It Could Happen Here Weekly 72

to it could happen here. The podcast that is sometimes introduced by me, Robert Evans, other times it's introduced by James Stout or Mia Wong, who are both on the call today. How's everybody doing? Pretty good? We've we've we've declared victory over the balloon. Yeah we we Finally the F twenty two gets its first air to air kill. Yeah yeah, yeahs later. We did it, guys, we did it. We really can. Like the F tway two is like

God's perfect killing machine. Yeah, and it's thus it is like it is a six hundred and it was like a sixty seven billion dollar aircraft. Completely. It is a it is a perfect air It is a perfect air superiority craft. Which in modern warfare makes it slightly less useful than an eight hundred and fifty dollars DJA i'd

drone with hand grenades. Yeah yeah, I express. I cannot think of like a better metaphor to understand how the US Army works than shooting a using it using a sixty seven billion dollar aircraft to shoot a three hundred and sixty one thousand dollars missile at a balloon. Just like listen, somebody several balloons in his life, ammitately, not this high up. It is extremely entertaining. And uh yeah,

I can't fault that pilot. I am deeply disappointed in rural America that no crazy rich guy with a cessna flew his friend with a fifty cow up to like thirty thousand feet drop. That why the seventeen incinerator was invented for this specific instance. And yeah, we've been let down again. Anyway, what are we talking about today, Maya?

We're talking about the balloon a little bit, and then we're going to talk about something more interesting, which is the sort of history of US China relations and how it's not what everyone thinks it is. I've been led to believe by the media that there is nothing more interesting than the balloon, and that we should be focusing all our coverage on the balloon. That's true. There have been other balloons. There are now a fifth balloon, has it the towers? Okay? So yeah, let's let's go yeah.

So okay, So I want to start off by like, I want to talk a little bit about the balloon, which is that. Okay, so we have the American Army's claim, but this is a surveillance balloon. There's a there's a chance it just was a random balloon. Like, I don't know. I don't want to completely discount the fact that it

was a balloon. I do want to talk a little bit about sort of balloon surveillance stuff though, because I've seen a lot of people both on the left and also on the right, who are just like, why would anyone ever have a spy balloon? It's like, okay, so

let's talk a little bit. In order to do this, we need to talk a little bit about surveillance satellites, which I come from a family of astronomers, and one of the sort of dark secrets of astronomy is that the stuff you point up also could be pointed back down again and yeah, yeah, so And you know, one of the other things about this is that a lot of the companies that make telescopes, to make the lenses for that, are companies that work heavily with the NRO,

which is the National Reconnaissance Office, which is a a gen du winely terrifying organization with an unfathomable black budget to dedicated to just like spying on people from aircrafts now from space and more people, more people should be like we have a lot of Like people are scared of the NSA, people are scared of the CIA, but more people should be scared of the NRO, because Jesus Christ, that stuff is who but on the only head. Okay, so the NRROW has a bunch of satellites, right, But

the thing about satellites that they move. Okay, you can't prove that. I will, I will prove I will I will, I will, I will do a war thunder, I will post classic live underneath of dome. And satellites are stationary. The dome rotates in a clockwise direction around them, and that's responsible for the illusion of motion in the heavens. Sure, yes, there's no competing response today. So okay, all right, So so satellite satellites move, they move in stable and pdictable

orbits and this means a few things, right. One of the things that it means is that a satellite is only over the area you want it to cover for a limited amount of time because it's you know, satellites

moving around the Earth, right, um. And this means that you know, you can you can calculate their orbits, and you can calculate when they're going to be in range of whatever they want to look at, and you know, and this means you can do things like, for example, figuring out where the satellite is going to be in

hiding whatever you're working out when they pass this. This is how the CIA, this is how the CIA completely missed India's nuclear weapons program, is that they knew when that they've been dowhen the flies, the spy satellites you're flying over, they just hid all the way puts equipment and the CIA never figured out they were building dukes base well actually not based its bad, but but yeah, yeah,

it was very funny. Yeah yeah, but they do did they just paint it like a hot dog or something and just be like guy, they lit just like put tarps over it. The satellite came around, and then they build things under ground. It's very funny. I'm passionating the world's biggest hot dog. I dare in case someone else does. Yeah, I think Jamie Loftus actually might. If you beat that, you don't have to do all to the death. Jamie

secret something we're not supposed to talk about on the podcast. Well, look, it's it's it's it's like the Israeli secret arsenal. It's it's it's an open secret and not a closed secret. So okay. You can solve this problem of of sort of telescope go move um either by having just a bunch of satellites going constantly or by having a geosynchronous satellite, which is which is in an orbit where it's like basically over the same spot of the Earth at one time.

The problem is that both of these are like unfathomably expensive, and doesn't mean that governments don't do that, Like the US is a multi spy satellites like satellites, but you know, it's really really expensive, and there's you know, there's a few other reasons why you would use a balloon um. Which are you know some of the reasons the US

uses that use them in Afghanistan. One is that you have really limited space on a satellite, which means that there's there you know, you can only fit certain kinds of equipment onto each satellite. There's another issue, which is that, Okay, um, if you're putting spy stuff on a satellite that has to work in space, and it turns out that space sucks, and yeah, I mean wanting to kill you. I didn't like it. It's a it's a mark of how like bad people are at strategic thinking that they would ever

ask why would you put spy stuff on a balloon? Especially? Yeah, Like it's a little weirder to float it over the US if that's what happened. But like, if if you are the US or China or Russia engaging in most of the conflicts those countries engage in where they're not dealing with state level actors, provides perfect surveillance, very cheaply, it doesn't require refueling. Like, it's an incredibly reasonable platform

to spy on people with. Yeah, And I think there's another thing which I think has been less talked about, which is that, Okay, there's an equipment gap basically between when you design a camera for a satellite and when the satellite goes up. And this means that whatever you whatever kind of cameras and technology you're putting in a satellite are going to be by definition a few years out of date, because that's just how long it takes a design the equipment and putting it and put it

into the air. But you know, for a balloon, you could you can, you could use stuff that's more modern than way you would have on a spy satellite now, you know. And also like you can you can also just put other stuff on the balloon that's such as cameras like you can do cig and stuff you can use. So okay, well, the moral of this story is that, like, the spy balloon is not like a completely implausible thing.

If if you like put a gun to my head and said meo, what happened here, my guests would be was like the spy balloon went off course or some shit and this lost control of it. Now, yeah, it probably was not meant for the continentally United States, because that's a weird move. But AGA's happening. So Hi, this is Mia in post. So but back when we recorded this episode in the heady days of early February, there had been but two balloons. There have now been so

so many more balloons. Oh my god, there the US just has balloon mania. We now know a little bit more about the sort of suspected Chinese balloon. It does that that balloon seems to be an actual balloon at the very least. The US government claims that they've recovered an enormous amounts of sort of technical and observational equipment

from it. They said it was, well, what was the exact line, the size of three school buses, A bunch of signals intelligence stuff, which is something we didn't mention an enormous amount. But yeah, like that, that's an Everything you can use a balloon for is intercepting phone communications or radio communications, etcetera, etcetera. Okay, so like it seems like they're like they're the first balloon may have been

an actual balloo. Every subsequent balloon, however, we have learned more so at least one, and my assumption is this is every single subsequent balloon after the first balloon. We have confirmation that so one of the balloons is shot down over Canada by a F twenty two and this seems to be a Pico balloon from the Northern Illinois

Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. These are just like these are these just like tiny balloons that people send out so they can serve and navigate the globecause these people are just like balloon hobbyists. They just they just like balloons, and you know, it's just honestly really sad, like these are just people who like they just like putting balloons up

and watching them go around the world. And they were met with the entire aerial light of the world's greatest superpower, which spent literally more money than I have ever seen in my entire life to annihilate literally like about one hundred or two hundred dollars worth of essentially foil and some GPS equipment. These people apparently tried to contact the

US government and tell them what was going on. US government was like, so, yeah, congratulations to the US government which has uh, it has one, it has one an important geostrategic victory over the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. Uh. This is this has been this has been breaking news from MIA in in the in the balloon war. Yeah,

enjoy the rest of the episode. But you know, I wanted to use this to talk about something more interesting, which is again like the sort of arc of US China relations and what actually drives it, because I think people have a really really not very good understanding of how it works and why. Okay, I think it's reasonable to ask you why why are you talking about the arc of US China relations? Aren't US China relations always bad? And the answer is no, In fact, US shaded relations

to sometimes actually quite good. US China relations are driven by these two sort of interlocking forces. Right on the one hand, you have the internal domestic and also kind of global balance of class forces inside a country, and that plays a huge role on a lot of the things that are going to happen in Duwish China relationship. And the other thing that happens is what you, I

guess would call geopolitics. And we're going to kind of start with the geopolitics sign and then move back and forth between that and the sort of class angle on it, so you can get get get a kind of understanding of how how this stuff actually works and how to think about it in ways that are just sort of incredibly simplistic and useless. So all right, I'm not gonna go all the way back to like the eighteen hundreds

or whatever, because there are US China relations. We actually invaded China at one point in like the eighteen hundreds for some fucking reason, and we actually we did it

again the nexteen hundred and two. Yeah, but okay, So, but in terms of dealing with modern China, dealing with USU and modern US China relations is about the US's relationship with the CCP, and weirdly dream world War two it was the relations were actually really good, um, you know, because obviously China, China is the US's ally and World War two I were there were also allies with China's

nationalist part, the KMT. But you know what's interesting about this is that there's a faction of the US army that is anti KMT and pro CCP. And they're not pro CCP because they're communists. They're pro CCP because a they're kind of racist and they really don't like the

KMT kind of out of racism. And the second thing that that's going on is that the KMT, as we've talked about elsewhere, it's just like incredibly corrupt Esquad party, and that means that you know, some of the people who have to like the people who have to work with them on the ground to World War two or like these are literally the worst people who have ever lived.

Why on earth are we doing this? That means that when when the civil war starts, right like the US takes the nationalist side, but like nowhere near as strongly as they could have. And this creates this sort of like this myth around like the loss of China that

becomes this massive thing in the US. Is because this is one of the things that triggers someth McCarthys and etceterac Is like everyone becomes convinced it was like, oh my god, like Truman, like like they lost China, Like we could have kept China for the communists, but like they lost it, and it's wow, okay. But this has another massive impact, which is that it creates this thing

called the China Lobby. And the China lobby is this is this sort of bank of these like incredibly psychopathic right wing like anti communist goools and some also people who had some also people who were like had been rich in China and then about owned by this CCP, and they start pushing incredibly aggressively for like regime change in China for just the US and try to not have a diplomatic relations, and this this star starts to sort of like tank relations between the US and China.

And then obviously like so we we fought. We fought a war with China and Korea, a thing that I feel like doesn't get talked about as much as you would think it would. Yeah, the Korean War is the memory hold war in yeah, and in the UK. It's why I was in America. But it's the war that no one Yeah, I mean the Forgotten War is literally like it's it's most common nickname. There's a pretty good

book by that title too. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, like like that were like there are there are US and Chinese troops like shooting the shit out of each other, like oh yeah, well yeah, like a cross the entire peninsula, Like there are there are Chinese troops doing bayonet chargers

through the road artillery like the American lines. My my, the last before I bought my place, my last landlord was a Chinese citizen um living in the US on a green card, and during a pandemic conversation over some wine. We kind of figured out that both of our grandfathers wound up at the same battles and made very in shooting each other. Yeah, so that's the melting pot, buddy. You she became a landlord. M hmm, Well, I mean, I mean that's a dream there, you like, there there

is a reasonable argument that they're in back again. A landlord story is the entire course of the of the sort of like Chinese Chinese politics in the twentieth century any respect to the United States. Yeah, well, and also trying to right because landlords are back now. It sucks. Yeah yeah, land yes, and no Chinese people have become landloads.

