It Could Happen Here Weekly 87

going on, right obviously. And then March, I want to say it was March fifteenth or sixteenth, we got a notice that the building was sold from Essex to Course Spaces. And then it was the day after that we got a notice that said, hey, you're all getting evicted because we got to do renovations. I kind of expected it

to be honest, because I've seen what Blackstone has done. Yeah, and I had just heard about it from a lot of properties or also tenants, like in La friends that I had, other college students that had had this happen to them. But after that, basically, I mean, I don't want to speak for everyone but my own personal Like what I did. I just kind of went on Reddit and was like, hey, this really awful thing is happening. You know. I went on the UCSB reddit page. This

really awful thing is happening. There's like a lot of families that live here. There's so many Section eight disabled people, elderly and udents, but our complex is a little different and that it does have more of the marginalized groups. And I went on Reddit and was like, dude, this

is this is awful, like just yeah. So I made a post saying this sucks, and from there I was referenced to contact Santa Barbara Tendancynon which I was like kind of hesitant at first, because I was like, oh, what are they going to do, Like I don't know. I thought, you know, it's just like one of those resources you get where you're just like, are they actually going to do anything or is this just for me

to like waste my time with. But I reached out and I got, you know, a response back within hours and they're like, yes, here's a flyer for you. We are we have your back, We're going to do this, we will support you. And so from there, I want to say, it was within a day or two, we went flying door to door. And remember it's it's two hundred and like I said, I think it's play sixteen. Yeah, it's it's it's a lot of it's a lot units

to knock doors on. I know one of our county representatives, Laura Capps, called it the largest eviction in California history, and I've heard others say at the largest eviction in the United States history. I don't I don't know if that's uh what they're basing that off of. But it's a gigantic eviction. There are many people here. But yeah, So from there, I just went like door to door knocking. I knew none of my neighbors. I am a hermit. I stay in my apartment. I keep my curtains closed.

I'm like, but the only contact other like my neighbors make are with my cats just chilling in the windows and stuff.

happened in the past two months. So I don't know where you want me to go from there, but you know that's at least the beginning of it was just you know, us flying going door to door, getting everyone together, getting everyone in a in a group chat, and then SBTU truly supporting us and telling us, hey, here's the next steps that you need to do. This is how you become you know, a union, a tennis association for your for yourselves right with their full on support.

Section eight vouchers that will pay about twenty five twenty six hundred dollars for their rent and their utilities, and then maybe they pay one hundred or two hundred because they're unable to get that income otherwise. But Max might be able to describe it a little bit better than me.

Don't quote me on this, but that this is like the lowest one of the lowest income housing apartments in Ila Vista, and so there's a ton of like large families. When when this happened, you just people were just crying everywhere like they didn't know what to do.

There's like full time UCSB students whose like parents may.

because rent keeps going up every year. So there's a lot of that, And so I guess I'll just speak to I mean, I've only you know, I've run into it a bit, like I'm in the group chats and I've been I've been to the building like a few times, but I'm not like there every day, and I'm not like flying every day and stuff like Sam is living there. But like one common kind of like difficult. It's like it's it's a beautiful thing and it's a difficulty and

that like there's so we need interpreters. And like in sbtwo we have where we're a sort of self funded autonomous tenets union, which means we don't get grants from like wealthy foundations or government government entities.

bilingual people, but they're usually super busy. It's if if if one of them doesn't show up, or if the child of a parent, like a teenager of a parent isn't there or whatever, right, like, how do you actually get the info across? So I'll just speak to lastly on that that it is like it's a really kind of frustrating, sad situation. And we could probably elaborate on this in that like the whether it's the lawyers right now who have been hired by by Course Baces, which

they're a snaky, slimy piece of shit, evil firm. They're called Tyne Taylor, Fox Howard LP. Just if you see any of them on the street, just give them dirty looks. Don't do anything violent, use that against me at some point in the inevitable thing that's probably gonna happen. But but whether it's them with the landlords directly, there's there's always a you know, this is happens in labor organizing.

So I'm I am jumping a little bit ahead, but like that, that definitely has been like a challenge in that you know, if there was like a totally like linguistically, culturally monolithic group of a thousand people, that would probably be a little bit easier to keep things like totally unified. But those those demographic different differences do present some challenges for sure.

of like the number of languages. But it's still like never like an enormously easy thing to sort of have to bridge, Like just having to bridge linguistic divides too, especially when you're getting information like misinformation different languages is a whole thing. I could I could talk for like seven hours about the effects this has had on like Asian American communities, like Chinese Americ communities particular. Yeah, but instead of doing that, we're gonna we have to take

an ad break. We'll be back after whatever incomprehensible ads are playing.

of normal nowadays. It's not like you know the sixties, where like, oh, everyone has a house and knows the neighbors and stuff. No, people kind of keep to themselves, especially in really large apartment complexes. So yeah, we we just started going in the group chat and then someone

was like, hey, I can do this. Another person was hey, I can do this, and then eventually we set up a group meeting where we could all come together and basically share our our feelings, our emotions, our pain about this,

but also find a way to fight against it. So what we learned was, which we fully learned from the center of our rettenants union, was oh, if we go in front of the county board, we can convince them, we can share our stories, we can share our pain, and we can tell them, hey, we need the law to change, we can pass something, we can use our voices to stop this from not only happening to us but future residents. So from there it was really in the early stages. We I don't know if this is

jumping ahead. Honestly, my brain is a little foggurant. So there's so much that's happened, so quickly, but I do know the next biggest step was us coming in front of the of the Santa Barbara County Supervisors Board of Supervisors and telling our stories and sharing that. I think Max could probably also share a little bit.

got the city to pass. It wasn't a ban on renovictions, but it was an amendment to their what's called their Just Cause Ordinance, which makes it a lot harder for landlords to renevict and that now that they have to get permits first, they have to to put the permits in the eviction notices when they're going to do it, they need to there's some language that says that it needs to be done in good faith, which which is like really subtle but potentially really important because if your

reason is that you just want to trigger what's called vacancy de control, which is like kicking people out so you can jack the rent over the ten percent limit. In California, like like right now, a landlord can raise the rent about ten percent every year if just just because they want to, but if you can get people out of the unit, you can raise it to whatever you want. So on the city level, it was just it was a really big deal. We had just won it,

and we were like pretty exhausted from it. We're like, shit, that was a lot of work, and we won really quickly, and everybody around us that's been doing stuff for a while was like, we don't know how you guys did that shit so fast.

So the reason I'm bringing this up is it just felt like natural for us to just like and we don't like tell people what to do, like not to not like correcting you, Sam, But when it's like Okay, do this, do this, do this, it's sort of like we ourselves are just tenants. We're not paid staff, we're not like highly trained like nonprofit staffers or something like

that that I think we know everything. We're just tenants ourselves that are in the struggle just like everyone else, and we're trying to gain information, share information, and become collectively smarter and more experienced and better at handling the shit together. And so we were like, hey, we just won some shit on the city level. If you guys, throw all of all of you, which is like a

lot of you straight to those county meetings. And the county meetings are every Tuesday at nine am and they go back and forth every week between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. Santa Maria is like an hour to hour and a half drive from where they live, so that's like pretty unrealistic for most people to not only get work off and stuff like that, but like that upcoming

Tuesday from that meeting we had that Saturday. They just happen to be in Santa Barbara, which is more like a ten to fifteen minute.

