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- [00:00]
Dana Al Kurd
This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
- [00:04]
Mia Wong
This is Dr. Joy from therapy for Black Girls. A fresh, sparkling kitchen.
- [00:08]
Jackie Mae
Yes, please.
- [00:09]
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- [00:11]
Mia Wong
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- [00:20]
Febreze Announcer
Less scrubbing, more living.
- [00:22]
Mia Wong
Find Dawn Power Wash Dish Spray at your favorite retailer. Dawn is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. Don't miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available June 1 on the iHeartRadio app.
- [00:41]
Jackie Mae
And everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [00:42]
Bina Ahmed
If you're feeling off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription Strength Bioidentical Hormone Cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oestro replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again.
- [01:12]
Dana Al Kurd
That's innerbalance.com Taco Bell's new jalapeno citrus Salsa adds a tangy twist to the Cantina Chicken menu. A sweet and spicy, bright, citrusy burst of flavor made with real red jalapenos and guajillo chilies. Try it with a rolled quesadilla and you will absolutely be well.
- [01:30]
Mia Wong
I don't want to give it away.
- [01:31]
Dana Al Kurd
You need to try a for yourself new Jalapeno Citrus Salsa, the sauce with main character energy. Get it with anything on the Cantina
- [01:38]
Joey Mogul
Chicken menu for a limited time only
- [01:40]
Dana Al Kurd
at Taco Bell at participating locations while supplies last.
- [01:44]
Deja Indigo
This is Danielle Fishel, Ryder Strong and Will Friedle from Pod Meats World. Let's talk chewy.
- [01:51]
Dana Al Kurd
Yes, for starters, They've got over 100,000
- [01:54]
Bina Ahmed
products food, treats, toys, beds, and as
- [01:58]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
a dog and a cat mom, I
- [02:00]
Bina Ahmed
can go to Chewy for literally anything I need.
- [02:03]
Dana Al Kurd
And it ships fast.
- [02:04]
Mia Wong
And Chewy's customer service is unreal.
- [02:07]
Jackie Mae
Day or night, they're ready to help.
- [02:09]
Deja Indigo
You know what else I love? They handle prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits, and they're rolling out vet clinics across the country for life with pets.
- [02:18]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
The answer is chewy.
- [02:19]
Bina Ahmed
Save $20 on your first order with free shipping at chewpanions.chewy.com World
- [02:27]
Robert Evans
Cool Zone Media hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch. If you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
- [02:54]
Dana Al Kurd
Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Al Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. I'm recording this on May 19, 2026 and this past weekend, May 15 was Nakba Day. Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe and Nakba Day commemorates when close to a million Palestinians were expelled in 1948 with the founding of the Israeli state. So the Palestinian catastrophe, hundreds of villages and towns were destroyed and many Palestinians were made refugees in camps around the new state in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and farther afield within Israel, Palestinians who somehow managed to remain were put under military rule. As the past few years have demonstrated, and as many Palestinians will tell you, this Nakba never ended Usually I use this podcast to discuss current events or to interview someone who is an expert on a dynamic I'm interested in and I think is useful for people to hear. But today I'm going to be doing something a little different and outside my comfort zone. I'm going to share my personal family history and our Nakba story. I'm a Palestinian from Jerusalem, both sides. My mom and my dad are from Jerusalem and I was born there. Usually when people ask me where I'm from and I say that, they just assume East Jerusalem because that's where Palestinians have been sequestered today. They were driven out of west Jerusalem in 1948, but actually some of my family were from the western side of the city. My paternal grandmother and her family lost their home in West Jerusalem in 1948. My grandmother ended up spending three years in Aqabit Jaber refugee camp outside of Jericho because my great grandfather had been wounded trying to defend the city and they were waiting to see if they could return. My grandmother has told me details about this time. She talked about the makeshift school in the camp that only went up to the eighth grade, so my grandmother repeated the year a couple times and then eventually dropped out of school because she couldn't continue past the eighth grade. Now the rest of her siblings, especially upon their return to Jerusalem, were all fully educated as adults. Many of them held advanced degrees. My grandmother was the only one, as the eldest, who had paid the price of displacement. In this way, she was trained as A seamstress later on, but always lamented that she had to leave school early. She also told me about her house in Ba', a, which is in West Jerusalem, a neighborhood in West Jerusalem before it was taken during the Nakba. This was a newer neighborhood with nice views of the city, where middle class Palestinian families were expanding their homes as their families expanded. My grandmother's family had only moved into this house two months prior to the Nakba, and she used to tell me how the house had been newly painted and it was made of beautiful stones. Before she passed away, she would often cry over this house as if it had just been taken. That house, by the way, still stands in West Jerusalem. The last time I visited Palestine, my grandmother's younger siblings showed me pictures of themselves posing in front of their house, now occupied by Israelis. Now, my grandmother's story is very typical, but also very lucky because her and her family, they did become refugees, yes, but they found their way back to the city. Most Palestinians were never able to return back to their hometowns. They were lucky in that sense that they had property and family in other parts of the city on the eastern side. And they were able to continue. We were able to continue. That's how I was born in Jerusalem myself, because of that luck. Now, on my maternal side, I don't know as much about them and their Necba story. I left Palestine when I was a child. I don't have a close relationship with my mother's side of the family, and they harbor a lot of secrets. I never knew much about their histories and their dramas. My maternal grandmother is divorced and the family had fractured in particular ways. So there was a lot of touchiness. Many parts of the family were estranged from each other. One thing I did eventually find out when I was a teenager was that my mother's grandmother, so my great grandmother was actually Israeli. This was my mother's paternal grandmother, her dad that she no longer had a relationship with because of her parents divorce. And I didn't have much information beyond that. I knew her name, Rachel, but nobody really wanted to talk about this Israeli great grandmother. It was also an uncomfortable finding for me at the time because I'm a Palestinian from Jerusalem. The only Israelis I had ever engaged with at that point were soldiers. So I didn't press the subject. It was just another family secret we didn't talk about. When I got older, I got more curious about this and I asked for more information and I asked my dad to confirm whether this was true, that my mother did in fact had an Israeli grandmother. Like this wasn't just a rumor. And he said he had met her himself. In fact, he had met her while I was a toddler, apparently. And I had met her, though of course I had no recollection. My dad says that during her visit to my mother's family. So this would be Rachel's grandchildren and then her daughter in law. There had been some argument and they had harangued her over the actions of her state and her state's military. And according to my dad, she replied that it had nothing to do with her because she came during the British Mandate era, she was classified as a Palestinian Jewish. And he told me as much of the story as he had been told. Rachel was a Polish Jewish woman. She came to Palestine, she married my great grandfather, who by my father's description was kind of a wealthy Palestinian playboy type. They had two children. And in 1948, when Israel was founded and Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, my great grandmother and great grandfather split up. What my dad understood to have happened was Rachel left, her children joined her new countrymen, and that was that. So as I said, Jerusalem was split up. The western side was cleared of its Palestinians. There was an armistice line where actually the newfound Israeli state housed recent Arab Jewish migrants, sort of as cannon fodder. One of those neighborhoods where Arab Jews were placed later birthed the Israeli Black Panthers. And then the western side was under Israeli rule and Palestinians on the eastern side of the city fell under Jordanian rule. So the story goes that my great grandmother left and my great grandfather put his children in an orphanage. My dad says he heard they were often mistreated, possibly because their mother was Israeli. And later, when Israel occupied the rest of Jerusalem and the city was unified, my great grandmother did go looking for her children. But my grandfather didn't connect with her, so her son and moved to Jordan. Now, from my mother, I also pressed for more information. She had never told me any of this story. But this year, literally a few weeks ago, she finally gave me Rachel's last name. I dug around to see what I could find out about her. I asked online. I got the help of people who had expertise in Jewish genealogy. And what I found was a much more complicated picture. First, I found an academic article about a non partisan Zionist youth group in Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s. I don't speak Hebrew, so I'm going to mispronounce this. I think it's called Zer Haam. Getting their members ready to make the journey to Palestine. That's what this article was about. They were nonpartisan in the sense that they included a lot of different strains of Zionism. So right wing Zionism, left wing Zionism among the members. But the Zionism itself, of course, was taken as a given. Now, the article included quotes from former members of this group and kind of grainy black and white photos of which the name Rachel appeared in the captions with her last name. And when I first saw the woman identified as Rachel in this group photo, I knew instinctively that I had found her because she looked like a blonde version of my mother. My intuition was very quickly confirmed because Rachel was identified by her married Palestinian name in the footnotes where she was quoted. So I found her. Here she was. I wanted to know more about what had happened to her after these pictures in Belgium were taken. The article states that she immigrated to Palestine in the early 1930s at the encouragement of her, quote, Zionist mother. But what had led her between 1933 and 1948 to marry and then leave a Palestinian? And then why was she visiting her grandchildren and apparently me in the 1990s? The second big piece of information I got was because of a Bluesky account. P Y M U N D Genealogy. This is a person who works on Jewish genealogy, has an interest in it, and he helped find an article that had been written about my great grandmother in the Israeli magazine Ma'. Ariv. So shout out to this guy. Now, this article was dated June 12, 1987. It's a three page spread. And in this interview that Rachel gives, she talks about her childhood in Antwerp, her immigration to Palestine as a young woman and her marriage. So apparently after her civil ceremony with my great grandfather in 1935, they had traveled across Europe for a whole year, even meeting the extended family in Poland, where Rachel's family was originally from. Her new husband was honored by her uncle, who was an important rabbi. Now, for reasons she does not outline, Rachel discusses leaving her husband, maybe assuming the separation would be temporary in 1948. But unlike the story that my father had heard and I had been told, she had not left her children. And in fact there had been four of them. She left two of them with their father and took the eldest and the baby that she was pregnant with to West Jerusalem. She kept her married name and she never officially divorced. I can only assume that she didn't guess the city would be divided or maybe didn't understand for how long. Now, when Israel took the rest of the city in 1967, she not only reconnected with her, I guess, Palestinian children, but it seems from this article had warm relationships with them until the end. Rachel had assisted my grandfather, her son in marrying my grandmother, compiling the dowry the children who had been raised Israeli had reconnected with their family to varying degrees. Some of the Palestinian children visited the Israeli children in Tel Aviv. According to this interview, Rachel even reconnected with her husband, my great grandfather, living with him until he passed in 1983. Rachel had also maintained a relationship with her daughter in law, my maternal grandmother, even after her son's divorce. In this article I recognize the descriptions of my mother and my aunts. Rachel had kept visiting them until she died in the mid-1990s, so that explains the visit that my father had witnessed. I quickly realized that of course it had been easier for many members of my family to pretend this had never happened, try to keep the truth of these relationships from their children. I suppose they preferred a neater story of clean breaks and solid national divisions. It's also not lost on me that much of this obfuscation relies on the common misogynistic trope of the negligent mother, which was apparently easy for everyone to believe. Now I won't say that Israeli Palestinian marriages are common or that intimate relationships between the two groups are easy to find, but they aren't unheard of. Israeli political parties are certainly scared enough of this prospect. They often voice condemnations of inter ethnic relationships of this kind. So this phenomenon must exist at some level. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised either, because Palestine's most well known poet, Mahmud Darwish, was famous for his poetry, among many of them a poem he wrote to his Jewish girlfriend titled Rita. This was the same man that joined the plo, lived through the Israeli siege of Beirut, and wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Now Rachel's story really boggled my mind in its contradictions because she had been part of a Zionist youth group. She had actively joined an effort to facilitate the migration of Europe's Jewish population to Palestine, eventually leading to the displacement of Palestinians. But she had married a Palestinian, and in the interview for Maariv, she describes running to the eastern part of the city when Israel occupied it in 1967 to see her friends. And she says she would marry my great grandfather all over again if she could. You see dear, it was a great love, she told their interviewer. Ironically, my parents and my maternal grandparents, all of which share national and religious identities, both ended up divorced. But Rachel and her Palestinian Muslim husband somehow stayed together at the same time. Rachel turned a blind eye to many things, and she herself hid many things for Example, she doesn't reveal the details of her children raised as Israeli. The interviewer in the Ma' Ariv magazine interview emphasizes that they wouldn't want their information known, especially about their lineage. It seems that neither ever reconnected with their Palestinian father. And most tellingly for me, in that interview, when my maternal grandmother, Rachel's daughter in law, complains of the Israeli soldiers in the neighborhood that she lived in, the interviewer reports that Rachel feigns deafness and returns the conversation to a discussion of the children. Now, Rachel isn't abnormal. Israeli society has turned a blind eye to many things. Many Israelis pretend that the Palestinians as a national group do not exist. They prefer to think of them prefer to think of us as the reincarnation of Nazis or the modern day manifestation of antisemitism. Or at best, Palestinians are merely generic Arabs with easily severed ties to this particular land. The Israeli state even grows pine trees over emptied and demolished Palestinian villages to ensure return is impossible and to hide the extent of what happened in the latest war on Gaza. Images and videos from Gaza are dismissed as AI fabrications. They call it Pallywood. It's just an effort by Palestinians to put Israel in a bad light. And governments the world over seem to have taken this position of turning a blind eye to the oppression Palestinians have faced and assuming Palestinians would live and die never having exercised their basic rights. All I can say is I'm living proof that these silences prolong the inevitable, that the truth eventually comes out and the return is inevitable. The longer we wait to acknowledge the reality of the situation, the more people will suffer and the more this kind of intergenerational trauma will continue. I recently finished Molly Krabappel's book Here Where We Live Is Our country on the Jewish Bund. She quotes a Jewish Bundist, Levik Hodes, saying that belief in mankind is not popular today. In these last years, we have all seen it become deeply debased, despoiled and spat on. But if man is at heart a beast, no amount of running away will help. End quote. This really resonated with me. I firmly believe that we can't rely on silence to disappear our problems. We can't run from each other. Let my family history be a testament to that. When we understand that, then the truth and the resolution and the return is only a matter of time. And maybe then the Nakba will end. Thank you for listening and hope you all stay safe.
