It Could Happen Here Weekly 67

I'm Garrison Davis. This episode is going to be a bit of an update and an interview regarding the Defend the Atlanta Forest and Cops City movement that's been ongoing for almost two years now. If you're unfamiliar with the topic, I made a three hour, two part deep dive last May titled on the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest that you can find up on the it could Happen Here feed, and I've been doing random dates like in our History of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm episodes from

last August. But the TLDR is that the City of Atlanta and the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation are trying to tear down a large section of the Woolanee or South River Forest in Decab County to construct a massive, ninety million dollar militarized, state of the art police training facility,

complete with a mock city on top of that. Ryan millsaps Black Hall Movie Studios are planning to cut down an adjacent section of the very same forest to expand their film production studio in a shady land swap deal

that's currently the subject of a lawsuit. The past couple of weeks have seen a massive increase in the intensity of repression efforts by the state and local police inside Atlanta and Decab County against the Cops City movement and people in the forest encampments trying to prevent the construction of the police training facility. Last month, on a December there was a raid on the forest by a task

force of local, state, and federal law enforcement. Police were shooting pepperballs, rubber tipped metal impact rounds, and tear gas canisters into the woods. They destroyed treehouses while people were still inside, and tore part of the infrastructure like the communal kitchen that was built inside the forest to support the encampment. Police fired chemical weapons at tree sitters, arrested multiple people and pushed others out of the forest at gunpoint.

One of the things setting this apart from previous raids is that six people have now been charged with domestic terrorism as well as a number of other felonies. The people charged were initially denied bail and essentially held as political prisoners for trespassing in a forest with the terrorism enhancement charge added on top top. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation alleges quote several people through rocks at police cars and attacked E m T s outside the neighboring fire

stations with rocks and bottles. Task Force members use various tactics to arrest individuals who are occupying makeshift treehouses unquote. The Georgia Department of Homeland Security, which was formed as the result of a seventeen bill which is also responsible for the expanded definition of domestic terrorism, has chose to designate the defend the land of forest as quote domestic violent extremists unquote, which has led the State Attorney General's

office to also get involved in the case. I think it's worth mentioning that this seen domestic terrorism bill was first passed by the Georgia legislator in response to the neo Nazi Dylan Roof mass shooting at Emmanuel African Methodist Piscopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed nine people.

So now we have this law allegedly created in response to a murderous white supremacist targeted attack against black people, now being used for the first time as a bludgeon against anti racist protesters who are fighting against the expansion and further militarization of police facilities. This is a reminder that any expansion of state power will always come down the hardest on people who are actually pushing back against

the power structures of the state, like the police. After being held in jail for two weeks on in December, the six people were finally granted bail, but as of two days later, the jail was refusing to comply and release someone, instead saying that they will be quote held well the prosecutor add additional charges unquote. This abnormality was soon resolved and by December all six people charged were released on bail thanks to the Solidarity Fund, everyone who donated,

and people working jail support. Our interview today will be focusing on the jail support aspect and bail Fund organizing and for Note this interview was conducted prior to the release of the Forest Defenders. With me here today is James and Ralph. James is from the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee, and Ralph is from the Solidarity Fund. Greetings, thank you, thank you for joining me here, Thank you for having us.

Good to be here. So first I would like to see if, if if either of you have any kind of extra input on what's happened the past few weeks and how you think. I mean, I can't. I can't quite ask you why because you're obviously not not the police, but like, what what might be some reasons for some of the some of the increased repression and the use extremely extremely high charges being levied at people at this point in the movement. Yeah, they are extremely high charges.

They're really unprecedented charges in the state of Georgia. I don't think that, uh does of us in the entire questions based I've really ever seen anything like this being used against protesters, and I think the reason why it's pretty clear, and I think that that reason is because there's been an extremely effective social movement that's involved thousands of people from Atlanta and from across the country over the last year and a half two years that have

brought a serious challenge against a very unpopular proposal from the city to build a police mega mega compounds. And I think that the police and various other agencies that they're working with, the Atlanta Police, the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Georgia Bureau Investigation, that the Cap County Police Department, all of these different agencies, I think at this point

are are are really frustrated. And I think that really shows up in the charges that they've given people, because what we're talking about are people who have been literally pulled out of tree sets. Like this is the most like classic example of you know, nonviolent direct action civil disobedience you can think of, and you have people who are allegedly being pulled out of tree sets and charged

with domestic terrorism. And I think that really shows it's both very very scary in terms of the severity of the charges, but it's also has like an element of just being a little ridiculous in in terms of using these types of charges. You know, they make you think of like you know, the school shootings or you know, like nine eleven or something like this, like like these are the sorts of things that come to mind when

you think of domestic terrorism. And yet what we're talking about here is people who are allegedly being pulled out of out of tree sets after you know, being shot at with pepper balls and tear gasper and hours on end before they before they were pulled down. And I think that then the point of that is to scare people. It is because they are having a very difficult time um gaining any sort of public support or sympathy for

this project. And I think they're they're just really out of at a loss, and so that what they need right now is they need to scare people. They need to shut down this special movement by whatever means that they have available, and right now they're the technique that they're employing is just fear. And so the point of this is to have a chilling effect. It's to say that anybody who is protesting, who is a part of this social movement, could be liable to extremely extremely heavy charges.

And that's what they're banking on. They want people to be scared. They want to separate out people from from the movement. You feel like they can no longer participate because the charges or the potential repression is too severe. They want to be able to scare away people that support the movement by saying, look, you're supporting a terrorist movement. You're supporting something that is uh extreme to to some

crazy degree. But we know what the what the the real extreme position here is that they know that the city doesn't want this. They've had, you know, countless protests and all sorts of different different examples of just public outcry aginst this projects, and they proceeded with it anyway. And so now they're forced to be in this position where they're gonna have to they're gonna have to use whatever sort of either m violence or force or like

extreme charges to shut it down. Yeah, Atlanta Police Department since has had a huge, like the largest in the country by percentage, budgetary increase granted by the city. And this was done after the most amount of public comment there ever was in the history of city council, which was all done to say, to lower the police budget, to to defund the police as it were, and to

send put that money to other use. And then a second most amount of public comment the city council has ever received was seventeen hours of public comment were over se of the respondents were saying to not build cops city. They the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Department in the City of Atlanta, does not listen to the popular will from below from the people that they alleged to represent.

But all of this pressure, the pressure to to charge non violent protesters with domestic terrorism is coming from their corporate their corporate sponsors. It's coming from BB and T, It's coming from BAC of America, A T and T, Equifax, the Arthur Blank, Arthur Blank, who is the billionaire who runs Home Depot. Uh, it's it's coming from the people they actually represent, which is their corporate backers. They're there

seven months behind on this project. Uh, grass Field and Gory, the company that is the general contractor who also funds the APF. They're all certainly behind doors, being like, what's going on. We're seven months behind on this project. Why have we not broken ground yet? And they're still being denied the land, the land disturbance permits because there they can't get their own act together. They can't prove that this would be an environmentally friendly thing to do, because

it's simply isn't. It's leveling over five acres of land of forested land, and instead they just try to use brute force because that is what the state knows how to do. They know to use brute force, and then they want to put up trumped up charges onto on, onto onto random people who they are trying to pend the whole movement on, when the movement is thousands of

people all over the city and all over the country. Yeah, from like the from some of the recent some of the recent hearings and based on the based on the DHS documents, they're they're really trying to do the thing where they frame an autonomous, decentralized movement as a group. And if you're part of a group, that means that you're you know, involved in in you know, the domestic violent extremist group, which is just not how these types

of things work. It's the same thing that the right has been trying to label things like quote unquote antifa as for years. Some prosecutors and cities around the country have tried to try to charge people with similar kind of domestic terrorism or like gang violence charges due to their involvement with the Antifa group. Um, And it's the same, it's the same tactic here and trying to frame a

decentralized movement as like an organized group of people. And it seems like one aspect for why this is happening is like, like some of you have have mentioned, it's it's in the four of like a deterrent right there, trying to scare people away, saying that if you associate with this movement, we could we will charge you with terrorism.

Right It's it's it's it's this, it's this thing to try to push people away UM, try to try to try to prevent anyone else from from organizing in any capacity or just showing up, like just just showing up

to the forest. It's it's it's pretty comical, but it's also quite quite frightening in some ways, which is which is part of the intention, part of why I wanted to talk with h with both of you here today is to kind of discuss the role of both the Solidarity Fund and Anti Repression Organizing UM and just discuss the role of that and in how they support like activism movements and how they support UM land defense movements like like like in the case of Defend the Atlanta

Forest and yeah, what what what kind of what the role of of this type of organizing is in a in the kind text of this this type of activism. I guess, uh, let's let's start with Let's start with the Solidarity Fund, because that was you know, one of the things that I saw in the aftermath of these charges in the raid is a lot of calls to doing it, to doing it, to the Solidarity Fund to

help people out who have been hit with these outrageous charges. So, uh, I guess a Ralph, we talked a little bit about some of some of you know, what what the Solidarity Fund is and and uh and kind of how how this how this type of organizing operates. Yeah, for sure. So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund formed just to have a

bit of context for the organization. We formed in two thousand sixteen in the lead up to a um count counter demonstration against uh some ku Klux Klan members who are trying to burn a cross on Stone Mountain in

two thousands sixteen. This was like after a sequence of them having protests there after the Dylan Roof massacre, and people organized a counter demo, and we thought it would be intelligent to form a bail fund in case anyone got arrested because in the past, bail funds in Atlanta like refused to bail out anyone who they like deemed

as committing crimes that they deemed violent. Uh. And we wanted to create a b mail fund that does not discriminate against activists based on what the state alleges that

they did or did not do. And we formed in that and like after that, we would at different protests throughout the years, we would buil people out, we would fund raised to get them lawyers, and we would support them however we could, like organizing court vigils um and court support, and then and also suing the police like countersuing them for when they did like agreeious acts of police brutality or intimidation. And then in with the George Floyd up rising, we went from being a like small

fail fund to UM getting widespread support. We got tens of thousands of people donating money to us. And in Atlanta, over nine people were arrested by the police that summer, and you know, we supported all of them, all the ones who are not giving signature bond. We bailed out all the ones that were given signature bond, and all the other ones we got them lawyers and we have been supporting them every step in the way. A few of them have sadly gone to prison, and we support

them financially while they're in prison. Were like putting money on their promissary every month, and we UH pay like help them out with their phone calls, and we set aside money for when they get out there. You won't just be in destitute poverty, which is like what usually

happens to people who have to have sit in prison. UM. And in the case of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, we've supported it um through anti repression by when people get arrested, getting them lawyers, failing them out and UM when there's been like door knocks or whatever from law enforcement agencies, we have lawyers who will represent them as well, because oftentimes those people aren't given charges, but they're being intimidated by law enforcement, and when you get a lawyer

in between them, that intimidation normally stops. UH. And we also do jail support for anyone who has to, like when they get in jail, they have a number that they can call us and we can help get them

out UM. And for the six people who are currently charged with domestic terrorism as at the time of this recording, they're currently locked up and we are supporting them, and we've hired lawyers to advocate for them at their bail at their next bail hearing UM, and hopefully we will get them out and they will not have to sit in jail during their pre trial. We're a volunteer organization, like,