But yeah, many a subject to landloads. Shit. Yeah, you know. Okay, So like obviously it's really interesting too because when people, like when people write about US China relations, they normally like the thing that the thing they picked from this period tends to be like the Tawanies straight crisis, and it's like, okay, yeah there was this, there were this race crisis. But again, like the US and China were like shooting at each other like before this, like why

why is this that? Why is this the thing that you pick for the downcour of US China relations like we were at war. Okay, but baffling stuff, right, But you know, and relations are not good to like the sixties either, like sort sort of based on very very similar sort of lines that you've seen in the fifties. You've like, this is a period where people sort of take communism anti communism seriously. That stops being true very quickly. On the other hands, these these sort of geopolitics things

have real material consequences, right. You can look at this in the American side, where, for example, the industrial build up of the Japanese and Korean economy and also the industrial build up like the industrial building of California, right, has to do with these sort of trade linkuages that are that are being set up in order for US to run the war in Korea and run the war

in Vietnam. And China has its own sort of version of this, where which which starts getting more and more apparent by it starts around the mid sixties, they have this thing called the Third Front, which is okay, so, having having now been through like I don't know how literally, I don't even know how many wars since the start of this century, the CCP goes, Okay, we need to

shift art. We need to shift our production away from sort of the coast and into the middle of the country so that they can't be attacked by the Soviets and they can't be attacked by the Americans. And this, this has, this has a really major effect in terms of what sort of Chinese industriization looks like. Over the course of the mid twentieth centuries. You get, you get this industrial belt that's built up and that is going

to be destroyed later on. And it's destroyed in part because of of what starts happening in the seventies, which is the sort of warm up between the US and China based on sort of Nick Nixon and Kissingers attempts to sort of peel the Chinese away from the Soviet Union. And you know, like Robert, you've you've talked about this ambassadors before, um, but you know, part of part of what's going on here is that China like basically gets into a war with the Soviet Union in Nitteen sixty nine.

It's not called that, it's technically just called the border dispute, but like like there are troops like shooting at each other, like all across the border, people are beating each other the death with sticks like people are people are shooting borders at each other. It's it's it's it's a real war, and it's in a grand British tradition of course, calling

like massive conflicts an emergency or the troubles. Yeah. Yeah, it's like okay, you know, but but this, but this, this this really sort of this this really sort of drives Chinese sort of international like relations to the point where they're like, okay, so I know we're supposed to be communists, but also like the other communist power next door might like marching army across the board at any point.

So you know, you get you you get this sort of trying to triangle diplomacy of of of becausin you're trying to sort of bring China into the or at least away from the Soviet spear and then closer into the US beer And you know this starts to work, right, and you can ask, you know, there's other there's other things going on here, right, It's China's not just playing

pure geopolitics. Um there there there, there's there's another factor involved, which is that part of the sort of conditions for US and Chinese sort of like as you called bilatter relations or what what whatever sort of geopolitical can't bullshit you want to say for like getting along closer is the US starts sending these technology transfers over to China, like I mean literally like like like taking like sometimes like taking factories basically and like taking them apart and

then putting them in boxes and shipping them over to China. And you know, okay, and this is this is this is a huge deal for the CCP because like the Chinese econ mean, this period has been really bad. And part of this is just you know, this is what

happens when you bow. But a secondary part of this is that China's has has had a real basically it's it's China's been dealing with this sort of economic crisis since like like literally since since they came out of World War Two, which is that okay, so, but most of China's industrial capacity was completely destroyed you in the War of the Parchment that weren't were like there was this belt in Macharia that had stuff and that the

Soviets literally loaded loaded the factories on trains and shipped them back and shipped them back east or back west. So bye bye bye. By the by the time, by the time that the CCP takes over, like China has less industrial capacity than like Russia dated at the beginning in nineteen seventeen, Jesus. So situations really bleak, right, And the other the other thing that's bleak about it is that, Okay, so in order to build an industrial base, right, we've

talked about this a bit on the show. In order to build industrial base, you need food. But in order to get like increase your agriculture productivity, you need like medical goods. But you can't get those mechanical goods unless you can increase your jectal capacities. You have this bottleneck. And this winds up being one of the solutions to

the bottleneck is getting technology transfers from the US. And you know, the sort of product of this is that now all of our products and services which we are about to talk about, which you should buy, are made in China. So yeah, go go, go, buy, go buy those things that are the product of all of this. That's no problem. Yeah, don't don't question it, just purchase it. Go to Ali Baba, and just finally, their express. Get

Alie Express and just wire them seven hundred dollars. Within I'm going to say two weeks to seventeen months, you'll get a package of something yet by a drac. Honestly, if you order something from Ali Express, there's no real way to know what you will get. That's the beauty of Ali Express. Look you you. On the other hand, there there there is there is a non zero chance you get a collection of really really sick Chinese shirts

that just have absolutely random on him. It's great Chinese shirts, or like knockoff versions of military grade optics that work well enough for the Taliban to use. Yeah, they liberating people of the world over at the expressed optics. All right, and we're back. So okay. The Chinese swing into sort of like alignment with the US. They they start doing things that are like even a lot of the US's

right wing allies won't do. Like, for example, China, China is one of the first countries to like to diplomatically recognize Pinochet Chile, and they like send him a shit ton of money. Those loans they send they send him with direct cash transfers and like this is a point where even like France and like the UK are like, oh we woo, that's that's a like we're we're not We're not We're not gonna have We're not gonna acknowledge his military kindship. And China is like yeah, this rules.

Hell yeah, Pinochet, And you know, they do other stuff that's very sort of pro us, right. They invade Vietnam in nineteen seventy nine in the war that you know, the only war that's more forgot, and then the Korean War. Yeah, that's it's the side of wit of ease war. Um. Yeah, that was some pretty good Twitter threats. That taught me a lot about China's non aggression tour to other countries

last week. Yeah, it's it's a good time. I I can we we could all talk about like the Sino Indian War in the middle of this where they just invade India, which is great, but you know, okay, but like what what what this sort of comes up to you is in is like you you you get a point where the US and China, by by by the end of the seventies and going into the eighties, are very much on the same side. Like for example, when

when Dangel Ping came to visit the US. He takes he takes like an hour out of his schedule to make a secret visit to the CIA so that he can set up a joint like USCA Listening posted in China to monitor the Soviets. We talk about this a lot in the Kissinger episodes from last year, but folks should generally be aware that like Chairman maw and Richard Nixon legitimately got along, like enjoyed one another's company as did and Chowchesscu like they were they were all good friends. Yeah,

which is something something one ruling class, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, there's almost a class analysis you could make the yeah, but you know, okay, we we're gon're gonna do it. We're gonna do a slightly different class analysis, which is that like, okay, so US Shuna relations are very good literally like basically until Tianneman and then everything gets kind

of messed up because Chianamenianemans. It's a very has a set of like very weird and contradictory effects, right, you know, we we talked about some of this in our Chaman episodes. But it does two things. Right. On the one hand, like in the US, people are horrified, right the you know, the the entire media classes like watches, this happened the outside their windows. There's just like it is an incredible uproar.

It becomes one of the sort of like central like I don't know, like I sort of like it becomes it becomes a thing. It's like incredibly central to just like the memory of what it is to be an Asian American is to sort of like remember uote unquote Tianneman. But on the other hand, you know, so okay, what do you would expect from there, is like the US and China break off diplomatic relations, and like the Cold War two starts again immediately with the US and China,

and it doesn't happen like that. And it doesn't happen like that because the second thing that that that Tianaman does is it finally crushes the Chinese working class. And you know, once once, once, the once, the old, once, the last deald Chinese working class is just gone, right, and all that's left is an incredibly disorganized and incredibly

desperate sort of market working class. Suddenly, hey, look, we have a very highly educated, very poor population that you can that you can just you know, just ship labor too. And this is what this is what actually happens in sort of terms sort of the US and Chinese relationship over the nineties, which is that you know, you you

have these this double D industrialization going on. You have a D industrialization in the US where you know, the last of the old russbelt falls apart, the sort of like mining industrial boom that had happened that the Reagan just implodes. And you know, some of this is some of this is these jualization something. This is these jobs go to like the suburbs and shit, or like places like Decalb that are just incredibly accursed. But real call out there, man, I look, I'm sorry to anyone who

lives in Decalb. I wish you best luck fleeing that guy's at Decalb tourist board sponsorship we've been looking for. Yeah, but you know, but but simultaneously there's there there's another wave of the industrial relation happening in China too, which is that that old third wave industrial belt that I was talking about, Right, those people had worked in like basically the equivalent of like the Chinese equivalent of sort of like good union jobs. Right, They're they're they're working.

They're working for state for state owned enterprises, so they have housing, they have healthcare, they have pensions, and all of that is just destroyed. Like all these people lose their pensions, they lose everything. There are like millions of

people who are pushed out of their jobs. And you know when when both both of both of these things happen at the same time, and a lot of companies who are watching the sort of vast Asian companies like like economies collapse, We're watching the v B is sorry, who are watching the South Korean economy collapse, who are watching the Japanese economy collapse, suddenly start looking at China and throughout the course of the nineties sort of more

and more American capital. I mean there's already's been capital from East Asia sort of flowing in the China, more and more American capital starts flowing in. And what you get here is you get this battle between geopolitics and economics, right that the sort of geopolitics side and the sort of like you know this this this is side that like the media is on and the side is at this sort of like the sort of intellectual etc. Et cetera,

like anti China classes on is. You know, they don't they don't want to let China into the World Trade Organization. But it doesn't work, right, those guys just get destroyed China.

China get submitted into the World Trade Organization. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush support China entering the WTO, and they do it because they can they can see when I'm partially a little bit of it is because they've they've for some like they've they've they've been drinking the kool aid and they believe that like, if you have capitalism, then democracy will follow, which I and lyrical data suggesting yeah, okay, sure sure, indio cons like whatever.

But you know, but it's also it's also because these these these these people have financial backers, and their financial backers are telling them like, hey, look, we can you know, if if if if if like if all of the sort of weird sanction regime shit has worked out, and if China's fully integrated into the capital system, like we can make a lot of money. And they do that that this is what the two thousands is, right, like Walmarts and like Walgreens and shit like directly integrate all

of their supply lines into Chinese supply lines. They make deals with the Chinese government in order to do this, and suddenly by you know, by in two thousand and one, China is i think, like the fourth exporter of goods in the world. By two thousand and nine they are number one by like an order of what on order in magnitude. But they're like very very much the dominant

export like world's dominant export economy. And this is a problem, right because on the one hands, you know, if if like American Chinese relations get there, they're actually really good around nine to eleven, they're actually really good, right, Like the the US like there were there there were guys

from shing who, like China sends the Guantanamo. It's like here, take these people in US, torchis them for China, Like you know, yeah, like relations are like relations are good, right, It's like, well, okay, hey, we both have like this like quote Muslim extremist threat that we're like dealing with, you know, and they try to get on the war on terror. But eventually relations kind of degrade, like you

have the whole Olympics thing. You have there's like in like the two thousand tens, there's this whole fight over these islands that the Philippines claim. But you know, but but the problem with this is that, like, okay, so you get, on the one hand, a faction of the American right that is really and also and also like there's actually the American right that's really really hard line

anti Chinese based on sort of racism. There's American liberalism, which you know, has this thing about like the rules based international order that like China is violating. They're also racist. And then there's like progressives like Elizabeth Warred who are also racist and um, and also but you know who's thing is like, oh, well, workers rights in China are really bad, so we need to do like competition with them.

It's like, okay, that's how you fix it with more capitalism. Yeah, right, And but they have a political issue, which is that there's another massive section of American capital that has enormous investments moth sort of financially and in terms of where their factories are, where the logistics are, where the supply lines are that make them incredibly supportive of sort of close to US China relations, or at the very least makes them oppose any kind of sort of like real

like anything that goes beyond kind of geopolitical posturing that makes it harder to do business for them. And this is something I think people have a tendency to forget when they when they try to think about US China relationship terms of economics, is that like, Okay, so there, the US has a military industrial complex, but that's not the that's not the entire US economy. Like, there are other people in the US who have lots of money.

There was an entire financial sector, there was an entire tech sector, and those people also have a shit ton

of money. And even even sort of tech companies, right who who have a foot in sort of the American contracting business, also often have a bunch of their you know, a bunch of the places where the technology is built is in China, right, So you know, even even people who could theoretically be brought into a sort of like like an umbiltering industrial complex political coalition against China, like have reasons not to do it. And you know, and

this this works down the board. Right if you look at when Trump did the trade war, he you know, initially there was a lot of popular support among sort of like American like mid sized businesses, who are like, oh, we can bring industrial capacity back to the US. And then all of them discovered that they had to pay, like all of discovered that, like they had to pay more for their Chinese goods, and we're like, wait, hold on, we fucked up. We've made a mistake. He's actually screwed us.

