It Could Happen Here Weekly 178

work with. Is that we are committing to youth when they are typically around kindergarten age level and they're being paired with a mentor, and they will have a mentor until they graduate the program, so that usually ends up being a total of twelve and a half years. And that like within that, we were doing a lot of

like individualized care and support. We work with them in the schools, we work with them outside the schools, We help them get into extracurriculars, We help them with like social emotional regulation, developing relationships with other youth in the program, and really just like being a consistently reliable human being, and one of the big pillars of our organization is the commitment to long term, which sometimes can be an issue when you are facing a lot of high turnover

As an organization. We both have eight kids on our roster, as do most mentors, and within that we have youth. I personally have youth that have been assigned to me that have just started in the program, meaning that they were like maybe first grade when I was assigned to them.

And then I also have youth that are middle school level that have had several different men tours in the past, some that have stayed there for maybe a few years, and like sometimes there's ones that have been there for months.

So we work with a lot of kids that come from immigrant families, from families that have you know, single parent households, foster care families, and kids kids that like unfortunately, are likely to face some challenges that our society and the way it's built up will deal to them, and our goal is to help them through those challenges, just be there for them so that they have a chance of you know, graduating high school or entering adulthood without

having you know, having had kids or facing like the justice system. It's kids that we love dearly that we work with in a similar way as like you know, a program like Big Brothers Big Sisters. But we are paid mentors, which is the big difference, right, We're not volunteer based. We are employees basically social workers for all.

We also work with like the siblings too, because sometimes you'll have a youth that maybe is the only child in that family that for whatever reason got a mentor and then you support also I mean it's a choice, but I would say that most mentors definitely opt into being there for siblings and family members in the household and making sure that they're also showing up for the caregivers to help them create a loving home.

do that if you're doing this kind of work. But then also, you know, in order for that to work, I think it's you know, you can see this the outside, like, in order for this to work, this has to be a job that you could stayably do for a decade, right.

negative feelings and that grief, that anger. We can take it in and almost like dissolve it a little bit, right, But within that, like it can affect us so so much. And that's where, Yeah, the sustainability part of like twelve and a half years in this job, like that is a lot, and you we need a lot for that to like at all be be possible.

like physical and emotional labor. And then also like, I don't know, it seems pretty bad that there's only been one co worker who's been able to graduate their kids.

like taking good care of themselves. But it is definitely something that like takes a lot of regulation, and I think empathy is one of the greatest skills in this job. But it also yeah, it also then leads to us needing greater needs of self care and things like that.

of like what this job can be. And I think like overall, like like social work, it's not just like our our job, but like I'm sure other social workers and people in care industries, like we have that like continuous like vicarious trauma that makes us forget like how how our job is sometimes and then it's helpful to hear other people mention it because it's like, yeah, wow, our job is kind of crazy and and the work we do is like really important and really important for society.

And also yeah, like it's hard. It's hard work.

obviously like develop such loving relationships with these kids. It's hard to see like kids that you care about so much that sometimes the most you can do is just be there.

lot of people to want to start organizing. Some of the issues that we face, like the pay obviously, like within social work in general and nonprofit work, like it's never gonna match up and never gonna really be as good as like the cost of living, especially here in Portland. But the pay compared to like all of the emotional work and all the work that we do was just

not there and not sustainable. It's why people were not able to stick around because frankly, we were looking at the same issues that our families were facing of, like you know, food of insecurity and needing to like get food stamps, or like needing like rental and like housing assistants because our pay was just not up to par. Those are a few of the issues. Jess, I don't know if you have other thoughts.

that haven't really been addressed. We have had very tragic things happen in the in our working community with the families and that have drastically affected. Yeah, the well being of mentors and staff members alike.

people are incredibly well supported. And it's like the fact that it's like, Okay, you're trying to do this, but you're not paying people enough money to fucking afford food, Like.

but actually it's more than two of the youth. But the first two youth that I was matched up with, they hadn't had a mentor for over two years, jeez,

which is a really long time. Like when when you know, are five six years old, and you're used to one person consistently picking you up every single week and hanging out with you and spending time with you for several hours for six or seven years, and then just like next day, next week, maybe even that same day, you find out like, oh, you no longer have a mentor and you're not going to have a mentor for two more years because people keep leaving, People aren't wanting to

apply for this job because the pay isn't high enough. Right That then like creates like a lot of issues with the kids that we're dealing with. It's not like we are these like saviors or like anything like along those lines, right, But when someone has consistent support and then that support is lost for a long time, especially when you're a young kid where it's been the majority of your life you've been having that consistant support. That then creates like a lot of trust issues and like

overall like attachment issues that a youth could face. And for me, that was the main thing. Like working with these kids and having to like regain that trust was something that's like still to this day is like really emotionally like daunting. And I, like I will keep saying this. I love my kids so much, like I like can't stop thinking about them, and I want to be with my kids until they graduate, which would mean me staying at this job for another eight years, which it's a

long time, right, but I want to do that. So I want to you know, get paid, have time off when what of my sadly this is something that did a curve where you've passed away that I worked with and like didn't have time off to like really grieve that.

And then also it's like, yeah, one of these kids that is literally your job to care for dies, you just have to fucking go to work the next day. Like it is so hideous, and it's.

that they need to, like, life happens. Sometimes people leave and like move and get a different job for various reasons, but a lot of the times it's it's because it's not sustainable and it's really hard to leave, and like it's a heartbreaking thing because I, like, I want to graduate many of my youth and it is something that I think about of like how feasible is that, Like I want to do it, and like also, okay, then that means I got to be frugal and all these

other ways are et cetera. And yeah, I'm working with youth that have already kind of experienced loss and wanting to continue to show up for them.

crazy and rent for me. Yeah yeah, which which you know gladly. Now we're we have this fight and we're at the two year mark and not at the zero year mark and not looking forward to two more years of doing this. But yeah, it's it's been hard to sustain this when everything is increasing in price and our wages are completely stagnant.

it's exhausting. It is so exhausting. We have regular meetings that we attend to that our bargaining meetings were specifically schedules outside of work hours, so that like the people on our bargaining team and other union members would have to put in that extra time outside of our forty hour week. Yeah, and within that, Like the hardest part is when you directly confront right your managers and your bosses about like the rights and the things that you need.

our supervisors and managers, like it really was hard. What was hard for me was hard for other union organizers in our workplace, and it was hard for all of our workers where we started thinking like dang, like what is the value that we have like in this workplace, What is the value that we intrinsically have in the work that we're doing with our kids? It's a lot, And it's a lot when you're facing all these systems that our kids are facing and like taking those things

in and then are trying to change those systems. Finally able to try to change those systems, and we learned that like, oh wait, like the place that we're working is actually part of these systems too, and it's doing the same things that we're like fighting to have our kids like have better lives. Like we're facing it right now from inside the house.

quality of conditions. So definitely not what you want to be getting, not what you want to be handed across from the bargaining table.

getting stuff back to you. And it's like I remember, you know, like we'd be sitting there for a bargaining meeting and they wouldn't and they would be an hour late, and they'd be an hour late because they hadn't like bothered to beforehand spend time drafting out what their responses were going to be, so they were frantically trying to get it done before we were there, and we're all just sitting there for literally an hour waiting for them

to show up. But it's like, Okay, there are people in this unit whose job it is to stand next to car bombs, like and you can't show up on time to your to this, to this meeting that you

have know was going to happen for weeks. Like it's just I say this every single lepany these episodes was like, this is an incredibly common YouTube blisting tactic is draw out the first contract, because that's that's like the second point where unions fail after like the after after you get like recognition votes is like here, yeah, for sure, you know, like I mean I think there's something extent we expect corporations do this, but it's like, Okay, this

is an NGO that's like the point of which you're supposed to be like helping underprivileged, underprivileged youth. And then they're like we're going to turn around and we're going to screw over different underprivileged youth.

And you know that's not to like like other you know, businesses and other workplaces that unionize, a lot of times people want to do that because they want financial security, right, And I think for a lot of NGOs, nonprofits and care work like, we unionize because we want to stick around both because of financial security, right, but also because we just like care so much about the work that we're doing.

