All right, welcome to It could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes about how things have been falling apart for a while now, and today we're going to talk about how things were also bad in falling apart in the two thousands, which a profoundly
cursed time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I think a part of the anti war movement that does not get much attention, which is the port militarization resistance that happens sort of two thousand and six, two thousand and seven. And with us today to talk about this is two people who were part of this movement. We have Juliana Neuhauser Hello, Hello, and Brendan Maslawska's done. Yeah, both of them were organizers and activists while this was
going on. Yeah, thank you, thank you both for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having us so.
Yeah, as I was saying a bit in the intro, I think that this is a part of the anti
war movement that is not very well known. I think I think a lot of people know about the initial stuff that happened in two thousand and three, and people might know about some of the stuff that was happening against the war in Afghanistan, like right when it started, but I don't think most people know that it like you know, even after two thousand and three stort doesn't work, that it continues, and it continues sort of informs.
That are that are very interesting.
And so I guess I want you to to start out, I want to ask how we sort of got from the early part of the anti war movement into this, and how you got involved.
I would say that there's this narrative about the women against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests in human history, at least at that point. I don't know if it's still true against the invasion, and then it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and ended there, and to a certain extent that's true. But like you said, the people that didn't go home went in interesting directions, and so at the time there were direct action was not as acceptable as it is now.
The this movement was largely dominated either by big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically indistinguishable in what they actually did, which was basically nothing and in the best of cases and then the worst of cases, counterinsurgency.
But then there were small groups of people that when we saw that it didn't work, and we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one part of town to another, or voting for job Carrie or whatever the work, that we started to look for other options.
Yeah, and you know, I got involved, you know, i'd say with the anti war movement. That idea of how war is unjust was really taught to me from a very young age. I mean, my parents were you know, children of the sixties, and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and you know, friends dying in Vietnam, and we're against the protests back then. So I grew up hearing these stories and of course stories from family members, particularly one of my grandfathers, both of them who were
veterans in World War Two. One of them was a marine in the you know, in the Pacific Theater, and still into his seventies, eighties and nineties until his final days, was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught me from young age never to get involved. So I, you know, and I remember when when the very clearly, you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of
a Rock started. I was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C. That Juliana just mentioned, and I ended up. I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural high school just outside of of Utica, you know, russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends, and they were just everywhere in the hallways. So it
was very present with me when I was younger. I moved out to Olympia, Washington, two thousand and six, and that's when a new student activist group, Students for Democratic Society, was launched. That's how Juliana and I first met. We were both in separate chapters of that new organization in the Pacific Northwest. And the protests started just a few months after I moved out there in Olympia in two thousand and six.
So wait declared for this or second because I've never quite been clear in this history. So there was a second SD like Students for Democratic Society that was like unrelated to the first one.
They're born briefly at the end of the Budshet Master.
That explains a lot of things that it's very baffling.
We're not that old. Yeah, we were definitely in the in the second you know, the rebirth of it. So you know, I think it took on some things in spirit, you know, but also was i'd say different in many ways, and it was very active. To me at least, it was very exciting to be a member of the New STS because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest and it was a great way to connect with young activists all over the US.
So STS is emerging in this time period. One of the other things I was interested about is something something you were talking about in the early part of this, which has to do with the way that these giant both the sort of answer Coalition PSL, Frank Group, and I guess the ISO was still around back then coalitions work versus how like anything else worked on. So was was SDS sort of like consciously set up and in opposition to those groups?
I don't think it was conscious, but there was just like I mean these days, I mean, like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like anarchists versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at that time, Like, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the answer, which was the PSL Front group was completely fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police liberal democratic
front group. There was literally no difference, just in terms of their aesthetics maybe like is there a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something. That's the only difference we saw. So I don't I don't think there was. It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious like political opposite attention to it. It was just like they're not doing anything, and so we had to look in another direction.
Actually, you know, it's hard to keep track of the alphabet soup of authilitary and communist groups at times, but this was actually answer for those who don't recall it was a front group for the Workers World Party the W which, yeah, I mean it's it's hard to keep track, right.
