It Could Happen Here Weekly 74

hold off on president crime at all. That's true. That's true. James said the word crimes, and James is the one that brought up doing crimes. I would never talk about doing crimes. Oh, welcome to don't it happened here? Yeah, if we never talk about anything illegal. Um with us today is myself, Garrison, James Stout, and Mia Wong. It's right, we are talking about crimes today. Actually, but we're not

doing any crimes, Crisley, because we never would. Yeah, like for for for example, well, actually I don't I don't know if it's technically illegal to to talk about jury nullification on air. I don't I know. I don't think they can stop you from saying the words. I think they can. I think I think you You don't have the rights to do it, but you have the ability. I think is a way a lawyer explained it to me. But they also said I'm not your lawyer before that.

So take that with a great assault. Yeah. Yeah, you probably say you shouldn't be describing how to do jury notification or googling it. If that's in your future, stay tuned for our upcoming episode, how to yeah your Jury. Yeah, how to Nullify your jury. That will be our final episode. Okay, so now we're not talking about jury today. We are talking about crime. The people doing the crime in this episode, shockingly are the cops. So I want to start on

October twenty eight, twenty sixteen. Some of you can probably cast your mind back then, the last week of the pre Trump era. Yeah yeah, So inside the Captain's office at the sheriff station of Rancho, San Diego, one of the most expensive ZIP codes in the country, Captain Marco Garmo was making a deal. Garmo, along with Giovanni Tilotta, who's a licensed San Diego gun dealer, sold a glockhandgun an a R fifteen Star rifle and a Smith and

Western handgun to local defense attorney. Because Baje inside Garmo's office, Garmo coordinated backdated paperwork to avoid the ten day waiting period required by California law for handgun purchases and supplied Bajaj with misappropriated San Diego Sheriff's Department issued ammunition. Oh fun, yeah, yeah, so's he's really thriving in his side hustle here, Marco Garmo. I've used the word misappropriated because that's what the DOJ used.

I'm guessing the more vernacular term would be stolen. Here. I think I think he's so what do you say issued? Is this MO that like like was supposed to be given to a coup or is the stuff they had an impound? Uh No, I think it's supposed to be given to a cop. I think hell yeah, I think he's good. I think he's gone into the armory and just grabbed a few box set of AMMO and stole them. Cops have just turned into the Afghan Army. It's amazing. Yeah yeah, yeah, the Ana they've got the what's that

guy who had the like help? He had their like night vision on backwards or something that was that was a Taliban guy. Yeah, interestingly, what they have in the compound me, it's another story that maybe we should do

another day. I also prate that, like the weapons that are impounded, Jesus Christ, they have some shit like they have like a full auto shotgun, like a bunch of NFA items and they keep them all for like lab testing in theory, like so they can so they can be like, oh, this person was shot, what does that wound look like? Well, let's get our armory out from the fucking end shoots and ballistics gel and see if

that helps us. And it's like that scene from two thousand and eight The Dark Night where Christian Bale is Batman fires a ridiculously loud gun in a sealed bugger, absolutely destroying both his and Alfred's hearing for the entire rest of the movie. That's why they make so many bad choices. Fascinating. Yeah, I didn't know that was a character called Alfred and Batman. Yeah, they really welshed him on the names, because like, Batman is a cool name,

the joker cool name. Do you don't know who Alfred? No, the one British character in Badman. He is your culture. When people think of British people, they think of Alfred J. Pennyworths, not a costume Garrison. Well, so I have a bad bad news yea. They disgusted that this is the point of reference, not one of our many wonderful modern British role models. Alfred's great. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, yeah, no, okay.

He is a working class zero, he was a he was a wait our butlers are working class right, oh god, discourse off very quickly. I would say petty bourgeoi. But yeah, it's kind of complicated because you're like working directly for a billionaire and you're living in the billionaire's house and you're living a very upper class life, but you still are working. It's kind of what is your relationship to the meta production? Though? Oh that this? Wow? Well, but

it's all service, Like I don't know. I feel like we have to do a divide here between because I think I think the gender division of labor between made and butler is very important. I love Howard debating how if Alfred is based. Yeah, yeah, so you can find Garrison on Twitter. I right, Okay, so we made to paragraph too everywhere. In February twenty nineteen, federal agents executed a search horrn at the Rancho San Diego chaff station.

Later that year, they arrested Captain Marco Garmo. In twenty twenty one, Garmo pleaded guilty to trafficking over one hundred guns which were deemed unsafe for civilians. His sentence, I shouldn't say civilians because cops are also civilians, right, but non cops. His sentencing, the judge said Garmo was almost becoming a mob boss of sorts. What you want to strive for as a cherish captain. Garmo admitted to engaging in straw purchases, which is buying guns with the intent

of transferring them to someone else. He also acknowledged tipping off an illegal marijuana dispensary that was about to be searched in order based Nothing this guy did is inherently wrong. It's the fact that he only did it to certain people, and so that was his cousin who earned a marijuana's fensury. He was also engaged in illegal consulting with other dispensaries, which I don't bulliant. Yeah, I'm getting his consulting emerged to being like, Hey, the cops are on their way tomorrow,

maybe stop being a dispensary by the time they arrive. Yeah, that seems like a that that that that that that that seems like a very classic the cop to take a cut kind of Yeah, I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of the things in this DJ thing are like, really fantastically phrased. So Garmo and his Code A friend and wail Will Anton also helped paying clients skip the waiting list for a difficult to tain concealed carry permit.

As part of this scheme, Anton took a legal cash payment to accounty clerk who ensured favorable treatment for his clients. Garmo might have flown a little too close to the sun with this one, but it's not actually that unusual for gun laws to have carve outs for rich people, and often those carve outs don't involve cops stealing AMMO. But it's pretty easy if you're wealthy enough to work your way around firearms legislation, which is kind of what

I want to get into today. So while Garmo did go to jail for gun trafficking and multiple other crime, he was doing the sale of so called off rous to firearms by law infolvement officers. In California, it's relatively common and there's not much that's been done to prevent it since Gamo was arrested. So to understand this, I think you have to understand California is incredibly complicated firearms laws,

which probably requires like an undergraduate degree. But to give a brief summary, California introduced its gun roster in two thousand and one, and like many of our laws, it has its roots in entrenching systemic inequalities. In this case, legislators were trying to ban something called a Saturday Night Special and people know what people know what that is. No,

it's it's a small, concealable, affordable hanggun. It's like there were there were this, there was this, these guns that came out in like the eighties and nineties that were like super small, very cheap, very simple, very concealable and ship. Well that's the thing, right, So this is really fascinating.

So in practice, right, these were at least culturally associated with like black communities, right that that's you see them in sometimes like certainly like there was a stigmatic reference to like a disease guns that is causing violence, and we're not going to fucking look at inequality at all, right, We're just going to ban the guns. Are they shit? As an interesting question, because California introduces legislation which said that handguns had to be dropped safe, so that means

you can drop them and they can't go off. That is generally a desirable feature. And a handgun able to fire six hundred rounds without more than six malfunctions and have a manual safety device. And later on they added another thing that would make the gun only fire when it had a magazine inserted. And they put all these rules in place, and has said manufacturers had to submit

guns for testing. All the guns they were going after pass the testing, So I guess they're not as shit as one the one had suspected, which is kind of like that that is the intent and they are laboring under that misapprehension. But it seems like these guns, which

are very cheap, actually pass a testing just fine. So if you look at the California roster, so once those guns have passed that testing, right, they go on a roster, and that roster like it's done by skew so like by the individual code that's given to the gun, and you could look up the California roster. It it's online still and like there are hundreds of cheap small hand guns that are on it. So they've failed in that regard.

But they created this kind of bizarre system where most manufacturers had to make a California compliant model if they wanted to sell in California, right, because it had to have a magazine disconnect, which means that the gun won't fire without the magazine in, which is not a usual thing for semi automatic handguns to have. Like if you are outside of California and you have like a normal like a glock for instance, it doesn't have that, but

you would need one that did in California. So that means that these guns are going to have a much much smaller economy of scale, right, They're going to be more expensive. Manufacturers also have to pay for the testing and submit three models, So what de facto means is that fewer guns are available in California. It doesn't really become a big issue until twenty thirteen when the DOJ

in California add a micro stamping requirement. But they added it earlier actually, but in twenty thirteen they certified it was possible for missing. But so is the roster the list of guns are allowed to buy, yes, okay, And if it doesn't appear on the roster, we're going to get into that. You can actually buy it, but you can't buy it new from a store, so you can buy it used. And there are two ways that these used handguns can enter the state, right. One of them

is if you move to the state. So let's say Garrison moves to LA right, and they bring with horrifying yeah, just enjoy just just like a Vulcan mini gun. Yeah yeah. They bring with them an M one Abrams tank. It's a balloon shooting gun. Yeah. Every one of the West Coast has to have one now, and so it's actually different from rifles, SEDDI. But they bring with them pistols, and those pistols are not on the California roster. They can keep them and they can sell them right to

a California resident. The other way that these guns can enter and be sold is cops are exempt from the roster, right, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And when I say cops, I am speaking in the broadest possible terms because a variety of peace officers are exempt, to include employees of the California State Horse Racing Board. Sometimes park rangers can

do this, right. I think it depends what you are within the park ranger, within the park, and it seems to be there is actually a list, right that's in the legislation, but it seems to be largely like at the discretion of the gun shop. Like in practice they

could get in trouble. But like I've heard of like firefighters and EMTs being able to purchase off roster guns, which is fucking not in the legislation, Like it is also kind of funny, but like U, in theory, it would depend on what unit you're in, or they could contact your like park ranger office and be like, hey, this this girl is trying to buy a gun, like she used us at work, because the idea is that they would they would have the most up to date

weapons to carry at work, right, or that they could buy themselves even though they get issued guns. So like if you need a gun as a cop, you get issued a gun, right. So what it means in practice is that there's a thriving market and offer us to firearms but there's also massive price premium. Right, they often sell off for two or three times there MSRP, even

though they're used. And I did a little digging into this, and I looked at one particular item, which was a P three sixty five, a sig P three sixty five, which is a fairly like a popular pistol. Right. But after twenty thirteen, California doesn't didn't allow any new guns to be added to the roster unless they micro stamp

their bullets. Micro Stamping is a little feature where the firing pin of the gun stamps the casing, not the bullet, with a little, kind little tiny stamp which is unique to the gun, right, or it stamps it with the serial number of the gun. So in theory, this would allow you to pick up the casings at a murder scene and be like, huh, well they were fired from this gun and this gun is read to this person. Therefore we got someone to talk to you, right, pick

up the casings. Yeah right, yeah, absolutely, no ways around this. Well, I mean emmittively immediately that the one thing I've learned over the years is that people are really lazy when they're doing crimes, and so true, So true to be slightly less lazy and get caughts and you're really that is that is Yeah, that is my biggest my biggest advice to the illegalists literally think five minutes before ye yeah yeah yeah. Also, don't tweet your crimes. Yeah, every

green statements. Yeah yeah, it's one of our mottoes here. You could also just use a revolver, I guess and it would inject the casings. But um, the because there are no guns in twenty thirteen, right, the DOJ says you are not allowed to add a gun to the roster unless it micro stamps, and we we've de signed that micro stamping as possible. No firearms manufacturer will make a gun that micro stamps because other states will require all guns to micro stamp once set technology is available.

So they just don't built it, so they just don't do it. Yeah, it is, And it's very funny. It's like the car companies just being like, fucking, you know what if we put airbags in that bad boy, They're going to make us put airbags in all the cars. You know. This is the thing that I've run into

a lot. I think it's really interesting, which is like, okay, the specific combination of regulatory state and corporations being required to do a thing gives you a bunch of really really weird like outcomes that are like not what you would expect when you're writing the legislation, which makes them ineffective, Like I mean, I like the most famous one is like the Clean Air Act actually worse into air quality for a huge amount of time because they put in

this exception for like existing coal facilities under the assumption that people would just like you know, build new coal facilities and thus be like and thus like have better to like create that cleaner technology, and no one, no one ever did. They just left these old coal facilities running or the other one, Like everyone always talks about those like those fucking like why why the giant SUVs

keep getting bigger? And the reason for that is actually, I mean, it kind of is sort of fascist psychosis, but like the actual reason for that is Obama era pollution controls on cars, right, had to have these fuel emission standards. But the larger your car is, like the worst fuel emission standards are, so they keep so okay in order to get around the fuel emission things, they

keep making cars make it bigger amazing. Yeah, and this ship just like I don't know this is this is I think a pretty good argument against like against a sort of regulatory state being able to contain like capitalism doing horriborifying shit. Is like every single time someone tries to make it air pollution thing, it just makes it worse. Yeah, they just create perverse incentives to do something which is like just stupid and polluting as opposed to Yeah, or

they just don't comply. It was with the microsynything. You're just like no, like, yeah, simply romote. The specific interaction of like people who elevate themselves who make it to the California legislature on one hand, and gun companies on the other hand, just leads to this complete intransigence where like anytime a Laura is written, it is like someone has found an end run or a loophole before it

comes into practice. Do you know what won't illegally smuggle illegally smuggle guns into California install them for two to three times a retail price? Mare? Is it? All the firms that are doing child trafficking? And that's right, the Washington State Highway Patrol we're back and we're talking about cops selling guns for a lot of money in southern California. So big Marco Garma wasn't the only cop who shares a life of crime. As it turns out, yeah, yeah,

shockingly enough, this practice is pretty common. So a Guardina police officer in twenty twenty one was also convicted of making forty one illegal offer us to sales in a year, and at least six LA officers have been found to be engaged in legal firearms transfers, according to twenty twenty one LA Times investigation, So that that's eight in a

single year if you're keeping track. And it's pretty common to see people like posting about this, like like if you go on to like the California Guns forum, where people will be like where they sell guns right where they don't. You don't actually sell the guns on the internet, so that's illegal. But people will post it and then say meet me at this gun dealer and we'll do

the background check. And you'll see people being like, oh, like m l O, I have a friend to LEO and like happen to be selling this gun new in package. I bought it to carry it on patrol, but I decided I didn't like it, you know, like that's the theoretical connad here, right, Oh god, Okay. The thing this reminds me of specifically is a very very weird use case of like people will magice the gathering tournaments where you're not legally allowed to both draw and split the

prize money. So you have to say this incredibly complicated series of sentences where you're like, I want to draw, and then new conversation, can we split the prize money? It's like I have to I have to like say this exact series of words in order to make it's clear that I'm not doing exactly what I'm doing and

breaking the law. Yeah, this is how the law works, right, Like it always ends up being some kind of like totalistic magic incantation that you can say, and then the thing that they trying to fucking stop obviously no longer applies to union can do what you want. Like it's incredibly assinine. So in mid twenty twenty one, I tried to I wanted to get a sense, right and when I was doing this of how many of these offer uster guns there are in California, to get a sense

of like exactly how much of a fass. The attempt to create this roster has been so I've been going after this for a while. But in the middle of twenty twenty one, there was an Assembly bill pass called Assembly Bill two six nine nine, if you're interested, and the bill required the Department of Justice to send a letter to owners off off roster weapons, which California officially calls unsafe handguns, to remind the people who own the

mother laws surrounding them and to whom they could transfer them. Right. I first became aware of this letter because someone dectarted to post it online and that kind of gave me an opening where because I can't pira the names of the people who owned the guns right or even where they live, because obviously protect information and it probably should be and I don't think that inforation is even actually stored by the state. But I can pira the letters

say sent out. So pira is a public records at request, right, it's what people might know as of foyer. And so I did that, and it took me more than a year and it cost me more than a hundred bucks, But eventually I managed to get the DOJ to to send me the information which showed that at least at the time I got it, which is the middle of twenty twenty one, four thousand and five hundred and ten firearms have been obtained by the subsection of the law

that allows exemptions for police officers. There are some other exemptions for like antique collectible firearms as well, so it's

not clear that all of those were cops. They also noted that it had sent two hundred and thirteen thousand, eight hundred and four notices to the owners of off roster weapons, which, yeah, it suggests that if we think of that, the roster became a serious issue in twenty thirteen, right, so that suggested about ten thousand, ten thousand weapons a year since the roster began in two thousand and one have entered the state that are off ruster, which kind of kind of makes the point that it's it's a

rather fasticle attempt at gun control, right, But it still is that the roster, which I don't think like, you're fine, right, you can you can buy a very effective gun in California, as we have seen, they're very effective of killing people. But it does kind of make it a joke that if you have enough money or a friend who's a cop, then this doesn't apply to you. Right, then you're over two hundred thousand of these guns which are supposed to be like banned in circulation, as long as you're wealthy

enough to buy them. I tried also to pra a if any of these guns have been involved in crime or murder, and they would tell me that. And what it's always worth pointing out that like the cops themselves are issued guns which are illegal for civilians to purchase, right or it's not possible for them to purchase them.