- [18:56]
Mia Wong
This is George Taveras and Sam Taggart from Stradiolab.
- [18:59]
Jackie Mae
Okay, picture it.
- [19:00]
Mia Wong
Your apartment after a Saturday workout. The gym bag, the couch, maybe even the car. Mi amor. It's a full novella of odors and not the glamorous kind. That's where Febreze comes in.
- [19:11]
Febreze Announcer
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- [19:14]
Mia Wong
It doesn't just mask odors, it fights them. Honey. Want long lasting scent you can control? Try Fabrizio Febreze Plug Scent Booster today. With the adjustable intensity dial, you can control the scent to match your mood. Plus, thanks to its Fade Defy technology, your home stays first day fresh for up to 50 days.
- [19:33]
Febreze Announcer
Need a quick car rescue? Clip a Febreze car vent clip and
- [19:36]
Mia Wong
map your ride to freshness. And don't forget the fabric refresher.
- [19:39]
Febreze Announcer
While you can't cram that cushion in
- [19:41]
Mia Wong
the washer, you can top off every pillow fluff with a spritz of fabric refresher because home should smell like you. Fabulous. Fresh, Unforgettable.
- [19:49]
Febreze Announcer
Febreze is a proud sponsor of the alt Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those
- [19:53]
Mia Wong
who have helped shape a more inclusive
- [19:54]
Febreze Announcer
and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality.
- [19:58]
Mia Wong
You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact awards podcast, available June 1 on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [20:06]
Bina Ahmed
If you're feeling off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription strength bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oestra replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again. That's innerbalance.com this is Danielle Fishel, Ryder
- [20:39]
Deja Indigo
Strong and Will Friedle from Pod Meats World. Let's talk Chewy.
- [20:44]
Dana Al Kurd
Yes, for starters, they've got over a hundred thousand products.
- [20:48]
Bina Ahmed
Food, treats, toys, beds, and as a
- [20:52]
Dana Al Kurd
dog and a cat mom, I can
- [20:54]
Bina Ahmed
go to Chewy for literally anything I need.
- [20:56]
Dana Al Kurd
And it ships fast.
- [20:58]
Mia Wong
And Chewy's customer service is unreal.
- [21:00]
Jackie Mae
Day or night, they're ready to help.
- [21:02]
Deja Indigo
You know what else I love? They handle prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits, and they're rolling out vet clinics across the country for life with pets.
- [21:12]
Bina Ahmed
The answer is chewy. Save $20 on your first order with
- [21:15]
Dana Al Kurd
free shipping at chupanions.chewy.com World Dozens of
- [21:19]
Bina Ahmed
executive orders, thousands of anti LGBTQ bills,
- [21:23]
Jackie Mae
all designed to harm people.
- [21:25]
Bina Ahmed
We know people we love the People, we are every day Lambda Legal is in court fighting back. And when we take a stand, we're standing as the last line of defense between real human beings and harm. But we don't do it alone.
- [21:39]
Jackie Mae
With every act of support, you stand with us.
- [21:42]
Mia Wong
And together we'll hold the line.
- [21:44]
Jackie Mae
Fund the fight@lambdalegal.org donate.
- [21:52]
Mia Wong
Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about going on strike and hopefully winning. I am your host, Mia Wong. There's a concept in union organizing called a hot shop, which is a shop where everything is moving really, really quickly and people are organizing really quickly and bad stuff is happening really quickly and people are reacting really quickly. And today we are going to talk to maybe the hottest shop I have ever encountered. So. And to discuss the shop, I am talking to Jackie Mae and Deja Indigo, who are members and organizers of Real U Electrolysis Workers United. Both of you two, welcome to the show.
- [22:31]
Robert Evans
Hi.
- [22:32]
Jackie Mae
Thank you.
- [22:32]
Deja Indigo
Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us on such short notice. You said hot shop and. Yeah, it's been a week.
- [22:41]
Jackie Mae
Very hot week indeed.
- [22:42]
Mia Wong
I had heard this was going on and it was, there's an attempt to go public. The next thing I heard was like the next day and there was a strike. And I was like, oh my God, this is wild.
- [22:55]
Jackie Mae
So, yeah, not even a week ago.
- [22:57]
Mia Wong
Yeah, it will be, I think by the time you're listening to this, it will be one week.
- [23:02]
Jackie Mae
Yeah.
- [23:02]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [23:03]
Jackie Mae
Okay. That's fair.
- [23:04]
Mia Wong
Yeah. I want to mention, this is being recorded on Monday, May 25th. This situation is moving very quickly. There is a chance that things have changed by then. We will try to get an update in if something really major has happened. But let's roll this back to the beginning. And I think the place I want to start is. So you all are. It's real. You Electrolysis Workers United. So you are electrolysis workers. I, I know this audience specifically of it could happen here has a significantly higher chance of the general population to know what electrolysis is. But can you explain for people who don't know or only kind of familiar what electrolysis is?
- [23:49]
Jackie Mae
Of course. Electrolysis is the only FDA recognized method of permanent hair removal. It is a technique that dates back a surprisingly long time where we insert a filament about the size of a hair into individual hair follicles. And with the use of electricity to generate either heat or lye, we basically kill each hair follicle at its root. And that hair, if all goes according to plan, will not come back. It is commonly used in gender Affirming care. And that is one of the, if not the specialty of real EU electrolysis.
- [24:31]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Can you talk a bit about this in a gender affirming care context?
- [24:35]
Jackie Mae
Of course. You know, if you are a transgender person and you are undergoing medical transition, there is a variety of reasons you might want to have hair permanently removed.
- [24:46]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [24:46]
Jackie Mae
Either in preparation for surgery, both in terms of a trans feminine or trans masculine surgical context, you will need hair permanently removed from some parts of your body that will be involved in that. You also may want to have facial hair or body hair permanently removed. Again, this applies to both trans feminine feminine, trans masculine, and people anywhere else on the transgender spectrum. Because, you know, not everybody wants to have body hair.
- [25:17]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [25:18]
Jackie Mae
Or facial hair.
- [25:19]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And this is something that, I mean, I can personally say you can get a lot of dysphoria from body hair. It can be real bad.
- [25:27]
Deja Indigo
Oh, yeah, it can.
- [25:28]
Mia Wong
And not having it is such a huge difference.
- [25:31]
Jackie Mae
Yes.
- [25:32]
Mia Wong
And I guess a thing that I should say. So my understanding of electrolysis, I have not done electrolysis. I have a lot of friends who have. But the thing about electrolysis versus, like, you know, shaving or something is that once you hit a hair follicle, it's gone. And theoretically, after you're done with, you know, like a bunch of the sessions, you just don't have hair growing there anymore.
- [25:54]
Deja Indigo
Yes.
- [25:54]
Jackie Mae
Correct. And also, I should note that it is also covered by most health insurance that does cover gender affirming care. I know we all have kind of mixed feelings about the WPATH standards, but it is considered the standard of care for hair removal under the wpath. So, you know, a significant proportion of the patients at the Real U electrolysis clinic are using insurance to pay for their care.
- [26:24]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Which is really cool. Not all trans healthcare is that expensive, but electrolysis is not the most cheap thing if you are paying out of pocket. And it's really not.
- [26:38]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, it's usually out of pocket is somewhere between 120 to $240 an hour, depending on your provider.
- [26:47]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [26:47]
Jackie Mae
And these are weekly sessions, usually at least an hour. Sometimes they can be less for those who have difficulty tolerating it. Some people go for even more. Like, some patients may elect to get like six hours of it done. But again, this is a lot of out of pocket costs, especially when it generally takes anywhere from a year and a half to three years to fully clear an area. So this is why it's so important to have this covered by insurance, because it really adds up quickly.
- [27:22]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And I think this Also gets into what's important about this shop, which is that this is one of the few electrolysis places I've ever encountered where huge portions of the staff are trans.
- [27:39]
Jackie Mae
Yes.
- [27:40]
Mia Wong
And yeah, can you talk a bit about what that's been like doing, you know, like doing this kind of gender affirming care on other trans people who normally could say this in a medical setting. I can count on one finger the number of trans healthcare providers. I mean, I guess if you count pharmacists, I can add like a second finger, like in my entire life. And I'm extremely lucky that I've even gotten one trans healthcare provider who is trans.
- [28:13]
Deja Indigo
Well, it's an honor and a privilege to be able to work with other trans people for gender affirming care for our community because we don't just serve the Vancouver area, we also serve the
- [28:28]
Jackie Mae
PDX area and further, we have patients that commute from hours and hours away.
- [28:35]
Deja Indigo
That is true.
- [28:36]
Mia Wong
Yeah. For people who don't know a little bit of geography stuff that will become important later. So this is Vancouver, Washington, which is just like right across a river from Portland. This amazingly, the fact that technically speaking, this river is like the state border will become important in a little bit.
- [28:57]
Jackie Mae
Yes, yes indeed.
- [28:58]
Deja Indigo
Yes, it will.
- [28:59]
Mia Wong
Oh, boy. Yeah. So, all right, I'm going to. I'm going to ask all of you to put a little pin in city that is technically across the state border from another city, but is like you just drive over a bridge and you're there. Let's go talk about some strike shit.
- [29:13]
Jackie Mae
Mm.
- [29:14]
Mia Wong
Okay. So I guess to start. Can we talk about how organizing kind of first started at. At Real Ulatrolysis?
- [29:22]
Deja Indigo
Yes. It first started because they hired me, Mia.
- [29:27]
Mia Wong
They hired me.
- [29:29]
Deja Indigo
Ever since I was a little girl, I have been enchanted with the idea of a workers union and people working together to make their conditions better. It is something that I have had to learn and practice on my own because I didn't know about the iww. Yeah, it's a thing that I was trying to do before I moved out here and then this opportunity just drops into my lap and it's queer people. And you're working on queer people. I've got goosebumps. It's not because I'm cold and. And how could I, in good conscious, just like let that opportunity go?
- [30:12]
Mia Wong
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:14]
Jackie Mae
Jackie Mae is very much the motive force behind us getting our together and unionizing. I remember from the time that I started, Jackie Mae was talking about having a goal to unionize the shop. We weren't expecting it to be on such a quick timeline, but I was really excited to have somebody else who was into doing this because I've always been a hardcore leftist and an extreme socialist communist. I don't know, whatever label you want to put on me. Workers rights. Like we should own the means of production and we should be the ones receiving all of the benefits from it.
- [31:00]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [31:00]
Jackie Mae
But Jackie Mae has just been like ready to go. But we. We could also talk about like the actual start to. Like what. Okay, what did we actually start doing things to this direction.
- [31:14]
Mia Wong
Right.
- [31:14]
Jackie Mae
You want to take that, Jackie Mae?
- [31:16]
Deja Indigo
Yeah. So like light talks have been going on since I got there back in actually June of last year. It's always just been real light. Real surface level is in. Hey, do you support a union? Would you like to consider being in one one day? And then I go about my day, like converse like that's as far as the conversation goes. Because that's all the information I need at that point.
- [31:40]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [31:41]
Deja Indigo
So I knew who in the building was. Yes. And last month, one of our members, someone who was already in talks with us, was fired. And the circumstances around that person being fired and the vibes were off. Right. Like the previous week, there was a dirty cart that just happened to appear in her room. That would be worth the write up to get her fired.
