Understanding the Response to the Tyre Nichols Video

Discourse Discourse. Discourse is about podcast. I don't know it could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening to. Uh. If you came here list looking for another podcast, then you fucked up, But you fucked up in a good way because that podcast was trash. Thank you for being here with us today. Who all? Who all? Who? Who? Who's here? Who are you? People? We're in Eln? Sure? Yeah, I'm THEA long I'm here. Wow, I'm I'm James. I'm a little unsure about who I am beyond that, but

that's who I am. It's okay. I'm Garrison Davis and I'm here to engage in discourse. I there's nothing I love more than discourse. Um. Speaking of discourse, today we're gonna be talking about, well, I don't know, it's not really discourse, but today we're gonna be talking about the reaction to the video of the Memphis police murdering Tyree Nichols.

In particularly, we're gonna be talking about the way in which kind of the left responded to this, both online and kind of public channels and actually in the streets. Because I think there's some interesting stuff here, um, and I think it's kind of worth analyzing outside of uh, you know, the broader conversation about police violence and you know, uh that sort of thing, because I think there's some

interesting story of tactical stuff to kind of talk about here. Um. And yeah, that's that's that's what we're going to be doing today. UM. In case you've been kind of stuck under a rock, uh, you should probably be aware that on January seven, three, police from the Memphis p D Scorpion Unit, which was a unit with a very sinister name that existed to effectively over police, um a chunk of the city of Memphis. Uh yeah, um, pulled over Tyree Nichols, a twenty nine year old black man. UH.

Tyree was an amateur photographer. UM, he liked skating. He had Crohn's disease. UM, he was just driving around that night. UH. And the encounter, as we would later see on the video, went pretty much immediately violent on behalf of the police. Nichols was beaten very badly, and he died in the

hospital three days later. And for the first few days after the killing, obviously, you know this happened, the police did this, and then rumors started kind of spreading in the immediate wake of the beating, but very little was known for certain about like what had happened, UM, about

you know what, why this had had gotten escalated so quickly. UM. One of the first kind of signs that this was going to become a thing on the national uh in terms of like the national attention span, was when the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in the U. S. Department of Justice independently opened investigations into the beating. UM after reviewing body camera footage from multiple officers on scene, five Memphis

p D officers were dismissed on January. Three days later, an autopsy commissioned by Tyrese family found extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating. Outrage around the killing grew rapidly, and it was announced by the Memphis Police that body camera footage of the stop and of the beating would be released to the public. Uh. This started the rumor mill really churning up. UM. There was kind of a couple of leaks from people who had seen the footage I think who were close to the case, and they

all sort of described it as uniquely bad. The term that I heard a lot was that it's worse than the Rodney King beating. Um. This is just the way in which people started talking about it. And as more details filtered out, there were conversations around the country, particularly folks on the activists left, who started talking about the need to prepare for what they suspected would be the

aftermath of the video's release. UM. And one of the things that was kind of kind of worth discussing here is that in the immediate, like immediately before the video came out, a lot of the conversations that people on the left were having and that people in law enforcement we're having kind of focused around the same expectations, which was that there would be widespread protests and rioting as a result of the release of this video. UM, police

departments around the country entered high alert. Riot squads were prepped UM and then kind of on the other side of things and sort of open channels on Twitter and massed on and in person, and a number of of of different cases, distant people you know who claimed to be that online talked about their expectations too. I heard variations of the phrase, you know, it's going to be a really hot year. This is going to like lead

into a particularly aggressive summer. On the ground, people are going to make the burning of that precinct in Minneapolis look tame. You know, get your gear together, check in

with your friends, everything's about to go off. UM. There was a lot of chatter kind of along those lines, and I don't know, I didn't really speak up too much about this, but my kind of thinking, as folks were sort of anticipating the reaction to this was I suspected that the actual reaction on a mass scale to the video's release was going to be more muted and law abiding than than people were expecting at the time.

