Part Two: Riot Dogs Are Very Good Dogs

thank you. We talked to the domestication of dogs. We talked about why dogs and humans belong together and why mass euthanasia is not the most effective thing that's ever happened in terms of fixing some of the problems between humans and dogs. Today, we're gonna talk about riot dogs.

can't not say it. There's all these jokes in twenty twenty about anarchist jurisdictions. Actually they weren't jokes. There's all these strange accusations made about why the government should kill everyone in various cities in the United States for being anarchist jurisdictions. But exarchia anarchists present about as much political power as the actual government does, and that balance goes

back and forth all the time. Right now, Airbnb is fucking it up, and I haven't entirely kept up with how things have changed in the ten years or so since I've been there. But there are or were dozens of squattish social centers. These are huge buildings. Anarchists there house refugees and immigrants and physically stop any attempts by police to deport those immigrants. They run pay what you want cafes. They have open air movie screenings, health clinics,

and language classes for migrants. Even the restaurants you have to pay for often give out free food during the general strikes. Greece loves a good general strike, and because well, it means literally the birthplace of rule by the people, so they like finding out ways to do that. There is a large squatted park there called Navarino's Park that is run by anarchists. Tourist guides say a self managed park run by locals, which is technically true.

In garden. Police tend to only come into Asarchia in large numbers because when they do they're often met with molotovs and rocks. People try to solve problems through self organizing. While I was there, I went to the weirdest anarchist demonstration I've ever been to, which was the most like the anarchists are in Charge demonstration. Yeah, it was a reclaim the streets demonstration. Normally, a reclaim the streets demonstration is when you reclaim the streets from like government and

capitalism by having a big parade. This time it was a demonstration led by anarchists of all ages to reclaim the streets as public space to be shared by all. Because there's a problem with some of the younger punks in the neighborhood were harassing older people, and so the anarchists through it, like leave the old folks alone, new assholes. Yeah, it was beautiful and it was just and the way they did that wasn't They showed up and like we're

going to fuck up any of the young punks. No, they just like showed up with like food and shit, and they were like, look, the streets belong to all of us. We are all part of this neighborhood. We all live here together, like.

mechanism of that. As an article in The Daily Beast put it, the freedom and ease of life in Exarchia is preserved by the constant and immediate will to set shit on fire, throw tear gas canisters back at the police, maintain esthetic control of the neighborhood, and use petrol bombs to remind everyone. The place is not for sale. It has been under anarchist control for about half a century, as far back as far as I can piece together. Literally,

it's coming up on its fiftieth anniversary. Because in order to talk about stray dogs, we're going to talk about Greek military junta.

communists and the government's and exile. The communists lost. The right and the left had been really polarized in Greece ever since, maybe since before then, but that's as far back as I traced it. In nineteen sixty seven, the right wing staged a coup. In nineteen sixty eight, a centrist guy tried to assassinate the military leader, but he sadly failed. There were large demonstrations, but nothing that really shook the dictatorship to the core until nineteen seventy three.

Nineteen seventy three, a fuck ton of people were like, are you just serious? Are you serious? We have a dictatorship? Fuck this an entire battleship. The H and S Velos mutinied. Literally the commander was part of the mutiny. Know that I could still kind as a mutiny, but I guess if the entire ship mutinies against the higher naval thing right, they refused to return to Greece. Meanwhile, the students are fighting against conscription. In nineteen seventy three, students barricaded themselves

into the University of Athens. This is in February, the first one of these, and the cops were brutal, they tortured people, they did all that stuff. This didn't stop the students overall. It probably stopped individual students because of the death and the torture. In November, students at the Athens Polytechnic, a university in Exarchia, they went on strike

and their motto was bred education and liberty. Forty years later, I was inside the Polytechnic while students were preparing for another demonstration, and I saw one of my favorite pieces of graffiti ever, which translates to anarchy and stale bread, with the argument like subtextas I could live off of only anarchy and stale bread.

of our way. And so they barricaded the place and they held the cops off for a night and the second day and this is some shit out of a movie, I fucking swear is now what's called celebration day. Thousands of people showed up to support them, and it I believe this is like basically like when the protests really got large against this dictatorship, a radio tower inside the occupied university that they cobbled together like literally out of like the thing I read was translated was like out

of pieces from the lab, like the science lab. They just fucking put together radio tower and they started spitting out demands for freedom, and for the first time, molotods started showing up at protests in Athens, and the junta freaked out. They declared martial law, which they had like kind of I think walked back a little bit because they'd been around for a little bit. They drove a tank through the gates of the university. Twenty four people

were killed. And this is the part of this is like the last words heard from the occupied radio station before it went dead were hail freedom, spoken in an adolescent voice.