New I should say that offer us to guns are issued to the cops, right, So, by definition, some of these guns have been used in the accidental shooting of bystanders, shooting of officers by themselves, and shooting of officers by other officers that have occurred in California since the Rousta began. So the sort of by definition of us to guns to kill some people. So this isn't actually the only way that being wealthy can get you around gun laws. And I want to go a little further east for

my next example. Then I want to go, in fact to a little town called Lake Arthur in New Mexico. Then if you are you guys familiar with this part of the world. Not well, not that I lived in New Mexico very very briefly when I was a small child, but not there. So so I've been using Google street View. That's my my dive. It appears to be the back arshile of nowhere, and in let Garthur, they have one cop who it turns out was a volunteer and was being paid a dollar a year. Aha. Yeah, so this

is this is where the problem starts. This guy is called William Norwood. And I'll issue a spoiler here that William Norwood is no longer a cop in orders the department exist. And that's because Norwood was running a scam that took advantage of something called LIOSA. LIOSA is a Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act and what the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act does is allow cops from any state in the Union to conceal carry a gun in every

state in the Union. So this was a big deal. Yeah, I think you might be abotuely what this is going. This was a big deal before the Supreme Court Brewined decision. Right. The Brewer decision was the one that significantly reduced the impediments in between you and getting a concealed carry weapons permit.

I didn't totally remove them, and it did make it any less expensive, and California needs to be going about trying to make it even more expensive, which is bullshit, Like everyone should have the same right, regardless of how wealthy they are. But if you were covered by LEOSA, right, if you're a law enforcement officer, you could conceal Carrie anywhere. So this is very desirable for certain people. One of those people is Robert Mercer. Do you guys remember Robert Mercer? No?

I do not, Okay, So Murcer is a big time Donald Trump appreciated. Oh yeah, he's that like super rich guy. Yeah, the bright Bart guy, the Cambridge Analytica guy. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So this guy is rolling in it, and he he was. He actually hosted like a a like success party soon after twenty sixteen election. This this guy is definitely pivotal to the whole Trump scene, right, like like his bank

rolling a bright Bart, Cambrinallytica. He As it turns out, it's also a cop in this little New Mexico town, which is kind of weird, right, especially when you consider that one hundred and fifty other people are also cops in this me. Yeah, that's that's one cop for every two point nine residents. Jesus. Yeah. And turns out they're probably not doing much copying, but they are doing at least a certain amount of volunteering. It's actually unclear how much.

So the Lake Arthur Treasurer with Bloomberg did some prays around this, and it turns out that Mercer was what's called an honorary member of the police department, but there are no records to indicate they actually did any policing. But nonetheless he took advantage of LEOSA, right, and that's carried in all fifty states, so these jurisdictions, there are several of them. Another famous and who's taken advantage of

this is a friend of the podcast, Stephen Seagal. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Stephen Seagar, who apparently has been a volunteer cop for a very long time and like actually was doing some copping according to a reality TV show he made called Steven Seagal Lawman. You know the thing about that show, right is it's like, are you gonna come out and

defend the show? Are you pro the show? Really? Here, here's why they on this show, right, Like, obviously Seagal's doing stuff that's really messed up, but it's also unclear how much ye what he was doing is than the average cop. Liket Like, probably what he's doing is worst than the average cop, But I don't think it's like like I don't I don't think it's as bad as like like a Chicago Special Operations unit. It's like, I

can't believe this came out in defense of Steven Seagal. Specifically, he has work to do to reach like the true upper echelon of like I don't know, shitty cops, Like this is a man who gave his time freely to volunteer for Joe Apio. This level of apologism coming from you right now is simply shocking. I don't know how to deal with this, this cigol apology, sigologismogism. Yeah, that is that is what I was working my way towards, but I couldn't finish it. Yeah, thank you for delivering

the kuda grass. Yeah, me are coming out with the some cops to Bastard to take scab. Okay, So what what is Carrison's Carrisons deceased? They've've died Okay, So these badge factories, like the ones in Lake Arthur and Geermany trade influenced cash your connections for a badge and the right to carry a gun nation why Mercer and his

son in lawd. George Wells have supported the town generously and so the most kind of the best investigated example of this right because Bloomberg went after him and Bloomberger publication, not Bloomberg the dude. He went down there personally Bloomberg he formed an alliance with apparently at one point this with this police department did to a raid on a methhouse. And I would love to see like Bloomberg forming alliance with the methilers of Lake Arth to fucking take on Murcer.

So if Bloomberg can take on nine to eleven single handedly, surely he can bust up whatever whatever operations going down in New Mexico. One hundred and fifty Stephen Seagals, would you rather fight one Bloomberg size Stephen Seagal? And yet don't don't do not bother messaging me. I know he wasn't the mayor during nine to eleven. That was the joke. Don't bother messaging me, I already know than no, no, no, I wrote, Okay Garrison's Twitter again, I write a case.

He also famously dropped Staten Island Phil Bloomberg. You guys don't know about State nine. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog. This This will be in a Bastards episode as well, So it's a second mentor of Staaten isl and Phil for some people. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog similar to Puck's attorney Phil. Yeah, but he lives in Staten Island and that's fortunately. Yeah, we would we say that a second second. Pretty pretty disgusting take from me anti

Staten Island this way, this is why MEA gets canceled episode. Yeah, going back the time and getting rid of the Yankees hings of the state. Sure yeah yeah. Unfortunately, build a Blasio dropped the groundhog on its head and it died. Yeah, build really build a Blazio the groundhog. It's reduced popularity. Everyone who's been the mayor of New York is a

piece of shape, unhinged. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, like fucking the current mayor just what lked TV to Tay and talked about how he has this magic smudge that yes, so that he could absorb despair and ring the despair. What the I'm so sick? The only thing isolated New York was does the whole like there shouldn't be any separation of church and say that is so much funnier. He's doing a sham wow for sad. Oh

what a place, what a town? All right. So, if you're wondering how much it costs for Mercer and his son in law to carry downs everywhere, they paid at least ninety three thousand to set up this thing called the South East New Mexico Police Reserve Foundation, which you know is doing the valuable work of supporting reserve cops in Southeast New Mexico because they are the thin blue line between us and people not being able to buy

concealed carry permits in all fifty states. I guess under its bylaws of its half the foundation's net jews were required to be paid to police departments whose reservists were members of the foundation the time of its founding. All of the members were Like Arthur reservists, So just a good public public benefit. Probably just money going around in circles. He also paid for Lake Arthur officers to get SWAT training in Vegas again, there is only one full time

cop and he's a volunteer. So some of the lads went to Vegas, I guess, and this was a donation that was probably tax deductible. The way that this came out is when a quote unquote firearms expert from North Carolina got drunk and shot his b they're in law in the leg and why were you carrying bro like you're a cop? And yeah, from their things began to unwind. A lot of the other clients for this place are people like bodyguards, and they were a client's cops, volunteer officers,

I should say. They're people who do close protection for wealthy folks, right, and carry guns as part of that work. And I'm guessing it's their employers who are making these significant donations to like Arthur that probably allowed these people to reserve officers, which allowed them to carry in all fifty states, which in turn allowed them to protect these

wealthy people. Right. So it's another and like it's important to understand that like New York, for instance, declined before this was before the bruined decision, I can still carry permit applicant from like an FBI informant who had taken down a biker gang. They were like, no, you don't need to carry a gun. Like it was almost impossible for people, even if they were like helping the cops, to get concealed carry permits in some parts of the

United States and in California was very hard. Lots of places before Bruin, Like, I think, what's it, Nancy Pelosi had a concealed carry permit of Finstein, this is the whole thing, Okay, so this was this was Finestein that One of the other scamps for this is you can

get deputized as a federal marshal. There's like a bunch like I like Finestein's rumored who have done there's like a bunch of like every like a bunch of sort of like California like Congress people have done this that like they get they get deputizes marshals and so they can do this shit. Yeah, incredible stuff. Yeah, it's so I guess what I want to come back to is like all of these laws, right, all of these gun

control laws and are circumventable if you have enough money. Right, So if you want a nice brand new gun that doesn't mic Ris damp, it doesn't have the it doesn't have the magazine disconnect. And like modern the modern Harry guns especially, you're a lot nicer than they were in twenty thirteen. Right, They're smaller, they have a higher capacity. You can put a little red dot site on them

if you want to. And if you want one of those things, you can have it in California as long as you're rich and if you're If you're not, then you can't. The same applies with this fifty state carry right if you want to carry a gun all around the country, and even now with Bruin, states are not required to recognize each other's concealed carry permits. Right, So I have a concealed Harry permit in California. It's not recognized by any other states because California doesn't recognize any

other states carry permits. So I can apply for one Arizona. That costs me more money. But if you want to carry in all fifty states, you can just make this donation to the corps. Right, And you can almost all of these things, right. These are the only examples Mere cited the federal marshal thing. Another one is the NFA right, the National Firearms Act YEAH Act, which like, essentially, it's not illegal to have a suppress there. It's not illegal to have a short barreled rifle. It's not illegal to

have a machine gun. Actually, you just have to spend a shit ton of money to get one, which a mercer has a collection of machine guns. I guess, so all of these things. Yeah, it's great, it's fine. It's it's great that we live in a country with with two tiers of rights for people. Those are those those machine guns are totally going to be used for normal,

completely normal things in twenty years. Yeah. Yeah, a totally normal guy who were using for normal stuff and just I'm sure like to make holes in paper with his friends. And it's not problematic at all that to be as rich as this guy is, you have to be a problematic dude. And it maybe those are the people who shouldn't be having guns, yeah, but instead it's it's it's going to be poor people who can't be having guns.

And I think, regardless of what you think, and it's perfectly reasonable to think that there should be fewer guns in this country. It's it's perfectly reasonable to leave that. And I think, like it's perfectly reasonable to think what the fuck should we do about the fact that kids get shot in schools. That's not an unreasonable starts at all. But if the way around it is saying, well, only rich people get to shoot people, then that that's not

really a solution. It's just kind of the appearance of one. And I don't think any of us suddenly, if we were on the left, should should really support that. Yeah, that's where we are in California, which is great. Yeah. So that's about all we've got on this. If people are interested in seeing more about either the Mercer case or the public records I have, we'll put them all up on our sources page. You can find our sources page on there could Happen Here website, and we put

all our sorts out there for all our episodes. So yeah, go check that out. Anything else to finish off with, guys? The cops having guns, bad cops being cops, bad cops? Yeah? Oh well, what about Stephen Cigar I made. This is a dramatic change of form from your earlier start. I only, I only ever argued that he was slightly more violent than a normal cup. That was the extent of my argument. He is only slightly more violent than a regular cup. She is flip flopping on the some some cops issue. Again,

you can send me your opinions on the police. She's on Twitter at I write Okay, hello and welcome to it could happen here once again? Who sit by myself Andrew as we talk about whatever. So we have two special guests, Sprout and Sherry Anne from the Black Flow Collective, and they has talked to us about the dicought me between Uban and rural plats organizing. I mean, as we can all recognize, in this day and age, being plicitly

active is incredibly important. There are a lot of vulnerabilities that we are all facing on the intersection of systems, and we are looking for weez to get out, but it could be difficult to naviate, especially when you don't know exactly where to begin. That's part of the focus of my channel and it's also something that these folks are here to talk to us about. But before we delve too deeply into the meat to that discussion, let's

begin with a quick introduction. You know, who is Black Flow Collective, How did you all begin and what are some of your goals as a group. Hey, this is Sprout and We got started organizing with the Black Flower Collective through previous organizing projects here in Aberdeen, Washington, such

as the Chehala Server Mutual Aid network. That collective got started after the Black Lives a matter of rebellion in so called Seattle and was started by feeding the movement out there in Capitol Hill and Chaz and then brought that organizing effort back to the community to start a food and out bombs here in town. Through those meetings and relationships that we formed, we got to know the local homeless in town and started getting to know their needs as we tried to fill them with our mutual

aid efforts. And out of those conversations over meals, we learned that one of the biggest needs was some sort of home base where people like us trying to support the community could come together and cook meals together and

serve them in a collective area. Yeah, having a safe place to be able to just cook food and plan other types of organizations or collectives is imperative because we faced a lot of backlash from the reactionary politics around our town being in the kind of the heart of trump Land, and the type of people that show up in the big city protest to mow people down with their trucks and whatnot right and how has that affected your old reach efforts. What'd you see? Thankfully not too harshly,

but we've definitely had some scary situations. There was one time at the homeless camp we were told about by the campers there where somebody had tried to like run down a tent that somebody was sleeping sleeping in. They may just like jump out at the like like you know, before they got hit, and they jumped out of the truck and was like waving of a like a police baton or some sort of like stick or something or

something around threatening people. Somebody got like a bigger stick, which prompted them to get in their car and start waving a pull out a pistol and start waving that around before they ended up driving off. Yeah, sometimes when we get new volunteers, there can be a bit of hesitance from people to like you know, take food or supplies because there's a bit of a relationship that needs forming there of trust because of those actions of right

wing actors in town. So it's kind of like, you know, what is why you're out, you're feeding, So there's a bit of hesitance there, but once they realize they're with our group, we've established enough of a reputation that you know, that name drop is usually enough to to re establish that trust, right, but it's good that you'll love somewhat established yourselves, you know, locally and builds up a reputation.