presses for a week or two. There was all these articles on the crisis, and then so that Tuesday morning, all of them going and hitting the public comment, hitting the mic, and and I should say like public comment is typically anybody who's like gone to the public comment at a city or count like a government meeting, there's usually one or two people that are just like really weird, like they are they're like human on they're like human on people, or they are like or like they're like

the next door care in person that's complaining about, like I don't know, some stupid stupid shit that nobody gives a fuck about. But like sometimes that person actually gets something changed because they actually complain over and over again. And then there's actual agenda items in these government meetings and having this many people like totally flood of public comment just for one issue as if it's on the agenda, is like it's kind of jaw dropping, right, So people

just went so crazy with it. People got off of work, they were monolingual Spanish speakers. They just spoke in Spanish and there's a live interpreter.

because they don't have permits. And oh oh and this is this is actually really like important kind of legal fact is that that what the law said was that this notice applies to any current notices posted to tenant stores like after this date, as well as unlawful detainers. Unlawful detainer is a fancy term for an eviction lawsuit. So so basically like any eviction lawsuit that Course Spaces would try to file against any of the two hundred and fifty plus people would be they would just be

tossed out in court because they're just like you. You know, an eviction defense attorney would just point to the law and be like, the new law says you have to do X, Y and Z, and they didn't.

well there's no other thing. But immediately, like almost immediately, within like a week or something, the other side started countering with like insane propaganda, like like disinformation, which I guess I'm kind of taking up a lot of space now, but Sam, I don't know if you want to, because you're actually there with all the people having being foresped the disinformation but by by Tyne Taylor, Fox, Howard Lop and four spaces vertically integrated private equity piece of shit firm.

my opinion, harass us. Like it felt like, oh, everything the course basis tennasalization and SBT is saying is a lie. This is the truth. If you want to join them and be with them, well you might not get your relocation assistance check and or we might charge you more from that, at least with that specific notice. It was super confusing. And you know, most people here don't have law degrees. They don't they don't know the law. On top of that, you know, the law firm intentionally left

out the last part of the ordinance. They said, hey, this doesn't apply to you because the eviction notice were issued before this, but it left out the unlawful detainer part.

then maybe you get paid of other amounts. You you're looking at you're looking at a situation like this, and you're like, okay, two hundred and fifty units and then there's somewhere between five hundred and one thousand people, and like, you know, you don't need to evict the little kids, but like you need to evict like every person on

the lease. Like that's a lot of unlawful detainers. Like that's a lot of filing that we're going to have to do, meaning we're going to have to like get every single name and every single lease, and we're going to have to like every individual person on every lease, we're going to have to file an eviction lawsuit in the court that we know is going to get tossed out. Like that's so much fucking work for us to do.

We don't want to do all that work. That's insane, right, Like we we want to kind of just keep this retainer money and do like minimal work, like because we also don't have it. It's a four person law firm, and they probably have some legal assistance, but like, do they really have the capacity to do something of that scale like this little slimy, garbage trash fire of a

fucking firm, of course not. What their strategy was was to was to scare people through lying with abusing their power as much as possible to empty out that building so there'd be no need to file eviction lawsuits and and do the bidding of their of course spaces without

going to court knowing they would lose. Right, So that's anybody listening, by the way, this is not like this actually isn't about course Bass or the time law firm, Like this is just a strategic set of like a methodology for an industry that views human beings as obstacles to profit in in a hyper commodified real estate you know, capitalist market.

you know this this is an enormous were people who you could just throw out and not have to go through any kind of legal process with and so yeah, these like you know, like it's like this goes back to the old, the old sort of capitalism problem, right, which is like the easiest way to make money just by taking it from someone, and the second eiastest way is by is in you know, like it's like the one that's even easier than that is you is you lie to them and trick them into either trick them

or intimidate them, and she's giving you the money without having to like actually fight them. H And yeah, it's you know what they're doing here, it is legal terrorism.

an interpretation of the law. But I do think like this is as a side note, like this is the issue with you can have like evil ass people who are trying to make people homeless in order to retenant. That's the kind of language of these these firms views.

The word is retenant in the building, You're just retenanting, right like that that's the sort of real estate capitalist law firm or that's the industry like language, right that, Like there's just there we got lawyers for that, right, Like, we have a thing we want to do and this is just the wild West, and we just want to make a lot of money, and we just have like stacks of lawyers just on deck that we'll just pay

to do this. And then you even have like these state bar associations that are like, well, yeah, that's just how it is, man. Probably most likely because like on the side of real estate, I guess I'm like making up this number. The eighty percent of the lawyers working in real estate are on the side of landlords, and then maybe twenty percent, probably way less than twenty two.

a massive diction by landlord Ghouls Core spaces Enjoy. Yeah, something else I wanted to ask about that I'd heard about was like harassment from the guards and the fact that there suddenly started being security guards after this started.

to four twenty four to seven security guards. I know they're they're really They've made me personally super fucking uncomfortable. I've had them ask me where I live, Like when I'm going around canvassing right trying to get flyers people's stores, let them know like, hey, this is these are the actual facts. Stuff like that they've asked me like where, what building do you live in? What's your name? Creepy things, And I'm like, I'm not gonna tell you that I

have no idea who you are. They walk past our apartment constantly. It's every time I go outside, they're waiting right outside the building. They're taking photos of the things across the buildings, like like stuff outside of people's units. It's really uncomfortable, and it's kind of telling because it's like, well,

we never need a security before. Oh, but but once you bought the building and wanted to kick everyone out, Oh, all of a sudden, you're you're you know, you're hiring these random people, which I will also add one of our neighbors talk to one of the security guards. He worked there for a day and was like, yeah, they lowered my pay to like minimum wage. I'm not going Yeah, yeah, he literally don't.

police officers. They aren't trying to. They don't have the power to do certain things that you may be afraid of.

judge too much, but I can't help it. When you know they're taking photos inside the windows of my apartment, it's sucking creepy, like.

which is which is hyper vigulous. I mean there's literally you can pick up a fucking ds M five and look at the definition of PTSD and I would say, uh, I can't say everyone. I haven't talked to everyone in the building, but I mean this process creates fucking PTSD. Like I'm not exaggerating, I'm not making this up. And also because the mental health fields, as a side note,

is such a like neoliberal, individualistic, fucking trash fire. It's hard to actually look at this correctly to say like this is this is like a mass like trauma of it. But despite the mass rama that everybody experiences with this, the resilience in it of being like Okay, we're still.

get permits and then they try to evict everybody, then then then there's the actual sixty day uh like countdown, I guess, depending depending on a lot of different factors. Right, But so the county one of the supervisors said, you know, I want to I want to make like the most gruesome speed bump to you know, to speed bump is eviction for core spaces. And so what they did is it is a big speed bump, but it actually doesn't

like solve the problem. Would solve the problem is either a no fault eviction more toorium, which is be like really broad. We're not sure how how what the chances are getting them to pass that. But another thing would be it's usually called right to return, but we're calling it right to re rent because right to return, I guess is a thing that like I don't know, I don't know, like Ziona say or something I don't know.

up their checks right now. And Sam, you can correct it from but it's like you have to pick up your checks by today, I don't know, like next week or something.

want in any context. But so having to like try to counter those all that disinformation, all those lies is like this constant, like parallel process, like trying to get the county to do stuff, but trying to get people to like understand like, no, they're lying to you, right, like while they're in this like chronic state of kind of like PTSD, They're like where am I going to go?

people going to go? If Santa Barbara has a from what I've heard, a one to two percent vacancy rate, these these these people have, including me as a person living here, have nowhere to go, I'm I will be entirely forced out of the county. Me and my partner, who holds a job here. He works as a delivery driver. He likes his job. It doesn't pay great, doesn't have good benefits, but he enjoys it and he's an important

part of the community. And if all of these human beings are forced out of here, what is that going to do to Santa Barbara? Are you know who's going to who are going to be, the teachers, the healthcare professionals, the everything. I will say in addition to that, this is why we formed Course Basis Tenants Association with the help of SBTU, so that we can not only stay together and work together as a union to fight this, but also what course Spaces will likely do in the future.