And I guess the primary reason that I felt this way was simply that kind of the vibes were off. It just didn't feel like folks were ready for that kind of a response. Um, but I do kind of have a fact based reason for why I was anticipating that as well. UM. On January, two days before the video's release, five Memphis p D officers were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, assault, a bevy of very serious charges.

Immediately after that, three firefighters T. E. M. T s and a police lieutenant who had been on scene after the beating were fired for failing to assess and provide emergency care to Nichols on scene. And there's a couple of ways to view what happened here. I think the less optimistic one is that the state simply made a pragmatic decision to throw these guys onto the bus. That's

definitely what happened. The more optimistic way to look at this is that because people had rioted so hard for so long in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the state felt like it had to throw these guys under the bus rather than, you know, risk another year of rage. And this is also correct. I think both of these things are are pretty accurate ways to look at what happened.

The idea that the release of the footage of Tyree's murder would lead to massive protests was not quite universal, but I didn't notice that a lot of the people who felt similarly to me expressed the belief that if people didn't riot over what had happened to Tyree, that was due to a mix of liberal cowardice and racism, since most of the officers who beat Tyree to death were themselves black. And I think this is kind of a short sighted and unfair take, and I'll talk about

why shortly. On January Friday, the Tyree Nichols videos were released by the Memphis Police Department. UM, along with a lot of you. I watched them all immediately, UM, and you can find there's a description on my Twitter page. It's turned currently pinned to my profile of the video if you haven't seen it but want to know what happened there. UM To kind of summarize it in brief, it's it's very ugly. Uh. Tyree is immediately calm as he's pulled over and taken from his car. The police

are not calm. He attempts to de escalate them. They accuse him falsely of resisting, then they mace him and themselves. I think in general that the inciting incident for the beating was the incompetent use of mace by these officers. They hurt themselves, they got pissed, and then they beat Tyree because they were angry at themselves for macing themselves. UM. It's also kind of worth noting that a white officer who has since been fired as well, also deployed his

taser on the young man. There's been some kind of this was kind of left out of a lot of the initial summaries of what had happened. Uh, that guy has now been fired. UM. And yeah, it's it's bad. The video is is very unpleasant and very brutal. UM. Watching it, though, I think kind of the thing that struck me most was how much like a normal traffic

stop a lot of this was. UM. I think that if you know, they had gone a little bit less hard and beating him a little less badly and he had survived, they probably would have charged him with resisting arrest and assault on a police officer. UM. And who knows how the case would have gone. You can hear the police preparing for this eventuality in the footage, one

officer claims that Tyree went for his gun. There's no evidence of this in the footage, uh, And you can kind of hear them all working to get their stories straight after they beat Tyree Um for the inevitable court case.

More officers and emergency personnel arrive on scene as he's just kind of laying there, and none of them seemed to find what's happened peculiar or noteworthy, which is interesting because immediately prior to the video's release, police departments around the country all issued statements that were basically identical, condemning the officers who had beaten nichols Um, saying basically, this

behavior is unacceptable. These men are bad apples. This is like an extreme example that does not represent policing values. And there's a couple of things that are are interesting about this. One of them is that the actual way in which emergency responders on scene treated the beating kind of puts the lie to that, because nobody acts as if anything outside of the normal has occurred. And the other thing that is noteworthy is the uniformity of these

these messages by police departments around the country. I have not actually seen that happen before. There was kind of a version of this that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd video, but it was much more cohesive prior to the release of the Tyree Nichols video. UM. That said, there were no widespread riots or acts of property destruction. After the video was released. There were protests in a number of cities, most notably in Memphis, UM,

but compared to things were very subdued. There was not kind of widespread property destruction or rioting in Portland, which was obviously the site of intense radical street actions. In there were two fairly small marches. UM. I'm not gonna delve into this in tremendous detail, but there were kind of allegations from one of the marches that the larger and less radical of the two was an op designed to take numbers and energy away from the radical march.