Would you see that that has been one of your media goals as a group, to build that trust in the community and where you'll see that trust go in from where it is now. I've always seen that personally as our only asset. We don't have a lot of money. Obviously, we're not funded by anyone, so all we really have is our reputation in the in the community and in

the wider community. Our reputation has led to some of that backlash that Sharia was talking about, but within the actual on housed community, you know, we have a reputation of doing whatever we can to help people and always showing up consistently and you know, always being willing to go the extra mile when someone needs something in crisis. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So having had some experience with like you mentioned, working in the various movements that were

happening in twenty twenty. What would you see some of the media differences that you've noticed between organizing in media cities and in uban areas compared to rural posical organizing. Well, I'd say the majority of the issues we've noticed depend on the material conditions of the town that we're in. Being a small and rural area, there's a lot more property here, and so those material conditions lead to a

lot of differences between urban and rural areas. I found before come into the area, I was involved with Occupy Oakland back in the day, so I had a bit more of a running with the larger city, larger cities way of doing things. And what would you share in Well, I've grown up here in this town my whole life and have a really left outside of it all too much. This type of organizing is always uff that I heard about, more so through rumors than anything else. Soursus actually seeing

people on the ground and doing things. Once we got our food not bombs chapters started during twenty twenty, it opened kind of just a new a new world for not just myself, a lot of people around here. Right. So, one major difference that we've noticed that is the dichotomy

of electoral politics in the town. Most of the opposition that we've faced has not been from the city but from grassroots initiatives, and so some of those people over the course of the last two years have taken positions on city council, but the police that they control are still demonstrate an unwillingness to attack their own community in the way that far right politicians would want them to. Yeah, so take like the police that show up and the

like big city protests and whatnot. They'll bring in all police stations from all surrounding areas, people who aren't familiar with the community, who you know, it's just a job to them, which helps sever that they're connectioned that that area, while here it's the same people dealing with the same people every day. And in the minds of police, it does create create like a sense of community in their mind that makes them a little more reluctant to use the type of violent force that we see in in

the bigger cities. And it's not to say that force isn't present and doesn't happen here, but it definitely doesn't happen on the frequency. If I could run back a second by way this is me. I'm also on this episode. Um yeah, if I could, if I could walk back a second, ask or something. When when when you say that most of the resistance to what you've been doing is from grassroots movements, is that like, like, are you talking about like sort of grassroots like right wing political movements.

Are you talking about sort of NGOs opposing you or no? Like, we have a local grassroots right wing initiative in town that's been the main breadth of our our little groups opposition and they have, like I said, they have run and won a few city council seats since then. But it started as a grassroots you know, clean up the trash sort of campaign. Yeah. Yeah, you could still find

their page on Facebook. It's a save our Aberdeen, Oh God, save our Aberdeen please soap and they got like little soap bubbles and whatnot, and they're here to clean up the city streets. Said, Oh boy, I don't think they're talking about the trash, not trash as we would define it. Yeah, so sort of right, So this is a place where sort of like right wing like anti homeless stuff has

been has been their sort of main way to build organization. Yeah, it's a. It's a huge I mean, I don't really even know Sherry, And like, what other talking points do they have other than the homeless. Everything centers around the homeless, Even stuff that has to do with like businesses in town and local economic that gets blamed on the homeless. You know, everything gets blamed on the homeless. So it

really all goes back to that. Yeah, they are the scapegoat for every problem that the city council faces, or not just the city council, but businesses. You run a shitty business, it's it's the homeless's fault. I don't have customers say it has nothing to do with the fact that I haven't sold anything in years and this is just a hobby shop for me because I got a fat inheritance. But yeah, I'm talking about you all that glitters.

Oh we call the names no, so you speak. You spoke about how this um, this grassers right wing movement has picked up some steam and wanted some seats into city cone. Soum. But one thing I recognize about grassroots movements is that they tend to have to sort of balance their goals with the trust they need to build with the broader public, with the perception that the public has of them, and how are they trying to shape

that perception. So how would you see that the public of Aberdeen views the right wing initiatives the Soup movement as your reference in And how do you think that the of tentative view Black fol collective. Well, I think a lot of people feel scared to voice their opinions

if they're on the left in town. But we do get a lot of support for the mutual aid that we do the the base of the other The right wing movement in town is pretty strong, and you know, I don't see them drawing in a whole lot of new people because of their extreme nature and their tendency towards conspiracies, but they do have quite a substantial base that whatever they say, they're gonna they're gonna agree with

and they're gonna go along with. Take for example, like here about a year or two ago, um, I think it was November twenty twenty one or augustum, there was a big anti tran trans rally outside of a Star Wars shop here in town that yeah, they had to bring in a bunch of proud boys from you know, out of town and the like filled their numbers from outside, you know, with outside help and whatnot, while chanting about how Antifa was coming from Seattle to burn the shop

down and kill the shop owner and all this and all the stuff that they had the guy during the whole protest. They gave them like a bulletproof vest that he's like walking around. Did they brought Matt Walsh the fucking town? It was a mess? Wow. Yeah. It's really a classic example of pot meat cattle with a lot

of their metric. In my experience, I think the majority of the public though, does care about the issues that the homeless are facing and the fallout issues from that, but they kind of it's kind of this tug back and forth between us telling them what's really going on on the streets and the stories of people down at camp and this other more right wing tendency to just blame things on the homeless and take the simple route of saying if we just get rid of these homeless people,

then our problems will be solved, and local efforts to gentrify the area with the influx of Terry, a right wing capitalist who's brought up like sixty properties in town recently, and as well as just the local media landscape in town has a right wing tinge to it. I mean where we're at, everything has a right wing tinge to it. But so it's hard because there's not a lot of voices.

Even though there is a lot of sentiment of caring about the homeless, there's not a lot of voices that are actually telling the truth of what's going on on

the streets. And so when you get all of the lies and bullshit coming from the police and city hall and just being reported verbatim by the papers in town, it leads to a lot of people forming conclusions based on faulty facts, and so they might think, oh, the homeless did this, the homeless did that, And we go into the comment sections every time and push back and say,

you know, actually this is what happened. And it's actually a lot of times that we get people, you know, opening their eyes and saying, oh, I didn't know that. You know, it's not always just the standard dig your heels and sort of thing that you see on social media. Because it is a sort of smaller town, right, everyone kind of knows everybody. Yeah, there's a bit more accountability in that sense. If you're going to spout off online it's you know, it's likely and the grocery line after stuff.

Not only that, but it makes like for organizing a general um and nonimidity a lot different of a um of a tactic in how in how you use it, because like say in the big city, you're constantly surrounded by UM security cameras everywhere you go. You're constantly being monitored, watched or whatnot. But it's a lot easier just disappear in the crowd, just another face the you know the other.

Like you can go out spray paint ditch got a big deal in place like here in Aberdeen for example, But like I could mask up and do everything, um, you know I can. But if I get known in any kind of sense of way by go out and you know, spray paint a wall, it's like, oh, there goes Sherry and you know, spray painted walls again. And once once you are docks are identified, it's really hard to undo that and just sort of renonymize yourself. So we've taken an anonymity and our security in that aspect

very seriously from the get go. A couple of people in our organization who didn't have faced, you know, public harassment and stocking. So yeah, it is a big deal. So you've managed to maintain a level of anonymity despite elder jefflets in a small town. Yes, well, to a large degree. To a large degree. Okay, there's different people in our group. You know, it's not like our group has rules about it. So some people use their real names,

some people don't. But those who are concerned about it have been able to although it's it's difficult, and you know once that, once that identification comes, you know, it's pretty much games up. It also kind of has affected our recruitment in the sense that people on the outside looking in may see what we're doing as more dangerous than it actually is because of those security concerns, and they might be scared of retaliation and not want to

participate because of that. So we have taken to kind of reducing the fire in our online social media's for some of that mutual aid stuff, so that we don't get as much of the backbash on those accounts. And we found that it's helpful to have ancillary groups that can go and do more autonomous stuff if we need stuff done that it or said that as a're gonna create more backlash, right, So have sort of different layers

of the organization. I remember the after futurist abolitioncy America's one of the statements they had puts out they were they had used it to move like my courizy in the sense of having sort of different levels of network in place. You have like the above ground level of you know, more visible public face and action, whereas you have that sort of underground, fungal network of anonymous and

probably more risky action taken place. Yeah, because we have to sort of maintain a certain level of good will in town for the mutual for certain sides of our organizing. Organizing like the police, for example, they're always down at camp and so having an amicable relationship with them is advantageous in certain scenarios. So, yeah, splitting apart roles, I would say, you know, one role being the public facing side of things and one role being the more private,

autonomous group. And how would you see you're talking about you some semi am a couple of relationship with the police. How has that been sort of sort of set up? You know, what was the basis of that. Well, as we were mentioning the the the structure of policing is a little bit different, since the police in an area small like this is going to hire locally as opposed to in large metropolis areas you generally see police department in big cities hiring from the suburbs surrounding the area

leads to sort of like a foreign occupation feel. That's definitely the feeling that I got when I was doing stuff in Oakland was that the Oakland Police Department was not made up of anyone who lived in Oakland. You know, they were coming from the surrounding suburbs that were much more affluent and removed from the problems of Oakland, and

they were just there to occupy by force. And so we get more like the Andy Griffith feel out here, where it's like the cops are, you know, the good guys, who's trying, who's helping Grahama across the road, and you know, will you know, carry your groceries up the stairs for you and that kind of stuff. At least that's more at least that's more the public perception. Anyway. They also have a small tank and conduct all sorts of drug rates.

Rights to me, like, yeah, we're helping you, you know, we're walking you down the road and carrying your groceries in your house for you within all the shoe But because of the small town aspects of it though, um being able to like play on their um wanting you know, for the ones who do want to help but are

misguided because they're cops acab um. But for the ones who are trying to help, who aren't like specifically going out trying to fuck over homeless people besides their jobs, you know, once who occasionally like go out and buy stuff of their own money or whatever to like help so or whatever, they'll kind of like rely on us to deal with that side of the population so they don't have to waste their time dealing with the homeless, is how and which is allows us to deal with

more of the problems in the homeless community in house versus having to get the police involved, right because you know, the police aren't really treated or capable of resolving the it's kind of issues. For example, like my father, for for example, UM, he was in and out of prison his whole life, and after I was born and he got out of prison that last time, Um, he had a moment where he's gonna get ready to have a relapse. Right. He went to his dealer's house. You know, he's there,

he bought his eight ball. He's sitting there and you know, getting ready to do his thing and there's a knock at the door and they opened it up and it's police there. They got a warrant for the dealer. They're raiding the house. And this one cop you know, pulls my dad aside because he knows if the other cops season, he's gonna send him straight to prison. And he's like, you know, hey, you know, what are you doing here? Man? And whatever possessed my dad to do it, he's like,

I just want to go home. He put the eight ball in that dude's hand and cops kind of looked at him, was like, just just get the fuck out of here, just go because he knew if the other cop you know, saw him, he would have sent him to prison right then, and the like again a cab, the like, this is, you know, the best story you're ever going to hear, our best story if a cop is a cop not being a cop pretty much? Yeah, exactly, yeah, every time. But you definitely get more of that here though.

That their advantage to take over. Yeah, and we have a certain people in our group that can liaison better than others with the police, and so we've used that to our advantage as well. They've largely ignored, I want

to say, the police, not the city. The city wants to stop us, it's like their undying wish apparently, But the police have largely ignored or shown tacit support for our efforts because they're members of the community and they, at least the older crop of officers, have been working these streets and seeing the same homeless individuals for in some cases longer than I've been allowed, So you know, there are relationships there, even it's even if it's one

mediated by that position that being a police officer. Um, when you see someone struggling for that long, you know, it's it's hard not to be empathetic as a human. And so we've been seeing a bit of a shift now that they are all those officers are starting to retire and we're getting a new crop of younger, more gung ho police because who would who would vaun who would sign up to be a police officer in twenty twenty three, you know, other than people who have something

going on with it. So yeah, but for a while there it was this, you know, that sort of old crop of police officers who had build relationships in the community and had that public image of being the helpful peace officer, as it were, which makes it hard to push back when you're when you're a group that's trying to advance, you know, abolitionists thinking and anti cop sentiments. When they are beating people with batons, it's easy for your community to look at that and be like, Okay,

these guys are clearly the enemy. But when they're just you know, helping grandma across the street, it's a lot harder to make those arguments. So that's been one aspect that has made things difficult for us, and another dichotomy in the just the list of these in the mere differences between the conditions around organizing in a small town

rural area versus bigger in cities such as say Seattle. Yeah, but despite all of their helpful nature there, they are enforcing local ordinances that criminalize then housed, despite the ruling out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Martin G. Boise that says it's unconstitutional to do so so, even with no alternative alternative shelter available. This year we have zero cold weather shelters in Aberdeen. They're still out there sweeping people and telling them, hey, you've got to move along.

When the maps handed out by the city say specifically you can sleep here and you can camp here as long as you leave enough space for pedestrians to get by, you can set up on the sidebox, and yet they move them along every day. Yeah, as you're talking about, you know, the different Ey caught to me is that

you feace between urban and rurale political organizing. I would imagine that population is certainly an issue about that you might have to feace as you know, an organization trying to make a change in a small space, have your phone. It challenging to build your base and you know, get connections and stuff going. Yeah, for certain like, as we said, there's already the issues with the US having a more reactionary based politics in a lot of our population, and

that's scaring what allies that we do have here. So it's definitely resulted in us having to do the best we can to network outside as much as possible. Yeah, there's not a really wide base of radicals to pull from, so we have to work with a bit wider ranging group of folks out here, although it has always shocked me how many people are willing to get involved in

radical organizing here in town. You know, I think the smaller group size has led to a need for more connection and more listening in our decision making processes, which has been nice. I think we've gotten really good at operating as a small technique group, which may be organizers in larger areas where groups are larger, I have to deal with a little bit differently. You know. There's also

the difference in terms of where we socialize. In places like Aberdeen, there's nothing to do in terms of social gatherings. There's no center of socialization in town. The only thing that we did have was the mall, which has been closed for a couple of years now. So there's not a lot to do in terms of activities, and there's also just not a lot of space, like physical space

in which to gather as a community. That's why we are currently serving our through not bomb meals under a bridge because the city has removed all covered areas in

one of the most rainy areas in the country. Yeah, Like when I go to like Seattle, for for example, I could walk into any business, any doorway, just about any street pole and see flyer after flyer after flyer for this event, this oncertaty, this group is doing this, this, this, these classes are taking place, etc. They straight up have a law against putting anything on the poles in town versus let alone. They're actually being any events happening worth

using the poles in the first place, right right. So I would imagine that parts of your aims as a collective would be to find ways to bring the immunity together through those sorts of social events, in formal and formal for sure. And that's definitely a big part of our goal with the Black Flower Project is to create a sort of social center, a place for the community to come for various reasons and you know, experience whatever

they might discover. So it sounds like you'll have a good lay of the land in terms of what is happening in the town and what sort of movements you want to be making. In the next part of this episode, you can join myself and Miya and Ryan and Sprout as we discuss the actions that Black Fowl Collective plans on taken in their community and what sort of material conditions they've continued to have to navigate in this space until then. I'm Andrew of the YouTube channel andrews Um.

You can call me on Twitter at underscore sat Drew and support on Patreon dot com, slash Seeing Drew. And you could also check out Blackflower Collective and support their work. Yeah. You can find us at link tree, backslash, black Flower LLC, or Blackflower Collective dot no blogs dot org. You can also find our content at at link tree Backslash al thirteen twelve, where you can find our podcasts maltav Now and a bunch of our other projects by Saber Media.