So we actually learned from the Santa Barbara Independent. They interviewed one of the I think was one of the Course Basis representatives who said this was they've done this forty six times and this is the first time they ever got this level of community outreach, which I was like, excuse me, what what we know that their executives are They've previously worked for Goldman, Sachs and Blackstone, and to find out they've done this forty at least forty six

other times and just gotten away with it. Now, we're not going to keep letting that happen. And so whatever happens here at CBC in the sweeps are four bill things. However it turns out, and hopefully it turns out in our favor, We're not going to stop because they are further They're just going to keep continuing this and it's we it's disgusting. We can't keep letting this shit happen. Like someone needs to stop it. It needs to be stopped.

And if I hope that we can get legislation to stop it, but if not, we're going to be a fighting force and we're not yeah, we're not stopping hell yeah.

but they chose Course Spaces as the company name. Right, So like and if you're in Arizona, if you're in Tennessee, if you're in Seattle, Seattle or whatever, and you are people getting rid of it did by these people or or I don't know, you're just students like renting by the bed and they won't fix stuff or whatever, like you can join the course basis. Then association this very well could be like a national level organization. Like right now it's local, but it's been set up to be

something that could be potentially national or international. Of course Bass wants to go you know, Capital and those now boarders, so they want to go fuck people up in other countries.

it's not going to be you. The tenants fighting them like no one, no one is ever going to and they're just going to keep running people over forever.

I'm not very good at that. I'm good at like scaring them, I guess, but like you have to like kind of scare them into acting. You have to like discipline the politicians in acting. So anybody that's like we just see more policies, it's like policies don't just happen, Like.

in numbers. And although I have faith that we will win against score spaces for our complex, even if we don't, we've left a huge mark and we've helped so many residents of Santa Barbara County. For maybe landlords that we're planning to change the stove out and not get permits, Well now they have to find a reason to get

a permit. We've at least done that, but I think there's a lot more that we will do and can do actually against course spaces and their future endeavors their properties they decide that they want to overpay.

tenants themselves. So I'm not like a representative of the group or au tuned, but it's a really strong network of really experienced organizers that are really intent on these kinds of things, right like forming like there's a crisis former tenant association, like organize your whole block, like get the politician to do a thing, go on rent.

Olive trees feature prominently in Palestinian art and literature as symbols of steadfastness amid a life of displacement. Palestinian olive trees are yet another target, however, for Israeli settlers and the IDF. And this is why I wanted to talk about this, because there's so much talk in Zionism about how sacred the land of Palestine is, how sacred their land is, the land that I will call Palestine, and how this land belongs to only them, the chosen people.

But these chosen people are the same ones desecrating the land and quite literally pulling out trees from their roots, trees that have been there for centuries, been part of that land for centuries. I've never been able to reconcile that with what Zionism pretends to be. That they respect anything at all, not even the land they supposedly belong to. And it's just something I always think about when I read reports about olive trees being uprooted or chopped down.

Isn't that the land you pretend to love? What could possibly be the Zionist rationale behind destroying the nature of that land. The olive tree encapsulates the Palestinian identity. It roots an entire nation to a land and livelihood lost to occupation, while serving as a potent symbol of resistance

against the territorial encroachment of illegal settlements. The Mediterranean climate is pretty balmy, and olive trees have for centuries provided a steady source of income from both the sale of their fruit and their silky golden oil derived from the fruit aka olive oil. The land around the Sea of Galilee, which is an enclosed sea in the northeast region of Palestine, was once the world's most important olive region. The area was the site of the earliest olive cultivation dating back

to five thousand BC. And this is just a fun fact that I thought was interesting, but southern Spain and southeastern Italy are now the biggest olive oil producing regions. To this day, between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand families in the Palestinian territories rely on olives and their oil as primary or secondary sources of income. The industry accounts for about seventy percent of local fruit production and

contributes about fourteen percent to the local economy. The trees have been a target for violence and vandalism in Palestine for decades, which is nothing new, but this is also

compounding the already damaging effects of climate change. While other farmers around the world can work to adapt their cultivation practices to a warming climate, Palestinians lack regular access to their olive groves and is coupled with increasingly violet attacks on the trees and the farmers themselves, and all of this spells out just a grim future for their historic way of life. An olive press owner in Palestine, Abuid, said, climate change and the occupation are making our job more

difficult than it already is. He owns several dunams of land in the inaccessible seam zone. He said, bitter olives. That is our present, that will be our future. Palestinian farmers are also often restricted by Israeli authorities from accessing their lands that are close to settlements or the separation Wall.

In twenty twenty one, the International Committee of the Red Cross said for years the ICRCA has observed a seasonal peak in violence by Israeli settlers residing in certain settlements and outposts in the West Bank toward Palestine farms and their property in the period leading up to the olive harvest season, as well as during the harvest season itself in October and November, and that quote was said by

Els Debouff, the head of ICRC's mission in Jerusalem. They went on to say farmers also experience acts of harassment and violence that aim at preventing a successful harvest, not to mention the destruction of farming equipment or the uprooting and burning of olive trees. The olive harvest season, which runs between October and November, is a lifeline for again about eighty thousand to one hundred thousand Palestinian families in

the occupied West Bank. Since nineteen sixty seven, more than eight hundred thousand Palestinian olive trees have been illegally uprooted by Israeli authority. In August twenty twenty one alone, more than nine thousand olive trees were removed, and on February ninth of twenty two, twenty fifty olive trees were forcibly uprooted and destroyed in the occupied West Bank region of Selfet.

For the past several years, when the olive harvest begins around October, both Israeli forces and settlers regularly attack Palestinian villages and farmers and destroy their crops on almost a daily basis. They beat farmers, they spray crops with chemicals, and uproot olive trees by the hundreds. In November of twenty twenty two, Israeli forces uprooted two thousand olive trees in the West Bank. Make it make sense, you can't.

It's stupid and illogical. On October twentieth, twenty twenty two, a group of men armed with metal bars and stones attacked klasm At Hajbrahammad and his olive grove in the village of El Lureyev, northeast of Vermola. This group of nearly two dozen settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settle of Adiad attacked the olive farmer and his friend Mazda Muhammad, the owner of the grove next door, uprooting and heavily damaging a total of eighty olive trees and all men

saplings between the two properties. The trespassers also set fire to a vehicle and water tank just for good measure before retreating to their homes in the legal settlement in the northern West Bank. Klose madhaj Rahammad is a forty five year old father of four, and he said, the Israeli army backed the aggressors and through tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at us so that the settlers can keep on destroying our crops. I thought the first time

this has happened. This man already lost an eye in a similar settler attack a decade ago, and these are far from isolated incidents. This man lost an eye, now he was losing his entire livelihood and the thing he's built for his entire life, probably his family's life as well. For another incident came from Doha Assous, who is a

sixty year old farmer. She says that she got up at five a m. To journey to her olive grove to harvest, only to find thirty five of the precious trees that were planted by her father seventy years ago. These trees were scattered in pieces after settlers took a chainsaw to them. I couldn't contain my sorrow. I hugged the broken trunks and waved goodbye to them forever. Then

the Israeli army pulled me away from my field. Many of the groves of Palestinian farmers are located in the vicinity of settlements in restricted areas under Israeli administrative and military control, which means that farmers need to apply for permits specifying when and for how long they can gain access to their own property. On top of that, Israeli law allows the government to seize Palestinian fields if they are abandoned for more than three years, which is at