There were confrontations between members of both groups, and while the overall story, again is not worth spending time on, the gist of it is that very little happened. Now this is not kind of limited to Portland's Atlanta, Georgia is probably the city in the US today that's been the center of the most effective radical protests against law enforcement and the history of attempts to stop and stabotage.

The construction of Cops City, which is obviously a massive police training compound in Atlanta's largest urban forest, has been well documented by by Garrison Davis UM as well as a number of other reporters. UM. I do think it's worth noting that days before the Nichols video was released, Atlanta police shot and killed a forest defender, Tortu Guida, and a moderately large protest followed, where protesters smashing windows

and lighting one cop car on fire. This was the kind of action that I think most of the activists I observed expected in the wake of the Nichols video as well, but we simply didn't see that. I'm just going to butt in here for a little bit and you'll you'll you'll hear more about that riot slash protest in Atlanta next week. UM. I'm putting together a series

on it that'll that'll be out soon. But definitely one of the things that was talked about a lot in Atlanta was the upcoming release of this video and the potentiality of this video getting released shortly after the death of Tortuguita at the hands of police. Kind of both of these things feeding off each other into a into a similar like level um uprising. And this was like no one was like for sure about this, Like no one was like saying, this is absolutely definitely gonna happen,

But it was something that was definitely thought about. UM, it was something that was definitely considered. I think, honestly, if the the video was set to come out originally on like the Monday or Tuesday following the big downtown protest in Atlanta, UM, it was supposed to come out just a few days later, and that that didn't happen.

It was delayed once again for further further into the week. UM. I think if it came out sooner, I think that could have fed off momentum in a pretty considerable way. I think a few things happened both in Atlanta that in the in the next few days that kind of stunted possible possible for their protest. UM National Guard was deployed.

UM police in Savannah were ordered to start arresting people and shutting down gatherings of over fifteen uh specifically for like including vigils, and in Atlanta, obviously there was people getting really pretty pretty inflated, uh high level felonies and domestic and domestic terrorism charges simply for being simply for

being present at a protest UM. So I think those those things kind of all in all impacted people's ability to like prepare for you know, a sequence of protests which there was someone there was someone in l a for for like a day or two. The ones in Memphis were pretty big, but I think they the timeline in which they released the video is definitely should be considered in terms of when they chose to release it um to like yeah, in terms of the state's goal

of preventing you know, large large scale protests. But that was definitely something that was talked about a lot during during like the little over a week that I was that I was in Atlantis, because everyone was getting ready for this, Like everyone heard that this is going to be like the worst of ADEO that we've seen since Rodney kinging like that that that that was the way

it was. It was thought up of like on the ground, you know, just like word of mouth being being passed um, and people were definitely like preparing, like preparing themselves for it, like like like thinking, like thinking about like what's going to happen if this is like, if this really is the most horrific thing, what is the appropriate response to that? And and this is kind of a lot of what I wanted to talk around because you have sort of

Georgia law enforcement. There's this this riot, and the response to that, as well as the response to the tree set is a series of dem stick terrorism charges, um.

And then this video comes out and there's not a mass like radical street response to it, and it it seems to me and Garrison you can correct me if I'm wrong that a big part of that is people in Atlanta were kind of not willing to throw more lives and bodies at the police without kind of more of a cohesive plan of what to do given the severity of the repression that that was being engaged in.

I mean, obviously can't comment on people's votivations or like plans for for for stuff, because that's not something that I would be would be privy privy to. Yeah, um, so I I don't know, there's there's there's a lot of stuff. I mean, like I think a big part of why I heard a lot about it in Atlanta was one because a friend of a lot of people who were involved in the forced and the force events

got killed by police a few days earlier. And two Memphis is only a few hours way from Atlanta, Like it's it's it's not it's it's it's not that far, and it's a big part of the stuff in Atlanta is like solidarity with struggles that are not just in your immediate vicinity. And you could argue that Memphis really is in the immediate vicinity of Georgia. Um, but like that that type of cross cross state solidarity is is a big part um. But yeah, I can I I could not comment on on on why why people did

