Port Militarization Resistance

time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I think a part of the anti war movement that does not get much attention, um, which is the port militarization resistance that happened sort of two seven And with us today to talk about this is two people who were part of this movement if Juliana Newhouser, hello, and Brendan Maslaska's done, Yeah, both of whom were organizers and activists while this was going on. Yeah, and I thank thank you,

thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us so. Yeah. As I was saying a bit in the intro, I think that this is a part of the anti war movement that is not very well known. I think I think a lot of people know about the initial stuff happened in twos three, and people might know about some of the stuff that was happening against

the war in Afghanistan, but right when it started. But I don't think most people know that it, like you know, even after jails and three sort of doesn't work, that it continues and it continues sort of informs that are that are very interesting. And so I guess I want you to to start out. I want to ask how we sort of got from the early part of the anti war movement into this and how you got involved.

I would say that there's this narrative about the women against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests in human history, at least at that point. I don't know if it's still true against the invasion, and then it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and ended there, and to a certain extent that's true, but like you said, the people that didn't go home went an interesting direction. And UM, so at the time there were direct action was not as acceptable as it is now.

The protest this movement was largely dominated either by UM big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically indistinguishable and what they actually did, which was basically nothing and in the best of cases and then the worst

of cases, counterinsurgency. UM. But then there were small groups of people that at when we saw that it didn't work, and we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one part of town to another, um or voting for John Carry or whatever, it didn't work, that we started to look for other options. Yeah, and uh, you know, I got involved. Um you know, I'd say, what the anti war movement, That idea of how how war is unjust was really talked to me from a very young age.

I mean my parents were you know, children of the sixties, and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and um, you know, friends dying in Vietnam and we're against the protests back then. So I grew up hearing these stories and of course stories from family members, particularly one of my grandfather's, both of them who were veterans in World

War Two. One of them was a marine and the you know, in the Pacific Theater and still into his seventies, eighties and nineties until his final days, was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught me from a young age never to get involved. So I, you know, and I remember when when the very clearly, um you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of a Rock started.

I was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C. That Julianna just mentioned, and you know I ended up. I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural high school, uh just outside of of Utica, you know, russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends, and they were just everywhere in the hallways. Uh So

it was very present um with me. When I was younger, I moved out to Olympia, Washington, two thousand six, and that's one a new student activist group, Students for a Democratic Society, was launched. That's how Julianna and I first met. We were both in separate chapters of that new organization in the Pacific Northwest. And the port protests started just just a few months after I moved out there in

in Olympia in two thousand six. So wait to declare for this for a second, because I've never quite been clear on this history. So there was a second st like Students for Democratic idea that was like unrelated to the first one. Yeah, they're born briefly um at the end of the bushop Manastery. That that explains a lot of things that it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah, we're definitely in the in the second uh, you know,

the rebirth of it um. So you know, I think it it took on some things in spirit um you know, but also was i'd say different in many ways, and it was very active to me at least, it was very exciting to be a member of the new STS because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest and was a great way to connect with young activists all over the US. So STS is emerging in this

time period. One of the other things I was interested about is something someone you were talking about in in in the early part of this, which has to do with the way that these giants both the sort of Answer Coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess the I s O was still around back then coalitions work versus how like anything else worked. So so what was was STS sort of like consciously set up and in opposition

to those groups. I don't think it was conscious, but there was just like I mean, these days, I mean like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like anarchist versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at that time, Like, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the answer, which is the PSO Front group was completely fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police

um liberal democratic front group. There was literally no difference, just in terms of their aesthetics maybe like is there a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something. That's the only difference we saw. So I don't I don't think there was. It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious like political opposite attention to it. It's just like they're not doing anything, and and so we had to look

in another direction. Actually, you know, it's hard to keep track of the alphabet soup of authilitarian communist groups at times, but this was actually answer for those who don't recall it was a front group for the Workers World Party, the WWT, which yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to keep track, right, Yeah, that's the same thing, like I think, so so okay, So for people who are sort of unaware of this, there's a network of connected but sometimes