none of us are paid to do this. Uh. We do this because we believe in um the power of like liberatory social movements, and we want to support those movements and give them strength. Yeah, because I would say, I think I think a lot of you know, relatively big cities around the States have some form of jail support organization, whether it be formal or informal. UM. And it's it's this type of organizing which happens kind of

on the periphery of a lot of these types of bouvements. Right, It's not it's it's not the it's not the like excitement of throwing back a tear gas canister at a cop. It's it's all of the things that happen afterwards that can can can assist people who are who are facing like in some cases, very significant state state repression. And

it's definitely. It's not it's not the most flashy work, but it is I would argue as pretty crucial to any to any type of like functioning like system that allows protests to happen as a part of democracy, is a part of you know, long term revolutionary strategy, whatever kind of whatever kind of ideology you have, These these types of these types of like peripheral jail support and

bail fund organizings. It's definitely just as crucial as a lot of a lot of like the on the ground support stuff like you know, bringing water bottles or you know, helping up people in the moment. Totally, Like every movement needs a rear guard, Like it needs people like the people who are out protesting and organizing there on the

front lines. And we're able to be the rear guard for like when the state does attack, like we're able to like not have them be completely taken out of the field, Like they're able to get back, and we're able to support them and able to keep people safe from like police repression and from what essentially amounts to like legal kidnapping and like torture in the carceral state. Yeah,

and I mean in some cases, like in Portland. That's it's very much was a legal kidnapping as something that people are still are still dealing with on the on the on like the jail support side and helping people out with with you know, making sure that the state cannot get away with stuff like this, um, because they the thing they want the most is for nobody to push back on it, because that means they have permission to do it in the future without you know, without

any possible consequence or even even like even like any like attempt at concert quins. How could so I know like that. Nope, A lot a lot of cities have have jail support stuff. Um. A lot of this is also run on donations. What what are what are some ways that people could could assist in these types of things? Um.

Obviously people can donate to bail funds um. And I think there's a lot of I mean even even just showing up outside of jail or prison after these types of events is something that that happens a lot in terms of in terms of ways to kind of start getting plugged in in this in this type of like peripheral bail fund and jail support organizing totally. Yeah, I mean people should should donate to their local bail funds UH and even become like reoccurring donators. But people can

like join jail support teams. There's like we in Atlanta, we have a training and it can get you trained on how to be a jail poor person, and yeah, we have like once you're plugged in, you can like do jail and jail vigil like for when people get out so that they're not alone. Jails are often not always, but often like in like remote areas of the city or even outside of the city, so like it can be hard to like get get a bus back, so

you can offer them rides back. You can get plugged into do it in court support and like currently the six people charge of domestic terrorism are like being denied bail. Hopefully that will change. But in the case of like people being held UH, you can write post cards or letters to people and let them know that there are

people on the outside who support them. If you're in an area that like doesn't have that doesn't have a group that UM helps people out who are like who are having to sit in jail, like you can put money on their commissary UH directly, and you can write to them and you can send them books. Uh. And in the sense of like people showing up pretty immediately outside of the jail, like it is really inspiring. Uh. What happened the day Uh in the evening after the six,

after the first five people were arrested. Uh that that evening, like a crowd of dozens of people showed up outside of the Cab County jail and had a noise demo to like make noise outside of the jail to let the five know that they were not alone and that there's people outside who support them. Now, I think we will shift the conversation over to James. James, you're with the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee. We've already talked about the

role of these ridiculous charges as a repression method. Could you briefly explain what the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee is and its role in the periphery of these on the ground decentralized movements. Yeah. Sure, So. The Atlanta Anentire Repression Committee is a group that started in in the aftermathod the George Floyd protests, and we started because we recognized that there was a need for a kind of specific type of UH anti repression work to be done, which

is to say that there's a lot of um. You know, it's like the bulk of anti repression. You know that the single most important thing is keeping people safe, right, and so what that entails is a lot of legal defense for people that are arrested, people that are in car story to people that are imprisoned as a result of their activity, and protest movements and social movements, um,

fighting for you know, liberation. That said, um, there's also a whole a whole other type of work that needs to be done, which is the sort of what we like to call political defense. So in other words, we want to see these movements continue, we want to see these movements grow, and we want to see these movements be the powerful. And a part of that is understanding the specific mechanisms of repression and fighting back against the narratives that are being used against protesters in the media.

So a lot of what we do is media work, um, because there's a lot of things that you know, once you're once you're arrested as a part of a protest movement, there's a lot of things you can't say, um, but there's a lot of things that need to be said, um, namely that the people that have been arrested, whether we're talking about people in the Black Lives Matter movement of or in the Defensive Forest movement today, are fighting for

a just cause. These people should be doing what they're doing, and that's something that that that needs to be spread as as far and wide as possible. Um and so we do a lot of media work to to to justify and support not just the individual protesters, but the things that they're fighting for. And then we also do a lot of essentially research and analysis to understand the

overall patterns of repression as they play out. And and so that's something that's like that's really interesting, particularly in this case because you know, I said, we've never seen this before in Georgia, but we have seen this before. We've seen exactly these tactics be used against you know, protesters in the Standing Rock movement. We've seen it used in the Green Scare against U, the Earth Liberation Front

against Earth First. We've seen these movements like over and over again come up against this this giant wall, which is these these sorts of charges accusing people of terrorism. And so part of what we do is analyze what those what those strategies are and try to publicize them, try to help people to understand um, because it's it's the the agencies that were up against the all these different wings of the state and their corporate factors. As

Ralph was saying, they have an institutional memory. They are able to look back, you know, twenty years in the past and beet like, Okay, there was a social movement over here, um, and we were able to stop it because we did this, this and this, And they're able to have that that sort of memory to go back and look at those tactics. And part of the goal of depression is to cut people out of socialis to cut off this sort of generational understanding of the dynamics

of repression. And so we want to we want to increase our our capacity, as people are invested in seeing social events succeeded, be able to understand these sorts of repressive tactics and develop strategies against them. And I say that because we see repression as being a part of social movements. There are no social movements that are successful

that don't encounter repression. And so we have a we have a strong need to be able to understand the specific mechanisms of state repression, how they were, how different agencies work, how the specific laws worked, UH, and to be able to disseminate that information for and led both

within movements and also within the mainstream media. At the public event, one of the sheriff's involved in the involved in the raid against the forest offenders UH suggested that because because one of them is from California and is in Atlanta, that makes him a terrorist. This is utterly absurd.

Like we live in one country, like we're allowed, we have the freedom to travel, and we have the Unlike the police, we regular people have solidarity and can and have empathy and can see our own interests in other struggles that take place elsewhere, and that it is a noble thing to be like I have to go somewhere support to participate UH. And this is not something that

should be discouraged. And this is not terroristic. This is a sign of the beautifulness of human empathy and the ability to see yourself in others and this is what the police lack. That's That's definitely something I wanted to bring up at some point because this is this is a tactic that we've seen both the Atlanta Police Foundation of the City Council, and you know, right wing propagandists like Andy no have have have tried to frame this, have tried to frame this in terms of like the

the outside agitator's angle. Um. There. And you see in all of and all of the all of the arrest reports um that that that get published, one of the things they emphasize is that the that people arrested, some of them have been born in other states. They always they always mentioned the state that this person was born in, UM, which is just a ridiculous notion that people don't have

the freedom to move around the country. Uh, absolutely absurd that that that that people don't have the freedom to move around to places and choose where where they want to live. So they're framing they're framing people who are arrested that were that happened to be born in other places. They're they're they're they're using this as a in terms of like the outside agitator angle to be like people are are coming into Atlanta to try to you know,

so chaos and disorder within our city. Um. And look, they're they're pulling up people from all from all around the country. Then they're trying to you know, frame it in this like very conspiratorial lens. Um. And that's just that that is that is that is something that I've also noticed and found to be uh, a quite interesting tactic.

I mean, I would they definitely wanted to be an effective strategy in terms of the outside agitator angle of of you know, people coming coming in from out of state to get to get involved in this group, this this Antifa alligning terrorist group, as someone like Andy No would say, uh, And it's it's it's it's purely it's purely a propaganda tactic because it relies on the notion that people can't move around the country and decide where they want to live, uh, which obviously which obviously is

an absurd notion um. And I think as as as you said, it also kind of you know, the other side of this is that it highlights the kind of the beautiful nature of being able to choose where you want to go and choose to get involved in things that you feel are important, even if they aren't in the current place where you are living. Just to add a little bit to this, like it's crazy because it's like when you read the reports and the news of

the people that they arrest. They always make it a point to talk about people from out of town, and they always seem to omit the people that are from Atlanta that they've arrested. And not that I'm advocating that they should be publicizing, you know, these people at all, but it's just to highlight that what they're doing is a propaganda tactic, and I think it it has has really fallen on their face in Atlanta, because, you know, Atlanta is a city that's famous for the civil rights movement.

Like we're talking about freedom writers were talking about people from all over the South, from all over the country coming to you know, Martin Luther King went to Solma, He's from Atlanta. You know, this type of this type of logic just doesn't really doesn't really seem to work here, and it's really bizarre to see them try to use

it over and over and over again. It's really just like a failed playbook at this point, within the context of both how the repression against the Defend the Atlanta Force movement has evolved and where it's at now with what's happened in the past few weeks, and then also consider the types of analysis of past ecological and resistance movements that we've seen. How do you see some of the repression by the state evolving as the Atlanta four

stuff continues. Well, I think that that overall, with respect to social indiments, we've seen an increase in this this type of charge that as Ralph was sort of getting at, it's it's a it's it's a it's a type of charge that criminalizes your participation in in a in a

group or in a socialment um. And so if you look at the specific warrants that are using in some of these people that they just arrested, um, you know, I'm thinking of one in particular where it goes into detail and it says this person is accused of being a part of a domestic violence a domestic violent extremist movement called Defend the Atlanta Forest, and they're responsible for all of these acts of all of these different crimes from trust passing to UH to arson or whatever, you know.

And so they lump this all together. They say that an autonomous social movement is a coherent organization, and then they say that the individual that they arrested UH confirmed their participation in this group called Defend the Atlanta forest by sitting in a treehouse and wearing camouflage. This is absurdum because there's there's no evidence in in this in this example, that this particular person or any of these people have anything to do with any of these other

crimes that they are alleging. We're a part of this movement. So what they're doing instead, they know that they can't arrest them for that. But what they're doing instead is they're coming at it from this legal angle where they're saying this movement as a whole is a discrete group. This group is an extremist group, and so your participation in anything that seems like it's a part of this group is criminal in and of itself, and in this case,

terrorists in and of itself. And this is a really disturbing trend that we've seen in over the last few years, with the grease in the use of conspiracy charges, with the increase in the use of arrico charges, racketeering charges, and the point of all of these different legal strategies is to hold people accountable for crimes that they did not do, and that's exactly what we're seeing now with

the six people that they just arrested. They want to hold these people accountable and make them martyrs for an entire movement that's involved hundreds and thousands of people doing all sorts of things criminal or otherwise. And that is a disturbing trend um and it's it's especially disturbing because if you look at the way that the the law has written in Georgia with respect to domestic terrorism, so

that's an that's an enhancement charge. It means that you have to be arrested for another crime, for example, in in in the in the example of the people that they just arrested felony trust passing, they add in a domestic terrorism enhancement charge to it. And the justification for this domestic and domestic terrorism enhancement charge is to basically saying that they were attempting to change governmental policy by into addition, which is an interesting way of saying protesting

is illegal. All protests involves trying to change governmental policy.