We could underpay them and overwork them.

back on for a long time. It's also like what precipitated the ULP filing. I made too many buttons that said you could never have peuty butons truly that said I worked forty plus hours a week. Because one of the people on the bargaining team for management at the bargaining table asked if we even worked forty hours a week while we were talking about this, and that's like one of those instances that I mean like yeah, wow, that's like a little disrespectful and like really bites. So

we all were wearing these pins regularly. We you know, we signed a strike pledge where we had like eighty something percent of the unit say that like if we came to voting.

that I'm at and that I've been at since the beginning. Yeah, And when it comes to wages, like, well, we're still figuring that out, but some of the gains that we are potentially looking at is like incredible, Like I looked at the numbers yesterday of like what hopefully given like where we're at right now in the agreements like what I would hopefully get and I straight up like tiered up looking at the number because it felt like such

a big change in my financial status. Right, And yesterday, like as I said, I worked on nine thirty PM with my kids, probably because I had this like massive like weight of you know, this financial doom that I'm looking at somewhat lifted at the hope of the winds that we might get from this contract. So it's been incredibly hard, incredibly long, way too long, and all of it is so it is going to be so worth it, right.

I hope that's something that the listeners really get that, like, this is hard work, but in the end, like is the change that we were hoping for, you know.

sense with where our buildings were located. Despite even if our kids were like totally somewhere else where we were picking them up, it definitely wasn't like the most sensible way for us to be like being fully.

on people and it is the most necessary work. And I think it's really easy to fall into the mindset of I'm doing this for the greater good, not you know, not for money, not for these things, but like you also deserve to feel okay and taken care of and like have the things you need to be saying yeah, hey, says anything else do you want to add?

is really going to impact like the development side of our organization and like all of the things that like our fundraising team is going to have to do to like meet thees, which again I think, yeah, that would be more true if like our executive director wasn't making like what like five times as much money as I

am Jeu Christ. Yeah, but yeah, showing that support, like it doesn't have to be a lot, but showing our bosses just how much like the populace like is supporting our unionization efforts like that power do you really don't too? And and then also like it impacts our kids, like our kids, like that's the truth of it all, Like I want my kids to have the best life that they could possibly have, and sadly we live in a world for money really dictates that.

It's somewhat odd that corporate media has really not reported on the revolution in any substantial way since twenty twenty one, but the earthquake apparently justified a lot of network sending people to me Amma for the first time. Very amusingly, people dming me on Blue Sky and Twitter are asking how to get a visa from the Burmese Hunter, which is not a thing I've ever done. The last communication I had with them came in the form of a car bomb that they said of near to a place

where we were. But if you're not aware, the earthquake happened on the twenty eighth of March of this year, just before one in the afternoon. It was the biggest earthquake in Myanma. So it's nineteen twelve and it registered seven point seven on the Richter scale, which is huge because it's it's very hard for foreign journalists to get

a visa to enter Memba. The initial reporting focused on Bangkok and the damage done in Thailand, but the epithet was in Sagang, which is near Mandalay, Madelaide's second biggest city in Memba, and that was where like the worst of the destruction happened. Almost every street in Mandalai has collapsed buildings. It's a little difficult for us to get a sense of the exact scale of the damage because the Hunter refuses to allow Some media has been allowed in the BBC. I saw like sneaked up in. It's

very difficult for media to move and report freely. And in addition to this, the Hunter has continued to practice of cutting off Internet for people in Memma, right.

thirty thousand people, and they blocked international aid. They said that people didn't need the quote chocolate bars that the US and other countries were trying to deliver, and that they could exist by like hunting frogs in ditches, was

their suggestion. I don't think people realize like how far down the North Korea scale that the Burmese Hunter is, but like they're very worried that any interaction with the outside world, specifically with like I guess western neoliberal powers, will be damaging for their like ability to control the population. So for that reason, we don't know how many people have died. Right from what I've heard on the ground, the death toll is substantially higher than the three thy

six hundred number being reported. The US Geological Survey estimated that an earthquake of that magnitude in that region would kill between ten and one hundred thousand people. Obviously, that's quite a big kind of delta there. What I can tell you is that I've heard firsthand that there are some parts of mandolines A going where the stench of rotting bodies is so powerful that people have stopped returning

to their homes. There have been so many aftershocks that people are still sleeping in the street because they're worried about the damage structures falling down. The UN has an estimate of seventeen million people of cross fifty seven townships. Townships are like the administrative districts that are used in miannber a bit affected, with over nine million people facing

severe hardship. And of course this is all compounded by the fact that there were already twenty million people in Miamma who needed humanitarian assistance, and they're about three and a half million internally displaced people as a result of the fighting that's happened after the revolution, So like, it really came at a pretty difficult time in a place where the government is not willing to They said after the earth quake they wanted international aid, but they've as

we'll see later in this script. They've only accepted it from certain countries. I spoke to a friend who has family in Mandalay yesterday. He told me that the way they're assessing the damage is using like open source intelligence. They're trying to look in the backgrounds of people's videos on Facebook to work out if their childhood homes fell down. Right, they were using satellite imaging software when I spoke to them yesterday to try and ascertaining of their families were okay,

they told me. Or Sagang has very famous pagodas, and the pagodas are all on a hill. Apparently a lot of those pagodas have fallen down, and even the hill itself is like listing. So there's been like massive cultural damage as well. Another way in which the damage was compounded by Miamma's politics was the quake struck like I said, at one pm on a Friday, right, which is Friday prayers.

This happened during Ramadan speciularly the day before it'll fitter, which is a very busy day for mosques if you're not aware, right, Successive governments of Meamma since the nineteen sixties have refused to allow even basic maintenance for mosques.

That means that these buildings were in great states of disrepair. Right, Myanma, there is an ulternationalist Buddhist movement which has been embraced to a great degree by the Hunter, but also limited even like the National League for Democracy, which was the relatively neo liberal aligned party that had previously been in

power in Myanma or somewhat in power. I suppose alternationalist Buddhist monks like Ashin Wurathu and his nine six nine movement have kind of condemned anythink that they did as making the pro Muslim and they have this essentially they have a great replacement theory, right that Muslims are trying to come in through Bangladesh to replace Buddhists in Mianma.

global nativist movement. People's orientalism, I think sometimes stops them seeing that or appreciating that this extends outside of like

white global North countries. Yeah. One thing that I did think that that really touched me in the days after the earthquake was young Buddhist Bamar people of the majority ethnicity, reaching out to me and being like, hey man, this happened in Friday prayers to Ramadan, and it has devastated the Muslim population, Like thousands of people, hundreds of mosques have gone, and thousands of people are trapped in a rubble and like no one's talking about it. Why it is,

no we're talking about it. This is terrible and like it would have been inconceivable to hear young Bama Buddhist people so concerned with the well being of like their Muslim countrymen. Before the coup in twenty twenty one, This was a country that had been manufacturing consent for genocide against it it's Muslim minorities for four or five years by that point, right specifically on Facebook. That's a behind the bath this episode on this you can also listen

if you're new to the show. Robert and I have made two scripted series about the revolution in the Emma, which will include in the show notes. But like that change to a real genuine solidarity and care between these two groups was really touching in the moments after the earthquake, in the days after the earthquake. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about the revolution and I want to talk about how the revolution has been responding to this and the impact it has

had on the revolution. We are back, and of course the revolution hasn't stopped because of the earthquake, right The conflict is still ongoing and the PDFs and their allied ethnic business organizations are still fight against the Hunter. In fact, within an hour of the earthquake, the Hunter began using paramotors to drop bombs on Hangul village in Sugang. This has been a thing that they've started to do recently.

In a sense, I guess it's a good sign because it shows that maybe their jets and other aircraft are in a poor state of repair, or that they're struggling to keep enough of them airborne. Initially, I wondered if they were using the paramotors because their runways have been damaged, but there doesn't seem to be the case. They've been air striking just as much as they ever did, which

is unfortunate. Satellite images or imports some my source on the ground suggests that they're able to continue carrying out bombing rates at a pretty similar rate from when they

did before. Despite this, the National Unity Government, which is kind of the shadow government composed mostly of people who are elected and then deposed by the coup in twenty twenty one, and the PDF, who in theory are commanded by the National Unity Government, called a two week ceasefire right after the earthquake to allow for like a humanitarian pause.

The Three Brotherhood Alliance, which is an alliance of the three most powerful ethnic resistance organizations in Myanmar, also called what they called a humanitarian pause for a month in both cases, they said they wouldn't undertake offensive operations, but they would defend themselves, right because I think they had a CeNSE that the Hunter wasn't going to stop attacking them.