feuding like weird stalonist cults that kind of kind of like they hold on through the eighties and nineties and they start sort of rebuilding again around the anti one movements in that period. That that's the PSLs of the DUP's answer, like, and I think that's like most like modern anti war groups are also still these people, which is incredibly depressing something they want to talk a bit about it towards the end of this, but yet just for people who have not spent the last half decade

in the in the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So, yeah, so I think we should get into how the sort of the first action starts in Olympia. Yeah so, and there were actually a couple of actions that happened um in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it was not yet under the banner of PMR port Militarization Resistance. That was a name that was officially coined in uh,

you know, and in May and June of two thousand six. So, just to give you an idea, Olympia, it's it's a college town or at the Evergreen State Colleges there. It's also the capital of Washington State, so you have that going on. It's also a military town. It's a little over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis. It's now called j B l M. J BLOM or Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force

base now it's one base. Um So, yet all these you know, different kind of elements, uh in you know, in tandem in in that town and the public port. The Port of Olympia is one of about seventy years so public ports in the state of Washington, some of which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of things, you know, for commercial, private industry, but also the military

and the US government. Uh So, uh you know, I heard from someone I don't even remember who that the military was sending a ship to the Port of Olympia in late May of two thousand six. And this happened for ten or so days, and it was just kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us to go down to the Port of Olympia. It was it was the war machine in our backyard. And the idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out with just like less than ten people number folks getting arrested,

and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests. Every single day um AN active blockades people, those of us like Julian and myself and other folks using civil disobedience or what we prefer to call civil resistance to try and stop or at the very least slow down these striker vehicles and to give folks an idea of what a striker vehicle is. You can look it up online, but it's kind of halfway between um, you know, a tank and humby. It doesn't have the slats you know that

a tank would have. It's you know. And they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for for raids of residential areas. They were really on the front lines of the war in in both those countries, and that's what we were trying to stop. I only got involved later um because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time. UM I was in another STS chapter, but my roommate was from Olympia and he had been involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before moving up to Ballingham.

And so like hearing his story, it's got me very excited because just like finally someone's someone's doing something like someone's they're not just like you know, it's like everything else was just so liberal. Take whether it's marching from one place to another or writing to your congress people or occupying their office. It was like asking someone else to do something which you knew from the beginning they were never going to do. And finally this was finally

someone was like actually getting into it. UM. I think the first one of the things that happened here was that um they started to avoid UM. There's it was kind of a geographical thing. I think, UM for people who either don't know Washington Washington, or because they're normal people don't know like the port areas of these cities very well because it's like like unless you're a long sherman, like, why you would you go down to like the port

of Tacoma. There's nothing there. UM. But they kept moving it around because um Olympia is also not very big and UM, so it's there's really only two roads into the port, which is very small, and so it was it's very easy to block it. UM. And so then I think The first time that I got involved UM was in two thousands seven when they had moved it because they kept moving it around to try and switch

things up. And wait, before they're moving the ship around, No, it's like they had to make a military ship met. They would UM. It's like like once the ship it was in the port, they would just have to go through with it. But then UM, you know, it's like everything every six months or so they had to make another military ship met and they would change the port usually each time, UM, to try and let basically to

avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal crap. Um. The first time I had gone down was in um Tacoma, which is a much much, much more industrialized port than Olympia. It's you know, it's like a big port, more normal part, I guess, And that one was honestly pretty crazy, UM, because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success

we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. UM. I think the in two thousand seven in Olympia was definitely as the glory moment, which was when people were able to on and off like actually hold the port and control it in the exits. Yeah, and I wanna, you know, just emphasize that, like the the one the military changing their approach right to avoid us so jumping

from port to port with these different shipments. They actually went so far because we were so successful as a movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so far as to ports in Texas. Um. But you know when one thing that we did is that we built up contacts with other activists with long shore workers all up and down the West coast in California. There are other activists were connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey,

and New York. There is a desire in the anti war movement. Uh. And and you know, in some extent maybe it's like it was small, but some folks in the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the I LW the you know, long shore workers Union, it's a lot more militant than say in a place like Olympia. UM. But yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because, as Juliana said, we wore successful in two thousand and seven. We shut down the port of Olympia for a total

of it was essentially two days. They were not they're not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades, were willing to throw down with the police in the street.