That is what protesting is. And what they what they are attempting to do now with these charges is to reframe that entirely and say that that is terrorism, and that is uh, you know, it's sort of it's we're on a tricky slope right now, because it's like, on the one hand, we need to recognize that these charges are absurd and they very likely won't stand up in court because they're very clearly unconstitutional at the very least, So we need to not be afraid of them on

the one hand, and to show how absurd they are. On the other hand, we should take this as a serious threat to social movements all across the United States in all different sorts of fields and areas, in different different types of fights for for for different different sorts of things, to say like, wow, this is a huge, huge stretch that they're trying to pull here because they have seen like in the last few decades, like a tremendous amount of pollersy in America, all sorts of social

events that involve you know, Black Lives Matter was twenty million people. Are these people all terrorists? And and so that's why it's important to pay attention to what's happening now in Atlanta with the struggle to attend the Atlanta Forest and the charges that they're putting against these people, because if they can succeed with this type of charge, that's a very very dangerous precedent for people who are part of all sorts of social events and not just

the left wing either. You know, there's a part of this that's like since the January six, the you know, so called insurrection. However you want to however you want to characterize that there's been a tremendous push by the

federal government too to crack down on social movements. They see this as like threats to into their stability, that there are you know, situations where there's thousands or millions of people who are participating in in all different sorts of social movements, and they need to send a clear message that people should not be out protesting. Thank you both for talking with me today. UM Where could people

but learn more about your respective organizations? And then also how can people support force defenders who are facing the

increasingly harsh state repression. You could visit the just like Google or look up on any of the major social media platforms Atlanta Solidarity Fund UH and you could read go to our website UM and if you want to support any force defenders who are facing serious charges, UM, we donate money or you could write write them UM postcards or if you could send them books that they've

requested UM and when court dates are. When court dates come up, we'll probably publicize those so that people can come out and um show show their support and solidarity the people facing charges. And you could come out to uh do court support and you can get involved in the movement yourself if you uh feel so inclined. Yeah, and I'll just add to that. The aliena entire re Quesion committee can get found on Instagram. You can look it up. Uh. And and just generally speaking, this is

something that people need to talk about. So any chance that you have to to talk about to explain what's happening in Atlanta, to put a giant light on this situation, because everybody needs to be paying attention to this because this is not just uh, you know, as as as people in that defend the coursewomen say, it's not just a local issue. There national and even international complications for this type of stuff. And and that's also true with

regards to repression. If they can succeed with these charges here, that's a that's a major death blow too to all sorts of social evidents, and they'll they'll be trying to export this tactic elsewhere. We think it won't stick, but we think it's extremely important for people to be talking about it and to make this uh the national issue that we recognize that it is. Some of those links. We will also be putting in the description below The day that this episode is being released just so happens

to be Martin Luther king Junior Day. And also it's the last day in a weekend of solidarity to stop Cops City. This past weekend, there's been events, gatherings, actions, and rallies in Atlanta and across the country in support for the Stop Cops City movement and the six individuals facing domestic terrorism charges. On Saturday, I saw pictures of a huge banner hanging outside of a squat in France in solidarity with Atlanta and struggles to defend the Atlanta Forest.

It seems the extremely high charges in Georgia have not dissuade people from across the country from engaging in direct action. In December, at List construction offices, one of the contractors working on Cops City were attacked in Manhattan and Michigan

in solidarity with those arrested defending the Wolani Forest. On January five, a construction site and offices for Brassfield and Gory, the main contractors currently working on Cops City, were attacked by anarchists in South Florida, according to a statement published on the website Scenes dot No blogs dot org, and just days earlier, another post on the site claimed credit for setting fire to a Bank of America in Portland. Bank of America is a major contributor to the Atlanta

Police Foundation. Both of those statements referenced the domestic terrorism charges. You can check out Defend the Atlanta Forest at Defend the Atlanta Forest dot org and most major social media sites. You can check out scenes dot no blogs dot org for more stories of direct action on the front lines, and of course you can check out the Atlanta Solidarity Fund at a t L Solidarity dot org. There you can donate to bail funds and help people currently facing

state repression. That's all for us today. See you on the other side. Yeah, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen here once again? Who'sted around? Myself Andrew and also joined with Garrison is here as well and me Mia. I'm awful here and of the things that I've been thinking about lately because I've been reading a lot more fiction um A lot of things, and these sorts of sci fi's fair particularly um some Activita,

but um some orcum some Margaret Atwood. I recently read Orks and Creek. UM. I've just been thinking about a lot of these concepts that are presented in stories um in sci fi. UM. And what is more sci fi than the idea of computers that sort of digital space. And what has become of the digital would um as of late, as you know, and really since its inception, as capitalism has sort of chopped it up and privatized

it and sequested it and monopolized it. As I think it really um goes against what the principles of the Internet should be in terms of how it is run, how it is structured, how it is organized. Because the Internet as a concept really brings together, um a variety of people, a variety of spaces and backgrounds and intersections, and I believe it would be a place of sharing, a place of collaboration, particularly since the sort of resources that might be UM limited in the physical world ah

far more abundant in the digital world. UM. I'm thinking in terms of like educational resources and otherwise of course they are you know, infrastructural limitations. But on the cloud, you know, um, in cyberspace, And I cringe saying that because it makes me feel like a booma. Um. You know, they have the ability to freely and easily copy and

share and paste wherever and whenever, basically without many limitations. Um. Instead of really seizing that for what it could be, you know, we've we've turned it into this sort of

um corporate feudalism. Um. We're all these uh digital merritcoporations, these social media giants basically have carved of the Internet into their own little you know, fiefdoms and dominated um the discourse, you know, dominated how we communicate with each other, how we tend to communicate each other based in the main stream side of the Internet, what has become to me in stream things, so what most people think of

when they think of the Internet. UM, But I'm not a big fan of that idea of the Internet, that perception, that conception of the Internet in fact um as something that I have been thinking about and developing and discussing for the past couple of months and researching for the

past couple of months. I really think that among all the other things that I've discussed, unnecessary components, in developing the commons, in creating and re establishing the commons, I think digital commons will be just as important because the commons, uh the rather, the inclusion of the commons is what

really kicked off the establishment of capitalism. I believe the re establishments of the commons will be required in that transition away from capitalism towards a more collective, more communal, um, more sustainable way of life. For those who, um, I guess just tuning in this perhaps your first episode with me at least, or perhaps you've never seen any of the figures of my channel. UM, I'll take a moment to,

you know, explain what exactly the commons are. The commons referred to the resources accessible to all members of a society, the totality of the material riches of that part of the world, of that world regarded as the inheritor of

humanity as a whole, something to be shared together. The commons or something that are based on common pool resources or cprs, which is any natural or man made system that is organized to benefit a group of people, but would provide diminished benefits to everyone if each person pursued their own self interest and of course, these resource systems, like I said, could be natural or man made, so

they could be forests. You know, traditionally there are things like forests and irrigation canals and fisheries and pastures and drown water basins. UM. But I think it's it can be expanded even food. I mean things like energy infrastructure like windmills, WIN two bndes or as um. Going to describe different portions of the Internet, different resource systems within the interntion of course, the Internet as a whole. I believe all of those things can um can be brought

under the commons UM And of course the Commons. The theory of commons history of the Commons is its own lengthy discussion. Of course, you could read about it in Governing the Commons by Eleanor Ostrom. You could listen to a sort of a condensed version of that in my video on my channel on the Commons as an institution.

But when it comes to you know, information and communication technologies, when it comes to I C T S and sort of applying that Commons idea to I C T S. ID like to think about it in terms of these sort of digital communities bringing together people who share you know, common goals to collaboratively build and share those resources through technology. So I would say that digital commons are or can be, and can be because I think some of them already

exist in some form. But they are basically these online creation communities where you know, there's a free flu um and free access to and free collaboration. Um. You know, the sharing of this non exclusive digital information and the collective creation of like knowledge resources. These resources of course being owned and used freely between or among the community

and also available for use by three parties. So and instead of being exchanged as commodities, you know, these resources are used and reused and reused without artificial restrictions to sort of enforce an artificial scarcity. UM. I just actually thought of a really funny example that I hadn't initially conceived of in a sort of guideline for this episode. I don't know, if you're a lot of familiar with Martin Scorsese, is Gone trov no Okay? So in nine three,

Martin scorsesey developed this film called Gone. It's a historical epic um a sort of a post war era mafia movie, and it was directed by Scorsese, and it started Robert de Niro and Alpuccino and Gene Hackman. It had a sort of deep Hume eroticism blended with a sort of exploration of of medal aggression. It's a sort of a look at the relationship between Gone Shrev, who is a Russian mafia boss, and his partners slash rival slash old friend Andrew, who I believe is supposed to be an

Italian mafia boss. But the thing about Gone Sharov and I mean, you can find posters about it, you can find fan art of which you can find many, many, many fan fictions about it. Um, But Conture is not a real movie. It does not exist. Everything I described it's entirely fake. The litany of colorful side characters that you know people have developed for this movie, the hundreds of fan fictions, the dozens of metaalyses and pieces of fin arts people have you know, generated for this movie.

The movie itself doesn't exist. The movie only exists in the collective um co creation of it that took place over a Tumbler of all places, Essentially, a couple of Tumbling users basically came up with this idea of this lost Martin Scorsese film that everybody has seemingly forgotten. They would rave about it, and they would come up with fake plot points and fake characters, and before you know it, you know, it's sort of like this massive Internet phenomenon,

this sort of inside juke Internet, inside juke UM. One of people started building on top of it and respecting what came before UM, and that sort of spirit of co creation is what it ended up creating. This Gone this teal of Gone throw, this gone through of fandom, this whol development of Gone Troop as a character of the side characters as you know, fully developed characters. And it all started because you know, one user said to another like, oh, don't you know the movie Gone Shroof,

it's only the greatest Mafia movie ever made. On that tagline, the greatest Mathia movie ever made. Would be built upon with further photoshops and embellishments and developments, and there's now like a really comprehensive document of a sure off law. Um things are added and ingest things added in complete seriousness, But it's just a thing that exists. It's a thing that I believe. Um, it's just one manifestation of many

of what the Internet has the capacity to produce. When online creation communities are allowed to operate freely UM and develop, they wouldn't sort of common creative UM resources. I think other examples of I guess the seeds of what I'm talking about can be seen in UM. I guess, like role play UM servers and role play communities, role play message boards. I think some fandoms also have some of

the seeds of what I'm talking about. Of course, the Minecraft community with everything they've created, modern communities across different games. They all sort of manifestations of you know, human desire to read and human desire to share, without you know, the artificial restrictions and boundaries of of mainstream couplust imagination.