go back to Autumn era land codes. Taken together, these rules incentivize attacks to keep the farmers from accessing their groves, thus allowing for claims of abandonment and eventual seizure of the land, and many families have given up on reaching their lands for fear of being killed, which is also I think what the settlers want. Farming activists Gasan Najad said during the harvest, settlers attack us on a daily basis. They want to take possession of our lands and build

more settlements. Today, the number of Israelis living in some two hundred and fifty settlements built on Palestinian territory illegally according to international law is between six hundred thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand people, and as settlements keep expanding, the rights of Palestinians to access their land in those

areas are stifled by ever more restrictive permitting. Since two thousand and five, more than ninety two percent of investigations into complaints made by Palestinian victims were closed without filing legal charges, surprise, surprise. According to independent observers appointed by the UN, the violence attributed to Zuri settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has worsened in recent months amid

a quote atmosphere of impunity. In response to these attacks, Palestinian farmers have been forced to plant about ten thousand new olive trees in the West Bank each year to prevent the region's five thousand year old industry from dying out. Chauna Dullan, the director of international relations with the NGO yesh Din, said impunity encourages settlers to take over more land. They feel more empowered than ever to use violent means to attack Palestinians. It's hard to imagine the situation getting

worse than this, but it likely will. And they also added that cooperation between settlers and the army on these organized attacks has become something of an established pattern. We've talked about this on other episodes in the past, but legislative elections in November of last year brought a sharp rise in settler violence because the far right religious Zionist Party and the Utzvah Yehudid party surged in the polls.

It'samar Benavide is now Israel's National Security Minister under a new coalition deal, and this grants him control over the Israeli Border Police Division in the West Bank. He proudly advocates for expelling disloyal Arab citizens from Israel. Dior Sadat from the Jerusalem based NGO bit Selim, which documents human rights violations in the occupied territories and frames Israeli policies in the West Bank as those of an apartheid regime.

They said, the State of Israel is using settlers as its unofficial armed arm in the West Bank to take over more land. Settlers are fully backed by the state. We expect to witness much more violence as far right

parties gain positions of power. As the unfortunate triumph of nationalist religious ideals has made the Israeli far right integrated in mainstream politics, human rights groups are becoming increasingly concerned with the implications for Palestinians and the occupied territories, going as far as to fear a formal annexation of all or parts of the West Bank through a Kinesset vote.

According to U one experts, twenty twenty two was the sixth year of consecutive annual increase in a number of Israeli attacks in the occupied territories, and the deadliest in the West Bank since two thousand and five. Let's take our first break right here. We'll be right back because we always are. Okay, Okay, we are back. Let's just jump right back in. In twenty twenty Harts magazine publish an article about Israeli's growing ancient olive trees in the

Galley region in northern Israel. The article focuses on the Neu Maher family, who have been growing quote hundreds of these ancient trees, many of which are between two hundred and eight hundred years old, on land adjacent to Mojave Da Zapori in the Lower Galilee region. The olive oil produced by Neu Mayor's company rish Makish or lakish. Sorry he was pronouncing that, probably, but this olive oil received high praise from Ronetz Vered, the article's author, and the

Harrit's food critic. But my question is how did such ancient trees fall into the hands of the Neu Mayer family, who settled into Zapori only twenty years ago. No historical context is given in the article to explain the existence of these trees, which the author rights are quote spread out over a large area and found in pasture is difficult for cultivation and harvesting. The answer to this question is that mojav Da Zapori this region sits on land

to the destroyed and depopulated Palestinian village of Safuria. According to Palestine remembered a website dedicated to preserving the memory of more than four hundred Palestinian villages which were destroyed during the Nekba. Safuria was a relatively large community, with over five thousand residents in nineteen forty eight. The area around the village, according to Wild Khalidi's book All That Remains, was well endowed with fertile soil and surface and underground

water resources, with olives being the village's chief crop. Safuria was conquered by Israeli forces on July fifteenth, nineteen forty eight. According to village residents, only a small number of people remained in the village after it was bombed from the air by Israeli forces, and very few people were able to return and retrieve their property. We talked about the

Nipka in the previous episode. If you guys want to revisit that, I won't get into it too much in this episode because I already have one all of it. But I'm just going to continue talking about this author, while Khalidi and his books. While Khalidi has another book titled The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, which unveiled previously concealed Israeli state archives, which Khalidi references in his book.

Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that those who remained in Sefudia were expelled in nineteen forty eight, but that quote hundreds infiltrated back in the months that followed. Israeli authorities, Morris wrote, feared that if they returning Palestinians were allowed to stay, the village would quote soon return to its pre war population. By then, neighboring Jewish settlements had already

coveted Sefuia's lands. According to Morris, one senior Israeli official stated in November of nineteen forty eight, next to Nazareth is a village whose distant lands are needed for our settlements. Perhaps they can be given to another place. After the inhabitants were loaded on trucks in January of nineteen forty nine and expelled again to neighboring Arab communities. In short, going back to that Heart's article, the hundreds of ancient olive trees that our reference did not just grow out

of thin air. The Palestinian residents of Safuria planted and cultivated them for centuries. The trees were stolen from them by force the state leases those trees after claiming the village's land as its own. Some of that land is now part of a man made forest planted by the

Jewish National Fund. But to ignore the village's history, as the Heart's article did, is no worse than ignoring the stolen land on which Israeli companies like the one mentioned and many others produced its olive oil in the West Bank. Taha Muhammadadi, the famed Palestinian poet, was born in and expelled from Safuria. The family of Muhammad Bedeck, the politician who heads the High follow Up Committee for Arab citizens of Israel, was uprooted from the village. Safuriya may be gone,

but its memory lives. I want to talk about how olive trees became a symbol in Palestinian art in literature. Olive trees are featured so prominently in Palestine art in literature even the far flung diaspora, as symbols of rootedness in an age of displacement, self sufficiency in times of hardship,

and peace in periods of war. Sliemad Mansour, a Palestinian painter in Jerusalem whose art has been long focused on the theme of Land said, the olive tree represents the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, who are able to live under difficult circumstances. In the same way that the trees can survive and have deep roots in their land, so too do the Palestinian people. Mahmoud d Ruish, the celebrated Palestinian poet who died in two thousand and eight, his

works have many reference to olives. In his nineteen sixty four poetry collection Leaves of the Olive Tree, he wrote, olive is an evergreen tree. Olive will stay evergreen like a shield for the universe. Nabil Anani, the celebrated Palestinian painter, Saramesis and sculptor, believes that the olive tree is a powerful national symbol that must be protected at all costs. Anani, who was considered one of the founders of contemporary Palestinian art, told Arab News. For me, it is both a national

and artistic symbol. It reflects the nature and beauty of Palestine. Our traditions, culture, poems and songs are often centered around the tree to the west of Ramolah, the administrative heart of the Palestine government. Annani said that the hillsides are full of olive trees as far as the eye can see. They cover entire mountains, and it is one of the most pleasant views that anyone can observe.

of Palestine. In a nineteen ninety three poems, she wrote, the roots of the olive tree are from my soil, and they are always fresh. Its lights are emitted from my heart, and it is inspired until my creator filled my nerve, root and body, so he got up while shaking its leaves due to maturity created within him. More than just a source of income and artistic inspiration, however, olives also form a vital part of Palestinian diet and

culinary culture. Pickled olives feature and breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and also provides significant nutritional health benefits. Olive oil, meanwhile, is used in scores of recipes, the most popular of which is zata rousset, which is basically fluffy peta bread dipped in oil then dabbed liberally in a time based powder that includes sesame seeds and spices. My mom actually talks about this all the time. It was what our hers staples growing up in childhood. Were obsessed with it.