fells apart. In nineteen seventy four, there were free elections in Greece once more. A referendum to install the monarchy failed and Greece became a republic. And the students were fucking heroes. They had destroyed a dictatorship, I mean, alongside a ton of other people. So for almost forty years there was a law that said cops weren't allowed to enter universities because people were like, oh, I don't know, maybe giving students defensible spaces as good for democracy because

it was destroyed dictatorship. This was the nineteen eighty two academic sanctuary law. In twenty nineteen, a right wing government scrapped that law.

in this direction. Cool, and it's going to be a story about the dogs, but now we're going to talk about the riots that made those dogs famous.

and the cops murdered Alexandros. They murdered a fifteen year old. They claimed that their shot was a ricochet. The autopsy disagree it. Yeah, shocker there really, yeah, really total news to everyone. Within an hour, the riots started. Within two days, there were twenty eight cities across Greece that were on fire. Basically Athens was burning, Malthous were everywhere. The police station Outpost Nicksarkia was firebombed by a crowd of one hundred people.

Students went on strike everywhere. Labor unions went on strike. Air traffic controllers shut down dozens of flights because they went on strike. And it was about Alexandro's but it was about more than that. It was about the failing economy. Two thousand and eight, as everyone will recall, was a really great time for everyone economically. It was about increasing financial inequality, and it was about authoritarian control of the state.

It was about people's demands to live lives of self determination. So a private company that kept records of individual debt was burned. Their records were burned. Protesters shot out the tires of a police bus with AK forty seven. By the end of this even some cops went on strike and protested against this. Is this like actually surprised me. The cops went on strike and protested against the cops.

I think it was during this, but it might have been during some of the protests a little bit later than that. I talked to a Greek friend about this time, and his perspective was that in the minds of the average Greek person, the anarchists were about as legitimate of a force within society as the police. Like some people supported the anarchists, some people supported the police, and the rest were like, well, both sides have a point, and that is not a situation that I have ever experienced

anywhere else. A Greek woman, quoted by The Daily Beast put it quote the day we don't tear things down because the government murdered a child is the day we are no longer human? And I don't know. I think about how often people have to do that all over the world, you know, in these clouds of tear gas. Amongst the rock throwing, molotov throwing anarchists who were supported by a surprising percentage of the Greek population, a hero emerged, a hero named Canelos, the first modern riot dog.

trop comes in many different colors. Sometimes it comes in it as other animals Anderson, and Anderson goes through them every couple months. They're her favorite. So sometimes it is jumble lamb Chop. Sometimes it's Jumbo black bear, sometimes it's Jumbo tiger. Sometimes we often do the unicor becaus they're very, very very pretty, and uh they're They're awesome. And I highly recommend the Jumbo Lamb Chop franchise. I guess hell yeah toys, right Anderson.

their fault. But of course the first ride dog is a mutt.

I know. Like every legend, it's hard to peace out what's true and what's not. There are three famed and named riot dogs from Greece from the twenty eight or twenty twelve and possibly earlier than that, and they all look really similar. Sometimes people claim they are related, Sometimes people claim they are the same dog. Sometimes the heroic deeds of one are conflated with the deeds of another.

I'm certain I will get some stuff wrong here across and every source I could they all disagree and they're all anecdotal. It's possible that Canelos actually died in two thousand and eight before these particular protests, and it was one of his other yellow dogs that was these ones. But all these dogs were loved, and all these dogs fought hard, and we're going to talk about how they fought. Canelos he ruled. He gave people hope, and he basically was like, hey, the street dogs are street dogs are

with you. As he aged, he started to get arthritis, and student protesters got him a wheelchair for his back legs and then helped him along for more marches. There's photos of him like being helped along on these marches, and he's just happy and old. He retired and lived inside the Polytechnic, the university that brought down the fucking dictatorship.

