Abbot's Border Folly

also Sophie Hello, Hi. So we are we're going to talk about something that is I guess technically over, but it was extremely weird and did a lot of harm. And that is the very weird stuff that Texas General General Jesus hopefully not Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who had general the General of Texas. Greg, I mean, like you're kind of not wrong, but he wished like that, he

wishes he wishes he was the General of Texas. I mean, I feel like that's one of those things where like that, that's when we know the coup started, is when he himself, the general, takes over Texas. So Greg Abbott is extremely mad, and he's actually mad because Biden finally decided to end one of like the absolute worst Trump era border policies just called Title forty two, and it's he was like

nominally an anti pandemic measures, like the CDC. That's so, I don't know why it took me like five seconds to remember the name of the CDC, the Central Defense Agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah. So it's normally supposed to be a thing where it's like, okay, you can you cut off migrants from coming into the country because there's a risk of a pandemic. Now, okay, if if if you have lived the last two years, you know that the US just literally does not give a single ship out the

pandemic at all, like ending. Yeah. Yeah, so this, this whole thing really has just been a justification to just boot out, this prevent every like asylum seeker in refugee, an immigrant for getting into the country. And you know that you can tell this because the title forty two when it was originally invoked, didn't cover people who were like driving trucks across the border. Like he didn't cover economic activity of course not. Yeah, so it's it's it's just a way for the US to like not have

asylum seekers. And Biden let this go for like another fucking year while he was in office, and so like it's like like late last monthy like he finally got rid of it. And you know, this means that like immigrants and refugees now once again have their legal right under both American and international law to a petition for asylum, which again the US doesn't give a shit about, because you know, the US doesn't care about laws unless they

do bad things. But this finally happens and Greg Abbott, who is once again we must remind of you one the great habbit is, is running for election in November, and she's it's justus just literally running through the entire right wing like every single right wing scary we can possibly think of. Don't worry, Chris, don't worry Chris. Beto will get him. I believe. I believe in Beto this

time by like slide. Yeah, well okay, So the thing that could stop him from this is Greg Abbott decides you like two PR stunts, and one of them is he's taking busses of of immigris throt asylum seekers and just busting them. The d C and I want to talk about this for a little like a second, because like this is really shitty and that shouldn't be legal, shouldn't be allowed to really traffick. You're trafficking people across the country for a political stunt. That's like that that

shouldn't be allowed. Yeah, Like and like I think like everyone's like, oh, this is book like it is. But like the thing with American political sence is that real people get hurt constantly. Yeah, And we're gonna come back

to that theme more in a second. As we talked about the second stunt that he did, which was so essentially what Abbott did, is there are an enormous number of trucks that cross the US Mexican border into Texas like every day, right, I mean they're like there are individual bridges that are moving six seventy billion dollars of just produce like every day. And so that produced when it when it comes into the US, it goes to a bunch of checks by the border patrol and stuff.

And there's all these checks and this is this whole thing. But uh, Abbott went on this incredibly bizarre rants about well, I mean it's not bizarre. I guess if you're right. When we went on this rant about like the cartels and there's immigrants of need to stop them, and so she's very scary. Yeah, it's really weird. Okay, So he's he's doing all the birds faymongering, and he's like, Okay, we need to stop the people from getting across the border.

So we're gonna inspect all of these trucks, which again like they're already being inspected by the FEDS. This is this is you know, this is where like the horrible ice budget is going. Right. So he he does this, and he he calls in a bunch of just like the border patrols to just literally do all of the same checks again. And this has an enormous economic impact. Um, I'm going to read a quote from the American Statesman.