And one of the things that was cool about that blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the other one, UM, we had like a moving I don't really even know what it was, but something with wheels that we could move in and out, um to open it up, and so then we could allow like civilian cargo to move in and out, but then like we feel it back in place, um to block military shipments.

So we were able to actually like stopped him from like what while in in in that oneted to come. We able to actually like stopped him from moving the self all together. Would you when sheally cleared up on the police and they moved it, we would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like we were never able to It's like we're we we held it for two days. That those protests took place over a series of two weeks or more or less. Um, we were only able to fully hold it for two days before

eventually they would clear us out. But one of the things is that it this does it did create problems for the army because when you work with a port, you know, it's like you've got like a certain time frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever it is because you're going to do and it's not too happy if you take longer every thing you said

you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing I want to add is, you know, I think the other really important element with this whole movement going on is the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western Washington, where the two of us were living. It was it was, you know, the center and in a sense it was the heart of the anti war movement in the country

at that time. One because of this militant direct action that we were, you know, we were building up in the streets and trying to throw wrench and the gears of the war machine to to at the verily slowed down, which in some ways we did, but we're up against so much. But the other added element, of course is the g I resistance and the soldiers who are resisting I've all also known as the Rock Veterans against the

War was very active there. They set up a g I coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh, you know, the gates for one of the entrances for Fort Louis. Um, there are a whole bunch of soldiers that were going a wall. We had friends who were active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding, you know, refusing to go back into the striker brigades

that joined us in port militarization Resistance. Uh. There are a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so we are very much connected with this movement too. And I think the higher ups in the military they're they're hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um, you know, to the point of actually spying on us. So that's like a whole other element of this story too.

One of the things that I've heard from talking to other people were involved this was that like wow, like during these protests, like the level of police militarization just like skyrocketed. And like I remember I was talking frend about this. It was like, you know, if you go back and look at like old system of a down videos,

you know, they'll they'll have these things. Yeah, and you'll see these you see these riot police, and like you look at them and it's like these people they look so much less armored than like the people that we have now. And one of the things that I thought was interesting about this was that like this is I think one of the points where you start getting the modern riot police showing up that are just like, you know,

completely encased in like armor. And yeah, I want to talk about just like the police response to this, because I think that's that's another thing I think. I think there's never there's a kind of a tendency to sort of project back what the police look like just onto the whole history of police, and I think it's like

it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last twenty years. Yeah, I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and probably just like a six minute walk away from the Port of Olympia and and also very conveniently just a few blocks away from the police station, so so lucky. So we actually saw you know, we could see from the front of down on the road, down the sidewalk from the front of our house. Uh, some of the military shipments going by. And we we we did see that absolutely,

and at at times it was it was terrifying. I mean I lived in an activist house we jokingly called h Q because that's just you know where because of its proximity to the port, that's where a number of us were having meetings, uh, you know, around these protests early on in two thousand six, and um, yeah, I mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's something I had I you know, I hadn't like I had been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the r n C protests and d NC protests in Boston, New

York and like in Washington d C uh and so I would see these like riot cops. But they were I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was like a whole army of them that was sent out. I mean when Juliana said that things got kind of crazy at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was like a police riot, you know, like the cops went absolutely nuts there, shooting people with tear gas and pepper balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before witnessed

anything like that. And it got to the point in you know, in Olympia where we we kind of knew early on that we were being traced by the police to the extent where, you know, one friend of ours was followed from our house to the bus station to take a bus to school by the police and then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.