Thanks loot guys, Hello, and welcome to it could Happen here. Joining me again for this second part of two parts, shari An and sprout from the Black Flower Collective in Aberdeen, Washington, as they've joined us to discuss the dichotomy between urban

and rural political organizing. Last week spoke. They gave us some background on exactly how the Black Flower Collective began and what sort of motivating factors they have been in their developments as an organization, as well as some of the dichotomies that they've experience between urban and rural political organizing. Now we're going to take a moment to explore some of the materials, some of the other material conditions that they have feast in their city or rather in this

small hotel. Sure an, As we were talking about in the last episode, there's a huge difference between the modes of socialization um in big cities and then versus small towns like our own, you know, Pere, we socialize more

like in our houses. You meet friends at at the homes of other friends houses, where in the bigger cities it's more so that you know, you went to a club, you went to an event, concert, class, what I have you um, And these are definitely things that have like evolved and developed based on the you know, just different material conditions. Like you know, there's not as many classes around here and you know, events and stuff like that because a people just don't have the money to go

to them and be there. Nobody has the money that really put them on or you know, any of that's a startup capital. There's not enough money coming through the town. That's why the far right are always trying to push this homeless narrative, because they're trying to make like turn this town into like a tourist town or something which makes no goddamn sense to me. There's nothing in this town to come here for us, But like, the only reason you're coming to this town is because you're driving

through here to go to the ocean. That's it. Like the highway dumps out here and then it's old highways back to the rest of the ocean. Sounds pretty isolated. It can be pretty isolating out here, but it doesn't disconnect us from the overall struggle. Throughout our organizing, we've discovered that there's a lot of things that we can do for urban comrades through our mutual aid. For example, rural people can do anything that is virtual, such as

graphic design or web support. We can also offer up rural spaces for rest and recuperation for front light activists in urban areas. While we might not be present in the heat of battle, we can make our isolation of strength, as often people abused directly by the system require peace and solitude to recover from such trauma. We can also use our local networks to identify enemies and report this

to the wider radical community out here. There is a huge number of out here and in the Pacific Northwest in general, there's a huge number of white supremacists and neo Nazi militias and organizations, and so they generally organize in small towns like Aberdeen. You see a lot of that here, and so people living in those towns bear the responsibility, we think of reporting on the activities of those groups to the wider community, because a lot of times what you see is, you know, it's kind of

like the police coming in from the suburbs. The extremist often come in from the outlying rural areas, either in protest scenarios or you know, usually in protest scenarios. We saw a couple instances in which our local right wing neo Nazi group went out to Chaz and was filming videos out there and collecting information for their organizing back here.

So we can also be doing the same throughout the interim and collecting information on those groups for our comrades and urban areas, right right, That sounds like some really viable and pout and weeze to to build that sense of Uban rural solidarity. Yeah, yeah, because there's definitely a lot of people out here that need UM some notes

taken on them. UM for example, during the height of the twenty twenty protests, Um, there is a small solidarity protest um that was essentially just five women that you know, holding a couple signs, and which resulted in a line of reactionaries and their assault rifles. The you know, the harass I get threatening this very small group of women of you know, if it says saying how Antifa was coming to the town and they were going to burn

the town down and all this stuff. Um, you got people like in uh in Walla, Walla, for example, you have Henry Contrera who utilizes what connections and whatnot that he has out there to like call other white supremacists around the nation and would essentially be like, hey, you know, move here, We'll get you a job, we'll get you a house, we'll get you all set up. Just come

here and organiz as with us. And we kind of have our own version of that here in Aberdeen with Cash McCollum, a leader of the Pacific Northwest wolf Pack, our local neo Nazi group and people like that. I think it's only just them, that's a whole group that there are a whole social setting that follows them and us being in rural communities are going to have the best opportunity to keep tabs on that kind of stuff and warn the wider community. Right, Yeah, that's that's absolutely vital.

And you know, one of my questions i'd prepared incoming to meet with your I was going to ask, actually, you know, how can we avoid this sort of idea that a lot of people have in their heads, A radicals have in their heads? Did sort of the distant commune trap? You know, this idea that you know, radicals they move out to the country, they set up the happy the commune. It either follows up pot into a cult or just like pulls away from the broader struggle.

But it seems like in some ways you'll have been able to utilize that distance as a sort of a strength. And you've spoken quite a bit about how the real communities different ways they've been able to help Uban communities in the broader struggle. But now I guess I want to tune the tune the tables a bit and ask what sort of we as Uban radicals can support the struggles within rural communities. Well, one way that we've seen a lot of solidarity from urban comrades has been in

the topic of harm reduction. It's really hard to access services out here where we're at. There's really only one player in town, and they are highly bureaucratic, and the line to get any sort of social service from them is a mile long. Also, fun notes that Cash McCollum, person I talked about earlier, is on the board for that social service as well as long as as well

as other people who are part of the Soap group. Yeah, so we've seen a large show solidarity from urban comrades sending us harm reduction supplies such as Narcan, which has literally saved dozens of lives since we started that program. Healthcare in general is a tough issue for rural areas. Transportation distances, lack of providers, lack of services, all of those things compound to make it really difficult to get

appropriate healthcare. And so anytime anyone has any actual injury in town there, they just send them to Seattle and right our hospitals out here are really terrible, and so training, I think would be a really vital need that we could benefit from a lot out here if we could get the medical collectives and the harm reduction collectives that exist in these more urban areas to conduct rural training workshops.

I think that that would be a huge benefit to not only just Aberdeen, any rural area that that was to take place in, because that would allow those communities to start employing harm reduction and general first aid in

their communities and prevent transportation out to these more metro areas. Yeah, the more we could do skill shares, the more we could do workshops, the more we could do radical classes or anything under the idea of kind of unschooling that we could do for rural communities is imperative because the outside of high school, unless you're going to college for something specific, there's just not much for learning out here. What about the next general what about that site of

struggle in education? Well, I believe sprout could probably delve into this a bit more, but it definitely would say that our ideas for you know, educations in the next generation as much as everything kind of goes under this I forget the name of it, but it's this idea of the like seven years generation in our planning and the like, what what would this look like for the

next seven generations? Right? Seven generations? Sustainability all seven generations stewardship is another twom used, I think education is central to a community. It's really the same sort of you know, you're going to get the same answer with all of these healthcare, addiction, poverty, they're all interrelated out here. And because education is so crucial, we have focused the Black

Our Collectives initiatives on a lot of educational programs. So we're trying to get this space set up so that we can start having some revolutionary course works that we can offer there. We would really like to develop it into a real campus for learning, both for youth programs and for like continuing education GD and college level kind of stuff. We think that the unschooling method is pretty cool where people can kind of just pace their own learning and decide what it is they want to learn.

So that's the method that we would go with, and we think that that allows for a lot more diversity in the styles of learning that are employed, and through that you can kind of learn, you can kind of learn new ways of learning, I guess, which helps add

resilience to any community. And I think that a lot of those skills offered at a place like that, Like like Sherry I was saying, skill shares, I think a lot of that could come from We'll need to come from urban communities because we don't have a lot of that out here of our right, so hopefully right get our When we get our space set up, we can host all manner of gatherings and start bridging that divide

between the rural and the urban. Yeah, and I mean I've been looting more about your space, did a bit of research on it um, you know, prior to the episode, and we stood food started token very inspiring stuff, very much in the being of something that I plan on doing locally here and turn on to be ago. Let's pretend that this is uh, lets pretend this is a revolutionary vosion of shock tac. All right, Like, let's just

pretend this is an anarchist shock tac. Give me your elevate a pitch for this space, Like, what is the plan there? Our plan is twofold. The property would be divided into two separate sections. The public facing section would be dedicated to the social center we've been speaking of, and the rest of the property would be what we're

calling an eco village where residents would live. The social center will be where we centralize community resources, and the self governed eco village would have immediate access to those

shared resources. The plan is to run the Social Center as a bit of a small business incubator for various community initiatives that we've been talking about, and as well for the residents of the Eco village to start their own small person of businesses, because in our discussions with people on the streets, you know, everyone has an idea of how to make money, and it's just always some small barrier like paperwork or permits that gets in the way of them starting to have their own income and

that sense of independence. So we want to be able to help with that. It would also obviously be a central hub for preparing and serving food, which has been the basis of all of our organizing so far is the coming together and sharing of meals. We want to have an Internet cafeteria and a community kitchen there. We would also host hold space for the Mutual Aid Network to store supplies and conduct its work both on and offsite.

We want to have enough space to have a meeting hall for potential unions and start pushing on the unionization

locally with the IWW. All of these spaces would be rentable to the public, so the union hall, for example, would be a great venue for an event that someone wanted to throw, or perhaps the wedding even and so that be one source of revenue for the Social center, as well as the bookkeeping, the back end bookkeeping services that we're going to have as part of the business incubator, and the permaculture design services that we're going to have

as part of the eco village. The release sounds like a lot of the different ideas that I've had conversion on my channel for some time now. You know, this idea of a sort of a library economy, in this idea of the eco villages, the sort of public culture spieces and moods and centers of clunity, outreach and education. I'd be lying if I didn't say say that that we're a huge fan of your channel. Actually appreciate that, appreciate that, and I'm honestly in tune. This project is

something that really inspires me as well. Yeah, I'd like to say that none of this is from us. We've taken so much inspire from other projects to cobble together this plan that, Yeah, it's been a real joy to just go through all of everyone else's different content and kind of see like, oh, this could fit with that, and this could fit with that, and come up with a plan that we really think could start to solve some of these issues that we're seeing in town. Right.

I think that's the real one of the few beauties of the Internet these days, you know, the fact that it's still able to connect people and ideas from all over the police. Yeah, for sure. I wanted to ask as you mentioned these sort of equal villages and that that whole idea having spaces for housing and benefitting the people in that community, developing that sort of sense of interdependence.

I wanted to you know, you can't really talk about urban and road rule and urban without bringing up the fact that Urbanizasha, you know, seems to ever crawl into the rural space. You know, like there's always this sense of the encroachment of the city on the surrounding rural regions. What do you what is your teak on that? Yeah,

it does seem to be a one way street. I think the model that we're trying to push is one of the growth where you would see sort of a reversal of that trend of gentrification or urbanization and you would see more of like a ruralizing of urban spaces to start having more green spaces, more growing of their own food, and more production of agricultural products right there in the urban centers, right, you know, which is kind of what we want to do with the eco village

is provide a bit of a model for how community organizing, of how a community could organize itself around the ecological

principles prefigurative politics and action exactly. Another note that I guess I want to bring up before we start to come to the clues is, you know, again we've been speaking a lot about the urban and the rule, but one element, except in a you know, sort of a passing sense of our discussion of the police, one element that's kind of been lost in that and that I know people might be asking about, is what about the suburbs? You know, like, do you see a space for organizing there?

Way does that fit into that urban rule? That caught to me what sort of focus is do you think

suburban organized says might want to tackle? Well, I think suburban comrades are probably gonna have a bit of both worlds, as it were, because they're not in the downtown core of a city where most protests or sites of struggle happen, but they're also not out in the boonies in a rural environment, so you know, they might have police that are a bit more preoccupied with the actual community and actually from the community, and so they might need to

take some lessons from the rural center or from the rural areas in that regard and try to diversify their group into multiple different roles, multiple different channels, so that they are having continuous backlash against a group that's just trying to feed the homeless. But at the same time, you know, they have a lot of resources that rural people don't have access to, and so they could be coming into rural areas and providing those same sort of

trainings and workshops that urban comrades could. And they could also be going into urban centers and learning and providing workshops and skill shares. In those scenarios, I think they're kind of a maybe play a bit of a buffer zone between the two. So what does the future look like the Black Folk Collective? You know what projects you're planning on tacklin in the end now, a couple of months from now, a few years down the line, and how can folk support Well, right now, we are definitely

focused on securing funding. The housing market is horrible. Property prices are going up, and when there is a good deal on something, it's gone usually within a day, within hours. So we are definitely full focused on fundraising right now. We need to have the money on hand to be able to jump on a piece of property when it comes up, because we need a good deal and we need a good amount of land to make sure that we have the room to grow and build various projects

in the future. Yeah, So the projects that we're focusing on right now immediately is the Perma Culture Design Services, and so if anyone wants to have us design their farm or garden or house or balcony, they can go to Blackflower Perma Culture dot no, blogs dot org and

get started through that process there. Hopefully, once we get land, as you were saying, in the next five years, the Perma Culture Design Services can grow into a permaculture design course that we could actually start offering people to come and do like a two week intensive study on the building techniques that we're using on site in the eco village and on how to apply those back at home.

Another project that we're currently working on is the bookkeeping This is sort of the bedrock of the business admin side of things that we're going to be folding into the business incubator once we get that going, and we are looking into a couple of different grants for that. But as Sherry and said, you know, right now we're focused on fundraising, so we are. We do have a couple of different platforms that we're collecting donations from and we are starting to plan a few benefit shows here

locally in Aberdeen. So if anyone is in a band and wants to roll through and play a show for us, you know that would be much appreciated and then they can just get a hold of us through our website. So our role in black Flower is trying to spread awareness help with this fundraising. Gave them kind of free

advertisement in order to help their growth. Mean Sprout and our podcast moltop Now are from the Sabo Media Collective, which once things are going with good with black Flower, we're hoping to be housed by them to help grow our media efforts. But if another good way to help in supporting black Flower is to go to our website at Sabo Sabot Media dot Noblogs dot org and share our podcast Maltov. Now check us out on social media, on whatever social media you are on. From Collectiva masted

onto Facebook at Aberdeen Local thirteen twelve. We have articles that we write on the Harbor Rat Report and a whole host of other content for people to check out and share with donation links that all go to Black Flowers efforts. That's fantastic and I would encourage folks to check out what they're doing and all these different platforms and well, that's been it for it could happen here. It's been great to have you both from Black Flower Collective.

I've been your host for today. Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism, which you can follow YouTube dot com slash Andrewism, on Twitter at underscore Saint Drew and on Peter dot com slash Saint True. All power to all the people that's have your Thanks for having us, thanks for being on. Thank you guys, great recording with you. My that's my getting absolutely screwed over by the Medical Establishment Voice. People thought it was another Sheet podcasts. They were briefly extremely excited. Nope,

the Sheep, the Sheep podcast. Will I make no promises about the Sheep podcast. What we're going to tell them about the Lost Sheep episode. No, yeah, okay, well T will just leave that one. Yeah, this is this, this is it could happen here the podcast where you would think that the medical issue is a trans thing and it's absolutely not. And it's amazing and I love it. Uh yeah, it's it's a podcast for I complain about

medical issues and talk about other stuff with me as James. Yeah, I'm a person who complains about medical issues and sometimes goes to Mexico to buy drugs yeay, legal drugs, medical drugs while we're while we're being recorded. This The thing that is making me think of is I was in Oh god, I don't remember where Mexico I was. Um, I was no very old, but so we took up, we took a ferry and it was I got like so c sick. It was like the most ceasic we've

ever been. So we had to like go back and um we so I this My Spanish is not great at this time. My Spanish was much worse than it is now. Um, and we have to we go to this drug store and we're trying to find something that's like an antic sickness drug and we buy this drug

called vomits in and we're looking same. When we're looking through the the thing, we find the part where it's say side effects, and I remember and I look at this and I and I read it and it says lucas and I'm like, oh no, it's like, oh god, it wound up. Actually it was completely fine. Yeah, yeah, I did not vomit over the rails again, hydrate on the ferry ride back. I have a good I have a good inadvertent medicine hallucinogen story, and then we can we can actually do the podcast. And I was when

I was a bit younger. I was climbing a mountain in Morocco and became extremely altitude sick, like my fucking nose was just like unleashing my blood. Like it was a real momentum. Yeah, I look great, and so I tried to get some medicine. We went somewhere and like you know, I speak French, but most of people spoke Berber and it wasn't a language that I speak at all. Anyway, I received some medicine which I took in the form of I think like a powder that I'm mixed with honey,

and I was like, okay, this is unique and different. Whatever, fuck me, did I have some incredible dreams. I just kept taking it. I zone, well, it was definitely opium was the thing I was taking. Was like, I bought it down and was like, I this stuff just really helped out my altitude sickness. One of the adults I was with was like, ah, yeah, don't do drugs. Kids speaking of not doing drugs. Okay, So what we are here today talk about democracy, the opm of the masses. Yeah.