The delays have resulted in a six drop in commercial traffic at the border, according to ums U S Customs and Border Protections. The agency said the delays are a direct results of quote additional and unnecessary inspections being conducted at Abbot's request. I I do like that the same people who were shooting moms in Portland now inspecting produce at the Texas. It's it's pretty well. I mean, I think I think that there there there's an important thing

to note here. Writes like, so, why why are these the people who are like doing both these things. And the answer is that, like those organizations like that, the thing that they're designed to do is to protect the interest of American capital. And you know, so the interest of American capital are we need to move capital across the we need to move goods across the border, and we need to just like absolutely obliterate like a bunch of teenagers who don't like us. That is pretty much

their bit um. I mean, yeah, I know we've talked in the past about us like customs and border and word protections and the weird the weird like agencies and weird kind of almost militias that they operate and how they get deployed into certain areas if they're you know, x x miles away from the border. Um, it would be worth talking about more in depth in the future, because I know Robert has done some historical background on them from Bastards, um. But I think, yeah, that is

something I would I would be down to talk more about. Yeah. I think they are a very bizarre agents. Yeah, they're very weird. They're also really not like in this story, they're basically really just sitting there being mad because it's taking longer at what they do. Yeah. And and you know because because again like these these actual spections are being run by like state troopers, and because because because Abbott has more direct control overy stage. Yeah, because yeah,

Abbot dr power for them. And this means that like, okay, so you have your truck, right, your truck has a bunch of produce in it, you would be it across the border. Um. This usually takes about two hours of you know, being like sitting there in a truck while you're stop your every once cargo gets inspected and stuff, which I will say the truckers don't even get paid

for that when they're waiting two hours. Yeah, and and and you know what would make that worse, Oh yeah, now it takes between ten and thirty hours because intentionally, on purpose was like okay, we're just we're gonna put six thousand like people total to do this whole thing. And so you know, like hundreds of millions of dollars of produce like since like onions and tomatoes and avocados

are just sitting in these trucks, rotting in the textas heat. Yep, hopefully the trucks are refrigerated, but still, well, the trucks are refrigerated, but like the people in them, I'm sure the cabins are not. Yeah, I'm sure it gets mighty well. You know, I do have some family who would truckers, and some of the cabins can be nice. But still that's sitting for thirty hours without getting paid because the only get paid when you are moving. Um, which is oh uh not a great way to you know, run

our entire economy. Yeah, I'm gonna read a quote. I'm gonna read a suction from the paragraph of the Texas Tribune. Felix, a sixty year old Mexican trucker who was transporting tomatoes, onions and avocados, waited about thirteen hours in line at the bridge. He has to be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution and targeted inspections from

CPB officials. Hearing of the delays at the border, he packed water and food for a few days, but other truckers didn't come as prepared, and we're sitting in stand still traffic without anything to eat or drink. Felix said he was told by a CPB official that the agency would be putting portable bathrooms along the bridge for the

gridlocked truckers, but he never saw them. Once Felix made it to the state troopers inspection point around nine pm, he said they didn't even peer into his truck, which had been sealed since Mexican had already's inspected about six hundred miles away in the state of Sineloa. There's no possibility of bringing legal immigrants in the merchandise or in the cabin, he said, referencing one of Abbott's explanations for

the inspections. I can't bring any illegal immigrants here for money because I know inspectors are going to discover them. It's not a thing here. I don't know what the politicians ideas are. I don't know what they're talking about. So that seems not good. Yeah, it's it's really bad. And like again, like this is this whole thing is nonsense like that. I didn't even I didn't even think

about having to, you know, use the bathroom for hours. Yeah, and like do you think the thing with this is like this, the backups are eight miles long, so like if you want to go to the bathroom, you have to walk for like miles, depending depending on where you are in this backup. And you know this is having like these just enormous horrifying that there's like these normous horrifying knock on effects. Um, because you know, it's not

just the truckers are affected by this. There's a bunch of workers whose job it is you know, it's the process is these goods rights, take them out of trucks, put them into American trucks to like sort through the vegetables and figure out like which ones are good and which ones are not. And again, like just enormous amounts of just produce that is like fresh and good to eat. It's just being intentionally destroyed because it's being forced to

sit at the border for this long. Uh. There's a bunch of these people whose whose job like who who are contract workers whose job it is to like go through this stuff, and they're all getting fired because they're like there's no work for them to do. Um. There's all of these people who like their their jobs that they run bodegoes that they run like like they run restaurants. Did they run a much of stuff on the border for these truckers, and they also don't have any work.