Palestinian zata is delicious in particular, but olive oil is a huge part of this cultural Arab staple. Beyond the dinner table, Olive oil historically has had many other uses. It's been a source of fuel and oil lamps, a natural treatment for dry hair, skin and nails, and even as an insecticide. It is not only the fruit in its oil, but the olive tree contributes to the cultural

and economic life of Palestine. Olive pits, the hard stones in the center of the fruit have long been repurposed to make strings of prayer beads used by Muslims and Christians alike. As for the leaves and branches of the trees, they are trimmed during the harvest season to be used as feed for sheep and goats, while the broad canopy of the olive grove provides animals and their shepherds with

welcome shade from the relentless afternoon sun. The wood of felled trees has also been widely used in the carving of religious icons as far back as the sixteenth century, and as a source of firewood before the modern use of gas. In fact, the glassmakers of Hebron, who are famed for their stained glass, continue to use charcoal derived

from olive trees to fire their kilns. And while the quantifiably beneficial uses of the olive tree are many, perhaps what is even more valuable to Palestinians is the inspiration it has provided for poets, painters, and prophets down the ages. Not to mention this special place it continues to occupy

in their culture and quests for statehood. This is all why I wanted to mention the olive tree and really illustrate its significance to Palestinians and also just point out that destroying these crops and these trees, or claiming them for your own it actually is an insult to the land itself, and that is a Zionist action that I just think has no actual excuse or defense. Why destroy the land that you want so badly if not for spite and hate. So that's what I want to talk

about today. I hope it was interesting, educational or whatever. How we encourage you to try Zeta Zata one day in your life from an actual air person so you can make sure it's good. But yeah, that's all I got, So thank you for listening and until next time. Fuck the idea. The tug is real.

reporting on it. So can you explain like the physical kind of stature and impact of the wall.

on half. So that already for us as an organization, since the beginning and the conception of the idea of start rolling all of these remote areas, start looking at the environmental impact that social action can have.

of the ecological impacts. Maybe if we start where you are in Tucson, and then we move gradually west to where I am and at the western end of it, And would that be a good sort of way to do that?

wall stops there. And then there is certain areas that there is a lot of unfinished projects, or we also call them orphan walls, like sections of the wall that never were completed and they just stand there. Unfortunately, to get them up there, there was a lot of impact. For example, they use dynamite to blow up entire mountain tops to get equipment up there, and some of the cases without even constructing any wall at the end.

a lot of the vegitation that was there before. Then as you keep coming, passing through the Phariitu Mountains, then you get to the area called the Buenos Aires National Refuge near the town of Sassab, and there is a large segment of a wall there with twenty six gaps, small gaps, big gaps, and all of these gaps have been there since the beginning of the construction.

Tona Autumn decided that they didn't want a wall there, and they fought for it, and they didn't build a wall, and there is about.

the flow of the water as well. And then once you pass the reservation, then you go into Organ Pipe National Park, and then you start seeing more wall sections on areas like Kito w Akito Springs like a very important ceremonial site for he has shed.

walls are being built in that area as well. So even so President Biden said that he was not going to build more walls, we still see a new construction happening as we speak right now.

I know that there are some jaguars. Jaguars, however, you want to say that that are impacted in it's my very British pronunciation. In Arizona, there is the bighorn sheep, of course, who are closer to me, right near to Cumba where people will have heard the scripted series by the time this comes out, so they'll be familiar with the Cumba And can you talk about the impact of the wall on those sort of bigger animals.

this is the northest most territory. So species like jaguars can all of a sudden be drinking water out of the same pond with a black bear, and that is very unusual and very rare and very amazing, you know. So we also have ocelots, which is another type of

cat that lives here in Arizona. We also have the Mexican gray walls species there is in danger that use these corridors back and forth, and unfortunately we haven't had the opportunity to track properly a lot of these animals to recognize their migration patterns, because a lot of these animals cannot be put on a GPS color for example.

But what we have done is put a lot of cameras on the wilderness and we're able to photograph jawars on this side of the border and photograph the same jahwa a few years later in Mexico or vice versa. So there is a lot of proof that all these animals have been using these corridors for thousands of years. There is plenty of evidence that the importance of these

wildlife corridors in the Sonoran Desert. And also we see, you know, like that with the construction of the border wall, a lot of the species that we used to see more often in the United States don't see as much anymore. Animals have a memory, so when they come and all of a sudden, city is really large obstacle, they're less likely to come back and try it again, and that can be an a racial thing that they came past it two fture generations.

some places, and it's been also increased the elevation. So when you increase the elevation on these roads and do not have the proper drainage on the areas that need to be and then you're going to have water being stuck on one side or the oider of the border, not able to make it to the areas where it used to flow normally. So we might not see the consequences and the first year or the second year, but we can start seeing consequences in a few years from now.

Several plants all of a sudden starting to die because they didn't have the water that their habita used to provide for them. So that's why they grew there on the first place. So we might see a lot of changes on the landscape in regards of the way that the water moved on those places.

an emergency that they waived a lot of those. Normally they would have tribal nations would have the right to sort of inspect and do a survey before digging back. I know in twenty twenty they weren't doing that, right.

swing at it. Is like, can you describe these desert landscapes for people who are because people think of the desert, right, and they think of Osita wells like where where people like to go drive their vehicles, you know, and it looks like like Saudi Arabia. But that's not most of the desert. The desert is actually a very live place and a place full of like life that has struggled and made a way to exist there, can you explain.

And it's a very special place, not just sort of because it's it's unique, but it has a real sort of well yeah, it has a uniqueness you can't really feel anywhere else in the world.

of water. But you got to remember also that the desert comes most alive at night, so that's when all the species you know that are not wanting to hang out on the heat of the desert, they come out and this place becomes like a whole other place at night.

So it is it is definitely worth protecting this and every single desert, you know, because sometimes as we might not see the biodiversity in our first visit, it's there, and we like the amounts of plants and animals wor enough to sustain entire populations of people as well in the past. So I think once you build a relationship with the desert and able to experience, you and everybody that I have talked starts developing this really deep appreciation.

wall is not a contiguous thing. It's full of gaps and holes and a lot of the places where there are gaps of places where it's hard to build and therefore it's hard to cross. Can you explain what this It creates a funnel, right, like a funneling effect through the gap sometimes. Can you explain what that means for people who are crossing north.

twenty twenty two had died crossing north. That's a very low estimate for the amount of people who died, and Border Patrol are kind of actively trying not to count all of the deaths according to agents I've spoken to.

like young folks are trying to climb. You know, sometimes there is an older lady or sometimes an older man that wants to give it a try. And the rate of injuries definitely has increased. So much of people falling because they got this year, they got naushalls, they burn their hands, or they lost balance and then fall from thirty feet high.

is like that. And that's people who went to our ei today before little learned, people who've been walking since the Darian Gap, or you know, people who have much lesser means to equip themselves. It's a very dangerous environment. People maybe listening and thinking, Like I think with immigration issues and specifically with the wall and the border, it's such an apparatus right the whole, you know, DHS and

its one hundred and seventy five billion dollar budget. It's such an apparatus that people can feel powerless in trying to just put a stop to this, to make this change, to make this even you know, a little bit more humane, just so we seem to like ratch it up the evil meter every year at the border, regardless of Democrats

or Republicans, Like, it doesn't matter. What would you suggest, folks listening can do to make it more humane, to advocate for like even less impactful border policies on the environment or on people.

and see how can we really address root causes. You know, the border wall is just a medieval solution that it's really trying to stop such a.