The Hunter did declare its own ceasfire on April third, and the Kachin Independence Army, which is another ethnic residence organization, followed shortly thereafter. Notably, that ceasefire from the Hunter came the day after its troops fired on a Chinese Red Cross convoy, which is not a great look for them.

see where that will go. Given Yeah, Marcus Leninism MAUSM is definitely not the majority ideology the revolution. Most people are committed to some form of federal democracy, which when you speak to different fighters varies from like we want what you guys have in the US to something more akin to the democratic confederalism that people might be familiar

with in Rajaba. China is competing with Russia in me and mar so both of them are interested in supporting the Hunter right like, and obviously both their ideologies are far from liberatory that they're interested in propping up a totalitarian state. So we have seen both Russia and China send support to the Hunter, send like rescue teams after the earthquake. Meanwhile, the US offered two million dollars, which I was kind of surprisedly offered.

as like someone with adversarial interests. Russia is still interested in just kind of projecting itself as a global power, even as it continues to shrink of every day in terms of its global ability to project power. But there

definitely are both Chinese and Russian assistants helping the Miamma hunter. Now, meanwhile, the US doesn't seem to give a shit what happens here now, like this is kind of not that the Biden administration was doing very much either, but at least we had USAID and USIP was very invested in MEMR and actually did a really good job of kind of almost like being the Foreign Affairs not branch, but they explained the revolution to the world like whenever a journalist

wanted to understand the revolution in MEMMR, it was USIP. They went to. All the contents that have at USIB

have now been doged, which is a shame. So despite the ceasefire, right I said, they fired on these Chinese troops, the Hunter has in fact not stop bombing earthquakes struck areas since the earthquake madele APDF, who I'm in contact with the other revolutionary forces in the area that was most affected by the earthquake on April seventh, told me that they're aware of ten strikes in their area of

operations since the earthquake. Three months old baby and a ten year old child were killed in an air raid on Niicar village and Papun township that was in Corren State on April tenth. They bombed a school and something that the Hunter likes to do a lot that they dropped two five hundred pound bombs on a food court. They then circled back and dropped another bomb on the people responding to and giving aid to the people they'd

initially bombed in the food court. By food court here, Just to clarify, I'm not talking about like at the shopping mall. I'm talking about like a market where people can buy like prepared food.

and rescue volunteer. Right, So they were moving rebel to rescue people, and they were forcibly conscripted while they were doing that. Obviously, that's had a chilling effect on people going out to help others.

They spent twenty four hours sitting in an airport waiting for their visa to be approved, and then they spent one day working in search and rescue efforts before being told that search and rescue efforts had now finished and they were to go home. So they traveled around the entire world, didn't save a single life abundance. It's great,

presumably because the Hunter wanted to plicate China. A Taiwanese team was straight up refused entry into Mienmar, that Taiwan had a search and rescue team that they were willing to say send who could have saved people lives, and that they weren't allowed to enter. All tourist visas have been suspended, so it's not like the Hunter is like overwhelmed with visa applications, but they're not allowing search and

rescue teams to enter from countries. I guess they're not politically aligned with this kind of horrific indifference to human suffering has characterized a toutmudor for decades, and it's really unlikely to change as it grows even more desperate and it loses even more territory. If just going to clamp down harder and harder on its people, be one. In the liberated areas, aid is being mobilized using the mutual aid structures which have existed for decades in the absence

of the state. In significant and growing parts of Me and mar people are relying on each other instead of the government for aid, and that has its benefits. Right, Like, people have been out rescuing people from the rebel, but they're also desperately short of resources. I spoke to mandal APDF rescue team at the first week of April and they literally sent me a they have a notebook of a list of like we've run out of gorze, we've run out of twenty k's, we've run out of adhesive dressings,

we've run out of elastic bandages. Right, they're like the little nuts and bolts of saving people's lives. They run out of We did a fund raising campaign for them through Behind the Bastards. We raised nearly two thousand dollars, which is great. So they're restocking their supplies, which is fantastic, But that's just one township. All across the country, people are struggling for the basic supplies that they need to save lives. The military has also blocked aid and medicine

from entering their areas. Right, so the military controls a lot of road and it uses its control of those roadblocks to stop aid in medicine. Often it's kind of hoarding it. In the capital city, which is Napi Door. If people not familiar in Napi Door is a city that they couldn't have built for itself to go from. I mean seat of Kings. Also in napidor right now, it's the US Aid agency Samaritans Purse. Are you familiar with Samaritans perse Gratin? I don't think so.

that Christians would be going to services at churches. Right the Kareni Christians this year I saw celebrated Christmas in caves because they were so afraid of being bombed. Right, Like, I have no idea what logical leap you have to make, sar Yeah, it's and they're like, they're not even at the Insagang. The only people, the only international AID I'm aware of that was able to make it to Sigang

was a Malaysian team who were able to save some lives. Unfortunately, there were really strong rains this week and that made all the collapse structures even more unstable. And the Malaysian team I saw have now returned home. We're going to take another ad break here and when we come back, we will talk about what you can do t help. All right, and we're back first, I want to, I guess have some good news. Despite everything. The military has

still been taking massive losses. The all Burma students Democratic Front captured remaining Hunter positions in Indoor. They're all both. Democratic Front are a group that's been around since nineteen eighty eight, right, and they have armed up and re entered the revolution since twenty twenty one. One of the things that they captured on Monday was a underground Japanese field hospital from World War II, which I guess had

been like entrench position. I guess they're not covered technically by the ceasefire, but there was a unit under the National Uniti government's command that operated with them, and from what I understand, this began as a defensive action. They'd surrounded the Hunter I think it's called yet japan Came Hill. They'd surrounded them on Japancave Hill for a long time, and then the Hunter obviously, seeing the earthquake and everything thereafter, decided that now was the time for them to break

out of this circlement. They did not break out, They took a fat l and as a result, they've all been captured now. Meanwhile, in chin Land, if people haven't listened to the episode, I did a couple of weeks ago with a Zad from the Anti Fascist Internationalists Front. I was just going back and listening to that to understand chin Land. But the AIF and a lot of their allied forces from a Chinland Defense Force and a chin Brotherhood had a significant victory in capturing the rest

of the Hunter's positions in Flam last week. And I think it's very much like on the table that we will see the whole of chin Land liberated in the next few months or by the end of the year, which would be great to see. So people are wondering, like what they can do to help, right, And I think it's a very valid question because I saw today that the un was meeting with the Hunter in and I just have no faith that any money that goes to the Hunter is going to get to people who need it.

are making a really big difference. And one of them that I wanted to highlight, and Robert and I are very familiar with their work from the last time that we were over reporting is Community Partists International CPI are really cool because they work by empowering members of the local community to be health volunteers, as opposed to like dropping in some some like doctors from America or doctors from the United Kingdom or whatever, and then when those

people leave, they take their skills with them. CPI the thing is to educate folks within the community so that they can take care of one another. And I saw that CPI has a matching donations thing right now, which is pretty cool. So like if you donate, someone else will match your donation and that will double the amount that you receive otherwise, I will provide a list of mutual aid funds that have been shared with me. Most of them are like gofundmes or things like that. I'll

put it all in the show description. They've all been vetted, and like I know, people are sometimes reluctant to give to go fundmes and they'd rather give to like a five oh one C three or an organization which has a little bit more I guess, like online presence. In this case, you have to understand that like a lot of orgs just aren't operating in the liberated areas. The two that I'm aware of CPI and Free Burma Rangers.

I spoke to Dave from Free Burma Ranges. They're trying to get to as many people as it can as well. That would be another great place to donate. And I would include a list of vetted gofundmes. If you want to have a look through those and see if any of them kind of speaks to you more, you can do that too. What this will mean for the future of Memma, we don't know yet. Right we have really no sense of how many people have died, of what it's done to the Hunter's ability to control those areas.

But until the revolution has a way to stop planes bombing people, we will continue to see the same dynamic of the Hunter losing terrain on the ground, pulling back its soldiers, and then bombing civilians in the areas.

much solidarity for the people at Burma. If you want to stay in touch with what's happening on the ground, I think the Irawiti I Double r a Wa d d Y does a really good job of doing daily summaries right now. So I would suggest checking out what's happening there, and of course we'll keep you updated on developments in the Spring Revolution as they come.

in Seacott lights around all the time. They put ten to twenty people per sell. It's pretty bad. Jameson has done episodes on Seacott in the past, will probably keep doing more.

to a foreign prison camp is still bad. But this is something that Trump hopes to expand on greatly, and they are currently defending their ability to do so in the court since it has been learned that a few people sent there may have been partially sent by accident. But the Trump administration is refusing to return these people and is instead still trying to convince the public that these are dangerous terrorists that deserve to be disappeared. So

let's kind of start with that main case. The case that's receiving the most public attention right now is of a Maryland man named Kilmayor Abrego Garcia, who's the subject of a district court case that has been sent up to the Supreme Court and then sent back to the district court on whether this man can be returned home

to his US citizen wife and child. And then on Monday, April fourteenth, in the Oval Office meeting, President Bouquela said that he will not return this Maryland immigrant with protected legal status back to the United States, who Ice admits was sent to Seacot based on a quote unquote administrative Errorka said, quote, how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it.