And those people have to on a day by date, like it's like I think it's per day to rent a terminal in Yeah, and they're making nothing, and it's it's it's horrifying. There's all there's there's just enormous economic devastation that that that's been sort of like you know that that that that's been happening because of this and well you know, you know what else reminds me of economic devastation, Ah, the fact that the fact that our paychecks are solely reliant on the products and services that

support this podcast. It's true. Yeah, Well we'll talk about the problems they're having in a second after this break. Yep, one second. Wow, that was that was a fast second. That just that that flew right by time is not real? Destroy the clocks decided to start the police, all right, if you press if you press the if you press the thirty second button four times, yes, yeah, real speedy.

Now this is having other problems because, as we talked about the show, literally ad nausea and our supply chains are really bad. And it turns out, yeah, that does seem to be a recurring character on the pod. Is that supply chains uh not the most stable thing we've invented. Yeah,

and especially with especially with with with fruit and vegetables. Well, I mean, well we will be getting some of the other supply chains that are like fun because of this, but like prudent vegetables in particular, like the way that we do them, they're they're designed to be in motion for like a very specific amount of time so that when they show up to you they're ripe. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you add a few hours onto that everything

falls apart. And this like I'm not sure if it happens because I'm not in Texas, but there was there were a bunch of articles were talking about like yeah, like avocados and Texas are gonna cost five more dollars, Like like a single avocado is price is gonna increase by like five dollars over the weekend because like because it was just the enormous amount of produces that that's being destroyed here. And you know, there's there's a lot of other stuff going on here because American and Mexican

supply chains are enormously integrated. It from now. I mean they've always been in good to some extent, but like particularly post NAFTA, there's a lot of like auto supply chains in particular that are that are tied to two plants in Mexico, and you actually this occasionally has like interesting effects, like Mexico's has a lot of auto strikes and you get like you get these things where like people will like tuck messages into like auto parts and like send them to the US. People will open these

messages from like a worker in Mexico too. Yeah, you need and it's it's cool that there's lots of there's interesting stuff there, but this also means that like, yeah, so if those parts are moving across the border, there was just in time, production schedules are even more Omega screwed than they've been already. And so yeah, there's been a lot of sort of economics stuff that's been happening here.

And you know the other people who are getting just completely screwed by this are are the Mexican truckers and so yeah and so so so this this this starts on April six, on Monday, April eleven, I the truckers are just like funck this and they start just completely blockading the largest border crossing between like this it's on the Giant bridge. They started they literally just blockade the bridge and but prevent any goods from from getting in.

And this this has an enormous impact because again, like you know, it was going like yeah it was production was down by by sixty percent, but that means still means goods are getting through. And now you know, and bye bye bye. By the eleventh, it's just nothing. Um. I do. I do hope the one the one good thing that can come out of the whole Canada COVID isn't real protests, um, is that people have learned that blocking off supply chains it's a really effective way to

do protest. Use. You can stop the import of thousands and millions and billions of dollars of trade um pretty easily actually, And it would be cool if more people realize, Hey, obviously the COVID stuff that we're talking about and the whole over the in the government part um to install a right wing dictator that part it's obviously bad, but

some of their tactics were actually pretty interesting. Yeah, we're we're going to get more into that, uh like later, yeah, I mean I would say, like I think that the thing with the U S is that, like I think there's been a lot of focus on the American left on ports because yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that, but like, yeah, you can do the border crossings too, and the the mexicge rucker is really effective. I mean, okay, so that's this has been a thing where it's it's

it's kind of hard to get information from. I saw a few like newspapers talking about um, like cartel people like like attacking the blockaded, lighting trucks on fire to try to force goods to go through again, which it's possible.

I I don't know, um, but this, you know, once once there are like once the block like the border is completely blockaded, this completely ages like the entire political situation because now, like you know, ab Abbot's been running this thing sort of as a political stunt and as this game he's playing with you know, I suppose he's trying to play a game with Biden, right, and he's like, okay, well, yeah, you gotta decently go about the border or whatever, like

you know's he's been challenging Biden over like immigration bullshit. But you know, now now there's a there's a third party involved, and that third party is for Mexican truckers. And now and now Abbot's not just in the It's like Abbot's in a confrontation with the people that he needs to make the entire Texan economy run. Yep. And this starts going very badly for him. And the other thing that starts going very badly for him is that I it turns out if you shut down cross border trade,