And like, you know, there's there's another kind of guy, right who there's a lot of people who you expect to be really antic CCP who aren't, right, and Elon Musk is the best example of this. Like she's the guy. I think we'd expect Elon Musk to fully support anyone who can fully stamp on the face of their working class,

because that's true. But he's the kind of person, true you would expect, by pure racism to be like a really hard Lana to CCP guy, and he's not, because like he has, there's a class consciousness I think which overapes even apartepe boys racism well and and and like he has, there's the Tesla has this like oh god, it's called the Giga factory, which is a name that makes me want to die. Yeah, I mean, but the

Giga factories in Shanghai, right, And like he ha. He has even even dream when like the media was like like pretending to care about the weaker genocide, like he opened a showroom and shing John like dream that period.

So you know, and there's also people like Michael Bloomberg who are for very like you know, if you if you if if you read Michael Bloomberg talking about China, like in the media, he also talking about like how grave leader Hijinping is and it's you know, it's because the people have financial interests there and you know, and and this this means that like you know, even even the sort of media coverage of this balloon bullshit, right, and like China has been like threatening revenge or whatever

for the shooting down to the balloon, But like this isn't going to turn into anything, right, It's it's the same in the same way that like the last time I watched like straight stuff like didn't turn into anything. In the same way that like less seventeen goddamn with these scandals isn't going to go anywhere. And it's not going to go anywhere because there's a there's an enormous like faction of American capital who relies on this stuff.

I think it serves like the manditary industrial complex and the military specifically to have China be like Schrodinger's Next World War, right, like that they're always a threat, but like then they're not a threat, you know, like we can justify so much spending and allocation of resources if we can always like wave this stick of potential conflict

with China. Yeah, And I think there's something that's kind of like this important to understand is that like both the China Hawks and the China Doves are enemies of both the American and Chinese working classes. Like the China Hawks thing is they want to like, you know, they want to put the Chinese American working classes against each other. And it's like national philist fervor in order to get everyone to ignore the fact that like both the societies

are collapsing around them. And by the way, didn't did we we have no, I don't. I don't think this has really made the news yet, but a Norfolk Southern fucking basically set off a chemical weapon in Iowa by crashing one by crashing a train full of toxic chemicals. Yeah, and it's it's literally exploding like right now, as as we're fucking to recording this episode. It's on fire. Oh good.

You know. I love how when you deregulate train industry so that you can have just like one guy working a massive train hauling huge amounts of toxic chemicals, it works out great. Yea happens. It's good efficiency. Rub Yeah. Look, a train crash like this would have normally taken dozens of people to engineers. So we have we have improved our efficiency markedly well. And also in terms of efficiency, Robert like, think of how bad it could have been

if we hadn't crossed the rail strikes. Yeah, so yeah, it can been disaster, Yeah, terrible. There might not be there might not be a giant poisoned gas clad and what is it, Ohio, we can't have that. Yeah, it's in the East Palestine, Ohio. That's it's it's Palestine. They don't say, can have American solidarity with with Palestine. NICs. Oh, free, free Palestine. That's what I'm saying. That's been done already,

the first, the first Palestine. This will this will seem like it's in bad taste if a lot of people wiped up dying. But yeah, yeah, I also want to mention here that I'm I'm gonna take this opportunity to mention that China is the second large Israel's second largest trading partner, and they do like yeah, and like they they do like security exchanges with each other where people

trade each other's military is it's great, it's great. Um yeah, but but you know, you could rely if someone is oppressing working people they've done a security exchange with Israel. That is it's golden lore of cup beating you in the head with a stick. So it's never more than two degrees removed from the idea. Okay, there's one less thing I want to talk about really briefly, which is okay, So one of the things you will see people talk about who are like pundits or like people on the

news talked about this thing called decoupling. And the thing you need to understand immediately is at the moment someone says the word decoupling, you can stop listening to everything they're about to say because they are lying to you,

like it is bullshit. So the what in theory the coupling is this thing where like supposedly, like the US and Chinese economies are gonna decouple, right, and like all the American firms in China are gonna pull out, and they're gonna pull out their supply chains and they're gonna relocate them to swhere else in the world, and the US and Chinese economies suddenly will like not be coupled to each other. It's like, no, they're not, Like this

has never happened. It didn't. It didn't Like if it was gonna happen, it would have happened in twos and seventeen, and like, doesn't eighteen when Trump was Trump is doing the trade war, It didn't happen. Then. The only time it's ever happened, or the only time American companies ever sort of pulled out of China like on mass or tried to was Ironic Green twen two thousand and eleven.

But in two thousand and eleven they are trying to pull out because of the Wukan riots and this like mass of surge of strikes in China, and suddenly all these companies were like, oh my god, China might not be able to keep our I might be not be able to suppress the working class hard enough. And then they yeah, they got horribly crushed. And well, the other

thing that happened was like company. They like companies tried to go elsewhere and they couldn't do it because no one, like no other countries had the combination of like a like things like a stable electrical grid and like working roads, like an actually highly educated population. So like they didn't have all of these things at once. So they all came back and you know that that was that was close as ever came to happening. Everyone talks about this

all the time, they're lying to you. Ignore them. Yeah, it's it's it's not it's not going to happen. The US and Chinese economies are inextorably bound to each other, and they're going to continue to be. Yeah, I mean, we can't run like our economy to a logic extent on an economy, but I cast society runs on like providing treats to the working class just enough to prevent them from a battle angle from trying to radically change anything.

And like we can't keep the constant stream of treats running if if we decouple from China, right, like cheap consumer goods. And also like the Chinese economy relies on like as an expert economy, right like they've they've they've they've been trying to turn to an internal consumption economy

for a decade. It's like not really working because hilariously, it's not working because they don't pay people enough to buy shit, and surely no one will ever do that because yeah, yeah, so you know, but yeah it's great.

But you know, okay, I guess like the gist of what I wanted to say here is that, like like you, US China, relations are driven by forces that are more complicated than man on TV yell at balloon, and as as powerful as man on TV yell at balloon, seems like in the moment, it's not actually the thing underlying

what's going on here. And you need to be able to look past man yell at balloon on TV in order to look at the sort of the broader, the broader political and social forces that are that are going

on here. And I think beyond that, what we need to do is recognize that there's a deep emptiness at the center of American society that should have, in this case been filled by rich people in cessnas and their friends with high caliber precision rifles flying into the sky and a noble caxote quest to shoot that fucking balloon down, just having Sancho Panza. C'm so disappointed in this country. Um, I expected forty or fifty people to die, but that balloon to be taken down. There was a time when

we had a country. Yeah, our founding fathers would have dropped that son of a bitch. Yeah, Joe Brandon has forced some wan into retirement. Yeah, and China has revealed anyway, I hope China sends another balloon. Yeah, what else are we going to do? Yeah? I feel like a Mickey Mouse fucking Frozen balloon. You know, if they do like the girl from Frozen, Sure, it would be cool. I'd like to see that. They should start pranking us with

character balloons. I'd fucking love that. Oh God. But but but then the US would start sending like Wi the Pool balloon. Elizabeth would commission a Moana balloon to like illegal for raising fun to happen. We would have like a balloon based Cold war where the United States starts shooting over balloons across China and the Russians start floating, and it's just, yeah, we got to close the balloon gap. Becomes the number one world power. Green Chili Jack boots

stamping over the face of humanity strong minutary capacity. The developers of Balloons Tower Defense get hauled before a Senate committee for supposedly doing the future. God yeah, yeah, we got a nationalized MYLA production in order to monopolize it. All right, well the balloon pause. Yeah, I think that's our episode. Yea, all right, until next time, everybody go

forth in balloon. Yeah yeah. Float a balloon into the airspace of a sovereign nation, just to take with them a little bit by Cameron Ali Express, put it on a balloon, send it somewhere. But you can be be the CIA you want to see in the skies over a sovereign country on the balloon, spree painted on the side. Why not? Why not? What's the harm? What could possibly go wrong? Now I'm going to listen. On an unrelated note, I'm finally going to listen to the SI song ninety

nine Red Balloons for the very first time. Changes my opinion on what people should do with balloons. All right, everyone out, Hi, everyone's it could happen here and today it's near and myself and we're doing two interviews, which is going to split over two different episodes. What we're talking about is a case in Asha, North Carolina, where a group of people doing mutual aid work with and

How's people have been charged with felony littering. Now we're going to get a little bit in the episode into what felony littering is. Unfortunately, I don't think any of us can explain why that exists as a charge for individuals and not for like you know, BP or SHELL or something, but such as a state. And so in the first episode, we're going to talk to Sarah. Sarah is one of the people facing these felony littering charges. Sarah's also been banned from parks in Nashville and which

we're going to talk about. So Sarah will explain a little bit of the process that led up to those felony littering charges, what the situations like in Ashville for mutual Aid in front How's people. And then we're going to talk to Maniba tomorrow. Maniba is one of the lawyers at the ACOU, and she will explain a little bit of the legal background to the case and what is sort of the way that the ACOU is helping

these people oppose the ban. So we'll have two separate episodes, but we actually recorded them in a different order, so you're going to hear Sarah maybe referring to some stuff Maniva said, and Maniba saying, Sarah will say some stuff. Just know that we recorded Mania first because she had a pressing time commitment, But we felt that Sarah's interview gives you a better set up for listening to Manya's interview tomorrow. Okay, hope you enjoy. We're going to start

out talking to Sarah. He's one of the people who is a quote unquote problem child in Asheville. We can Yeah, yeah, Sarah, did like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're a problem child? Yeah, my name is Sarah Norris. Um. It's so funny to be called something like a problem child because I'm mostly like what I am as a mom of a little kid. I'm a social work student,

like I am a career educator. Um. And I am also yeah, one of sixteen local organizers who who has been facing for almost the last year felony littering charges in conjunction with December twenty one. December twenty twenty one art spaced protest. Yeah, I'm sorry, did this bizarre thing has happened to you. Obviously, like on the face fit felines, feloninees ring is a bizarre charge and the fact that

you are banned from parks is also very weird. Al Right, so let's maybe start off with like the situations before this, what were you what we were doing in the parks that led to you being deemed unsuitable for parks? Gosh, no way, you'd have to ask those who deemed who so deemed us. But I can talk about what I did in parks for for the year prior to being banned. Um, And that's a I was part of a collective whom who at the beginning of the pandemic um did like

six times a week meals, coffee, gear distribution in parks. Um. By the time I came around and started participating in these in these food sharings, in these community gatherings, UM, we were at like two or three times a week. And um, really what the way I spent my time in parks was Saturdays and Sundays. I brought my daughter to Aston Park and we brought food with us, gear with us, art supplies with us, or nothing with us.

We just showed up as us and we hung out and we distributed food, tents, packs, socks, toothbrow is really whatever we could get our hands on. UM. And towards the end of the year, we got a little bookshelf and uh we were we were in charge of bringing books UM on this like little white plastic shelf and like talking to people about what they most wanted and see if they can match them up with whatever we

randomly had. UM. It was really like sitting in the sunshine and uh making sure the coffee thing was full UM, and mostly just talking to people, people who were run house, people who are housed, people who walked by and were like, what's this? What's this picnic? Why is everybody like using glitter glue? Like, oh, because there's a five year old and that's what we do. UM. So So that's what

mostly I did in Parks UM. And this is this this activity UM is in the context of a city who I think in twenty twenty one, UM, I think we know there were at least twenty one sweeps of homeless encampments, and a sweep like that name for some of us, really connotes violence, but I think it's important

to name how violent those are. A camp sweep means that folks have to leave the place where they've been living, and very often their belongings are then considered to be trash, are bulldozed over, are are at a minimum lost to them. And this had happened over and over again in the city of Asheville. And yeah, there's a way that that being in the park weekly felt like a thing that happened in Ashville that was the opposite of feats that was like we're here, We're all here together, like here

we are. And so the protest itself around which in the context of which like these arrests have come, happened in December, and it was an arts based protest and was really about was in favor of sanctuary camping in the city of Ashville with sanitation services. That was the point of it. And there were like kind of standard protest related events on or sorry, arrests on Christmas night.