or did not choose to do specific things. I think that that's that's up for people themselves. Yeah, I want

to want to put words into anyone's mouth. But it was kind of interesting because I I paid attention a lot to the reaction, and there were a lot of folks talking about how disheartening it was that there were not more of the kind of radical actions that they wanted to see in the wake of the video coming out, And I'm that's kind of the thing I wanted sort of to talk most around because I feel very mixed around this, But broadly speaking, I guess I'm glad that

we didn't see a repeat of the part of that was folks standing up in front of cop shops until riot police came in and getting charges against them, because I just don't think that that works right now. I don't think it works is functional anymore. Um, I don't think it actually hurts the state because the reaction, like there was a period of time early in those first couple of months in particular, where you could see the

police were off balance. Obviously in like Minneapolis with the burning of the Third Precinct, was was this kind of sea change moment um, but you could see it in a number of cities that like they didn't really know what was going on, and they were themselves concerned with

how out of control the situation had gotten. And then it kind of morphed later in the year to I think a situation they could control very well where there were these acts of fairly minor property destruction and then a bunch of people would get picked up and charged. And I think that while I understand like the desire to react that way and to do something, um, kind of very firm and uh and radical in response to

state violence like this. I'm also like deeply concerned about people not throwing away months and years of their lives fighting charges. Yeah. I mean a big part of it is is people learning that treating protesters as disposable meat bags to throw against the wall of the state is kind of a bad idea. Um. Yeah, And there's I think this is something that that that was talked about in conversations just just like regarding like, hey, this video is going to come out, what do you think it's

going to happen. Like there's just a lot of the casual, casual conversations, but like there was a lot to make happened. A lot of things contributed to the intensity and the length of those protests. I think, uh, COVID being a pretty big part. This was a few months into the pandemic. People have been stuck in their homes now for a

few months and not really like prepared for that. Like at this at this point, we're kind of we're all kind of used to being in our house a lot more now, But back then it was it was new for a lot of people. So I think the opperaty the opportunity to get out of the house for what seemed like an important reason. I think was a really

big part of people. People being out of a lot of work was a really big part of because a lot of people did did not have the types of jobs that they might have now, did not have the jobs they had like in like the months before. It's maybe because I can't really think of another example like

this from history. Obviously a lot of uprisings occur when people are suddenly out of work, but this was a mix of people are suddenly out of work and they suddenly they all have cash like that, that which contributed in a lot of ways because like that, that was I think what funded a lot of you know, people bringing in food and people bringing in like pallets of water and getting gas masks and stuff as they had these sort of checks for you know, as a result

of like COVID relief, which was an interesting situation as well that hasn't been replicated since. I think there's there's another very important factor of this that doesn't get talked about that much, which is just the weather. Like if if you, if you, if you, if you go back and look at when the largest police like largest anti police protests in the US have happened, right, They either start like late spring, early fall, or just the middle

of the summer. And there's the reason. Yeah, Like then this is I think another this is this is the thing up in Chicago, right was it was just really fucking could and I mean this this affects actually circles too. But it's like you can't get the critical mass, which just regular people in the streets when it's like twenty degrees. I think the other side of that is, um, just summer vacation of a lot of a lot of the people who go the hardest at these protests are people

in high school. UM. And during winter, fall, spring kids, kids are in school during during summer, uh, people have people under the age of eighteen have a lot more free time on their hands. So I think that is

another contributing factor. UM. And I think there's there's there's one other aspect which is very sinister um And but I think is worth talking about in terms of how of how the state may have been trying to frame this to like to to frame the release of this video too kind of like curtail the the the the the intensity of any type of like um of a

protest revolter up racing. Now obviously that there was like the fucked up nature of like making this feel like a world premiere of like a snuff film was like it was it was. It was like a weird a weird aspect, which I think it encouraged the video to be to be something that is consumed versus something that's actually like watched and like, oh, this is a fucked