you really really piss off the bourgeoisie. Turns out, it turns out that will happen if you ain't careful. Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting and and you know, and and I think I should mention like stressed this, Like they're piste off on both sides of the border. And like obviously you could talk about the excient which like yeah, like

they're the same class. But like capitalists on both sides of the border start exerting their political pressure because they're I mean, they're losing enormous amounts of money off of this, that's what they do. Yeah, and you know, the way their ability to do capitalism as capitalists, they're going to be mad. Yeah, which again you think you would think that the Abbot would like get this, but he just

he it seems to have not occurred to him. That he was going to piss off like either or like he thinks he didn't care enough and thought it wouldn't matter, but like, no, it turns out like you know, one of the things that happens. Yeah, it's it's amazing, Like he's you know, like I mean, I think this is.

This is you know, I think this is. This is sort of a symptom of like people lose like right wing politicians losing sight of what their actual basis because like this is all this is all supposed to be like campaign trail feeding the anti immigrant base, but like, you know, you you are a politician in the US. Your actual constituency is the capitalists and and like you have an actual job and let's make the economy keep going and keep the people in power to have all

the power, Like you're not just like that. That's one interesting thing that Trump was kind of one of the first big um indicators for which is like a politician now is just the endless cycle of campaigning and they don't actually have a job. It's just always campaigning and then it's always campaigning, uh, and they're like, oh, I guess I should do my actual job that I was elected for or I could just do more rallies and

that seems like it would be less work. Yeah. Well, I mean I think I think what Trump was like there was those instet to which the bureaucracy kept functioning, and so you know, like like he like Trump got Trump got the tax cut, right, yeah, and like he didn't really start getting in trouble with him until he started doing the anti China stuff, which was sort of a disaster because there was a lot of people who turned out like need those trade connections to make money.

And you saw like like it was weird. It was very weird thing. Like you started to see even some of his like like domestic like small business base. I started to get really mad at him because he's putting all these sanctions up and it's like, oh, hey, look all these sanctions mean at all these people who are reliant on Chinese supply chains have to pay this stuff and an Abbott. Abbott has like done this in microcosm, and like these these people like they start going to

the press. Um, I'm going to read a quote from Bloomberg. Uh. Some retailers, particularly those in the grocery industry, have experienced supply chain delays resulting from the extended wait times along the Texas Mexico border. John McCord, the executive director of Texas Retailers Association, wrote in an email, so, like, you know these are like like the Texas Retail Association is like this is like the most republican solidly institution in the country and and you can watch them over time,

like these people are getting really mad. Like one of I was like, like, what if Abbot's like I forget the exact title, Like what one of Abbot's like secretaries, like they're like at the secretary or some one of the like economic bureaus was like, yeah, man, avoca are gonna cost five more dollars. And you know this really hits me hard because everyone knows it's about me. I care a lot about retail um, retails like my one of my big core personality traits UM. And you know

who else wants you to care about retail? Oh my goodness is that the washing st Patrol. That is right, Sophie, it's the Washington State Patrol. Are are are good friends? Um? So here here is some here's some messages about about how you can improve your retail decisions. Okay, I can't find this George Bush quote instead of that, we will

return to this. And you know, one thing I think we should also mention is if you ran into this on Twitter, um you will see a lot of videos of people like Democrats like standing at the border and pointing at the trucks and going, uh, this is this. This is Abbot attempting to like make inflation to get worse by sabotaging the economy. Cringe and like cringe cringe moments. Yeah, like okay, Like uh, I cannot rule out that this was like a part of what he wanted to do,

but that's not really why he's doing this. Like this, this is this is like mostly and I some people talking about like, oh, this is like the trucker's buckage and Chile and I'm like, no, no, it's not at all, like like yeah, yeah, yeah, Like yes, Chile has a bunch of right had I had a bunch of right wing anti communist truckers unions that tried to shut down

the government, But like that's not what's happening here. This is the state and Abbott trying to do this is like an immigration pr thing like this isn't like he's not actually he's not actually trying to destroy government, because the the only way you can get stuff like that is if like, is is it the capital's classes like genuinely afraid that they're about to get like like wiped up by communists And it turns out that is not about to unize the entire us. I don't think that's