I think another manifestation of the digital commons in a sense can be found in resources like z library, UM and a few others that I'm afraid of naming in case, you know, they get taken down as well. And I mean that's really the sad part of its the libraries loss. I mean, I haven't really been feeling that loss because I am aware of the alternatives UM, but it's lost on the last because of the way the library is formatted, it was a bit more accessible to a lot of

people and people aware of it and stuff. Um, but Z Library, and I'm glad that it's called a library. It's called Z Library. It's just you know, one manifestation of the um the roots of the library as a concept and how it can manifest um in the digital speece, how the commons through the I guess the conception of the library can manifest in a in a digital space.

I mean even you know, mainstream ones we have like we have, we have stuff like archive dot org and I know archive dot org is trying to launch something to host a whole bunch of scientific journals and other articles that are harder to access as well, but I mean they already host you know, quite impressive plethora of

copyrighted books. Um me and Robert have gotten into arguments on Twitter dot com with many an author who is mad about their book being on archive dot archived dot org of and so that is you know, there is there is, There is many resources if you know where to look. But sadly some or some someone there no longer with us and people have been have been punished by the state for trying to provide open access to information. Yeah,

and I mean who controls information right. Well, however, the same goes I think another as you mentioned, kind of another example of that sort of collaborative information sharing can be seen. And of course Wikipedia, you know. Yeah, as personal computers and the intent became more more accessible, the

lower barriers of expression and stuff. Um. This Internet culture, as it was initially born, it was one with the aim of you know, collaboratively great and cultural content did not developing and generating you know, universe sell access to knowledge. Wikipedia just one example of course, different wikis bluralum. But of course the longer called wickiest I think it's called

fandom that or or something. Now, Yes, unfortunately fandom bought a bunch of uh different wiki sites that were independently operated over the course of the past twenty years, and then they kind of consolidated under the big Fandom company. Yeah. Now like half of them are unusable because of ads and stuff. Yeah, it is, it is. It's it's pretty rough to scroll a fandom site. It's not the easiest thing.

But I will see, as a youth with a few regulations and my access to the Internet, it was actually quite nice to be able to go on to the fandom and just like well, I was, you know, around when it was still Wicky. UM. But you know, going like Marvel Wicky or going TC Wicky and read up on all the different characters I was into at the time. Oh yeah, absolutely, you know I used to go on like power listing Wicky and like come up with characters,

you know, piece on certain superpowers. UM. And I also created my own Wicky for my own made up, uh sort of world building project. UM. And just the fact that resource was available, you know, that the tools were easy, were free to access UM, and that easy to understand as well. UM. And of course they were always tutorials and stuff available if you don't know how to function

and what to do certain things. Just that that that accessibility, UM and freedom is something that I think is still exists, you know in some sense, despite you know, this company

buying out everything. And I appreciate the fact that you know, unlike you know that company, Wikipedias and me and e og Wikipedia continues to maintain their steadfast anti ad um you know, standing um and continues to you know, UM run on I guess donations just just today as of the day that we're recording, uh, people whole a whole bunch of the right wingers that have coalesced around Musk after his purchase of Twitter have gotten mad at Wikipedia

for not for they've They've gotten mad that Wikipedia wasn't was wasn't reposting their fake Twitter files drama thing um as glowingly as some of them might like. And they're complaining about Wikipedia's left wing bias, and a whole bunch of these Musk fan boys are talking about being like, hey, Elon Musk should buy Wikipedia and fix Wikipedia's left wing bias and this this, this one, this, this one guy.

He was like, um, I wonder how much Wikipedia had cost to buy at Elon Musk and then the the uh, the founder of Wikipedia is like, absolutely not, this is not for sale. We we are not letting Elon must compie Wikipedia. Yeah. I mean, if if conservatives really want um a platform that badly, there's always conservative Pedia or whatever it's called. Um, there's always Encyclopedia if they want to get really wacky. Um. But yeah, Wikipedia is going

to continue being Wikipedia thankfully. UM. I appreciate the rabbit holes it has let me through. I appreciate the Wikipedia games that I've been able to play, you know, like you have to go from one page to another. Uh, you know that kind of degrees of pages, how you link two different completely different topics. But yeah, zero advertising accessible to all many different languages. Of course, you know it's not completely flawless. They are sitting UM very contentious

articles of course, UM. They always be attempts to hijack that those peaches of the pops of propaganda. Of course, every article has its bias. But by and Lodge, because of the collaborative nature of the project, they have been ways to mitigate bad actors and respond to UM those sorts of attempts at corruption and cooptation. So you know, it goes to show that you know, even something as I would say, the essentially organized as Wikipedia UM is

still able to regulate itself collaboratively. Yeah. I think around this time last year here on the show, we interviewed somebody from Wikimedia UM specifically talking about how the talking about the the regional differences of the wikipedias that are in different countries and in different regions, how that impact access access information and how people in their own communities can work towards providing a fuller better picture of the

types of information that people are getting. UM and the great part about it is that it really does put the power into anyone's hands. It's not it's it's not gate kept the same way a lot of other information is. Yeah, yeah,

that's the beauty of it. Really, I think another problem in case of information sharing or rather file sharing and just so that I pay it to pay architecture, we found in really um, the pirating community could and could you know, there's facilities, access and the exchange of cultural products there might otherwise be lost, you know, as we're seeing with a lot of these shows being axed, and you know, people's hard earned UM, you know hard people

who you know, really worked hard on sitting projects and stuff. These companies with their you know, tax dodging schemes and whatever, you're able to basically sweep all out a side. UM. And so the fact that UM, we are able to presume and of course in films and view and TV shows being taken down by sitting streaming services and not

eve being able to be found easily physically, UM. You know, having these files and stuff just accessible online UM, shared between payers is it's really great to see, UM, and it really allows for the preservation of things right otherwise be lost and of course there's also as another example of a sort of digital comments um, the idea of open source, or really the free software movement, which is a social movement aimed at obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms

for software users, you know, to run the software, to study software, to modify the software, and to share copies of that software, whether the modified or not. UM. The philosophy of this free software movement, there's really this idea that computer you should not lead to people being prevented from corporating with other In fact, it should. The opposite is be allowing people to cooperate with each other. So things like you rejecting restrictions on software, promoting free software,

and liberating people who use some technology, use computers. It's really what you know, the free software movement is trying to do. UM. One of the founders of the movement again name is Stilman. He has said that the idea the free software movement is that, you know, by allowing free access to software, it allows it promotes, rather than hinders a progression of technology, because it means that much of the wasteful duplication of system programming effort can be avoided.

You know that AFFLCA instead of going into advancing different projects, so you open source and you know, free software movement, what if you want to call it, it's although I know there's some people make a distinction, Um it is.

I would believe I would think a manifest station of digital comments people are able to self organize through the associate and really just allowing people to get their hands on some software, to creates, to run, to redistribute, to change their software, to look to pick apart and learn from certain code. Um I really just allow people to

continue to create and share. And the sort of culture that open source, that free software creates is one of you know, courtesy, is one of collaborations of helping one another to contribute to a greater whole um, to sort of regulate each other's monitor activity that might jeopardize the project, and we see the benefits of that. You know, a lot of the most recognizable, high traffic open software projects

uh stable. You know, they're secure and they're very thorough the understood by the people who collaborate to create them, compared to a lot of the more clues and proprietary projects that are not as accessible, not as open to scrutiny and study. So it is I think, in a sense a phone of of anarchy and um of people governing themselves and cooperating to create a whole greater than any individual could create a loon um. And speaking of

you know people I guess coming together and communicating and collaborating. Um. It's this sense that I guess people have been discussing a lot lately of the digital public square and Twitter teams is usually at the center of that conversation. This idea that we have this space that you know that shouldn't be privatized, shouldn't that should be freely accessed and everyone could communicate without restrict shown And when you have the free speech, people within that honestly question the value

of Twitter pretty much every day. Uh you know, obviously some good let's come out of it. And then really other sort of quote and qude digital public squares, like any sort of me and extreame social media, some good you know comes out to them. You know, you meet people, you able to work in projects. There was a meat like minded folks. All that is is good, but also a lot of you know, terrible, terrible things have come out to these platforms and continue to every single day, um.

And so it's it's a mixed bag. But I think any sort of digital commons project will need a space and how that space is conceived what of course need to be unmoored from you know, capitalist magination, um that the an ad whole um you know, potentially economy reach economy that aims to keep us divided and button heads. But I do think they will need be there will need to be a space for communication across boundaries, across regions around the world easily. Last thing I really wanted

to touch on on this topic. It's really the sort of the overlap beteen the idea of digital commons and t growth, so you know, both sort of question that

sort of means an idea of consumption um. Digital commons, you know, they promote this this idea of someone who both consumes and produces, consumes value and digital space, but also adds to that value that doesn't could modify um the resources available in the digital space, but rather you know, makes it accessible and adds to it, contributes to it, and that sort the idea of open access really something to the growth also tries to emphasize, you know, even

though we're trying to scale within planetary limits. We still want, you know, a good life for all. We still want people to to collaborate and create um and fract beople more free to do so without limitations that the growth oriented capitalist economy imposes on us. The idea, of course, digital commons also brings the means of production in the digital spare under the control of the communities who use it.

We use that resource, who use that service, in complete contrast the capitalist them of keeping them perfectly health and aiming to serve profit. Digital commons and de growth both emphasize access um information, to knowledge, the resources as part of our human heritage, as part of our human rights. The commons should be something that is openly available rather than restricted, commodified, privatized. Of course, unlike traditional commands, um,

you know, digital commons are not easily exhaustible, not really exhaustible. Um. They're not subject to many of the limitations that physical commons would have. But at the same time, you know, they depend on a certain infrastructure, and infrastructure that relies on you know, energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere. Being able to access the internet requires um, certain tools, certain technologies, computers, phones, whatever UM, and the

resources required to create those technologies has to come from somewhere. UM. The cables and the oceans, the satellites and space, you know, the electricity for the computers, the materials for the phones and the computers. All of those things UM consume and contribute the exhaustion of environmental resources, and so balancing that and being common sense of environmental impact, we still have to be essential component and you know, any development of

the digital comments. At the end of the day, I believe that humans are sort of pre program to create and to collaborate with each other UM, and I think digital comments are one way in which we can do that. I really appreciated UM the way that a different writers and thinkers on the subjects have UM sort of explore those ideas. Of course I drew a bit from one particular author, Mayo Foster moral UM and the exploration of the idea, But there's a lot available if you're interested

in covering topic and what happened. Of course, the same goes for the comments in general. There a lot of different resources out there. UM. Eleanor Ostrom's work is creed place to start, and I really think it's important that we do um get these conversations rolling in the mainstream, in the background, in every corner and every space, because we stand to benefit a lot from it, and we honestly really need it in a time like this. That's

it from me for this episode. You can follow me on YouTube at androids um, on Twitter at and disclosed saying true, and on Patreon you can support me. I should like Atton dot com slash same true Yeah, and you can find it could happen here on Twitter and Instagram. Apparently we have the coolson as a TikTok, a thing that we learned. Do we officially have one? I thought, well, I don't know. I I okay, well that we did. Who knows? We may or we do not have a TikTok.

