Tesla Vandals & Boycott Leaders: 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#2) w/ Joel Lava & Anti-car Activist

Summary

Podcast Summary: Tesla Vandals & Boycott Leaders: 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#2) w/ Joel Lava & Anti-car Activist

Podcast Information:

• Title: Tesla Vandals & Boycott Leaders: 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#2)
• Host: Andrew Callaghan
• Guests: Joel Lava (Founder of Tesla Boycott Movement) & an unnamed Anti-car Activist from Seattle
• Release Date: April 13, 2025

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1. Introduction

Andrew Callaghan opens the episode by discussing the impact of boycotts in contemporary American history, highlighting the Bud Light boycott of 2023 as a pivotal example. He transitions to introduce today's main focus: the Tesla boycott movement spearheaded by Joel Lava and the broader anti-car activism movement.

Notable Quote:

"The most successful boycott in contemporary American history was the great Bud light boycott of 2023." (00:00) – Andrew Callaghan

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2. The Bud Light Boycott: A Historical Context

Andrew recounts his personal experience during the Bud Light boycott, triggered by Anheuser Busch's marketing campaign featuring a trans woman, Dylan Mulvaney. This boycott, led by conservative figures like Kid Rock, resulted in a 20% drop in Bud Light sales within a month, allowing Modelo to become the top-selling beer.

Notable Quotes:

"In a single month, Bud Light sales dropped by 20%, allowing Modelo to become the number one sold beer in the country." (00:00) – Andrew Callaghan

"Not only was its job being taken by a Mexican, but the mere act of ordering a Bud Light in a red county was like wearing a MAGA hat." (00:00) – Andrew Callaghan

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3. The Rise of the Tesla Boycott Movement

Callaghan outlines the emergence of the Tesla boycott movement, initiated by Joel Lava in Burbank, California, following Elon Musk's controversial actions, including a provocative salute on Inauguration Day. The movement aims to reduce Tesla's brand value and, consequently, Elon Musk's wealth and influence.

Notable Quotes:

"Today we're going to be speaking to the Godfather and alleged founder of the Tesla boycott movement, Joel Lava." (01:49) – Andrew Callaghan

"We're boycotting Tesla." (08:41) – Joel Lava

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4. Interview with Joel Lava: Founder of the Tesla Boycott

Joel Lava's Motivation and Goals: Joel discusses his transformation from an Elon Musk supporter to a leader in the Tesla boycott. A pivotal moment for him was Musk's "Sieg Heil" salute, which solidified his resolve to oppose Tesla directly. His primary goal is to diminish Tesla's stock value, thereby reducing Musk's financial and social influence.

Notable Quotes:

"I've always been, I have to fight back." (14:36) – Joel Lava

"The primary goal is to reduce the value of Tesla brand, to tarnish the brand." (32:12) – Joel Lava

Impact and Success: Joel highlights the significant decline in Tesla's stock and the widespread vandalism against Tesla properties. He emphasizes the movement's focus on disrupting Tesla's brand rather than general anti-capitalist sentiments.

Legal Concerns: He addresses threats of domestic terrorism labels by political figures like Trump, asserting confidence in the righteousness of his cause despite potential legal repercussions.

Philosophical Views: Joel shares his skepticism towards government efficiency and his belief in the necessity of concentrated action to effect change, contrasting it with what he perceives as the fragmented and self-righteous nature of progressive movements.

Notable Quotes:

"Our movement's clearly successful and I just, I feel like part of the reason it grows is because every week there's like a new horrible thing that happens." (12:34) – Joel Lava

"It's all about Trump and the people who control him destroying our country unconstitutionally." (32:12) – Joel Lava

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5. Positive News Segment

Interspersed within the discussions, Callaghan shares uplifting news snippets, such as Sophia Arcuri's exceptional IQ achievement and the Inter American Court of Human Rights' ruling on the rights of uncontacted tribes to remain isolated. This segment serves as a counterbalance to the otherwise intense and critical subject matter.

Notable Quotes:

"Sophia Arcuri from Park Ridge, Illinois just received the highest IQ score of any 13 year old in American and global history, hitting 162." (04:30) – Andrew Callaghan

"The Inter American Court of Human Rights has just ruled that uncontacted tribes have the right to remain in isolation." (04:24) – Andrew Callaghan

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6. Interview with an Anti-car Activist from Seattle

Background and Motivations: The anti-car activist, referred to as "Saddam," discusses the over-reliance on cars in American cities and the negative impacts on safety and social cohesion. He advocates for reduced car dependency and increased public transportation infrastructure.

Direct Action vs. Violence: Saddam emphasizes the importance of peaceful protest but acknowledges that some may resort to vandalism. He believes property destruction shifts the narrative but maintains that the core movement remains non-violent.

Personal Journey: Saddam shares his personal experiences growing up in car-centric cities like Orlando and Dallas, leading to his disdain for automotive culture. He also discusses his transition and personal struggles, linking them to his activism.

Notable Quotes:

"I hate this thing. I want to get out of this car. And there is no option." (63:18) – Saddam

"I don't support vandalism and violence. All our protests have been peaceful." (46:34) – Saddam

Challenges and Strategies: He outlines strategies such as bike rides to disrupt traffic and advocating for congestion pricing. Saddam also reflects on the importance of creating safer, more walkable urban environments.

Notable Quotes:

"Start small. Just get yourself, like, a bike. Just get yourself, like, walking more." (98:15) – Saddam

"There is a growing sentiment. There are a lot." (92:55) – Saddam

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7. Violence and Property Destruction in Movements

The conversation delves into the role of violence in social movements. Joel Lava argues that property destruction equates to violence as it creates fear and symbolizes aggression towards the targeted entities. In contrast, the Anti-car Activist contends that while property damage is illegal, its violent nature depends on context and intent.

Notable Quotes:

"I would say that graffiti firebombing dealerships, setting supercharging stations ablaze... is getting so bad that the FBI has launched a special task force." (10:05) – Andrew Callaghan

"I don't support vandalism and violence. All our protests have been peaceful." (46:34) – Saddam

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8. The Broader Implications of the Movements

The discussions highlight the interconnectedness of various protest movements, the influence of social media on activism, and the generational divides in political engagement. Both guests express concerns about the potential for increased governmental overreach and the erosion of democratic freedoms.

Notable Quotes:

"Our federal government is to operate extrajudicially without any cooperation, especially on foreign lands." (35:00) – Andrew Callaghan

"We have no real democracy anymore." (additional timestamps implied) – Joel Lava

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9. Concluding Thoughts and Future Outlook

Andrew Callaghan wraps up the episode by reflecting on the challenges faced by progressive movements in maintaining unity and avoiding divisive tactics. He emphasizes the need for strategic, informed activism to counteract the powerful influences of figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Final Takeaways:

• Joel Lava: Focused on diminishing Tesla's brand value to undermine Musk's influence.
• Anti-car Activist: Advocates for reduced car dependency and enhanced public transportation, while navigating personal and societal challenges.

Notable Quotes:

"We are about to see Elon Musk has lost a significant amount of wealth. It'll reduce his mystique and influence." (35:09) – Joel Lava

"Make an incremental change. Free Gaza." (101:36) – Saddam

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Conclusion

This episode of 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan provides an in-depth exploration of two significant protest movements: the Tesla boycott and the anti-car activism movement. Through candid interviews with Joel Lava and an anti-car activist from Seattle, listeners gain insights into the motivations, strategies, and challenges faced by these activists. The discussions also touch upon broader societal issues, including the role of violence in activism, the impact of social media, and the urgent need for cohesive and strategic progressive movements.

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Note: All timestamps correspond to the provided transcript segments.

Transcript

[Andrew Callahan]

Lets talk about boycotts. The most successful boycott in contemporary American history was the great Bud light boycott of 2023. I am three weeks sober today, so no beer for me. But I remember back then being in a bar in Algona, Iowa, which is an all American cornfield locale, where I was informed by a bartender that they just stopped serving queer beer after Anheuser Busch decided to feature a trans woman named Dylan Mulvaney in their spring marketing campaign for Bud Light. I responded of course by ordering an even gayer drink called Watermelon White Claw and and pulled my phone out to do some research. Apparently the commander in chief of the boycott army was ordained minister Kid Rock, who riled up a cabal of conservative reactionaries to spearhead what was the first prudent example of right wing cancel culture. In a single month, Bud Light sales dropped by 20%, allowing a widely acknowledged symbol of Latino camaraderie, the Modelo, to become the number one sold beer in the country for over a calendar year. It appeared that Bud Light had fallen. Not only was its job being taken by a Mexican, but as I mentioned, the mere act of ordering a Bud Light in a red county was like wearing a MAGA hat. Portland, Oregon but six months ago, things began to turn around when Bud Light featured a friend of the show, universally loved comedian and the least trans person in America, Shane Gillis, in their 2025 marketing campaign, securing the brand in the hearts and minds of heterosexual American alcoholics as a certifiably chill and not gay brand. But Tesla might not get so lucky. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Andrew Callahan and you're watching 5cast our weekly news report here at Channel 5, the largest crowdfunded independent newsroom in the world. Today we're going to be speaking to the Godfather and alleged founder of the Tesla boycott movement, Joel Lava, who kicked things off in Burbank, California shortly after Elon's controversial probably Sig Heil salute that he threw up on Inauguration Day. Joel is not a fan of Doge's mass firings and federal budget cuts and hopes to weaken the Trump administration by lowering Tesla's stock price.

[Joel Lava]

As a kid I always asked, like, why didn't the German Jews fight back against the Nazis?

[Andrew Callahan]

We're also going to be sitting down with a militant anti car activist from Seattle who is engaged in the vandalism and destruction of not only Teslas, but all cars, especially Waymos.

[Saddam]

Like, I don't know if you saw the Waymo caught on fire and frequently.

[Andrew Callahan]

Organizes calculated traffic disruptions to advance the agenda of the Car Free Movement. But before we get into all that, I would like to remind you guys that we actually do this show twice a week, first on Tuesday and today on Sunday. But our Tuesday show is available exclusively on our [e-mail] Channel 5. It costs 5 bucks a month to sign up, but gives you access to an entire catalog of exclusive, unreleased and extended ranging from back in the all gas no brakes days until now. It sucks that we have to panhandle this way, but the only other option is finding an investor which would compromise our ability to have total creative control. Now, before we get into the world of politics, vandalism, boycotts and break down the possibility of a dystopian technocracy, I want to share some positive news as a reminder to all you guys that there is still kindness, love and joy all around the world. So let's get into it. AJ Soprano was 13 when he figured out that his fictional father was in the mafia. Lil Wayne was 13 when Birdman discovered him in Holly Grove. I was 13 when my parents divorced and Sophia Arcuri from Park Ridge, Illinois just received the highest IQ score of any 13 year old in American and by extension global history, hitting 162, significantly higher than a 13 year old Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. Inducting Sofia into the Mensa Club alongside Steve Martin and Abby Sciudo. The benefits of becoming a Mensa member include free trips to Singapore to network with rocket scientists and the ability to refer to yourself as a genius in a public setting with without backlash. Sofia's mother Cecilia is quoted as saying, my daughter didn't study at all. This is actually crazy, which if true, is big news for the future of humanity. Sophia, congratulations and I hope that as you escape the confines of child labor restrictions, you'll ignore all future job inquiries from the CIA, Mossad or Chinese secret police and instead pick a career path that benefits humanity as a whole. Other good news, the Inter American Court of Human Rights has just ruled that uncontacted tribes have the right to remain in isolation. Not just from explorers, missionaries and YouTubers asking them about their Skibidi toilet body count, but from energy companies seeking to invade their homelands to drill and mine for natural resources. As we covered in our previous videos, Havasupai Uranium Mine protest and Biden's apology to Native Americans, there is a never ending friction between greedy transnational energy corporations and indigenous tribes who care for their land as opposed to pimping it out for profit.

[Saddam]

All of this land they look at it and they only see shrubs, rocks. But all this is medicine.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's been said that during early westward expansion, many of the Arizona tribes sold things like mountains, plateaus and fields to American pioneers for close to nothing, often joking. You want me to throw in an extra cloud before you get out of here? You see, before colonization, while there was territory warfare and bloodshed, the relationship between man and nature was never one of complete dominance. There was a common understanding that the grandiose, often apocalyptic force of Earth was never something that man could control or own, but rather would have to learn to exist with in cooperation and stewardship. But energy companies don't care about that and are invested in the maximum profit yield over the shortest period of time, which is, in the case of the Navajo reservation, led to generations of cancer, air radiation, pollution and uranium poisoning. Thankfully, though, the lasting impacts of those disasters have led to increased resistance from activists and tribal governments against resource extraction, which, like in the case of the Dakota Access pipeline, significantly slowed down construction and brought a great deal of public attention. However, uncontacted tribes don't have these privileges. They don't know what the hell is going on. National Geographic estimates There are over 75 uncontacted tribes remaining, mostly along the equator in the Amazon rainforest, Papua New guinea, and of course, North Sentinel island, where American missionary Jonathan Chow, not to be confused with incel, Jonathan Cho, won the Darwin award back in 2018 while trying to convert the hostile North Sentinelese to Christianity, only to be sent to his maker by way of bow and arrow. Normally in these kinds of situations, it would be up to the local police state or international courts to handle as far as the Sentinelese consequences go. But because of the new ruling by the Inter American Court of Human Rights, the law will automatically honor any uncontacted tribe's right to voluntary isolation from both Content Christ and capital. So shout out to the goddamn court. Oh, looks like I'm getting word of something new. Apparently for the first time since the ruling, the law has been broken by a US tourist and YouTuber who is being held by the Indian navy after making a selfie stick landing on the shores of North Sentinel Island. We've got Saddam with the latest on scene. Saddam, are you there? Yeah, Andrew. Okay.