up thing that we that we need to do something about. Instead, it turned it into this like element of consumption and the other aspect for this in terms of a lot of hardcore activists like like people who have thrown down in the streets before, people who have who have who have seen fucked up ship is that the intensity, what was the violence depicted on this video was framed as being extremely horrific, being being a very very unusual a very um like uncommon but but but but horrifying display

of violence and display of brutality by the police. This is this, This is what police departments were faring it as. This is what the President of the United Its was framing this as like this this is a case of a few of a few bad actors who who did an egregious um but you know, uncommon thing. And I think when a lot of people who have thrown down watched this video, it just reminded you of stuff that you've seen before, Like, yeah, they saw a thing they

had seen. It wasn't It was not shocking in the same way that it was getting framed as. Because what separates this from most of the arrests that happened in Portland during is very little Like one or two punches that were that were thrown just a little bit too hard is all that separates this from most like violent police arrests, Like this was not an uncommon display of violence. This was an ordinary, an ordinary encounter that just a

few things were pushed just barely over the edge. And I think a lot of people watched, like my first reaction was like, oh, like this, this is not as bad as what I thought like this and that that that should be a condemnation of the police's actions, Like well, that's why I think one of the most important things to watch is how the other cops who were not present for the beating, but who show up immediately after or at the end of because some of them did

watch the others beat him. How they react because they're just kind of even the m T R. Oh, yeah, this has happened, but we we we do a stand back. When this happened, pizza people, the people on the ground were not concerned. Like it was not you could you could slowly watch because like a lot of this video

was not of the actual beating. It was it was of the aftermath, and you you you could you could watch these cops slowly start to realize that maybe they went a little too hard, just very slowly over the course of thirty minutes. But for most of the time they're on the ground, they're like making jokes. They are talking about how fun, like how fun it was to beat up this person and there facing each other. That is most of the video. I think it's worth noting

like a couple of things. One like it's extremely long, Like I'm not in the in the way that the George Floyd video like fits into the attention span of stuff we consume on our telephones at a time versus

versus like an hour of footage. Right, Yeah, if Tyree Nichols had just been seriously disabled, have life altering injuries, been charged with disting rest all the things that very plausibly could have happened if a couple of punches had handed in different place, this body camera footage would have been denied under the investigative exemption, right then have said no, we're investigating his resistance of arrest. You can't you can't see it, and none of this ship would have happened.

And like, yeah, the normalcy of so much other than the outcome. I don't know that that stripped some of the rage away, but it's important context. I think a few things I mean, and this is again one of the things that I think you can see from this that is evidence is sort of a positive long term result too, and it's it's a very mixed bag when I say it's positive, but that is kind of a positive sign. Is that they acted so quickly to throw all of these guys. They are firing and charging a

lot of city employees over this. It's going to be between all of the people fired and all of the people charged, more than a dozen people by the time this is all done, which I can't think of another time when that has happened this quickly over an incident of police violence. And they did that not because it's the right thing to do, but because they were scared, and again I do I want to emphasize here the thing that they're scared of is not that like radical

left wing protesters will take to the street. It's that liberals and more political they know that the consequence of the cops beating someone to death is that, like someone suck a mom will fucking abandon how many vans wing hammer into your cops show if you don't do this, do like give a scapegoat, right, like do the fair the bad minimum? And so the positive the thing that I can say that is probably positive about this is that it does show there's still some fear there on

their behalf. The thing that's negative is that, like, well, it it worked, because I will say, on a moral level, I think a wide variety of radical actions are morally justified by what was done to Tyrene Nichols. Now that said, like back to the sort of the point we're making the start of this, I don't particularly urge or encourage that just because, like I don't like seeing people get arrested and charged and spend years of their life fighting ship in court um for the chance to like, let's say,

carry out minor acts of property destruction on a cop shop. Um, I don't think like that sort of activism works right now. Um, it certainly doesn't work without them, without the critical mass of like liberals sort of behind it, without enough people saying like we like again you look at like the fact that the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis is still one of the most popular things in modern