You'll never know. By earlier January, we definitely will because we have something special planned. Um. But yes, Twitter, at least, Twitter and Instagram at at happened here. Pondonicles and media still on where despite despite the digital town square collapsing, we are holding out in the in the dystopian ruins of Twitter. UM. So yeah, anyway, welcome to it could happen here a show. I've had a bunch of ship actually, but but our our core is collapse and UH, political

violence in the United States. That's that's where we got our bones. And today we're getting back to basics. We're we're going into the roots. UM. Those of you who live in New Mexico are probably broadly familiar with the kind of basics of this story. UM. Many of you probably will have heard aspects of this. But there have been a series of shootings that took place in December of last year in January of this year, UM at the homes of to state legislators and two county commissioners.

No one was injured, thankfully, UM. But this was obviously something that was scaring the hell out of a lot of people, UM, liberals and people on the left in New Mexico over the last several weeks because they were clearly politically motivated. UM. New Mexico has had shootings at protests and it's its share of the political violence that has swept a large chunk of the country, and this

seemed like a real scary years of lead style escalation. UM. Very recently, within the last couple of days of US recording this, it was announced that the police had brought in the guy who was responsible for organizing this UM. He did not carry out the shootings himself. His name is Solomon Penia um and he was a former Republican candidate for local office who hired fore men Um in order to shoot at the homes of elected Democrats. Um.

Those are the basics of it. Uh. The arrest Warren affidavit says that penia intended to cause serious harm or cause death to the occupants inside their homes, which seems pretty credible based on what we know objectively about what happened. Um. It's also worth noting that Penya had donated repeatedly in the past to Lyndon LaRouche, which I'm sure we'll get

into a little bit later. But I want to introduce my guest for this episode, who knows the story much better than I do, a local, uh New Mexico based activist, Lucas Herndon. Lucas, How are you doing today, buddy? I'm doing good man. Glad to be back, sort of really glad to have you back. You've been on the show before. I'm just gonna kind of let you take it from here now that I've sort of laid out the bones of it. Yeah. Thanks, and just a couple of clarifying points, um,

which only because things have been moving very quickly today. UM. This is the day after he was arrested. There is actually now evidence put out from the A p D that um Penya himself UH was in the car and attempted to fire at least one of the targets. Apparently he had an A R fifteen that quote unquote jammed.

It didn't stop that shooting from occurring. His accomplice, who is unnamed at this time, at least to our knowledge, UH did fire a glock out of the car during that that I mean, so that there was still a shooting that happened. But it is worth noting that he was not just the mastermind but also an active participant, at least according to what we know today. Yeah, it looks like the weapon that was used was a tan

and black clock with a drum magazine. UM or at least the drum was seized at the thing doesn't really matter, UM. But so I'm interested kind of first in if you want to walk us through how you became aware that these shootings had happened and how you would kind of characterize the impact it had on on the community around you, because this obviously is is intensely frightening and is the kind of thing most of us have been paying attention, have been worried about happening for for quite a while.

Right exactly that. Yeah, so, um, you know, in in the in the political nonprofit world, which which I work in professionally, UM, it's not uncommon for the whole movement sort of takes the last part of December off for the holidays. UM. So unfortunately, there was sort of not a lot of eyes on stuff in the latter part of December. But as soon as we got back to work on the third of January, a series of events happened where there was a realization that there were shootings

that happened at different elected officials houses. Right, and UM, it turns out or it looks like that the cops were just starting to put it together themselves. But it came from, um, the fact that the first two targets were at the time ceded county commissioners in berno Leo County. Um. Just for extra added confusion, UM, one of those targets was she finished her term at the end of the year, so she's now she's not technically sitting as a commissioner anymore,

just just for clarity UM. But then over the course of of you know, those weeks that we were all out, there were also then shootings at UM one of the state senators homes, and then in January there was also shootings at the campaign office of who the gentleman who is now our state attorney general. Within our sort of movement of people that work on you know, political things, we were all gearing up for the session are into Mexico.

Our legislative session kicks off a sixty day term actually started today on January, and it became clear to all of us that this was happening, and we started, you know, talking amongst ourselves, and we really we did find out that at that point the cops had started piecing it together. They were piecing together pieces of information. It turns out that after the shooting on the third UM, the only other named accomplice so far, this guy Jose Trahio, was

arrested forty minutes after the shooting. UM a p D because of ongoing issues with UM crime in the in the city of Albuquerque, has like a quick response like system set up that like tracks gunfire and yeah, so they were they were able to track this guy down. Um, he was driving a car that was registered to Penya. Um. And uh, there was other connections obviously that the you know, cops put things together and then yeah, and they executed

the search warrant yesterday. There was a SWAT situation. It sounds like it was um preventative more than anything, but it but but some of the stories that have come out is that he was reluctant to leave at first, but there wasn't actually any overt threats of violence. But you know, the cops did respond was swat when they arrested him. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that he had carried out a series of shootings. Uh. Not surprised

to hear that. Now, I'm I'm kind of curious. Was there a community response prior to sort of Pinia being exposed and arrested? Was their community response kind of reacting to the fact that there were was an escalating series of shootings targeting local elected leaders. Yeah. So the company I worked for, Progress Now New Mexico, we put out

a series of twee eats. Um. Basically as soon as we had started putting two and two together, Um, you know, we we were careful to say that disappears politically motivated. We don't have hard evidence, but it's hard to not

put those two things together. We at progress now and and me specifically, having worked here for a very long time, UM, I have been tracking political violence here in the state UM for for a while and and i've i've i've been part of it in the sense that I was threatened and docked in as were some of my other colleagues, and so, you know, these things hit close to home, right and on the and on the one hand, it's it's tough to see these things as anything but political

violence for for those of us like you, Robert, that like we see it all the time because we're paying attention to it. On the other hand, there is unfortunately a lot of gun violence in Albuquerque, and you know, so there were there were some pushback people, Oh, I know, this is just you know, there's just that much gun violence quote unquote, but that's you know, that was a

silly premise. Honestly, this was very clearly politically motivated. And now that we have a person to attach this to, and we can look at his social media history and and you know, stuff we've found in telegram stuff on his Twitter. It's so clear. I mean he we just actually even today, right before we got on here, we just published another telegram piece that we found on our Twitter that he threatened the Secretary of State after he lost his election, UM telling saying that she should quote

unquote hang until she's dead. So yeah, I mean, he's this has been an ongoing part of his um ideology for a while. You know, he has a lot of pro maga posts, UM, a lot of big lie you know, tainted election you know, uh rhetoric all over his social media such as it exists anyway, Now, have this altered it all um, or had an impact on your thinking of um? You know, when when you have attacks or a series of attacks like this, as you said, it's impossible to say prior to kind of knowing who did it,

that like this is certainly politically motivated. But at a certain point it becomes kind of reasonable and and safe to make that assumption, and I think also necessary when you're trying to two protect a community and get people prepared for the likelihood that they're going to encounter of violence. UM. We've also had those cases where like it, it is impossible to know, you know, we had a series of

attacks on power plants last year. We still don't know who did the ones in North Carolina or who did the ones in Portland. But it turned out that the folks who did that Christmas Day attack UM on power substation and UM Washington State were um uh just robbing a place right effectively non political. So it is kind of impossible to get has this altered it all your kind of feelings on when at what sort of point

do we start raising the alarm? Yeah, you know, I mean I think that progress now you know, my my, my organization that I work with, we as soon as we heard something was afoot, we put out the word for us. It was for us, it was a matter of safety as as as people who have lived through it ourselves. Um. This was a time that the community needed to be aware of these things and be thinking about it. Um and and to be honest at you know, our our group discussion about it was it was better

to be safe than sorry. If if somehow this wasn't political, or if it was maybe personalized or something like that, um at you know, at these legislators and lawmakers, rather than it being overtly just political ideology. You know, that would be we could walk it back. But again it was for us we made the decision that no, this information needs to be out there. Um. We have, especially as we were gearing up for the session, there was

just there's too much on the line. Um. You know, up until years ago, at our state legislature, which we call the Roundhouse because it's a big round building. UM. Up at the Roundhouse, you could carry firearms into the building. Um. It was just a sort of a remnant of New Mexico's sort of wild West days, I guess. Yah. But uh, but with the with the rise of with the rise of far right related violence, and you actually did have armed insurrection minded people showing up um in and around

January six. Um. But even before that, really during during up with a lot of the MAGA rallies, the Trump trains and all that, the legislature passed their own you know rules saying you couldn't bring guns into the into the legislature. And that was up even further this year by the installation of metal detectors. So but that's new. But that was directly related to this, this this looming

threat over over lawmakers in the state. Um, they didn't know if they were going to have anybody in custody before things started started today, and so the legislature made that decision for themselves that they were going to institute that policy and have metal detectors on the way in. Yeah, I mean that that that that makes sense, and that I as I understand it, that it's still the law in the state of Texas actually that you can be armed inside the Capitol building. I certainly had been during

protests years ago. It's interesting the watching kind of the simultaneous adaptation by the law enforcement, by kind of elected in sort of standard centrist Democrats and by the left in different ways to this escalation in in political violence, and kind of the acceptability on the right of using the threat or the practice of violence to try to push um for political ideology. Because everyone is kind of

adapting in real time to it. I'm wondering, how are you kind of looking at this from the left, how are you how are you feeling about the way in which the actual state has responded so far? Yeah, it's complicated. Um So, the tradition in New Mexico is on the opening day of the legislature, the governor gives the State of the State address. UM and I covered that earlier today. One of her key points and she and she tied it to this very issue, was she is pushing as

a priority bill this year a quote unquote assault weapons ban. Uh. There is also another legislator who is pushing, um a what we would call a standard capacity but what they call a high capacity magazine ban. And you know, and then there's some other ones that are maybe a little bit more UM reasonable, like safe storage UM, which is

something that I can get behind, you know. And I think there's a couple of things here to consider and and you know, and it gets complicated because people on right have dominated the conversation about guns and gun control for so long that it's hard to have UM, well intentioned conversations from the left, I find UM and and yeah, yeah, so you know, speaking personally as a gun owner and as somebody who has um made the decision of my life to be you know, armed and ready and have

you know, body armor. And I you know, I don't just shoot guns. I train with guns. I train other people. I have a group of people that I work with and trust that if things ever got real bad, I would you know, we would call each other. UM, being that guy, I obviously have very strong feelings about being told by the state that I don't have a right to defend myself with the same types of weapons that

I know the other side has. Right, so I think the answer you know, sorry, that was a little bit of a roundabout, But the point is that, UM, the person who perpeture to this um Mr Penia. It's unclear, but he is a felon. And UM there is some hay being made about um how he and others may have possessed guns. And you know, the reality we know is that it is not hard or difficult. Um two try to get guns one way or the other and so and and no, you can just drive across the

border to Texas for one thing, I mean, or Arizona. Yeah, yeah, or Arizona. This guy was already what was, in fact restricted from being able to own any kind of firearm, right, right, And and so it is hard to be somebody who works on in the political left, and I work on a number of policy issues. My my day to day work focuses more on energy issues. Um. But but you know, but I have been doing this work long enough that I step in whenever there's stuff like this happening and

cover it for for for my work. But it's yeah, it's UM, it's gonna be interesting to see. You know, I don't know if there's the political will in the state New Mexico. UM, even you know, moderate Democrats are our hunters are recreational shooters, UM. And I think that there's you know, there is some strong feelings about gun violence.