Yeah, it's the same thing, like I think, so okay, So for people who are sort of unaware of this, there's a network of connected but sometimes feuding like weird stalness.
Cults that kind of that kind of like they hold.
On through like this the eighties and nineties and they start sort of rebuilding again around the anti war movements in that period. That that's the PSL's of a DUP's answer, like, and I think that's like most like modern anti war groups are also still these people, which is incredibly depressing something I want to talk a bit about it towards the end of this, but yeah, just for people who have not spent the last half decade in the in
the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So yeah, so I think we should get into how the sort of the first action starts in Olympia.
Yeah. So, and there were actually a couple actions that happened in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it was not yet under the banner of PMR port Militarization Resistance. That was a name that was officially coined in you know, in in May and June of two thousand and six. And so, just to give you an idea, Olympias it's a college town, or at the Evergreen State College is there. It's also the capital Washington State, so you have that
going on. It's also a military town. It's a little over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis. It's now called JBLM j BLUM or Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force base. Now it's one base. So ye had all these you know, different kind of elements in you know, in tandem in that town and
the public port. The Port of Olympia is one of about seventy or so public ports in the state of Washington, some of which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of things, you know, for our commercial, private industry, but also the military and the US government. So, you know, I heard from someone I don't even remember who that the military was sending a ship to the Port of
Olympia in late May of two thousand and six. And this happened for ten or so days, and it was just kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us to go down to the Port of Olympia. It was the war machine in our backyard, and the
idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out with just like less than ten people, a number of folks getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests every single day, an act of blockades people those of us like Julian and myself and other folks using civil disobedience or what we preferred to call civil resistance to try and stop or at the very least slow down these striker vehicles and to give folks an idea
of what a striker vehicle is. You can look it up online, but it's kind of halfway between, you know, a tank and a hum vy. It doesn't have slats, you know that a tank would have. It's you know, and they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for for raids of residential areas. They were really on the front lines of the war in both those countries, and that's what we were trying to stop.
I only got involved later because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time. I was in another STS chapter. But my roommate was from Olympia and he had been involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before
moving up to Balingham. And so like, hearing his story has got me very excited because it's like finally someone's someone's doing something like someone's they're not just like it's like everything else was just so liberal, like whether it's marching from one place to another or writing to your congress people or occupying their office. It was like asking someone else to do something you knew from the beginning they were never going to do. Yeah, and finally this
was finally someone was like actually getting into it. I think the first one of the things that happened here was that they started to avoid there's it was kind of a geographical thing that I think for people who either don't know Wash Washington or because they're normal people don't know like the port areas of these cities very well because it's like like unless you're a longshoreman, like why would you go down to like the port of Tacoma. Yeah, there's nothing there.
Yeah.
But they kept moving it around because Olympia is also not very big and so it's there's really only two roads into the port, which is very small, and so it was it's very easy to block it. And so then I think the first time that I got involved was in two thousands seven when they had moved it because they kept moving it around to try and switch things up and.
Wait before they're the ship around.
Is no it's like they had to make a military shipment, they would It's like like once the ship wasn't the port, they would just have to go through with it. But then, you know, it's like every every six months or so, they had to make another military shipment and they would change the port usually each time to try and let basically to avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal craft. Yeah. The first time I had gone down was in Dacoma, which is a much much, much
more industrialized port than Olympia. It's you know, it's a big port, more normal port, I guess, And that one was honestly pretty crazy because you're just trapped into a giant industrial maize basically at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. I think the in two thousand and seven and Olympia was definitely And it's like the glory moment, which was when people were able to on and off like actually hold the port and control it in as an exits.
Yeah, and I want to, you know, just emphasize that, like the one the military changing their approach right to avoid us, so jumping from port to port with these different shipments. They actually went so far because we were so successful as a movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so far as to ports in Texas.
But you know, one thing that we did is that we built up contacts with other activists with long shore workers all up and down the West coast in California. There are other activists we were connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York. There is a desire in the anti war movement, and you know, in some extent maybe it's like it was small, but with some folks in the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the ISLWU, the longshore Workers Union, it's a lot more militant than
say in a place like Olympia. But yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because, as Julianna said, we wore successful. In two thousand and seven, we shut down the port of Olympia for a total of it was essentially two days. They were not they're not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades, we're willing to throw down with the police in the street.