Club Borderlands. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of the different We have a YouTube channel as well, and you can see some of the videos of the documenting that we do. We're able to go down to the boorder document with drawn so people can actually look at the irony of the whole project. We do also autiings that we take people out into the desert to get familiar with the issues themselves. We do clean up at the local rivers and collaborate with other organizations, all

kinds of works. So with people and the audiences based here in Arizona, they're welcome to join us to some of these audience or activities that we do with the community.

We are going to do an announcement probably in the next month because since twenty nineteen, Sierra Club, in collaboration with the Southern Border Community coalitions to the federal government for the legal use of funds of the two eighty four and two eight h eight funds, which were funds that were originally allocated for the military and drug related programs that were used to border work construction.

you're in one of the other places. At Baltimore, you're dealing with air quality the likes of which you've probably never seen unless you fled there from the West Coast. Basically everyone who lives in the northeast of the United States right now, as well as a huge number of Canadians, are absolutely cloaked in wildfire smoke, drowning in the ghosts of a thousand forests. And that's a bummer. It's a bummer, and it's a real problem. And so I wanted to

kind of sit down with Margaret Killjoy, our resident Prepper extraordinaire. Hi, Margaret, Hello, how are you?

is like a moral thing. But it happens anytime there's a disaster that affects everybody at once, all the stuff that is useful for countering that disaster sells out or is looted very very quickly, and then people suddenly don't have the kind of options for tools that they need. You know, this is not great. So I wanted to kind of sit down first off and kind of talk about one of the better airsats tools that you can put together if you are trying to deal with the

problem of making your air cleaner. And basically we have to kind of split this problem into two. Right, there is the problem of what do I do if I'm going outside, and we'll talk about that later. But there's stuff that you purchase, you know, that is the only things that's going or stuff that you already had on hand is all that's going to help in that instance.

But there are some things you can do to keep your inside space clean of particulate and relatively safe that don't require at least as many things to purchase, and that are you know, can be made with stuff that you probably are likelier to have on hand. So I want to talk first about what you can do to

like filter your indoor air. You know, in Portland when we had our horrible fucking wildfire apocalypse, yellow smog blanketing the world and making everything look like fucking blade Runner, everyone at least had gas masks and full face respirators, which you know, folks in the Northeast right now haven't gone through that experience and so don't have that kind of stuff on hand. But what we didn't have in Portland was the stuff that can keep your indoors cleaner.

For one thing, people don't have like HEPA filters or central air you know in Oregon as often as they have it in some other parts of this country, and so a lot of people wound up creating building for themselves what are called Corsey Rosenthal box now a Coarsey Rosenthal box is a kind of like air filtration system for rooms that's made up of a box fan and five air filters, like the kind of filters that you're going to use for your HVAC system in your house.

Right pretty much most houses are going to have some kind of like air filter already, and they're also widely available, Like if you go to any home depot or lows, they're going to have a shitload of air filters. You can use multiple different types. The bigger the air filter, the more air it'll handle. Coursey Rosenthal boxes were invented

kind of right at the start of the pandemic. One of the guys who made it, Richard Corsi, was an environmental engineer who kind of realized as soon as the pandos started that a lot of poor people were going to be absolutely fucked when it came to filtering air in their homes. Because good you can get like a nice Hepa filter, like standalone Hepa filter, but they're usually several hundred dollars. So he wanted to try and provide people with something that could make that was a lot cheaper.

He had worked previously with the CEO of a filter company that I think is based in Texas, so he called that guy up and they collaborated on a design that basically used you build like a box out of air filters and you stick a back box fan on top of it. If you google Coursey c O R S I DASH Rosenthal R O S E N T H A L box, you'll find the Wikipedia page which has a guide to making these. It's very simple. If you're not crafty at all or have no real tools,

you can still make it work. I built won a couple of years ago, you know, when should happened in Portland, as did several people I knew. And they're not hard to do. And the most common size of box that you can build will allow it'll basically change the air out in a room five full times per hour and a five hundred square foot room, which is reasonably good. It'll make a meaningful difference in your indoor air quality if you're like blanketed in Hell's mog right now.

and what things are are running. But HEPA filters are also standalone ones likelier to sell out fast as opposed to kind of the raw components to making a Coarsey Rosenthal filter, so you may find it easier to get access to I like the Corsy Rosenthal filter for a couple of other reasons. Obviously, it's accessible and it's comparatively affordable, but it also is something that you can make yourself that will have a meaningful impact on how you weather

this event. That's important psychologically in a disaster, feeling as if you have some sort of agency by actually doing the useful thing. And it can also be important from a community point of view. You can theoretically raise money and put together people to make Corsey Rosenthal boxes and hand them out to people who maybe can't afford them, or have mobility issues or less able to get the equipment.

That's the kind of thing that builds community connection and also offers an immediate alleviation of suffering and health consequences for people, which is the kind of thing that I like to see people doing in a disaster like this. I also kind of like this filter because it represents a rare example of people you might call elites taking immediate action to ensure cash poor individuals had a life

saving tool available to themselves. It's one of those kind of rare examples from the start of the pandemic of like that radical solidarity we saw bits and pieces of. And I think Jim Rosenthal and Richard Corsi are pretty cool in my book for figuring out this thing. So you know, there's a lot that's nice about these filters.

that's a more accessible thing compared to the equipment. We're about to start talking about stuff like respirators and stuff like standalone HEPA filters, which are likely to sell out pretty quickly as people go to all of the stores to buy up all the things.

see in disasters. I think that's kind of particularly meaningful to me because of why this air quality event is so frightening to folks. You know, people who are in New York or Philly or Richmond or DC or a lot of other places in the Northeast have not dealt with this kind of air quality before. This is because most people who are young in those areas, because most young Americans have had the privilege of experiencing air pollution primarily as either an annoyance or as an abstract concept.

A big part of why is that the Clean Air Act, instituted in nineteen sixty three, did a huge amount to stop the kind of poisoning of the sky that led to fairly regular smog events in the fifties and early to mid nineteen sixties, even nineteen seventies in a lot of parts of this country. You know, it took a while.

There was more involved than just the Clean Air Act, but shit like this used to be a lot more common, and Americans suffered from a variety of illnesses, including adult onset emphysema or young adult on set mphysima at a much higher rate because of stuff like this. If you are young, and by young, I mean like my age, Margaret's age, you know, not all that young. Because air quality in the United States has been significantly better than it was for like my parents when they were kids

for quite a while. You have benefited from a pretty remarkably successful campaign to render Americans at least less vulnerable to them to this kind of pollution. Now, this came alongside years of others' reforms and things like emission standards, which were successful enough that in like West La right now, a lot of days of the year you can see the mountains. That was not a thing for people who

lived in Los Angeles and say the nineteen seventies. I had an annual check up right after I moved there with my doctor in you know, southern California, and I asked him, like what life had been like there during the smog years. And the thing that he mentioned to me that stuck with me is that he had a shitload of like patients in their twenties who had like the early symptoms of emphysema, which is just not a

thing that really occurred occurs in southern California anymore. Although, you know, because of climate change, there are similar things that are starting to hit. You know, there's a number of like fungal based infections that people are getting, particularly in the valley that's really nasty, and wildfire smoke could

bring back a lot of this stuff. And so, yeah, we're kind of looking at a lot of the gains in public health caused by reducing you know, the amount of smog in the air going away as a result

of you know, externalities that can't be controlled locally. Now, the downside of the really lovely state of affairs that was kind of ushered into by the Clean Air Act is that most Americans have spent their lives in kind of a bubble of artificially pure air, while the negative externalities that made are tech heavy lives possible were exported to the global South, and those people experienced with increasing regularity the kind of catastrophic pollution that in an earlier

age here caused the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to light on fire every spring or so. Globally, in twenty eighteen, some eight point seven million deaths were caused by air pollution, specifically pollution created via the burning of fossil fuels. David Wallace Wells, who writes about climate catastrophe better than most people, put the cost this way in a testimony before the US Senate Committee on the Budget in twenty twenty one.