- [32:17]
Mia Wong
Huh?
- [32:17]
Deja Indigo
That cart couldn't have been hers because before she started school, she moved that cart to another. To her substitute clinician's room. Like, could. Could not be what management said it was.
- [32:33]
Mia Wong
So it. It looks like something that was fabricated.
- [32:36]
Jackie Mae
To clarify this, this union member, this co worker, was going on a leave of absence to attend a certification training program. So that is why she had a substitute clinician taking over her equipment. I should also add that this was the first time they have ever done room inspections on site.
- [33:01]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah.
- [33:01]
Jackie Mae
In fact, the only. They've only done room inspections twice and both times resulted in a termination.
- [33:10]
Mia Wong
Well, that. That's not suspicious at all.
- [33:15]
Jackie Mae
Anyway, sorry, Jackie Mae, please continue.
- [33:19]
Olive
No worries.
- [33:19]
Deja Indigo
It's okay. We're. Listen, we're allowed to rabbit trail, but we come back to. So our friend was fired. Right. It's super duper suspicious.
- [33:29]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [33:30]
Deja Indigo
And I saw an opportunity and I took that opportunity to talk to people about it. And for like a few days after this had happened, nobody knew where she was at. Nobody knew what happened.
- [33:45]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [33:46]
Deja Indigo
So the, the narrative was entirely up to me and just going, this is what they did. And, and we all know this. We all know this person. We've worked Alongside this person, we all recognize her skill and how intelligent she is. She's going to go on to teach this stuff.
- [34:03]
Jackie Mae
It's, it's true.
- [34:04]
Deja Indigo
And it made all of us scared that one of our best could just be removed like that.
- [34:14]
Jackie Mae
Bingo.
- [34:15]
Mia Wong
This is, to my understanding, this is a pretty small shop, right? Like everyone knows everyone else.
- [34:20]
Jackie Mae
Oh yeah.
- [34:21]
Robert Evans
Yes.
- [34:22]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [34:22]
Jackie Mae
Like maybe 15 or 16 practicing clinicians at a given time.
- [34:27]
Mia Wong
Yeah, thereabouts. Which, yeah, I guess makes it more scary when it's someone you know and you're close to just is just suddenly fired.
- [34:37]
Jackie Mae
And I should note that most of us who have worked there are also patients there. So like a lot of these, a lot of our co workers are not just co workers, they're also practitioners that provide gender affirming care to us. So we don't just have like a superficial sense of the clinical skill of these people. We have direct experience.
- [35:02]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [35:03]
Jackie Mae
And that makes it just that much more devastating when it's somebody you know is extremely good at their job is just suddenly gone under very suspicious circumstances.
- [35:18]
Mia Wong
Yeah, that's devastating. So this gets into one of the truly wildest and most distressing parts of this entire story, which is. Can, can you talk about the. I guess I would just call it the most neutral thing I can call it is the loan.
- [35:43]
Jackie Mae
Yes, absolutely. So remember when we kind of put a pin in the fact that Vancouver, Washington is right across the river from Portland, Oregon? So there is a big difference between how the state of Washington and how the state of Oregon regulates the practice of electrolysis. In the state of Oregon, you cannot practice electrolysis without first going through a certification program and passing a certification exam to become certified in the state of Washington. As long as you are practicing under the authority of somebody who has been certified in another state, you can practice electrolysis without certification. In fact, the state of Washington does not currently have their own certification framework for electrolysis. So those of us who work at Real U Electrolysis were all hired without prior certification. I think there may be one or two exceptions over the years, but by and large the overwhelming majority are people who have no prior experience performing electrolysis. So Real you Electrolysis does have certified electrologists on staff who are responsible for the training of new hires. One of the conditions of employment at Real U Electrolysis is to agree to sign a promissory note wherein Real U Electrolysis will basically provide a stipend and pay for all expenses related to receiving certification from a certification program in exchange for four years of work at Real U Electrolysis. Those who sign this note are not required to directly pay back any money unless they either fail to complete their schooling, fail to pass their certification, resign their position within four years, or are terminated. And at that point they are immediately liable to repay the full amount of the promissory note. So essentially, as soon as you enter schooling. And again, this is a condition of employment. Every single person who has been hired by Real U Electrolysis could not start working without signing a contract agreeing to sign this promissory note when it comes time to be sent to school.
- [38:21]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And can you, can you talk about, like, how, how much money is it that you have to pay back if you either get fired or leave?
- [38:28]
Jackie Mae
At least $21,000 in this case. Jesus Christ.
- [38:33]
Mia Wong
Like, oh my God.
- [38:37]
Deja Indigo
Yeah, it's cartoonishly evil.
- [38:41]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [38:42]
Jackie Mae
I should clarify as well that most of us who are hired are not coming into this job from a place of financial privilege. Most of us had some manner of skepticism over this contract, but because the opportunity just seemed so great and because we had not heard any history of, you know, any sort of bad faith actions from management, I think we all just kind of decided, well, I get to work with a bunch of cool trans people on a bunch of cool trans people for decent pay and benefits and they probably won't just fire me once I sign this loan. Like, that wouldn't be cool. And so where this really comes into play is that the union member, the co worker who was fired, as I mentioned before, was on a leave of absence to be in school and basically she was fired. And immediately they demanded repayment in full of this loan. So not only did she lose her job over extremely spurious circumstances, she now was on the hook for $21,000, like immediately. Like, I think the deadline they gave her is in like two days.
- [40:00]
Deja Indigo
So I want to add something to all of that.
- [40:03]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [40:04]
Deja Indigo
They had her sign that loan knowing that she had two write ups on the books and that her next write up within those four years would lead to termination. They knew that. They have that on file.
- [40:21]
Jackie Mae
They admitted that to our faces. We had a group of witnesses who can attest to this because we did all confront them. That's jumping a little bit further ahead in the story.
- [40:33]
Deja Indigo
We'll get there.
- [40:35]
Mia Wong
Yeah, I just, I want to stay here for a second to just sort of just walk through how unbelievably unhinged this is, which is that.
- [40:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [40:45]
Mia Wong
So the condition of working here is that you have to sign like, what is effectively an indentured servitude contract,
- [40:54]
Bina Ahmed
like
- [40:54]
Mia Wong
it's like, okay, you. You have to work here for like four years, and if we ever decide to fire you, you can't leave. And if you ever decide to fire you, you just owe $21,000, which just on the face of it is such an unbelievably exploitative situation because, yeah, this is a bunch of queer and trans people. Like, no, no fucking trans person has $21,000. Like, that's just not a thing.
- [41:22]
Jackie Mae
Like, yeah, certainly none of us, like,
- [41:26]
Mia Wong
what are we doing here? Like,
- [41:30]
Deja Indigo
taking advantage of the trans community.
- [41:33]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And then you have that just as the baseline condition of just everyone has just the doom of Damocles hanging over their head. And then also, you know, like what you were describing, where, okay, you get someone to sign the contract knowing that you can get rid of them after one more infraction. That's such an incredible incentive to like, mistreat and fire people. Because if you fire someone, you can just collect, like, try to collect, like $21,000 from them.
- [42:05]
Deja Indigo
Financially ruin somebody, financially destroy somebody, Render them homeless even.
- [42:11]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, it's what we call a perverse incentive.
- [42:15]
Mia Wong
Yeah. You can just reduce someone effectively into a debt peon. And usually that kind of threat is abstract. This is how we're incentivized to work and to stay in line. If you lose your job, then you're going to like, drown in all of the things you need to do to survive. But no, here it's just. Yeah, you're now $21,000 in debt to this company that just fired you.
- [42:41]
Robert Evans
Yep.
- [42:42]
Jackie Mae
And again, that is due and payable immediately. That the way the contract is worded does not stipulate any sort of repayment period. Now, we have attestations from previous employees who have been fired under this contract and been released from it. So we do know that the owners of Real U Electrolysis will selectively choose to release terminated employees from their contract. However, they have elected not to do that. In the case of this union member, this co worker who was fired last month.
- [43:16]
Deja Indigo
Correct.
- [43:17]
Mia Wong
Yeah. So that also just. That also looks like retaliation.
- [43:21]
Jackie Mae
Your words.
- [43:21]
Mia Wong
Like sort of deliberately your words. Yeah, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't look good. There aren't good answers as to why you would do that in this situation and not in others.
- [43:34]
Deja Indigo
The story gets more fun too.
- [43:36]
Mia Wong
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [43:37]
Jackie Mae
We're just getting started.
- [43:39]
Mia Wong
Before all of this gets even more unhinged, we need to go to, I don't know, maybe a source of hingedness and security. I mean, if that's true, I hope better things happen in your lives. But we're throwing to the products and services that support this podcast. We are back. Let's continue with this story here and get to, I guess, the next set of firings, because this just keeps escalating.
- [44:21]
Deja Indigo
So before we actually get to the next set of firings, we. We would have our first and, deja, correct me if I'm wrong, our second meeting.
- [44:33]
Jackie Mae
You are correct.
- [44:34]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [44:35]
Deja Indigo
We would have our first and second
- [44:36]
Jackie Mae
meeting before the next firing, May 2 and May 14.
- [44:40]
Deja Indigo
Yes. So that next firing would take place
- [44:45]
Jackie Mae
on Monday, May 18th.
- [44:47]
Deja Indigo
That was Monday, May 18th.
- [44:50]
Mia Wong
Yeah. So like, one week ago from when this is getting recorded. Which bear that in mind as the rest of the story plays out. Because the timeline here is so condensed that, like, it's like all of the shit that happens with, like, a bad union busting campaign condensed into the span of, like, three days.
- [45:08]
Deja Indigo
Yes, we are. We are speed running bad boss versus union workers story.
- [45:14]
Mia Wong
Like, this is like, one of the fastest escalations I've ever seen. Before we get to this Monday, let's talk about what happened at those two meetings, because this is genuinely such an impressive pace of, like, how fast all of this got organized.
- [45:31]
Jackie Mae
Yeah. So the first meeting, May 2, we basically gathered every clinician who we believed we could trust, who was not either a manager in training or did not have direct ties to management, and also who was on site because there were some people that we would have loved to have talked to who were off site attending a certification program at another location. So we gathered up everyone we could that started with about eight of us and grew to 10 as the night wore on. We talked about the circumstances around the firing of that co worker who was in school. We all talked about our options for how do we proceed. We voted unanimously to form a union and to do so under the auspices of the Industrial Workers of the World, thanks in part to Jackie Mae, having contact with them and having gotten a bit of a lowdown on, like, what our options looked like.
- [46:30]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [46:31]
Jackie Mae
So that was the TLDR of the first meeting.
- [46:34]
Mia Wong
10 people. That's like two thirds of the shop. Of the total people. Yes.
- [46:40]
Jackie Mae
Of the people who were active practicing clinicians there, I think we were only missing a couple.
- [46:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [46:46]
Mia Wong
Which is really impressive.
- [46:48]
Deja Indigo
I wish we could have got them.
- [46:49]
Jackie Mae
Yeah. We definitely wish we could have gotten to everybody or had been clearer on who was actually not management.
- [47:00]
Mia Wong
Yeah. That's also a thing that, like, management will play a lot of games with who is and isn't union eligible. I Just want to like, stop for a second and be like getting like two thirds or more of a shop to show up to the first meeting and vote to form a union is like, that might be the fastest I've ever seen this happen. It's like when you do this in one meeting, like, yeah, Speed ran the entire organizing process, like, one meeting. It's like unbelievable.
- [47:29]
Deja Indigo
Can we put this on GameStop quick too?
- [47:32]
Mia Wong
Yeah, like, I, I maybe, I don't know, we could submit it for a world record new world record category.
- [47:39]
Deja Indigo
Any percent unanimous, as they say.
- [47:44]
Jackie Mae
Nobody organizes quite as well as a bad boss.
- [47:48]
Mia Wong
That's true. Well, it's, it's you, you, you, you have. Yeah, you have, you have the double benefit of bad boss firing people. And also like, it's a bunch of queer and trans people, which is like, yes. Ideal conditions for organizing.
- [48:03]
Jackie Mae
Yes. So that meeting, that was May 2nd. The next meeting took place on May 14th. Now, Jackie Mae, do you want to talk a little bit before we talk about this meeting? About some of the things that happened in between the two meetings? Like certain actions by management and people who are manager adjacent.
- [48:27]
Deja Indigo
Oh, right, right. Yeah. So our tools in laundry sterilization tech, maybe specialist. I'm not quite sure on the word for it. Salem is married to our director of operations, Zarek Lee.