There was a very tragic death UM involving children last year during our legislative session, UM, where where a middle schooler I believe maybe a high school or a kid either way, UM, took a pistol from his parents, you know,

sock drawer basically and shot a kid. And you know, so again, safe storage is one of those things that I think most people generally can get behind, especially if we do something really good like subsidized safe storage, so that if you know, if you're a person who is of lesser means but you still want to protect yourself with a firearm, you can figure out how to get a safe or something like that. Anyway, that's so there

there are things that we can do. UM. I think we know that outright bands one don't work and are

hard to pass. And things like magazine capacity things, the enforcement level becomes difficult, and um, a good example of that is in New Mexico, we did pass a red flag law a number of years ago, and uh, you know, I've heard, I know you've talked about red flag laws in the past, and you know, and we had what a lot of states have had, which is that a number of sheriffs in conservative counties just very publicly said

out loud that they weren't going to enforce it. And sure enough, you know, last year during the summer, when we hit the two year mark of the law being into effect, it had been used less than a dozen times, um, statewide.

And so yeah, I mean, and one of the one of the things that's of obvious concern is if you have a lot of people living in these conservative areas where the sheriffs aren't enforcing the laws, um, they effectively have the ability to take the firearms they can acquire there to the areas that have maybe more restrictive gun control where there are elected Democrats and then shoot up their houses. Um. Yeah, I think kind of outside of that,

I'm wondering. So, and obviously we're still looking at the fall out of this there's still quite a bit we don't know. I don't think there's a lot of context on how Penya found these men that he hired. Um, although I am interested in that, I think it'll be it'll be worth learning. Is there kind of a lessons learned that that you're going through with us here? Has this altered it all kind of going forward? How you think you might respond or your community might respond the

next time something like this occurs. Oh yeah, I mean I think there's a couple. I mean, actually, one of the things you just said is that we don't necessarily know how we found these guys. And and that's true because we still don't know the names of some of them.

But the one, the one man we do know, um, was one of was a was a person who donated money to him while while he was running because because again remember this this is this was a man who was running for office last year and lost three to one. Um and and yeah, and so this this one accomplice whose name we have, Jose Triho, donated to him. And UM, they're very you know, they're they're clearly, Um, they clearly know each other and have some sort of a connection there.

But I think what's worth noting is that going down that path. Right, So when I looked up that guy,

I found the political donation from last year. And while I was there looking at political donations, I just happened to look at all the other names, which is how I found the other Uh you know the name of the other man who has this connection to him, um Fletcher and Michael Fletcher, right, and m that guy two years ago, during the you know thetests, drove a car through a crowd of protesters, and thanks to some amazing um you know, anti fascist organized there's here in New Mexico,

they were able to identify him, even though the cops never did anything about it. And so I think that if if there's gonna be lessons learned here, it's that these people have been showing their true colors for a long time. And um there's if if if we're going to have police in this world we live in, and we're going to ask them to quote unquote keep us safe, uh, then they have to do their job and they have to follow up with with things like you know, somebody

driving through a crowd of people. The video is on our Twitter thread. It's very scary. I mean, I know, people have seen it all over the country. It wasn't just unique to New Mexico. But um, anyway, that guy was Penya's third highest donor, and he's a young man. His his listed profession is security guard and um. And the other guy, Jose Trio, is listed as a cashier.

So there's a lot of questions about how how did these young men have so much money with jobs that are you know, you don't necessarily have a lot of money lying around if you're a cashier and security guard, at least at least not to donate to political candidates.

Back when I had jobs like that, I didn't anyway, Um, and especially then also for all the guns they have, right Like, there's pictures of these guys with a table full of glocks and um, you know and mag's and that's that stuff is not cheap, so I don't there's there's there is a These people were known to law enforcement one way or the other because again Penya was a felon, and um, I want to be clear, he was able to run into Mexico because in New Mexico

we believe felons deserve a second chance for things like running for office. In fact, it'd be great someday to have somebody who's maybe got that life experience to become a legislator. Obviously, there are circumstances like maybe this one that proved that people haven't you know, turned around from whatever life they were leading beforehand. But we're also but we're also not here excluding people from being Um. Being a felon does not make you a bad person, That's

what I'm really trying to say here. But a felon who has a history like this and then has clearly demonstrated a will towards violence and hangs out with violent people, UM, maybe there should be some things done to keep an eye on those people. This is one of those situations that there's a number of different solutions too, or I think things that will will lead to solutions, But it's also it's much more muddled than people would like it

to be. UM. I think I tend to think that from the perspective of like people who are activists, who are members of the community, one of the better things that we can do is keep an eye, as y'all do, on who's doing what. Like, you know, when you have people who are donating to one of these right wing you know fascist kind of candidates, UM, when they're saying certain things on social media, or the candidates saying so things on social media that are seen as incitements to violence.

Like keeping those people on your radar is useful and keeping you know, as you did, being able to kind of document once somebody actually starts acting. Hey, this person has has made further threats in the past. Um, these are groups of people that might be at risk from them. We know this person, Like, here's evidence that this person is and has been a threat. That's all really useful. Um. The question is always is like, how do we actually

stop these people before they carry out violence? Um? And this is a question that that to to be certain, law enforcement the state don't have very good answers for because they only kind of come in and take action after, Um, the attacks have started. We just got lucky in this

case that nobody was hurt or killed. UM. You know, there have been a couple of of mass shootings averted as a result of anti fascists finding someone who was making threats, who had firearms and in some cases like was not legally supposed to have them, and making that public ahead of time. UM. But more often than not. It's sort of this case as it as it was with Penia, where we're the name comes out, we realize who it was, and it's like, yeah, we had we

had this guy documented. We knew this dude was a threat. And I think that's the that is still kind of the the thing that we don't have a good answer to is what is the actual how do you how do you actually take action to stop these people from carrying out the attacks because obviously there's a thousand different legal issues with that. There's a number of different moral

issues with that. Because for every guy like Pinia who talked about carrying out attacks and then attacked people, there's a couple of dozen who talk about ship like this and don't do anything. But um, I don't know. This is this is something that I think that I think has to be answered and it's not on you know, you specifically or the New Mexico activist community to figure it out, but it is. It is like, this is

a big part of the struggle. I think because the the cops and the state, we'll do the thing that they do, which is when there are bodies or when there's bullet casings on the ground, generally, eventually someone will get arrested, not always, not necessarily, even the vast majority of the time. Again, nobody's caught the fuckers who were

blowing up power stations in North Carolina. But you know, so, I think the question for us that and I'm sorry, folks, I'm not gonna be not gonna be saying, here's how we solve the problem of armed right wingers carrying out attacks on people is how do we how do we get from knowing who's a threat to stopping them effect

effectively stopping them from carrying out actual attacks. And that is, you know, as our years of lead, if that is what we're in and boy, things like this make me think that that's a reasonable way to described the present political situation in the United States. Um, this is something we're going to have to answer. And obviously you know, I've asked you kind of your lessons on it. We don't,

we don't. I don't think there's much more to say at the moment, but it is this is this is the question, right, Um, It's a question we ask ourselves. I know people are asking themselves up in Portland. Um, the guy who carried out an attack almost exactly a year ago at a protest in Portland at a long history of making threats online, and now one person is dead and others paralyzed. Several more have been have been injured.

You know, these are this is this is a tough question and it's it's not one that uh, I think just kind of raw ideology actually gives us a very good answer on because there's the there's the emotionally satisfying answer, which is like, well, we just need to get some folks together and go like fuck these people up. And

it's like, well, you can't. That's actually not a realistic because number one, there's so many people making these threats, like you don't actually have of the human band with two for that to be realistic outside of the fact that those people would be destroying their lives and throwing themselves into the mall of the state to do it.

So this is this is a toughie. I do There's I mean, there's one there's one part of this that I think New Mexico can can offer some some I don't know, there's one thing we got right and um, I don't know if if you know, everybody out there is familiar with the name Coy Griffin or his organization Cowboys for Trump. But during the lead up to the election, this guy kind of made a name for himself. He went around the country on horseback with a bunch of

dudes and they all dressed up like Larkin as cowboys. Um, most of them are not and um, and you know they had American flags and they yeah, literally called Cowboys for Trump. This guy was a seeded county commissioner in Otaro County here in New Mexico, and he went to January six and he was the first convicted person from the January six fallout, and he lost his seat in in Otaro County, which is like the smallest amount of thing, right, Like it's the man should have been locked up. But um.

But one of the things that is frustrating but also maybe good is that probably you know, through my work doing what I do, I had been documenting this man for years because he'd been saying all kinds of crazy shit. Um. Sometime in nineteen I think or maybe it was, he like went up on top of a mountain to pray this is his words, and recorded himself on a Facebook live and like literally said that black people should go

back to Africa and like this. This video was on his Facebook, and I mean it had been out for days and nobody said anything about it anywhere until I clipped it and put it on Twitter. You know, I took I took away the forty minutes of other weird shit, he said, and I put that thing out into the world and said, this man deserves to be like under so much scrutiny, it's ridiculous. And then of course it got pressed, and then of course he came under fire,

and then a couple of people were paying attention. So then when he went to January six and again on a live video because people can't stop instagramming their crimes, he said he was taking all of his guns and going to meet his you know, homies in in Washington,

and so he got arrested. He got arrested there. He was one of the few people who got arrested like on the ground that day because the FBI and the Secret Service were already looking for him because again somebody else had been out loud about saying, uh, this man literally just said he's taking guns to d C. Is somebody please going to do something about this? So I don't know it wasn't great, and I feel like more could have been done. And again, fortunately no one got hurt.

I mean, I guess people did if you wanted to take the whole of January six into into UM mean, but I guess. I guess. My point is is that it's sort of just a constant vigilism, right, It's like you just have to be and it's not you know, and obviously one person can't do it, but you have to have groups of people that do it. I mean, I'm I'm one guy who works with an organization of people and we work on a number of policy things

in the state. And again I don't necessarily do this all the time, but I also know that there's a number of amazing people, especially in o Tarot County, UM

which is a very conservative county. But there's a number of amazing people who do really hard work and they show up at County commission meetings and they get thrown out, and they go to school board meetings and they get thrown out, but they go and they document it, and they tweet and they TikTok and and it's it's you know, it's that work that puts the word out from these

little tiny places. You know, the last time I was on the show, Robert, we were talking about the school board stuff here in Los Cruces and the right wing chuds that had showed up to that, and you know, it's the same thing, right, It's like you don't I mean, you can't do it alone, but it doesn't take that many people to show up, and as know, and once you once you show them that you're not afraid and that there's more of us than there are of them,

they tend to slink away. And I think that there's I think that there's value in that, and there's you know, it's not the answer that you're talking about, but there's there's a modicum of hope they're worth remembering. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. That's all. Those are all really good points. Um well, Lucas, I think that more or less covers what we came to talk about today.