[Saddam]

Can you hear me?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yep, I can hear you. I'm here on the shores of Adamant island where it's clearly monsoon season. 24 year old content creator Mikhailo Puikov was just taken into custody. Police say he arrived illegally to North Sentinel island after traveling 22 miles in a small inflatable boat from right where I'm standing, which is insane. After landing, he filmed a five minute GoPro video and fucking fled. I'm sorry. And he fled after leaving behind a coconut and Diet Coke as a gift to the tribes people. Thankfully, he made no contact with the son of the Lys as they would have killed him with spears and have no immunity to common diseases like measles and the flu. Thank you Saddam. Alright folks, we'll be back after the commercial break. Hey, what's up guys? Ah shit. Hey man, thanks for that web link. It's really working. I don't know if you guys missed the memo, but we just dropped an entire feature film. That's right, a full blown movie at www.DearKellyFilm.com Dear KellyFilm.com it's an action packed movie that revolves around the life and times of Kelly Johnson, AKA Kelly J. Patriot. Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the Quins. Come here Nazi. You're going to Guantanamo.

[Saddam]

Oh my gosh, what did I do? Am I getting canceled?

[Andrew Callahan]

The Democrats don't like you. They're gonna cancel you. It documents his semi estranged family and their attempt to pull him out of the rabbit hole.

[Saddam]

Aren't you selling baby parts? Yes or no? Don't tread on me.

[Andrew Callahan]

Don't even think about it. I don't want to say too much, but it's a good movie. If you guys want to watch it, it would mean a lot. Www.DearKellyFilm.com it's available for rent and buy. You can rent it for $5.55 or you can buy it for $15.55. Www.DearKellyFilm.com www.DearKellyFilm.com WWW.Dear Deli Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to Five Cast. Let's get to the main event of today's broadcast, the Tesla boycotts. If you haven't heard, these demonstrations have from Rotterdam to Rhode island, leading to a 36% decline in Tesla stock over the first fiscal quarter of the year.

[Joel Lava]

We're boycotting Tesla.

[Andrew Callahan]

I sold my Tesla. I traded it in for a Subaru actually. Shut up, Elon. Go home, Elon. Since then, Trump has threatened to label these demonstrators as domestic terrorists, which would then qualify them for extrajudicial detention without due process at facilities like Guantanamo Bay, Adams County Detention center and my favorite South Texas processing center. Now, if you're watching this and you get snatched up by the feds, remember that while detained detainees aren't entitled to hand soap or phone calls, there's no Commissary system set up, which means you're legally entitled to unlimited snacks every day. And each solitary confinement cell has a help button, which may as well be a Capri sun and graham cracker portal. So just keep hitting that button over and over again if you get jammed up. It's a good psychic device to remind yourself and the guards that you have the power. Alright, guys, back to the boycotts. As I see them, the boycotts are a broader offshoot of the anti Trump stop the coup protest movement, which I covered briefly in New York when it first popped off. Here's a look. If you look at my gray hair.

[Saddam]

You think I probably don't listen to rap music.

[Joel Lava]

And you're right.

[Saddam]

But I heard about the slogan in a podcast and I thought that is the right idea. Elon Musk, he not like us.

[Andrew Callahan]

And that's a Kendrick Lamar reference.

[Joel Lava]

I would.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I know it's a rap music reference.

[Saddam]

How do the rappers say it?

[Andrew Callahan]

They not like us. They not like us.

[Saddam]

The billionaire shouldn't be able to tell all the rest of us what to do. Stop the billionaire coup. Elon Musk is literally raiding our government and destroying our country.

[Andrew Callahan]

Within a couple days, the anti Elon fervor began to target Tesla, being Litzy's most notable company. And beyond the company's stock price dropping, there's been some real vandalism in these streets. We're talking about graffiti firebombing dealerships, setting supercharging stations ablaze. It's gotten so bad that the FBI has launched a special task force to bring these perpetrators to justice. And on March 20th of this year, the US Attorney General announced felony charges against three separate individuals. One defendant, armed with an AR15, was arrested after throwing approximately eight Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon. Another was arrested in Loveland, Colorado after attempting to light Teslas on with a Molotov cocktail, which unfortunately did not explode as desired. And in Charleston, South Carolina, a third defendant wrote profane messages against President Trump around a Tesla charging station before successfully lighting all the stations on fire. Again with the Molotov cocktail.

[Joel Lava]

I've made it clear if you take part in the wave of domestic terrorism.

[Andrew Callahan]

Against Tesla properties, we will find you.

[Saddam]

Arrest you and put you behind bars.

[Andrew Callahan]

But still, the threat of a terror charge hasn't worked at all to slow things down. Even in the old country. That's right, Europe, where apparently they care about us. This fire at a Tesla dealership near.

[Saddam]

Rome destroyed 17 cars.

[Andrew Callahan]

In the wake of this global catastrophe, Elon's personal net worth has fallen by roughly $121 billion since December. While the billionaire initially acknowledged it's costing me a lot to do this job and that the stock of everyone who holds a Tesla has gone down in half, a recent appearance in Wisconsin suggests that Elon is not so worried. In Wisconsin, he was quoted as long term, I think that Tesla stock is going to do fine. So, you know, maybe it's a buying opportunity. Despite this newfound optimism, he still espouses the belief that these boycotts are fundamentally anti American. Elon even promoted a conspiracy that the boycotts are being funded and coordinated by a larger Soros funded group. You know, it fascinates me that even with Trump's open cheerleader like support of that one small Middle Eastern country by the sea, people like Elon are still leaning on 2020 era George Soros tropes about a globalist cabal. But some things never change. All right, without further ado, here is our first interview of today's five cast with the LA based actor, devout Democrat, and lead organizer of the nation's first Tesla boycott, Mr. Joel Lava. Mr. Lava, thank you so much for making the time. I appreciate it.

[Joel Lava]

Thank you for having me.

[Andrew Callahan]

So my first question is, how does it feel?

[Joel Lava]

It's feeling pretty good. In the midst of it not being a good situation, our movement's clearly successful and I just, I feel like part of the reason it grows is because every week there's like a new horrible thing that happens. So it's great to see more people getting activated, but the motivation for it, I wish wasn't there.

[Andrew Callahan]

What's the most recent horrible thing that's happened that comes to mind?

[Joel Lava]

The most recent horrible thing was him trying to buy off the Wisconsin election. And he did get defeated. So that's good. But it's just showing the power of money in politics. And I think that that combined with the Cory Booker speech, I think we're gonna see a lot of people coming out even more. But they're going after Social Security now pretty hardcore. And I think that's the latest big horrible thing.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it's kind of fascinating because I went to a defend the border convoy and a lot of people voted for Trump because they were upset that their Social Security checks were so small.

[Saddam]

I know people that's getting maybe $500 a month.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay.

[Saddam]

I mean, how can you even live on $1,000 a month especially? Yeah, I make $1,200 a month. Can you live on $1,200 a month?

[Joel Lava]

Yeah, like they say that people are surprised that the face eating leopards are eating their faces. I don't know what to say to those people. This is everything that is happening was forewarned before the election. It's like paint by numbers. There's nothing surprising that's happening. And so how these people don't know about it, I can't explain it.

[Andrew Callahan]

So recently there was a threat that was leveraged by President Trump, threatening to designate all Tesla boycott, Tesla takedown activists as domestic terrorists. And you as not the Godfather, but one of the OG ringleaders of the first flagship Tesla boycott here in California. Are you worried about a RICO coming down?

[Joel Lava]

No, I'm not. I am worried that there could be charges and I would have to. It would hurt me a lot financially to get representation if I can't get pro bono. But I'm not worried in the righteousness of my cause and the fact that I'm a law abiding American citizen.

[Andrew Callahan]

Are you ready to die for the cause?

[Joel Lava]

I'm not ready to die for Tesla Takedown. I am. That's a very intense question. I, as a kid I always asked like, why didn't the, did German Jews fight back against the Nazis? Why did they just accept it? And I've always been, that's kind of been a formational thing for me is I always, I have to fight back. And I've just told like my friends, it's like if they're gonna throw us in the gulags either way, I may as well bloody some noses going down. So I don't want to just willingly get on the boxcar, metaphorically speaking. So I don't want to die though for democracy, for our country, for the great America experiment of 250 years. Yeah, I'm willing to die for that. Just like a soldier's. I'm not saying I'm a soldier, but I get that sentiment is I'm not gonna go down without fighting. And that's one of the reasons I'm willing to put my name out there in my face is just kind of like come at me, bro. It's like they're going after immigrants and foreign students. They're not going after Americans yet, but I'm sure that's part of their plan. I just feel like, especially with the numbers now, there's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of protesters now. Are they going to arrest all of us? No, it's, I mean Trump's entire business model, his whole life is bluster. It's to countersue you until you give up. But he's a coward. He always backs down when fully confronted. And I'm not backing down, so I guess they can say whatever they want.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you believe there's, like, a separate kingdom within heaven that's like waiting there for martyrs?

[Joel Lava]

I do not. Well, I'm Jewish, so we technically don't believe in heaven.

[Andrew Callahan]

What? Wait, so what happens after you die? In the Jewish faith?

[Joel Lava]

It's kind of abstract and vague, but there's not like, heaven with, like, the pearly gates.

[Andrew Callahan]

Wait, I'm confused. The Torah is the Old Testament.

[Joel Lava]

Correct.

[Andrew Callahan]

And the Old Testament doesn't mention heaven?

[Joel Lava]

Not really, no.

[Andrew Callahan]

Is that a New Testament creation?

[Joel Lava]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, then it's probably not true.

[Joel Lava]

I mean, we don't know till we die.

[Andrew Callahan]

Judaism was the first Abrahamic religion. Was Abraham like, a Jewish Jesus?

[Joel Lava]

No, there is no Jesus for Jews. There's been no Messiah.

[Andrew Callahan]

But Abraham thought of the religion.

[Joel Lava]

He was like the OG Tesla protestor. No. Well, Abraham, according to the Bible, was a man who was being spoken to by God. And so you have this man who's hearing a voice in his head, and God is telling him to take his son to a mountaintop and kill his son. And he was going to do it until God said, no, no, no, wait. At the last second. That's the story.

[Andrew Callahan]

So that's interesting. So Abraham is not an allegorical character. He's a real life human being.

[Joel Lava]

For Jews, he is.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. I feel like Jesus. Well, Jesus definitely existed. Probably not in the form that we think he did, but I have a theory about Jesus.

[Joel Lava]

Okay, let's hear it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, I think that Mary had an affair with someone in the neighborhood.

[Joel Lava]

You think?

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, I mean, she's pregnant and her husband is like, oh, my God, it's a miracle. And she's like, what are you talking about? He's like, we haven't even, you know, gone all the way. This is crazy. And she's like, I know, right? Must be God's child. I imagine the neighbor's, like, looking over the fence like, oh, my God, just fucking telling him it's God's child. And then the kid's born, and she feels so bad, especially with the patriarchy of that time, that she just rolls with it. So here's this bab who thinks that his dad is God, and she doesn't have the heart to tell him, like, no, your dad actually lives across the street. So he grows up his whole life thinking that, like, he's the man. And I feel like that's why his death was particularly Hard for her because she wanted to just be like, you're not the Son of God, but he was already being crucified by the Romans.

[Joel Lava]

I think there's a lot of credibility.

[Andrew Callahan]

With that theory that makes more sense than the other theory, which is that Mary got impregnated by God. It's impossible.

[Joel Lava]

She could have been artificially fertilized. And we have our president who's, like, the biggest fertilizer.

[Andrew Callahan]

He says, wait, I thought Elon was the IVF guy.

[Joel Lava]

No, Elon doesn't need ivf, apparently.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, Elon is what's called a rationalist. I'm familiar with the subculture. He believes in the creation of, like, super babies. Rationalists believe in, like, optimizing humanity for maximum productivity. So he believes in artificially inseminating intelligent women who he thinks are, like, of a superior cognitive ability.

[Joel Lava]

I thought he was like, Nick Cannon. Are all these women getting pregnant? It's not through sex.

[Andrew Callahan]

Nick Cannon is definitely having sex with his baby mamas.

[Joel Lava]

I thought Musk was, too.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, he's not.

[Joel Lava]

Oh, really?

[Andrew Callahan]

Musk? Half of Musk's baby mamas. He's not even, you know, gone to first base with. He's not in love with them. He just thinks they're really smart. And I want the kid to be smart or have, you know, we got.

[Joel Lava]

To get this message out.

[Andrew Callahan]

Aryan features, probably.

[Joel Lava]

That's, like, a whole story right there. That's amazing.

[Andrew Callahan]

Maybe that's worth boycotting.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah, that'll be our next boycott.

[Andrew Callahan]

Is it safe to call you the godfather of this movement?

[Joel Lava]

It is not. Not at all. No. The movement is, first of all, like, the. It's. TeslaTakedown.com is people who've really helped it grow. But it's a decentralized movement. There's no leader. It's like Occupy Wall street, which, by the way, should have had a leader at some point. But no, there's people. Like, my protests are in Burbank, and we're getting up to 300. But, for instance, the Pasadena protests are, like, perfectly located in the downtown Pasadena. They're dense, and they're getting three to 500 people.

[Andrew Callahan]

But, I mean, going back to the very beginning, you were one of the.

[Joel Lava]

First people to protest, as far as I know.

[Andrew Callahan]

So let's talk about that very first protest that you went to. Was that your idea?