- [48:49]
Mia Wong
That's. That's, that's. Oh, boy.
- [48:53]
Deja Indigo
But wait, there's more.
- [48:55]
Mia Wong
Oh, no.
- [48:56]
Deja Indigo
Salem actually approached at least one of our, one of our union members to ask directly if we were forming a union.
- [49:07]
Mia Wong
Yeah, which, by the way, you're not allowed to do. You're not supposed to do that, but, you know, that's. Yeah. Great. Incredible stuff.
- [49:16]
Deja Indigo
It's a lovely gray area because Salem isn't management, but technically isn't.
- [49:22]
Mia Wong
Management is simply married to.
- [49:25]
Jackie Mae
Married to management.
- [49:28]
Mia Wong
Technically. Technically legal, but like, management's really, really not supposed to be doing that. Yeah.
- [49:37]
Jackie Mae
I think it also bears clarifying at this point that Zarek Lee, director of operations and effectively the HR department of really Electrolysis, has absolutely heard Jackie Mae express positive union sentiment.
- [49:55]
Deja Indigo
I forgot about that.
- [49:57]
Jackie Mae
This goes back to summer of 2025. Like, there have been multiple instances where people in management have directly heard Jackie Mae talking about being pro union. Granted, Jackie Mae has always been properly elliptical about it in the presence of management.
- [50:16]
Deja Indigo
God, it's hard, but.
- [50:18]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [50:18]
Jackie Mae
But the suspicion clearly established long ago.
- [50:22]
Deja Indigo
Yeah, that is true. That is true.
- [50:26]
Jackie Mae
This will be important.
- [50:27]
Bina Ahmed
Oh, boy.
- [50:29]
Mia Wong
Foreshadowing is a literary technique.
- [50:33]
Jackie Mae
So to continue during these two weeks in between meetings. Thereabouts, yes, we did have Salem, spouse of the Director of Operations, poking around, asking questions.
- [50:44]
Mia Wong
Oh, boy. Yeah. And I will say this is also a very common management tactic.
- [50:48]
Jackie Mae
Of course.
- [50:49]
Mia Wong
And it's part of why, when you're organizing, you need to do the basic power mapping of figuring out who is close to the bosses and who is close to management and what ties they have, because that dramatically affects. Yeah. You two absolutely both know this. But for. For. For the listeners. Yeah. It is very important to figure out who the person who's married to management and will report to them is.
- [51:12]
Jackie Mae
Yes.
- [51:13]
Deja Indigo
So I treat it as game theory. I have treated all of this like it has been a game.
- [51:19]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [51:20]
Deja Indigo
Because that's how I process it. That's.
- [51:23]
Jackie Mae
That's.
- [51:24]
Deja Indigo
That's all I needed to say about that. Go ahead, Deja.
- [51:29]
Jackie Mae
Yeah. So to the credit of every union member, not a single person violated OPSEC on this. Nobody confessed to any union organizing activity.
- [51:42]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [51:43]
Jackie Mae
That doesn't change that they continued to be suspicious. In any case, we had our second meeting on May 14. At that meeting, present were representatives from the IWW as well as a representative from ILWU Local 5. Because at that point, we had not been formally endorsed by a union, and we wanted to get some perspectives from whoever was available to speak to us. And those were the two shops that were available to come talk to us. At that meeting, we again voted unanimously to continue with organizing unionizing. We were initially going to do it under the auspices of ILWU Local 5. However, their onboarding protocols are a little bit more time consuming and involved than the IWWs. And the following Monday, which Jackie Mae will be talking about in just a second, there were some circumstances that sort of forced us to go with the union who could get us on board lickety split.
- [52:53]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah.
- [52:54]
Deja Indigo
So that Monday, I want to say it was like midday. I had just finished with, like, my. I want to say, my first two people and was. I was on my way to the break room to grab a drink, and on my way out, I see my co worker, fellow union member, and even my housemate come out of her office flanked by real, you electrolysis management. And the last time I saw her that day was she had tears streaming down her face and she just goes, jackie May. They fired me. And I responded immediately. Yeah, I got. I want to say, five or six of us together outside of Director of Operations Eric Lee's office. And we voiced our displeasure. We voiced that our co workers should have their jobs back. We voiced that none of us feel safe because of the working conditions. None of us feel safe because of the way management goes about handing out disciplinary actions, the inconsistency with the different things that they will or will not punish. I just see his eyes peeking up over his monitor and he's like, well, I can't discuss what's in somebody's, you know, personnel file. And also, I can't hire them back. My hands are tied. You don't. You don't know all of the documentation on our side. So I go, okay, who else do we gotta talk to? And Zarek Lee points us to president of Real U Electrolysis.
- [54:36]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [54:36]
Deja Indigo
On a landtry. And we go down to her office and we say the same things. And she says, I'm not what is. I'm paraphrasing. I cannot make unilateral decisions.
- [54:50]
Jackie Mae
Yes.
- [54:51]
Deja Indigo
And I asked who else we would have to talk to about this? And she said, that would be co president Leah Lefevre and director of operations Eric Lee. I turned around and right across the hallway from Anna's office is Leah in reception. So we give them the exact same spiel of, we're not happy with this. This needs to be corrected. None of us feel safe about this.
- [55:21]
Jackie Mae
And this was not simply Jackie Mae speaking either. Those of us present all voiced concerns, myself included, you know, was. It was very clearly not the actions of a single individual, but of a concerted group.
- [55:39]
Deja Indigo
Yes, they may trust me to speak for them, but I also know when to be quiet so that they can voice their opinions. At that point, Dejah had finished with all of their appointments and said, hey, I'm done for the day. I'm going home. This isn't me giving you an official resignation. I need to go home and consider my options. And I followed suit with, I'm not giving you a resignation. You have essentially created a family emergency for me.
- [56:10]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [56:11]
Deja Indigo
And now I have to go see to that family emergency that is important. We will come back to that interaction.
- [56:20]
Mia Wong
Oh, boy.
- [56:21]
Deja Indigo
Later.
- [56:22]
Mia Wong
Yes, I will say being one of the two presidents of the company and someone goes, don't fire our co workers. And you go, sorry, that's not like I can't make unilateral decisions is the most absolutely chicken shit response I've ever seen in my entire life. Like, it's like. It's like fucking. It's fucking like Verder von Braun. Like, when the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department. It's like, you are the president of the company.
- [56:49]
Bina Ahmed
Like, what are we doing here?
- [56:54]
Mia Wong
Like, I. I can't make Unilateral decisions. Like, you are the president. Like, there's like three people in management. What are we doing here? I mean, I guess like, I mean, the thing you're doing here is everyone in secession is trying to be like, ah, I actually can't do anything. It's like, yes, you can. You. You do run the business.
- [57:17]
Jackie Mae
But I would also like to note that this conversation held between the group of us with Anna Lantry and Leah lefevre. Very early on in that conversation, Anna Lantry said, this conversation is over and walked away. However, Leah. Yeah, they do that did continue to have a conversation with us. And was the person that we informed that, yeah, we are not resigning. Yeah, anybody who leaves today is doing so because their schedule is clear or they are having a family emergency. Both of these things are acceptable reasons for leaving your shift. And that has been established through ample precedent.
- [57:57]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [57:59]
Jackie Mae
So that was Monday. That was Monday, May 18th.
- [58:03]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [58:05]
Deja Indigo
That's not even all of Monday.
- [58:06]
Jackie Mae
Right.
- [58:07]
Deja Indigo
I want to point out or include that. Straight from the job site, I went home, I grabbed my other roommate who is at the time wasn't a part of the union because wasn't an employee of Real U Electrolysis but is on the Real U Electrolysis hiring list.
- [58:30]
Mia Wong
Oh, so it's like, it's like a contractor situation.
- [58:33]
Jackie Mae
Not quite.
- [58:34]
Deja Indigo
They will work with us in the future.
- [58:37]
Mia Wong
Oh, it just like hasn't been fully hired.
- [58:40]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, that's kind of the way they do things. Like they hire people well in advance of having them actually start work. Like, most of us were hired like months and months and months before we started actually taking shifts.
- [58:52]
Deja Indigo
So Monday I go home, I pick up my housemate who is incredible and has a special interest in documentation and bureaucracy. She and Deja are my two documents and shout out, shout out to VAY because we wouldn't have been able to get here without you. And we went to the IWW over in Portland and we had a meeting with them and we just walked in there with the intention of asking for help from like, their solidarity network of like, hey, we have just been put into like a hardship status at this point because of what has happened. Can you help us, like, with rent? And I want to say that meeting was like two or three hours long. We talked about a lot of plans moving forward and instead of just having support with rent, we came away with a plan of what we would be doing next. And Tuesday came. We had all 11 people of this union meet in the parking lot and sign our petition together. We got it photocopied, we made digital copies. We made sure it was all safe. Our person got that stuff filed away for us, got us some very nice red folders to be able to keep all of these documentation in. And yeah, we were given. I was given a red folder labeled management. And we planned to deliver this on. On Wednesday. Tuesday was quiet. Tuesday was like quiet before the storm quiet. Yeah, we were all braced that I was going to be fired because while I wasn't swearing or rude to management, I wasn't as even toned or level headed as I am right now.
- [61:00]
Jackie Mae
I was also bracing to be fired because I did also do a lot of that speaking and I was extremely emotional at the time as well.
- [61:08]
Deja Indigo
Absolutely.
- [61:09]
Jackie Mae
Oh, I do think there is one little tidbit that is important to mention about the employee who was fired on Monday is not only was this. This person a union member and one of the organizers, this person also had a fully, like, workplace sanctioned and endorsed romantic relationship with the first person who was fired. So like, again, this is, this is not like they were illicitly dating. It's like management had a protocol, had forms and all that for when co workers are dating. It's in the employee handbook that they're okay with that. Yes. And so it looks.
- [61:44]
Mia Wong
So they're like moving through the. Yeah, that's. That's. That's interesting.
- [61:50]
Febreze Announcer
I.
- [61:52]
Mia Wong
That's. Oh, boy. I. Yes, there's a thing this, an FAA guy said about. There's. There's a story of that guy who was like flying around in a lawn chair with like balloons attached to it.
- [62:05]
Jackie Mae
Oh, my God. I know that story.
- [62:07]
Mia Wong
Yeah, and the thing about the. The news calls the FAA guy and the FAA guy goes, we don't know what section of the Federal Aviation Code is violated, but when we figure it out, we're prosecuted with it. And like, that has to be some kind of violation of like, like specifically targeting people in a relationship. Like, there's got, there's got to be something there. But I don't know. And I mean, admittedly American workplace law is a complete nightmare, but that is extremely sketchy and shitty and.
- [62:40]
Jackie Mae
Yes.
- [62:41]
Deja Indigo
Oh, we're gonna get it sorted out.
- [62:44]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [62:45]
Jackie Mae
Oh, yes.
- [62:46]
Mia Wong
Yeah, I just. Oh, boy. Jesus Christ. That. That feels not good. And good Lord.
- [62:54]
Jackie Mae
Okay, so Jackie Mae, please continue.
- [62:57]
Deja Indigo
I slept real good Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Let me just say that I slept real good Wednesday morning. We coordinated and we went. We went a little early, admittedly, I got a little. There was a little bit of adrenaline and I kind of jumped the gun. Just, just, just a hair. We were supposed to wait until 11:55 to deliver our signed petition.
- [63:19]
Jackie Mae
It's okay.
- [63:21]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [63:21]
Deja Indigo
We all had noon appointments and we are all so committed to our patients that none of this process like interrupted patients in treatment. All of this had been coordinated around our schedules so that people got to continue getting treatment.
- [63:43]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, that is correct. There has never been a point where a patient's treatment session has been interrupted or a patient has been abandoned. I'm saying this because there are some accusations from management to that effect. And I would like it on public record that that is absolutely false and that we can all attest to this foreshadowing.
- [64:03]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [64:03]
Deja Indigo
More foreshadowing.
- [64:04]
Jackie Mae
Yes. Sorry.
- [64:05]
Mia Wong
Oh, boy.
- [64:07]
Deja Indigo
So Wednesday morning, I have the privilege, I have the backing of the crew to go serve this paperwork. We had somebody from the union kind of send out, send out a feeler text to find out when the president and co president would be in the building. It wouldn't be until after 12:30. We served that paperwork to Director of Operations Eric Lee. He took that at 11:48. He doesn't really give us a response. Besides, there's a lot here. I'm going to have to read it all thoroughly and get back to you. But we go about our days. I have to leave sight after two of my appointments because I left my phone at a gas station. So I had to leave and come back. It's okay. We got it. It's all good.