actually a looming threat at the moment. No, So yeah, it's like no, it's like it's it's not it's not really about that, Like it's it's it's it's mostly about this sort of this sort of like border game that

the communities are coming for your avocados. Well, this is sort of this is the interesting thing here because it's like you have this really weird scenario where like it's it's it's the right wing governor like shutting down the flow of commodities, and like the liberals are like, we must restore the flow of commodities, and the like we must restore the flow of commodities, and like even the cartels or something sentire like come on, like we all we all need the border open. Uh. It really it

really does just showcase the entire bit. Yeah, you know, but I mean, like we've been talking a lot about the human cost of this and the reason this stuff works is because American politics is literally just a machine that turns human suffering into stories and then turns those stories into percentage points at the polls. And that's Abbot's entire weight. Am I getting him confused with no Greg Abbots the governor. I momentarily got him confused with the

UK guy Tony emmett Ri, also bad in very similar ways. Yeah, but I think I think we're allowed to have two bad Abbots. Yeah. I thought there's kind of Australia too, But well, the bad appots that are multiplied. Someone has got to get on this. We need we need to deal with the anglos theory before they pro the fourth produced a fourth one and we get the four horsemen of the apocalypse. That would be funny if you just

have four Abbots bringing the apocalypse. Yeah, but I think I think that think that's important to understand about Like about Abbott is like that that everything that Abbott does is just about inflicting suffering on people and trying to

use that to do polls. Right, Like he he has genuine right wing beliefs, but like the timing of everything that he does That's what all of his that's that's that's what all has had anti trans stuff is is that he couldn't beat his primary challenger, who was trying to campaign a little bit fur them to write than Abbott was. Yeah, And this is the thing where like politicians are allowed to play games with all people's lives

like that that's their job. But they're allowed to do this up until the exact moment at which those real people are the bourgeoisie, and the moment this is this The thing that Abbott is learning is that you can do this kind of stunts all you want, Like you can, you can, like you can shoot every trans kid, you can like I don't know, like you can you can ban like every school from like saying the word race.

But you can't funk with the bourgeoisie. And and you know this, this is this, This is the problem that he has is bye by like by like the middle of last week. He has the like the ruling classes turning on him. The truckers a up blockading the bridges that preventing all travel, and Abbott is like basically scrambling

to find a way out. And the thing that he does to do this is he like, he goes to a bunch of Mexican governors who who are like that, the governors of border states, and these governors have like sent him letters being like hey, like what are you doing, Like we need like we we we need our economies to function. Can can you can you actually do this?

And you know, so he starts doing these negotiations with him where he's like, well, okay, if you guys like inspect all of these trucks or whatever before and you ensure that there's no immigrants in them where whatever before they get here, like we'll reopen the borders. And you know, so they do this, and I think there's a couple

of interesting things about this. One is that most of these I think there's one guy who's from the p r I, but like almost all of these governors are from the p A N, which is Mexico's like far right wing party, and like these guys, these guys are also like hard right, like we're on drug hard liners, you hate immigrants and and this this has been another big part of how the sort of border regime works, which is that like, yeah, on the one hand, you have you have Abbo and you have like Texas so

you have just the US government like projecting its power like into Mexico, which is you know, another big part of what this is. But the other part of it is has been the US essentially outsourcing its its border regime and border policy just in like to Mexico. And so you get a lot of there. There's been a

lot in the last especially dridern Trump administration. Uh, I mean it goes back much further than that, but like in the in the last like five years have been a lot of really egregious examples of just like border patrol ship but by the Mexican police, because it turns out there's also a bunch of people in Mexico who fucking hate Central American refugees and b uh the police

or the police literally everywhere. And this also for example, like this, this is how this is how a lot of the border regime stuff works in um in Europe, front acts of the European border like thing makes you to do like makes like basically just negotiates with like literally every like I don't even know what you call them, like border state, I guess in Africa to ensure that like refugees coming up to North Africa, like don't ever get to Europe, and like this is that they make

deals with Gadaffi. They made deals with the people who came after Gadaffi. Um, yeah, there's the border system is horrible and this is sort of the border system like working as intended. Now, the other thing that we should mention is that like, okay, so they're they're stopping and like supposedly searching all of these trucks and they find literally nothing the entire time, because like there's there's you know,

there's never anything there. But you get all these press companies they were like, well, yeah, of course there is nothing. It's because the cartels were tipped off of the raid because we did press conferences about it, and that's why they announced. We announced the thing that we were gonna do. So it gave him a chance to smartest Wow whoa. Yeah.