[Joel Lava]

Oh, yeah, it was definitely my idea. I've always been politically active. I've made my own political videos for 25 years. And then I just. I volunteer for certain organizations. I canvass not all the time, but when I can. And so I've always just had that bug. And I actually was somewhat of an Elon Musk fan. I bought into the hype up until he bought Twitter or right before he bought Twitter. And then obviously he started to like, espouse his views. I started to learn more. He opened it up to Nazis. And I loved Twitter as much as anyone can love Twitter. And so that just pissed me off. And then obviously he got connected with Trump, but. And no one knew when we had the election, no one knew he was the co president. No one could have predicted it as much as we could predict a lot of things. Not that. And I would say there was a turning point for a lot of us was the Sig Heil. I already hated the cybertruck and wanted to do like flyers or something on it. I don't want to vandalize, but like put like a vinyl static clean sticker that just peels off or flyers just insulting the drivers. But that was kind of where I was at. And then the Sig Heil happened and I saw someone, Someone posted, they said, when you declare yourself a Nazi, you're a direct threat to my family. And that was like a paradigm shift for me because it becomes now, if I don't do everything in my power to stop this, then I'll never live with myself. And so the obvious easiest thing to do was to go directly at his primary source of wealth, which is Tesla. And I was with a friend and I was just like, we have to do something. And so we made. We made. Just made two signs and stood at the Burbank Tesla. And the next day, two more friends. So there was four. And I've not ever done anything like this. Like I said, I'm involved politically, but not protests like this. And like there were honks like the horns, like people were like really supportive driving by, and it was just like, whoa. And it just kept building.

[Andrew Callahan]

And so going back to the pre Sig Heil, pre Twitter stuff, what were the main factors that made you admire Elon Musk?

[Joel Lava]

I saw him as a very bold visionary. I knew he didn't start Tesla. I knew that. But I saw Tesla was having trouble going somewhere. And there's something about what Elon does. He doesn't. He asks for forgiveness, not permission kind of attitude. He's like old. I actually know, for instance, my. From high school is the county judge in Austin, which is arguably more powerful than the. The mayor. And so they've got flown out to Vegas to go on The. The tunnel. The boring tunnel.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Joel Lava]

And then obviously Elon Musk has moved to Austin. So my, My friend is, like, involved, and he's just like. They've told Elon, like, you can't do this or this. And he's like, okay. And he just does it anyway. And then the people are like, what do we do? And they just. Well, he's bringing business. So the reason I liked Elon is he. Something about his aggression and his ability to, like, see how to, like, take government money to turn that into profit. And he was doing. He had good ideas whether or not they're gonna work. Everything he promises doesn't happen. Yeah, like, everything's like, we're going to Mars. He said, In 2025, the Boring Company is doing nothing. But he, he. We're all on page. We're all on the same page with him as far as visions for the wonderful future of technology.

[Andrew Callahan]

And to clarify, the boring company, they had a plan to create like a hyperlane from Los Angeles to. And then additional freeways or tunnels beneath the LA freeways to alleviate traffic.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah, not so it's within cities to, like, get to the airports from a downtown, and it just all falls apart. But you read articles like quotes from city managers and mayors. They just enthralled with this, like, guy who comes in. I don't know how a guy is so socially awkward. I don't know if he's on the spectrum. I assume he is. But this guy who's like, socially awkward just wins people over. It's just the wealth. And he's hit a few home runs early. Then that's a lesson for all of us is like, just because someone hits a few home runs doesn't mean that they're going to keep hitting them. You know, it happens all the time. Someone buys a stock and it goes through the roof. They think they're an amazing day trader. And, you know, the casino always wins, of course.

[Andrew Callahan]

So going all the way into the protest, so you and one friend are out there at the Burbank Tesla showroom. How fast did it become just you and a couple of friends to, like, hundreds, if not thousands of of people?

[Joel Lava]

It literally was geometric progression. That means it just kept doubling. So 2 to 4 the next weekend, 15 the next weekend, 30 the next 60, the next 100. And then we got up to 300. It was crazy. It was almost crazy how, like, mathematical it was. Like, because I'm new to this, I've learned some ins and outs of protesting. Good way to make a sign and A good chance and all these things. And it's just very interesting. And the other very interesting thing is the Average age is 75, I would say. And, and I like to say the reason that everyone at these protests is so old. Let me rephrase it. The reason that there's no young people at these protests is the same reason Donald Trump won, because they also didn't show up and vote. So whatever that reason is, because those people showed up for George Floyd. So I think a lot of the younger generation is also, like I was before I learned about Elon. They just think he's this cool tech guy who does really cool stuff. And like, why would I protest this guy?

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, I would say like 75% of the people in my social sphere didn't vote at all. Or if they did, it was for a third party candidate, mostly because of Israel, Palestine. That's the most common reason. And also there was a lot of, like, spoiler candidates, like Jill Stein, who came into the picture and promised, you know, that she would end the genocide and that both candidates are in support of this war and therefore both part of the war machine and compromised by this system.

[Joel Lava]

That's crazy that foreign entanglement played such a huge role.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, definitely.

[Joel Lava]

Whether or not I agree with their positions, it's crazy that it had so much sway.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. I mean, I even interviewed Jill Stein and I was like, wow, those are great ideas. And then the election happens. Trump wins and she's gone, literally vanished from the face of the earth. And so I think that we've learned for next election, 2028, to be very wary of third party candidates who promise a solution to this whole thing.

[Joel Lava]

I had to suffer through Ralph Nader in 2000, where George W. Won. That was a significant poll of votes from Gore. I've never. My people, my friends, we're never going to forget that lesson. We learned it the hard way. It led to 9, 11 in Iraq.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's really. I'm really happy you brought that up because, like, our generation doesn't remember Ralph Nader. I was in fifth grade when Obama got elected. So all that, like, Bush ERA and those third party spoiler candidates from the early elections, like in 2000, that's just something that's totally escaped our collective consciousness.

[Joel Lava]

I mean, it's always been there. It's how Bill Clinton got elected in 92, because Ross Perot ruined everything. And so I don't have a problem with spoiler candidates. I support democracy. I have a problem with poorly informed voters who put us where we are.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that also, too, because of some of the censorship that happened in 2020, particularly with right wingers. There was this idea that conservatism was the new counterculture. And also there's this conception that if a. If a social media platform is removing your posts, it's because you're telling the truth, not because you're spreading misinformation. So it's kind of like the 2020 social media censorship was a collective Tiananmen Square moment for so many Trump supporters, where they were like, all right, if I can't talk about the vaccine on Facebook, I must be telling the truth. And so they were able to convince themselves that Trump was, like, a people's hero against the machine. And now we're seeing he's bringing the machine closer than it's ever been.

[Joel Lava]

That's true. I mean, it's like, that's why conspiracies. If you don't believe the conspiracy, then you're part of it. Do you really feel like. I'm not interviewing you, but do you feel like conservatism really became countercultural? Because I don't believe that. But you would know better than anyone.

[Andrew Callahan]

It didn't become countercultural. But many young conservatives, especially young dudes, young white dudes in particular, felt like, all right, I see Trump on the Nelk Boys and Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn, and they didn't really feel like they had a people's candidate that was on their level and spoke to them like a regular person. The Biden kind of Obama, Clinton machine, that kind of political dynasty they felt like didn't reflect anyone's perspective. And, you know, I think that in a lot of ways, the Democrats are paying for what they did to Bernie in 2016, basically disenfranchising him and keeping him out of the picture. Every person that I know would have voted for Bernie Sanders. I can't think of a single friend of mine. I'm from Seattle, that did not support Bernie Sanders. You know, but it's also. Maybe it would have been easier for Trump to take him down because he is, like, openly more sympathetic to communist regimes.

[Joel Lava]

I have a whole spiel on Bernie, and I don't want. I loved Bernie before you were born. Like, since the 90s, my politics align with him. I just. There was a reason Trump was saying, Bernie, he's a good guy. You guys should vote for. They would. If Bernie got the nomination, it would have been a bloodbath. You think so? And again, I align with him politically, but as a candidate, I don't oh, God. His communist background. He wrote like crazy porn fiction at one point.

[Saddam]

Bernie.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

He doesn't even seem like he's a horny guy.

[Joel Lava]

He's. Oh, and he's, let's see, Jewish. You think that wouldn't have come into play? Oh, my God.

[Andrew Callahan]

And he took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah. Again, he's. My spiel on Bernie is I don't think he got taken down in 2016. I think you can't spend a career attacking the Democratic Party party and then nine months before an election, come in and say, I want to lead you when you're going against a woman who spent 30 years building relationships. And then to also say that about Bernie. When Obama proves that wrong. We had a black man with a Muslim name come out of nowhere and take down the deep state Hillary like that. So he proved it can be done.

[Andrew Callahan]

But I think that with Obama's policies, too, especially with, you know, mass deportation and, you know, the actions in the Middle east, too, a lot of people felt like he didn't deliver on the promise of hope as well.

[Joel Lava]

Oh, God, no, no.

[Andrew Callahan]

But what I will say is he was a lot cooler than any other president. He was a, you know, just. I think that the president as a role model does affect how people treat each other. Like, how a president acts on television does bleed into the behavior patterns and speech patterns of people. So, like, when you have a president regardless of what they're doing in the world, a president who is a bully and, like, calls people names will in turn create a generation where that's seen as okay. Whereas Obama was just like, people were nicer to each other during the Obama era than they are now, 100%.

[Joel Lava]

And that's a problem with Trump and Musk, is they both are insulting. They insult you. And a good leader brings people together, period. You lead channel five. If you're insulting everybody and calling them names and, like, spreading rumors, you're not going to have a successful channel. You're not going to have retain anybody. And they. If you are leading any organization and you start out of the game gate with chaos, that's not a good leader. I always apply things to, like, a football team. Like, if a new coach comes over and it's just total chaos and just everyone's unhappy and yelling at each other, that guy wouldn't last. But, you know, Trump has. He's hypnotized people to the degree that obviously anything he does is gold. But, yeah, the fish rots from the head. And right now we have people like you said, leading with insults and chaos and hate. Racism has been called like, like the unhealed scab of America. It's always there. You can always pick at it. And most leaders, Republican and Democrat since like the civil rights especially have tried to like foster better and better times. But that scab's still there. Yeah, and Trump came in and he's just like, he's just picking at it and of course blood's pouring out.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it's definitely one of the easiest issues to weaponize. So, moving to the Tesla protests again. So they're spreading by the thousands. What are the primary goals of the Tesla takedown movement?

[Joel Lava]

The primary goal is to reduce the value of Tesla brand, to tarnish the brand. That's one of the reasons I did it and one of the reasons I'm drawn to it. I'm not a big protest boycott petition guy, because I don't think they work. But this is like a unique window of a perfect storm. Our sole goal is to reduce the Tesla's brand value because Elon Musk's entire mystique is based on wealth and power. And his entire wealth and power is based, not entire, but the majority is Tesla. Take that. Take him down. And I would like to point out, let's not lose the narrative. This is all about Trump and the people who control him destroying our country unconstitutionally. It's just Trump has rape convictions and he can't do business in New York. He's untouchable. He got reelected despite having classified documents in his bathroom. Elon Musk is a much easier target to achieve the same goal, which is again, Trump and the people that are his puppeteers.

[Andrew Callahan]

How successful have the protests spin?

[Joel Lava]

Very successful, I would say. Just look at the stock chart. Since he did the Sig Heil, it's come down 40 to 50%. I don't know if you follow stocks, but if you look at like a year chart of the stock, there's something called support. And that's if you, you can draw a line across the support. And that's support is where a stock falls and kind of bounces and it's been hitting that support. And if we break through that, then there's like a whole nother level of support that's another 100 points down. So, so we've hit that support, you know, the car dealership commercial at the White House, all the elections and Elon just getting more and more boisterous. Plus the terrorism calls. I think of all boistered support of support in the stock price. I think we're about to see, with the tariffs now and the stock market falling, I think you're about to see a plunge of the stock price, which is our goal. It has been said. I don't haven't seen receipts that Elon Musk has a margin call at130.30 today. No, just in general. He's extremely leveraged. That's one of the ways he's become such a successful businessman, is he leverages everything to, like, you know, you take your collateral is a million and you leverage that into 10 million to make a new investment. But if the Stock drops to 130, there's a margin call. And when that happens, he has to come up with the money. Now, I believe, because there's no more law. There's just Trump law. Trump will just tell the sec, don't do anything. Just don't ask for the money. I expect that to happen, but it doesn't matter because his value is still low. And suddenly this 300 billionaire is now worth 50 billion. He's not such a big hotshot in that world.

[Andrew Callahan]

So the idea is just to reduce his net worth gradually over time.

[Joel Lava]

That's his source of power and more importantly, his mystique. All these people who buy into all his cockamamie crap he says and says he's gonna do, they're not gonna buy it anymore.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, it's true. Like, wealth worship is something that's hypnotized the masses. People just think, like, you have money. That's so sick. You know, I mean. I mean, you could go back to, like, Jay Z, big pimp. And that's a different kind of wealth. But with this, it's like, you're a businessman, you're an alpha male. You know, you're on top. Like, I should listen to whatever you have to say.

[Joel Lava]

That was a big reported story. Under W, it was the K Street, basically. If you're wealthy, that means you're righteous and a religious level. And if you are poor, then you are not as righteous, you are not as worthy in the eyes of the Lord. And that's this whole mystique. That's like, it took over with W, and now it's on steroids with Trump.

[Andrew Callahan]

I would argue that in America and just society in general, the dollar is more valuable and important than God. I think people worship money more than they do God. And it's the religion that justifies more than the Crusades could have ever.

[Joel Lava]

I agree. And I don't know if you saw reports today, because it just happened today, but because of these tariffs. The world's basically saying F you America, we can't deal with all your chaos. We're switching to a new currency which is devastating and that's not good. I'm not rooting for that.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, but I mean it's just talking about the impacts of real politics.