And one of the things that was cool about that blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the other one we had like a moving I don't really know what it was, but something with wheels that we could move in and out to open it up, and so then we could allow like civilian cargo to move in and out, but then like we would feel it back in place to block military shipments.
So we were you able to actually like stop them from like wet while in that one in to come we actually like stopped them from moving this stuff altogether. Or do you actually cleared up by the police and they moved it.
We would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like we were never able to It's like we were we we held it for two days. That those protests took place over a series of two weeks or more or less. We were only able to fully hold it for two days before eventually they would clear us out.
But one of the things is that this does it did create problems for the army because when you work with a port, you know, it's like you've got like a certain time frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever it is is you're going to do, and it's not too happy if you take longer than you said.
You would or Yeah. And the other thing I want to add is, you know, I think the other really important element with this whole movement going on is the Pacific Northwest was it is specifically western Washington, where the two of us were living. It was, you know, the center in a sense, it was the heart of the
anti war movement in the country at that time. One because of this militant direct action that we were you know, we were building up in the streets and trying to throw wrench in the gears of the war machine to at the very least slow it down, which in some ways we did, but you know, we were up against so much. But the other added element, of course, is the GI resistance and the soldiers who are resisting i've all also known as Iraq veterans against the war was
very active there. They set up a GI coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, you know, the the gates for one of the entrances for Fort Lewis. There are a whole bunch of soldiers that were going a wall. We had friends who were active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding, you know, refusing to go back into these striker brigades that joined us in port
militarization resistance. There are a whole, you know, long list of soldiers that were very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so we are very much connected with this movement too, and I think the higher ups in the military they're they're hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, you know, to the point of actually spying on us. So that's like a whole other element of the story too.
One of the things that I've heard from talking to other people who were involved in this was that like wow, like during these protests, like the level of police militarization just like skyrocketed. And like I remember, I was, like you said about this, those like you know, if if you go back and look at like old system of
a down videos, you know, they'll have these things. Yeah, you'll see these you see these riot police and like you look at them and it's like these people they look so much less armored than like the people that we have now. And one of the of things I thought was interesting about this was that like this is I think one of the points where you start getting the modern riot police showing up that are just like,
you know, completely concased in like armor. And yeah, I want to talk about just like the police response to this, because I think that's That's another thing I think. I think there's there's a kind of a tendency to sort of project back what the police looked like in twenty twenty one, just onto the whole history of police, and I think it's like it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last twenty years.
Yeah, I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and probably just like a six minute walk away from the Port of Olympia and also very conveniently just a few blocks away from the police station. So so lucky. Yuh So we actually saw, you know, we could see from the front of down on the road, down on the sidewalk from the front of our house, some of the military shipments going by, and we we did see that absolutely,
and at at times it was it was terrifying. I mean, I lived in an activist house we jokingly called HQ because that's just you know, where it because of its proximity to the port. That's where a number of us were having meetings, you know, around these protests early on
in two thousand and six. And yeah, I mean we like they looked like RoboCop and it's something I had I you know, I hadn't like I had been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the RNC protests and DNC protests in Boston, New York and like in Washington, d c uh and so I would see these like riot cops, but they were I mean ubiquitous in these port protests. It was like a whole army of them
that was sent out. I mean when Juliana said that things got kind of crazy at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was like a police riot, you know, like the cops went absolutely nuts there, shooting people with tear gas and pepper balls and brutalizing people. I had
never before witnessed anything like that. And it got to the point in you know, in Olympia where we kind of knew early on that we were being traced by the police to the extent where you know, one friend of ours was followed from our house to the bus station to take a bus to school by the police and then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on
the street. And we had another fellow activists and you know, a roommate of mine who was going out to driving out with a few friends, a few fellow activists from Olympia to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a port of grays Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's where Kirk Cobain is from.
Home of the famous Kurt Cobain teamed McDonald's.