The question is preposterous unquote. The Al Salvador president also balked at the idea of releasing Garcia from Seacott since he can't have a quote unquote terrorist free in his country, lying about Garcia being a criminal. I am going to play a few clips in this episode because I think it is necessary to listen to these people actually say the words that they are saying, in the tone that they're saying them, and the exact phrasing on these I

think is actually pretty important right now. So, unfortunately, you are gonna have to hear the voices of a few people who you might not rather hear from, including the president of El Salvador. So I'll play this first.

United States. All he needs to do is release him from SECAT and the US can fly him back right just as we flew him to l Salvador. Like the two heads of state are sitting right next to each other. They could agree to do this at any time, But now everyone's pretending that that suddenly they don't have the power to undo what they seemingly had the power to do in the first place.

of the design of Seacot. Uh, the person who runs, Like the Seacott Like security has said that they do not intend in any person ever being released from Seacott. You are not designed to get out. You are stuck there forever. No one's ever left there. Yeah, it's just where you get disappeared, and that's that's all. That's all

that it is. And I think part of why they're so unwilling to send Garcia back is because then you have someone like the first person who's ever gotten out and can talk about what it's actually like in there, when you don't have like Christinome and like propaganda cameras pointed at at the prison bars.

Like you said, they don't want anyone to be able to go to any international human rights courts and testify as to what happened to them there. So it's kind of in his interest to never have anyone be released. It's not just also, I guess like in his interest, he's also being paid right twenty thousand dollars per detainee per year by the United States right now, so he also has a financial interest in keeping people in there.

be there for one year. It's like they're just they're just there, and like who knows if they're gonna like still be alive by the time that some of these people would be able to get out, whether that's through the miraculous Donald Trump impeachment of twenty twenty six which will never happen, or like however, like these people are just they are just stuck there because he's not going to release them into his country. We are seemingly unable to take anyone back from there.

how it was always someone else's faults. No single person could get like hammered down of being like, okay, you are the person that's going to be like accountable for this. And throughout this Oval Office meeting, eventually they started taking questions from journalists and reporters and propagandists who are in the room. And you saw this trend of you know, if someone asks Trump about what's going on, he passes the buck to Stephen Miller, who passes the buck to Bouquetle,

who then passes the buck to Mark Rubio. And it's like this big circle of like everyone's just talking around each other because no one really has the authority to to speak on what's going on or how to fix this problem because they don't see it as a problem.

So instead they just talk in a circle. And I think Miller was one of the most effective at this and unfortunately, we're going to play the longest clip in this episode, just under two minutes from Stephen Miller, where he lays out the Trump admins thought process and strategy behind what they are doing. And I apologize for this, but it is useful to hear from Himmler.

know you're very familiar with. The iron eg that he was no longer eligible for any form of him a greation relief in the United States. So we had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our law he's not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation. This issue was then by District Court judge completely inverted, and a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen

of El Salvador and fly him back here. That issue was raised to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed nine zero, unanimously stating clearly that neither Secretary of State nor the President could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from Al Salvador, who again is a member of MS thirteen, which is I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, murder's women,

murder's children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world. And I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.

hundreds of people with no criminal records and send them to a foreign goo lug and then also lied about about the Supreme Court ruling, saying they found the district court order to return to Garcia unlawful and grossly mischaracterizing the scope of what the Supreme Court ruling was and how it was sent back to the district court to work with the details on what facilitate the return actually means.

And again, I think like the one of the most telling parts is how he ends by saying, quote, no version of this ever ends up with him living here, And yeah, like they're gonna look for any any way to like make this test case to work, right and if and if they if they can do this to someone with protected legal status, who is not a who's not a terrorist, who is not an actual MS thirteen gang member, right, this is this is kind of ideal for them because that means they can paint anybody as

as a foreign policy threat enough to be sent to a foreign goolag. Then at the very end of the clip, he passes the buck off to to bouquettist to have to have him answer this question again perfectly laying out their strategy.

Sea's protection was from being returned to El Salvador, right, because he had been harassed by gang members when leaving El Salvador and when being in El Salvador.

I'm sure people from Trend de Ragua have come to this country, but they have not provided any evidence that the people they have sent to say God, are those people.

which is okay, we'll send them to a Salvador. But for the Salvadarians, that's a different question, right, And that is what they're trying to find here, and that is worrying because the case here that is getting the most publicity, that seems to be the one that the Supreme Court has taken up, is about the Salbadaran man. And I hope that doesn't mean that like the ship has sailed for the Venezuelans, right that essentially, yeah, No, like they don't have a case because that was the vast bulk

of them. I think there was only like sixty Salbadrean citizens and the rest Venezuelans, no.

conduct the foreign policy of the United States unquote. And Steven Miller hopped back in to talk about this Supreme Court case that they're falsely saying they won nine to zero, which is not how that case went, and they start talking more broadly about what can be allowed if it has to do with the foreign policy of the United States, and how the courts don't have the ability to intervene in that process.

the US has neither the obligation nor sometimes the ability to return you to US soil if that is their foreign policy interest. And this is such a troubling broad concept that the portions of the courts are kind of allowing them to claim right now. And the complete removal of due process is like slowly getting encroached upon at first with undocumented immigrants and green card holders, but as we will see in the next section. They are also absolutely going to be targeting US citizens.

A few days later, the White House Presecretary reiterated that this is something that Trump is discussing both publicly and privately, and later during the April fourteenth Oval Office meeting, Trump said that if Salvador was to build more of these torture megaprisons, the United States would quote unquote help them out. If the Trump administration could disappear more American immigrants and US citizens to these prison black sites, well.

of people to get them out of the country. But you'll have to be looking at the laws on that state.

asylum hearing right. And that's what I'm wondering if they're going for again, Like Steve Miller has been very good at this, at finding obscure justifications in the United States federal law for shit that they want to do.

the undesirables to. And no matter how much Trump talks about how we're oldly going to send quote unquote like American criminals there, as we've seen with Seacott so far, Like, no, like the majority of people they are sending do not have criminal criminal histories. I don't think anyone can trust the Trump administration's definition of what isn't isn't criminal to this extent anymore. Later in the same meeting, Trump reiterated the same idea about sending you a citizens who his

administration deems criminals to this foreign black site. Here's another clip is a fall question on a.

how they're going to handle that aspect. But you can't just take this as like, oh, you know that that's just Trump talking, like no, this is this is this is something they really want to do, and it's like one of the freakiest things that I've seen in like domestic US politics in a long time. Earlier, Trump was recorded half whispering to Beckley telling him that El Salvador needs to build five more Sea cought style torture prisons

to house US citizens, as Trump says, homegrown criminals. Bukeley replies that they will have enough room, and then the entire Oval Office laughs.

James want to want to, impossibly five minutes or less, fill us in about the the update from the from the District Court on Garcia's case since it was sent back to the district Court from the Supreme Court last week regarding his possible facilitated return to the United States.

irreparable harm. And she talks about the process being at the roots of the constitution. Right, She's ordered for like two weeks more of discovery, which is going to mean that both sides have more time to repair their cases. Right, she wants people to testify in front of the court.

She is so the administration has argued that facilitating his return would consist of them allowing him to enter the United States if Bukele released him, and possibly providing a flight for that to happen, but not crucially ensuring his release from secord. Right, and so anything else subsequent to that doesn't matter. Chinis said that like their interpretation of the word flies in the face of the plain meaning of the word. Quote, when a wrong fear removed individual

is uh. And then I'm adding to the quote here I guess or context. She means when a wrong fee remove individual is taken outside the US, it's not so cut and dry that all you have to do is remove obstacles domestically. She also said, quote to the Department of Justice here, you made your jurisdictional arguments, you made your venue arguments, you major arguments on the merits you lost. This is now about the scope of the remedy. Right, this is a case that Miller is claiming they want.

That's pretty unequivocal for a justice. However, she does not seem to think that it is within her power to request his return from El Salvador. So she's calling for things to move quickly. Right, they want to conduct depositions about twenty third of April, she said, quote council vacations, council over appointments. I'm usually pretty good about it. Not this time. I'm going to be available if you need to do it odd hours or weekends. That's what I'm

talking about. Anything short of a judge saying you have to go to se Calle, remove him from the cell, put him on the plane, and bring him back to America is going to be interpreted by the Trump administration to mean that they don't.

that we're getting that anytime soon. And as the judge said, right every day he's there, he's a reparable harm is done to him. And that's where we're at right now, right with people arguing over the definition of a war, as hundreds of people are locked up having done nothing wrong in a giant torture prison.

your options include creating networks to take care of one another. Right, Like, the things that will probably affect more of you than direct state violence are economic downturns, are recessions, right, things like this, like those are things that you can take care of one another through, and like you should plan to do that too. You should you should think about how you're going to pay your bills, how you're going to feed each other, how you're going to take care

of your medical needs. Because I don't think that the world is going to want to keep doing business with the country that acts like this, and both economically and in terms of its conduct towards migrants. So like, your plans don't have to be to leave, Like your plans should also include what to do if things get really bad, like in an economic sense.

it'll be when when you hear it. But yeah, with me to talk about this strike is Spencer Jordan, who is a rank and file member of the Urban or Workers Union. Spencer, welcome to the show.

small shop from the sounds of it. And yeah, yeah, so do you want to talk a bit about what the basic process of getting this organizing started was like and what the sort of like social mapping looked like and stuff like that.