And we had another fellow activists and you know, a roommate of mine who is going out to driving out with a few friends, uh few fellow activists from Olympia to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a port of Gray's Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt Cobain teams. McDonald's. They served billions and and billions served

and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonalds. But yeah, I mean, the you know, they they were they were following. They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know, pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There was alert gone out to all the police departments. They pulled them, They pulled him over, they made him walk the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and no drugs, like nothing in his system, but they he was driving under like one mile per hour under the

speed limit. They arrested him for d d W I you know, eventually fought the chargers, sued um uh and you know when a big settlement out of all that. But that's just one example of many of the lengths that the police would go to h It was pretty severe. Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger anarchists called a pitch Pipe info shop in Tacoma, and that was also a big target. The police were swarming

around them all the time. They had like camera set up like specifically just a side the infishop, Like there weren't Surrens cameras there before, but then it was like, oh well, just conveniently put them on this one specific street corner. Yeah. I think like that was one of the things I was reading about this is you have

that stuff. And then also I think one of the steers parts of this is that like Army intelligence gets involved, and yeah, do you want to talk about the man named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not that Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what what memories you have of our our good dear friend John Jacob Julian. I don't think I ever actually knew him in person, but he was the moderator of the list Serve, wasn't he. Yes, she's one of the moderators of our

list serves. Now that I look back on it, I'm like the port Militarization Resistance the SERUB was always just like this dramatic ship show, and it's like, looking back on it, I was like, oh, a cop that did nothing, that absolutely nothing to like established order or uh if that was on purpose. Yeah, so I think there's definitely something that happened, Like, you know, looking back from our vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make a little

more sense at the time though. And we're in this movement, right, and so that means like meeting people where they're at. We find all kinds of people that would like want to join the movement, like I, like I said earlier, like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met this guy named John Jacob, and he sent an email

out to me. I was one of the contacts for the Olympia STS group, and it's like, hey, you know, there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old like elder activists or in uh to kind of mentor us called Movement for a Democratic Society, very small, never really took off, but like, I'm interested in getting involved. We met up in public and he seemed like an alright guy. I mean he was, um, you know, forty

is early forties. He had told me, like, you know, been in the military for years, and he actually still worked at Fort Lewis, so he was always open about that, but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty, you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers. As I mentioned that, we're in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved, and he gets really involved with Port

Militarization resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma, UM and he seemed like a really solid guy to to most of us. UM. And you know, things happen as as we progress and you know, as the military responded to our uh, you know how effective we wore in the anti war movement and the g I resistance

movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that a when we first started the protests, UM, we we had the ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up you know, blockade here, we're having a surprise action there at this time, or this port, etcetera, etcetera. And as time progressed, we found out that you know, we were having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.

We thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason, the police kind of knew about where we were going to be before we even showed up. And that I remember that Paly happening in two thousand seven the Port of Olympia. Yeah, and the COMMA. There are a lot of things like that. Like there is one time when there are like some people who had a meeting in a closed room, like all there they had taken the

batteries out of their cell phones. They had simply written on the whiteboard the time and place they're going to have their next meeting, which is going to be in a diner near the port, and so that way if like if for any reason the room with bugs, it wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on aboard. And then it was like a small meeting too, so it's like there weren't and then when they got to that dinner, there was like full of cops like clearly

waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it was very clear there was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah, and I think we are from early on, like you know, we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one of our our fellow activists and p Mars and a friend of ours, Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College. He was in the original Sts back in the sixties, and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for

a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. Um, I mean the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um back in in the seventies when he was active in the anti war movement in San Diego. Like we knew, you know, former Black Panthers, and we read our history, so we knew about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence program of the six season seventies and the war on the anti war and civil rights and black power, American

Indian movements, etcetera. Um, so we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. Uh. But there's one thing that happened in particular which prompted some of us to file for a public records request with the City of Olympia and another activists walking down the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the Wobblies Industrial Workers of the World Union, and we had like a one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and it was locked to a poll um,

you know, with a bike lock. And there are some city workers there with a pickup truck and they're cutting the lock to the newspaper box and they threw it in their pickup truck and so are you know, this friend of ours was there. It was like, what the hell, what are you doing? What's going on? And one of the workers just kind of strugged and was like, I don't know, the police told us to do this, and they drove off like they stole you know, are essentially

like union property or whatever. Um. So we had you know, our our lawyer friend Larry Hilda's and the National Lawyer's Guild you know, call and kind of threatened the city and and then a number of us got together like, hey, you know, let's do like a public records requests UM with the City of of Olympia freedom of information law right,

and so we did. And the request was, you know, just requesting any all information the city had UM, any exchanges communications by email, etcetera, UM between the police and like other agencies about anarchists, I WW, students for a Democratic Society UM. And their initial search that the city clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, okay,