They served billions and billions served in that one McDonald's and Kirk Cobain's McDon donalds. But yeah, I mean they you know, they they were, they were following. They had orders the Washington State Patrol too, you know, pull over a car ful full of known anarchists. There was alert gone out to all the police departments. They pulled them, they pulled them over, They made him walk the line. He was hadn't you know, wasn't drinking at no drugs
like nothing in his system. But they he was driving under like one mile per hour under the speed limit. They arrested him for d d W I, you know, eventually fought the chargers, sued them h and you know what a big settlement out of all that. But that's just one example of many of the lengths that the police would go to. It was pretty severe. Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger anarchists called pitch Pipe Info Shop and Tacoma, and that was also
a big target. The police were swarming around them all the time.
They had like cameras set up, like specifically just side the Inn Fishop, Like there weren't seriunce cameras there before, but then there's like, oh well, just conveniently put them on this one specific street corner.
Yeah, I think like those One of the things I was reading about this is you have that stuff. And then also I think one of the sturiest parts of this is that like army intelligence gets involved, and yeah, do you want to talk about the man named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not.
That Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what memories you have of our our good dear friend John Jacob. Juliana.
I don't think I ever actually knew him in person, but he was the moderator of the list serve, wasn't he.
Yes, he's one of the moderators of our list serves.
Now that I look back on it, I'm like the the Aport militization resistance the SERB was always just like this dramatic shit show. It's like, looking back on it, I was like, oh, moderated by a cop that did nothing, absolutely nothing to like establish order or that was a purpose.
Yeah, So I think there's definitely some things that happened, Like you know, looking back from our vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make a little more sense at the time though, And we're in this movement, right and so that means like meeting people where they're at, we would find all kinds of people that would like want to join the movement, like I, like I said earlier, like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met this guy named John Jacob and he sent an email
out to me. I was one of the contacts for the Olympia STS Group, and it's like, hey, you know, there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old like elder activists are in to kind of mentor us called movement for a democratic society, very small, never really took off, but like I'm interested in getting involved. We met up in public, and he seemed like an alright guy. I mean he was, you know, forty ish early forties.
He told me had like you know, been in the military for years, and he actually still worked at Fort Lewis, so he was always open about that. But it only went that far. He didn't ever tell us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty, you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers. As I mentioned that, we're in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved,
and he gets really involved with Port militarization resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma, and he seemed like a really solid guy to most of us. And you know, things happen as as we progress and you know, as the military responded to our you know, how effective we were in the anti war movement and
the gi resistance movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that, Okay, when we first started the protests, we had the ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up, you know, a blockade here or having a surprise action there at this time or this port, et cetera, et cetera. And as time progressed, we found out that you know, we were having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.
We thought that we're in private, and then for whatever reason, the police kind of knew about where we were going to be before we even showed up. And that I remember that clearly happening in two thousand and seven the Port of Olympia.
Yeah, in Takoma. There was a lot of things like that. Like there was one time when there are like some people who had a meeting in a closed room, like all their they had taken, like the batteries out of their cell phones.
They had simply.
Written on the whiteboard the time and place they are going to have their next meeting, which is going to be in a diner near the port. And so that way, if like if for any reason the room bugs, it wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on a board. And then it was like a small meeting too, so it's like there weren't and then when they got to that diner, there's like full of cops like clearly
waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it was very clear there was some level of infiltration involved.
Yeah, and I think were from early on, like you know, we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one of our fellow activists in PMRS and a friend of ours, Peter Bohmer, is a professor at the Evergreen State College. He was in the original STS back in the sixties, and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. I mean, the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him back in the seventies when he was active in the anti war movement
in San Diego. Like we knew, you know, former Black Panthers, and we read our history, so we knew about the history of co intel pro the counterintelligence program of the sixties and seventies and the war on the anti war and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, et cetera.