But yeah, so preceding that was like, like I said, about a year and a half organizing that involved you know, the typical thing of like one on one conversations with like all the staff, making the you know, color coded spreadsheet and everything, which all of this was not my my purview. I'm a lot more involved now than I

was at the start of the process. And I was approached by like one of our lead organizers really shortly after being hired just to kind of you know read the dipstick as too like my sentiments about it and whatnot. I was pretty on board right away. I mean, you know, like I'm from the Bay Area, so it's not.

is better. Yeah, also kind of seeing like some of the factors that dicipitated it, Like for instance, like when I was hired here, I was hired in my interview, it was the one of the owners and the manager of my department, my department being salvage and recycling department of the urban or which is kind of like not super public facing. We like go to the dump and like root around through the garbage like you know, is

or whatever, get to get stuff for the store. But that manager, you know, he was there in the interview and we got to the portion where the owner explained what at will employment is. Oh and she and she went, so we're at will here. So Sam Weell, Sam was my manager. Well, how long have you been here? Twenty one years? He's there, hands folded on the table. Yes. What at will means is, uh, it could be tomorrow. I could say, you know, Samuell, it's been a great

twenty one years. I really appreciate all the work you've done. Today's your last day, what I say. And he has to sit there and go Jesus Christ, and then she says, of course, likewise, tomorrow sim Well could come to me and say, hey, Mary Lou, it's been twenty one years. I've enjoyed it. I'm quitting. So you know, the sort of sword over his neck is being cast is somehow equal to him not being like indentured.

I've gotten the impression that they enjoy showing their power, and I've gotten the impression that the sort of like uncertainty and like my mom would call it jockeying for position that you have to do is a dynamic that they I can't say I really can't say they honestly because the other owner, he hasn't been very active in the business since since my hiring, but at least Marry

Lou Yeah, tends to lean on. That's kind of like the the special quality that you get with like a small business and organizing in a small workplace is that, like, you know, you can see sort of in their public communications the way that like the Zucks and the Bezos is and the rest of them feel about their employees, and you know, you can get a sense of perhaps how they might act or to their employees if they

like interacted with them on a daily basis. But in a small business setting, you really get a keen view into how like the power of the employer mixes very readily with a person's like pred election towards discipline, pred election towards like personal what'd you call it personal battling? Almost?

But with this, it's like, no, the small business tyrant is right there in your face all the time and all of the weird heady shit that they want to do in all of this sort of like you know, and I would say, this isn't just just like a unique thing of like small business owners, like people in all positions, like in all portions of of like the class society have in them kind of like the capacity

for cruelty. And there's just people like that, but they don't normally have the ability to just do it to

you directly in your face. And that's yeah, and that's like that's you know, this is what you've been talking about, is like, yeah, you have like these small business tyrants, and like every suddenly in the same way that like, I don't know, you're dealing with like like one of the random King Louis and you're like in the court and suddenly just like the fact that this guy doesn't like people going to the bathroom means that everyone around

him doesn't get it, doesn't get doesn't get a shit, right, Like it's just like, yeah, it's weird.

microcosm of like the larger capitalist social order. And while the small business man might not have the scope of power of the oligarch, or like the actual capital resources of an oligarch, the behavior certainly rhymes yeah.

they used to. But you know, you talk about this idea of like living in a democracy, but democracy ends at the shop door.

a substantive thing here. And what this also means is that like, even in ways that are sort of hard to see, like a fight over democracy in the workplace, right is a is a part of the larger struggle against all of all the things that's happening because if you know, if we're gonna survive this, and if we're going to make sure that we don't all live in a world where you like, if you say the wrong thing, you can be sent to a prison camp. Democracy, if you want this to survive, is going to have to

march into like into the layer of the beast. It is going to have to go into the source of this tyranny itself, which is the workplace, and it's going to have to crush it there.

the totalitarian state. But also, like you said, you're you're you're addressing the structure in its I don't know, I almost think of it as like the you know, like Grendel's mother and the then or whatever, and like, you know, the the authoritarian thing is like it's like Grendel maybe, and like Grendel's mother is like this capitalist, hierarchical structure. Yeah, you know, you take it on with an insistence on workplace democracy as kind of libby as that's that sounds.

the old sort of like anarchist idea of workers control. Right, But okay, so one thing I wanted to talk about before we sort of get into the more formal stuff about about the strike is I was I'm really interested to hear you talk about what the process of kind of onboarding you to get more involved in the union is, because this is something that like, okay, every functional union wants to do this, Like if your union is not trying to bring people like its members like more to

get more involved in the union and become more of the people becoming like core organizers and becoming you know, like they're the people who are doing your bargain and people are doing anything like your union is, there's weird shit about it and you should probably like be looking into that, but it's pretty hard. So, yeah, can can you talk a bit about the process of like how you were brought in and what sort of worked and what didn't.

And you know, eventually one we like kind of persisted as a union over a longer period of time, the necessity of involvement became more like obvious to me, right, And that's that's a hard ask. You know, Like you're organizing, you want momentum and you want yeah, you want to be able to change your conditions for the better as soon as possible. Yeah, And with with urban or you know, lots of workplaces that need unionization have high turnover, right,

and Urban Ore is no different. And so I saw, you know, like some of the more committed elements of the bargaining unit be fired or quit or whatever, and you know they would be replaced with other people and you have to begin the work of organizing over again. And with some of them you succeed with something that you don't, you know, you have different dynamics. I feel like the hiring procedures may have changed a little bit afteryone our election, but you know, I can't say that

for certain. So the sort of like necessity of like keeping that like flame going, especially after we had won the election we were in contract bargain for a long period of time, made me feel like a sort of sense of like I need to be more active in this because like this is an important struggle and like, yeah, I see our like main organizers taking on like a fuck load of work and like needing more voices at the table, needing more more uh, needing more people to

be more involved. And so like I, you know, volunteered to run for treasure. That was the only candidate. Yeah, but theoretically I could have been voted down. They could have been like I don't know about fessor, And you know, like ended up having like a little bit more direct responsibilities.

Like I was like receiving some of the donations to our strike phone once we started fundraising for the strike and to keep track of those and you know, put some special bank account and then eventually take that money, get it to like the the i w W branch, uh hand it hand a big check to dono that

kind of stuff. And just like having like little things to be doing, like yeah, spurs involvement other people, you know, became responsible for like parts of social media outreach, graphics, stuff like that, and also like sort of I guess, giving people the opportunity to leverage their individual connections within the work because every workplace is like clicks and groups and subgroups and all that to leverage those connections in

like service of bettering everyone's conditions. So like to a certain degree, I've I've been like important as like an envoid to my particular department because it's our job takes us away from the job site or like from like the main the main work site often and stuff like that, so there's less of a direct avenue for communication there. Ye, So I can say that's my experience. Yeah, as far as organizing goes, like, I'm easy. You know, I was already I was already believing in it, and like there

are others that it have that it's been harder. I will say though, that the strike itself is I mean, a strike is a conflict, and when you're in conflict together, it's an extremely cohering force. Which isn't to say that like necessarily you want your unionization to come to a strike, but perhaps like raising a sort of consciousness of like the fact that like you are ultimately like in conflict with the boss. The boss doesn't want you to unionize.

The boss doesn't want you to force concessions out of them, and that like, as a union we are taking on this like responsibility to look after each other's interests and to like support each other like tangibly in terms of like what we do, and also intangibly in terms of like the kind of conversations we have around like morale planning and stuff like that, you know, to succeed together.