- [65:00]
Mia Wong
Yay.
- [65:01]
Deja Indigo
2:51. I'm back on site. I am in my own office. I have co president Leah Lefevre and one other member of management present. And they are firing me. They are handing me three write ups.
- [65:18]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [65:19]
Deja Indigo
Now, the earliest of those write ups, or I should say, I guess the oldest of those write ups, are from May 4, 2026. And it essentially is a write up that says, jackie, you were rude to management. Now let's talk about why. Let's talk about why that write up happened. You see, by that point in time, we were on the third pay period where we were all being given paper checks.
- [65:51]
Jackie Mae
After years. Yeah. Years of direct deposit, like long history of direct deposit, only switch to paper checks.
- [65:57]
Deja Indigo
We were given paper checks. Those checks had been bouncing.
- [66:04]
Mia Wong
Paychecks are bouncing.
- [66:07]
Deja Indigo
Yes.
- [66:08]
Jackie Mae
Yeah.
- [66:08]
James Stout
Yes.
- [66:12]
Jackie Mae
Not just Jackie Mays either.
- [66:14]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah.
- [66:15]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [66:16]
Deja Indigo
That is true. That like I'm. What I will say is on average per pay period, like a handful of us had their checks bounce. That will come into play later. That's foreshadowing.
- [66:28]
Mia Wong
Oh, boy.
- [66:29]
Olive
Yeah.
- [66:30]
Deja Indigo
So my Check bounced once. My bank account went. Okay, that's kind of sus. My check bounced a second time. I currently don't have access to a bank account because my bank has labeled what has happened fraudulent activity. And my bank is investigating dating, not me. Because they've now figured out that it's not me that's doing it. I can prove the checks are bouncing.
- [66:55]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [66:57]
Robert Evans
But.
- [66:57]
Mia Wong
Yeah, but they still locked your bank account. Yes, because. Because the other people's checks bounce. Jesus Christ.
- [67:04]
Jackie Mae
Yeah. So we. We should note here that we all were aware that Jackie Mae was locked out of fair bank account and experiencing financial hardship to the point where we actually did have some of our union members, like, donating food to Jackie Mae.
- [67:25]
Deja Indigo
Solidarity Network came through for me because that kept us fed. That kept us.
- [67:29]
Mia Wong
Like, we.
- [67:30]
Deja Indigo
We were able to have gas for that for the next. Like, to get us to the next payday. Essentially. This. This whole thing would set me back, like, a full pay period. Like, I wouldn't get the last check cashed until we got to the next pay period on Friday because we get paid every two weeks.
- [67:50]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And this is something we've talked about on this show a lot. Is that like, you know what I mean? I think most people listening to this show understand this on an intuitive level, but it's like, if your paycheck fucking bounces, that's really fucking bad. Like.
- [68:09]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah.
- [68:09]
Mia Wong
Holy shit. And it's like.
- [68:11]
Deja Indigo
Yeah.
- [68:11]
Mia Wong
Like, obviously that's gonna cause, like, unbelievable, like, financial distress and it fucking sucks. And I'm really sorry you've been having to deal with that on top of fucking everything else. Because that's just. Yeah, that's something that can just like, completely fuck your entire life. That's through no fault of your own.
- [68:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [68:31]
Mia Wong
It's literally your boss is fucking up.
- [68:34]
Jackie Mae
Yep.
- [68:36]
Mia Wong
God.
- [68:36]
Deja Indigo
I want to note that still to this day, I do not have access to my bank account. As far as I know.
- [68:41]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [68:43]
Deja Indigo
The last week has been really crazy and, like, I haven't been able to get out to, like, or anything to get something new set up.
- [68:51]
Mia Wong
So. So that's just in the. In the, in the background. Like, you're not even getting paid because the checks are bounced.
- [68:56]
Jackie Mae
Yes. And Jackie Mae was understandably distressed over this and explained. Expressed that frustration and that was the cause of a write up that was used to justify termination. Right. Is that. Do I have that right, Jackie Mae?
- [69:10]
Deja Indigo
That is correct. That is the first.
- [69:13]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [69:14]
Deja Indigo
That write up is from May 4th. That write up is from May 4th.
- [69:20]
Mia Wong
I have heard of a lot of bullshit write ups in my time doing this job. Write up for being rude to management because you were talking to them about the fact that your paycheck boun. That is the worst write up I have ever heard that. It's like that, like, even. Even including ones where like. Because obviously, like, people, they'll just like, make up to do a write up for. But, like, that's like a special level of like, oh, no, this did kind of happen, but it's because they up and bounced your paycheck. Jesus Christ.
- [69:56]
Jackie Mae
So, Jackie me, I believe you were recounting the write ups that Leah Lefevre presented to you.
- [70:02]
Mia Wong
Sorry about that. I'm just. I'm just losing my mind. That's so awful.
- [70:08]
Deja Indigo
So the second one is because they did a room inspection. It's really weird. They like doing room inspections when they want to remove somebody.
- [70:15]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [70:16]
Deja Indigo
So there was a room inspection and they were like, your room's not clean enough. Okay. That's your statement. The third write up. Do you remember when I had a family emergency that they caused and I left site because they caused a family emergency?
- [70:34]
Jackie Mae
Yeah.
- [70:36]
Deja Indigo
My third and final write up was because I left early and they tried to say, well, Jackie, you didn't ask for our permission. Excuse me, Jackie Mae, you didn't ask for our permission to leave for the day. You just told me it was happening. And that was my full write up.
- [70:57]
Jackie Mae
I would like to add to this that I myself have multiple documented instances of having to leave work because of a health or mental health emergence situation. And there has never been a situation where I said, may I leave? It has always been, I need to leave. And I have note noted and observed this with other employees as well. None of these incidences ever culminated in a write up or any sort of disciplinary action. So this is clearly inconsistent with ample precedent for the application of disciplinary standards.
- [71:34]
Mia Wong
Yeah, they're just trying to find reasons to get three write ups, which is also like, just a sign of how well y' all are, like, doing your jobs that like. Because, like, normally employers have like, random code infractions that are always just sort of laying around that they can pick up and be like, hey. But it's like they couldn't even, like, find anything. They had to just like, basically fabricate complete the. Just like, absolute nonsense.
- [72:06]
Deja Indigo
Yes.
- [72:07]
Mia Wong
Like, Jesus Christ.
- [72:08]
Jackie Mae
Am I recalling correctly, Jackie Mae, that these are the first instances of any documented disciplinary action against you in your tenure at really? Electrolysis?
- [72:20]
Deja Indigo
Yeah, I'm a good girl. I follow the rules and I do so very, very well so.
- [72:27]
Mia Wong
And then suddenly it's like, oh, here's, here's three write ups. Like again, like the, the, the post facto write up for the hi, I am upset that my paycheck bounced. Converse Jesus.
- [72:44]
Jackie Mae
Yeah. And so I will note that even that very first write up did take place after we were engaged in organizing activity after management had demonstrated suspicion.
- [72:56]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [72:57]
Jackie Mae
And all of these write ups were delivered within a few hours of the delivery of our petition for voluntary recognition.
- [73:05]
Dana Al Kurd
Uh huh.
- [73:06]
Mia Wong
Which I, I, I, I, I will say looks not even just suspiciously like, it looks like they have just like a giant polar bear sitting there. And the polar bear is union retaliation. And they've like painted a little clown face on it and gone. This is a clown, not retaliation for forming a union. It's like, no, that is a polar bear. Like what are we doing here? Oh God.
- [73:41]
Jackie Mae
So what happened next, Jackie May?
- [73:43]
Deja Indigo
Oh gosh. What happened next? Well, you know, I had to clean out my office. So I grabbed the stuff that was important to me. I took my time. I wasn't angry. I didn't, I really didn't speak throughout much of it because at that point the best thing I could do is just take my recording, not say anything. And as soon as I was out of the office, I sent a message to the union members that said, hey, I was just fired. They walked me out of the building. If we're going to do something about this, we need to do something about this now. And that was at 2:51. By 4:01pm Wednesday afternoon, we had the rest of the union organize a, organize and stage a walkout in solidarity.
- [74:40]
Mia Wong
That's really quick.
- [74:42]
Deja Indigo
I'm gonna let Deja take over. Cause I was outside.
- [74:45]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [74:45]
Jackie Mae
Yeah. So at the point that we found out Jackie Mae had been terminated, we called an emergency vote in our secure messaging platform that we use to coordinate things and we voted in favor of doing a walkout once we had each finished with our obligations to patients. In fact, I actually had an appointment scheduled from 3:15 to 3:45 that at that point I elected to continue that appointment and I did so. I provided treatment as usual, cleanup as usual, chart noting as usual, not a single person who engaged in this walkout did so without completing their scheduled treatment in that time slot. Once that appointment was finished and everything was in compliance within my room and the rooms of those who were not stuck in appointments. Because we did have a couple of union members who were in longer appointments who were not able to join the walkout immediately. Those of us who are free did walk out. And when we did this, we spoke directly to Leah lefevre, who was sitting at the reception desk, and said that we are staging a formal walkout in protest of the wrongful termination of Jackie Mae.
- [76:07]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [76:07]
Jackie Mae
And this is not a resignation. This is a legally protected action under the National Labor Relations Act. Leah then said that anyone who walked out that door must immediately surrender their keys and was no longer welcome on the premises.
- [76:23]
Mia Wong
Now, that's. Jesus Christ. Sorry, I was just. In terms of, like, open retaliation for union activity, like, oh, boy. Yeah, we were.
- [76:39]
Jackie Mae
Oh, honestly, Mia, we were so gobsmacked at the. The just absurdity that she would take such a blatant action of retaliation, that our response was, are you sure you want to do that? And the answer was yes. So initially, we did not return our keys because we wanted to confer with somebody from the iww. So we spoke with an IWW representative who advised us that their demand for the return of the keys was a lawful demand for the return of company property and that we should comply with that. So we did. We gathered up our keys. We sent a representative back in to return them, and at that point, we were officially on strike. We reunited with Jackie Mae in the parking lot. We started strategizing about how we were going to do this. IWW sent some folks our way to, like, provide support. I took off to pick up some art supplies so that we could make signs and just general, like, things like water and snacks. Our other union members, who were currently inside treating patients, finished their appointments as scheduled and emerged when they were no longer responsible for any patient care, also turned in their keys. At that point, we did have an IWW representative on scene who accompanied those employees back inside to return the keys and to confirm to Leah LeFevre directly that this is not a resignation. It cannot be construed as a resignation, that this is a protected organizing action and that all we were doing was complying with a lawful demand for the return of company property. We have plenty of witnesses to this, regardless of any statement that they may choose to make to the contrary, which
- [78:32]
Mia Wong
also, I just want to know. This is the first time I've ever gotten time stamps. This is the best documented one of these I've ever seen. Like, y' all are very organized. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. No.
- [78:45]
Jackie Mae
No, we're not. We're not playing around.
- [78:47]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [78:48]
Jackie Mae
So at that point, Jackie May, I think you can take it from here.
- [78:52]
Deja Indigo
Yeah. So real quick, I gotta go back.
- [78:55]
Jackie Mae
We got.
- [78:56]
Deja Indigo
I. I forgot A very important detail about Monday after. After my co worker, union member and housemate was fired. In talking to Zarek Lee, I looked him in the eyes and I told him, don't do this. I said, please don't do this. Please don't call my bluff on this. Please don't make me do this. And we're here now. I. Jumping back to Wednesday, I had to go off site. I was meeting with some IWW members who were. We were mainly discussing what we were going to do next in or what options we had in response to a mass firing.
- [79:41]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [79:42]
Deja Indigo
We spent a couple hours at that. I came away understanding a whole bunch more as to what we're doing. I returned to the shop and I think I don't remember it very well because I was all emotion and adrenaline at that point in time.
- [80:01]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [80:02]
Deja Indigo
What I will say is that when Anna Lantry and Leah Lefevre were getting in their cars to leave sight, I made sure that they heard me, that the block heard me, that a good chunk of downtown Washington could hear. Could hear my anger and my passion.
- [80:23]
James Stout
If.
- [80:24]
Deja Indigo
I don't know if you can tell in my voice right now, but I kind of went a little too hard on it. And it's why I sound like I do.
- [80:32]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [80:32]
Jackie Mae
Now a little bit scratchy. It happens. I'm honestly surprised I can speak as well because there has been lots of chanting and singing and yelling and.
- [80:43]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [80:43]
Jackie Mae
Because we have been on the picket line pretty much since then, every single day that the business is open.