American politics. But that was the product of a fairly unique moment, And I just don't I see some positives in like the lingering fear of that moment, But I also don't see the material conditions that make me think it's something like that is coming again in the immediate future. And especially because this this situation around this video demonstrates how much more effort the state's putting into trying to

prevent things from happening before they start. Like there was a lot of like inter agency work put into having all of these local police departments release statements, having the FBI release statements, having uh president like having having the president release statements, and it's it is all made slightly more bizarre considering that the contents of the video are not the on on the level of like uncommon or like rare, rare displays of violence that the police do,

like this is this is this is relatively standard, um and that that kind of one thing I've been thinking about is like why did they choose this video? Like

why did they why did they make this one? Like what were they afraid of, like for this video, because like other other other videos have come out in the past few years, like other like other police killings have happened, like the police killings all the fucking time, but they they did a lot of work on this one specifically, um and it it's kind of it's kind of interesting that, like why why they chose this specific video to to dedicate all of this work into because not not only

did they like you know, denying stuff, but they also they like they like hyped it up. They're like you using this as like an example, Yeah, like like using this as an example, like here, this is what bad cops look like. Watch us punish these bad cops. Well, but I think I think I think there's a rate. I think there's a huge racial aspect of this, right, which is that like you know, like the cops are

getting prosecuted. Are only the black cops who are involved in this right, and I think that's a huge part of this entire strategy. I think that's why they framed this as exceptional violence, is to play on people's racism, right. I think I think that's why I think person why this is allowed to happen, which was that yeah you can it is. It's like even inside the police it is a lot easier to throw black cops under the bus that it is that throw white cops under the bus.

That's just how the system works, and it doesn't trigger that same like visceral response right that that we all had to seeing the George Floyd video. I don't think quite like like there is age old tradition of white men doing violent to black men on behalf of the state.

And I think also it's it's also easier politically inside of the police departments because I think I think there would have been a lot more pushback from like the police part Like there hasn't been much that I've seen like internal pushback like from inside and police partments, because I I think if ituld have been five white cops, I think this would have been a huge fight, and I think you would have had like the fucking police union like calling Biden like an anti cop, like whatever.

But I I think I think these were people who they were, Like we could tell these people onto the bus and doesn't looking matter because who cares Yaity isn't there for him? I think those are I mean, that's certainly like a significant aspect of why like this was the one they focused on. But I also think a major aspect of it is that it shows and records the reaction of other city employees to this, and you can see in real time the police putting together um

story like it's it. There's I think a few things about this that are are really unique, but even I don't know the it's relatively unusual to have an angle which is not like the body camera, right, which really I think the violence in this was was captured and depicted in a way which was more or explicit than you would get many individual cops body camera. And like the fact that they most of the time when cops kill people, they do it with guns, right or maybe

to taste sera or something like that. The fact that they took minutes, you know, like several minutes to be a man to death. It's it is just it should We've we've said like how this isn't unusual, and it's not, But it doesn't mean it's not repulsive. No, no, no,

it's sucking disgusted by it. It's it's nightmarish. Yeah, the point is that, yeah, it's it's it's it's even more nightmarish considering how common this is, because yes, they did spend a few minutes doing this, but it was really only I think one or two punches that threw it right over the edge, Like it wasn't just a punch. Is the thing that I think one of the things that I saw that I think was probably critical and why he died. No, it was when they tackled him.

His head bounced against the ground with a significant amount of force. There's a number of like a perfect store and the factors, right that went into making this the incident that they talked about, and like this the incident that didn't start two. I guess it's no one particular thing,

it's all these things that led to it. And I do think also, like we have Joe Biden as president, right, like a lot of the same bullshit it's still happening that we've covered, right, like talking about the cops, talking about the border talking about all this stuff, but it's not being shoved in people's faces by legacy media outlets. Liberal folks have not been getting gradually angry or more upset at like the appearance of vulgarity from the White House.