I gotta narrow this down. And I don't know, I was working on the request at the time and for some reason, like I don't know where sport protests are near a military based communications between the army, not thinking anything. And so the initial responses who actually got um you know, maybe a hundred hundred thirty years so different documents, just copies of emails, etcetera. That UM, we're little puzzle pieces for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few

of them. Uh, and it was you know, there was an email talking about our guy in the Navy going to a PMR meeting to get some intel. Uh, there's you know, all kinds of things like that. There are a few emails in particular, UM and the email address was something like John John J. Towry at you know,

Army dot us whatever the email address was. So there's a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together, did some research quietly for a few months, and eventually found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club called like that I don't know, like the Brown Beauque Club or the Brown Butt Club or something, and and

the like. Found out that this John Towery guy that was in this motorcycle club and had his you know, was registered to vote outside of Tacoma, in this town there. It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist UM and and a friend, you know, I thought he was a

personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force Protection Unit at uh AT Joint Face Joint based Lewis McCord and also working with a whole list of different agencies and what turned out to be like a massive surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,

to aspire on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge. Yeah, and that there's one of the things that have always so much really steak. So like I learned about from militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around the history of like informists and I ran into this and I was like what because and then that was what

I thought. One of the things I thought was really interesting about this is that like, like I think that this chapter of the anti war movement is even on the left, is like not very well known, but like the seriousness is which the Army seems to have taken itsily is really remarkable. Yeah, I'm wondering what you to think about that. One thing we have to emphasize is

is that we were not a large group of people. Yeah, Like, um, the number of people who are actively involved in portmoloitaris agast. My assistance at its peak was how many people do you think it was Brandon. Well, it depends. I mean I'd say they're probably like at its peak, maybe probably four year to fifty people that would like consistently show up to things, you know, maybe a slightly smaller, very

core group. But we would have demonstrations with like and then like four people you know, yeah, and like that would be like the max like there is it's like there are like the peaceful like kind of like support actions. You know, you would get like a couple hundred people and then like for the stuff like where it's like the first night that that the part of the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied, it would be like, Um,

these were not These were not very large groups of people. Um, I feel like and like I said, it's like one thing that we need to keep in mind was that, um, the peace police were much stronger back then than they are now nowadays. Lating like as we saw last year, it's like people in the US of Blurn to throw down, but that was not the case at the time. And so this is a very very small group of people. Um. I think we accomplished a lot from with how small it was. Um, if it had been larger, it would

have accomplished way more. Um, but even that small core of like people with maybe expanding out to like a larger group of a couple of hundred, had them that scared that they went that far. They're trying to disrupt it. Yeah, And and this is one of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently of this seems to be a very consistent thing, which is it like the two things that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer drop on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports.

And that that was that was something you know, we we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests, um. But I was interested in what you too think about because this this is like a very particular moment right now in what you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures.

And I was wondering if, if you do, you think there's anything that we can learn from how your versions of the sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming up next year. Yeah,

that's a great question. You know, that is this old saying and the I w W direct action gets goods, right, and I think it really boils down to that it's building up uh you know, mass movements and social movements from below that rely on direct action, that rely on civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um yeah, and the pipeline protests that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on the front lines of that for many, many years now.