At one point, the dog catcher was called on him and the students were vaulted until he was freed good and he lived among the students until his death at roughly seventeen years old. Next to Rise, Yeah, next to Rise in fame Leucanicos, who is sometimes said to be Canelos's kid. That might be true, I don't know, but street dogs are often sterilized in Greece, and I think Lucanicos at least was sterilized based on it did a

lot of weird research. I was like reading the pieces written by the people who handle the stray dogs in Greece, as I was trying to figureut which dogs are which Lucanicos is the next generation famed riot dog and since this is Greece, the next generation of riots is less than three years later.

but people will accept it all right. Shockingly, they were wrong. Yeah, the Greek population was like, actually, we like having a social safety net and a society that believes in taking care of one another instead of all pretending like we want to be America but poor and fuck each other over all the time, people saw no reason why they had to pay for unpopular and bad decisions made by their leaders, and they had no interest in going along

with these austerity measures. So you've got what's called the anti Asterity movement, and it was riots and general strikes starting in a militant fashion. In June twenty eleven, when the Greek Parliament voted to agree to the austerity stuff. The protests started out kind of peaceful. Cops were soon like, fuck you get the fucking line, We're going to hit you and poison you and fuck you up. So people were like, I'm doing a lot of paraphrasing here. These

are not direct quotes. People were like, wow, I don't want to get in line. And also, it turns out you can make them all tough cocktail pretty easily. All you got to do is take a bottle and then and where there are clouds of tear gas, where there are armies of RoboCop right police marching in uniform is a show that I wrote this while I was like kind of excited and just like reading about this with my dog in my lap. Where there are rock throwing anarchists,

there are riot dogs. Where there are protesters to be protected and cheered up, there's leucanicos barking at cops. His name means sausage. I like wonutiful. I know, okay. According to a Greek person's comment quote that I just found on a random article, because this is the only piece that I found of anything anecdotal about this part of

it quote. Initially, Leucanicos would go to the demos with the left wing student group EAAK, and it was only later that he changed his political preferences and went to demos with the anarchists. On another note, I am under the impression that dogs are not affected by tear gas, though one would expect them to be. I could not

justify this claim scientifically, but only from experience. Neither Leucanicos, nor Canelos, nor any of the other dogs that joined riots in Greece ever show any kind of effect from the tons of tear gas that the cops constantly threw at us. So I looked it up. It turns out you can justify this claim scientifically. Most sites are like Oh, dogs have more sensitive senses of smell, so they're affected more. But this is not based on experience or study. The

opposite is true. You want to guess what group has done the most research about tear gas and dogs without reading ahead.

and not just in proportion to their body. Are the tear ducks bigger, but like literally objectively size, right, So they flush tear gas way the fuck faster, or lachrymatory agents way the fuck faster, including pepper spray. They've also got what's called a nictating nictating membrane or a third eyelid. That that's what most people call it because it's easier to spell and pronounce that hangs out on the inside corner of their eye. It's very effective at protecting their

eyes and spreading tears across their eyes. They also don't have sweat glands, so they don't absorb the chemicals and many in as many places, there are long term health effects. You should not intentionally expose your dog to tear gas. Looking at you canine units. You should just let all your dogs tire yep, Lucanicos, and then you should yourself retire. Actually, Lucanicos won even more hearts around the world than his maybe dad did. In twenty eleven, he was nominated for times.

But then the non striking cops started beating up the striking cops and he sided with the cops who were on strike.

people's dog for much of his life. He had a collar with his vaccination status that was given to him by the stray dog people, and he was welcome at every squat and organizing center in the city. But he didn't stay put. He would hoop around from one place to another. He basically couchsurf across the movement. And in twenty twelve, after a year on the front lines of this particular protest, possibly longer depending on whatever whatever, in twenty twelve he was adopted more formally by a guy

and given a loving home. He had food, water, tick collars, veterinary care, and safety, and he lived another two years and he died peacefully in his sleep in twenty fourteen. He was buried in the shade of a tree on a hill in the center of Athens, and he died at about ten years of age. And the reason he died young is probably the veterinary. Report says that it was in part due to all the tear gass he'd ingested over the years. There's a bunch of monuments and

murals in his honor. He's a character in the twenty twenty video game Tonight We Riot Cool. Yeah, So I started off this episode as kind of a cute like look its dogs being cool, but honestly, like the more I was like writing about it, reading about it and all that. Like, Lucanicos is as much our comrade as anyone. He worked tirelessly to keep people safe and keep people's spirits lifted. And like everyone, he hated cops and he sacrifices health to keep people safe. Long live Lucanicos.