I think those are like really potent cohering forces. And you know, it helps to have a good you know, the boss is the best organizer and at urban or it's you don't go along without coming head to head with like the with with conflict with ownership or with like ownership through the mediator of management. Like although like support for the union might be divided a bit at the workplace, one thing that's pretty universal is like frustration with ownership.

is bad faith bargaining. And for us, what that's looked like is two years of completely stalled negotiations where we are basically being faced with a take it or leave it offer of the status quo in the vast majority of our proposals. Yeah, bargaining is very, very slow, and ownership has held tightly to the offense at us having unionized it all, which to my understanding is pretty typical

of small workplaces. The ownership takes it very personally, and that personal feeling of the trail or whatever becomes like a stumbling block in the negotiation process. I know that was the case with mos Another's bookshop in Berkeley that also unionized with the AWW. So, you know, we've had our whole proposal on ownership's table for a year and a half now. We had started with a bargaining proposal.

By proposal, they said, well, how can we possibly agree to any of this without understanding the full context, especially the economic context, And so we gave them a full proposal and they said, oh my god, how do you expect us to read all of this in time to bargain? This is way too much. How we're going to evaluate this all? Oh my god, we got to do a

proposal by proposal. So it's been really unclear to us if ownership has even actually like read the entirety of our collective bargaining agreement that we put on their desk. I know that in the past lawyers have the lawyers have said things like, oh my, my eyes glazed over when I read your email, So I missed such and such part of it.

They say it'll ruin the company, they say a company will go bankrupt, they say it's unsustainable, they say this and that, and then when they get to the table, they say, we have never and will never are your inability to pay. Because the thing is is that to say inability to pay right, it obligates you to furnish information to prove that, and they, for whatever reason do

not want. Wow, I wonder why British financial information. So these have been some of the sticking points, and that's why we've been out on the picky line for about three weeks now, still waiting for them to come to the table.

this compromise. One of the things that was a big part was of some of the not exactly contract related discussions, but like has been talking for a long time about a co op transition that it's never happened. It's been twenty years, and you know, now that we've unionized, they're like our people who we were talking to about doing the co op thing, they don't work with unions and so the only way that they were going to be

a co op is if the union goes away. And so in response to that, we said, well, we're totally opened to a transition to a co op that involves the union, and here is such and such organization. It was our lead negotiator who actually provide the information some or the name of the organization, but you know, here's such and such organization that actually specifically deals with union

co op workplace transitions. Was not received with interest. So it's like your massive catalogue of bad faith bargaining and end up in your strategy discussions with the whole unit testing the wires of like when is too much? What's our red line that we need to take more direct action? And what that began with for us was first, well, if we're going to have if we're going to have

a strike, we need funds for it. The IWW is an organization that affords its unions a lot of freedom and a lot of mutual support and solidarity, is not an organization with a huge amount of money. And so we did start with trying to get like a sense of like what we could get from you know, the branches reserve, and we moved on from that to how we were going to fundraise and stuff like that. So we held informational pickets that had donations, we sold shirts, posters,

stuff like that. We held like a big strike fundraise. Yeah, I think something around like a month in advance of our or it was maybe like a month and a half in advance of our of our strike. We also gave management like a courtesy notice about this so they could pass it on to ownership, saying, hey, we've started a fundraising for a strike in the hopes that like being aware that we're taking active preparations to go on strike would facilitate bargaining.

you know, pro labor. You know, we talked to like DSA whenever because you know, they have their like a workplace Organizing committee, yeah walk Yeah, and various other you know, yeah, organizations that are pro labor. And once we got to a point where you felt like we were reasonably like prepared to sustain they open end to strike because that's what we're doing. This is a strike with no set end date. Then we announced our intention to hold a

strike vote. We held our strike vote, strike vote passes. The ownership was made aware at the barning session before the strike vote, so it was like the Monday before the strike vote, which is on I think like a Saturday. So in totally it was like around maybe like two weeks in change that they knew like definite possibility past the strike vote. Twelve days later, drike begins with unfortunately no bargaining in between. Good lord, Yeah, the whole way.

You hope that they'll come to the table. You hope that.

We've got people in their fifties and forties and thirties and twenties, you know, which is which is of course the problematic group, but yeah, the young radicals. Yeah, so there's there's been this sort of patronizing attitude that I think as a resulted in like a real strategic failure on their part to seriously prepare for the strike or you know, bargain to avoid it. Yeah.

Portland is getting bands to do benefit shows. So like, because it's Portland, right, Like, the local hardcore scene has a lot of bands that you know, are just supportive of stuff, and we've do not this for a whole bunch of different causes, and this is this this this can also be a good way to just sort of do fundraising things that are fun and also raise morale because yeah, you're doing the show.

like raffled off like stuff we have. But honestly, you can even do like a straight monetary raffle is still a great fundraising tool, you know, where everyone puts in money, the winner, the top freet winners or whatever get like a certain percentage like the total pool and the rest of the pool. Is is a to be cause it's really simple, really effective.

which is fine as far as I'm concerned. But the issue with that PR wise is that now the boss is are saying and they're like tallying up of who's working and who's not working. They're counting them as working. You know, they're like, oh, it's only whatever they've been saying eight people. I think it's more nine or ten we're on the picket line. But the rest is the

rest of the employees are working. They count themselves as employees in that count of course, and they count these these people who are not crossing the picket line but not on it also as among that count of the rest of the employees they are working what and they've had the opportunity to really inflate that count because in a sort of you know, classic move. Really all the moves are classic. You know, you read your organizing books

and you're like, can it happen here? It does? So like we got a lot of new assistant managers after we want our election, so right now, like the composition of the workplace right got thirty four people fifteen managers.

other and be like have you seen this? Isn't this crazy?

Like what the hell? Yeah? Also, you know is uh, this is where the sort of like seeds of organizing all the way that you start all the way back at the beginning of your union campaign become you know, you show themselves is like really important again because like the start right, anyone will tell you is it's like getting to know people, like being like, you know, being on like a hey, how's it going kind of level, you know, and having like a personal rapport with the

people you're on the line with is vital just in the sense that you know, obviously like you know each other, you're sort of friends, You're going to be more likely to stick up for each other. But also like you're out there nine hours walking in a circle with these people, Yeah, you know, you got to you got to have positive,

strong relationships with them. You want to be able to have the kind of rapport where like you can talk to people about like what they're feeling anxious about, you know, like where they're worried and like the strike strategy, like you know, you need to have that like trust between each other that you can have like an open dialogue about how it feels to be on the picket line, because you're not going to maintain morale if ever, if like everyone feels like they've got things they got a

hold in about it, like yeah, there's a room to be like shit, like are they going to close the business? Like and what are we going to do? And like sort of like talk through that from a from a place beyond like you know, like what you're not letting it speak into a crowd of a million people or whatever. You're just like two people, Yeah, going through a stressful experience together.

can like possibly do. It's like forging relationships that are based on like the actual experience of having gone through struggle together and having had to like literally had to face your fields on the picket line.

not actual community relations. But when the boss was talking about community, that's what they mean. They mean like like our collective community Walmart. They mean preserving the relation of extraction that they have. Yeah, and we are, you know, using the same word and reading something literally so radically different.

to maintain this, like Skeleton Crew is. The community outreach part is like talking to every single person who's coming up and being like, Hey, how's it going that I've been on strike such and such long? This is what's up. Please don't cross our picket line. And you know, I've noticed. You get this real funny situation where there are the people who are like, I've shopped here for twenty years.

You don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't know you and have to be like, well, I normally at the dump get in the merchandise you're buying. But and who attribute the entire attribute everything they like about the business to the bosses. And then there's the other part of the community that is coming by frequently and like hanging out with us on on on the picket line. You know, I pet the dog and we chat about what's going on. They're like, how's the strike going.

They're like, you know, I know it's been rough on you guys. For such and such, and like these people are are are our shoppers too?

owns it. He did found it with his with his labor and all that he did, the labor you know, back when it was you know, only a few people and stuff like that. But ultimately, a business, like any sort of social phenomenon, has to be constantly recreated in order to exist.

the labor and in public for the labor. Right, is that going. Is our society going to just be a bunch of pure commercial relations where a bunch of people get very very rich off of the wabor of everyone else in the society and get to rule the mess sort of like these petty tyrant kings. Or is it going to be a society where the people who produce

the society control it, right? And that society is a democratic society, is an egalitarian society, is a society where people are free to do the things that they need to do, and people are free to you know, have a life where they can fucking pay for their groceries right where like you know, where where they're whe they're not forced to go to the market for all of the things that they need to live, where you can survive in a way that doesn't involve like subjecting yourself

to just a tyrant for like a third of your life.

paucity of imagination about what's possible. Yeah, and like about the legitimacy of trying to make something better, the legitimacy of saying, sure, I can subsist on this, but yeah, there's so much more as possible. Yeah, so I'm maintained that there's something more as possible.

to an update on the student crackdowns. So ICE has targeted a third Green card holder for deportation based on pro Palestinian activism. Mosen Matuwi is a Palestinian from the West Bank who has lived in the US with a green card for a decade while studying philosophy at Columbia. He co founded the Columbia Palestinian Student Union in twenty twenty three with Mahmoud Khalil. Maduwi was arrested by Ice last Monday, April fourteenth at his citizenship interview in Vermont.