So this this script was originally written in a period where High had spent an enormous amount of time being forced to watch documentaries about what democracy was. And my conclusion from all of this is that the history of democracy begins with a mistranslation. Okay, so okay, what does that mean? The answer is that, Okay, the whatever someone starts talking about democracy, the first thing they do is they go, like, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna I'm gonna

start by translating the word democracy. Now, the most common translation that you'll see this like like everywhere, from like Astra Taylor's like documentary what is Democracy? To just like the thing that's on Wikipedia holds that democracy is derived from two Greek words. Right, you have demos meaning the people, and cradouse meaning rule. So you put these two together, you get demos cradous, you get democracy. My Greek, my

camp announce greatly. Well, it's fine whatever, it is ancient Greek. Um. Yeah, but you know that this means rule by the people. So okay. This translation has several advantages right Foremost among them, it is simple enough to be taught to a school to school children, and catchy enough. That's a non zero chance that, like the most pedantic of them will remember it after the day after the test, which presumably is the explanation for why this is. This is the translation

of democracy. It opens every single fucking thing people write about democracy. Unfortunately appreciately for beleaguered grade school teachers and and sort of those are of the broader populace as a whole. This translation is so blatantly wrong that I have been forced to start a thing about democracy and also about rioting yelling about ancient Greek. So great, okay, so what what? What? What? What is the actual issue here?

The actual problem is the mistranslation of Credos in particular is incredibly important both conceptual and ideologically, and the actual sort of proper translation, and the implications of this are

worth examining in some detail. So the other problem just David Greybirds to way have mentioned a lot on this show wrote in his regrettably very poorly read essay There Never Was a West, He describes Kratos thus quote in this This, in turn, might help explain the term democracy itself, which appears to have been coined as something of a

slur by its elitist opponents. It literally means the force or even violence of the people Kratos, not arcos, the ancient Greek word for ruler, also the root of anarchism or without arcos. So, yeah, so what he's saying there wasn't Cretos a dude? Like he's dude, day I found dissolved him an immortal dude. Yeah he's Also he's the main character of the God of war Games. Okay, that is the thing I did not know, And hilariously that that is like him him being the main character of

the God of war Games. That is actually a better way to understand what Credos is than the rule by thing that everyone usually translates. This app because like, like ancient Greek has a perfectly good word for like rule by right, it's arcos. It's the word of anarchisms, like an an archos, it's but it's the word. It's like the normal thing where you have a Greek derived word where you want to say rule by is that is arcos? Right? Yeah? But is not that right? Yeah, like all Gk is

like that. But like democracy is specifically credos. And this is because what democracy literally means is rule by the violence of the people. Heat. Yeah, well and this, you know, okay, so like this, this, this, this, like this sounds like I am essentially per clutching about translations, but the context you is actually important, right, as as Grammar points out, the sort of you know, Athens, which the example or society, society against which the original antidemocratic philosopher is rail By

the way, this is like Plato hates democracy. Most of the people who you read from sort of classical Greek like yeah, philosophy despised democracy, even so they live in them a huge you know, not not not not to like whitewash Athenian society. But like these people are like sparta apologists, And it's like, yes, we haven't already. It's funny that people have definitely I don't know if they've actually recovered Plato or red Plato or they just get

mad when Donald Trump doesn't win elections. But like this whole, like this whole like benevolent philosopher king ship has definitely

definitely made a comeback in recent years. And it's troubling. Yeah, And I think I think part of this this is this is another complaint that I've had about sort of like the way that like the sort of like great authors thing is taught in in universities, is they deliberately like there is like an in in what in what specific reading as they assigned there was like an incredible intellectual effort that goes into making sure you never see

the absolutely drained shit that these people believe. Like Plato. Plato literally worships angular momentum. Yeah, like that is his god is angular momentum um. Like he he's he hates democracy, he loves like spurred in like oligarchy. Basically like all of this stuff is like that's like something like you don't read you know, as you get assigned Plato. It's like, yeah, there's a huge like um as someone who's taught like a ton of universities. That's that's this huge fucking impediment

to you assigning that stuff. Like I've specifically tried to assign different stuff in these like writing courses, which which ended up being like great white dudes of history. Right, Like, um, like if you kind of signed different things, but like the cost of of assigning those and that that cost isn't born by you or the university, right, it's born

by your students. It's massive. Like even if for while there like we would just like a lot of texts, you know, if you take the time as a professor to label out of text, you can take it to a print shop, get them to photocopy it, and it almost evers be you need to find someone who's willing

to kind of play fast and news with copyright. But still it will end up costing your students so much more than the texts which are in the book that you can fucking autogenerate the quizzes because the book also has a website, and you still get paid, like you're doing a job when you're not so yeah yeah and bad yeah, and and this stuff has had you know, like this has had sort of profound ideological influences, has had, you know, it's it's has sort of profound has profound

influences on like the I mean just sort of the way that like ancient Greece and Rome or like conceptualized and and and I think this also really has you know, it hasn't It makes it very hard to see what was sort of actually going on in a place like Athens.

And you know, a great graper sort of points this out right, like this is a sort of like exemplar I like, you know, sort of it's as a sort of an examplar, like it is literally like the place for which like, like most descriptions of sort of democracy are are are sort of originally about and Athens. You know, we are trained to think of Athens as like, oh, it's like well Athens, this is like the first democracy

or whatever. This is like actually this is actually like a very normal sort of society and it's not this is a this is an extremely weird society. And what what grammar sort of points out about this, right is you know the thing that that is you know, Okay, so like there have been lots of societies over sort of the course of human like the you know, hundreds of thousands of years in the sort of like course of human history, right that I've had collaborative decision making systems.

What is very, very weird and almost unique about Athens is it has two things put together. It has a decision making apparatus where people have equal say, and it also has a violent enforcement mechanism to impose the will of the people on other people and as you know, as we'll get to you in a second, also impose the will of those people on other people. Most society, Yeah, that that that that turns out to be a very important part of sort of the evening empire, et cetera.

Exactly like who the people are? Yeah, this is people. Yeah, well we'll get to that in a second too. But so so most societies, grape or argues either have one or the other of you know, having a having like a decision making apparential people of equals say, and a violent enforcement mechanism. Right, you have a lot of societies with collective decision making apparatus is that involve the entire community.

But the thing is, these these processes invariably sort of like develop some kind of consensus process as a sort of expedient to keep the community from just tearing itself apart through costs of conflict, right, because like, okay, like if if you can't actually without the threat of force, right, you can't actually have society where you constantly have really really controversial decisions being made by like fifty one forty nine splits where both sides absolutely hate each other and

one side as imposed over the other. Right, And in order to sort of like keep your like, you know, your like city or your state together, right, you have to actually create political solutions that you know, people people not not that they necessarily like fully agree with, but that they're willing to live with. And then you know, this generates sort of like various so increasingly elaborate, sometimes not very elivable, but you know, various sort of forms

of consensus processes. On the other hand, you have societies with extremely violent enforcement mechanisms. But these societies are almost always incredibly hierarchical, and they're ruled either by sort of monarchs or oligarchs who just simply do not care about the notion that like people should rule themselves, or that you know, other like other people who are not like the king or the body of oligarchs should have like

anything even remotely to do with me decisions. And that that's what makes Athens really weird, right is Athens has both of these things. It has a sort of it has like a violent it has a way of like imposing decisions on people through violence. And also it has this principle that like people should be able to make decisions for themselves collectively by you know, like through through through a sort of process that doesn't involve them all

being ruled by just like some guy. And you know what makes Athens and the other and the other sort of Greek democracies, because there there are other democracies in Greece over the sort of period that this goes on. What makes them unique is that, like the people quote unquote is composed largely of soldiers, as Gravery puts it. In other words, if a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinion into account. One can see how this works, and it's starkists and Xenophon's analysis.

I've been I have now been told by several dictionary sites that this is in fact how you pronounce it. I don't know. Anabassis sounds terrible to me, But a degree such as the will of and I Don't Know Dictionaries, which tells the story of a Greek army of mercenaries who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle of Persia. They elect new officers and then hold a

collective vote to decide what to do next. In a case like this, even if the vote was actually sixty forty, everyone could see the balance of forces in what would happen if things actually came to blow. Every vote was in a real sense a conquest. So what we're dealing with here right in this is this is sort of

what democracy is. It's very rawest form. Is you are dealing with a group of very heavily armed men who need to find a way to convince slightly more than half of the group to agree to help them impose their rule on everyone else. Do you know what I will get you? Do you do? You know who will fail to pay your mercenary contract, leaving you stranded in the middle of a Persian civil war which you have backed the wrong side, Vladimir Putin. Yeah, don't take mercenary

contracts on Vladimir Putin. And we're back. So, you know, as I was sort of saying, well, what we're dealing with here. Right, we have a group of a very heavily armed men, and they need they need to find a way to make you know, they need to find a way to make like half of like slightly more than half of the group agree with them to impose

their sort of rule on everyone else. So it's slightly more technical terms, right, Athenian, you know, Athenian democracy or democracy in the Athenian sense is composed of two code

determining elements fused together. There is a decision making apparatus and an enforcement mechanism that you are code determining because the structure of the enforcement mechanism, which is fifty one blokes with sticks beating forty nine blokes with sticks over the head, also determines the structure of the decision making apparatus, which no longer needs to concern itself with the opinion of everyone in the group, as they would in a

society without the ability to sort of employee violence to enforce decisions, as long as they have enough people to sort of militarily defeat a minority of the group. Right, you know, you could you could see how the structure, how how the enforcement mechanism is is the thing that is structuring what the decision making process has to look like. Right, It's the thing that sort of sets its limits. And this is something that it turns out, is very very

sort of important in what a democracy is. The enforcement mechanism, too, is also determined by by the sort of decision making apparatus. Because the people here are armed soldiers. So the fifty one percent that becomes the sort of like basis of of of the of democratic majority rule. You know, it literally composes the enforcement mechanism itself. And this sort of

double code determination is the origin of majority rule democracy. Right, The institution that you know, in various forms, and we will get into this, like this has gotten increasingly less and less quote unquote democratic over time, but this, this specific form is the thing that has come to sort

of define what democracy is. If we look at what democracy is as a political project, though, right, what we see is that the essence of democracy itself is to transform the majority from a simple count of military strength into into a signal of morality. Right, The citizens of democracies, and even even a lot of people who are either not citizens of a democracy and live in it, or who don't live in a democracy simply believe that is the moral right for a majority of people to be

able to impose the will in a minority. This is this is just this you know this this this is what This is what forms a kind of democratic common sense. Right. It is the thing that everyone believes that is sort of the basis of everything about how it democracy functions. Right, And you know, democracy is almost never framed this way explicitly except by you know, every once in a while you'll get someone who makes his argument who is like, I don't know, they're a billion they're or they're like,

you know what's his name? I yeah, high E will like like if you press him, or like Milton Freeman to also well, like if you pressed him, will make this argument, right, which is like no one actually wants to live in a democracy because you know, like if you you know, if if we actually live in a democracy, everyone will just like increase our tax rate or like virginalized groups will like these are critiques made of the United States as well. And yeah, the earliest inception, right, yeah,

you know, I know what's his name? I think it was I think was John Adams. So some of the early founders like very explicitly this is their argument against like maybe maybe various was the anti democratic arguments against giving anyone who didn't have property in the vote, which was, like, I think the exact line was, if you give people the vote, the first thing they will do is erase

the debts and redistribute the land. Yeah, which was a whole asked rebellion about this, right, Yeah, yeah, I wish would have been based good program usually kind of kind of messed up in the US where you have to

ask where that land comes from. But you know, yeah, but like, well, this is an argument you really only ever hear from people who have like the only minority that makes this argument are people who have a ship ton of property who are like, oh god, and you know, and their their thing here is, well, okay, we need to make the system blessed democratic so that people can't take our property away, yeah, or give property rights. Yeah. Yeah.

But on the other hand, the reason for sort of pointing out that this is what democracy is in theory is really sort of cynical and like reactionary. But the thing that the reason this argument works a quote unquote works with sort of like you know, with with sort of libertarians, is that this equation of sort of numerical superiority with the more right to exercise power is like the key underlying assumption of democracy. It is the idea

without which democracy simply sees it the function. Right. But but this is something that you know, people don't talk about democracy like this, right, The sort of trick of the democratic system is to make is to push the

enforcement mechanism into the background. Right when when when you talk about democracy with like regular people, the thing that they walk and they normally they think about voting, right, but you know, and any any kind of thing that is like a collective like decision making process, right, a regular person is going to call democracy. And you know, there if that's kind of true. But but you know, but if if if you want to sort of get

like technical about it, it's not. And there's an there's an incredibly large ideological apparatus that specifically built up around making sure that people don't look at the way that the that the enforcement mechanism is as much, if not more so a sort of key element of what of what democracy is than the part where you know, where everyone comes together and make it makes a decision that

everyone talks about all the time. I was watching an interview with Gray but the other day the such things I do in my free time, and he was talking about like democratic confederalism in Northeast Aria, right, and he talked about it like democracy without the state, which I think is interesting, Like it's him using that vernacular definition.

So okay, so I'm I'm taking a lot of the arguments from self, Graaber wrote, but he he backs away from the implications of his own argument, right yeah, and goes back to albeit like caveating there were and I guess it's worth noting that there are a ton of like hugely divergent like we're not like prisoners of etymology, right, like like yeah them meaning like I think it's Rosa Luxemburg who said government is uh politics in the people's

interest or something. It's kind of bullshit tanky interpretation of like most people would see it as there are these broad definitions, you know, and I think this is something that like like Asher Taylor's documentary, right, like you know, part about that's good, Right, It's like there's I forget who says that there's this like kind of famous political line that's like I if if if if if there if there is a thing that everyone agrees is good.