I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know, surveillance of repression that folks were facing at Standing Rock for example. Um. You know, I think, of course, one of the well one of the main differences is that it was primarily the military you know, with us, right that was surveilling us, because this is very specifically, you know,

a war issue and a military issue. Um. But yeah, I mean I think, um, you know, like I think there's a big questions like what what do we have to do? That's that's new And to me, I say, you know, for both that kind of militant action, but also for the labor movements, like it's not you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things that have tried and true track record of getting the goods and that is you know, these more disruptive kind

of actions and movements. Um, and so one of them would be you know, I guess my suggestion would be to like go back to the basics. And even like I would say, now, you know this, remember this at a time when like Facebook was around, right, like, but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone calls and building up trust with people and building up

our capacity to like take actions and make change. You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know, that at least some of the good that social media has to offer, but like I think going beyond that and going back to these older tactics. And then for the labor movement, like the big thing is you know, and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream unions in particular, I mean, they're that the whole idea

of like union contracts is that workers also lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but uh, business owners and bosses

have rights carved out in in those contracts. And with the longshore workers, I mean, the difficult thing with that of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that, of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do, you know, around like the war Iraq historically supporting movie a bou Jamal mayde a, etcetera, like in Oakland, Um, but they have some things for that written into their contracts, and you know, for all these other like unions, it's like, well,

you know, we can't strike at all for for the next two years, the next three years, whatever the life of the contract is. Like, I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond that and not be putting this strait jacket of contracts

like that. Yeah, I think that that, particularly, like the the no strike clause part of contracts, I think an interesting thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean, there are some unions that will actually do stuff around fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.

And I think you wind up in a situation where it seems like you you kind of have to plan your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you can't actually get people to do anything more in like a one day symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you know the challenges, like, you know, we have this great

American tradition that's not unique to the US. It's universal really, and it's one that resonates with me breaking the law right and like we're you know, we're like civil disobedience. That is that what we were doing in the streets and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement did in in the nineties sixties.

But like we have recent examples of workers breaking the law and mass like the West Virginia teacher strikes that have been a few years ago, like teachers in every single county in that state went on strike. They broke the law and and they want something out of that. And I think that's what we really need to encourage people, is this idea of breaking out of like the norm and and breaking the laws which you know, the laws that are in place, which are not there to you know,

expand our freedom. There there too, contract it. Yeah. One of one of my friends kind of joke about what was the exact line. It was, it's it's only illegal if you get caught, and it only matters if you lose, which I think is a good way of thinking about both breaking. Yeah, and you know, yeah, I think it's also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides, the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly.

So don't don't bind yourself if if you can, if you can, not get caught and not like good a prison for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself by a bunch of like paper that the other side just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's an excellent point, because that's the big thing, you know, with the army and law enforcement in general, like surveillance of us. They were in the police just their actions, their brazen actions on the street, like the riot police. Um, they were

just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights, of civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were a number of, you know, court cases that sprung out of um, you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagocus Vitari.

Another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member co plaintiff in that case, and you know, is it a case against the army that you know, we we waged and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and you know, eventually lost and it could have brought it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But you know, like the the other thing is like the violation of the posse Commentatus Act. It was a whole other thing. You know, we don't have to get like so tied up into like the

legalistic thing. But like the point your point is valid, Like they don't care about the laws that are already there. They'll they'll just intentionally break them, break their own laws that they have set up, and you know, they'll just get a slap on the wrist because that's really all that's all that happens to them. I think, I think I think that's a good note to end on break

the law. It's fake. It's also bad. Um. Do you do have anything you want to plug other than that, other than you know, encouraging people to break the cage your local port? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's you know, I guess just encourage people to do is you know, it sounds like what were you're doing by having us on the show, and like there are some in our very recent history, um, you know, movements and winds that we all as activists today can still learn from.

And I think part of that, um you know, I don't want to call us elders because we're not that old, but like one part of that is like making sure like our movements are still like a multi generational and like we we learned from each other and also as as Juliana and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements of the past, sts, the Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um, but there's a lot that you know, these these struggles I think

have to offer us today. All right, thank thank you, Thank you both for talking coming down and talking with us. You're for having us. Thank you. Well, this is this has when it could happen here find us at happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and the rest of our stuff is at closon media at the same somewhat accursed social media places. I don't know why I'm saying somewhat, they're just a cursed yeah see you next time whenever

that is it could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media or more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.