Now after Khalil was arrested last month, Maduwi went into hiding and he suspected that this citizenship interview could be a honeypot, but decided to go anyway. After waiting a long time for this appointment, his lawyers quickly filed a habeas corpus petition arguing his detentions unlawful and Violet's First Amendment. A US district judge issued an order hours later that he was quote not to be removed from the United States or moved out of the territory of the District

of Vermont, pending for their order of this court. Zionistocksing accounts targeted Marwi in recent weeks. I'm going to play actually this two minute clip of Marwi talking This is from December of twenty twenty three on the program sixty minutes.

I tooked the megaphone and they gave a speech and they said we here are conscious, educated, students, and we know how to separate right from wrong, and what this guy has said is wrong. What this guy has said is clearly anti sematic against Jews. To be anti Semitic is unjust, is unjust, and the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against anti Semetism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

told CBS News the day before he was detained. Quote, if my story will become another story for the struggle to have justice and democracy in this country, let it be unquote like other students who've been targeted and arrested, he has not been charged or accused of any crime, but the State Department has deemed him a threat to foreign policy.

adverse foreign policy consequences. The only quote unquote evidence presented in court was a two page memo written by Mark Rubio that alleges that Khalil's presence in the country threatens quote US policy had to come at anti semitism around

the world and in the United States. Based on information provided by the DHS ICE and Homeland Security investigations regarding the participation and rules of Khalil in anti Semitic protests and disruptive actions which foster a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States unquote. So there's no real evidence in this document. It is just Mark Rubio's opinion

for two pages. And this is the only ever and said ever, has been held in court that resulted in the judge ruling in the government's favor.

case is playing out in a New Jersey court. This week, NBC News reviewed over one hundred pages of documents from the federal government and Khalil's legal team containing information about

his immigration process, work experience, and activism. These documents showed that the government used unverified tabloid reporting against Khalil and contained contradictory information yep, so, essentially using New York Post style publications as a pretext for ICE to execute arrests against people who are Green card holders, legal permanent residents of the United States. We're going to go on break and come back to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Junior.

have a broader understanding of what it is. RFK Junior is obsessed with the idea, the image of autism as a disease that is spreading due to an environmental contagion, and he is trying to make the case that this is a calamity. He has promised. The most recent promise he made is that by September the government will release exhaustive studies that will identify the environmental causes of autism. And he made a statement, autism destroys families. More importantly,

it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. He is called autism a preventable disease, which it is not. While there is evidence that some of the factors that can be relevant in autism expressing are environmental, the vast majority of it seems to be genetic. There's no evidence, and there have been repeated studies there has anything to

do with vaccines. He's positive a couple of other theories as to what causes it, including mold and diet, and these are largely based on what are already kind of quack, both autism treatments and quack autism causes that are are popular within the biomedical movement, the experimental biomedical movement, which is the fake autism medical industrial complex that we covered

recently on the Behind the Bastards. One of the things I think is really worrying about the language that Kennedy is using is how similar it sounds to a lot of what you were seeing in the early nineteen thirties out of the Nazi state, what we know of as the Holocaust, which is generally a term. Generally, Primarily when people use that term they are talking about the mass killing of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Central Europe by the Nazi state. That got a lot of its start,

and there's a couple of different places got it start. Obviously, the wild concentration camps and the political concentration camps are in that heritage. When it comes to the actual mass killing of people, the very origin of that was in getting rid of the disabled.

of profound autism. I think is the preferred term for people who do have a significantly higher degree of like disability as a result of their autism or that correlates with their autism, right, as opposed to the vast majority of people who can be diagnosed to somewhere on the

spectrum who are able to live independently. Right, And Kennedy sort of does the thing that is very common within this community of sort of number one, correlating that to everybody with autism and talking about it as if it is a disaster that justifies any kind of response, because the people who have profound autism aren't real people in

his eyes. He made a statement quote, these are kids who will never pay taxes, They'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children. And first off, having taught a lot of kids with profound autism, yes they could play baseball, like a number of them held jobs. Now do a lot of them need assisted living? Sure, But

like number one, that's always been the case. There's no evidence that people with this kind of autom that there's any sort of raise in this right. What's raised is

the number of people who are being diagnosed. Right, And he's using this kind of scare term, right, this idea that like parents, you need to be frightened that something is going to steal your children from you in order to justify the dehumanization of everyone with autism, as well as radical biomedical experimental procedures that are going to do

harm at scale to lots of kids. One of his favorite new terms is epidemic denial, which is the term that he's using for people who say that, like, this is not an epidemic, this is something that we're now screening for more. He's kind of kind of repurposing the language of like vaccine denial and whatnot as like a denial that this is sort of an immediate crisis that needs to be hit, which I find interesting.

I don't think either of those are particularly good bars for whether or not you're a human being, but he for sure doesn't do either.

report trans miners receiving healthcare. Finally, and so an another one of these like snitching hotlines at this time on a federal government website that I'm sure will only get real, real complaints sent to it, and not the B movies.

for the next election. But I think I think in his mind, like he doesn't want to stop Democrats from caring about this issue in a way like like the the more that they that they fight for it in his mind is like what gives him ammunition for the next election, whether he's going to run for a third term or just like Republicans like mega stuff in general, but I think that it is an interesting look into

like his personal insight on this issue. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice just announced on Wednesday, April sixteenth, that they are suing Maine's Department of Education for not complying with Trump's anti trans executive order by continuing to allow trans people to compete in sports, claiming that they are quote failing to protect women in women's sports unquote, which which

they say violates Title nine. The suit aims to get an junt function to force Maine to strip away rights from trans people in schools, to take away two winning titles from trans of school athletes, and are considering to quote unquote retroactively pull all funding that Maine has received. Maine's Attorney General, Aaron Frey said on Wednesday, quote our position is further bolstered by the complete lack of any legal citation supporting the administration's position in its own complaint.

While the President issued in executive order that reflects his own interpretations of the law, anyone with the most basic understanding of American civics understands that the President does not create law nor interpret law unquote. So Maine and specifically the main governor are adamant that this is going to be an issue that's only going to be settled in the courts, and in fact challenged Trump at a recent

meeting to see you in court over this issue. We are going to go and break and then return to close out this episode of executive disorder. Okay, we are back. I'm now gonna throw to myself and Mia to discuss the tariff talk in a future recording.

electronic goods from the earlier round of tariffs. In one of the initial rounds, there was a whole thing where he put a bunch of tariffs.

that other tariffs. So if he's removed the Liberation Day tariffs, but there still are twenty percent tariffs on all like iPhones and all the electronicos that are still in effect. So the tariff right for those goods is now twenty instead of one hundred and forty five. But this is

where things get even more murky. So even before the exemptions for the semiconductor stuff had been released, Trump had been talking about imposing a bunch of tariffs specifically on semiconductors from all countries, which is going to like, again, if this is just awesome, if you want to just kneecap your entire economy, you put in a tariff on all semiconductors from other countries, which was what this is looking like, it's possible the levels are going to be

that high. Anyways, It's again worth pointing out that, like, there's a bunch of the parts of this production process that basically can only be done in Taiwan, which will presumably have these new tariffs on them. We don't know what they're gonna be yet they're coming in who fucking knows, But so it seems like they're these tariffs are being withdrawn for now to to market sort of backlash, but probably they will come back at some point in the future.

We're not We're not one hundred percent sure. There's also another thing I want to mention, where so the number that you said, the two hundred and fifty percent tariff thing,

so Trump tweeted that out, but that's fake. What that is is that there are a couple of items, and I mean when I say a couple, I mean like we're talking like single digit items, like things like medical syringes that already had like one hundred percent tariffs on them, that the one hundred and forty five percent tariff stack on top of all tariffs that are already in effect.

So there's like like three or four items already had one hundred percent tariffs on them, so when you stack the one forty five on top of them, they're two fifty percent. But again it's like it's like three things, right,

So like that's fake. On the other hand, like substantively, And this is something that a lot of people have been talking about the difference between one hundred and forty five percent and two hundred and forty five percent, Like it isn't that relevant because at one hundred and forty five percent you stop doing trading, So it's you know, the numbers at this point are just sort of in comedy levels. But yeah, so that's what's going on with the two hundred and fifty number of people have been

going around from it's it's not real. It's still one forty five for all non electronics goods twenty four electronics. There's also been a bunch of sort of China has been doing retaliatory stuff for a little bit, and they've been ramping up this program to restrict US access to rare earth elements that are necessary for a whole bunch of advanced engineering, particularly sort of defense projects. This is

only that could genuinely devastate the American defense sector. Trump's plan for this is that he's threatening to use the Trade Expansion Act nineteen sixty two to impose even more devastating tariffs. Now it is genuinely unclear to me, Like what are he gonna do impose in one thousand percent tariff? Like you need to buy these goods?