No one will agree on what it is, right, like you know, and this is something that like, you know, like I think I think it's it speaks to the power I think it's specifically to the power of the sort of like like the idea that more people being like agreeing with something like gives gives legitimate gives legitimacy to that thing, which is that like every like like even societies that are like not even like really remotely democratic, right,

We'll pretend that there's still democracies, right, like the Baptists have elections every sort of like psych right, yeah, I mean, like like you know, this is this is the thing I think isn't very well understood, but like like this this was also a thing like for example, China has this Like Okay, sorry I I I as as as I'm preparing to explain this, I'm realizing that the China wa like the like Chinese government experts are going to get mad at me because I'm I think I think

I'm about to confuse the United the United Front with the United Front Works Department. But so chin China, like technically speaking, is there are like other parties technically that are kind of remnants from like you know, for exact example, like the left faction of the KMT, which is like the Chinese Nationalist Party. Right, there's there's like technically a faction of them that's part of this thing called like the United Fronts. There's like technically other parties and they

have like this like consultative role. It's it's it's an incredibly convoluted in the elaborate system, but you know, like that whole thing and you you you can find you know, like the Chinese system is like not it's not democratic in the sense of like you can like vote for someone or like like okay, like it's not democratic in the sense of you can make a vote that will make a thing happen, right, you know. And to be fair, the US is also not democratic in the sense of

you can cast a vote and make a thing happen. Right, But this is sort of like you know, okay, like it is it is a in a society that is less democratic than the US, which is sort of astounding considering the US like doesn't even have one person one vote. Right. Well, we'll get into like republics a bit in a second, but like you know, like Chinese like quote unquote, democracy is like not it has very little to do with like the principle of like the mote like fifty one

percent of the population votes for a thing and it happens. Right.

But but you know, like if if if you if you look, if you look at the sort of rhetoric that you that you see from or in the internal justification of like like you know, you sort of like read chinesecratic documents, so you read sort of like that their pr stuff, Like they constantly talk about like, yeah, we're gonna make a more democratic society because like that legitimacy, like the idea of democracy is really incredibly powerful and enduring,

and it's something that like even like you know, like I mean, like I don't know, like the Saudis don't pretend to be a democracy really, but like most of the other like golf monarchies have like election ee things right, Like it's it's it's an idea that is that is enduring and powerful enough that even people who don't agree with it are forced to sort of like do this pageantry of it. And I think that's really interesting and I think it explains a lot of the kind of

I mean, especially around to occupy. But I think it explains a lot of the kind of political movements that we've been seeing over the last about fifteen years, which is I think this is also an explanation for why why we see so many riots as as a former sorts as a form of politics, and why you get these demands that are sort of like, I don't know, you you like in the two thousand eleven revolutions, and

so you sort of also see this now. You get a lot of sort of very abstract calls for democracy while also doing things that like are quote unquote not legitimate in a democratic society, like like rioting is not supposed to be sort of like a legitimate political action in a society because you know, like this is whole like the AA, because there's a system under which violence is supposed to be administered, administered right, like you have a state. The state is the thing that's supposed to

do violence. If anyone else does it outside of that, they're like, you know, they're an illegitimate extremist. But okay, if if we go back to a sort of base definition of what democracy is, right, democracy is a collective decision making apparatus anti enforcement mechanism. It's like, well, what is a riot? Right? A riot is both of those things happening at the same time. There are a bunch of people collectively making a decision and then imposing that

decision immediately. Yeah, it's ap Thompson who called the Leadites collective bargaining by riot. Quite possibly, Yeah, yeah, it's it's often like reference now and other stuff like like people talk about like you know, like your you're here that used all the time. I think they're the origin of it is um what is it? Eric Hobsborn could be Hobbsborn anyway. Yeah, Famously the Laddites were called collective bargaining

by riot. Yeah. I think, well, I think there is something sort of interesting there about collective bargaining by sort of physical force. You know, it's like the decision making apparatus is happening outside of the sort of normal bounds

in which decision making apparatus is supposed to happen. And I think I think there's there's a sort of this isn't there's another I forget exactly which graver thing this is from, but that you know, there's graver this might actually this might actually be from Essive about Batman, which is pretty funny. Um, what's he said? What's his take on Alfred's class status? I don't think he unfortunately, I think that's I think that's the one thing he doesn't mention.

Pretty I'm pretty sure there's no Alfred discourse in it. There's lots of other discourse. He calls how is it banging it? No, he calls joker. He calls one of the Batman villains as Zurza Nite, which I think is very funny. Um. Yeah, but you know, okay, he has this argument about sort of like okay, how do you

you know? So? So the the other part of democracy is it's is it's the part about the people right, And this is always a thing that's that's very much in contention, like how do you determine what the people quote unquote are? And you know the structure of Athenians to society is very much determined by who isn't isn't included in the people right, Like you know, women can't vote.

If you're a slave, you also can't vote. There are lots of people who are directly under Athenian rule who can't vote, And are you know, not part of the people and therefore sort of like and and this this is in some sense the origin of like the trajectory democracy goes on, right, which is that the trajectory it goes through his republicanism because you know, like the founders of the US, right, if you look at this of that style of fifty fifty plus one style majority democracy, right,

those guys you know, as we talked about, like they didn't want a democracy because they thought into democracy people would vote against their sort of like aristocratic interests. Yeah, and so yeah, like like yeah, it's like, well, all these people own slaves, all these people owned a bunch of land, all these people like I don't know, or like bankers and shit, and they're like, okay, so it's gonna be a bad idea if we let people like decide what to do with our stuff. So instead, you know,

they go to this republican in structure. And the republican structure is I think very interesting because it takes the fifty plus one structure, right, but you know, it abstracts it to the point where like the like you like, your vote for the most part basically simply does not matter. Like every once in a while, like a local election, it can do something. But you know, like what what's actually happening, right is is you're like you are selecting

who is going to rule you. And you know, the other part of this is that the enforcement mechanism becomes autonomous from the people itself, because you know, unlike unlike an Athenian thing, where like everyone's either like on a ship because they're like are you know, they're part of the navy, or they like you know, they can go strap on their fucking shield and like plates and grab their big ass spear, right and you know, it's like, well, this is this is the state, right, the state is

like fucking Jerry and his friend like Patrickliss or whatever the fuck, you know, like form forming a shield wall with the like the shields they have at home. You know. But but you know, and then that's the thing like in in in in sort of like warrior democracies of that style, like they're there are short third like the Cassatra Republic. I think that's same of it. Um they're they're these sort of like they're like you know, they're

like they're they're they're there. There are republics like this or quote unquote republic like this that that that exists in in various places in the world where you have these sort of like military classes that you know, like D fifty plus one, but those people, right, the unfortunate

mechan mechanism is very is very very direct. In a republic, the unfortunate mechanism becomes autonomous, and also the decision making apparatus becomes both both of them become autonomous from like the people quote unquote who are supposed to be making the decisions, and suddenly you have the situation where you know, okay, if you live in the US, right, it is very very clear that there are lots of things that everyone supports that simply like are not is not like like's

not happening right, Like you know, I mean you can look at sort of like universal healthcare, like I mean, for exact another example that we could take that's I think for poignant right now is like there was a pretty recent study on like what percentage of the population in the US supports trans people getting like frands affirming healthcare,

and it was like seventy percent. And then you know what I mean, But you know, you look at a state by state basis, right, and it's like what we'll be talking about this more sort of later, but you know, basis like, well that's not fucking happening, right, people are just making it illegal. And it's very easy to look at this and go like, well, okay, so the principle of fifty plus one is being violated, right, Like, this

is not a democracy. Something else has happens. One sort of solution to this is to go back to you know, is to very literally go back and ask the question

who is the people? And and this is this is you know a lot of ways what occupy is doing, right, Like occupies to answer this is like we are the ninety nine percent, right, It's okay, So like there there there is a thing that is claiming to be the like the demos in in democracy, which is you know, Congress, right, but like, okay, Congress trivially is not the people, right and at the best a section of them, it is definitionally not in any any yeah right, you know, And okay,

so you have you have lots of versions of this, like the American one tends to be a lot of people sitting in square, you know, but like like like can can actually convening a a something that's kind of like a democracy. But even but you know that's the everything was like is occupy democracy, right, Like they don't

have violence as like a political tool. Really, I mean this isn't to say that like there wasn't some weird shady shit that happens, but like, you know, like they don't have the ability to sort of like coerce people into accepting like a fifty one percent decision that people like genuine they can't lifts, right, So they don't they don't really like they in some sense, in challenging democracy, they create something that isn't really a democracy, right, They

create a sort of like elaborate consensus process. And this is you know, like if if the Kratos part is I'm trying to think of a way of being I think for like ten minutes about a way to phrase this, but like if the if the strength and power is like is the people, and it's even distributed among the people as opposed to it's the state, and like if some of this theoretical abstraction of the will of the majority of the people, then that that leads to a

consensus almost by definition, right like like if yeah, well, I mean I think I think the sort of breaking principle here is if you think that it is legitimate to use for a group of people to use violence to enforce something, and at that point everyone is still armed, then then you you you get a fifty plus one structure, right, right. But if if you don't think it's legitimate to use violence to coerce people into sort of like doing whatever the thing is you want to enforce, then by definition

you get some kind of consensus process. But you know, we we have a system that every everyone like thinks that what's happening, like you know, in some sense, like the ideological principle is that like you know, everyone thinks that what's happening is is you have a fifty plus

one system. And that's where like the legitimacy of the system comes from, because like you know, we voted for these people, but also it's so clearly not and also like the police are so clearly just this sort of like roaming like bandit force that is like not even like remotely like it like they technically drawlogy missy from the people. But like you know, okay, like what what what what? What what happens if you try to convene

an assembly of the people in the US. The answer is they beat the shit out of you with sticks and then tear gas you and then like start shooting you. Yeah. So you know, I mean this is this is sort of what you know, like like this, this is what occupy prove, right, which is like if if you challenge the sort of the claim of the government to represent the people, right, because like, who, who the fuck are these assholes to like to be like a hey, la, no, like we we we are the people. We are sort

of like the legitimate manifestation of people. If you want to do anything, like you have to go through us. Well, it's like okay, so like how how how did they get that? How did they get that authority? Right? And

the answer is they did it. They did it by staging an armed revolution and that that that's what their religion, That's what their actual legitimacy derives from, right, is they they want they want the armed revolution, yeah, and violently dispossessed people of that before they did that, like pig

backing off colonialism to do an armed revolution. Yeah, and so like okay, but like you know, their their legitimacy is incredibly tenuous, right, Like this gives you this question of how do you determine like what you know, how does a democracy determine what the people are? And one one way that you can make a sort of counterclaim again against a democracy is by a like physically assembling a ship ton of people in a place and going like we are like physically we are the people and

we are going to make decisions. You know that that can that can look like occupy with like a seven hour meeting about whether where we want to put plants right, or it can look then this is you know, you get this a bit and occupy but like or it can look like you know, here are one hundred thousand people like they are going to fight there once you just like throw shit at the police until the police run away. And you know that that is that that that is a that is a thing that like we

have seen in this country. This this will be like another episode, but this this this was a thing that happens in Mexico on two thousand and six in Wahaka, where people basically ran out the police by literally hundreds of thousands of people like wa waking up to a bunch of police, like a bunch of police just beating the ship out of like a bunch of striking teachers and then like picking up a brick and throwing it. You see it a little bit, not really but like

in like pon deemos in Spain if you're familiar with that. Yeah, like they kind of their attempt to have people determined their policy platform, not lastly a successful one, but like yeah, well, I mean interesting, Obama did that too already. Yeah, this was the thing Obama had this job. Like one of Obama's initial pitches was like he was gonna have there's gonna be this like online thing where people could vote and like decide in policy things. And he immediately managed it.

And but damost also immediately like this this is this is one of the things that like this is this is like one of the ways you try to like capture this kind of like yeah, because what what what what you're what you're really see like when when riot police are like fighting like a bunch of people in the street, right, Like what what you're watching is is

two kinds of democracy fighting with each other. Right You're you're you're you're watching a sort of like like you're you're you're watching the crowd, which is and you know, a very very immediate like for like you know, literal form of democracy, right where you know, the crowd makes a decision and people do things fighting the police, who are like a very you know, the like the police are technically like a part of a democratic system, right, but the police are just purely the sort of like

like they're they're they're you know, they they they are the violence by which the people rule. And you you are watching, but you're watching these two things sort of

like clash with each other. And you know, I mean, I I think I think one of the sort of like products of of of the way that republicanism like specifically developed or like a publicanism in the sense of like this is a republic not a democracy like yeah small like yeah small r but also in the sense of like, okay, so instead of you voting on things directly like you know, you vote for some asshole who yeah the police funding yeah whatever, right, like that that

sort of like unmooring of of of the means of violence from the people, which was you know, which was is the essence of democracy good or bad? Right? And and and I would also say, like you know that can go like that that sort of like having having violence and democracy, like you know, violence and decision making being paired together, Like that's not always a good thing.

That can go really really badly, right, Like you know, because like like for example, like a race riot, right, like like a clan march right is technical, like is technically an expression of democracy, right it is you know, it is a group of people convening themselves as the

people and then doing an action. And you know, and like I this has been something I've been sort of been forced to think about a lot with the anti trans laws, which is that like trans people are, like you know, the most optimistic estimate you could like have is like maybe two and a half percent of the population if you assume based a bunch of people who are trans and don't know that they're trans, right, Like you know, And and if if you were two and a half percent of the population in a in a

fifty plus one system, it is very easy for fifty one p there is no physical way that you can have like if fifty plus one percent of the population decides to kill you, while there's nothing you can do, right, Like there's no there's no amount of like voting that you can do that would make you not die because that that's the sort of like the terinad of the

majority or whatever like or like that. Yeah, yeah, have you familiar with like the argument against utilitarianism that like the greatest good for the greatest number, or the greatest happiness for the greatest number, if you're looking to serve the greatest happiness the greatest number. If like ten people get two units of happiness from beating one person to death with sticks, yeah, yeah, Like she can't experience as

much sadness as the experienced happiness, like democratic impulse in action. Yeah, and you know, like this is the thing that is again what we're talking about, like is normally brought up by like incredibly corrupt, corrupt and sort of vital the

leads who want to protect their status. But like it is also you know, and like this is part of the reason why, for example, the US just fucking puts like immigrants to camps, right because they can't fucking vote, right, Like, they're they're not part of like quote unquote the people, right, Like there are large sections of the populations who are

just you know, like booted from this entire process. Right. Um, this is an argument that William C. Anderson and Zoe sa Moods you make in the book as blackness resistance, which is that like yeah, like black people like fucking are not part of the ship, right, Like they're not like a constituentive like part of the people TM right yeah.

And you know this they they they call this, they call this the anarchism of blackness um, which is this sort of like it's it's a position of being like removed as like a legitimate sort of like subject in

the state. Who can you know, exercise you're like democratic rights or whatever the fuck it is, like yeah, okay, like lots of people have never had this, and you know this, even even even in this sort of like you know, relatively egalitari like you know, like there there have been like parts of the US, like especially the early US. Right. You have your like sort of like New England town council Ryan, It's like, well, what is what is your New England Town Council vote to do.

It's like, well, the votes to send out the fucking militia to kill indigenous people, right, Like, you know, even you can even even even when the US has functioned as something that is closer to like a like democracy TM, where like the means of violence and the means of sort of decision making are actually placed in direct directly in people's hands, right, Like that doesn't always go well, but yeah, you know, but like you know, we we we we we have now developed a like we we

we we developed a system that has like the worst of every single parts of every single aspect of this. Right we're like, okay, so we we we have fifty plus one as the sort of like legitimating factor, but also fifty beside of the population plus one does not actually vote for a thing. It is possible for like more than half of the popular It's possible for a majority of the population to vote for a businessio candidate you get a different one, right, like, yeah, it's possible.