[Joel Lava]

People worship the almighty dollar. Capitalism's great, but I believe in. I'm a social democrat, not a democratic socialist, Social democrat. Just everyone believes government up until now has some sort of role to help society. We just disagree on where that line is. And capitalism, it's a very complicated machine and it just needs a lot of maintenance and care. It can't be left on its own.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I think part of what you're saying too is the reason that so many young people didn't want to vote is they're staunchly anti capitalist altogether. They're looking at the situation especially in the late stage of capitalism where there's such little regulation, so much inequality. They're thinking on a more utopian level like I don't want to vote for either of these parties. I want a brand new world.

[Joel Lava]

I get the sentiment and I get that these people are born into 9, 11, the housing bubble pop Iraq. They were. It's been a tough go. They haven't seen the vision of the world pay off like when I my generation, I'm Gen X. Our parents grew up in the great middle class of 40s, 50s and 60s. We've seen what it can be with. We've seen a single parent household raise a family, I'm sorry a single earning and send kids to college. We've seen it work. I mean to me it's a tax rate. The 90% tax rate under Truman for the rich and that's now down to like 30. So yeah, I understand why they're disillusioned the millennials and Gen Z and now Gen Alpha. And I understand the desire especially when you're young to just blow it. And that's that attitude. That's how we get great music and great art from people in their teens and 20s. It's just like they're unrestrained what they're thinking and it any everything takes time. That's what frustration I have with Gen Z is to I don't know if they've ever watched someone want to make change in government. Like with a law you have to, there's so it takes years because you have to start with your own group and then you have to to get signatures and then get it to the state senate and then has to get voted on, and then there has to be an election. There's so many steps, and it's like, if it doesn't happen in four months, Gen Z is like, I'm not here to slam Gen Z. I think it's not their fault. Like, the whole social media immediacy, like, you press a button on your phone and something that used to take a week to come is now there the next day. Like, that's the world they know, and everything's like that. And the government is a giant ship that takes time to turn.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I think it's the timeline of the Internet versus the timeline of government. It's creating some disconnect here because with the Internet, people can make or break you overnight. And with law and any sort of judicial process or electoral process, it takes an incredibly long time. And you have to have patience and really see it through. I think people are so trained for that instant payoff or gratification of putting someone all the way up or putting someone all the way down. And that's just the Internet probably moves 30 times slower than the courts do, because the Internet is its own court. The court of public opinion moves so fast. I mean, if you look at the support for Biden in 2020 was overwhelming. People were like, trump is horrible. Especially after January 6, where Biden is the guy. And then one thing happens. Conflict starts in the Middle East. Then all of a sudden, anyone who doesn't condemn that is worthy of complete shame and exile. And that's how. I mean, I went to the DNC in Chicago, and there was more protesters outside the DNC protesting Harris Biden and their policy on Israel than there was actually inside of the building.

[Joel Lava]

Oh, my God. I didn't know that.

[Andrew Callahan]

And then candidates come out of nowhere and say, I will answer your calls. They take those votes only away from the left, liberals, and they give more votes to Trump.

[Joel Lava]

I mean, I. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying, and I'm of a camp that I. But I'm a Democrat, and I blame Democrats for that. This is the same playbook that's been run for 30 years, since Gingrich or before Lee Atwater under Reagan. And to not have a messaging response is infuriating. It's possible. We just have to first stop playing in their framework of, like you said, they're the problem. We have the answers. Everything we say. How Democrats talk is like, dope. Everyone. Like Democratic politicians, even Democratic or liberal pundits, everyone. Before they even say what they think about Doge, they go well, look, I believe we should get rid of waste and fraud too. Like just by saying that, you're automatically buying into the framing that the default government is waste and fraud. And that drives me crazy. First of all, government does so much that's good. I absolutely believe we can improve on anything. But there's so much the government does that we've learned with these cuts that are so vital, every department that they're cutting National Institute of Health, usaid, which is like our best form of soft power. The point is everyone assumes government is wasteful and fraudulent. Have you ever worked for a corporation? You want to see waste, go work in an ad agency. I mean, Social Security's administrative costs are 1%. A normal health insurance company is 20 to 30% administrative cost. So where's the waste? And on top of that, I mean, that's why we're protesting Musk and Trump. Doge hasn't, they haven't released a single case of fraud. Where are the charges? What fraud have you shown? It's just tweets. Again, Elon Musk is all hype. The waste and fraud is all hype. I've done forensic accounting on a very small amount, like low six figures. It is painstaking. So we're supposed to believe guys who know nothing about government are coming in within weeks, looking at billion dollar agencies line by line and finding fraud? It's literally impossible. It's just all a big lie. And that's why we're protesting is because they're destroying our country unconstitutionally. Because Congress is not doing its job as checks and balances. And they, I mean my Musk is, he's destroying agencies that he's like the faa, he's breaking them. Oh well, this is broken. We need to fix it. Hire Elon Musk Starlink to be the new service provider since we've destroyed the government one which was useless and wasteful. No, it wasn't. You just killed it. So now Elon Musk has come in and he's giving himself contracts because he's breaking the agencies that no longer work. And he also took, he destroyed investigations into to multiple aspects of all his companies that the government was doing. He came in and fired the investigators. It's all when going back to leadership, when a guy who only had 49.8% of the vote Trump, he did not have a mandate of the majority. You bring in Musk and you're very quickly and illegally firing and destroying agencies. You're doing it against the will of the people, which all polls show. That is A coup. That is a coup. When you're doing something, something way too fast, that's against the wish of the people that you didn't, that you lied about during the election. He didn't say he was going to do all this stuff that should be called a coup. Again, getting the framing. This isn't just an inconvenience or it's just like, we're angry because you're not doing things the right way. No, it's a frickin coup. And we need to use this language or else we're never going to get our message out.

[Andrew Callahan]

As far as like this Tesla stock price going down. How much do you think the boycotts had to do with that?

[Joel Lava]

I think a lot. It's sort of chicken and the egg. It's like the people were unaware of Musk's influence. And the boycott protests are raising awareness that is then making the stock price fall, which is then creating more awareness, which makes the stock price fall, which then has Trump and Pam Bondi saying, you're a domestic terrorist. So people who weren't paying attention are like domestic terrorists. What is this? I can't tell you how many people, like eight weeks into our protest, like at the Americana, it's a more conservative Glendale area, people come up actually genuinely not belligerent, and they're like, so what did Musk do? Like, why are you protesting? They honestly have no idea about anything. And my first reaction is just like, I don't. I was like, my brain shuts down because I'm like, I understand if you disagree with what we're protesting. You can be pro doge or pro Trump, but to not even know what this is about, unfortunately, like, I have, I have people very close to me who I am now at odds with. They drive Teslas and they don't understand why I'm doing this. And these are informed. Well, they're generally informed, but they didn't, they're not following all the Musk dosh stuff. And they're like, why are you doing this? And it was, it's, it's, it's, it's.

[Andrew Callahan]

Crazy when you talk about people just not caring or not knowing. Do you think that's just, just people being tapped out of what's going on in the world, or do you think it's like they're in an algorithm which shields them from that reality?

[Joel Lava]

Both. My whole thing is the Internet. The human species did not evolve for this. We can stand on a savannah and look at all the trees and animals and forests and just take it all in all the sounds, we did not evolve to take a fire hose of information, which is the Internet. We know how to pick nuts and berries. So that weakened the system and then social media came in as the virus to destroy us and give us a brain cancer. And we've just gone mad as a mass consciousness.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I feel like we have a mutual across the board brain cancer from left to right. In your view, what will determine the success of the boycott movement?

[Joel Lava]

Let's say the $130 margin call is real. Our success is to get there, to really cause Musk to, like, when you get a margin call, you're screwed again. I feel that Trump is just going to wipe away the margin call call. But if the stock price is that far and he's under that much duress, then he has lost a significant amount of wealth. The success of the Tesla boycott will be determined when Elon Musk has lost the majority of his wealth and power.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you see that as a real possibility?

[Joel Lava]

Absolutely. It's happening as we speak and there's.

[Andrew Callahan]

Obviously been a couple different incidents of vandalism and like, for real, real deal property destruction connected to the boycott. How do you feel about that?

[Joel Lava]

I don't support vandalism and violence. There is a reptilian side of me that wants to go at it, but I'm a peaceful person. And so is all our protests have been peaceful. But even bigger is once violence starts happening, like all peaceful, all successful movements in history were peaceful. Once violence is introduced into the equation, it changes the narrative. Look at George Floyd. That was about police brutality. Once the violence started, it was just about antifa and property destruction and no one talked.

[Andrew Callahan]

But do you think they would have convicted Derek Chauvin if the streets weren't on fire? Because I was there whenever he got convicted and I feel like the jury definitely felt the pressure, especially the judge of like, all right, if we give this guy anything but a harsh penalty, Minneapolis will burn again.

[Joel Lava]

I don't think he. I agree. I don't think he would have been convicted without the protests. I. There were protests happening before the violence. I don't know that it would happen. I don't know that the violence helped his verdict either way. I know that. I would argue the protests allowed for him to be convicted, but I don't know if the violence hurt or helped.

[Andrew Callahan]

But do you consider property destruction to be violent?

[Joel Lava]

I mean, it's illegal, but is it violent? I would say so, yes. Because, for instance, the person who didn't understand why I was protesting it and they own Tesla, they have a certain amount of fear that not only will their car be damaged, but it might be damaged with them in it. It's like spitting is an assault. It's not so much that the spit itself is overly violent, but it represents a threat. And I think threat of violence is arguably as powerful, if not more powerful than violence itself.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I mean, this is something I've gone back and forth with a lot because I grew up in Seattle with a bunch of anarchists, and they're very much like, into the idea of direct action. We actually have an interview today with an anti car activist who's involved in, like, you know, some pretty significant property destruction. But the idea is, okay, Trayvon Martin, for example, that was a nonviolent protest. George Zimmerman got off. So I think there's been a couple instances, especially with police brutality, or not even police just, you know, unarmed black people being taken, you know, victimized by people who didn't have just cause in doing so. And I think there's been a couple different movements that led up to George Floyd, which made people feel like, all right, we've protested time and time again, but in until some flames started going up, nobody listened to us.

[Joel Lava]

I'm not gonna say that violence doesn't raise the stakes and put an issue into the consciousness when it otherwise would not have been. I will counter to you. You grew up in Seattle. That was a WTA protest.

[Andrew Callahan]

WTA was in 2000.

[Joel Lava]

Okay, so that was before you were born.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, three years after.

[Joel Lava]

Okay, well, you were.

[Andrew Callahan]

I wasn't out there.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah. So the WTA protest did get attention, but it just. I remember that it quickly just turned into a bunch of idiot, violent hippies, and people discounted it. Now let's look at Occupy Wall Street. Let's look at what happened when it broke through the consciousness of America and the whole 99% thing even became adopted by all sides of the political spectrum. It was when that one woman got pepper sprayed by a cop. I don't know if you remember that, but there's like, video of her being sprayed. As soon as that happened, coverage went through the roof. So what's the difference there? That was violence. It was violence perpetrated on the peaceful protesters. Just like with Gandhi, just like with mlk. There was violence on Edmund Pettus Bridge, but it was the cops against the peaceful protesters. So it's a weird dichotomy, but violence actually really helps a movement, but it has to be by the power against the protesters.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you're saying that actually makes sense? So the best thing that could happen is a major non violent protest and the cops escalate it and that creates good optics for the cause.

[Joel Lava]

The best thing that could happen for the Tesla protest is I'm peacefully protesting and the cops come and beat me.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, for sure. Would you fight back or would you kind of just like play into it for the optics?

[Joel Lava]

Like, well, here's the problem. I'm no fan of the proud boys and there's been rumors that they were going to be showing up and why.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, to, to beef with you guys. Not in solidarity. I was like, what, what skin do they have in the game?

[Joel Lava]

And I, I, I have a lot of rage against the whole political thing. And you know, once they punch me, I, I have a right to defend myself. But there was a kid like, there's at the Americana, there's these hordes of 8th grade kids that are, they just, they, they're giving the sig heils and the white power symbol because they know that, that it's provocative.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's some eighth grader shit.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah, that's like, I get it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Joel Lava]

So one kid like spit on the street right in front of us. There's that little trolley street. And I was like, come closer. Like, let's have a talk or. But just I was being. And he spit like way too close to me and there's like a stanchion rope. I jumped that rope and I got in his face and I was just like, apologize now. You apologize. And he went, I'm sorry. And I did that knowing full well, because there's cops everywhere. And I was like, where are the freaking cops? Like, cops get here now. Because I don't want to have anything to do with an 8th grade child. And so luckily the cops descended pretty quickly and I just turned away and went right back to the protest. So, yeah, I don't want violence perpetrated against us. I'm merely stating a fact that historically movements. I don't even want to go there. We are nonviolent. It is the proven method of successful protests and it's succeeding as we speak against Tesla. Oh, that was what I was going to say is stay focused. And that's been the remarkable thing about the Tesla protest is they are so focused. It's about Musk and Trump and Doge and just it's not all this other crazy stuff like, yeah, I care about abortion, I care about code pink things and I care about the Gaza. There's no Gaza sign. There's an occasional Ukraine one, but that's it it's been remarkable how focused the Tesla protests are when it's just, it's grassroots, there's no leadership. It's just people coming together and we're.

[Andrew Callahan]

All, yeah, I think you did the right thing with those eighth graders at the, at the mall. When I was in eighth grade, me and my friends used to fill up water balloons with pee. And we would hide in the bushes near a public park in Seattle. And when cars would come by, we would hit them like hundred different water. We had to pee a lot in these water balloons. And at one time this guy stopped. Yeah, it was of kind. And he's like, fucking come here. We're like, oh, we're terrified. Because he really like you did. He jumped the rope and so we thought he was gonna beat the shit out of us. And then he grabs my friend Lewis and he's like, give me your phone. Unlocks Lewis's phone, Looks up Lewis's mom phone contact and calls Lewis's mom. And she comes and you know, he's already crying. And I think that like overall it was a learning experience. If that guy were to have punched one of us, it would transform into a whole different thing. So he did some good. Non violent discipline, confrontational, but not violent.