So that's what um Asheville Police did. And I think it's important just to note that there were not unhoused folks evicted that night on Christmas night, and no one who was there was pretending to be unhoused and was arrested. That's a strange narrative that the City of full Police department has set in open court. Um. But there were standard sort of like misdemeanor trespass resisting officer arrest that night, um,

including of journalists. And then these felony littering cases came much later and in a kind of a different context. But that's what that's what happened around Christmas. Okay, yeah, it's already pretty weird, but I think, yeah, it gets waited. Yeah yeah. So so particularly if you were not arrested, then I went home and Chrismasy stuff, and then at some point, well a letter comes through your doors saying

that you've been charged with like felony littering. So my own experience was that people organizers in the mutually collective that I'm part of, who had been showing up in the parks week after week distributing food and gear, started getting arrested in mid January. For um, what we learned was something you could be arrested for, which was felony littering and or aiding into and a betting felony littering, which like honestly exactly and and some people had one,

some people had the other. Some people had both um people were and this is you know, our understanding is that there's an unstated but generally followed policy by the City of Ausha police de forma that they don't go arrest people at work. But they went to people's work with five cops and arrested them. Um. And this began in mid January and it continued um into into February. And be arrest I mean, honestly, the charges on the on the charge sheets would read like crazy statues that

weren't even felony littering. It seems like they it really seemed like they were making it up as they went along, just from the what I can say is, I mean, I can't speculate about what they were doing, but there was a strangeness to to even like the documentation that

people who are arrested received. And then at the first week of March of last year, the letter that I received was similar to others that others other folks received that day, which was in an envelope from the Asheville Police Department but was on Ashell Parks and arc stationary that told me that I had been banned from all city parks for a period of three years based on the commission of a felony. And this was how I found out that I even had any charges, was through

this letter. And that's true for more than me, that's true for a few defends. Um. So you know, not everybody who is now we understand to be banned from parks has even received one of those letters, but I did, and a few of us did, And there was on there a sort of like if you would like to appeal this, you have seven days, but the letter had been dated sort of five days before that, and we

were like, wow, what are we even doing? And so it's hard to it's hard to really communicate the like level of um both like sort of desperation and nonsense that was involved. The next day, but um, you know, so a few of us found this out. We were we self surrendered, and because we were a lot of us around the courthouse in city hall, we were trying to figure out what does this letters even mean? Like what does it mean to appeal this? What does it

need to be banned? And so we trapesed around city hall, city offices, the courthouse trying to get some sort of answer like what here we've got these what does this mean? And every place sent us somewhere where they were like, we don't know what that is. Park Snart said, we don't know what that is. Go talk to the police. We said, we don't know what that is. Go talk to the magistrate. The criminal magistrate said, oh, this seems

like a civil magistrate thing. So there's like a group of five mutual aid workers, you know, sort of just trapesing around trying to find out like can I do I get to go give out sandwiches intense in the park this week or not for three years? What is? And who can help me figure this out? And no one could? And what insod We never got an answer that day. We just had city employees looking at us, often with a like wow, we don't We're sorry this

is happening to you. This seems really dumb expression. And eventually, via email it became clear that they were like, we don't know what this process is, but we're going to tell you soon, like thank you for your email, you know, saying you're going to appeal it. And over time we kind of got a little bit more like okay, we're going to schedule the hearings. You will have a hearing eventually, like okay, we ask who will be these are like

for what what is a hearing? And they didn't know, and then like, oh, okay, well there will be some police officers there and you know, the city representative from the City Attorney's office, and you will have a chance to provide information. And you know, at this point, like, none of us, I think none of us had maybe we'd had Adam appearances, but like, at this point, we're

dealing with felony littering charges that we don't understand. We're trying to figure out whether we can continue to provide community care in the way we've been doing for years, and it seems like what the city is offering is a chance to come and maybe entrap ourselves. Like it doesn't make any sense to us. And so you know, those of us who had representation that we could speak to said, oh, we're coming, um, and have you heard the recordings? No, Well, if you would like them, I'm

happy to send them. Mine is particularly I can't listen to mine. I have a huge nervous system response. Um, but mine is my my attorney asking over and over again questions of the of the representative, the city attorney. It's not it's John Maddox, who's um named in the ACLU demand letter. Um, just saying over and over again, like what at that point, we haven't even seen any discovery, Like we don't know what information this is even based on.

Like there are two cops in uniform pointing body cams that assume I have to assume pointing body cams at me, um, and in this in this hearing, and my lawyer is just asking over and over again, like upon what evidence is this space? And they just said over and over again, you're here to give information. We are not giving any information. My lawyer asking what is the standard of review here?

Like how upon what is this base? And the parks director just saying like my decision and the and and then and then you know, what are the what is the remedy if this is if the appeal is denied, there's none, then the appeal is denied. Like and so it really was for me one of the moments where I realized, like, oh, the city is is pretty hell bent on keeping a bunch of sweethearts who give out tens and sandwiches out of the park, and they're gonna

like they're they're up to something here. Um. But I'm happy to share that recording. We have all of them reported. Yeah, I'd like that performance of like suitable legal ceremony well and again and and like pseudo in a dangerous and extra judicial way, like I had no protections there, right, Yeah, you know, like yeah, there's something to respond to. Yeah, it's like these these are these, these are Star Chamber proceedings, like like the King of France is going to walk out.

I just think it seems like such a British thing, like yeah, you told me this in Britain and you've been like shooting the Queen's swans or something. I'd buy it. You know. Here we are in the land of the free.

You know that well, And I think the equivalent of shooting the Queen's swunts here is um hanging out with poor folks in a park um and in ways that inconvenience or that apparently inconvenience the folks who go who pay money because you have to to play tennis at a public tennis court which is like right by Aston Park and and we can go in in a minute as much as you want to to what you saw as far as like their attempts after their attempts to

pass to sneak through an ordinance. Um. Now we know quite clearly from public records directed at at food sharing in Austin Park. Yeah, it's really I keep thinking about that that Helder Kamara aligned I. When I give food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the air poor? They call me a communist. But it's like they really seem to have blown all the way, Like they didn't even get to part two.

They were just like, wait, hold on, you're giving food to the poor, like it is time for a military response. It's just it's just horrible. Yeah, and being banned from parks for three years has a pretty big effect on my on my little life, you know, like there are constitutional um aspects to it that matter far beyond me and and which matter in many ways more too. But the fact right now is that like I can't legally take my young child like to the park, buy her

house without risking a rest for misdemeanor trust house. Um and and to my knowledge I won't be able to for three years. Um. And you know, they've succeeded in getting us out of the park. They caused the harm to they disrupted community care Um, they did it. They didn't need the ordinance. Um, you know, it does happen. Food distribution happens, but it's in a place that really isn't the same. Like my daughter can't go there. She has some sensory stuff like being in the loud place

that it is right now, it really doesn't work. Um. So yeah, there's this. There's this very um like the scopes of all of this um from how Asheville as a city views and treats the folks who live on the street here who the city has most abandoned. There's the legal mechanisms, the like very strange way they are like doubling down on criminalization of folks doing community care.

And then there's just like the really day to day personal personal bits of this that affect all of us in different ways, and a felony would affect lots of us in different ways, Like it endangers professional licensure, Like I'm trying to get a social work license, like people, it endangers professional licensure. Of course, I right to vote, housing and employment. And you know, I'm the like middle aged, white, middle class mom, second graduate degree person in the group.

I am not really representative of our group. Like folks are in a lot less folks are in a lot more precarious and material circumstances than I am, and so much so that like, you know, it feels safe for me to come on this podcast. It doesn't feel safe for everybody to come on a podcast. It feels safe for me to have my name out, like, um, it doesn't for everybody. And I think, um, yeah, I think

that that's something that has to be named too. Of like how what I threat this is to folks future material will being as well as currently Like folks have most housing over this, Folks have lost employment over this, like um Jesus Christ. Yeah, like even if you're found completely innocent or whatever, like this has robbed your time or people at the housing or people's their jobs. It caused stress and in that way, you know, it does feel and often to us like the like the punishment

is the process. Yeah, it's just harassment. So I don't know if I feel are updated on like there are five of us being taken to trial. Is that something you know? Okay, yeah so yeah yeah, but our listeners probably aren't. So it's lain like so right after this happened or at some point, Alt's happening. So I know when we started speaking, I was like, oh, well, I'd pr ra this shit out of Aya City council people,

and you were like we already have. Yeah, so because there was some stuff in there that was just weirdly Yeah, can you what you got from, like this has got

a problem job Montaka come from, among other things. Sure, yeah, gosh, it's so even talking about it, I have such a reaction and um that I can feel um and I should say, you know, I speak about this to my not not about the city of the text necessarily, but I speak about the situation to a lot of people because it does feel to us like you know, they're also I think they would like us to be ashamed, but we're not ashamed of what is happening to I mean,

that's part of the degradation of a quick system. And so you know, all of my neighbors know what is happening to me, all of the people that I work with in the various like uh, school related jobs and such that I do. And to a person, everyone in Asheville starts with disbelief. They're like no, and then I'm like yes, and then they're just so disappointed, like they're just they're so appalled. Often people say the number in nineteen eighty four, Like often people are like, wow, I

really I didn't know. Some people did know, you know that the city was was like this. UM, but you know that's that's sort of paralleled my experience in a way, just like disbelief and then and then disappointment. UM. But yeah, we recently it's intensified recently seeing the publicly available communication between council members UM, and I think, UM, I want to be careful and I don't have it in front of me, and so I don't want to I don't

want to misquote it. But what I can say, UM, is that anybody can go find on the City of ashtables public records or busts. Anybody can go get those now because they've been requested UM. And so they're publicly available.

And we have texts between council members that UM, that are kind of debate that that are in contemplation of an ordinance that would restrict food sharing in public places to to require permitting in contemplation of that, like we have we have texts from council members calling um, those who do those who do fouturing and ask and park problem children, um and saying that it's a shame that the problem children have ruined it for the rest of

the class. We have. We have one saying like, you know, probably if if we go ahead, we city council go ahead with this, with this ordinance, there will be a lot of protests and a lot of pushbacks, which of course there was once it came out. UM. And we have the other council members saying like, yeah, that might be UM, but if permitting is the only way to get them to stop, then so be it. And any I mean I read that, and I have a variety of reactions, but mostly just like a kind of nauseous

disappointment UM. In And this is not true of all council UM, because some of some some folks have tried to like understand the gap being filled by folks who give out food and gear in a park. UM. And I think some of the council and have recognize it as a gap um that is being filled. And I think some are are so aware of what it says about the city that folks have to show up in a park and give out food and gear and there's

never enough of either. Um. They're so aware of what that lays there, about the abandonment that the city practices of those who live here, that they can only see that, and they can only be angry with us, right and call us problem children like forty three. Yeah, well you can see the sort of like like the kind of just like petty dictatorship mind that they've gotten themselves into.

Were like they can't see the people who like you know, nominally they're supposed to be serving, right, but like, okay, we know how far that goes, but they can't see like you as anything other than just like a child. Because that's the kind of like this is the sort of dictator brain that they've that they've from like holding this power. It's it kind of reminds me of like how you see with the fourteenth he said, like the state is me and therefore a tax on my reputation

or like a tax against the state. Like yeah, that's how it feels like you're being treated us by making them look bad. And I don't know if you saw this also in there, but um on the day that the arrests happen. So so those discussions about the ordinance were I think a little earlier in January that we should actually too that. Um, but there's a there's one that came right on the day of the first arrests for felany lettering that um or someone asks like can

those arrested be banned from certain places? Um? And and we know now yes, but it is it's a lot to see that. It's a lot to see what looks, um, what looks so deliberately like depriving us of a sorry to be in a perk? Yeah? Yeah? And so where is where's the five you are going to trial? Yeah? Unknown number of people are banned from parks in Nashville. Yes, yes. My understanding is that someone has been told, um, oh, we don't keep records of that, which also doesn't make

a lot of sense. Yeah, how can you force a bath if we don't have a record of who's bay? Yeah, and I shouldn't be quoted on that, but um, but my understanding is that, like, um, is that that has been the It's like, oh no, there aren't records that we can that can be made public about that, because there's some police aren't for records. UM do that just seems like that's just just like incredibly bizarre secret police shit.