- [80:48]
Deja Indigo
That is correct.
- [80:50]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Which I want to roll back for a second and just point out that, like, going from. Yeah, we all signed our union petitions and then we delivered it the next day, and then that same day everyone is on strike is astonishing. The pace of it is absolutely incredible. And then also just. It says a lot about the solidarity that you all have and all of your, like, y' all's character that. A, yeah, there's just. Everyone does a walkout and goes on strike. And then B, also, I think it speaks to, like, who you're fighting for here, both each other and also the fact that, like, all of you were so careful to make sure that your patients got their care is. Yeah, it's something that I think speaks. It says a lot about the kind of people all of you are. And it says a lot about the kind of people that management is that this is what they're doing to people who both fight for each other and also care deeply about the patients and the people that they're taking Care of.
- [82:01]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, Yeah, I really do. I know Jackie Mae and I are the ones who are kind of operating as the mouthpiece, but I absolutely need to express the deepest, most sincere appreciation for all of the other union members because, you know, not everybody involved in this has been as just like, gung ho angry. Like, screw it, let's do this. Like, this has been really difficult and nerve wracking for a lot of them. But you know what? They have followed through and persevered and not a single person who started this with us has switched sides or dropped out. Everybody has been so brave and so committed and showing up so fiercely. And yeah, we are also, like, our patience are still the most important thing. Like, yes, we've been picketing, but we have not been turning anybody away from crossing the picket line.
- [82:59]
Mia Wong
We.
- [83:00]
Jackie Mae
Every patient that shows up to be treated by one of the very few people who is still on site providing care at Real U Electrolysis crosses the line with our complete blessing. And we are absolutely vocal and unequivocal about that, that we are not trying to deny anybody care. And in fact, like, we are reaching out to other electrology providers out there to, you know, try to offer some options to our patients who have chosen to forego their care out of solidarity. You know, we really, we want to get back to work and go back to giving care to our people, but management has made that impossible.
- [83:43]
Mia Wong
Yeah. I think one of the things that comes through really clearly here is like, yeah, how willing management is to just hurt people and how dedicated all of you are to making sure that people you're caring for get their care. And also the just astonishing amount of bravery that it takes to not only go on strike and continue to be on strike, but also to do that in a situation where getting fired potentially means that you have to fight off paying the company that was employing you, that you're striking against $21,000. That is some of the worst conditions imaginable. And all of you did it anyways. And it's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.
- [84:31]
Jackie Mae
Thank you.
- [84:32]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [84:33]
Deja Indigo
It's almost pride. It's 2026. We're making history here. This union is for trans people, by trans people, to provide care.
- [84:45]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [84:46]
Deja Indigo
To, by and large, other trans and queer people. And weirdly, I have to say thank you to our two bosses because if they hadn't have made the decisions that they made, things could have been so different. It didn't have to be this way.
- [85:01]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [85:02]
Deja Indigo
Is what I have to say. It didn't have to be this way. But they chose this. They chose this. And we have chosen at every time, every. Every opportunity to choose each other and to choose our community and go, no, you're not going to bully one of us. We're not allowing this anymore. We are sticking together.
- [85:20]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And it's. It's been really incredible seeing the way that all of you have. Have taken this opportunity and taken all of these risks to fight for each other. There's a quote that I heard about you from management about why they hired a bunch of trans people that. But I was wondering if you could tell the audience what that quote is, because. Jesus Christ.
- [85:41]
Jackie Mae
It's a super majority of trans people, which is super rare for almost. Almost the entire workforce.
- [85:47]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [85:48]
Robert Evans
Yes.
- [85:49]
Deja Indigo
So this quote comes from President Anna landry from the Fourth of July Company barbecue held at their house in 2025.
- [86:05]
Mia Wong
Oh, no.
- [86:06]
Deja Indigo
With this eaten grin, she says, yeah, if you pay a trans woman $30 an hour and you give her health insurance and a little bit of respect, she will march through a brick wall for you.
- [86:24]
Jackie Mae
Jesus Christ.
- [86:26]
Mia Wong
Like, there's two immediate obvious angles. One, it's like, oh, so you, like, knew what. Like you knew what you were doing here, right? You were deliberately hiring. You were deliberately hiring because you thought. Because you thought they were. They would be easier to exploit. And that's hideous.
- [86:42]
Deja Indigo
Those are your words.
- [86:43]
Mia Wong
Yeah, like, that. That's. That's. Yeah. This is my. This is my analysis of. This is like, that's. Jesus Christ. And then b. Also, this is. This is really some, like, your chickens are coming home to roost. Like, you.
- [86:58]
Bina Ahmed
You.
- [86:58]
Dana Al Kurd
You.
- [86:58]
Mia Wong
You have sown the wind and you are now reaping the whirlwind. Because it is true that trans people get treated like absolute shit. And it's true. Very nice to get a job where you're not being treated like shit. But it's also true that if you decide to fuck over a bunch of trans women, like, we will fight for each other. Like, trans people and queer people will fight for each other. And I think that's one of the sort of beautiful things about, you know, as. As much as all of this absolutely fucking sucks. But, like, the fact that you were able to pull this many people off the line immediately and get a strike going, you know, that has, like, almost all of the clinicians are on strike. Like, it's this real refutation of what management believed about trans people. Yep. Which is like, no, actually, you can't just fucking sit there and exploit us because we will organize and fight.
- [87:49]
Deja Indigo
Yeah.
- [87:49]
Mia Wong
We'll fight for each other.
- [87:51]
Olive
We will.
- [87:52]
Jackie Mae
And I do want to stress too, like, the diversity of our workforce. Like, we are not all trans women. We come like a variety of backgrounds, a variety of ages. You know, like, I. I don't know how old the oldest among us is, but I know I'm 43. And we have somebody as young as 18 on the workforce and they're all
- [88:12]
Mia Wong
on the picket line together. It's. It's beautiful. It's. It's incredible. What is, what is the state of things sort of right now? And what are you fighting for in the strike? And I guess, how can people help?
- [88:26]
Jackie Mae
Big questions. Well, we are officially endorsed by the IWW. We are now IWW Industrial Union. 610. The picket is ongoing. Our fellow union members are on the picket line right now as we are recording this.
- [88:42]
Deja Indigo
Yep.
- [88:42]
Jackie Mae
At this point, management has elected not to bargain with us. They have sent a copy and paste letter to all of us who were present for the walkout on May 20, basically requesting a response and making some demonstrably materially false allegations about the nature of the walkout and the conversations that were had with management. So we have a letter from the union that we are going to send from the union email address and will be endorsed by all the individual members. But other than that, that, that's the only contact we've had with management. So they do not seem interested in bargaining or in resolving the strike. They have not asked for demands. Our demands are fairly simple.
- [89:33]
Mia Wong
Having management go, no contact during a strike is not normal. Like completely, literally no contact except for one email. That's like, weird. By management through the strike standards. Like, usually they're at least communicating like. Like sometimes they do this, but like, that's by management standards.
- [89:52]
Deja Indigo
So I can explain why that is.
- [89:54]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [89:54]
Deja Indigo
Do you remember earlier when Deja said that Anna Lantry had declared that this conversation was over?
- [90:02]
Mia Wong
It's still over.
- [90:04]
Deja Indigo
It's still over.
- [90:07]
Mia Wong
Oh, my God.
- [90:08]
Deja Indigo
This conversation is still over because that's what she tells herself when she needs to feel in control.
- [90:17]
Jackie Mae
So we would assume.
- [90:18]
Deja Indigo
So I would assume that is that is true. I've been treating lists like game theory, and that opinion is purely speculative. What's not speculative is our demands. Reinstatement of employment of all union members, including those terminated prior to May 20, 2026. The expungement of all disciplinary records for all reinstated employees. Back pay for all reinstated employees. The immediate cessation to any and all collections activities related to the outstanding debts owed to Real U Electrolysis by any and all union members. Voluntary recognition of Real U Electrolysis Workers United IWW, IU610, and the immediate commencement of bargaining for a new labor contract wherein our right to strike shall not be curtailed.
- [91:17]
Mia Wong
Yeah, this is like, one of the things that I think about a lot in terms of just how unbelievably unreasonable management is being, which is that those are such unbelievably reasonable and moderate demands. Like, I don't know, like, when you reach the point where like. Like paychecks are bouncing because your bosses are fucking you. Like, just. Just the amount of reasonableness and maturity that all of you are showing and the just mix of staggering incompetence and evil that management is showing is. It's. It's. It's really staggering.
- [91:53]
Robert Evans
And.
- [91:54]
Mia Wong
Yeah, and I guess that leads me to the other part of that, which is. Yeah, how. How can people support y'? All?
- [92:01]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, that's sort of like an ongoing thing we're working on putting together. We don't really have, like, a web presence at the time of this recording. We do have an email address for the union that we've been directing people towards. And that is all lowercase, all one word. RealUnion, electrolysismail.com and that's. Electrolysis is E, L, E, C, T R O. Electronic Lysis.
- [92:30]
Mia Wong
Yeah, we'll put the email in the description and.
- [92:33]
Jackie Mae
Fantastic.
- [92:34]
Mia Wong
When media stuff and like, social media stuff gets online, we'll put that in the description too.
- [92:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [92:39]
Jackie Mae
Right now that is the best way to reach us. Believe you could also reach out to the IWW in Portland, since that's who we're working with. They do coordinate things like strike funds and financial assistance and all that. And so we do have their resources available to us. And that might be the most expedient way. But yeah, we are working as fast as we can to get other things going, like an Internet presence.
- [93:06]
Mia Wong
This has all happened so quickly. Astonishing. Also, do you want people to show up to your pickets? And if so, where is that?
- [93:15]
Jackie Mae
Oh, please, we would love that.
- [93:17]
Deja Indigo
The address for that is 907 Harney street in Vancouver, Washington. Downtown Vancouver, Washington. I'll say that again. It's 907 Harney Street.
- [93:29]
Mia Wong
Awesome.
- [93:30]
Deja Indigo
Come out. Show your support. Thank you.
- [93:32]
Jackie Mae
Yeah, and the picket does take place, like, at the mouth of the parking lot. I know there has been some confusion from some folks who wanted to come out as to where they meet us. You know, it's on. On Harney Street. Like, just listen for the music and the cheers. And you'll find us.
- [93:49]
Mia Wong
Yeah, I've been out to visit the picket line, and it's a really sweet time. Everyone there is great. And as always, we're bringing picket lines. Just being on a picket line, just in support is an incredible experience. And also, if you can bring food and water and stuff, it's always something
- [94:11]
Deja Indigo
that helps a lot.
- [94:14]
James Stout
Oh, yeah.
- [94:14]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [94:16]
Deja Indigo
Thank you. By the way.
- [94:17]
Jackie Mae
Yes. I would like to also add, as far as support is, it's not just us who need support. It's also our patients.
- [94:25]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [94:25]
Jackie Mae
So anybody who is practicing electrolysis in the, like, greater Portland, Vancouver area who is willing to provide care to our displaced patients, please reach out to that email address as well so that we can direct them to you.
- [94:43]
Mia Wong
Awesome. Well, Deja, Jackie Mae, thank you so much for coming on the show. And, yeah, I hope we can talk to you fairly soon after you win.
- [94:53]
Jackie Mae
Thank you. Thank you.
- [94:54]
Deja Indigo
Thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us tell our story.
- [94:57]
Mia Wong
Yeah, of course.
- [94:58]
Jackie Mae
This is incredible. This is such a big help. And you also are such an inspiration and such a treasure to this community. I've been doing so good at not fangirling over being on your show, but I am a longtime listener, and so this is just like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm talking to me a mom right now.
- [95:18]
Mia Wong
Well, I. I think, you know, a. I want to say I think what you're doing is significantly more inspiring than me going on and doing a podcast. Like, the fact that you. You running this strike is just fucking incredible. And the fact that you're fighting for your people and fighting for your patience is a just unbelievable credit to all of you as people. And two, you know, like, just like two, two, two, two. Trans people in general. You are a credit to us all.
- [95:48]
Jackie Mae
Thank you.
- [95:50]
Mia Wong
Also, I want to say this is more evidence of something I've been saying on this show for a long time. But, like, the people who form unions, it's not some kind of just, like, special class of people. It's just literally, it's ordinary, everyday people like you, the listener, who are the people who join these things and build these movements and fight for them. And, you know, like, you, too, can be the person who builds. Builds the union in your workplace and fights forward and wins.
- [96:22]
Jackie Mae
Preach.
- [96:23]
Mia Wong
And when we work together, when we organize together, when we fight, we can fucking win.