[Joel Lava]

It's interesting you went with P because. Because I was in high school, I was a senior, and we were doing water balloons at cars with a winger, you know, where two people hold a giant slingshot. And it never occurred to me to fill it with pee. We were just using old fashioned water. But more power to you. That's the eighth grade brain right there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, because we figured like water wasn't pissing people off enough.

[Joel Lava]

Oh my God.

[Andrew Callahan]

And we had started drinking beer, which made it so we had more pee to work with. Lewis is now a Park City, Utah snowboarding truck. So he got saved from the world of pee water balloons, which quickly escalated into selling weed.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah, Pee water balloons is like the gateway protest to. I think it's Trend Agua, Venezuelan Trende.

[Andrew Callahan]

Aragua Aurora, Colorado landlords. I was there on scene and it was really interesting because like I went there about a week after the, you know, the whole thing unfolded and it was probably more influencers there than tenants on the right wing. You had like influencers with their mega hats and their long live stream technologies. Like we're here in the center of the gang takeover. Trende Aragua's apartment building. And then you had like all the liberal influencers like talking to random people on the street, being like, are you in a gang and they'd be like, no, not in no gang, Papi. And they would be like, see, there's no gang members here. It was like a media circus, but people were. The circus animal was just real life human beings going to work in Colorado.

[Joel Lava]

Yes, that's a great observation. It's sad. You gotta help change that. You gotta change things.

[Andrew Callahan]

I'm trying.

[Joel Lava]

So I've been thinking about, like, our next boycott. Let's say we destroy Elon Musk's wealth as much as we can, because he'll always have wealth. If he gets kicked out of Tesla and divests, he'll have. Oops.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's okay. It's Chief Keef. You didn't break it. The head comes off.

[Joel Lava]

Okay. Even if they buy him out, he'll have billions of dollars. But we have all these people coming together. I feel like the movement is actually going. It's not there yet, but there's going to be an organic point where it has to. To evolve to something else. I mean, I personally have always believed. I mean, Trump is doing everything we predicted. I have a gentleman's bet, like with my friends, that there will be martial law by sometime this summer. And the whole domestic terrorism pretense of Tesla, that's just a canard, so that they have the pretense to declare martial law. They are just looking for any small reason. And this Tesla protest popped up for this them as a gift, in a way, for their desires to say, oh, they're burning a car. They're all terrorists. Martial law.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, terror is the most weaponized word of all time, not just in the public consciousness, but what the terrorism designation, grants or permits. Our federal government is to operate extrajudicially without any cooperation, especially on foreign lands. One question I had for you is. So first off, the social pressure created by the boycott is definitely seen here in the streets of la. I was going through Silver Lake, which is like a. You know, you live in Los Angeles. I was in Silver Lake and I was seeing some Teslas drive by. And I could say 50% of Teslas that drove by had a sticker, a bumper sticker, indicating that they did not like Elon. Like maybe the sticker, one of them said felon. Yeah, that's a good one that I saw at the protest. It was the F elon because it's f elon felon. It's perfect. I saw that on a bunch of different Teslas. Are they doing their part enough or should they sell it?

[Joel Lava]

They're doing their part enough, I think. First of all, I don't condone vandalism or anything, but it is happening. And I feel like that sticker says, don't mess with me. A lot of people, a lot of people can't get rid of them. They can't sell them or they're underwater on their payments. And I would say, I don't know, 90 plus percent of Tesla owners are socially environmentally conscious liberals who were trying to do the right thing. It sucks that it turns out out they're supporting a Nazi. And we interviewed people at our protest who were trying to get out of their lease and they couldn't. Like, Tesla's not helping them. So yeah, it's there, there's, there's someone sending out flyers that you can tell if a Tesla has been purchased since Elon went evil. There's like slightly different designs and they put like a flyer on their car and on all the neighbors, neighbors, homes, like in their mailboxes to let them know this guy bought it after. So he knew Elon was a bad person and still bought a Tesla.

[Andrew Callahan]

Holy shit. That's intense.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you think that Tesla can have a sort of Shane Gillis Bud Light moment and feature the most progressive person in their commercial and be able to reverse the boycott?

[Joel Lava]

I got it. I have the spokesman for Tesla, Bill Burr.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh my God.

[Joel Lava]

Bill Burr talks race like nobody else can. And he goes anywhere, talks about anything. He, he does it right now for the Times Smart. He's the guy.

[Andrew Callahan]

And the reason that he's broken the matrix is when you hear a Boston accent in that cadence, you assume there's racist stuff incoming. But it's actually the reverse. It's anti racist Boston verbal verbiage which is changing the world.

[Joel Lava]

Have you heard his bit where he's going to visit his now wife, she's black and in Harlem and he's like a white red headed Irish dude going up to Harlem and just everything about the experience.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I haven't seen it.

[Joel Lava]

It's funny.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Is she from Harlem?

[Joel Lava]

I think that's where she lived at the time when they were dating.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. It was crazy to see people were calling, like they're saying like Bill Burr went woke and they're like using pictures of him and his wife. It's like, I don't know, all black people made you woke. You know what I mean?

[Joel Lava]

It's just that's what woke means dei and woke means black people. I want to say if I forget about Teslas and the sticker easily in our protests outside when there's cars honking. The number one most horned honks we get are from Tesla drink drivers. Almost, I would say three quarters of them actually honk. A lot of people just don't honk. I don't know how they feel. Tesla drivers specifically are honking and that's just fascinating.

[Andrew Callahan]

After Speaking with the Honorable Mr. Lava, I went down another Internet rabbit hole and I came across some tweets that read something to the tune of this isn't just about Tesla. All cars are a threat to our community and safety. The account posting seemed to suggest that the Tesla boycotters weren't doing enough and were being too linear in their focus on a specific car brand, ignoring the larger problem at hand. Other tweets on the thread included Henry Ford was a literal Nazi, where's the Ford boycott? And a link to a data sheet showing the 42,112 motor fatalities in 2024 captioned is picketing Tesla going to bring these people back? Fuck no. We need a world without cars. To me, this logical digression perfectly encapsulates the mentality of Cancel kids and why the Left can't win. On the right you've got half the voting population united in their obedient worship of Trump and Elon. And on the left you see INF start to emerge on the immediate heels of a small victory as this cannibalistic mechanism is activated by the self righteous online talking heads who are more concerned with chastising their own for not doing enough than they are with uniting to defeat a common enemy who, by the way, are very much united in their convictions. If I were to put my tinfoil hat on, I would say that intersectionality is a clever psyop engineered to cause progressives to lose focus. But I don't think the CIA is really involved here because these people people have indoctrinated themselves in a level of logic that rivals the flat earth. Here's how they think, step by step. Bear with me. Step one Leaving a broader group out of a singular discussion marginalizes them. Step 2 if a group is marginalized, you must center their voice in the discussion. Step 3 if you do not center their voice, you are causing harm to them through implied violence which has caused trauma. Step four Trauma requires accountability, a parasocial process that prohibits debate and can be taken two ways. First through self renunciation and secondly, a complete transfer of resources to the offended or marginalized party. By step four, the online mob has already likely moved on to its next target, leaving the often well intentioned activists so disenchanted with Progressives that they jump into the open arms of the right. Welcome to the United States. Anyways, this online debate sent me down a rabbit hole that landed me in a private discord server with members of the Safe Street Rebel Alliance, a non hierarch, nonviolent group of cyclists from San Francisco who organize slow rides across the city to disrupt car traffic, host vigils for pedestrians killed by cars, and have a campaign called Cone SF where they systematically place traffic. Where they systematically place traffic cones on the hoods of self driving waymos and other robo taxis which apparently shuts down their operating system and leaves them in the middle of the road just freaking out. I tried to get one of the safe street activists in our studio for a sit down interview and they were not having it for obvious reasons. So I had to get creative and I posted an Instagram story asking if any anti car activists from the west coast would be down to come to the Channel 5 studio and sit down for an exclusive conversation. Shortly after I was contacted by a person from my hometown of Seattle, Washington who is directly involved in anti Tesla and anti Waymo vandalism and deeply entrenched into a secret society of car haters that until now I didn't know existed in my hometown. Due to factors that will become obvious, they've requested that I leave their name and age out of this interview. But without further ado, here is an interview with a car hating soldier currently on the front lines of the Emerald City. Are you worried about like the domestic terrorism label?

[Saddam]

Yes, a bit. Yeah. Especially because if you can just label anybody you don't like a terrorist, like we're really cooked. But also no, because I'm like very visibly white. I feel like the news would have a field day if you deported someone like me.

[Andrew Callahan]

All right, thanks so much for making the time. I appreciate it. With all this stuff going on with Tesla and everything like that, it kind of sent me down like an anti car activist rabbit hole. I mean I had a homie or an associate of mine who's a graffiti artist who started doing tags on Waymos and so I was like, holy shit, it's deeper than Tesla. There's a whole army of people out here who just don't fuck with cars overall.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So what can you tell us about?

[Saddam]

I think that we have an over reliance on cars and specifically this country, but really the world. And I think that people are really just fed up with kind of having to drive everywhere, kind of having to spend money on gas, especially at the prices it's gotten And I think that especially Waymos, like the way they've been introduced and the promise of the technology they have is. I mean, people just see through the bullshit, I think, for sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

So what can you tell us about yourself? Like, where you grew up and stuff?

[Saddam]

Yeah, so I grew up in Orlando and then lived in Dallas for a while. And so you see, like, everybody has a car to go everywhere. Like, there is not a place you can go without a car, pretty much. And that kind of on top of doing. On top of driving for work kind of just led me to be like, I hate this thing. I want to get out of this car. And there is no option is really the main point.

[Andrew Callahan]

What do you hate most about being in the car?

[Saddam]

I think the danger, you know, at all times, you're like a split second away from being pinned up against a tree, you know. And I think on top of that, the, like, insular nature of being in a car, you know, you're like, climate controlled. You got whatever music, you know, you're just kind of in your own world. You kind of feel kind of like, God, you know, you can just go 60 miles an hour immediately if you want to. And I think that leads people to make very dangerous decisions.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I think it's certainly an antisocial experience too, especially living here in LA. Probably spend 10 to 20 hours a week on the freeway. And I remember back in the day, growing up in Seattle, I would catch the bus everywhere. Like, you know, I used to live like, right downtown. So I'd catch the 14 bus up to the hill or the three or the four to the Seattle. And it was every day I saw something crazy on the bus. I had like a story to tell. Now it's just like, I can tell you about a bunch of podcasts and new songs and shit. Because I'm on the phone, I'm like researching, trying to occupy this incredibly boring allotment of time that I spent on the road.

[Saddam]

Yeah, it's like not a social environment at all. You know, you are just kind of in your own world.

[Andrew Callahan]

So Orlando, growing up there, what can you tell us about that?

[Saddam]

It's a wild place. People think it's just Disney World, but it is not Disney World. It's kind of like. I mean, it's owned by Disney, you know, like everybody that has a job there some way links back to the parks. It's like a conglomerate of suburbs. There is no, like, real downtown area. Cause it just has, you know, the highway interchange through it. I4 and whatnot.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I'VE thought about this a lot before. The only walkable part of Orlando is like the Lake Eola park corridor. But aside from that, you have like Sanford Winter Garden all the way down to Kissimmee. It's just this like infinite sprawl of suburbs. I had my RV breakdown one time on a street called Orange Blossom Park Trail.

[Saddam]

Yes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Familiar.

[Saddam]

Yeah, I grew up on like right off Orange Blossom. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. That is quite the road to be on.

[Andrew Callahan]

How would you paint a picture for the outsider of what OBT is like?

[Saddam]

Oh, man. Anything you can get up to. Anything now what's the. What's a good word to use?

[Andrew Callahan]

Any race of. Prostitute?

[Saddam]

Yeah, definitely. Or anything you want to get up to that you know you shouldn't be getting up to.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you can find drugs there that people don't even do anymore. Like you can get a cigarette dipped in formality hot 15 minutes.

[Saddam]

Yeah, no, it is. Yeah, it is crazy.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Saddam]

And, and, and it's all up and down obt. Like there's, there's a couple spots where you're like, all right, this is kind of normal, but I mean, when it gets dark, it's like you're, you're in it.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's the wild West.

[Saddam]

Absolutely. The wild East.

[Andrew Callahan]

And your experience living in Seattle, would you say OBT is crazier than Aurora?

[Saddam]

Oh, that's a good question. I would say so, especially because it's just a bigger road. You know, like Aurora kind of gets cut off at the north and south, where it's just becomes, you know, either Amazon town or like part of Seattle where it's just like, you know, older families.

[Andrew Callahan]

Green Lake and Woodland is right there. So there's still some commerce happening that isn't just like super post apocalyptic.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So your journey started in Orlando and then you made your way to Dallas, which is another car hell city. Yeah, there's probably five to ten car hell cities. What comes to mind as the worst car cities for you?

[Saddam]

Oh, man, probably Houston. Houston is up there especially because of their, like, bullshit zoning laws where you can kind of just put. I mean, not whatever, wherever, but you know, the limits are not what they should be. I'd say Houston, all the Texas. All the Texas. Big mega cities. Because, you know, they don't give a shit. They're just like, put cars everywhere. You know, we have infinite land here in Texas, so I'd say Houston, Dallas and Austin. In that order, probably. Well, because you got to factor in San Antonio.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, you can't. You always have to factor in San Antonio. There's someone watching right now, like, yes.

[Saddam]

I do it though. It's like an unsung hero of Texas for sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

It definitely is. So back then, were you like politically involved at all?