And and that's also a big aspect of why things went the way they did in is you have four years of pent up frustration on behalf of the a large group of liberals as well. Although I do again, I don't like pushing kind of the simple narrative here because I see that on the left a lot that like, oh, the Libs they stopped coming out because Biden one and

they never really care. And I think that like that's there's certainly like a decent chunk of people who who showed up because it was the thing to do and we're not committed. But I also think the folks who are just like, um, you know, people stopped coming out because they suck. That's a that's a little bit of a reductive summary of the take. But I think that

that that broad idea leaves out a lot. One of the things that leaves out is that a lot of those those Libs and moderates who showed up in got the ship beaten out of them and got pretty traumatized, and are probably would be willing to get back out again, but are going to need to feel like there's a an actual chance of doing something because they understand the

consequences of showing up in the street better. Um, and they're like, well, I don't want to do the same thing that I just got my ass kicked and there's still cops. Um, there is a decent amount of evidence that for kind of the long term positive impact of getting all those people out in the street and of the fact that so many more people in witnessed police

violence with their own eyes. Um. There's a couple of places you can go to look at this, But I was I was watching going through a recent ABC News Washington Post poll that showed that from twenty three confidence that police treat black and white people equally fell from fifty two percent where it was inten to thirty nine percent among Americans. UM and confidence that yeah, and confidence that police like it's too it's certainly too high, but

that's a significant change. And confidence that police were adequately trained to avoid use of excessive force fell from fifty percent to um like and confidence in both of these things fell twice as fast from twenty three as it did from and that like thirty something percent number is just that is also just like close to like the number of people who are like active, like like actively hardcore racist yeah about the country are biggest. Yeah. Yeah,

I don't think the election was real. Think that I want to quickly mention that, like some of those liberal folks as well, like like like this is not we don't do like shipping on the lips or whatever. It's useless and it doesn't help. But like a lot of those folks have been out doing other ship too, Like I've seen folks so I haven't seen since twenty like trying to protect trans kids, trying trying to stop biggest shout and get little children going to the pantomime or

some ship. Like they've been doing stuff, and that contributes of course to people being you know, fatigued from other actions. A large part of what I'm seeing people not being willing to do anymore is like the same ship that they did in twenty that stopped working, right, it didn't

continue to be effective. Yeah yeah, And I think also like this this also, you know there's something actors like the weather, like the stuff that was happening in the very very like the first week where like I don't know, like the cops lost control of like the sid at the center of Chicago, right like that. The kind of people who did that stuff like aren't really like that. Those those those are those those that was not being done by people who were sort of like political liberals

or whatever. That was being done by people who like had like very various tenues, very tenuous connection to politics at all under normal circumstances. And you know, like eventually eventually you'll get will see something like that again. I don't know, I mean it took like six six five or six years between like Ferguson and like that. That

will happen again. But there's that kind of that that kind of stuff doesn't happen that Like those those like the kind of people who actually riot very significantly, who are not in the sort of like cadra of like hardcore left or organizers, like, they don't throw in that often. And a lot of political conditions have to like converge exactly correctly for it to happen, and it's just not going to happen most of the time. And that's a lot of ways, but like you like, that's just that's

just what reality is. Yeah, I don't think there's been enough time between cycles in order for things to really pick up, because yeah, it does require a lot of people to forget, to forget the brutality of what the corps did to people, and like and and and and and just like material conditions and like recovering from burnout,

and it creates it. Like one thing that's been so incredible about Atlanta is the level of resiliency because they've not they've not really stopped since they like they've they've kind of they they've they've kept going in a very particular way that both like encourages people to take care

of themselves and not to be treated as disposable. And I think a big part of that is having like a multi pronct movement, Like the movement isn't it's not built around a singular thing like going out and breaking windows or even even just like camping in the forest. Like, the movement isn't just those things. There's a lot of