- [96:28]
Deja Indigo
We can.
- [96:29]
Joey Mogul
Yeah.
- [96:29]
Deja Indigo
If we're done, I need to get out to the front lines so I can get back to hollering at these people because they need hollered at.
- [96:36]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [96:37]
Jackie Mae
I'm all fired up now. So.
- [96:47]
Mia Wong
This is George Taveras and Sam Taggart from Stradiolab.
- [96:51]
Jackie Mae
Okay, picture it.
- [96:52]
Mia Wong
Your apartment after a Saturday workout. The gym bag, the couch, maybe even the car. Mi amor. It's a full novella of odors, and not the glamorous kind. That's where Febreze comes in. Boost, spray, spritz, plug or clip.
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Deja Indigo
It doesn't just mask odors, it fights them.
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Mia Wong
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Febreze Announcer
Need a quick car rescue? Clip a Febreze car vent clip and
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Deja Indigo
map your ride to freshness.
- [97:29]
Mia Wong
And don't forget the fabric refresher.
- [97:31]
Febreze Announcer
While you can't cram that cushion in
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Mia Wong
the washer, you can top off every pillow fluff with a spritz of fabric refresher because home should smell like you. Fabulous. Fresh. Unforgettable.
- [97:41]
Febreze Announcer
Febreze is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality.
- [97:50]
Mia Wong
You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact awards podcast, available June 1 on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [97:57]
Bina Ahmed
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- [98:31]
Deja Indigo
Strong and Will Friedle from Pod Meets World.
- [98:34]
Mia Wong
You know what I didn't expect?
- [98:35]
Deja Indigo
Becoming best friends with Chewy's customer service.
- [98:38]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh, been there. I've chatted with them as late as midnight.
- [98:41]
Bina Ahmed
They actually get pet people.
- [98:43]
Deja Indigo
And if Pickles or Lucky hate something, I just send it back. 100% satisfaction guarantee. Gives you a whole year to make a return, no questions asked.
- [98:53]
Bina Ahmed
Meanwhile, I'm over here ordering everything for bill and brunch.
- [98:56]
Dana Al Kurd
Food, treats, beds, toys.
- [98:59]
Bina Ahmed
Because Chewy has over 100,000 products to choose from and it shows up in like a day.
- [99:04]
Mia Wong
I mean, my dog Sammy thinks the delivery driver is her personal assistant and
- [99:08]
Deja Indigo
I'M not sure she's wrong. It's not just for dogs and cats either. They've got stuff for birds, fish, reptiles. The list goes on and on.
- [99:16]
Dana Al Kurd
And the health side is huge for me too. Prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits.
- [99:22]
Deja Indigo
They're even opening vet clinics now. My cat pretends he doesn't care, but he benefits.
- [99:27]
Dana Al Kurd
Chewy just makes the whole pet parent
- [99:29]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
thing easier for life.
- [99:30]
Bina Ahmed
With pets. The answer is chewy.
- [99:32]
Dana Al Kurd
Save $20 on your first order with free shipping at chupanions.chewy.com World Dozens of
- [99:39]
Bina Ahmed
executive orders, thousands of anti LGBTQ+ bills,
- [99:43]
Jackie Mae
all designed to harm people.
- [99:44]
Mia Wong
We know people.
- [99:46]
Bina Ahmed
We love the people.
- [99:47]
Jackie Mae
People we are.
- [99:48]
Bina Ahmed
Every day Lambda Legal is in court fighting back. And when we take a stand, we're
- [99:53]
Jackie Mae
standing as the last line of defense
- [99:55]
Bina Ahmed
between real human beings and harm. But we don't do it alone.
- [99:59]
Jackie Mae
With every act of support, you stand
- [100:01]
Mia Wong
with us and together we'll hold the line.
- [100:04]
Jackie Mae
Fund the fight@lambdalegal.org donate.
- [100:25]
Olive
Hi and welcome to Outlaw, a podcast about how the law is used to crush dissent in the U.S. i'm your host Olive. On the previous episode of Outlaw on It Could Happen Here, we zoomed in on legal repression of rapid responders in ICE occupied Minneapolis. On this episode I'm joined by Bina, Joey and Mo, movement attorneys based in New York, Illinois and California. In this conversation we zoom out to talk about the larger trends and repression of resistance to ICE activity across the country and how to prepare for the long road ahead from the north, from
- [101:04]
Mia Wong
the south, from everywhere.
- [101:06]
Olive
Welcome to Outlaw to start. Could you all introduce yourselves, the work you do and how it connects to the repression of anti ICE protest activity.
- [101:16]
Joey Mogul
Okay, I guess we're going to start with the oldest here. My name is Joey Mogul. I am based in Chicago. I am the Director of Movement Partnerships at Movement Law Lab, which is a national organization that is very much in the anti authoritarian fight in the nation. Prior to joining Movement Law Lab, I was at the People's Law office for over 26 years where I did mostly civil rights litigation against law enforcement officials and criminal defense of police violence survivors as well as protesters and organizers, and at different points have been proud to represent several organizers and many movements seeking justice and liberation. I am also part of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and a board member of the Chicago Torture justice center and very much involved in the movement for justice, redress and particularly reparations for Chicago Police torture survivors during the surge here in Chicago, I was proud to work with a group known as the Black Community Care Collective, serving as a coordinator of their legal committee. And that was a group that was very much involved in the resistance and care work that was happening during Operation Midway Blitz.
- [102:38]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
Joey, I don't know if you're the oldest person here, but I was referred to today as a Gen X loser, if that makes you feel any better. My name is Maura Meltzer Cohen. Everybody calls me Mo. I am an attorney in private practice in New York, and I work in particular to defend people against the politically motivated abuse of the legal system. I also teach federal Indian law, professional responsibility and lawyering at CUNY School of Law to the world's best and most brilliant law students.
- [103:18]
Bina Ahmed
Hi everybody. Bina Ahmed, she her pronouns. I also have been referred to as an elder. And I don't know when that happened, but here we are. I am currently an associate at a law firm in LA called Hadselt Stormer Renegade, where I practice civil rights impact litigation and also where we are external general counsel for several movement groups including Muslims for Just Futures and Jewish Voice for Peace. Before going to Hadsel Stormber and switching to civil rights, I was a state and federal public defender for nearly a decade. A state defender in New York, been a federal defender here in la. Prior to that, I practiced international law and animal rights law. And a lot of my motivation as well has been to support movements and organizers fighting back against the state repression. And that's been a big part of my work, giving Know youw Rights trainings, advising people and organizers and organizations on their rights and what they, you know, what the law says you can and can't do from a radical lens.
- [104:21]
Olive
Well, thank you all for being here over the past few years, from the movement for Palestinian liberation to the many ways people are organizing against ICE and authoritarianism today. I'm curious to start by just hearing a little bit about what broad shifts you're tracking right now in the state's playbook for crushing dissent.
- [104:41]
Joey Mogul
Well, I mean, I think that we've seen and you're talking to people who've represented organizers and activists who have been prosecuted by state actors for decades. I think that what we're seeing, particularly with this administration, is the weaponization of federal charges. And we're seeing the weaponization of federal charges en masse. And I think this is by design. We are seeing that with the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number seven issued by President Trump and his administration, where they are wanting to enlist, the use of Joint Terrorism Task Force to go after people they deem to be, quote, domestic terrorists and that means they are going after individuals who they claim have extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, anti American sentiment. I don't believe we agree with these determinations and in fact we absolutely oppose and object to these determinations. But these are individuals who do not agree with this administration that views or takes on immigration, on gender, on anti black violence and the rest. And we see though that this administration is actually working hand in glove with one another. So after the issuance of national security Presidential Memorandum no. 7, we now have Pam Biani and the U.S. attorney's office issuing this memorandum 25-12-4, where they are basically calling on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, they're calling on federal agents and they're calling on the Department of Justice to go after organizers and activists throughout the Nation. They list 27 enumerated crimes in those memos, things like rioting, looting, so called doxing, swatting, conspiracies to impede or assault law enforcement officers, destruction of property and the rest, as well as trying to enlist the use of the IRS and other tax crimes to go after organizers and organizations in several ways. Essentially, anyone who opposes this administration is someone in the target sites.
- [106:45]
Olive
Can you tell me more about what these federal charges are and what is new about what we're seeing right now?
- [106:52]
Joey Mogul
So now what we've seen since the onset of this administration, so for over a year now, we have seen the exponential rise in federal charges being lodged against organizers. I think that is very much a different landscape than we have seen in decades. And I don't want to say there hasn't been the use by the Department of Justice to bring federal charges in the past, but not in this massive scale that we are currently seeing it right now. And so what we are seeing is, I would say in particular we're seeing these assault, impeding, harassing officer charges, which is 18 USC section 111 being brought in scores across the nation. That is not something we typically have seen before. We are also seeing charges of conspiracy to impede officers, 18 USC Section 241. Again, that's not something we generally have seen before. Generally I can say, for example, as someone who was in Chicago who was part of representing protesters who were protesting the Democratic National Convention. Generally, the federal government and federal agencies don't get involved in protest related activity. But for arson cases prior to the Trump administration, that playbook is out and this new playbook is in. So we are absolutely seeing the federal government stepping in and engaging in this policing and persecution of protesters and organizers in a way that we have not seen before. That said, there's a silver lining here is the federal government is overreaching in so many of these cases and many of these charges are being dismissed, many of these charges are being declined by U.S. attorneys. And there have been several not guilty verdicts in LA as well as in Chicago as well as Miami. And further, what I think is striking, and I think that this is really unheard of for criminal defense attorneys in particular, is we're actually seeing grand juries refusing to indict in these cases, cases. And given how biased grand jury investigations go, how one sided they are, to have the grand juries come back and not return an indictment really is showing that people are resisting and they are not buying the government's slogan and lines and playbook on this. And they are saying, no, we're not going to put up with this. So while on the one hand it's a whole new landscape, we're also seeing the counterpart of people resisting. And that includes in the federal courts,
- [109:27]
Olive
if the term grand jury is new to you, it's basically a special jury in federal criminal cases that is appointed to decide if there's enough evidence to bring the official criminal charge, the indictment against a defendant. But they're super rigged against the defendant. Basically they always indict. And often the grand jury process is just an information gathering tool for the government. Especially in movement cases, people get subpoenaed to testify before grand juries in a way that often seems just like a fishing expedition because whatever they say can be used against them and only the prosecution gets to present evidence to the grand jury. There's a lot more to say there, but check out the show notes and I'll link some really important conversations and resources about grand juries.
- [110:15]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
I think that's all exactly right, Joey, but it isn't a hundred percent new, right. What the Trump administration is doing is that they are able to police First Amendment protected identities, beliefs and associations by trying to define those beliefs, identities and associations as terrorism. And so there's a whole apparatus for fighting terrorism that they then can pull in, draw upon resources they can use and legal authorities that they can exercise as long as the thing that they're policing is something that can be called terrorism. Well, by defining all of these things as terrorism, that lets them sort of trigger all of these resources and authorities. Those resources and authorities were not put in place by this administration. They were put in place post 9 11. They were put in place by Barack Obama. They were put in place by Joe Biden. Right. And so this is Not a problem with the Trump administration. This is a problem with the surveillance state. This is a problem with consolidating federal police authority and, and making it easier and easier for the federal law enforcement apparatus to assert jurisdiction over what we would normally understand to be state level matters, such as garden variety protest. And so the shift is not one of kind as much as it is a shift in scope where we're seeing the federal government treating, as I said, garden variety protest conduct as though it is militant revolutionary action.
- [112:21]
Joey Mogul
No, I totally agree with that. And to underscore your point, not a single law has needed to be passed. There's been no legislation that's needed to be changed in order to effectuate these prosecutions whatsoever. Let alone this immigration enforcement, this all pre existed. The Trump administration, his administration hasn't passed a single law. So I absolutely agree with you. I'm just saying, you're right. The garden variety level of prosecutions we haven't seen, and it's the scale of this. But again, we absolutely know, for example, the Biden administration pursued the FACE act against individuals in Florida regarding one of these false clinics. It's not that these tools weren't used before. I just think the scope and scale is not what we've seen.
- [113:06]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
Yeah, and I totally agree. And I think it's important to note that the fact that the law hasn't changed is important not simply because the laws already existed to bring these prosecutions, but because the law actually hasn't changed, which means the First Amendment remains in effect, which means that a lot of these prosecutions, as you pointed out, Joey, are going nowhere because they actually can't really be sustained under the current regime.