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah, I've. I've been organizing with unions since like for about five years now. So I've always kind of been on that end of it, but definitely living in Dallas and I was, I was driving for, for work as I said. Really kind of. I was just like, I don't. I. I feel so like alien to the world and I don't know if you've ever tried to catch a DART bus, which is like their, their transit agency, but it's like they come sometimes.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Saddam]

And so I guess that not having an option and especially having that like, you know, self proclaimed Texas freedom mindset, you know. Yeah, it's like I don't have the freedom to just like walk places. Are we doing right?

[Andrew Callahan]

What was the first union that you got involved with?

[Saddam]

Workers United through, through Starbucks. And then I just kind of did a bunch of external organizing from there and pretty involved with like seiu. And I won't say too much.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you still work at Starbucks?

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah, I still work at Starbucks.

[Andrew Callahan]

What's your position there?

[Saddam]

Lowly barista?

[Andrew Callahan]

You guys can make good tips now though, right?

[Saddam]

Yeah, you know, so they say. I think that's a way of them not paying us a fair wage. Just relying on whatever asshole comes in. And it's like, here's $3 your way. No. You know, I can yell at you all I want type thing.

[Andrew Callahan]

Definitely. Dude. I used to work at Starbucks too.

[Saddam]

Did you?

[Andrew Callahan]

But I worked at one on a college campus where everybody paid with their student IDs. So there was tip option. But I have to serve like a bunch of kids during finals week. Like 100 kids in a row, no tips.

[Saddam]

Damn.

[Andrew Callahan]

So what, what caused you to make that jump from Dallas to Seattle?

[Saddam]

It was really family. It was really like I don't really have any reason to be here. And definitely this, this new admin, you know, like I debating on whether I want to say this. I'm just going to say it. You know, I'm a trans person so like access to hormones and, and safety, you know, like Dallas is the number one spot for trans women to die, which is like just a crazy statistic.

[Andrew Callahan]

Why is that?

[Saddam]

I think it is a cultural thing, but I think it also is that Dallas is so sprawling and you can kind of get away with crazy nasty like that. And also it's definitely a racial thing. You know, like white trans people die less than, you know, black trans people.

[Andrew Callahan]

Are just because of homophobia or something.

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah. But also, you know, if you are like a, a white person that wants to do bad shit, you know, you're not less likely gonna target another white person. Maybe because of biases or maybe because you probably get away with it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, there's less like police interest.

[Saddam]

Yes. I mean, yeah, definitely.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. It's interesting because when I was a kid growing up in downtown Seattle, most of the trans people that I knew were black and a lot of them were sex workers and they lived super hard and they talked about this phenomenon that used to happen where they would have a client and then after they would finish up with. Because typically the client would be like cheating on their partner or whatever the fuck. Like some old dude. Of course he would have like this post nut clarity that would in turn turn into something violent where they'd be like, I, like no one can know that I'm gay or something. And they would just have like a furious outburst.

[Saddam]

That's a trans experience. You know, people don't want to feel like they're gay. Especially if you're a sex worker. You know, you're gonna deal with the.

[Andrew Callahan]

Lowest of the low who just have like this extreme shame complex kick in.

[Saddam]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you're planning on going through like a full transition?

[Saddam]

Yeah, you know, I, I'm one of these people that's just like the binary, you know, so I'm kind of. I like my main goal is just to scare the shit out of people. Just be incomprehensible, you know?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Saddam]

But yeah, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm three months now on estrogen and I'm loving it. It was a decision that I didn't make immediately because I was like, damn, you know, is it. Am I really gonna feel right in this? And then I did it and I was like, yeah, nevermind.

[Andrew Callahan]

What was like the jump off point that made you feel like it's time.

[Saddam]

I started getting a real buff. I was like, oh, what? Who the is that in the mirror? You know, and it was just from like normal, you know, I'd just be like lifting boxes or something.

[Andrew Callahan]

And you didn't like being buff?

[Saddam]

Well, it's not. It's just that the body that I had, I was no longer identified as closely with. I was like, whoa, whoa. You know, like, I don't mind being strong, but I don't want to be.

[Andrew Callahan]

Like, you know, you didn't want to look like a douchebag.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you feel like if you got two buff fools would be like, fuck this. Fool bodybuilders.

[Saddam]

I like skinny, scrawny guys.

[Joel Lava]

How about multi millionaires?

[Andrew Callahan]

How about eight inches and thick? My testimony. I'm nothing but pure. And I ask you if you want.

[Joel Lava]

To be in the YouTube channel, and.

[Andrew Callahan]

You like scrawny guys.

[Saddam]

Yeah. Well, also, you know, I feel like I date primarily women, so I. I feel like women would look at me and be like, wow, you're so buff. And I.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you feel like if you got too buff, you'd attract more superficial ladies?

[Saddam]

I don't know if I. Hey, I don't know if I say that maybe, but I think I'd attract more straight ladies.

[Andrew Callahan]

Wait, wait, wait. Oh, I see what you're saying.

[Saddam]

Like, looking for a man.

[Andrew Callahan]

And are you straight? You date the ladies, though.

[Saddam]

I date the ladies, primarily.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. But you have dated some of the homies.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. Respect. Okay. And you're thinking, like, so you felt like you would feel more comfortable having, like, a less masculine body, basically.

[Saddam]

Exactly. Yeah. You hit it on the head.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And so how long does it take for the estrogen to, like, genuinely take effect in your body?

[Saddam]

Yeah. So, you know, you. You start feeling it, like. Well, depending on the method in which you take it. Right. Like, if you're taking the pills, it takes a little longer. If you're taking the patches, it takes a longer. But I've been doing the shots, and, bro, I am scared of needles. So it has been an experience. But I'm telling you, week one, I was like, damn, my skin is smooth. What's going on?

[Andrew Callahan]

What? I'm trying to get on the.

[Saddam]

What's that? This is a whole tangent, but you know that, like, live longer, dude.

[Andrew Callahan]

Uh. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Gary Johnson.

[Saddam]

Yes, Gary Johnson. Yeah, he's taking non feminizing estrogen for this effect.

[Andrew Callahan]

Damn. He needs to just bite the bullet and just go for it.

[Saddam]

Just do it, man.

[Andrew Callahan]

What are you doing, bruh? So your skin is getting smoother. Is your voice gonna change?

[Saddam]

Probably a little, but again, I'm just trying to scare people. So I would like to look real feminine. And then, you know, somebody comes up to me and is like, hey. I'm like, what?

[Andrew Callahan]

So you move to Seattle, you're taking estroge in, you're setting cars on fire?

[Saddam]

Something like that. Yeah. I'm like, Fox News worst nightmare.

[Andrew Callahan]

That literally is Fox News. Sounds like a Fox News GPT. Headline.

[Saddam]

Yes. Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So what's the craziest shit you've done to a car?

[Saddam]

The craziest shit I've done? I mean, it's just spray painting cyber trucks. That's like the, the extent. Personally, I know fools that like, have gone further with like, I don't know if you saw the Waymo caught on fire. I know people that, that are like in that kind of space. But I think that I'm like a deeply suspicious person. So if I don't know that I can get away with it, I'm not going to do it, you know, So I don't, I don't, I don't think that that's a bad thing to like maybe light a car on fire or two.

[Andrew Callahan]

Let's, let's back up a little bit. So, so that the anti car movement. What are the key tenets of the anti car movement?

[Saddam]

I would say choice, definitely. You know, like being able to choose how you want to get around. Also, like safety. You know, I think that largely our cities have become just unlivable. You know, depending on which city, you know, it's, there's levels to it, but safety for sure. You know, there's too many people that die on the streets every day just from getting hit by a car. You know, there's no, like they could be just walking to their, to their class, to their job. Like, it's not like they're doing crazy shit. So I think that that's, that's like the two main things. And then also, also I think people just want to be able to not be so insular, you know, and want to have a sense of like, I know the people around me, rather than just being like, like you said in your bubble where you listen to the podcast and music or whatever and not having a story for that day, you know.

[Andrew Callahan]

So do you envision a world without cars?

[Saddam]

We can dream. But I, you know, I don't, I don't think so. I think that cars have a role, you know, I think that there is a reason why people like having cars. I think that what I envision is not having to own one. You know, it's like that, that having to. That is the problem.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you're talking about taking away the necessity, making it so people have the option to live without a car, right? Yeah, because I'm thinking like the most pertinent need for a car, I'm thinking would be semi trucks transporting agricultural goods into the cities. Certainly sounds like what you're talking about is major metropolitan areas having enough of a public transportation infrastructure to where you don't need a car to live your life.

[Saddam]

Right? Yeah. Or, you know, and this isn't just. This isn't just. It could be rule as well, you know, like, there is a way to make places places, and not just like gutters for cars, you know, and even like stuff like the trucking business, you know, we could do this via freight rail. We just don't have a vested interest enough into actually getting that done than we do into selling more tires, selling more 18 wheelers, selling more things of that nature.

[Andrew Callahan]

You know what's crazy, bro? I'm getting a real tinfoil hat. So in the 1960s, between 20 to 30% of people traveled to vehicles via thumb hitchhiking.

[Saddam]

Oh, really? Oh, shit.

[Andrew Callahan]

The Ford motor company subsidized a program by president J. Edgar Hoover that was a covert operation to stigmatize hitchhikers so they could raise sales for auto manufacturers. They funded the production of the film Texas Chainsaw massacre in which a hitchhiker kills a regular group of motorists to get people to fear hitchhikers and to get hitchhikers afraid of the public turning against them so they could create more auto sales. So the death of hitchhiker culture, which was like the ethos of the hippie movement, was directly caused by a CIA psyop that was meant to sell more cars.

[Saddam]

Well, great. I got a new talking point. I didn't even know that. That's crazy, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

Because I asked people what happened to hitchhiking and they say, oh, the world's just not safe anymore. I think security culture itself, especially if you want to talk about post 9 11, like for airplanes, but for cars, it was the hitchhiker stranger danger that led most people to get their own vehicles.

[Saddam]

Damn.

[Andrew Callahan]

Back in the day, it was super common to hitch. Check to work.

[Saddam]

Yeah, okay, there you go. I didn't even. And that also tracks in line with them buying out, you know, the streetcar systems of old and just ripping them out. You know, when you look at public.

[Andrew Callahan]

Transportation as far as, like, the most effective systems, what cities come to mind?

[Saddam]

Oh, you know, you got to say like, Tokyo. You got to say like, Amsterdam or Rotterdam or things of that even some, I mean, really, the biggest example, I would say, is China. Chinese cities, you know, you got entire metro systems that have just been crafted within like 20 years. And they went from like, no high speed rail grid to, like, everywhere is connected. And I think that that is the, like, the shining example because it's new. Like, a lot of people have this idea that because we don't have it built at all that there is no way forward.

[Andrew Callahan]

And yeah, cities with the best public transportation systems also statistically have the highest social trust, you know, and I think part of the anti hitchhiker seems CIA Hoover psyop was to reduce social trust, create stranger danger to where you're like, I don't want to ride the bus. The bus is full of criminals and homeless people and I want my own car so I can guarantee safety when I'm going somewhere.

[Saddam]

Right? Yeah. And I think that, you know, the joke is that on New York trains there's like someone going to Wall street, there's like a homeless guy and a day then barista from Bushwick. And when you have that sense of like, okay, we all have to keep this a space where we're all going, you feel at least some sort of cohesion. Rather just I don't know who else is in the cars next to me, you know.

[Andrew Callahan]

That's so true, man. You do feel like this solidarity when you're riding the train in New York where you're like, we're all have different walks of life, but we're all here right now doing our thing.

[Saddam]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So as far as your activism, you do believe in direct action means?

[Saddam]

Oh, certainly, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right. And so what are some of those direct action strategies?

[Saddam]

There are some ways you can do it that don't directly involve like breaking the law. Right. Where you can try to implement congestion pricing or you can try to implement like, you know, tolls for roads and stuff. But I think that only goes so far. I think that it is kind of like a social thing. So I think some of the direct things that you can do is kind of just be a menace. You know, go out there and walk when you're supposed to walk, you know, get a bunch of people on bikes and overtake the whole lanes and shit. Because it's just like there was a time where cars didn't own own the street. And I think that we need to kind of do things like taking over a street or like taking over a pike market where you just have so much that it is unignorable. You know, I think that there is a role for things like spray painting a Tesla where you're just like wanting to cause some chaos. But I think without a goal in mind, it's not really direct action. You're just like feeling emboldened because everybody else feels like fuck cars, you know. So I think, I think the direct actions have to be organized with Other people.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right. So what do you think about the whole Tesla boycott going on?

[Saddam]

Yeah, I mean fuck Teslas, you know, like they're, they're not good cars. They're expensive car bombs. They, they, I would say that they are a sham. They're just a promise of this electric car. You know, they got into the market first in America so they have this like leg up. But they're, they're not even the best electric cars out, you know. And it's just because it's this buffoon. Buffoon that is the president now, you know, because he has so much influence, he can kind of control, you know, like he did a commercial at the White House and we won't even let electric vehicles from China come into the country at all.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Saddam]

So it's like I think that people have a real anger and hatred for the guy behind it. And I think that, I think that any way that we can get people to like under understand this, you know, this promise of this green future with these cars is a sham, is a win.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you're taking things a step further and you're thinking, does it matter if it's electric or gas powered still same machine.

[Saddam]

Right. Because you still. We're not at a point where we have electric cars that are just like zero, zero emissions starting. You know, you have to produce that car and you have to charge that car. Yeah. And not only to mention things like tire particulate matter and things of that nature where no matter how green you get the car, there is still inherent things with a car that is not green. I don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with EVs replacing gas powered vehicles, although I don't think it'll happen within my lifetime. I do think that it's not the golden bullet that ever or silver bullet everybody thinks it's going to be.