Of like, yeah, I know we have like we have we have lists that don't exist of people who are banned from spaces and we won't tell you what they are because I don't existe. Yeah, you'll find out when this what team comes from behind the swings and yeah yeah yeah, yeah terrible. So yeah, you're banned from the park,

you're facing you're going to trial. Yeah, five of us um have been have been scheduled for trial and the other folks UM have been kind of it's called taken off the calendar, so they don't have nothing's dismissed um but um, but they're not scheduled. There's no there's no next quart date for them. Okay, so when when will you if you don't mind saying, when would your trial date be? Our trial date right now is set for February twenty seventh. Well okay, so you're coming up, it's

coming right up. Yeah, that's tough. We'll make sure we get this out before then. How can people support you, support the work that you uh not doing in parks anymore? How can people help you through this? I'm sure it's a really stressful trial prices, Yeah, thank you for asking. Um, so we post updates in a few different places. UM, But we don't have our own Instagram right now because we're we just don't. But our our defendant statements get released in a few different places, including UM at a

V survival on Instagram. We also have a website where we always post our own statements and also all the press that comes out about us, and that is abl

Solidarity dot no blogs dot org. We have a VENMO which is used that those funds are used for attorney fees and and frankly, like you know when someone loses housing or their car breaks down and they have had trouble finding employment because they have fell any lettering churches against them, and it's also used for material needs in that way, and that is a VL defendant fund And all that's actually on the website too. You can find

those UM. And honestly, it matters so much that people just know this is happening, you know, when I tell people in Ashville, like more people know now than did before. UM, when I tell people outside of Asheville, there's very much like I thought about coming there. I heard it was cool. It's like they do want those who make not just like a living from tourism but those who make tons of money from tourism are certainly invested in you thinking that it's really cool and tell me to spend your

money here. And it's not cool in the ways that they want you to think it's cool. It is cool because neighbors show up for each other and you can come here and we'll talk to you about that. But there's a way that, like people knowing what this place is really like does matter. And there's a way that honestly, people just like sending us like they're beautiful energy and hope really matters too, Like that actually that actually really doesn't matter. So they can send us through beautiful energy

and hope and material contributions as they might have them. Yeah, I'm sure people will because horrifically fucked up. I wanted to ask, what is the sentence range for felony littering? Yeah, so it's the lowest class of felony. As it happens none of us have any criminalstery. Yeah, we'd be facing felony probation and so that could that there's a range

there of whether that probation is supervised or unsupervised. Um, there's a range of how long it would be there's a range um of restitution in terms of community service, um and and I actually don't have the paper in front of me that says what the range of those things are, but I feel like it's eight twelve months on probation um and a lot of that is simply at the discretion of incentencing um and um And I think that that there are some puzzible restrictions on just

like being able to leave the state. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, probation. Sorry, christ Like, this is fully fucking sent me now. Because a guy, a man called Robert Wilson in San Diego was arrested for hate crimes because he assaulted his gay neighbor. Since he was arrested, he's riven around San Diego and La dressed as a Nazi, sometimes with horrifically anti semitic slogan. Has just left the country and is living in Poland because because fucking like somehow, sorry,

I'm sorry, I love it. This is fully fully sent me now too. Yeah, yeah, what is wrong with this ship? Yeah there's something else you wanted to get to you? Yeah, I think I wanted to name so, you know, people are so in a way like I wish I had a super cut of everyone I've ever said the word felony lettering too, just like their faces over and over again.

Maybe I'll come to Asheville and just vox pops. Yeah, so there's a way that you know, of course that's just like and with you add on eating and a betting, which we've all been bumped up to felony lettering but or sort of but but but the myst miyor is conspiracy to commit no, yeah, what's next greco charge? Yes, so so um so on its face, you know, it has this ring of absurdity, and of course like it is.

You know, a lot of the press about us, you know, they'll go talk to someone at the School of Government who says, like, well, this is baffling and at the very least seems like a misapplication of the statute, which is about um huge amounts of waste often being like dumped by businesses. Um. But I think it's it's it's telling that a couple maybe a month or two ago, there was an article in the Citizen Times, a local paper, about US and a company, Waste pro which had dumped

um an entire dumpster's worth of trash um. Now I'm like out somewhere outside of um where it should have been like in the in the landfillm um. And but it was all about like how actually they had followed procedure because there was like maybe a little bit of a battery fire or something. There was something going on with it where they they weren't supposed to bring it in,

so they just had to dump it. But in the course of this article, they interviewed a lot of people about like, well, what's going on with like litter in general and like big amounts of litter, and our case was never mentioned, but they did talk to some folks who who do river clean up, an organization called GreenWorks, and that person said, you know, sometimes there are like there's huge amounts of dumping that happens, and we call the city and they say, yeah, that's illegal, but we

don't actually prosecute that. And like seeing you know, that's the sort of thing also that seeing in print, I'm just like, what what sort of strange like dystopian novel am I living in where the city is so upfront that like, oh no, like we wouldn't prosecute felony littering, but when it comes to aiming to disrupt a kind

of community care and political speech that they don't like. Um, they're willing to expend an incredible amount of resources on it, you know, like the number of resources that have gone into this would have funded like sanctuary camping with sanitation services like for years, for years, and you know, I think you alluded though maybe this is in the future of the podcast, like to the way the City of Asheville or our lawyers have been clear that when you

when you look at the City of Asheville's like public apronouncements and the way that that they talk about um homelessness, it does seem like, oh wow, we're really we're really trying to get on this UM. But at a recent meeting where a consultant group often referred to as like yeah, that other that that consultant group from now because it's happened to over and over again, presented findings about like what should actually be done to end unsheltered homelessness. Here

presented finding to the city council and accounting commissioners. No one was allowed to talk except for this huge meeting. No one was allowed to talk except for council members and commissioners and those who were presenting. But a man who actually has experience, was experience with homelessness, got up and talked anyways, and he was interrupted by the mayor and like that's telling in its own right. That's that's telling in its own right. Also telling is that later

also not allowed to speak. A local pastor got up and said, you know, I saw that happen. You know, like what we need to be doing is actually listening to the folks who've experienced this and like data, yes, we need data, but we also need to like actually listen to the voices of what's going on. And he used the phrase, which I think was echoing the man who had spoken earlier, spiritual death, and said that this he thinks as a pastor, that Ashville is in a

moment of spiritual death. And in a way, that's why I say, like we need you, We need your material contributions to us as defendants to collective care. Like when we have extra money in that defendive fund, we just

give it away. Some people can buy more tents, and we need like we need some hope because Ashville is in this momentum where it's as a city, it's making choices that seem so misaligned, not just with like the image that it would like to sell to tourists, but like with the people who live here and are actually like about it day to day in a neighbor's caring for a neighbor's way, like really misaligned with what we actually want and what we actually are capable of offering

each other. Yeah, yeah, it is deeply sad, but like we've created this abstraction of society which is being entirely anti social, like no one wants, no one, ye, no reasonable person would do that, But we've got the state, which in theory acts on our behalf and is doing it. Yeah yeah, which also is probably to editorialize for a second.

Often people will make this argument, I see it specifically around gun laws, but with other laws, to where this law won't always be enforced and only use it if they need it if they have to get a bad person.

They will use it if anybody threatens their interest, their shit right, Like it was extensively mobilized for a ghost gun law here, which made some bizarre things illegal, like the bank stick which you use for spear fishing, is now a ghost gun and a felony, and like there were definitely boomers who have dozens of those in their garage right and don't keep up on local audiences and are now, in theory at risk of committing a felony.

And then obviously the response to that from the councilors, oh, well, we wouldn't charge them, like who we can't us the state to be benevolent when it's your experience is shown it's anything but and you know we And I can say this personally because I've spoken I've spoken to people in city government or in state government who I've just said like, hey, did you know this is happening? Um?

And and they're clear about how Um sure it sounds nettie but the city but like that, but that that we as a group have been painted as particularly dangerous. And that part to me is like, I mean, don't do this to anybody, you know, don't do it to anybody.

But the part where where what's going on is like, it's is this strange justification, um, with the idea that that we are dangerous people who deserve to be taken you know, who need to be taken out of a part, who need to not be allowed to be in a park. You know is particularly easily disproved by anyone who actually like hangs out with us, knows what, knows who we

are and what we've done. But not when it's just like a weird whisper campaign in the in the halls of city government, like oh no, they're bad, Like they're just bad. Um. Like we we've heard the lies that they've told about us, some of them we have in um in you know, public records requests like um that we haven't even talked about. But it's it's a it's a really strange thing to be to be painted that way. Yeah, yeah,

it's design. Again. I'm sorry it's happening to you. And so I think to wrap up, maybe again, you could just give that venmost people can support materially and yeah, you know, if there's any other social media account where people can follow along, where people can send their support and best wishes, that yeah, that's great. Um our venmo is a VL defendant fund and um yeah you can so on Instagram. We're easy to get you through a VL survival and there's a way to contact us through

our website. We can have a little we have a little email. I'll be so cute to get some supportive emails, and that website is a VL solidarity dot no blogs dot org. Amazing. Thank you all so much, thank you for giving us your time. I'm sorry that you're dealing with the fairy US state bullshit. All right, So that wraps up. Are into you with Sarah. Tomorrow we'll be talking to Maniba from the ACOU, the American Civil Liberties Union, and he will be giving us a legal perspective and

some more insight into this case. We'll look forward to talking to you then. Hi everyone, it's James again. I just want to remind you that this is part two of a two parta and if you haven't listened to yesterday's podcast, today's might not make a lot of sense, So I would suggest starting there. Obviously, you know of your own lifetill you want, but you're going to understand

today's a lot more if you start with yesterday's. Today we speaking to Menieba with the ACLU about the legal response to some of the bizarre things City of Asheville has been doing. If you hear reference to Pip in this episode, that's because Pip is another of the activists. They weren't able to make our call but we're going to be speaking to them as well in our ongoing coverage of this. So hope you enjoy today's episode know that we'll keep you updated as this moves forward. All right,

so our first guest today is Niba and Minnie. But would you like to introduce yourself explain your relationship to what we're talking about today. Yeah. Sure, So my name is Maniba Talister. I'm a stop attorney with the ACLU Narth CAREL I know, and I represent some of these wonderful folks that you'll be talking to actor me and UM, it's unfortunate that we met this way, um, but you know, I'm happy to be working with them. So basically I can go into it or do you want to ask

me questions about it? Or I think it'd be great if you could start off by sort of walking us through how Mutual Aid seems to have met with this

bizarre prosecution. Yeah, of course. UM, so we got connected to um, you know our now clients, UM, this group of individuals whom you know have been doing important advocacy and rachel Aid work on the house of on house folks, um in ethel and UM we were connected by this other organization called Center for Constitutional Rights and kind of filled in quickly about how this group of people were not only banned from perks, but these bands were based

on this absurd criminal charge called felony littering um, which

you know, it sounds as crazy as it is. Um. So so yeah, you know, I think, um, my colleagues and I at the ECLU, we were eager to talk to these folks and learn more about what happened and see what we can do and um uh and you know, start talking about some of the legal issues that um that arise from when a city tries to ban a large group of people from from one of the few places that they have to convene and to protest um and demonstrate, which you know, one of the first things

I learned in law school is like how or like one of the first things I think I learned as someone living in the US, like you you always hear kids say, oh, I have free speech, like you know, free speeches. So it's such a central part of being in this or like growing up in this country and being a citizen or a member of this country. Is just the way that is thrown around, sometimes inaccurately, but people generally know that that speech should be protected and

cannot be restricted except in very narrow ways by the government. UM, not by like you know, your mom. You don't have free speech in front of your mom. Like that's not that I learned that. Um. Yeah when I took my being an American test, I took I became a citisen a couple of months ago. And there's like only like fifty questions they can ask you, And I think two of them are like, what it's free speech? Like like yeah, yeah, can you claim free speech when you get banned from

Twitter dot com? Like yeah, it's something, Yeah, that's yeah. And I think, um, I think you know it's UM it's absurd to criminalize protest, of course, UM, but it's it's also like equally as troubling to take away this this important public space from people that UM, you know, especially in a city like Ashville, if you've been there, it's one of the few public spaces that people can

convene and um get together and enjoy each other's company. UM. You know that that being separate from also one of the few places that you can protest and and um engage and discussion about how to fix problems. So it's really troubling, um that the City of Bashville has had taken that route. So when the ACIL you got involved, we thought it would be best to list out some

of these legal issues. UM. You know, I mentioned the First Amendment UM and free speech, but there are also a lot of procedural due process problems that um are issues that come up when you then folks from a park. Um. One of you know, one of the things that the

city didn't do is provide proper notice. So a few of our clients never received notice that they were banned from the park, and you know, found out that they were banned either through the discovery process in their criminal cases or by doing like very intense investigation of their own which you know, that is not a that's just not okay, Like a city needs to you need to at this is like a very basic thing, right, notice and hearing. Those are the tenets of procedural due process.