out of this issue. The government keeps trying to go back to euthanasia, and people keep saying like, no, fuck you, we are not going back to this. And it was this oh fuck no attitude that got the two thousand and four law passed in the first place, and whenever municipalities do it anyway, people get real fucking upset at them. But there's unlike Germany and the Netherlands, there's a ton of stray dogs in Turkey. They're generally not seen as a problem. A recent survey says that about a third

of the population sees them as a threat. While there's a bunch of organizations that sterilize and release strays, they put ear tags on them to mark them. There aren't enough of these programs yet, and pets can still be bought in stores, so a lot of people buy them and then abandon them. But on the other hand, there's a ton of cafes and such that care for the animals, and there's a bit of an attitude. There's more of an attitude of like, these are our dogs than is

commonly found in more western countries. So people fight for the dogs. And then in twenty thirteen, like as they should. Yeah, no, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, all of the stuff of like oh we took care of these dogs who took care of us on the streets, like they make me really happy. So in twenty thirteen

you've got the Gezi Park protests. There's a park in Istanbul called Toxin Gezi Park, and in twenty thirteen the government was like, what if this was a shopping mall instead of a park, And the people of Vistabul were like, what if the fuck it was not? So it started with people occupying the park to prevent development. For two weeks they occupied the place, and then it spread all over Turkey. Like all major movements, it was about a lot of things. It was about the park, it was

about public space. It was about free speech and assembly, about having spaces not be just about places you buy and sell shit. It was also about fuck ertigan and authoritarianism. It was also about environmentalism. And then I really like this part. The government called them all looters. So the protesters rather than be like, we're not looters, we're the good protesters unlike the bad protesters. Just all of the protesters were like, yeah, we're looters. That's the name, that's

that's the word for us. The word is louter cool. Eventually, the moment passed. Urdigan is still in power, but Guzie Park is still there. It did not become a mall. And the dogs who lived in the park were part of the protest, and all the dogs who were around the surrounding area, and they were showing up as riot dogs, and they were, you know, defending people and fighting back

against the police. And there were also pets would come out and they'd have signs around their necks and stuff, and they would have like signs that say things like close the park and I'll shit in the mall. Cops were particularly brutal to the dogs in these protests, leaving us with photos of people washing pepper spray out of some good boy's eyes. And the news wants you to believe that these dogs were there because of the commotion, that they weren't there to defend the park, but this

was their home. Militarized police came in and the dogs joined people fighting back against police coming into their home. I think all of them are good pups.

I really like my travel crate. I have no idea the brand.

And I always talk about these huge protest movements and uprisings from fifty one hundred, two hundred years ago, but it's worth remembering these happen all the time. I'm sure another one is coming. You can just wait or not wait, whatever float your boat. In Chile, most education is privatized, and it was getting more so. Tuition was going up. The rich, we're getting good educations. The poor, we're not getting good educations. People didn't like this. It turns out

people don't like when that happens. The uprising was also about economic inequality, lack of opportunities for people to lead dignified lives, and the protests led to hundreds of injured protesters, hundreds of injured police officers, and one dead student, and once again in the tear gas, a hero arrived, a medium sized black mutt, always a mutt with floppy ears and a red bandana and an unwavering commitments of justice. Yeah, and I actually I have more details about him than any of the others.

it was blue. She'd change it up on different days whenever a protest would pop off. There's like, there's a video of her talking about this. Whenever a protest would pop off, he'd scratch at the door, desperate to go out and get into the fray. So Maria would bless him, drawing a cross on his head with her thumb to protect him from evil in danger. Then open the door and he'd go running downtown to the protests. I think she lived near downtown, but sometimes he took the bus

by himself. I think I've seen video footage of him on a bus and he's not with anyone.

also I mean whatever, it's all all these things. Okay, So a lot of dogs would march with the students, they would attack police, they would defend students. In a short documentary about Motopacos, the filmmaker asks some students, have you ever seen a dog defend the police? The students reply, no, not even those who walk with them.