[Andrew Callahan]

So we spoke to our friend Joel earlier who is the leading figure in the Tesla boycott protests that have now taken the world by storm. It seems like you've feel like it's bigger than Tesla certainly. But the boycotts have been a good opportunity for your movement to take center stage.

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah. Because I don't know, Tesla is an enemy, but it's not the enemy.

[Andrew Callahan]

You know, is the enemy just all.

[Saddam]

Cars more or less? I would say it's the dominance of cars. I don't know that it's like everybody in a car, some people just are trying to go to work and there is no other option. I think that the real enemy is keeping building just roads for cars. Just highways for cars. And I think that a lot of that is just the public attitude towards having a car.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you're not walking around fucking up cars.

[Saddam]

No, no. But, you know, if you park in the bike lane, if you parking in the crosswalk, you're liable for those things to come back and bite you in the ass.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you will up a car, I.

[Saddam]

Will up a car.

[Andrew Callahan]

But you're not waking up being like, I'm gonna go fuck some cars up. Cause you do have a job.

[Saddam]

Yeah, Like, I. Yeah, yeah. I gotta. I can't. I gotta eat somehow.

[Andrew Callahan]

You guys mentioned that you did something recently at Pike Place. Could you talk about that?

[Saddam]

Yeah. So we organized like a monthly bike ride where for the past couple months, actually, we've just been completely overtaking that intersection there. Which one? It's pike. And I think first.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. By the Target.

[Saddam]

Yes, yes. And we just kind of. We do. We. We do that and then we go into the market and just ride all the. Through the market. Basically, we're just trying to be a nuisance. You know, there's a lot of businesses in Pike Market that think they're not going to be able to receive shipments or whatever reason they have stated. And at some point, that just isn't a functional method of running the market. So what we're doing is kind of just showing that this is not a space for cars. You know, it doesn't even make sense for cars to be here.

[Andrew Callahan]

And in Pike Place.

[Saddam]

Yeah. In Pike Place. Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, I agree.

[Saddam]

Yeah. You know, tourists come and they load in. Let me get to Pike Place Market. And they're driving right through, like, what should be just a pedestrianized area.

[Andrew Callahan]

I know there's no, there's no worse vibe than like, right after you hop out of Tenzing Momo or left bank books and you're trying to walk down the cobblestones by the first Starbucks and there's some with his Uber or ways up, like, driving hella fast toward the gum wall. You're like, buddy, slow down.

[Saddam]

You. You don't own this, right?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, you don't own this. Take that street down there. What's the street down there called?

[Saddam]

Alaska Way.

[Andrew Callahan]

Take Alaska Way. No, there's a street in between Alaska Way that when you take the elevator from the fish market all the way down. Back in the day when the viaduct was there, I used to hide under that little area to smoke weed by the antique store.

[Saddam]

Oh, yeah? Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't even know what that street is called. I thought it was Alaska, but they've changed that grid so much I could just be lost to translate it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Dude, Pike Place is amazing. I support what you guys are doing. If it means Pike Place pedestrian accessibility.

[Saddam]

Dude, I hope so.

[Andrew Callahan]

Back in the day they had this place at Pike Place. It was called like world's. It was called the Guinness Book of World Records store. And it only lasted for about a year, but everything in there was like the hottest hot sauce, the most sour candy, the stinkiest, like stink bomb. Like everything was meant for the extremes. So you go there before school and just terrorize the school all day.

[Saddam]

Havoc. Oh yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hot sauce in one pocket, stink bombs in the other. You're fucking challenging fools. People were dumping milk in their mouth and lunchroom. It's amazing.

[Saddam]

Yep.

[Andrew Callahan]

So going back to my, my main questions. Obviously these shutdowns are meant to disrupt traffic and annoy, you know, business owners and stuff.

[Saddam]

Certainly.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Do you feel any guilt about that?

[Saddam]

No, not, not even a little. You know, like people are dumb, you know. And I think that business owners want to keep their parking spots more than they want more business. Because no matter what statistic you look at.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Saddam]

Foot traffic is going to drive business up over car in the market. And so I don't feel bad for doing something that will inevitably be good for the people that are running these businesses.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. Small price to pay, right? We always say. I was talking to Joel and I said, sometimes it feels like the dollar is bigger than God and everything's justifiable under the pursuit of capital. So it's interesting when you hear business owners being like, you are obstructing my business, which is my way to get capital, which is a way for me to survive. Survive. Thus I'm able to respond with violent means. Like when they had the anti ice rally take over the freeway in la, almost every comment was like, God, I wish somebody would hit these people because I have to get to work.

[Saddam]

But. But that's the thing you chose to drive into the city. You know what I mean? So it's like if that's your only way of getting to work, I get it to some extent. But also you can find somewhere to park and just get to work by other means. And we're not taking it up for, for hours at a time. So it's like I don't feel like there is any argument to be had there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, you could, someone could come at you for being ableist.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

There's always something.

[Saddam]

It is always something that's a problem. Very true. It is a very real problem. But I would challenge you to find somebody who is disabled that is like, yeah, we should keep cars here. Actually. I love being hit in my wheelchair by a car going 60 miles an hour. You know what I mean?

[Andrew Callahan]

That's a good point.

[Saddam]

You know what I mean? I feel like anybody that's claiming ableism is probably just trying to find something to throw at you, especially in that type of scenario.

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, that's the landscape nowadays, man. That's why it's so hard for people to come together and, you know, have a formidable progressive presence is because everyone's so occupied positioning themselves as being more righteous than the other party.

[Saddam]

Holier than thou.

[Andrew Callahan]

I mean, that's kind of why, in my opinion, that's the story of the truth. Trump victory.

[Saddam]

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's not a, not a bad takeaway.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, because people have all these fault lines of division on the left, whereas the conservatives, even if they disagree on major things, they're still a unit.

[Saddam]

I always like to say that if you're, if you're sowing distrust among, you know, what could be, you know, a progressive front, you should be getting a CIA bag. Like, I don't understand why you guys are doing this for free.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I feel the exact same.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

I wonder if CIA bags were delivered just as a straight up direct deposit or if they're laundered somehow.

[Saddam]

Good point. I think it probably depends on how involved you are, you know, facts.

[Andrew Callahan]

So let's talk about Waymos a little bit. So as I mentioned, the homie Savvy OTR has been tagging some waymos. I asked him, hey, is this in protest or anything? He said, nah, those cars are just fucking whack.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So I had somebody from Waymo hit me up about legitimate safety concerns. Do you know anything about Waymo and its potential safety loopholes?

[Saddam]

Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a lot of safety loopholes. I think last November they reported something like having to manually correct Waymos every three to four minutes or something. You know, it's not a self driving tech yet and I think that's one part of it. But I think that there are safety concerns that we can't even address yet. Like there was a story of somebody getting hit by another car and pushed up underneath them Waymo and getting pinned underneath it. Because the Waymo is like, we don't see anybody here. We're just going to keep going. Which things of that nature are not human error, but it's the room for error that you're going to have in a self driving car at this point, regardless of the company, you know. Yeah, we're just not there yet.

[Andrew Callahan]

I think that it might be a Psyop or maybe not even a Psyop, but Waymos are designed to try to not pay Uber drivers. That was my first thought. I'm like, oh, they're trying to cut that, like, $8 expense.

[Saddam]

Yeah, right. Yeah. And it is an $8 expense. They're not getting. They're not getting health care, they're not getting anything. You know, they're getting like pennies on the dollar. But, you know, if you can cut out $8, it makes your bottom line healthier.

[Andrew Callahan]

So do you catch Ubers or anything?

[Saddam]

I try not to.

[Andrew Callahan]

Did you take the bus here?

[Saddam]

I did, I took. Well, I took the train here. That's sick. I just walked it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, you're really inspiring me to start taking the bus.

[Saddam]

Do it.

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I feel like, fuck it, I'm gonna leave my car at the office.

[Saddam]

Yeah, no, and it sucks trying to. Well, I don't know, you might have parking here, but it sucks trying to find parking, going places. It sucks. Like there's just so many things you don't even realize. But, you know, there are times where I'm walking down the freeway and I'm like, damn, this sucks. You know, So I think that. I think that you can do it, but I understand people that are like, you know, I don't want to bring my toddler down this road right now.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I feel like, you know, I kind of am a little bit blessed growing up in Seattle, where you said that you moved, because I grew up in between Capitol Hill, downtown, and I went. I went to mostly schools in the central district, so I never even had to get a car until we ever heard of a spodie before?

[Saddam]

I don't think so.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's a Seattle high school slang for outdoor alcohol gatherings. So what will happen is somebody will get a keg, they'll go to a public park, they'll sell cups, or they'll go with a cooler and they'll get cups, and people will pour jungle juice and they'll sell the cups for five bucks. So cars came into the picture because we had to go far from the city to the wilderness to throw these bodies. And so up until then, I had a totally peaceful life with no car.

[Saddam]

Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

It was compelled by necessity of another oppressive law.

[Saddam]

Yeah. I was just gonna say it's because there's no public spaces for people to do that at that age.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. There should be bars for high schoolers.

[Saddam]

I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I do think that there needs to be places for young people to gather, and what happens there happens there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. I guess the closest thing we have to it is like, Alkai Beach. I'm trying to think where else can. Where else do high school kids get into trouble in Seattle? Alki. The parking lot of Car Key. The parking lot of South Center Mall. Where else? I haven't been a kid in a long time.

[Joel Lava]

Magnuson.

[Andrew Callahan]

Magnuson's pretty good.

[Saddam]

I don't even know what that is.

[Andrew Callahan]

Magnuson park is not something you need to know about. It's a. It's a small park in northeast Seattle.

[Saddam]

Okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

Northeast Seattle, in my opinion, does not exist.

[Saddam]

I was going to say I don't. That's an area of town. I'm never in Laurelhurst.

[Andrew Callahan]

Magnus park don't know what's going on. I just know they have like 150 baseball fields. Oh, now, if my dad's watching. You live in Seattle, do you agree that anything past the cut is the north end?

[Saddam]

I would say so, but I don't know that I'm authority.

[Andrew Callahan]

All right, well, now I'm an anti car activist because me and my dad haven't talked in a couple weeks because he says Ballard and the U district aren't the north end. The north end starts at 85th.

[Saddam]

All right. We're just drawing arbitrary lines at this point.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. What is this?

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

But north end kids from Ballard are like, I'm not from the north end. Oh, total bullshit.

[Saddam]

Right? Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Where on the other side, on the south end. Everyone's desperate to be from the south end.

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

You got people who live near the Mount Baker train station being like, I'm from the south end. And you can't tell them they're wrong because they live off Rainier.

[Saddam]

Yeah, I mean, you can. You can tell them they're wrong.

[Andrew Callahan]

How many anti car activists are there?

[Saddam]

More than you think, I would say. I don't know that I have a specific number ironed out, but I think that there are. It's like a growing sentiment. You know, people don't want to be trapped to their. Their vehicle. I don't know about activists. I feel like that's kind of a word that's been bastardized, but I think that there. There are a lot. Okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

How many fools are down for the cause? More than 10,000.

[Saddam]

We're talking countrywide.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, yeah. Sick, definitely. Are you guys like Mostly anarchists.

[Saddam]

I think it varies. I think some people have more of an anarchist slant and some people are like, I think it varies. I think it varies in ideology a lot. I think the main goal is just to be safe, which is like, I don't know, kind of the most beautiful thing about it.

[Andrew Callahan]

Would a libertarian be able to get into your fold?

[Saddam]

How much do they like kids? You know what I mean?

[Andrew Callahan]

Well, they want to save them a lot. Yeah, they want to save them so much they can't stop looking at them.

[Saddam]

Mm, not, no. But you know, if you're walking around as a self claimed libertarian, I don't know how much you give a shit in general.

[Andrew Callahan]

So what kind of bike do you ride?

[Saddam]

I have like a shitty little temu e bike and I bought it like four years ago. It's beat to shit. And some people are really into like the technical aspects. I just like that it gets me from the places, you know.

[Andrew Callahan]

So you bike. I'm not gonna say where you live because I don't want someone to come. I don't want one of these car executives to come assassinate you.

[Saddam]

That'd be sick. Yeah. To not.

[Andrew Callahan]

But do you bike for. From your house?

[Joel Lava]

Starbucks?

[Saddam]

Hell yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Damn. So you probably got some strong calves, something like that. Are you worried that estrogen is going to that up?

[Saddam]

No.

[Andrew Callahan]

Really?

[Saddam]

No. Yeah, because the thing about estrogen is you got to eat. So I just be eating way too much now, which has really changed my life because I'm like, damn, I don't feel like ass all the time.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, for sure. What's your favorite kind of food, man?

[Saddam]

What's my least favorite kind of food is a better question. But nah, you know, I'm from the South. I really like some, some fucking collard greens. I love some green grits. Really? I love breakfast food. You give me a good like platter of breakfast. That's my.

[Andrew Callahan]

You like turkey bacon?

[Saddam]

I do. I. I don't eat pork, so.

[Andrew Callahan]

Okay. You Muslim?

[Saddam]

No, I just don't eat pork. I was raised by a Muslim stepfather.

[Andrew Callahan]

Are you serious?

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Holy. Is he still around?

[Saddam]

He is alive, but he's not around.

[Andrew Callahan]

He's not the homie though. He is the homie.

[Saddam]

We don't rock with bro. No.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, yeah. I had a stepdad too. He was the Seattle Mariners catcher.

[Saddam]

Oh, okay.

[Andrew Callahan]

He was a great player. But we also don't rock with bro.

[Saddam]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you think vandalism is wrong on principle?

[Saddam]

No. It kind of depends on what you're doing. You know, if you're like running up in the mom and pop breakfast spot and you're like tagging the shit up and it looks bad. It's like there's no. There's no argument for it. But as a. I don't think. I think that the word vandalism is largely just a way to make it seem bad, you know?