So that that that that's been fun. Um And the last thing I wanna talk about, Yeah, this was part of what we were talking about earlier, which is that like, yeah, this is the second time this year that we've seen right wingers like block off a border for political reasons. And I think there's a few interesting things here. Um. One is that This is the kind of stuff that from like basically from the start of occupy and even

before then until like the Bernie campaign. This is like the core of like what Marxist we're thinking about in the US, and also anarchists or something sent like if if you go and read anything from that period, like it's all about logistics and kinter logistics and how you can like disrupt them and whether or not we shuld try to take control of logistics, and you know, and I think you see here like like attacking logistics is a very powerful political tool, but it's tool that has

like limited um, like it has limited utility for the right because you know, the right depends on the backing of capitalists for the politics to work. They really really need buy it the capitalists. Those capitalists need cross border trade and you know, and the other thing like they also need they also need market workers to make their money. And if you cut that stuff off, your political base

starts to collapse. And the second part of it that's interesting is you get to see how powerful this is as a weapon for you know, like the working class because of just like how instantaneously Abbott back down when the trucking buckhead starts because this this is all over. Um last Friday, I think the what date is that? That was good Friday, I mean the goodest, the goodest Friday. Yeah. Abbott was like, oh oh it's all over. We secured

the border. Yeah everything here to the border, sure buddy, Okay, yeah, but you know and you but like that's the thing, like you can see like, yeah, you gotta see. You gotta see a rare moment of like Mexican workers and also like the the sort of international capital class working

on the same side. And you've got to see how fast they just like collaborate their politicians because yeah, like yeah, like that the state is that the state is a powerful force, but it turns out it's it's class politics all the way down. And I think I don't know between this in Canada, I think there's a couple of interesting things. One is which, Okay, yeah, you're like if you're on the left, like already automatically you're going to be fighting the capital business Oshi is just always mad

at you. That's less concern. You will face more suppression immediately obviously. This this is this is how the game is played. Yeah, your face, more supression benediately. But it's also like that that's not like a you're based turning on you, Like that problem doesn't stem from capital is not making money. The problem you have with your base turning on you is about being being able to provision.

It applies to people, and I think this is you know, I guess you know more about this than I do, but I will finish the sentence and then stop talking. Which is that like like, yeah, if you should look at Canada, it was like part of the reason their occupations failed was that like yeah, like just like a bunch of ordinary people got really really mad at them

because their whole their cities were being locked down. Yeah. Yeah, they started impacting not just the economic drivers, but the people who live in those areas regularly and need them to operate. And that gave politicians enough enough of incentive to be like, see, it's actually hurting real people. It's not just hurting the economy, but it's hurting you know,

your grandma who could be living in like Ottawa or something. Right, So when you when you use these tactics, it's about balancing the propaganda of like not severely impacting the people

who actually live in these places very much. But but targeting the economics, policies and the you know, you know, the corporate elite or whatever kind of framing you want to use, because as as soon as you start doing tactics that just hurt you know, regular people, that is such an immediate like propaganda l as the kids would say, um, because yeah, you're you're just giving them the tools to easily fight you back. And yes, they're gonna they're gonna try to invent tools to to to stop you no

matter what. Like they're they're gonna, they're gonna they're gonna try to do something via propaganda lens. But there's some propaganda is way easier and uh much harder than others. So I think a big part of these types of things, when you're starting to like block off you know, roots to cities, block off supply chains as you need to be cognizant of making sure that the people who are like immediately next to kind of things that are also cool,

because that can give you so much more legs. I mean, we saw this in the Red House in Portland. There was a there was a lot of effort um to make the immediate neighbors not hate the occupation there to to stop the family from being evicted. Um. And there was a lot of debate around like how much graffiti should be allowed out in the surrounding area because you know, you don't want to piste off the neighbors too much.