Those punishments are harrowingly widespread. The Lancet puts the global annual death toll of air pollution at nine million. This is dying at the scale of the Holocaust every single year. In India, where three hundred and forty nine thousand stillbirths and miscarriages have been attributed annually to the effects of air pollution, the average resident of Delhi has had his or her life expectancy shortened by more than nine years

from the repetitive inhalation of smog. Globally, the average figure is two years.

Like one of the things that's you know, you've kind of seen on like Twitter and shit is like people in the West Coast and the East Coast fighting about who's had it worse in terms of wildfire smog lately, and like, well, the answer if you want to talk about who's been dealing with this the worst and the longest is like people in fucking Day, people in Shinzhen,

you know, the in China. Like this is a problem that is primarily born I mean, this is not in the US too, by the poor, but it's been born by the poor outside of the United States because we successfully externalized a lot of the consequences of our lifestyles, and ideally the hopeful thing is that perhaps experiencing this in New York City, which is, if you're not aware, we're the only writers that people apparently listen to live will cause some kind of enhanced solidarity for the folks

in what you might call or what often is described as the Global South, who are have been dealing with this for years and will continue to deal with this in a much more severe form with much fewer resources available to them. If you are currently living in one of the great cities besieged by wildfire smoke, your life span has already been shortened. Now, I'm not trying to be like panic inducing. We're talking about like by the same it would be like if you had smoked half

a pack of cigarettes since this all started. It's kind of similar to that. But there is no safe amount of time to inhale particulate in the quantities when you're talking about AQI over four hundred. There's no safe amount of time to just kind of be raw dogging the air out in the street. Any amount is going to damage your lungs, it's going to stiffen your arteries, it's going to increase your chances of a number of cancer's.

Heart attack risk increases by a meaningful amount. When you are out dealing with stuff like this, your immune system is significantly weaker, and.

although you're clothing will probably always smell of wildfire. There's a lot also, it's kind of worth noting that, like, when we're talking about the dangers here, it's not it may smell like a little like campfire smoke, but you're also inhaling an incinerated asbestos and particle board and you know, presumably hordes of ammunition that had been buried by Canadian preppers. So like, there's a lot of reasons why you don't

want to breathe this shit in. So when you go outside, you are going to want to wear a mask in ninety fives work reasonably well for adults if you have any on hand, or if you're fortunate enough to live in a city with the kind of emergency preparedness budget that allows them to provide stuff like that New York City is providing in ninety fives in some quantity right now. If you're out on your own, an N ninety five maybe an easy thing to acquire quickly for relatively cheap.

That said, they're not perfect for one thing. They don't tend to work very well on kids. For this just because like the fit is off and wrong. You may find that something like a KF ninety four allows you to get a better fit on a child, And those do work reasonably well, certainly better than like nothing at all in this kind of a situation. My personal recommendation, if they are in stock and if you can afford them,

is either a half or a full face respirator. We'll talk about the differences between those in a second, But these are the kind of masks that, like, if you're a contractor and you're like putting together a building, You're dealing with a shitload of insulation. You're like cutting certain kinds of metal or you know you're doing a whole bunch of different things that can kick up nasty particulate. You probably have a number of these, right like people

I know in graffiti and graffiti. Yeah, if you're doing a lot of graffiti, you know, hang out near a building, you know that kids that kids spray paint a lot, and then you know, stick them up with a handgun for their their respirators. That's a responsible way to deal with Yeah, that's teach everyone smoke through the respirator. That

makes it extra cool and healthy. So yeah, what we're talking about here, Like, if you're looking for a thing to type into Google or whatever, threem half mask respirator. I found a three half mask respirator kit with a couple of what are called Bayonet filters for forty six forty one on Granger dot com right now. You can get them for similar prices on Amazon dot com. If you walk into a Lows or a home depot and they have not there hasn't been a run on them,

you can probably find these. You will want to make sure you get filters with them. Sometimes you get just the respirator and you have to buy the filters separately. Yeah, usually if you get one, it'll it'll come with them. But make sure the filters are going to be these. Most of them look kind of like triangles with like rounded edges that are sort of this like pinkish purple color. For the most part, there's some that are gray and like circular. It doesn't really matter you know which kind

of filters yours get. I would say, just get whatever they have the most of Well, yeah, the in.

normal people do not need in this situation. That's like, you know, it has like a tank of stuff walking around. Don't get that it's going to be a lot more than is necessary for at least the next like six to eight months. Respirators are then further divided into half face masks, which things like Batman from that the Worst of the Nolan Batman or not Batman. Think of Bane from the Worst of the Nolan Batman movies. It's a little bit like that right where it's kind of just

over your mouth and jaw. And then there's full face masks, and there are also reusable elastomeric respirators. I tend to prefer half a full face masks for one thing. There's no reason to like you're not working in some sort of like capacity where you want to be tossing it every time, you know, you might as well just get one. You can plug new filters into. A half face mask

is going to be a lot more convenient. It's a lot less sort of weight and stuff, but it doesn't protect your eyes or anything, which if you're dealing with really heavy particulate, you may find your eyes getting irritated out there. The benefit of a full face mask is that it does protect your eyes and if you happen to ever be in a situation where there's hella, mace or tear gas being used, it provides excellent protection from

that kind of thing. The downside is that these are three to four times as expensive as the half faced respirator, so they're not my general recommendation to people. But again, either of them is going to be perfectly adequate for wildfire smoke.

protect you from particulate. You may if you are someone who has the benefit of money decide I'm going to just go ahead and get a good gas mask if so, you know, there's a number of places you can look to for that. The one I have is called a mira Ir. They're three four hundred dollars something like that. I can confirm that they work great when you're drenched in tear gas so heavy that you can't see through it.

People bitch at them online in like weirdo prepper communities sometimes because they have some like silly attachments and stuff that are kind of too expensive. But like I have used every kind of face mask filtering product in heavy gas and mace mirrors are comfortable, they do work well. That said, much more expensive and much heavier than you need for something like filtering particulate. This would not be my first go to for anybody. Any kind of gas

mask you get is going to be very bulky. Even the ones that are made specifically for stuff like special forces use where they're like really streamlines so that you can like shoulder a rifle with them, those are still much bulkier than you know a normal half faced respirator is going to be. They also, you know, one of

the benefits. One thing I will say I did a few times when Portland was bad, as I would put on too filters in my gas mask, which allows you to kind of breathe it close to the normal rate that you can, and I would go jogging because like otherwise, you really can't safely. I'm not saying you should do this, Please don't like avoid outdoor exercise as a general rule. Anyway, Military surplus gas masks, if that's what you have, again,

and you have filters for them that can help. If you do attempt to do this, you will immediately gain an understanding of why chemical warfare suck so much, because most, especially MILLSERP gas masks suck ass to wear super uncomfortable, super shitty visibility. Not ever my primary recommendation, but again, if that's what you've got and all you can get, it will indeed filter out particulate.

That's going to be a lot more effective for basically one hundred percent of people. Now, you will probably notice, if you've been paying attention to what we've been talking about today, that all of the effective measures for mitigating the danger of smoke cost money, nearly all of them at least, and also rely on having stuff like access to transit that can get you to a store, on you know, having an address that packages can be delivered to.