So we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. But there was one thing that happened in particular which prompted some of us to file for a public records request with the City of Olympia, and another activist is walking down the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the Wobblyes and Dustal Workers of the World Union and we had like one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and it was locked to a poll, you know, with a
bike lock. And there are some city workers there with a pickup truck and they're cutting the lock to the newspaper box and they threw it in their pickup truck, and so, you know, this friend of ours was there. It was like, what the hell, what are you doing? What's going on? And one of the workers just kind of shrugged and was like, I don't know. The police told us to do this, and they drove off like they stole you know, are essentially like our union property
or whatever. So we had you know, our lawyer friend Larry Hildes and the National Lawyer's Guild you know, call and kind of threatened the city and then a number of us got together were like, hey, you know, let's do like a public records request with the City of Olympia freedom of information law right, and so we did and the request was you know, just requesting any all information the city had any exchanges communications by email, et
cetera between the police and like other agencies about anarchists IWW students for a Democratic Society, and their initial search that the city clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, Okay, I got to narrow this down.
And I don't know, I was working on the request at the time and for some reason, like I don't know, we're port protests were near a military base, communications between army not thinking anything, and so the initial responses it actually got you know, maybe one hundred, one hundred and thirty or so different documents, just copies of emails, et cetera that were little puzzle pieces for this massive puzzle, and it was just a few of them, and it was,
you know, there was an email talking about our guy in the Navy going to a PMR meeting to get some intel. Uh, there's you know, all kinds of things like that. There were a few emails in particular, and the email address was something like John John J Towery at you know, Army dot us, whatever the email address was.
So there's a crew of activists that got together put their heads together, did some research quietly for a few months and eventually found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club called like the I don't know, like the Brown Butte Club or the Brown Butt Club or
something and the like. Found out that this John Towery guy that was in this motorcycle club and had his you know, was registered to vote outside of Tacoma in this town there. It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist and a friend, you know, I thought he was
a personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force Protection Unit at Joint Joint Base Lewis McCord and also working with a whole list of different agencies and what turned out to be like a massive surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us, to spy on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge.
Yeah, And that's one of the things that are always so much really interesting on this So, like I learned about militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around the history of like informists and I ran into this and I was like what because?
And then that was what I thought. One of the things I thought was really interesting about this is that like, like I think that this chapter of the anti war movement is even on the left, is like not very well known, but like the serious dis is which the army seems to have taken it is, like is really remarkable.
Yeah, I'm wondering what you think about that.
One thing we have to emphasize is is that we were not a large group of people. Yeah, like the number of people who are actively involved in port military. I guess my insistence at its peak was at how many people do you think it was, Brandon.
Well, it depends. I mean I'd say they're probably like at its peak, maybe probably four to fifty people that would like consistently show up to think, you know, maybe a slightly smaller, very core group, but we would have demonstrations with like and then like four hundred people, you know, yeah.
And like that would be like the max like there is. It's like there were like the peaceful like kind of like support actions. You know, you would get like a couple hundred people, and then like for the stuff like where it's like the first night that that the part of the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied, would be like like forty to fifty people. These were
not These were not very large groups of people. I feel like, and like I said, it's like one thing that we need to keep in mind was that the peace police were much stronger back then than they are now nowadays, Like as we saw last year, it's like people in the US have learned to throw down, but that was not the case at the time. And so this is a very very small group of people, and I think we accomplished a lot from with how small it was. If it had been larger, it would have
accomplished way more. But even that small core of like forty to fifty people with maybe expanding out to like a larger group of a couple hundred, had them that scared that they went that far to try and disrupt it.
Yeah, and this is one of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently. Of this has seem to be a very consistent thing, which is that like the two things that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer drop on you if you touch them. Is pipelines and ports, and that was something you know, we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests.
But I was interested in.
What you two think about, because yeah, this this is like a very particular moments right now in what you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures.
And I was wondering if if you do think there's anything that we.
Can learn from how your versions of the sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming up next year.
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it is this old saying and the IWW, direct action gets goods, right, And I think it really boils down to that. It's building up you know, mass movements and social movements from below that rely on direct action, that rely on civil resistance, civil disobedience. Yeah, and the pipeline protests that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on the front lines
of that for many many years now. I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know, surveillance of repression that folks we're facing at Standing Rock for example. You know, I think, of course, one of the well one of the main differences is that it was primarily the military, you know, with us, right that was surveilling us, because this was very specifically you know, a war issue
and a military issue. But yeah, I mean I think, you know, like I think there's a big questions like what do we have to do that's that's new? And to me, I say, you know, for both that kind of militant action, but also for the labor movements, like, it's not you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
There are things that have tried and true track record of getting the goods, and that is you know, these more disruptive kind of actions and movements, and so one of them would be you know, I guess my suggestion would be to like go back to the basics. And even like I would say, now you know this, remember this is at a time when like Facebook was around, right, like,
but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone calls and building up trust with people and building up our capacity to like take actions and make change.