And the city fails there. The city then sails again at providing hearing and providing opportunity to appeal these bands, Like there is no pre deprivation hearing. First of all, like the bands, once our clients received them, they're banned. They're banned from the parks and cannot go and don't how didn't have any opportunity to defend um why they shouldn't be banned or be heard about why they shouldn't be banned before that band happened, which is, you know,

it's it's not okay. I think a pre deprivation hearing is really important when you're taking away an interest, like like the First Amendment interests that I laid out, and and then the hearing that was provided was problematic in a lot of ways. For one, these were very short cursory hearing um that lasted from I want to say like five to thirty minutes, but I'll let Sarah and

Tip confirm. And they they had people from Ashville Police Department who are you know, arguably also involved in the criminal case as that that several of our clients are

still sattling through. They were not allowed to ask questions, and you know, several of our clients do not have the resources to have proper legal representations, so it's sometimes our clients were there alone and had to fend for themselves and navigate that tricky area of not saying something that could hurt you in your criminal case, and you know, the hearing was just a mess in all of the ways. How does the city like legally justify banning someone from parks?

I guess they're like a way which they can do that. So they have this policy called the Restricted Access to City Parks falls policy, and it is I think we should call it the park bound policy. They basically allows the city to to ban folks from parks based on certain violations of I think the categories are city park rules, city Parks and Recreation Department program rules, city ordinances, state laws,

and federal laws. So what's interesting is there is no there's nowhere in the policy that says when a person has committed or that defines what a violation of any of these rules are like. Is that a conviction? Is that a formal like citation there the policy does not provide that. So this is important, I think, especially here where our clients, none of them, or actually I shouldn't

say none of them. Three three of our clients have pled to lesser misdemeanor charges, but everyone else has an open case and they have not been formally convicted of anything. And so it's it's strange that you know, you can ban someone based off of the steleny charge that hasn't even been fully litigated. Yeah, have they banned there like a record of the city banning people from parks or have they just like dug this one up from the

bowels of legislation to ban these people. Oh, that's a really interesting question, and I'd love to know the answer myself. We did submit a public records request to try to figure out if they have, but I imagine the city is not going to want to tell us. And I think, Sarah, you could speak to this later. But I don't think

they have. They. I think they've rejected PRRs that you all have done and have not provided that elusive restricted access list which they have of like folks that they've spanned from the perks and and maybe that list is just you know, our clients, which yeah, I mean, maybe

they have. I don't know what's worse, like if they have a parks black list and they're just not notifying people until like they send a swat team after them, or if it's if it's only people who are helping unhouse people and they just don't want to admit that. Both those are pretty dark on the topic of weird legal things. What on earth is felony littering? I'd love to know. I'd love to know what felony littering is, because, um,

I'll tell you this. When I told my partner, like, I was like, oh, did you know they're something called felony littering? And he's like, I hope that's when corporations get punished for, you know, dumping toxic waste into the sea. But no, it's apparently when community members come together for a demonstration and the city is mad about what's left behind, which, um,

you know that's uh. I think it's really telling that the city has chosen to to prosecute folks on this like felony littering charge, which you know hasn't I think in the past ten years there's only been one felony littering case out of Buncombe County, where Ashville is Okay, So I think that's really telling, and I think it's it's really troubling that's city of Aashville seems to be

really taking out a position in silencing speech. It does not like yeah, yeah, go ahead, No, they just seem to be taking like the most bizarre and ran around the first amendment that they can. Yeah, it must be a lot of munds. You a lot of like the Occupy era stuff where like all of these cities suddenly realized that like wait, hold on, these people can actually

use a park for political activity. And then immediately like suddenly that all these like organizes started appearing where like everyone has to like clear out of the park by ten pms leaking clean it or something that eventually just

were just like was used to force people out. And I don't know, it seems like there's there's something interesting too about Like it seems like it's it's almost when whenever like a city government tries to something, because it seems like they always like immediately reach for sanitation ordinances. Like yeah, I was saying like that was that was like the big occupy thing, Like they're doing this here too,

and it's it's I don't know. I think all around the country we're seeing the government fish out these weird ordinances and make new laws to criminalize poverty and um

and to criminalize unhoused people existing. And I think that trend, unfortunately carries even in places like Ashville, UM that are seeing especially after COVID, you know, there's been a rising and house population everywhere, and so it's it's really upsetting, but it is the truth that these these ordinances and laws that are being fished out are being fished out to targets folks and um and new laws that lawmakers

are creating. Now, I was thinking about this. I remembering there there's a whole sort of anthropological literature about like how colonial states use use like sanitation ordinances as a way to sort of destroy like indigenous public spaces and

the places they colonize. And I guess, like, yeah, I don't know, Like there's there's a lot of sort of throughput I guess between like the sort of old like colonial government's regimes and the way that people still use sanitation is like the default way to sort of cleanse

people out of public spaces. I think it's interesting how like um an analogy one can make me visit there are people with rights and people without rights, even when in theory we all have rights, and like this attempt to sort of use sanitation to be like all of these people's rights don't matter what. They don't have those rights at all. Yeah, it's not not linked to the way like metropolits rural colonies. I think also just you know,

going back to this position that the Ashville is taking. Um, what's really troubling is like the different angles that they're coming at this issue with. Like if you look at you know, if you look at some of the press releases and blog posts on the city's website about the house population, you might get a sense that they're trying to find solutions to address what they seem to acknowledge

as a big problem. But then you know, on the flip side, you see these actions that directly contradict that sentiment, and you know, these part funds. That's that's one of the ways that UM, the City of Aashville kind of indirectly is like no, please, like, let us do our thing. We don't want to hear anything bad about what we're doing.

Like we're trying our hardest. You know, that's rich on its own, but you know, there's so there's a felony littering charges, there's the park bands, and then you know, alongside all of this, Like a few weeks ago, we followed the petition in Bunkham Truntium Superior Court petitioning for the release of police body camera footage of the arrest of two journalists for the release of um the footage that UM that shows the arrests of these journalists covering

covering the eviction of encampments of unhoused folks in Aston Park on Christmas night in twenty twenty one, so around the same time that several of our clients, UM, you know are being hit with these felony charges and then shortly after with park bands and UM, the rest of journalists in a democracy is very or should be very rare and should be troubling. Uh. And these journalists, like just to give you some context, UM, we're not shy about their critique of the city and how it's handling

done housed community. And UM that critique is protected by the First Amendment. The city of Asheville, I think, is just you know, doing its own thing when it's allowing arrests of journalists and and UM, the release of that body camera footage we think is important to m just show what happened, because that's that's that's kind of strange,

like just in the same way that felony littering is strange. Yeah, it does seem like there is there is kind of a Yeah, bipassies and commitment to not wanting journalists to meddle with you, harassing and house people. It seems to be like very much a democrat thing is one of the Republican thing. What did were those journalists charged anything or were they dis arrested? They were also charged with UM,

I want to say second degree trust pass UM. And they've been pretty vocal about UM their arrests and and UM and I think what's been happening. Like their names

are uh, Veronica Quite and Matilda Bliss. UM. I'm not sure, Sarah if you want to add more to that, but UM, I think that's that's like another thread that's important to this story is like all of the different ways that Asheville is operating to silence folks and and and to continue doing what they're doing, which you know, in a like if you look at UM just their own narrative where they talk about, oh, yes, we've you know, evicted these folks as a success story, and you know, like

they'll they'll maybe list like all of the hotels, like free hotel nights that UM, these folks got for one or two nights. But that's obviously not a sustainable solution to UM. To you know the plight of that community. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. I think sometimes things get done because things look good on a press release around them, because it gives anyone like longto Maxis to housing. So I wonder what's the situation. Several of your clients are now facing felony charges? Are serious? Right?

If people maybe on in the US or don't realize, maybe you could explain, like a felony follows you around for the rest of your life, right, Yeah, And and just to be clear where the AFLU is not defending m the on the criminal charges. Um, I think all of our clients have suffer representation for their criminal charges we've taken on the charge of um addressing these parts

bands and how we think they're constitutional. So I'm sure like I can I can speak a little to this, but yeah, I think, um, you know, maybe getting getting one of the criminal defense attorneys to talk if they can about the criminal case might be more helpful for sure. Yeah, maybe can you explain this in general terms what a felony would mean for someone living in North Carolina in

terms of just how would affect their life going forward? Yeah, so there's there's a lot I think, you know, um, right, I'm not a criminal lawyer, but let me just think

of a few things. Uh, you know, having a felony on your criminal record just on its own, nobody nobody wants a criminal record in a country and state that is still looking and you know, allowing background checks for certain jobs and having to explain that in any context like I will just you know, you know, let me just talk from my own experience where I've whenever I

am getting admitted to a bar. I've moved a couple of times in the past few years and had to deal with the unfortunate process of being admitted into that state's bar. There's several intrusive questions and many of those involved like what kind of what your background is, and that means what your criminal background is, Like we have to do like I have gone through the moral character fitness tests for stage now, and um, it's never fun.

It's you know, as someone who is privileged and does not have a criminal history background, it's not fun for me because I like the number of questions they ask you. It's like you really like you know, have to dig back into the past, like your whole life, Like they ask all of the addresses that you've lived at in the past fifteen years and if you get it wrong,

you're lying. So you're okay, I'm going out unattention. But the point is, like any any sort of certification or job or UM new opportunity that is that is something a criminal record is something that's looked at and considered and oftentimes in in a negative way and can result in people not getting jobs. UM. It's I think Sarah and like other Saharan tips maybe can explain more about like what the consequences would be like if you've had

conversation with your attorneys. But I also have some background in immigrants race work, and I know that if any any kind of criminal charges slash convictions that you're facing can be used by UM, can be used by ICE, can be used by USBIS to deny you immigration privileges and and UM and to deport you, to detain you

before they deport you and UM. So you know, beyond that, like having to have this hang over your head where the the process is not short, it's not easy, is mentally taxing and UM it's honestly degrading to go through our criminal legals them and it's decorating for everyone UM and and I mean, that's that's all I can say of like someone, um who does like general civil rights work.

But if you talk to someone who's doing criminal defense work and in this all the time, I'm sure they're they're you know, can paint a better picture of how dark that that processes and how dark it can be to have that on um a record. I think another thing with this is, um about Okay, I'm not a lawyer.

I'm also not like your lawyer, legal advice, eta, et cetera. UM, but I'm pretty sure the way it works in North Carolina is that if you if if you have a felony conviction, you can't vote until you serve out the time Jesus. So yeah, like in country. Yeah, yeah, so that's that's another thing. And um, I'm fairly muted in North Carolina and I moved here in March, so almost

a year but not quite so. But I do know that the hoops that you have to jump through just to vote are a lot more than other states that I've lived in. And you know, of course that is that is also another thing done on purpose to silence certain voices. Yeah, that's dark and certainly like you'll lose your Second Amendment right, So be jobs you can't do.

There will be things that you have access to, like, yeah, your rights will go away potentially forever, which is bad when you're just trying to help some people who need

to help. It's pretty unconstable. Yeah, I think that's the other like really wild thing about all of this is like a lot the folks that are, you know, being banned on, being targeted on this way are providing really important services in a way that the city haven't been able to and hasn't and it's filling in this this really important role of like making sure that folks stay alive and have support and are fed and clothes and um, it's unfortunate to have that taken a way like being

banned from a park means being banned from one of the few spaces that our clients had to do this work and where they were able to distribute food and other aid to folks who don't have a home. And it's just it's wild that that kind of action is being taken when when we know that this is a crisis that the city is just not addressing. Yeah, they're like taking action against people pointing to the crisis rather than the crisis itself, which is yeah, very sad. So

what stage is you are? I know you have to go in a second here, what stage is your lucky sabco you with challenging the park ban? How has that? How's that gone for you? So so far? We've spent a demand letter to the city. The city have responded to that letter with UM right now kind of wishywashie

commitments of like reviewing the policy and UM. While while I think that's a great first step, I do think the city needs to commit to doing more and UM to commit to retracting the bands for all of our clients and potentially others who have been affected by this policy.