Because once again, as we talked about with you know, places like India that have been dealing with smog like this for many, many years, the costs of climate collapse are always heaviest on those who can least bear them, assuming you are housed. There are some other decent tips that can allow you to protect your house. One of them is that you probably want to create a clean

room for your animals. Your cats, your dogs number one, are less capable of understanding what's happened happening, and they will notice something is wrong. You know, they will not go outside and feel like it's a normal day just because they're stupid dog or whatever. Like, they will recognize that something is gravely wrong. You want to keep them inside as much as possible because it's even they're smaller

than you, right, it's even worse for them. The same thing with think like you want to keep your kids inside because the kind of shit that like maybe a two hundred pound adult can sort of shrug off in terms of particulate will hit a sixty five pound child

or a forty five pound dog a lot worse. So a good thing to do is to create a clean room, potentially with the kind of filters, the Corsey Rosenthal filters that we talked about, if you have the ability doing something like you would do kind of for a mudroom, a little kind of airlock situation when you take your pets in and out from doing their business, so you can minimize the amount of shit that gets in. There's a few ways to do this, you know, when there's

not currently hell s everywhere. Making sure that the seals and stuff on your windows and doors are of quality and up to date and recently replaced is key. Obviously if you're under smog right now, that's less of a realistic thing that you can do. But one thing you can do people, did you know in Portland during this if you get like towels and soak them and put them around the edges. If you know you've got oh I know this windows, Yeah, I know stuff's getting in.

If you kind of can tape that up around and keep it wet around the window, that will take some of the basically particulate. It'll get kind of soaked into the towel and it should minimize kind of what you're dealing with in the house. I haven't seen, actually, this is one of the things I haven't seen like studies on how well this works. But it's what most of the people I knew who had kind of older houses did and do during wildfires, and it seems to have

an impact. So I would recommend kind of trying that.

know it'll be fine for a little while. But if, like most people, you kind of let that go a little long, probably one of the first things you should do is slot in a fresh air filter if you've got one. If you are shopping for an air filter and you want something that is going to work better in your HVAC system on particulate, you want something with a high minimum efficiency reporting value or MERV, which Margaret mentioned a little earlier. Value. Those are going to catch

more particles than normal filters. You're going to want to switch your HVAC into fan only mode immediately. This will insist ensure that it runs your indoor air through the filter rather than pulling air in from the outside. Yeah,

that is a key thing to do. If you've got kind of a central system, you're also going to want to turn off anything that pulls in air from the outside, like, for example, the portable air conditioner units with like hoses that go at your window, which is the things that like everyone in the East Coast tends to have as opposed to a central system. So if you've got one of those, some window acs will have what's called an

outdoor air damper that you can close. If they don't have that, you're gonna want to keep it off and sealed, and you're going to want to in any case use tape or whatever you have to ensure that the seal around the unit is more robust. I know, people generally, you know, can be a little bit lax days about the actual like window seal with a unit like that

is generally not perfect. You're going to want to be extra careful because even a small gap, you know, that that allows shit in is going to allow quite a lot of particulate and like a surprising amount. Again, a lot of some of these methods are just like stuff that you should be doing to prep your house, but a lot of them do require resources, which is, you know,

frustrating for a lot of reasons. I'm sure hope I'm hoping Margaret that like what you found online is accurate people's experience and that stores have not sold out of the things that are useful in this situation. That is one of those things kind of when we talk more broadly about preparation for stuff like this, that people should be thinking about, like, don't just think about what stuff has gone wrong in the past. That's a great way to have plenty of toilet paper when there's a shortage

of water or whatever. Right likewise, it's one of those things where, you know, if you were in when I made a couple of posts about what was happening in New York earlier, and somebody responded, and I was making the joke that like, hey, if you get a full face respirator, it'll be useful, you know, if you've got to fight the cops too, And their comment was like well, we don't really get tear gassed here. And first off, I mean that may be true, but like you guys

do get maced, and they're great against mace. I can say that from a intense personal experience. But the other thing is that, like, well, that's part of when we talk about kind of proactive practical prepping. A big part of it is thinking about stuff that like maybe unlikely, but it's not impossible, and that if you don't have shit on hand, you're not going to be able to deal with, right.

fives and tape and stuff. And then if your dog, if you're really on top of it, you're going to do the work to acclimate your dog to this, right, Yeah, reward, reward your dog greatly and slowly build up their tolerance. And if you don't have time for that, you can put a cone on your dog to keep your dog to keep the mask on. And obviously you don't want to, like I mean, mostly just want to keep your dog inside, right,

but yeah, if your dogs, yeah, exactly. There's actually an argument for pad training my dog that I I've never bothered to do.

needed one and someone else had one. I will just have one, right And you know, so if this is you're suddenly I need an air purer of fire. It maybe is too late, it may not be too late. It don't beat yourself up if this is when you decide that you're going to start having one, you know.

But everything actually really does work that way, because that's just the way people be and so like, I'm sure basically everyone in New York had extra toilet paper on hand just shit hit, but they weren't ready for you know, which is you know that's not New Yorkers, you so stupid. No,

that's everybody. That's how that's how we all are. The only reason Portland was more prepared for this when it hit us is that we'd been getting like a significant portion of the city had been going out and getting tear gassed every night.

the map and game plan out stuff. You can make it fun, ye Like, there's no reason not to treat it like a you know, a session of D and D. Walk through different kinds of problems that you guys think are more likely and try to lay out kind of consequence trees as to like what might happen and what might be necessary, and then you know, think about what kind of equipment would be useful in those situations and put it in a kind of teer it in a

list of like what is more affordable, what is more likely, and you know, kind of trioge with that, and what's small too, Yeah, what's small? Like what's easy to have on hand? I'm going to go get eye drops.

be perfect at thinking through stuff. But like, the more time you spend kind of trying to make your brain elastic when it comes to disaster, the more likely you are to have at least some of the things that you need to deal with problems when they occur. Especially since a lot of tools are like multi use tools you know, are great with wildfire smoke. They're also you know, potentially useful if like, for example, a pandemic where to hit.

forest fire? And I thought it through and most of the answer was keep my car, you know, gassed and ready to go and have my go bag. And then I was like, that's it. That's the only preparation I'm gonna do for this fire that may or may not happen. And so then I stopped worrying about it because I've done everything that I'm going to do. There's like a next level thing, like actually these particular fires. I was

looking it up. I think one hundred thousand people have been displaced from their homes in Canada as a result of this.

wake up in the morning and it's orange. Yeah, Like it's a nice way to allay the doom feeling, Like give yourself a task. It increases agency and when you once you build that thing, you know either you'll use it all up right away because those filters don't last forever, or you'll have something on hand the next time this occurs. Yeah, so yeah, I don't know. That's what I got, Margaret, You got anything else to get into?

close it up. And I also want to say this is a really good time to take care of each other in particular, look out for asthmatic friends, or if you're the asthmatic friend, get other people to help take care of you. Go get groceries for your asthmatic friends during a smoke emergency, because you're gonna be able to handle it a lot better than some other people might.

Is the color of Mexico in a breaking bad right, Like it's this is going to happen again, because the fires aren't going to stop until there's no more forest left than they all have more gloriously clean air.

the country is literally just because of social norms. Have stopped having people mask and people don't want to be the weirdo with a mask. And I will say, as someone who has been the weirdo for the past thirty years of my life, it's not that bad to be the weirdo. And we can build new social norms. And so if you're worried about wearing a half mask respirator and a smoke emergency because you'll look weird, it is better than getting sick.