I'm gonna get that water, you know. And yeah, they form a physical buffer in front of protest sometimes, so there's footage of water hose tanks on the tanks, like not tanks of water, but you know, big things on wheels whatever. Yeah, unable to advance because they can't effectively clear the dogs off the street. They also serve as icons, and I mean that in the religious sense when the while the church during these protests was up there with the state and the police is one of the major

repressive forces that people are fighting against. Yeah, he was essentially canonized in a folk Catholic way, right, you have people, you know, doing the blessings and all that stuff, and there's images of him with a halo, and he just became a living symbol of revolt. Him and the other dogs street dogs defending the streets from those who tried

to deny it. Since street dogs they're defending the streets from those who try to like deny the streets to the people, they become this like clear example of downtrodden fighting back and just being like, no, we've got this, We're doing this together. And he was not so soon. Matapacos was not the only dog with a bandana tight around its neck. Basically, everyone like started going around and giving all the riot dogs bandanas, and it became the

symbol of it. There's a twenty thirteen documentary about him called Matapaco that's on YouTube and as English subtitles. If your Spanish is as bad as mine, and he's just he's really fucking cool. He he survives all of this. He is a dog, so he doesn't live as long as people. El Negro Motapacos died peacefully on Saturday August twenty sixth, twenty seventeen. He was maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. I've also seen twelve, but most of the time I see sixteen or seventeen.

a fight between liberation and repression. We win by being on the side of liberation, of education, of workers' rights, of dignity, of helping out the street dogs. And in twenty nineteen, two years after his death, the black Cop Killer became a symbol once more as the country sprung into revolt. A black dog with a red bandana is now the symbol of revolt for much of the world. Statues of dog.

murdering them. And this might be and might not be the origin of the term redneck. And so I like this continuation of the red bandana as a symbol in the twenty nineteen and twenty twenty protests. He've got two more named riot dogs that come up Pepe Matapacos and Elvakita, which means the little cow. El Waqita won the twenty nineteen Character of the Year award in his city of Antofagasta. I suspect it was a person of the year until Elakita. You know that's so cool. Yeah, And protesters had his

back as well. A little cow. One time he got lost in a neighborhood and he didn't know he didn't know this particular neighborhoo after a particularly tough fight with the police, so protesters used Facebook to coordinate a rescue of him, and then someone walked him back to the streets he did know, so that he could find his way home and when cops he survives this when cops shot him with a rubber bullet. Protesters get him, get him to the vet, because we keep us safe includes animals.

And there's one more. There's one more. Yes, we're gonna talk about another stire dog.

song ever recorded. You Suffer is one point three to one six seconds long, so not very long songs. Biquett lived on a punk rock farm. Have you ever seen the video the photos of this m m oh, you should look up Biquett b I q U E T t E. Yeah.

her go viral every now and then. And the name Bequtt the goat translates to goat the goat because Biquett means a young female goat. The punks at Mariok rescued her from a slaughterhouse when she was five years old. Basically,

she'd been a milk goat. When she stopped producing enough, she was going to get sent to the slaughter, but then the punks were like, give her to us instead, and she spent the next and last five years of her life listening to punk sleeping in front of speakers, trying to eat everyone's cigarette butts and drink everyone's half empty beers, and basically living her best life. One of the people on the farm named Flow said about her quote, she was most connected to grind seen as the barn

floor where we throw the concerts. As wooden, I think think that she felt the vibrations in her hoofs the majority of the time. She even laid down next to the speakers. She died young on December ninth, twenty thirteen. A goat can live fifteen years easily, but she died at ten years old. However, she got to live five years as the punk rock goat instead of dying at five, which is what her actual fate would have been if the punks hadn't intervened. And there are many, many more,

very good dogs of many different species. And I'm sure I'll return to this topic in the future, but for now, go hug a dog, including cat dogs and goat dogs and parrot dogs, don't hug bears or wolves. They're not dogs. They're great too, but they don't need your hugs unless you work at a wildlife sanctuary or some shit. That's what I got. So I got about good dogs. I love this.

about in front of me, but I don't. But if you want to be an occultist who talks to the dead at seances while your friend who ran away from the army but kept an exoskeleton is hanging out while someone else who's an orphan who eats fungus to commune with rats and send swarms of rats against the priests who sacrifice gods. All that stuff. Then you might like this game and you can play it. What do you got?

Underscores in there. I'm not good at saying it out loud, but Yeah, there's that, and men, Magpie, you post lots of photos of your dog on your Instagram.