Like we've seen this, like so many fucking elections have had this now like two in my lifetime, like like and and also also we have we we we have the other part of it, which is that we also have like the the we have the other democratic principle of like you should be able to worse a political opinion by violence. Yeah, we got that in space. Yeah, and you know again, guess guess gets like guess guess

who fucking guests to make that decision. It's not fifty plus one of you, Like, it's a bunch of assholes and suits and like six cops. Yeah, I think a good way to view the US. It's like a bunch of landowners made a system where land votes and people don't. Yeah, well, and then and then you know, and then and then they went about making sure that like even if the land does vote for a thing, if it's not for yourself, it doesn't happen or seventy Yeah, there's seventy five weird

dudes in between your vote and anything actually happening. Yeah, which is how you get like this kind of constitutional magic the trumpets are always trying to do because like it's not actually like that far from reality right there, there are like seventeen magic incantations I have to get said after you put your ballot in the box, and

then an old white dude's in charge again. Yeah, but you know, I think, like, you know, the US system is like it's stunningly bad, like it's it's one of it's like a it's a really dogshit like tooroughly written democratic system like it is it is designed not to

function like that that that was actually the point. Yeah, yeah, there's like a there's a king, a thing that like you shouldn't have, like the fur the president is supposed to it's supposed to be a king, right, Like I think like if if, if, if you go back and read like what the balance of powers was supposed to be was like there they're doing the Roman thing of like you need like you need to combine to king

in oligarchy and a democracy. And it's like, well, okay, so we have like a fucking king who could just

like kill people. It's great, it's great, it's great, but you know, you know, okay, So the I think, I think the the the broad total argument that that I want to make here is that what we have been seeing over the last about fifteen years, right with the certain movement of the squares, with the series of uprisings that we saw I mean, you know in twenty twenty the US, but also like all over the world from about twenty eighteen to I mean, some of they're still

some only them are still going like now right, you know, it's it's it's it's it's been a reaction to sort of this, right, it's it's it's been a reaction to democracy as a legitimating principle not matching like democray, like you know, even even even what the principle is supposed to be, and then people going out into the streets and doing democracy, and the sort of clash between like democracy and theory and democracy and action mostly has resulted

in democracy in action winning because it's it turns out the thing about Republicans is that they're really really really good at creating like military apparatuses that are very hard to defeat by just purely fighting them. Yeah, sadly. Yeah, But however, Comma, sometimes they lose, and you know, and as as as as the as the old Ira thing goes, they have to get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky one, so you know, keep collectively bargaining

by riot. Yeah, what the fuck else are you gonna do? You know, like vote like yeah, yea yeah, yeah, like your life depends on it. Kids, You can vote if you want to write like they're there are instances in which it might meaningfully reduce the cruelty of the state a little bit in some places sometimes, but yeah, it's not gonna it's not gonna like take away the central fucking connade of the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, so I do do do do do due democracy by rioting. That

is our official legal position. This is legally I'm legally non actionable, but also legally actionable at the same time. This is called dialectrics. And yeah, this, this is what they could happen here. Find us in the places. I don't find us in the places. David Graber, I do that. Read The Never Was a West. It's great. Nobody reads it. It's it's really good. People have been asking for grade book because we keep talking about him. So you have read I never read The Never Was a West. Read

Towards an Anarchist anthropology bullshit jobs. It's good to start. If you read, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you want to be the real grave head and read something that fucking no one has read, go read towards an anthropological Theory of value. I read into one of my cudages It's super Market the other day and we were talking about that good book. No one has ever read it. Uh yeah, reads more gray, but yeah, it could happen here. If that's the podcast that you're

listening to, it's a news podcast. About ship falling apart. That's the only intro you're going to yet, because Garrison is right now in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, reporting on the continuing Stop Cop City protests. Garrison's done a number of scripted episodes covering these in detail over the last year and change. They're in the thick of it right now, so I'm just going to bring them and a friend on to talk about what has been happening

this week. Yes, that's your que this week. This week is a special week because this is the fifth week of action that has happened here in Atlanta as a part of these Top Cop City and if in the Atlanta Force movement. This episode is going to be like a midweek update because this this week of action is still very much ongoing. There's still many many days that that thinks can't happened, but a lot of a lot has already happened in these in these first few days anyway.

So we're going to kind of do a quick a quick little update and then a more comprehensive piece will be later down the line, but with me here to help to talk about what's what's what's gone down so far? Is someone from the Atlantic Community Press Collective Clark, Hello, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on, So for being on. Yeah, we've we've been kind of

we we've been. We've been kind of teamed up the past few days here as as many many, many things both silly and serious, have have taken place across Atlanta of safety US. Yeah, that it's always nice to have friends when you're watching jack booted thugs go fucking ape shit with all of their new toys. And I mean, I think that is part of the Week of Action idea, is getting as many people here as possible and hopefully

some of that makes makes some people uh more safe. Um, that's something that we'll probably talk more more in detail later when we have kind of hindsight. H But I guess today let's let's just start on what's kind of happened so far chronologically, I guess starting on Saturday. We I met you Saturday for a rally at Gresham Park.

I think it's where we first met up this week. Yes, we met at the rally at Gresham Park, which had about I would say an hour's worth of speeches before they kicked off a march down the bike path from Gresham Park to what the activists called Welanni People's Park, which is the side of the protest beforehand. So the forest around it had been unoccupied since the raid in January that saw the killing of Torture Guita. So this was the first sort of permanent return to the forest.

So we took a I don't know forty minute march down the path and then landed in Weelani People's Park that had one more little round of chants with a promise to defend the forest, and then they broke off and everything was a It was a nice, really relaxing day. Yeah, it was. It was a pretty positive start to the week of action. People essentially retook Kulani People's Park and started to go into the forest once again. Camp got

set up in the forest. Um. Lots of people from both in town and folks from out of town started started to camp in the woods again. Um. And then in the hours after this small march, people started to prepare for the music festival, which was planned like a like a few hundred feet away from a Bulhani People's Park, I guess inside inside like a more like open field area, and music festival went off without a hitch. The first

day it was pretty pretty rad. Yeah. I think there was about five hundred people for five hundred people that first night of the music festival. Yeah, and the vibes were great. Everyone was having a fun time. I think it went on until about one am, and I don't think the first day could have gone better. I think I went on till about four am. Okay, well I went to bed at one am. I did not go to bed at one am. I was at the music

festival quite quite a bit longer. I'm quite a bit older, and I think that was the reason I had to leave so yearson doesn't understand things like needing sleep yet for another year or two before they hit that sweet sweet wall. So so true. Then then I'll have to find another teenager to go to journalism every like four or five years. You justn't find a new one. Yeah, just just keep re upping like Leo DiCaprio. Perfect. So So the first the first day was was pretty good.

There was no no substantial police response that I saw. Police kind of left people alone in the forest. The march from Gresham Park was fine, um, and people got to spend a night in the woods again, which you know had had not had that many people in the woods in like months. Um, I mean this is this is it should be said, like camping in a music festival, but it's like relatively high risk because people have gotten

significant charges just for camping in the woods in the past. Yes, and the very recent past part part some some of the warrants that that have been issued that justify the charges like domestic terrorism have included things such as sleeping in a hammock with someone else in the forest, and that's the reason why they're getting charged as a domestic terrorist. So, yeah,

it is a music festival, people are camping. It's kind of chill, but also there's absolutely this kind of this just like this like a ever present kind of fear that despite what is being done being pretty pretty kind of like normal and not not not not in of itself militant radical, still the consequences from the state are kind of always always looming, which kind of leads us to Sunday, Yeah, which picks up exactly where we left on. Yeah.

So I got there around noon on Sunday, I think, and the first thing we see is a bouncy castle, large, large bouncy castle in front of the music festival. It has a big stop Coop City banner, um, massive multi colored bouncy castle. People are having a pretty pretty good time. Yeah. As soon as they finished setting up the bouncy castle, it was it was filled and everyone. I think there were about seventy five one hundred people just set up

on blankets around the stage. Initially, I think in the next few hours that definitely grew to be there being hundreds and hundred, hundreds of people returning to the music festival for the second day. Um, I mean, I think the march on Saturday was anywhere between like I saw estimates of anywhere between five hundred two thousand people. Music

festival seems to be like over five hundred people. And then on the second day at the music festival, it slowly grew in size to again being hundreds and hundreds of people and it's Yeah's it started off just kind of continuing on with the music, continuing on with the people, people having having nice times in the woods. I walked around the campsites, got had conversations with people talking about all sorts of anarchy related things, and then they're slowly

throughout the day. I think that this was posted on social media as well. There was a plan for a rally at five pm to meet on part of part of the field that the music festival was also happening on. By the time that happened, people people met up. The group that that kind of converged was in a mix of black block camo blocks, so like people like covered head to toe and various various camo print And they set off from from the RC Field where the music

festival was at. So they left they what they went down Bouldercrest Road to the section of the woods called the power Line Cut. So to understand what is going on here, you kind of have to understand some of the geography of the Wilani Forest. So we have like the the Wilani People's Park parking lot and that immediate

kind of kind of camp site. This is this is like the the easternmost part, and then there's the RC Field which is just like right right next to that to the west, and then even west of that is Entrenchment Creek, and Entrenchment Creek kind of divides up this this uh, this dissection of the forest and then everything everything west of Entrenchment Creek is generally referred to as like the as the old Atlanta prison Farm area and the power line cut is is pretty close to to

to the creek and to that that is kind of where this this prison farm section is, and this is this is an area of the woods that cops have been more rigorous about policing, more rigorous about surveilling, more rigorous about having kind of constant surveillance and people on the ground. It's it's estimated that they're spending over forty thousand dollars a day running security on this part on

on this part of the woods. So yeah, yeah, so see people for that amount of money, they could hire like more people than are on the police force if they just used fiber. That's really that's really the tactic they ought to be embracing. And I think if they had used fiber, they might have had enough people to counter the protesters, but to catch the baby overbloated police salaries, they only had like twenty people. Yeah, they did not have any. So this group set down Bouldercrest, They they

marched up the power line cut. They laid out like tire tire barricades in the street um and then upon them marching marching on the power line cut. Uh after after they arrived near the near near the police surveillance set up that we that we that we just mentioned some of some of the equipment somehow burst into flames. Um. People have blamed like shoddy construction. People have said that,

you know, sometimes equipment just does that. Uh but yes, no so people people set set a whole bunch of police infrastructure on fire, set some construction equipment on fire that's being used to destroy sections of the forest where they wanted to build a cop city. Um. Police were repelled with stuff like rocks and fireworks. The cops that were stationed there very quickly retreated. I think, Uh, lots lots of stuff was set on fire. There was the

surveillance tower was set on fire. A bulldozer was set on fire. Well, I mean it's it's winter. People need fires to camp come from I understand. Have a UTV was some kind of like like a like big like big like trailer like storage unit thing was set on fire. Yes, and the cops were very worried about that. They didn't know if there was flammable material inside that you you wouldn't store flammable materials and an easily accessible area. Oh, we shut down an entire interstate because we did that

a few years ago. So we would in Atlanta, Atlanta, would all of Atlanta collectively, um so so so this happened. A thermal chopper from a thermal police helicopter was was watching all of this. Um. Honestly, the footage is pretty interesting. It is it is worth it is worth discussing how this type of how how this type of surveillance works. Um. Almost the same thermal cameras that are on the Bay ractire drones that Turkey makes. By the way, it's it's

it's it's pretty. It's pretty boomerang. Yeah, oh absolutely no, it's it's it's it's pretty. It's pretty frightening with their ability to track into into track individual people. UM. I also think it's worth because there's video of the cops

being pelted with stuff, including fireworks. I think it's worth noting that, like, while it is unpleasant to be pelted with the kind of stuff the cops were pelted with, you and I have both been pelted with numerous fireworks of similar size and it is not a serious threat to life and limb. No, no, there, we survived, but it's modestly unpleasant, but the cops that were there were

not very happy about it. They put out calls for officer in need of support and for all available units in the greater Atlanta area to converge on the forest. People who were who who marched to this to the section of the power line cut started to disperse throughout the woods, and I was backed by the road watching this from hundreds and hundreds of feet away because I did not need to go up there. That would not

have been helpful in any way. But as this was happening, a whole bunch of police cars zoomed by, so I started fall those cars. I went back to the music festival. Um I met up with with some with some other other media people that I was that I was communicating with, and then I got a text message saying that a cop showed up in the parking lot of the Wallani

People's Park with an air fifteen. I start making my way over, and then as as I'm running across the music festival, I see a whole bunch of police at the parking lot for the music festival itself at the at the RC Field, So I don't I don't make my way over to the Wallannie People's park parking lot where there's the air fifteen, because instead I see way way more police closer closer to where I am, so I staged there. Minutes later police start running into into

the music festival. They start tackling seemingly anyone who's like by themselves and that they could like get their hands on. It didn't it didn't seem incredibly targeted. Um, it's this is something that will kind of ill Pope. I'll probably like discuss in more detail once we have slightly more hindsight. But a lot of the arrests did not seem specifically targeted.

In the bail hearings from just yesterday as a time of recording, they said they were going after people who had mud on their clothing and like it it rains a day before the music festival. Incredible detective work. Only only a true terrorist would have mud. I think a month and a half ago Ryan Millsap tore up the parking lot, so it rained the day before, and anyone who would walk through that parking lot or the trail system had to walk through mud. You're walking through what also?

People are just sitting on the dirt at the music festival like, so yes, I mean this might also include like useful advice for people in the future, because if the movie Predator was telling me the truth and it's never lied to me yet, coding yourself entirely in mud makes thermal vision no longer function uh huh uh huh. Yeah, so please please start to tack with people. It was definitely they were going after people who were like by

themselves and yeah, people with mud. The police alleged in their in their warrants that were read out at the bail hearing that they were going after people who had metal shields, and they said that almost everyone they arrested was arrested carrying a metal shield. Now here's a few funny notes about that. There was not a single metal shield present at all. There were a few small plastic shields,

not a single metal one. And in and looking through all of the footage of arrests, the footage that I have that's been sent to NLG, footage to other people have had no one was arrested carrying a shield, let alone a metal one. So a whole bunch of the reasoning for these arrests is incredibly suspect. Police so rated once tackled, arrested, like five people carried them out. They rated again, and this is where they started launching tear gas into the forest. I got gassed decently bad. It

was not It was not very fun. The first time I've gotten tear gased in years, old, old old memories. Um and during this time kiss from a dear friend. So that was exactly what I was thinking, and I did not. I brought gas masks to Atlanta, but I didn't bring them on the Sunday because because usually you

don't bring gas masks to a music festival. Yeah, I mean, the thing about gas, the thing about tear gas and gas masks is that, like when you're used to getting tear gassed, it's really easy to have them handy and get them on. When like you're not used to being tear gas, you're probably not going to bring it with you. Yeah. So people got people. Some people in the forest got gassed pretty bad. I mean. The whole point was to sew confusion, make it so that people could not hide

out in the woods. It was it. It's to make people scatter, runaway so that they can be tackled and arrested. M One person that was a National Lawyer's Guild, a legal observer was arrested. Um, they're also at the Southern Poverty Law Center. This whole boy, this person was the only person arrested that I'm aware of that was released on bail. Everybody else, everyone else is being held indefinitely. That actually includes there was a second legal observer who

was not wearing the hat. So during the bail hearings yesterday there Laura said that they were a legal observer, but because they weren't wearing the hat and because they

were not local, they were not given bail. It was reported there was like around like thirty five arrests the night of yes Initially, APD released a press release that said there were thirty five detainees, which at the time they released it was a very interesting term because we thought thirty five people had just been arrested and were on their way to jail. Yeah, but just about forty five minutes after that, twelve of those thirty five were released. So this was very curious. There is a lot of

theories going on for what has happened. I'm I'm just going to relay what I heard when I was listening to the bail hearings yesterday. So a defense lawyer for some of the people arrested said yesterday during the bail hearing that, to his understanding, the twelve people that were detained but not arrested were people from Atlanta, and the twenty three people who got arrested and charged or were

not from Atlanta. And part of so what police could be doing here is basically, if you're from Atlanta, will we will id you, but we're not going to actually arrest and charge you, but we will arrest and charge you if you're from out of state, so they can continue this outside agitator narrative, so they can say every single person arrested after this protest was from out of state. The cops in the media have done a lot of weird collusion regarding the events of Sunday night. They've conflated

the location of the arrests a lot. Police want to make this seem like they arrested people at a crime scene, that like they arrested people as they were like torching construction equipment, which just is. It's true. They arrested people almost seemingly at random at a music festival that was like hundreds and hundreds of feet away like it was.