They also need to change the policy. Like reviewing the policy, that's a great first step, but you know, I want to see, like what are the things that they are building in to make sure that folks are getting proper notice, that this policy isn't being abused and used by UM actual police department others in an unfair way, and that there's like you know, basic standards of like when the policy can be instituted, Like is there a conviction involved

and what are the convictions? Like doesn't make sense to then someone from a park for I don't know, like I'm trying to think of like something, um felony, literate. Yeah,

it's it is bizarre. And I think, like, you know, historically park bends from what I know, is like they've been used against like people who have committed like sexual offenses and um, and so it's kind of it's kind of out of lust field to and and I'll just say this, that's a city like in their response, they cited to one of the cases that are two cases unsolved sexual offenders who are banned from parks, which you know, yeah,

some peaceful demonstrators who provided aids to folks who are unhoused. So you know, it's it's not really there. The comparison is not there. And I think I hope the city can be honest and um if they are not willing to put the network and to take some of um,

do the actions that I've laid out. I do think that we will continue to challenge these park bands and um, you know, will continue to prepare to file suit if that's necessary, great, And how can people follow along with that or if they want to sort of donate or support it, is there a place they can do that. UM. You know, our website UM is a great space to

our website. I think our socials like Twitter, UM and Instagram, like our comms team is amazing and they update on our work frequently and often and UM and we try to we try to provide updates there. But also UM kind of engage with our work and what it means broadly for UM books across North Carolina and across the US. Yeah. Great, And that's just a CLU North Carolina. There would be the socials. I shouldn't know that. That's fine of UM.

So it's a CLU of North Carolina dot org. And if you go to our website you'll find our socials that it's probably a very cho Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for giving us some of your time. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, that's great, Thank you. Welcome back, Dick had happened here? Once again the folks from It's Going Down are taking over the show as today we do a deep dive into how autonomous organizers are pushing back against a wave of far right attacks

on reproductive freedom and autonomy across the United States. A note to our listeners, this episode will include discussion on both sexual and far right violence. I'm your host, Mike Andrews.

Let's get into it. In May of twenty twenty two, Politico first reported on the historic league from the Supreme Court about the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the landmark nineteen seventy three decision, which ruled under the Fourteenth Amendment, that a pregnant person has the right to privacy, including

the liberty to abort their fetus. In June of twenty twenty two, the Dab's Decisions struck down Row, ruling that the Constitution does not guarantee a person the right to an abortion, triggering a wave of state governments rolling back abortion rights in access for many. However, the fall of Row only further cemented a lack of access to reproductive

healthcare has already been the norm for millions. As The Hill wrote, quote as of twenty twenty, six states had only one abortion clinic each, and eighty nine percent of America's counties had no abortion clinic at all, the cumulative effect of decades of restrictions authored by anti abortion lawmakers. This is not to say that things haven't gotten worse.

They have in the months following the Dabbs decision. In states like Ohio, where access has been attacked, a rape survivor was forced to travel out of state to find an abortion, while local politicians, including the state's Republican Attorney general, claimed on Fox News that the story was totally fabricated. In other instances, people in Ohio have been denied care even though they face potentially life threatening complications. In Texas, one woman nearly died due to sepsis because she was

initially barred access to an abortion by doctors. And these are only some of the stories that have made headlines. The deeper impact on this countrywide attack and reproductive health has hit low income and communities of color the hardest. A recent study from the University of San Francisco found that quote a third of American women of reproductive age now face excessive travel times to obtain an abortion, while twice as many are being forced to travel more than

an hour to reach an abortion provider. In short, attacks on abortion, coupled with the already exploding wealth gap, lack of access to healthcare, the rising cost of living, and the continuing COVID nineteen pandemic, will only expand existing in equalities, especially for people of color, the disabled, and queer and trans folks in particular. On the legal front, some states have pushed to expand abortion access, and many are challenging

attacks in the courtroom. Minnesota, for instance, most recently became the first state to enshrine abortion is a right. Meanwhile, many continue to donate to abortion funds, and nonprofits like Planned Parenthood are even launching mobile clinics to provide care and areas hit the hardest due to recent bands. But as our first two guests, Beck's part of a clinic

defense group in New York City. In ashe, an abortion doula in North Carolina, reported, many autonomous organizers aren't putting their faith in the courts, the cops, or the state. You know, living in New York City, abortion is legal, and it is legal before a row, and it's been legal after row. But that doesn't really necessarily mean anything

kind of is what we've seen. So one of the things that we've seen is we've seen on anti abortion protesters and activists coming up from red states to target blue states now, and so we've definitely seen their presence increasing outside of the clinic that we defend, and SOHO in Manhattan and so that's I would say is one of the biggest things that we've seen is that they really are targeting Blue states, are targeting New York City. There I'm actively trying to recruit people to come to

New York City. Is I think the biggest thing that we've seen, and that also in New York City we've been struggling a lot with a really escalatory police presence at our clinics. So that's the other thing that we're definitely really really struggling with is the response of the state after doubs. So the first thing that I want folks to know is that people abortion has people who

might have abortions. Where I am in time and space, they have always already been navigating some of these post roar realities that a lot of folks are just getting hip to, like after that Fateful Friday in June last year. And so I want to name here that we've always had a seventy two hour waiting period in North Carolina, which is one of the longest waiting periods in the country.

And there's a slew of other things that we find both hostile and restrictive, and I'm using those words to describe a situation, an ongoing situation, because these are the words that are being used to describe North Carolina now as we're seeing an influx of folks coming to North Carolina. So I'm saying that for the folks who live here always already like they've been dealing with a restrictive, hostile climate.

Becks just shared a little bit about like the presence of anti abortion protesters, so we've always been dealing with that. In twenty eighteen, the abortion clinic that I had two abortions at in my life, they saw the most anti abortion protesters in the Southeast, and we continue to see this.

We also continue to see as we see these anti abortion protesters right a police presence, and we know or I'm concerned about what that means for black folks having abortions, for people who are undocumented, and for people who otherwise like don't want the police all up in their business.

In addition to what's changed, since jobs are not change, right, but change, we have semen influx of folks coming to North Carolina from states where abortion is illegal or there are bands kind of early ingestation, and we're seeing those folks come to the clinics and access the services and the support networks that we have here in North Carolina.

I think that one thing with the group that I work with called ad VIC for Abortion Rights, one thing that we've been working really hard on is not only talking about abortion, not only talking about you know, going beyond just legalizing it, but also really focusing on like our communities and building mutual aid networks, building repro justice networks, and also just working overall on like community defense. So we work with a lot of mutual aid organizations all

over the city of New York. And that's one thing that we're doing, like Ash was saying, is we're focusing on you know, how do these people who are outside of our clinics are not only anti abortion, but they're also anti LGBTQ. They are fascist, That is something that we should be saying. They are also pro police. None. None of these things happen inside of a vacuum. They're

all interconnected. And I think that that's one thing that we really really have to do is talk about how the issue of abortion bridge is out to so many other things, and we can't only fight one issue. We have to fight all of them. But we also have to fight the root of where these things are coming from, and they're coming from this mass conservative movement that's been being built since the nineteen seventies, you know, groups like

Focus on the Family, like the Federalist Society. These groups have so much influence in our society, and we need to be going after all of it. We can't only be going after you know, one tiny, you know, sector of the massive problem, because like Ash said, it is all interconnected. Here, I'm thinking about like some political education that needs to happen, like and that is the framework and the theories of reproductive Justice. I know that they

recognize so many it recognizes so many things. But one of the things that grounds me that it recognizes that r J recognizes is that dismantling white supremacy is key to achieving reproductive justice. It also says, it posits that we live interconnected lives and not single issue lives. And it also for me yields that, like, we can't rely

on the state to provide what we need. I'm seeing abortion doulas, clinic escorts, abortion funds, and other organizers and organizations really come together to support people having abortions and resist criminalization and state violence right now, and we need to see more of that. You know, you talk about pro choice, I think it's so whack, like the logics of pro choice. We need to go further beyond the logics of pro choice and understand that RJ says that

there is no choice without access. And furthermore, RJ posits that the key to controlling entire communities is to controlling bodies. So if they're coming for the trans people on their HRT and their access to gender affirming and medical care, then they're gonna come for everyone else. Then they're gonna come for the abortion hovers. They've been coming for the poor people. I think that, like again, when we go back to that reproductive justice framework, we can begin to

like make these connections. And I'm also saying this as an organizer, like reproductive justice is my lane, but so as like environmental justice and SOS racial justice, and I'm on the front lines of different movements, and I go back to this framework because it acknowledges that, like black people need an end to anti black racism, and we need an end to the police and clean fucking water.

Right now, I don't know of a framework that says that, like we ought to demand all of those things right fucking now, and that we actually can't live self determined lives without all of that shit. And so I'm ready to talk about r J like I'm ready to do

that political education. I think it's ongoing work and right like, you don't have to be an abortion dou lah or a frontline organizer to help someone get to their appointment, to fund an abortion, to affirm someone's decision and support their decision to have an abortion, and so we really need that, like, we need that vibe right now. We need people to show up that way. I think that my biggest frustrate with Democrats is they've been telling us for years, like, oh, you know, vote for us, vote

for us. They've been fundraising off of the issue of abortion for decades now. They have done absolutely nothing, And I think that what they've really done is they've really made us, made us, as in the general like American populace feel as though voting is the only way that we can change things, and that voting is the only way that we can like show our impact and like help our communities, when in reality, it isn't. It's going out onto the streets. It's also you know, doing abortion

do the work. It's also you know, going out defunding clinics. It's doing all of this work. And we don't need the Democrats to do that. And what we need to be doing is we need to be talking about the state and how we can go beyond the state. I also want to say here, like fuck Row. Like Row is the kind of legal infrastructure that made abortion possible. But it also made it possible for like both the Democrats, the Republicans, the Christian Evangelicals, anyone who was checking for it,

to take abortion away. So like fuck Row. It also gave us the trimester framework, which is like really black, and it also kind of made it more possible for the states and the federal government to put in bands and restrictions on abortion. That's something that we need to get clear about as well as we fight to decriminalize and not legislate further abortion. Stay with us, it could happen here. We'll return after these words from our sponsors.

On July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, Eric Rudoff set off a nail bomb during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The explosion killed one person immediately, while over one hundred more were horrifically injured in the communicate. Claiming responsibility for the bombing, Rudolf denounced the Olympics, abortion, and LGBTQ rights with talking points that seemed ripped right out of Tucker Carlson's nightly news headlines. He wrote, the world converged upon

Atlanta to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. The purpose of my attack the Washington government sanctioning of abortion on demand. Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American society is the considered effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality, whether it's gay marriage, homosexual adoption, hate crime laws including gays, or the attempt to introduce a homosexual normalizing curriculum into our schools. All of these efforts should be ruthlessly opposed.

The existence of our culture depends on it. Rudolph would go on to carry out more deadly attacks against abortion clinics in a queer nightclub, releasing communications under the banner of the Army of God, a group which endorsed leaderless resistance and was linked to the white supremaci Christian identity movement,

and the murder of multiple abortion providers. The Army of God was just one formation that grew out of Christian identity, a mix of white supremacy in Christianity, the preach that Jews were Satanic and people of color were subhuman and

need to be destroyed in a racial holy war. Christian and inde adherents set up paramilitary compounds, Bible camps, radio stations, and churches from the Aryan Nations to the Covenant of the Sword in the Arm of the Lord, and they helped usher in a wave of homegrown terrorist groups such as The Order and individuals like Timothy Vey carried out

the Oklahoma City bombing. Meanwhile, above ground groups like Operation Rescue cheered on the violence against abortion providers while organizing mass protests at clinics with the aim of shutting them down.