other various aspects. So when you're exhausted from one single thing, you can move on to one of the other many aspects and like do that as like as your recovery, um and and having having that, I think it's contributed to the level of resiliency that we've seen. UM, But I don't think the rest of the States has those types of practices. Like people in Portland are definitely still extremely burnt out from from Jesus, and I assume a lot of a lot of other cities are dealing with

similar levels of fatigue. One thing I do want to address really quickly is the horseshit framing of this by legacy media. Again, like the very fucking people who, like on the day that Derek Shovin went to Joe retweeted that initial statement where Minneapolis p D basically said George Floyd died of a heart attack. I think we had

a cardiac condition or something. Um, the very same people who retweeted that statement said never again are we going to be calmed by this ship and now out there fucking just carrying water for the cops, like CNN saying that Tyree Nichols had an encounter with the police, Like I don't understand what it fucking takes for these people to understand, Like, and I've been like I was on NBC this year trying to persuade other NBC journalists too

maybe critically assess the claim to the police and like, here we are again doing the same ship again, and we should we should probably close out here soon. But one kind of final thought that I've had is the other another kind of crucial difference between how this was treated as opposed to the George Floyd video is that the person who recorded the George Floyd video was like a bystander, Like they were just there and they posted that on their own accord and it was able to grow.

It was able to grow traction over the course of a few weeks, kind of slowly in like underground um like in like underground communities, you know, people who are much more aware of police violence, and then that's the

least seeped out into the mainstream. I think there's a difference in having that type of actual growth of people learning about like hey, did you see this fucked up thing that my friends sent me, or like did you like like there's that level of like, oh, we found this thing that is really fucked up and people need to care about this, versus the framing of the police and how they used this as like a world premiere of this, like of this of this like snuff film.

It's it's like that there was like a fucking countdown to to to to to watch the video and that that immediately frames this as something to be consumed. That immediately frames this is something like the way to engage with this is to sit down and watch it and then you're done. Like that that that that is the like they're they're they're framing this the same way that you would watch like a movie or like a music video drop like that is that is the style of engagement.

Because this video is being published by the police like they are. They are they are from from the very start, they're controlling the way that information is distributed. They're controlling

what information is distribute. Did it like creates this scenario where the consumption of the video itself like is the event as opposed to any type of like follow up action or protest or direct action that instead of that being like the action event, the action event is just the consumption of the video based on how it was hyped up as as this thing that was to be like officially released and you like count down for it and then you watch it and you're like, Okay, that

was it, that was the thing. Um, and I think that does just really impact it when it's like this, like sanctioned premier versus this thing that's spread by regular people. UM. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it kind of became the act of penance. Like you watch the video, you say, holy funk, that's disgusting, and then like the thing is already done right like that, the cops are already fired,

so you just do your penants. You go through the painful thing, rather than the George Floyd thing, which was like nothing has been done about this. I've got this organically from a friend. I'm fucking furious. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's very different. Yeah alright, well I think that's probably going to do it for us today. Um until next time. Uh, I don't know. Don't don't let your city name a police elite unit, scorpion or anything else. Uh yeah you can tell yeah yeah,

I don't have special police if. Yeah, I would prefer no cops. If you're going to have a special police unit, maybe call it like the Barney Fife Battalion or something like that. Um, at least at least try not to hype them up to be scorpions. Yeah. Um, anyway, that that that that that the fuck. Hi, everyone's James again bookend in the episode, and I'm just here to ask you again to donate if you have the means, if you're able to, to relief for people in Syria who

are obviously experiencing terrible conser quotation from this earthquake. The news cycle kind of moves on, but people's lives don't, and they still need your help. So a couple of places you can donate. The White Helmets, that's White Helmets dot org, slash e N for English Syrian American Medical Society Foundation, that's s A M S hyphen USA dot net Medsan San Fantier, Doctors Without Borders and that's Doctors

Without Borders dot org. And the Kurdish Re Question h E y V A S O r U K dot r G. Those were all great places and we'd love it if you could spare little money to help people out. Thanks by It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool Zone

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