Now that this can obviously stem in bad directions in terms of like there was then like self self appointed security guards like beating up and shooting people with paintballs who were doing graffiti, which is obviously like not not not how you do good anarchism, um. But then there's other stuff being like no, we should just trash this area anyway, it's all in the process of being gentrified, which mean it is, but you're like, yes, I understand

that emotional impulse. Um. And you may be right in a lot of senses, like like more like more correct morally, but to play the propaganda game to actually stop a black family from being evicted, maybe we can actually to look at this at a more tactical level. Yeah, And I think that there's a lot of examples of things

we can learn from strikes that is very efficiently. Like one of the things one of the reasons the wildcats in West the wildcat teacher strikes West Virginia, and he doesn't seventeen worked was that the striking teachers in West Virginia were very very careful about making sure that they did things like you know, like making making sure that kids got like the meals that the school would have been like providing like like you know, like this is

why this is when mutual aid is extremely important because it lets you it lets you provision services, not just when they collapse because of like you know, oh hey the government's doing weird stuff or like there's a plague. It lets you do it, lets you shut down logistics slignes yourself and still have community support and still be able to provide people to think that provide people things

that they need. And this is like you know, if if you carry this all the way to like the macro macro level, it's like yeah, okay, so like why did why did the Russian Revolution not work? And you know, like like why did the Pairs Commune fail? And it's like, well, yeah, it's because instead of like giving peasants things, they went into the countryside and shot them into decepting to get those things. And it's like yeah, like you have to

what what what whatever? The thing that you're doing is in in in your sort of like base area, right whatever, you're like, hey, you're you're doing a ch you're shutting down a bridge. You're like, you know, you're blocking up border, you're trying down to support, Right, you have to make sure you're constantly expanding and building out support outside outside of that, outside of that action, and making sure you're you're you're able to provision the people who are affected

by it. And if you don't do this, you end up like Abbott. And it's like, yeah, you know he Abbott had like the entire power of the American state behind him, and he was able to keep this up for like less than two weeks before he had to just pull out. So yeah, we can do this better and for things that are good and in ways that don't hurt people or at least hurt people significantly less or you know, don't not hurt the wrong people instead try to try to hurt the right people. Just like

an incredible lack of like thinking that's my that's my summaries. Yeah, better do thing like yeah, And I think also like again, like Abbott, Abbott's politics like is entirely about like infercting old to young people right and ours like shouldn't be and shouldn't And the fact that we actually care about people makes our politics were effective and I guess I should in theory. In theory they should um and any time when we take a misstep from that, I think

is of it is a big loss. Ye. There's there's one more strike thing that I just remembered that I was going to talk about, which is I So it's also trains a lot. There's there's a type of striker's name I'm forgetting because I'm a hack and a fraud where like the people, the people, the people will just like take over a train and they'll run it, but they just won't take fars. That is incredibly big. Yeah, and you know, so that's that's that's like level one

of it. And then level two of the strike is inside of just we're on strike, but we're running the series and not taking any money. It's we now control this train and that that has happened on several occasions, and well, yeah you hear that. It's cool. You heard it here first to take over your local train, Um, it could happen here. We could we we can do it anarchism can make the trains run on time. Oh hi, I am not sure about that. Punk punk time is

as an unstoppable Okay. Here, here's the thing. Here's the thing, right like punk time Like okay, so you don't have the punks running the trains. You have the train nerds running the train, people who should spend all of their time playing train simulator running the trains. Okay, that the trains will run great? Alright? That is that is completely fair. Um. Where can people find you and or the show on the internet. You can find me at three on Twitter if you want to do that for some reason. You

can find us that happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram. Uh, there's also the Cool Zone. We have Zone Media. Yeah, we have a We have a new podcast that is coming so if you do want to want to go past, we actually got we got two new ones for you coming soon. We have a Ghost Church by Jamie Loftus. Episode one is out April. And then we have Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff hosted by Margaret Killjoy. Trailer is out next week and episode one is out on

May second. Check both of them out. So many, so many pods in the pipe as you say that is that is the technical term pods in the pipe. These these are genuinely, legitimately very good shows and you should listen to them. And I'm really excited, so yay, alright, well, thank you for listening, and uh go go take over a train. It Could Happen Here is a production of

cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,