You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know, that at least some of the good that social media has to offer, but like I think going beyond that and going back to these older tactics and then for the labor movement, like the big thing is you know, and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream unions in particular. I mean, they're the whole idea of like union contracts is that workers also
lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but business owners and bosses have rights carved out in those contracts.
And with the long shore workers, I mean the difficult thing with that, of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do, you know, around like the Warren Rock historically supporting movement Abou Jamal may Day, et cetera, like in Oakland, but they have some things for that written into their contracts, and you know, for all these other like unions, it's like, well, you know, we can't
strike at all for the next two years or next three years, whatever the life of the contract is, Like I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond that and not be put in this straight jacket of contracts like that.
Yeah, I think that that, particularly like the the no strike clause part of contracts, I think is an interesting thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean, there are some unions that will actually do stuff around fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.
And I think you wind up in a situation where it seems like you kind of have to plan your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you can't actually get people to do anything more of in like a one day symbolic strike.
Yeah, and or you know, the challenge is like, you know, we have this great American tradition that's not unique to the US. It's universal really, and it's one that resonates with me breaking the law right and like we're you know, we're like civil disobedience. That is that what we are doing in the streets and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement did in
the nineteen sixties. But like we have recent examples of workers breaking the law in mass like the West Virginia teacher strikes and a few years ago, like teachers in every single county in that state went on strike. They broke the law, and they want something out of that.
And I think that's what we really need to encourage people, is this idea of breaking out of like the norm and and breaking the laws, which you know, the laws that are in place, which are not there to you know, expand our freedom, they're there to contract it.
Yeah, one of one of my friends kind a joke about what was the exact line. It was, it's it's only illegal if you get caught and it only matters if you lose, which I think is a good way of thinking about.
Both.
And yeah, and you know, yeah, I think it's also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides, the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly. So don't don't bind yourself if you can, if you can not get caught and not like go to prison for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself by a bunch of like paper that the other side just doesn't care about.
Yeah, And that's an excellent point because that's the big thing, you know with the army and law enforcement in general, like surveillance of us. They were in the police, just their actions, their brazen actions on the street, like the riot police. They were just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights, of civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were a number of you know, court cases that
sprung out of you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagoacas Vitari. Another Juliana Panagakas was another PMR member coplaintiff in that case. And you know, it is a case against the army that you know, we waged and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and you know, eventually lost and it could have brought it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But you know, like the the other thing is like the violation of the posse commentatous Act. It was a whole other thing.
You know, we don't have to get like so tied up into like the legalistic I think, but like the point your point is valid, Like they don't care about the laws that are already there. They'll they'll just intentionally break them, break their own laws that they have set up, and you know, they'll just get a slap on the wrist because that's really all that's all that happens to them.
I think, I think, I think that's a good note to end on. Break the law. It's fake. It's also bad.
Do you two have anything you want to plug other than that, other than you know, encouraging people to break them.
Your local port.
Yeah, uh yeah, I mean I think it's you know, I guess just encourage people to do as you know, it sounds like what we're you're doing by having this on the show, And like there are some in our very recent history, you know, movements and wins that we
all as activists today can still learn from. And I think part of that, you know, I don't want to call us elders because we're not that old, but like one part of that is like making sure like our movements are still like multi generational and like we we learned from each other and also as as Julianna and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements of the past, SDS, the Black Panthers, the
Black Freedom Movement, et cetera. But there's a lot that you know, these these struggles I think have to offer us today.
All right, well think thank you, Thank you both for talking, coming on and talking with.
Us, for having us. Thank you.
Well, this is, this has been. It could happen here.
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I don't know why I'm saying somewhat. They're just a cursed.
Yeah, see you next time whenever.
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