Did you have anything else you wanted you wanted to say to the audience before we kind of roll out of here, Anything you wanted to plug place you want to well? Yeah, I mean yeah, I'd just like to say that, you know, IM the number one donor to this guy's campaign is a corporation called Halopeno Corporation. It's owned by a billionaire named Harvey Yates. He's part of the family that discovered oil in the state of New Mexico. New Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in

the United States. Harvey Yates donated to every Republican candidate this cycle. And I think that what I want to, like just just say out loud, because again, my my job is normally I talk about energy issues, is that on the one hand, you know, we have questions about where some of these young men who have you know, cashier jobs and security guard jobs, where they came up with four thousand dollars to donate to a political candidate

over the course of a few months. It's not unsurprising that an oil corporation donated five thousand dollars, right, But but what's worth remembering is is that, you know, these these mega corporations of it of all stripes, but especially oil and gas um are the backbone of the political

movement that we are talking about. You know, even if we're sort of beating around the bush right, there's there's one side here that is dominated very heavily by this far right extremism, and they and they and the their funders treat them all the same, right, Like, oil and gas companies don't care if you're a quote unquote moderate Republican or a hardcore right wing maga guy or a literal Nazi. They just want somebody who's gonna like get

in there and you know, give them tax subsidies. Um. And you know, and I just the fight over energy issues in this country is often framed around climate change, as it should be, because I mean, obviously the climate crisis is something we can't ignore, but it's so much worse than that, and you know, we could do a whole other thing about that someday, but I just it's

just so important. I can't let it go. Um. You know, looking looking at at this at this what I'm gonna call it domestic terrorists donation sheet, you know, and seeing that the number one, you know, his number one donor was this oil and gas guy. Like, it's just not a coincidence. It really isn't, and it's it's worth remembering. So that's that's the last thing I want to plug, or last thing I want to say in terms of plugs.

You can find me on Twitter I'm just Lucas E. Herndon, and if you are interested in New Mexico politics things, you can follow us now at Progress. Now I am awesome. Uh well you cannot find me there, but you can find me elsewhere. Um, you'll figure it out. Thank you, Lucas. This has been really I mean, good is a weird word,

but I appreciate it. That's what happened last time too. Yeah. Well, I'm sure we'll have you back on in the near future, and we will be back tomorrow with some more ship that is hopefully, uh fun fun stuff, maybe fun stuff. I always get the episodes where it's not it could happen here, it's it did happen here, A thing has occurred. All thanks Robert, thank you. Welcome to Dick it Happened

Here podcast about things being absolutely atrocious. I'm your host, Meo Ball, and today we're going to do something a

little different. Instead of our normal sort of escapades through the torment and the sort of crumbles of the modern world, We're going to take a step back into history to trace through the history and class psychology of a kind of guy who is a recurring character in the history of North America and who are responsible, to a greater extent than you think, for some of the worst atrocities

this world has ever seen. Now, I hesitate to use the word class as a way to actually describe these people, because the people were going to be talking about are from completely different economies, completely different class structures, completely different systems of production. So we're sticking with the loose term kind of guy. And this kind of guy is a kind of guy that I have termed the debtor slaver. Now this, at first glance, this this is a confusing term.

My word processor, at the very least, gets very very angry with me every time I try to write it and insist that no, no, no, I must in fact mean debtor slave. But no, I do not mean debtor slave. What I'm actually referring to as a kind of guy who is both hopelessly in debt and also in command of enormous economic abilitary resources, most often slaves. To get a sense of what I'm talking about here, we're going to start with the archetypical debtor slaver. Her Nan Cortes.

Her name Cortes is, by all reputable accounts, an enormous piece of ship, a broke noble born in Spain in five Cortes managed to parlay an inn initially successful career as a sort of adventurer into a slave plantation in Cuba after he helped after he helped conquer the island

in fifteen eleven. From there, through a combination of I shoot, you know this is this is actually what the historical records say about him, wearing too many gold chains and spending too much money on his wife, his finances imploded and he fell into debt. This led him to embark on his infamous conquest of Mexican attempt to pay office creditors. Here, I'm going to turn to the work of the anthropologist

David Graber. Rest in Peace, Smissy Buddy. Graver describes the absolute horror of entire population sold into slavery, slaves with faces covered in brands indicating who they've been bought and sold by, Entire populations worked to death and minds empires drained of wealth by men whose lust for gold and silver seemed to know no end. And he somehow, both Cortes and his men seemed to have come out of the other end of one of the most important conquests

in human history. Completely broke. Now it's easier to explain how Cortes as men came out of this broke. They came out of his broke because Cortes and his officers were extorting and robbing them mercilessly at literally every step of the campaign, by charging them utterly exorbitant prices for everything from bandages to like having to buy their own weapons, which were being sold by guests who Cortes and his officers who had to sort of cabal going on with

everyone who could sell things. And once the conquest was done, Cortes as officers simply seized most of the share of the loot from their men as payment for all of the stuff that they needed. And I mentioned this not to inspire sympathy for the conquistadors like these are. These are some of the worst human beings who have ever lived, and managing to somehow lose money on one of the most brutal sackings of a city in human history is

like the least of the punishment they deserve. But on the other hand, their debt and the debt of Cortez himself goes a long way to explain what happened next. Here's Graper. These were the men who ended up in control of the provinces and who established local administration, taxes and labor regimes, which makes it a little easier to understand the descriptions of Indians with their faces covered by names, like so many counterindorsed checks, with the mind surrounded by

miles of rotting corpses. We are not dealing with psychology of cold, calculating greed, but a more complicated mix of shame and righteous indignation and of the frantic urgency of debts that would only compound and accumulate. These were almost certainly interest bearing loans, in the outrage at the idea that, after all they had gone through, they should be held to owe anything to begin with. Now, this is the

sort of trademark psychology of the debtor slaver. It's an incredibly toxic mix of shame, indignation, outrage, and desperation that breathes an incredible kind of violence and is determined in large part by the conditions of modern compound debt itself. Here's Graver again. Money always has the potential to become a moral imperative one too itself allow it to expand, and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that

all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools, and potential merchandise. Even human relationships become a matter of cost benefit calculation. Clearly, this is the way the conquistadors

viewed the worlds that they set out to conquer. Now it doesn't take long until not only human relations but human beings themselves become a matter of cost benefit calculation, a set of merchandise that value could be extracted from. And here emerges the debtor slaver. Now, very clearly, all debtors do not behave like this. In fact, almost all debtors across all places, in all times do not behave this way, or the world would be a place that makes even how we live in now look like a paradise.

There's another factor at work here that distinguishes the debtor from the debtor slaver, and that's power. The debder slaver already wields, or has wielded, enormous power over other people, either through direct violence or, as we'll see later, through the command of economic power. This is one of the

products of the righteous indignation Grapery described earlier. These are people who are used to wielding power, who are suddenly now beholden in a real and immediate way to someone else, and so they set about solving the problem the way they've solved everything else in their life, throwing violence at it. Now, if you've been paying attention closely, you might realize that I've actually been describing two different sort of ranks of debtor slaves who sort of fuse into one mass, and

Quarte has his conquisadors. On the lower end, the people who kind of loosely be called adventurers, essentially a kind of mercenary out for a big score, be that slaves, be that land, be that stolen loot that could vault them out of debton into the aristocracy. This is the sort of built general military base of the conquisator army itself.

On the higher end, of people like Cortez, who having already technically who you know who are who are already technically plantation owners, but their own ineptitude, have still managed to become heavily indebted. Combined, they form a group responsible for three centuries of the greatest evil the world has ever seen. Now, these two groups, in a broad sense,

need each other. The adventurers may have weapons, they may have some training, but at the end of the day, they have very little in terms of liquid capital at Liquid capital is something that you need in order to run a military campaign, because in order to keep all of these people, all of these sort of adventurers, all of these sort of debt or slavers, all of these sort of would be conquistadors in the field, you have to produce, you know, things like food, things like boots,

things like medical supplies. And this is where the plantation owners come in, because those are people who, even though they're enormously in debt, and even though very often they're either fleeing their debtors or their all of their debts about to be called in, these are people who still technically have lines of credit open and they and you know also there are also people who sometimes have allies in more sort of solvent people in the same class,

so they're able to sort of funnel liquid capital into these sort of ventures. And this is a process that we are going to see again after these ads and we're back moving forward in time a few hundred years and north a few thousand miles, we come into another scene of debt, subjugation, and violence, the plantations of the

American South. Now this is not the primitive, unhallowed fifteen hundreds, where slaves would be marked like tally sticks as they were passed back and forth between sword and pike wielding Spanish barbarians as they slaughtered their way through one of the greatest cities the world had ever known. This is the benighted eight hundreds. This is the age of steam power and railroads, the age of electricity, the advent of the global telecommunications network. What would come of this new

era of progress. One of the greatest of all world historical crimes the conversion of human beings into increasingly complex financial instruments. Plantation owners, contrary to their depiction in media, which they've gotten almost those those people have gotten almost as good pr as cops, which is fairly incredible considering they haven't really existed as the sort of slave owning classes that used to be in you know what, hundred

hundred years, I don't know. Discuss among yourselves when you think share cropping has so to decrease to an amount where these people like are no no longer around as a class. But you know, okay, just despite the sort of pr but these like Southern gentlemen get these people are constantly in debt, and they're you know, constantly attempting to solve the problem of them being in debt with the only thing they know how to do, which is slavery.

And when I say they're trying to solve this problem through slavery, um, we're We're going to get to the more complicated ways to try to solve this with slavery. One of the big ways they try to solve this with slavery is just whipping people harder. It's brutal and horrible, and yeah, you know this, this this is a system that is who's the the efficiency of which is just built on profound human violence. So let's let's let's just establish that right off the bat. This is the worst

kind of slavery anyone's really ever done. Yeah, now, you know, another actor for these people essentially turning into debtor slavers is the fact that these people are constantly putting themselves in self inflicted debt in order to do speculation. And this is the part where they start doing ship that is difficult for me to even try to explain will

adequately capturing the horror of the process. The Southern planters began to create an entire separate financial network based entirely off of the quote unquote value of their slaves and their land. From the historian Edward B. Baptiste. Yet enslavers had already by the end of the eighteen twenties created

a highly innovative alternative to existing financial structure. The Consolidated Association of Louisiana Planters, despite his name that c APL was still a bank, created more leverage for enslaveris at less cost and on longer terms. It did so by securitizing slaves, hedging even more effectively against the individual investors loss so long as the financial system itself did not fail.