[Andrew Callahan]

Do you feel like a lot of the graffiti writers who came up during COVID when the cops didn't get give a shit and they were like painting freeway spots that, you know, you used to go to jail doing, you feel like a lot of those kids have like stolen valor.

[Saddam]

I mean, they're still doing it, I think. I think the stolen valor kind of comes from how well you're invested in it. Like if you're just going out there and like doing a little shit tweaker tag and then going back to your house, like, I feel like that's stolen valor because you hit like a spot that is hard to get to and you just kind of didn't even have any integrity with it. Yeah, but I think that, I don't know, there's something about standing on the freeway that kind of gives it its own.

[Andrew Callahan]

You ever read Crimethink before?

[Saddam]

I don't think so.

[Andrew Callahan]

It was like this dope anarchist thing. Dope anarchist book set they used to sell back in the day. And it was talking about like, you know, it was sort of like an anarchist cookbook. But it was the idea that like petty crime stuff, like vandalism of corporations is a righteous act.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

You feel that way?

[Saddam]

I would say so. Yeah. I would say definitely. I think it is one of the only ways that you individually can cause a bottom line dip, you know, by just going out and kind of fucking shit up. For lack of better words.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. I was talking to Joel about the idea that violence itself. Joel thinks that property damage is violence, and I would argue that it's not.

[Saddam]

Violence against who?

[Andrew Callahan]

The idea is that you're creating an element of fear and that through attacking that building, you're psychically attacking the people who preside over it and harming them in some way.

[Saddam]

Cry me a river. You know what I mean? Like, if you're in the Amazon building, you know what I mean? If you're in the, the. The Tesla building, you know, the risk you took by taking that job, you know, and if you start to feel like I'm afraid of this, I don't like this. Go somewhere else. No one's forcing you to be there. Yeah, that's my thought.

[Andrew Callahan]

You ever deal with any heroes. For those who don't know, a hero is a pedestrian who acts as a law enforcement enforcement officer in the face of petty crime. You ever deal with any heroes in the field who are like, hey, stop.

[Saddam]

I don't know. I feel like. I feel like in Seattle, you don't get a lot of that.

[Andrew Callahan]

Oh, man, I wish you were right.

[Saddam]

Really?

[Andrew Callahan]

One time, a Krav Magra instructor saw me tagging or putting a sticker on a stop sign and put me in a headlock and called my parents.

[Saddam]

Yo. For real?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. On Third and Olive.

[Saddam]

Oh, shit. Okay. Well, I. I haven't personally had to deal with a hero, as it were, but I kind of maybe a little bit more sneaky than just throwing up a sticker on Third and all of.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. What are some tips you have out there for people who want to get involved with the anti car movement and are. But are a little bit nervous?

[Saddam]

Start small. Just get yourself, like, a bike. Just get yourself, like, walking more, even if it's incremental. And start talking to people. Talk to your neighbors. You know, just get involved. There is definitely somewhere around you that is already doing something.

[Andrew Callahan]

Did you vote in the election?

[Saddam]

Yeah. Are you asking who?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah.

[Saddam]

Yeah, I voted for Kamala. I whispered acab to myself as I wrote it in. But what are you gonna do, man?

[Andrew Callahan]

No, I feel you, man. And that's saying something. Cause I feel like almost no one I knew did vote for Kamala Harris.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Including myself. And so I just. But I feel kind of dumb now.

[Saddam]

I don't wanna say yes because I.

[Andrew Callahan]

Got tricked into, like, you know, I interviewed Jill Stein, and she kind of psyoped me and was like, yo, it's all the same. Nothing's gonna change whether or not it's Kamala Harris or Trump. And pretty much immediately, everything changed for the worse.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

So now I feel like I wish we could go back and, like, people were able to realize that change takes a lot more time and that issues like Israel, Palestine aren't gonna go away, and you're never gonna have a president who's pro Palestine. It's unfortunate, but it's just true.

[Saddam]

And I think that you can bully Kamala and to, you know, stop selling arms to Israel, but you're not gonna do that with Trump. You're just. It's not gonna happen. And the odds of it actually happening to Kamala either is, like, insanely low. But I don't know, man. We wouldn't have fucking sweeping tariffs. So.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, I think that Trump's support of Israel is gonna be his downfall.

[Saddam]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

Cause he's harvested so much, like, insane anti Semitic shit over the course of the past, you know, eight to 10 years. And he was like, there's this cabal of evil liberal communists that are trying to control us.

[Saddam]

He's saying every. Everything but Jewish.

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. And now he's like, no, I love the Jews. The cabal that I was talking about is actually like, Jimmy Kimmel and his friends.

[Saddam]

Right?

[Andrew Callahan]

You know?

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

Goalpost moving.

[Saddam]

Of course. Yeah. And we're not the only people to notice that. You know what I mean? Especially when you're one of these, like, freaks that actually believes that shit. You're probably like, dude, what do you mean? I thought you were saying the 14 words a minute ago. What happened?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah, did you see, you know the Nazi, Nick Fuentes?

[Saddam]

Yeah, of course.

[Andrew Callahan]

He was hating on Trump Harden the other day.

[Saddam]

Really?

[Andrew Callahan]

Yeah. He was like, this guy tricked us from the very first beginning. He's owned. He's owned by Israel. And I'm like, dude, if that guy's turning on you, the kids will too. Oh, yeah, the Nazi youth. Isn't it crazy that there's people from our generation who are, like, into neo Nazi shit?

[Saddam]

I wish I could tell you it's crazy, but, like, man, we didn't. We didn't do enough to curb that. I don't think.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's just weird because it's like, we all grew up online at the same time.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

It's crazy to think that white supremacist shit is actually still in our generation.

[Saddam]

Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to believe. But then you go outside and you're like, like, oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Andrew Callahan]

And to clarify, he's referring to white supremacists being outside. Not going outside and making racial observations. Yes.

[Saddam]

That is. Yeah. Ooh. About to get canceled today.

[Andrew Callahan]

You think it's crazy to be racist, and you go outside and you're like, jesus, where are all the white people in Seattle?

[Saddam]

They're there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Seattle? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to talk too much about Seattle. I still like it. I'm happy that you live there because I love that I get in this headset space, bruh, where I'm always talking about how Seattle sucks now, but the fact that there is people holding down the anti car movement in Seattle gives me some kind of hope.

[Saddam]

Yeah. I won't give up. So, truthfully, I can't because, you know, I fled from Florida and Texas and I'm like, well, sticking it out here, you know?

[Andrew Callahan]

You want to give any message before we head out of here to the people who may be watching at home thinking about, fuck, I have a car right now. I want to be on the right side of history, but I got to.

[Saddam]

Get to work, man. Do what you can. Get a bike. Try to find some other way. I'm telling you, the bike is overpowered. Get involved, even if it's not. For every day of your trips into work, do something. Make an incremental change. Free Gaza.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hell yeah.

[Saddam]

Appreciate you, G. Hell yeah, man.

[Andrew Callahan]

Dude, I'm straight up about to take the bus home today, dude.

[Saddam]

Hell yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

You actually inspired me.

[Joel Lava]

So what's your like plan or strategy to get rid of cars if it's would work?

[Saddam]

Well, I don't know that you can get rid of cars entirely, but I think that reduction is the plan. You know, reduce as much as possible until. And you know, boost methods other than just driving everywhere.

[Joel Lava]

How are you getting your message out? How are you? Yeah, how are people discovering your theory?

[Saddam]

Yeah, well, you know, just like organizing around, you know, big bike events or like things of that nature.

[Joel Lava]

So it's not just anti car. It would also mean if your movement succeeded, there would be a drastic increase of buses and trains.

[Saddam]

Hell yeah. Oh yeah. And if not an increase, then like an increase of service, you know, because a lot of, a lot of what it is, it's like you wait 40 minutes for a bus that might come. You know, it's like we have some good bones. You know, we used to like have cities that function properly, but now it's just like a, a gutter through, through your city for cars.

[Joel Lava]

So if you're so anti car, do you think it's effective to like actually vandalize or attack cars? To like bring awareness.

[Saddam]

Depending on what you're, what you're doing. Right. Like, if you have a goal in mind, I think that just like vandalizing all cars is going to get you in trouble and nothing done, basically. But you know, if you want to take down a certain company, wink, wink, nod, nod, then, you know, I can't say that it's a bad idea. Yeah, we see the price of Teslas start to go down, people not wanting to buy them. You know, I think that that's a, I think it's a real win, you know, apple pie.

[Joel Lava]

And cars are basically as American as it gets. How do you, how can you take, take on that ethos that if you're anti car, you're anti American?

[Saddam]

Who gives a. I think like, I don't think I think that that like anti. Your anti America sentiment has, has dropped off these days. I mean maybe with, with older folks, but I know a lot of younger folks are like, they don't give a. Nobody likes this country really. They're like the people in it.

[Joel Lava]

But so yeah, the younger generation, a lot of them aren't even driving. So that gives momentum to your cause.

[Saddam]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

[Joel Lava]

But they do take Ubers and Waymos.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Joel Lava]

So do you feel like the young generation's open to taking a bus though? Because there's a big difference between getting on a bus or getting in an Uber, right?

[Saddam]

Yeah, I think that the buses will come, you know, as I think people are more willing to get on trains, to be honest with you. I think it feels like more of a set thing, maybe safer, maybe more of an experience or whatever. I think that buses need to become like, you know, we only buy American buses and a lot of American buses are like not the greatest buses in the world. So I think that we need to have like a real shift in the type of buses that we run and like the, you know, like making it feel, feel like you're not a second class citizen because you're on a bus. And I don't know if the younger generation is open to it now, but I think that it's a step in the right direction to be not as willing to invest all your money in whatever car. So yeah, I think it's a stepping stone.

[Joel Lava]

So you said we're never going to get rid of cars. So it's like an admission that it's almost like your goal isn't so much to get rid of cars, it's to change the zeitgeist over to window for people to be more embracing of mass transit.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Joel Lava]

And your younger generation is primed to be swayed in another direction because a lot of them don't even drive.

[Saddam]

Yeah. Yeah, I would say so.

[Joel Lava]

So it's almost like defund police was never really about defunding the police. It was just to create awareness that police in general, their budgets are so massive as a part of city's budget.

[Saddam]

Oh yeah.

[Joel Lava]

So it's almost like you're doing the same, same thing. It's. You're not even though you're anti car, you're not at the same time, you're just more pro everything else.

[Saddam]

Well, I'll be honest with you. I, I used to love driving a car. Like I, I get why people like driving a car. I just think that nobody benefits from having to drive a car.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah. Like it's part of the American dream. You have to have a house, you have to have a car or else you're not living the full dream.

[Saddam]

Yeah, you're. Yeah, you're like a house halfway. Halfway point, you know, and it's, it's like any car, you know, it's like if you have a Camry, it's like certain. It's like a class thing too, you know, like you're still looked down upon.

[Joel Lava]

Yeah.

[Saddam]

And it's like. Yeah. And it's like a lot of other things where it's like a status or.

[Joel Lava]

If you drive a Tesla, you support Nazis.

[Saddam]

Well, I don't. Maybe a cyber truck. I feel like there's no excuse there but.

[Joel Lava]

Well, no cybertruck. The reason you buy that is because you want everyone to know how rich you are and you have a small penis.

[Saddam]

Yeah, but they're not that expensive. You know what I mean?

[Joel Lava]

80,000 is a lot of money.

[Saddam]

Well, fair point, fair point. But like as far as an expensive.

[Joel Lava]

Nice car, it's interesting. I feel like you're taking a provocative stance in order to create awareness for a better future.

[Saddam]

Yeah, but I think we've got too caught up in the weeds on awareness. I think we gotta to start doing because what does that mean? Well, you know, you got to start making it the, the driver's problem, you know, you got to start really de. Incentivizing drivers.

[Joel Lava]

How do you do that?

[Saddam]

Well, there's things that are like legal methods like congestion pricing or like paying to drive on certain roads or you know, some people have gone out and spray painted on some, some cybertrucks and, and I don't know anything to kind of bully people into not wanting to, you know, take that bang everywhere. I also think inside inner cities we need to really kind of take back over the streets, you know, like there was a point in time where streets were made for everyone to be on. You know, people bikes, you know, the grand Streetcar era. And I don't think we're ever going to go back react to that. But I think that drivers have become too emboldened and feel like the road is theirs.

[Joel Lava]

We're having a housing shortage, you're right. So yeah, we need to create more density and more walkable cities, which means the removal of cars.

[Saddam]

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I mean we need density like yesterday so it's never going to happen by just everybody gets their like individual parking, parking spot and you know, drives into the inner city every day. You don't. It's not. You're just going to build the endless suburb like Dallas or even la, you know, just forever expansion.

[Joel Lava]

That's why. Yeah. Austin and Texas, they're saying they're better policies for home building. It's because they have so much space. Whereas San Francisco. There's no space. It's not like San Francisco. And their policies are bad for housing. There's literally no space.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Joel Lava]

But yeah, I think cars and ability to. I mean, we're a frontier nation. So you're going up against some serious American identity.

[Saddam]

Yeah.

[Joel Lava]

And it's maybe being provocative is the way to like, pierce that bubble.

[Saddam]

Could be. Definitely. I think so. I also think that you kind of. You kind of got to be like we. I feel like we've got again lost in the weeds of just like making people aware, you know what I mean? Because it's like. Like we're all aware of how up is, but we're all looking at each other.

[Joel Lava]

Like awareness is the first step to making change. But we've been on that step for too long, is what you're saying.

[Saddam]

Far too long. Since before I was born, to be honest with you. But yeah, Channel 5 Live Worldwide, Hollywood.

[Andrew Callahan]

And Vine, the Authority, Channel 5 News, Channel 55. We don't. With Custers and 5 is the best number.