In twenty fifteen, when a gunman killed three people in a mass shooting at a clinic in Colorado Springs, the far right anti abortion movement had carried out eight murders, seventeen attempted murders, forty two bombings in one hundred and eighty six arsons, all targeted against abortion clinics and providers. Wanted to know more about the history of far attacks on abortion access if they were indeed rising in the current post stops period, We sat down with Bullets of

Fowler of the National Abortion Federation. Unfortunately, since abortion was legalized with the ROVERSUS Weight decision, there has been a really coordinated campaign of harassment and violence to target abortion providers and try to stop access to legal abortion. And we've been tracking this since the late seventies. There have been a number of escalating events, everything from clinic protests and clinic blockades all the way up to arsons and

murders of providers just because they do this work. So when we talk about this, it's very real. It's a very real threat, and it is really terrorism that's happening by a coordinated group of people and individuals who really are aimed at stopping any access to legal abortion care. So we definitely and have seen for a long time that there is an overlap between the people that target abortion providers and the people that are involved in other

types of violent streamist movements, including white nationalists. We've known that for a long time. It's existed many years. In fact, in the eighties, the KKK began creating one imposters listing the personal information of abortion providers, and the first provider who was murdered, doctor David Gunn, who was murdered in nineteen ninety three, was murdered by someone who was a white supremacist who had been mentored by someone who was

a former KKK member. And so we've seen the overlap of these groups, and in the last couple of years, we've seen that overlap be more coordinated and more public. So on January sixth, at the insurrection, a lot of our members were watching on TV and recognized people because they were the same people that protest at their clinics.

In fact, providers that even noted that day of pulling in the parking lot and not seeing their usual protesters and wondering what was going on because they saw less people outside of clinics, And we later found out it's because many of them were at the capitol. And you know, a number of people who are active in the anti abortion movement have boasted about being at the insurrection, posted video and pictures of themselves at the insurrection, and so it's it's very clear to us and we very much

see that overlap. We also see more more of these right wing groups actually showing up and participating at anti abortion events, so attending some of the marches around the country in a more visible way than we've seen in the past. Sometimes these right wing groups will do quote unquote security for the anti abortion movement, So when they have people who are speaking or they're holding large events to target providers, they'll get security assistance from white nationalist groups.

And so, you know, it's particularly disturbing to see. It doesn't surprise us because we've been We've known that there's an overlap in these groups for a really long time. But as we've seen in recent years, as people seem to be more okay being more visible about their membership in these groups or more vocal about their hate, we're seeing it more publicly. The anti abortion movement is not

doing anything to distance themselves from these groups. So since the leak happened last May, we immediately saw an increase in harassment and online posts that were threatening toward abortion providers. Even though we got a preview of the decision and we knew what was coming and that it would lead

to clinics closing, that wasn't enough for some people. We saw calls for people to go and burn clinics or go and take matters into their own hands and not wait for the decision to go and try and stop abortions from being provided that moment, and so we track

those types of online posts. We saw a real spike in May and June around the decision, and we also started immediately hearing from our member clinics that they were seeing increase in protesters and increase in threats, and it increase in the intensity and hostility of those activities, so more really aggressive protesters that were touching patients and staff, yelling at patients and staff, photographing patients and staff, and you know, since the decision, we have seen a number

of clinics close in places that are considered more hostile to abortion rights. But we know from our past experience that when a clinic closes, the protesters don't just give up and go home. In many cases, anti abortion individuals will travel the same paths the patients are traveling, and they will go to other states where abortion remains successible and target the clinics there. So we are seeing an increase in activity in the places where abortion is remaining

legal and where patients are going to get care. And we're still you know, we're just now collecting the numbers for twenty twenty two, so we don't we don't have those for a little bit, but we do know anecdotally and what we're hearing from members and what we're seeing on the ground is that there is an increase in that activity. There have been a few arsons this year who are also seeing clinic invasions continue, and these are

instances where people might pose as patients. In some cases, they go to a lot of work to try and infiltrate the clinic and find out about their practices for making appointments, and then they will pose as patients, make fake appointments and try to get into the clinic forcibly if they if they have to, and then once they're inside, they're harassing patients, they refuse to leave. In some cases

they hand out flowers or seeing or yell. In California, they walked through the halls screaming the name of the doctor, ordering the doctor to come out and face them, and it was very traumatic for staff. They didn't know if this person was armed or what they were doing. And you know, they had patients in procedure rooms with them or in counseling rooms, and they were locking the door and shelf ring in place and was very frightening, and we continue to see these types of invasions happen across

the country. Ironically, however, laws passed in the nineteen nineties designed to protect people seeking abortions and reproductive healthcare have now been weaponized against those who have been taking action in the wake of the Daub's decision, most notably under the banner of Jane's Revenge, a moniker used by anonymous activists taking action, usually in the former broken windows and

graffiti against anti choice, crisis pregnancy centers and beyond. As Natasha Leonard wrote in the Intercept, Congress passed the Face Act in nineteen eighty four, allowing the assassinations and mass clinic blockades, making the physical obstruction of clinics a federal offense, as well as threats of force and violence against clinic workers and clinic property. In its thirty years on the

books has been used sparingly. Now this law has been used to prosecute to reproductive rights activists who allegedly spray painted the outside walls of misleading and dangerous crisis pregnancy centers known as CPCs and now face up to twelve

years in prison for the graffiti. This use of the Face Act against those fighting to protect reproductive freedom and autonomy by weaponizing laws supposedly aimed at those threatening it mirrors the numerous domestic terrorism charges lodged against forest defenders in Atlanta, made possible by a bill in twenty seventeen following the massacre of nine black parishioners by the white supremist Dylan Roof. Stay with us, it could happen here,

will return after these words from our sponsors. As the culture war is deepened on the right and even mainstream GEOP leaders have embraced white nationalists talking points, many openly neo nazi and white supremist groups have come to see the anti choice movement as a lucrative recruiting ground and a point of engagement with the wider right wing base. Again we hear from clinic defender Becks in New York,

an abortion doula ash in North Carolina. In our case in New York City, the group that we defend, the Clinic Front, is its Catholic group that gets an armed escort from the NYPD. So that's one thing that really really scares me. You know, when we talk about a far right is that the NYPD has been aiding these far right groups and getting them escorts for a very

very long time. And so I think that kind of like goes to a lot of the fears that a lot of us have when it comes to this kind of collaboration and the changing face of anti abortion protesters.

We already know down here that cops and clay go hand in hand, and unfortunately, like newly white radicalized I don't know if you can call them that, but like politicized white women who want to defend clinics, they saw they they realize these realities, like the cops are not here to defend you or people who want to have abortions, and we actually don't need the cops to have abortions and to make reproductive justice a real possibility in all of our lives. I'm thinking here also about like the

need to decriminalize abortion and not legalize abortion again. As an abolitionist, as an abortion do and as someone who's had abortions, I'm making these connections and as a trans person right, I'm making these connections that like the folks who are standing outside of abortion clinics, the anti choice the anti abortion folks. These are the same people who

are pro police people. These are the same people who are racist in our communities, who are classist, who are anti black, who are fascists, and furthermore, right like these people who stand outside of abortion clinics, they are the same people perpetuating these rhetorics that like gay people are groomers, but also that like critical race theory, for examples, shouldn't

be taught in school. I am making these connections and I'm also going back to that reproductive justice framework that reminds me that, like, what do we have to do now is that we have to fight together, and one of the ways we can do that is by making these connections. Right, like these people are Christian evangelicals, they are fascists. Explicitly, we need to say that, and it behooves all of us to really fight together along those lines.

In the year since the attempted pro Trump coup on January six, neo Nazis, white supremacists, and Proud Boys have ramped up their presence at anti choice events. The neo Nazi group Patriot Front has shut up to march alongside various anti abortion groups, often to be bent with handshakes from anti abortion activists and police escorts to protect them from anti fascists. Several weeks ago, openly fascist groups took part in the yearly Walk for Life rally in San Francisco, California.

US Thousands took to the city streets after being bust in from across the state. Marching alongside them were proud boys decked out in your uniforms and mass neo Nazis holding openly racist banners. Wanting to know more about this continued crossover, we spoke with anti fascist journalists Paschal Singh,

based in southern California. In the wake of the reversal of Rovy Way, there was big spike in demonstrations from the right wing where they were targeting clinics, they were targeting any kind of school boards with any kind of reproductive health anything. They were doing it for several months in places like California where abortion is still provided and

still accessible. That makes a lot of the anti abortion movement still feel like they're the victim of something, even though they just had this massive political victory, and at least in southern California, I've noticed that they've continued to rally they've had some pretty large rallies, especially for the

pro life thing that happened recently. We're cities around the country, including San Francisco, had some pretty alarmingly sized anti abortion rallies, and some of them, like in San Francisco, you had some of the more extremest elements, white supremacist elements showing up quite explicitly, quite proudly, and here in Southern California,

I've seen that starting to pick up again. It's almost building off of the momentum from all these rallies, targeting drags shows, which have been excellent networking opportunities for different right wing groups to work with more far right extremists

and even about all out white supremacists. Once they get into a groove together, even if these groups don't always get along, they have a revolving door of enemies, and if it's time to target somebody because they think there's an advantage to it in the moment, then they're going to do it. And right now it does seem like reproductive rights is back in the crosshairs alongside LGBTQ rights.

Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a rally in southern California outside of a outside of a Walgreens shareholders meeting where a lot of right wing activists were marching through the hotel chanting that Walgreens is killing people because they because you can get an abortion fill through them. I think this has created a very tenuous situation where

there's always someone to go after. If it's not planned parenthood this week, next week, go after your local pharmacy, go after your local click, go after your local doctor. The anti abortion movement is very malleable, it's very fluid, and right now they're taken whoever they can get, and that includes a lot of openly radical militant groups who they turn to as groups that can do quote unquote security work, you know, because they're afraid of the left

coming and attacking them. The anti abortion movement isn't sewing down, as our guests from across the country of discuss, the more mainstream organizations with deep pockets also aren't attempting to distance themselves from the street level fascist groups flocking to right wing demonstrations, especially at a time when far right

violence is escalating across the country. And our last segment, IGD correspondent Marcella speaks on recent anti choice demonstrations which brought together both the mainstream and the fringe, organized in part by Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising, which weaponizes feminist and progressive language against drug store giants CBS and Walgreens an

effort to stop them from selling abortion medication. Anti abortion people protest it outside like CBS and Walgreens it's past Saturday, like in multiple places, to prevent pharmacies from selling abortion pills. I'm honestly, like really angry at this, not only because these people are trying to make sure they completely take away our rights to bodily autonomy, but because you're also

making me have to defend CVS and Walgreens. I've also thought about protesting outside CVS and Walgreens, but not because I'm obsessed with other people's to productive organs. I'm tired of them putting everything I need behind a glass anyway, Like these abortion protests outside CBS and Walgreens were organized by the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising. Yes, I will say that again, the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising PAAU, which claims

to want to dismantle the abortion industrial complex. Honestly, it sounds like the pa You think that you can just add industrial complex to something to make it sound bad, or they're just trying to sound cool to make people forget that they are fascists. Like, one interesting thing about PAU is they want to be so cool that their lead organizer, Lauren Handy, calls herself a femt. I honestly can't believe that I have to say this, but being

anti abortion immediately disqualifies you from being a feminist. Fun fact about Laura in Handy is that she randomly, she didn't randomly. She was caught with five fetuses in her apartment and was indicted from blocking a clinic in Washington, DC in twenty and twenty. So she's out here blocking clinics collecting fetuses, just like doing the worst. This is like just the tip of the berg about how like

these people are trying to act like their freedom fighters. Well, the PAU spokesperson literally said, and I quote, their vision to turn pharmacies into abortion businesses, which will exploit and kill disproportionately low income people and people of color for profit will be met with non violent resistance at every turn.

That's hilarious. These people are literally trying to make fascism sound like freedom fighting like, if PAU actually cared about low income people and people of color, they would be giving away abortion pills that like every corner, not trying to stop people from buying them. And also they'd be boycotting cb US on Walgreens for totally different reasons. They wouldn't be boycotting Walgreens and CBS, we're trying to sell

people abortion fills. What they'll be doing is that there would be boycotting Walgreens and CBS for putting toothpaste behind a locked glass, which makes it much harder for poor people to get a five finger discount on things that they need. That is going to do it for us today. Thanks for tuning in once again. This has been It's going Down occupying the offices of it could Happen here. Be sure to follow us online It's Going Down dot org,

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