It is. It is not an it is not an easy walk from from the power line cut to the music festival, because not only do you have to go through some like pretty pretty harsh brush some woods, um and like jump over a pretty large creek of the alternatively, you have to like walk down a road, which nobody did.

So the police have done a police and and and like local media like large like large corporate local media have have tried to make it seem like that this that this music festival thing is just like a red herring, that it's it's not it's not important. But a lot of the people that that were that were that were arrested seem seemed to be people that were just enjoying this music festival. So twenty three of them um have been charged with domestic terrorism. Most of those people are

being held indefinitely for now. There the the bail hearing is going to get appealed to the to the Superior Court, where we'll see if that changes anything. The judge said that they were not presented with any evidence that these people did anything wrong, but they still decided to not

give them bail. Um that the judge the reasoning for that was that the judge thought that people who did not have any local ties to the community could be a flight risk, and some people who did have local ties to the community, they said, still were a threat to the community somehow, despite many of them not having any prior convictions, not not having any prior arrests. It's it seemed it seemed pretty suspect during during during the during the bail hearing, but that was that was most

of Sunday night. UM Eventually police kind of surrounded and kettled the group of people that that was still still at the music festival hours after these arrests happened. They gave like a five minute dispersal warning, and then they gave a ten minute dispersal warning. Eventually, cops let most of the people who like gathered who were gathered right

in front of the stage leave. That was probably like fifty people at that point because people throughout the night, we're trying to leave um as as police were, you know, like rating the forest. Some people were able to some people were just like let go and like we're able to leave. Others were detained almost arbitrarily. It's it's it's it's hard to say so that that was the first two days of the Week of Action, and it felt

like a week. What happened the next day? So yeah, the non violent direct actions and then the Monday the events. Oh no Monday, yeah, because that was only that was only the second Monday. Is the city council meeting that we were in for eight hours? Yes? Yes, So Monday there was there was an interfaith coalition of clergy that uh that held a press conference outside of city hall. UM basically like endorsing the Stop Cops City movement or

like Clark how how would you describe what happened? So there were a couple of elements to the clergym we'll just call it in action. The first thing was they presented a letter with over two hundred other clergy members who had signed that denouncing cop City, calling for an independent investigation into the killing of Tortuguita, and calling for an independent investigation into the use of domestic terrorism charges

to chill free speech. And then during that press conference, uh Miko Shabon called for land back and called for landback of in the Wilannie Forest to the Muskogee people who stored in um coordination with the Legacy black residents of the area. Yeah, so they were both like talking about the need to stop cop city, but also providing a plan on how this land could be used. This land that is that is leased by the city. It

is on decap County. After this press conference, some of these people from the coalition gave public comment during the city council. That was most of the events on Monday that I can recall. Oh, there was the there was the poem in the forest that night and that was that was very enjoyable. That was kind of the first time people like tried to go back into the forest since since the Sunday night raid. Um. And I think

that started to slowly boost morale again. Yeah, and I think we should talk about also after the raid, there are a few, um, really unique things that happened. There were a lot of people who didn't have housing and they were housed by local activists. Um. There was the bus network was set up to transport people from the site where everyone was getting arrested to somewhere safe. They

moved breakfast offsite to a different location. So there was a lot of work done in continuing the Week of action and providing some sort of infrastructure for all of these people who had come into town and didn't have anywhere else to go. Yeah. Once again, the resiliency on display was impressive, and people's ability to adapt to the ever evolving situation was was tested and people adapted pretty well. Tuesday, there was there was starting to be like typical non

violent direct actions happening throughout to downtown. A whole bunch of banner drops happened around highways and interstates around Atlanta. People were detained for yes, US three people were briefly detained at the site of of of a banner drop, but throughout throughout the day there was people handing out letters to people, to folks like the CEO of Norfolk Southern Norfolk Southern Alan Shaw, and then similar similar type

of like non violent direct action were happening. A small a small march was led from Woodruff Park to At and T and Georgia pacific Um. There was like maybe maybe fifty I think fifty is an accurate number. Fifty people gathered to march. Well, there were fifty marchers gathered and then like one hundred and twenty police officers in the in the in the surrounding area, massive, massive police presence police caused a huge, a huge disruption to downtown.

Um that's something we've seen kind of ever since the Sunday raid. The police have been incredibly heavy handed in their response to every single thing, whether that be people handing out flyers or whether that be you know, uh, you know, people at people at at at a music festival. Um, whole a whole bunch of police were mobilized to stay night near the forest, like a hundred again, like one hundred and twenty cops at least three or four different agencies, bearcats, helicopters.

I think there's it's it's unclear what they were doing. Um, this is something that we might we might speculate further on once we have hindsight. When I when I put together my my kind of my kind of a more more intense deep dive. And then uh, then today the thing that me and Clark just got back from. How do you want to explain today's today's events? So today was a lot of leaflet handing out and marching. It was a smaller group than the march yesterday. I would

say there was like twenty twenty five people. Yeah, like it started off being like only only but like a dozen. Um, and it's it's it's slowly grew to like maybe like two or three dozen. But yeah, small, small, small group of people. Yeah, small group of people. And when they met at noon, they met and they broke into three different groups. Yeah. And so the group that we followed was just, uh, they walked a little northward and started

passing out flyers at the Petrie Center Marta station. They would to all three entrances, and each group warranted its own police surveillance unit, massive police surveillance units. It was following everybody around. There was there was a SWAT vehicle parked right right outside where these people were handing out flyers. Um, it was. There was there was like fifty to one hundred cops flanking people on like from from like, from

like different sides. Eventually all the all of the smaller groups that kind of branched off converged again and police then gave a dispersal warning to people who were on the sidewalk, on a sidewalk outside of a hard rock cafe who were handing out flyers. Okay, well they mean they were in that case, they may have been protecting people because you want to you want to get folks as far away from the hard Rock Cafe as possible garrison. And that's a real dangerous I was, I was campaigning

for all of the press gathered to meet afterwards. That's a hard rock cafe between the hard that one so scarce. And I watched you at the Rainforest Cafe. You barely made it through that dessert. That was different. That was different. I did. I did get food poisoning from that Rainforest Cafe. I will, I will continue to claim. And I woke up with a headache for an under an inexplicable reason, not because you were carrying around a bottle of bourbon

throat bourbon and or a milkshake or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, So, so cops gave a dispersal warning to people who were not not in fact blocking a sidewalk. We're simply handing out flyers. People were still walking everywhere. Um, so they basically moved to a different section of the of the sidewalk and cops kind of left him alone. Um. Near by, a group of indigenous activists from the Indian Collective. I believe it's what it's it's actually a Muscoge Nation, the

Muscogee Nation. Uh went went to a meeting that the Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, was having nearby. H Clark, I think you know slightly more about what happened here than I do. Yes, So several of the indigenous activists entered. So where he was having this meeting is a mall in true Atlanta fashion. Um. So they entered the mall and they they found where he was in the building, and uh so, Miko Colonel Chabon delivered a letter essentially

evicting the city of Atlanta from the Wielannie Forest. Uh So they got in without the police noticing. Um and then the moment they got out, a large squad of police mobilized. They were they were not happy how close people got to the mayor. So at this point we don't know what the full reaction of that's going to be. We do know that the mayor ran away from accepting the letter and then one of I believe they handed it to one. There are a few few more beautiful

sites than a mayor running away. Now more mayors need to spend time fleeing from their peoples. So I think this this episode comes out. I think like like late Thursday night, Friday morning, UM, Thursday afternoon there. So, like we are, we are recording this Wednesday, there's plans for Thursday, there's gonna be there's gonna be a large march at

six pm. I believe, there's gonna be a youth rally at Saturday, and then on Sunday morning, um Manuel torn Tortoquita's family is holding a memorial for tort in the Wilani forest. Um where I've been told that they're going to spread towards ashes inside the woods and that is kind of the last thing that's going to happen. Um And so those are the things that have not not not yet took place. Um So, but we've we've explained in pretty in pretty spruciating detail some of some of

what's happened so far. So yeah, that that's kind of the current current state of on the ground at the week of action. UM I guess, Robert, do you have any questions for Clerk as someone who's kind of been on the ground in Atlanta for years covering top pop city. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious what over the last few weeks, like you've you've had some direct clashes with the police that have ended in a variety of ways, broadly speaking, Is there anything that you're you're kind of leaning towards

this doesn't work? And is there anything you're kind of leaning towards? This seems to work really well. So there is something to be said for the more aggressive actions, and I think they serve their purpose. And there's definitely something to be said for the forest occupation UM it continued the movement until there was a ground swell of support.

So at this point, I think the actions have sort of switched gear into more non violent direct actions as we're seeing this week, and I think that those actions will will continue. I'm sure the anarchistic contingent will continue to do some other more aggressive, shall we say, direct actions? Yeah,

and and and all of these work. We have a large swath of different avenues of engagement that the movement is has developed, and each of them has their place, and if they're used in the proper place, they're used

to great effect. I think one kind of change that has happened we've seen we've seen a bit of a decrease in the types of like nighttime sabotage, like the sort of like attack and disappear tactics that was was really popular in the the early days of the occupation of like of of like the force occupation of people living and living and camping out in the woods. Um. And you know the because like the last two much more like militant actions were done during the daytime, during

like large rallies. There was there was the protest on Saturday after Tortuguita was killed where a cop car was torched. Then there was this, then there was this protest on on Sunday night UM that people that people marched, people marched to the to the power line cut and then the police started doing repression at the music festival. UM. But like those things were happening like during like before the sun was setting. UM. So I think that that

that's one interesting change. I feel like some people are definitely thinking about this, especially because there's been twenty three people arrested during this week of action and they're being held in jail uh and we have no idea when they're going, when they're going to be able to have

the option of getting out. So I think this is something this is something that people are thinking about in terms of how they are how they are doing direct action, and how how their involvement in direct action will affect people who did not participate, like with people at the people at the music festival, who who were not who were not present at the power line cut direct action, and how some of those people are undoubtedly now facing

like punishment from from the state. UM. So I feel like that there is definitely going to be some discussion about that. I've i've i've i've seen discussion about this sort in the city. Um. But I mean the Week of Action is still is still ongoing. It is it is only Wednesday. It feels like it's been a month, um, but it's only been like three or four days. Uh. But I mean it's people. People are in this for

the long haul. Um. We're we're starting to see more solidarity from from groups that are less militant, like with the interfaith relition right, like you're not. I don't think any of like the priests, the priests or the clergy were there throwing molotov cocktails um at the at the surveillance tower. Yet the very next day they're standing out outside of city Hall and demanding the same things that

the people throwing maltovs are are demanding. It should be noted that they didn't denounce no that is it is solidarity across the movement. Absolutely. They talked about how them as clergy you know, and uh, the in the history of Abrahamic religions, how many how many people associated and are the figureheads of such religions have been killed by the state, and how often often these religions have been in opposition to the state during during their formative years. Um,

and they don't know. I just I just can't think of any prominent uh Christian figures or Jewish figures who were who were murdered by the state. That's just not nothing's coming up, right none. Yeah, no, I grew up and I can't really remember anyone. So um, yeah, that is that is. That is the week of action so far.

There will there will certainly be be be a more a more detailed deep dive with like analysis and like, you know, a narrative through line in the coming weeks as we're actually able to like look back on what has happened. Um interviews with more people who are who are like actually involved, interviews with like organizers, protesters, force defenders, um, but people. Despite the ignassive amount of repression that we've

seen on Sunday, the increasingly like heavy handed response. Police have had to both direct action that includes property destruction and non violent direct action. Uh. Despite all that, people are still continuing to be in the woods. They are not letting it scare them away. The woods are still a place that the people are able to like exist in. Uh, They're still able to live, live together in the woods, stay in the woods. The cops don't like being in

the woods. No, there's a real fear that's you're trying to tear them down. Yes, the cops are. The cops are still very much scared of the woods. Um. And and uh people have have have not have not let the violence shown by police scare them away from from wanting to stay in the forest. So that is that

is something that continued every day. There's been like guided tours throughout the forest showing off the different different types of plants, the different sections of the woods, different different old campsites that people have slept at. Um. Yeah, it's uh, it's been. It's been pretty nice to see with the

with just the incredible level of resilience. Well I know that that I am, and I'm sure many people are kind of watching this from a distance, and uh, very very happy to see that folks are continuing to adapt and endure UH and and take punches. It's unfortunate that the punches keep coming, but the ability of the community to take those hits and continue iterating and adapting UM, remains tremendously impressive. UM. I think kind of the note that makes most sense to end on as to say

that this is still a winnable fight. Absolutely, And that is a sentiment that literally everyone on the ground shares. Like we are at a point where like people keep saying like at this point they have to win, like like there there is no other option than winning, UM, And people have the ability to win this. This is a winnable fight, UM. And that is that is something that people continue continue to talk about, and that that

is why people are fighting so hard. That's why people are are risking getting these ridiculous charges because they know that this fight is both worth it and they know this fight is winnable. Like these are these the actions and the risks that people are The actions and the risks that people are taking are not for nothing, Like they know that it is impactful and there is a very good chance that this this will lead to victory and will lead to the forest being preserved, to being

protected and being able to continue continue to grow. It does have a feeling of inevitability that they will win, that we're we will win. I don't know which appropriate way to say that is as a journalist, but the feeling is that that Cops City will not be built and that is something that shared, I think by all of the activists in this city. And I guess the last thing I'll say is, uh, Atlanta Solidarity Fund. You if you if you've been listening to any of our coverage,

you should already know what it is. You can find the Solidarity Fund at atl solidarity dot org. You can donate there to help the forest defenders and you know, anyone who who was arrested in relation to this with legal expenses, lawyers, that sort of thing. Um yeah, well, um, that's gonna do it for this episode. Uh. And we'll have more from you, Garrison, and more from Atlanta soon until next time, everybody, Uh, keep an eye on shit. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from

now until the heat Death of the Universe. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.