Here is how it worked. Potential borrowers mortgage slaves and cultivated land to the c APL, which entitled them to borrow up to half of the assessed value of their property from the CIAPL and bank notes to convince others to accept the banknotes thus distributed at face value. The ci ap L convinced the Louisiana legislature to back two point five million dollars in bank bonds do win ten

to fifteen years bearing five percent interest. With the faith and credit of the people of the state, the Great British Merchant Bank bearing brothers agreed to advance the ci APL the equivalent of two point five million dollars in Sterling bills. By the way, that is a on fathomable amount of money. Now that's not five million dollars status, that is it. That is an amount of money that will make your ears bleed the equivalent of two point five million and sterling bills, and market the bonds on

European securities markets. The bonds effectively converted in Slaver's biggest investment, human beings or quote unquote hands from Maryland and Virginia and North Carolina and Kentucky into multiple streams of income,

all under their control. Since all borrowers were officially stakeholders in the bank, the sale of the bonds created a high quality credit pool to be lent back to the planters at a significantly lower rate, sorry at a rate significantly lower than the rate of return they could expect that money to produce. The pool could be used for all sorts of income generating purposes, buying more slaves to produce more cotton and sugar and hence more income, or

lending to other enslavers. Ver borrowers could pure amid their leverage even higher by borrowing on the same collateral from multiple lenders, while also getting unsecured short term commercial loans from the c APL by purchasing new slaves with the money they borrowed and borrowing on them too. They had mortgaged their slaves, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes they even

mortgage fictitious slaves. But in contrast to what Walsh had promised, Nulty in this type of mortgage gave the enslaver tremendous margins control and flexibility. It was hard to imagine that such borrows would be foreclosed even if they fell behind on their payments. After all, the borrowers owned the bank. Using the c A p L model, slave owners were now were able to monetize their slaves by securitizing them

and then leveraging them multiple times on the international financial markets. Now, okay, having having just spent a decent amount of time running through the sort of finance of this, I need to reiterate these are human beings who are being enslaved and tortured constantly, the ownership of whom is being mortgaged to a bank and then sold and traded as assets on

the financial markets. What what they have done here is like two thousand eight style financial collapse, like set of collateralized loan obligations, except the loans are backed by fucking

human beings they've forced into slavery. It is a level of evil that is almost incomprehensible because the very financial language that is necessary to explain what they're doing, by necessity can feels the horror of what's actually being done and was actually being done here is hundreds of thousands of people are being sold into slavery and forced to clear land and work on land that has just been stolen literally like you know sometimes in some cases like

the day before, by indigenous people who have just been sent on the trail of tears. And this is this is being done to fuel these new financial instruments. Now, in a somewhat ironic twist, the product of this entire thing, the product of all of this land clearing, the product of Andrew Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the US, the product of all of this sort of speculation is the plantations wind up producing too much cotton, too much

slave cotton, and this quickly becomes an absolute fiasco. Debt suddenly outpaced the entire value of the slave crop, and you know, the entire financial system begins to implode. So it starts, it starts in sort of the UK and the European markets that had taken a bunch of these these sort of slave bonds. But eventually the financial collapse spreads and you know, as we heard in the article, right the way these banks are set off, the way these again, like these these banks that are just all

of the bank is just slaves. And I guess I guess I should also take an aside here to mention that, like the normal banks are also doing stuff like this. It's just that the South not being content to just have normal banks taking you know, doing mortgages like they're taking out mortgages on houses with slaves is collateral. Uh, They've they've credit sided to create like their in their own entire financial network that's just slaves and nothing else. Well,

land too, but yeah, slaves in the land. This entire thing sort of just collapses in on itself, and this leads to it to an even larger mass of dead or slavery plantation doners. And this is where we turned

from plantation slavery to some good old fashioned conquistadoring. What of the sort of myths of slavery with the way that you know, slavery has been sort of understood in the West, particularly in sort of Europe, well, particularly in the U S and the UK, which have these sort of like complexes about, you know, like this sort of inevitability of ebolitionism and the sort of benevolent empire against

abolition or whatever. You know, there's there's this sort of like that you get these economic organis to that that the people people will argue that you know, slavery was like going to collapse anyways, like people just let it go, it would have fell on apart, and that that is just sort of nonsense. And one of the things that this could one of the things that this conceals is that slave power was constantly expansionary. It's never sort of like slavery was never a system that was sort of

just contained in one place, right. It was always pushing, it was always attempting to you know, seize new land. It was always attempting to seize new slaves. Was it was a system that could only really survive if it was constantly able to seize new territory and seize new slaves in order to work it. And so there's a lot of sort of products of this, right One of the sort of earlier ones, you get these settlers pushing west, attempting to turn sort of new states and the slave states.

And these are you know, these are often, like the settlers here, often the sort of men like ephemistically described as adventurers with like you know, these are people who portize right like, they are people desperately attempting to stay one step ahead of their creditors by invoking the time honored American tradition of slaughtering indigenous people for their land, which you know, could then be turned over to speculators, you could be turned over to the short of wealthier backers.

And these men and in this period, these are almost always men. I thought that's going to change pretty soon. But these men are so violent and so disruptive that at various points in the late seventeen hundreds and early eight the US like attempts to stop them from settling any further less, they sort of disturb American foreign policy efforts. Um. And these efforts fail, and the product of this is that manifest destinies. You know, trail of corpses pushes even

further and further west. Now by the by the eighteen fifties, there there's a new sort of conquistador who's setting out to you know, conquering the name of the cross and paying off their creditors. And they're called filibusters. Now this is actually where these people are where the term filibuster as a sort of like like thing that you do in the sentence and not let people do stuff like that. This,

this is where that comes from. It's these people. Um, these are okay, So you know, the official descriptions of them will say things like private armies. I there are more these kind of like ragged bands of like slavery mongering gennis ideas who are backed by you know, largely by southern plantation owners, sometimes by southern states, occasionally by just northern banks. Because the place they're trying to go somewhere the banks. The northern banks want to sort of

seize control of. And you know, these people set out to conquer new slave states by you know, straight up

season control of places like Cuba or Mexico. They do a bunch of this stuff in Texas doesn't really work, but you know, they mean part of the complicated thing I'm talking about the filibusters is that like, in some sense, the most successful like attempt to do something like this was actually Texas, but those people weren't really feel about like the people who actually successful le sees control of Texas, like Sam Adam and his sort of crew of merry

miscreant slave owners. Those guys aren't technically filibusters, but you know, they they do sort of succeed in bringing in Texas as a slave state. But yeah, you know, I mean these people are they keep they keep launching invasions of

fucking Cuba, They keep launching us invasions everywhere. There's a really great movie called Walker that's a sort of fictionalized account of probably the most famous filibuster, a guy named William Walker, and well, okay, so it starts with his attempt to like conquered Mexico, which doesn't go well, but then it sets out for his attempt to conquered Nicaragua, which like kind of works like he actually takes Nicaragua

for a little bit. You know, but this this this movie version of it's also like it's an anti war film about the US backing the contrast, and it rules. I'm talking about it because nobody's ever watched this thing. And the studio when when they they actually figure about what Walker was and that it was, you know, like an an anti war film about the contrast, they literally killed the entire movie and the director Alex Cox, here's the guy you should repo man like he literally never

worked in Hollywood again after this. So yeah, go watch Walker. Understand it's a little it's a bit fictionalized. It's mostly

an anti war film about the contrast. But you know, part of what you trying to trace out and personally that is very important about this is that you know, the there's this there's these sort of lineages of American colonialism, and part of these linear edges is that you know, like the that literally does not matter like what century you're in, the US is trying to see his control of Nicaragua. Now, okay, so but back back to the

solo philibusters mainline. Unlike the conquistadors who were kind of like I don't know, they had a combination of being really really lucky and also like GENU widely having some pretty good leadership even though you know, good leadership but for evil I those guys were really sucessful. The Philipbuzzers they mostly failed because again this is these these are mostly sort of just like bands of like marauders. They don't they barely have supply lines, like I don't know.

Sometimes they have real weapons, but they're not especially competent. But what what what they did do is they kill a lot of people. And this this is one of those things that's sort of like I don't know, it gets sort of romanticized or gets sort of like brushed over. Is that like, yeah, I know, these these people like they're they're like these groups are basically like rolling lynch mobs, and so you know, there they'll they'll be doing something

that run into a town. They'll just they'll just kill everyone. They will enslave people, they were rape people, they do ship that is just they're absolutely imborrant and that's that's

the sort of legacy of this stuff. And you know they probably would have kept doing it, and you know, except they were stopped right one of One of the sort of like legacies of these people is eventually the sort of slave powers like wind up and Bleeding Kansas, which is the sort of semi civil war between the pro slavery anti slavery forces in Kansas that leads to

the regular civil war. But you know, I mean, I think I think it's sort of important to understand about this entire thing is that these people just kept accumulating power and kept accumulating power and kept a commulating power or someone stopped them. And that was also true of the conquisadors, right, Like I mean, you know, and like arguably arguably the sort of sentence those people are still in power, but like you know, the Spanish were not run out of the places that they had conquered until

people sort of fought them. Now, the last thing I want to do is we're also not free of this kind of guy. Um. It kind of manifests in different ways in sort of more recent times. I think probably the the closest we have to the sort of like corporate cortes thing are the people behind the sort of it gets it gets rereaded as emergency and acquisitions, but the people behind the like leverage, buy out um like corporate radar stuff on Wall Street in the eighties, who

you know. And then the reason, the reason they sort of they behave and they think in a lot of the very in a lot of the same ways as as these sort of as a sort of debtor or slavers, is that they're their financial techniques leave them in basically the same situation as um as as as your cortes, which is that the way that these people take over a company and these these are basically financed people. These are investors who have figured out a way to seize

control of companies. And the way they figured out to do it is they they essentially they still bonds to other investors. So the short version of it is that, yeah, they they go into an enormous amount of debt personally right in order to you know, have enough money to just buy up the stock prices of the company. And you know, they say, okay, we're gonna buy say say

say your stock price thirty five dollars. They're like, okay, we're gonna buy the stock at forty and unless the company can you know, like somehow raise or stock price above that in order to fend them off, you know, this one person who's taking on an enormous amount of debt now suddenly just owns the company, and he could transfer the debt onto the company, and then he has to start, you know, just stripping assets from it, right.

He has to find ways to make money. He has to find ways to sort of raise the stock price of this thing, you know, and this is usually done by like stripping people's pensions, by firing people, by just destroying entire like entire sort of like people's lively, this is done by just dismantling companies wholesale like toys. R Us is the last company that sort of famously had

this happened to them. They just get completely dismembered. And they get completely dismembered because the people who buy these companies, right, and you know this eventually shot transiento firms instead, etcetera, etcetera. But those people are also unbelievably in debt, right, and you know, it's that that they've imposed on themselves. It isn't that you know, the sort of psychological effects of it are very similar. And you know, I think I think the thing about sort of like the late century

is that the violence gets outsourced. So you know, these people still have slaves, but the slaves are like you know that the slaves are owned by a contractor who's our contractor of a contractor like somewhere way down the line. But you know, the the sort of strategic stuff and the way that these people behave is very similar. And I think it's worth knowing that there's there's two there's people who there's coop of people who come out of

this era who are very important now. One is that one of the people who comes out of this sort of eighties and nineties era who was also constantly in debt and it's also just sort of like a murderous, like incredibly vengeful person who who's also sort of dealing with these same kinds of like you know, who's tapping into the sort of emotions of the sort of like indignation and outrage and desperation, like is Donald Trump and you know in Toronald Trump, I think is a sort

of tragedy version of it. And then you get to see it We've been getting to see it with with Elon Musk as the sort of fest version of it where he's you know, increasingly desperate that try to like dig himself out of the hole that he got by buying by having to leverage himself so much to buy Twitter. But yeah, we are we we remain haunted by the specter of this kind of guy. And they've done they've done enormous harm to the world. They're probably going to

keep doing enormous harm in the world. And yeah, but but again, I I think it is worth thinking about them psychologically and worth understanding that it's not that, you know, like at the core of sort of like the capitalist death machine, are not necessarily these like incredibly cold, rational, calculating people. It's a bunch of people who are frantic, who are desperate, who are very very angry, and that doesn't make them sort of you know, it doesn't make

them more sympathetic. It just makes them more violence. 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

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