But I want to I want to move on to one more thing, which is things that have been happening at the at the NLRB. So the NLRB, for people who are not regular listeners to the show, is the National Labor Relations Board. They were in charge of a whole bunch of things related to negotiations between employers and unions.

Are the people who certify union elections. They they handle unfair labor practices disputes, and Doge effectively broke into the NLRB and has seized a whole bunch of information that they shouldn't have. NPR broke the story and has been doing a lot of good coverage of it. So it

came in right. They technically had some kind of like order saying that they're supposed to be able to come in and do this stuff, and they set up and they disable all of the security stuff and all of the sort of like logs and all the sort of stuff that's supposed to like verify what someone's doing on a computer system. They go in and disabled all of them.

They delete all traces of what they do. And this is a big deal because the NLRB has a lot of extremely sensitive data, has extremely sensitive data on unions, It has a lot of extremely sensitive trade data on

private companies. Now, the NLRB person who blew the whistle on this to NPR described how so he complains about to his superiors about Doge again just like sort of breaking into this fucking like office and just like stealing all of this data because he mean, so he notices this program that they're building that's literally just called like backdoor, which is like again what you would do if you were literally running a hack, right, And we'll come back

to that in a second. So the NLOP person complains to a superior so like, hey, these DOSE people are just like stealing all of the data from this And then like the next day, someone from Doge tapes to his door pictures of him and his dogs with like a threatening thing on it, like drone footage of him and his dog like walking, which is so fucking weird. I don't even know. I don't even So, yeah, that's that's extremely alarming. This is this is they're they're just

blatantly threatening a whistleblower. Yeah. So so the other reason that this is really concerning is that so a lot of the corporate media is focused on the fact that there's a lot of trade information in there, there's also a lot of very personal information about unions, about union strength, about size, about tactics, about the history of negotiating things, about just where unions are and who's in them, and it's it's deeply unclear what DOGE is going to do

this information, but it's not good And again, and I need to emphasize this. So I talked to friend of the show Maya Arson crime w about this, who is someone who knows a lot about hacking, And I said to it, okay, so this is what you would do if you were if you were just straight up like hacking the NLRB, right, Like, these are the things you would do, And they went, yeah, pretty much. So it's great, it's great. Yeah, the dose are just stolen a bunch of information.

Who knows what's gonna happen to it, who knows what's gonna happen with their escalation of attacks on whistleblowers. But things bad, things continue to go bad.

page then wrote a story. The Roosevelt Reservation is a sixty foot easement that runs along the southwestern border of the United States from the coast in San Diego or the way to New Mexico. Doesn't cover the Texas border. I've written about it before for the Sierra Club and for Drilled News four or five years ago, and I'm going to include a link to the Sierra Club piece in the show notes that Drilled pieces down. Now they

don't have that print side anymore. It was established in nineteen oh seven by Teddy Roosevelt, and it was transferred for three years from the Department of the Interior Department of Defense by the Trump administration in twenty nineteen using an executive order this year. In twenty twenty five, all of the Roosevelt Reservation that is not part of federal reservation land was placed on the Apartment of Defense jurisdiction.

A lot of reporting seems to have missed this exemption for federal reservation land, which makes up a significant part of the border, especially in Arizona right in the Tornad Reservation.

I'm going to quote from the language of the executive order here quote to provide for the use and jurisdiction by the Department of Defense over such federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation, and excluding Federal Indian reservations, that are reasonably necessary to enable military activities directed in this memorandum, including border barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment. The way I read this, it also doesn't limit to

the Resort reservation. It seems to include other federal land right, which could include National monuments, National parks BLM, and the National Forests, all of which exist along the border. The Trump administration this week also obtained waivers. The waivers wave dozens of laws that have been limiting construction in the

San Diego sector. I'd like to quote a little bit from that Sierra Club piece that I wrote, because I think the aspect of the damage done to the sacred space of Indigenous people is being completely overlooked by the legacy media. In this not perhaps surprisingly so, one of the laws waved with a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was enacted by Congress in nineteen ninety to protect and

safely relocate Native burial sites. When construction takes place on sensitive sites, the tribing question should be consulted, and in the event remains or other archaeological objects are found, construction should be altered so as not to disturb the site. In the areas of San Diego where they are digging, what's called midden soil has been found. Mid and soil is soil that contains evidence of cremated human remains. Right

in this case of Kumii people. With this waver, they don't have to comply with nagpro Native American Graves Protection and Relocation Act, which means that they can continue digging through what are literally people's ancestors graveyards. There's another quote from that twenty twenty story. If this were another country's government destroying a region's holy land, the US would go to war and the people would feel it justified, activist

Thomas barbatod Sierra. But it happens here at home, in front of us, and we just turn away.

that this doesn't even get reported. Yeah, big outlets with a massive budget, who are supposed to have a border reporter who's never fucking set foot on the border, doesn't take the time to talk to the indigenous people whose land the border crossed, right like, doesn't take the time to hear their concerns, doesn't take the time to think about when you dig thirty feet into this ground to build your border wall. That's twelve thousand years of someone's history.

How do they feel about that? And like that is a failing of the legacy. Media been a failing for a long time, and it will continue to be on for a long time and piss me off.

the southern border and shooting anyone who comes across. I do think it's likely a lot of the people who have been deployed to southern border so far at MPs military police, right, and it's possible that those MPs will be able to detain people and potentially charge and with

trespassing on a military installation. That would just be another string to the bow of their attempt to like rapidly deport people because they already have many other kind of options through executive order of doing that which which they're already implying, right. It might also make it easier for them to waive some of these other laws and to construct more surveillance equipment in the Epogogacia case, which we've

covered for several weeks now. The Supreme Court has unanimously asked the United States government to quote facilitate his return. The US government has embarked upon a unique definition of the word facilitate, which it feels like means allowing him to enter the country and providing transport if El Salvador releases him. Bu Kelly refused to release him, saying that doing so would be to quote smuggler terrorists into the United States. Garrison and I did a whole episode about

this yesterday that you can listen to today. Senator Chris van Holland went to San Salvador, right capital of El Salbador if you're not where. He met with the vice president because Boukele is still out the country. Van Holand held the press conference right afterwards that I watched for

it before we recorded this. In the press conference, Van Holland basically said that he asserted to the Vice President of El Salbador there was no evidence nor any conviction of being a member of MS thirteen, and he asked the VP why he was holding mister Abrigo Gassier, and the VP said, because the US is paying us to hold him.

Trump's nominees. He asked to meet with mister Abergo Garcia and was told that they needed more time. He said, I'll come back next week. They said they don't know if they can organize it in a week. He asked if he could call him. They said they didn't know if they could facilitate a call. They said maybe the US Embassy would have to be the one that requests that. So he has now requested that the embassy requests that he be allowed to call mister Abrego Garcia and mister

Brego Garcia be allowed to speak to his wife. Garreton and I spoke about how like it's not in the interest of government at El Salbaud or to have people leave this prison and to fire to the conditions that are in it.

of court. What does this mean? It doesn't mean, despite what you have seen on your timeline, that this will mean these people will be bought home. When they found a contempt, they have two options. Right, they can purge themselves of the contempt, and the way they would do that would be by providing habeas not by bringing all these people home at least not yet, right. Or they could present the people who are responsible and then either an attorney could be appointed by the DOJ to prosecute them.

I guess and don't quite know how it works. Sistance or the judge himself can appoint an attorney to prosecute them for criminal contempt. Again, like, at least the guys try and I guess like.

seen it assert as like, oh, legal experts can disagree. Meanwhile, you've got the actual judge in the actual case being like, notice is what the dictionary says. Your definition is ludicrous. I would caution people to be very careful looking at at like blue check legal experts on except com or people blue Sky. There has been so much misleading stuff about immigration law and the laws in these particular two cases,

and they are about the resol reservation. Actually, just be really careful where you're getting your information, especially on immigration law from maybe go back and check what that person was doing in twenty twenty three when thousands of migrants were

detained in outdoor detention camps. Because I've seen so much misinformation and people, understandably who aren't expert in this because it's extremely complicated, are likely to be taken advantage of by people who are grifting off what is at a moment when a lot of us are afraid and a lot of us are insertain, So to be very careful what you're reading out there.