- [113:38]
Bina Ahmed
Yeah, the scale and the aggressiveness and the scope, I think is something we haven't really dealt with before. You know, in terms of it being not new. I mean, we know the founding of this country and it's not a just system. And I think if we just also start from that, that is the system that protects property and white nationalism and violence and power and capitalism, then I think we can sort of like see where these powers originated from and where the structure originated from. And we've also seen that used against radical black activists, against the American Indian movement. So a lot of these things that we're seeing now were tested on communities of color prior to seeing, okay, what works, what doesn't work, and then bringing this surge, I think, to our communities. I think, in addition to, I think what Joy was saying about the FACE act, that is something we haven't really seen. Prosecutions under the FACE act before. Right. Because the FACE act is actually technically to protect access to abortion clinics. And I think that one thing that this administration is doing is finding creative different ways to manipulate the laws that are already terrible to go after folks in a way that we haven't seen before. Like Mo was saying, like so much of the work that we've done defending protesters and movements, a lot of it is state, of course, you know, some has always been federal, but a lot is usually state. And so then see these federal, not only prosecutions for the FACE act, or I know we'll get into material support prosecutions, but also like civil litigation, which I think is something we've never, not never, but really were not prepared for or dealt with as a movement before these massive civil pieces of litigation that while on the one hand are brought mostly by private actors, like Zionist actors, we know that they're really coordinated by and with the administration because then the administration has mimicked bringing these same lawsuits against these very same activists for the same causes when we know that they're in coordination. And so I think that's also really important to know is that the civil component, you know, the movement, of course, like criminals, where we've always been the most concerned, is someone's liberty is on the line, someone's life is on the line. But civil is also like this slow death, right, of like time and money and just draining organizations. That I think is something that we've now had to really grasp.
- [115:52]
Olive
Can I ask you a follow up question, Bina? Can you break down for people who are listening and really not in the legal world, why a civil case impacts someone's life, why civil cases against activists are really disruptive to movements.
- [116:06]
Bina Ahmed
Sure, there are many ways. So when a civil case lands, I mean, first you don't have the right to free counsel like you do with a criminal case. It's not guaranteed in the Constitution. You're not facing prison time and incarceration, so you're not guaranteed that. So one, you have to find either free counsel or you can pay for someone to defend you. And when the lawsuit lands, there's so many things that happen. There's an affirmative obligation for you as the one who's being sued to preserve any evidence that could be relevant to the case that is completely antithetical to what a lot of movements do. We don't like save documents and then turn them over to the other side. We're going to keep our work internal and our organizing and who we work with and civil lawsuits really make that really difficult because you have to turn over discovery if it gets that far in the case. And you can't delete things and you can't let things get deleted, like on signal. And if, you know, you can be sanctioned. And there's all these things that could happen if they find out that that happened, and then you're subject to, you know, other things, like being deposed, being questioned by the other side about things you don't want to talk about and that are really antithetical to what we, what we do. And these cases can go on for years and years. And even if you win, there can be appeals, there can, you know, there's. There's just so much that doesn't feel like it ever ends with civil litigation, and so much where people, you know, even just have moved on in their lives. Like, I've moved to a different city, have a different job now, but you're still always tied back to this civil case. And there's no sort of like, right to a speedy trial in a civil case. Right. That's. That's for a criminal case. So all of this stuff, and I'm sure there's many other things I'm not mentioning that you have to go through or that impact your life once you're being civilly sued, but a lot of that, you know, it's. It's not, again, like things that we have really dealt with as a movement before and, and really importantly, people don't have the money to pay for lawyers for years and years and years. And it's really expensive to do civil litigation and civil defense. It goes on forever. You have to do so many different pieces of discovery and motions, and all of that is so much more involved. And it really, I think part of the tactic is to bankrupt organizations. That's a big part of why these actors are bringing these civil suits.
- [118:29]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
I just want to intervene strategically at this moment to say that everything that Joey and Bina are talking about is true and critical and important, and we need to be so alert to the way that these federal apparatuses are being deployed against our communities. But I also want to say that one of the things we have seen over the last couple of years that I think is so important and we have to hang on to for dear life, is that when we fight, we win. And so what we're starting to see now, you know, we just saw some of my impressive and beloved colleagues at CUNY School of Law are litigating a case right now in the federal courts about Columbia University's repression of student activists. And what we're seeing is the court coming back with these rulings that say anti Zionism is not hate speech. Columbia University acting at the behest of the executive, makes them subject to the constraints of the First Amendment. It's potentially violative of the First Amendment to discipline students for engaging in speech. Right. We're seeing people fight these federal cases, both criminal and civil, and winning, as Joey mentioned, we're seeing grand juries declining to issue indictments or to authorize prosecutors to issue indictments. So I do want to say, you know, we really do see the power of communities taking on that legal battle, fighting with, you know, our community movement, legal people and meeting that challenge head on. And I think as devastating and exhausting as it is and as terrible as the consequences and the risks really are, I do want to say we do see people having a lot of courage, marshaling a lot of resources and energy and winning reliably.
- [120:42]
Olive
Thank you. And I know, Joey, you started talking a little bit about what we've been seeing broadly across the country and how the state has been repressing specifically anti ice activity. I know you've been based in Chicago and particularly tuned into what's happening there. And it's been similar in Minneapolis where it's been a lot of 18 USC 111 cases, federal charges. And part of of what is coming up is just unpreparedness for movements to meet and defend against these kinds of charges. And also similar vein to the question I just asked why it matters for people's lives and form movements that it's federal charges coming down instead of state charges.
- [121:25]
Bina Ahmed
Bina When I transitioned from state to federal defense, my reaction was like state, it's always horrible just being in the criminal system and fighting. It's very like David and Goliath. But I felt like I had a more of a fighting chance in state court. When I got to federal, it was shocking how much worse it felt for my clients, how restricted you are in a state. It really feels like when you're doing a trial, you have the power to kind of run the show. Right. Of course a judge can like shoot down many motions for experts for, like, for, you know, doing certain defenses. But federal is so much more constrained in my experience where federal judges want to have just so much more power. And I think I wasn't also just didn't appreciate how much more power federal judges had and how much more they were willing to wield it. But also I think in terms of the charges are heavier Plea bargaining and sentencing is so much harder and heavier. You're very restricted. Even though the sentencing guidelines, for instance, are no longer mandatory, that's what everyone, judges and prosecutors still mostly go by. There's so many more mandatory minimums. It's so easy to catch a federal charge, too. You know, things like even just gun possession, right? Because a gun might have been manufactured in Texas and then bought in California, which most people wouldn't think is a federal offense, but it can be charged federally. Just all of those factors, I think, just I realized how much harder it was in federal court for my clients to have a fighting chance. But, you know, that being said, I don't mean to make state sound like it's this like, sort of gold, like, oh, great, and we can, like, do whatever we want in state. Not at all. But I felt like I could fight more. I had more leeway to fight in state. You know, federal, I think, is a whole. Is a whole other animal.
- [123:05]
Olive
That was a great answer. And if either of you don't have anything more pressing to add, I would turn us back to just the question of if there's anything else. We wanted to talk about trends in charging across the country of anti ICE protest.
- [123:21]
Joey Mogul
Well, I know.
- [123:21]
Robert Evans
I just.
- [123:22]
Joey Mogul
I think I want to echo something that MO has talked about, and I'm not trying to leave it out, but I do think the resistance is. Is so amazing. And I think that, you know, essentially people are being arrested for First Amendment activity, whether it's video recording, ICE and CBP agents actions, whether it's following officers, whether it's announcing their presence with whistles. We've seen people arrested, we've seen people detained, we've seen people interrogated. Sometimes they're charged, sometimes they're not. But I think what's striking is we've seen so many of these cases fall apart and, and to be honest, but for Prairieland, Texas, which is a devastating loss, the federal government has lost in many of these cases. They've been able to charge or the cases have been dismissed, but even the ones that have gone to trial, they have lost. And that is not something that I think we're used to seeing in federal criminal cases. Generally, when someone's charged in federal criminal court, as Bina was explaining, so few of the cases go to trial because so many people need to take a plea bargain. And the idea that you're going to get to go to trial and win seems very slim. That landscape seems to be changing as well. And so I think what we are seeing in this Moment is the people are resisting. They are continuing to do this important First Amendment work and they are not being intimidated, they are not being deterred. And I think all of you and your neighbors and your, your friends and folks in Minnesota have proven that to us. And so I think we're going to continue to see this type of work go on. I'm not seeing this level of surges at this point. Ongoing post Minnesota. I don't know if we're going to see a return to this prior to the election. I don't know if we're going to see this if the Insurrection act is invoked. But right now I don't see this ongoing surge activity in terms of immigration enforcement enforcement.
- [125:21]
Olive
It's an interesting point. The thing you hear about federal criminal cases is like the federal government can be investigating somebody for years. By the time that they bring the charges, they have such a strong case against them, it makes it impossible to win versus what at least we've seen in Minnesota, where it felt like some of these cases were being brought, like pretty quickly and kind of sloppily, which is just a little bit of a different, maybe a little bit more hopeful for people in movements, even though there still are federal judges and procedural limitations and that make federal cases scarier and worse to go through oftentimes. Now for a depressing thing that is happening, let's talk about Prairieland, the recent trial and guilty verdict that recently came down. I'd love to hear how you all are thinking about this case and what it means for movements going forward.
- [126:14]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
I think right now the defense just filed post trial briefing. I've looked at some of it and I think there are a lot of really strong arguments, you know, for setting aside the verdict. And, you know, whether or not the judge agrees with me is of course not a foregone conclusion. But there are a lot of really strong legal arguments and this really isn't over. There's so much post trial and post conviction relief, so many appeals that remain to be done, and so much support that can be offered and so much solidarity that can be offered. I think that this case was unusual. It was a departure from what we would typically see in that so many people got pulled into this prosecution under sort of a conspiracy theory, right? A theory that. That all of the people at what was a really quotidian sort of noise demo in front of a ICE detention facility somehow spontaneously became a conspiracy to do serious violence. I think this is a little bit like the federal government trying to take a second bite at the apple that they took a run at that after Trump's first inauguration when they tried to prosecute, like, almost 300 people for conspiracy on the basis that they were all dressed in black block. And in this environment, politically and in that jurisdiction in Texas, it seems like that theory had legs in a way that it didn't in D.C. so one of the things that happened in the J20 case was that the prosecution withheld a bunch of exculpatory evidence. And based on some FOIA disclosures that a journalist obtained, it looks like actually a very similar thing may have happened here with Prairie Land, where the prosecution may have withheld evidence that would be favorable to the defense, and that's called Brady material. Based on a Supreme Court case about having to turn over information and evidence that would tend to undermine the prosecution or that would be favorable to someone facing criminal charges. All of that kind of information, if it's in the custody or control of law enforcement, has to be disclosed to the defendants and to defense counsel. And it appears that there is some material that would fit that bill that was not turned over to the Prairie Land defendants or their attorneys. And so, you know, that as well is an extremely important argument against, you know, letting this conviction stand and the trial itself. There were just a lot of irregularities. Not only was this an unusual prosecution, but it was characterized by irregularities. Very early on, the judge declared a mistrial on the basis of a T shirt that one of the defense attorneys was wearing. Right. There seemed to be a lot of conflict among the jurors. There were all kinds of inconsistent statements among the witnesses for the prosecution. Right. So there's all kinds of things that happened during this trial that do give me a certain amount of hope. Hope that Prairie Land is the exception and not the rule. You know, I, I think the government is boundary testing, but I'm not convinced that they're going to find that this is an effective approach to, to prosecuting protest. Although, of course, I, I want to be very clear, it's been devastating for this community.
- [130:17]
Olive
I hear that there's some uncertainty about the long term impacts of this. And with that in mind, is there anything, any of you just want to add what you think movements should be paying attention to here going forward? Also its connection to the expansion of the fundamentally racist War on Terror legal regime and its turn towards activist communities in new ways.
- [130:44]
Bina Ahmed
I can jump in and start. I'm really glad you brought up the war on Terror as part of the history of this. I think I mentioned previously a lot of these tactics that we see like we've all said, are not new. And much of it has been tested on communities of color the way that war weapons are tested on the battlefield and then brought to our domestic police forces here. Same thing with tactics. Right. And so the war on terror, like primarily against the Muslim community in the Muslim world. A lot of non Arab countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, you know, of course, is a racist endeavor, but it does sort of like give us a picture of the larger sort of like colonial project of what, you know, what we're facing. But I think there's also just a lot then that we can take from history and take to our movements and learn from. I think while it's devastating, and I agree with Mo, I think the Prairie Line conviction, there's a lot of bases for appeal, including being prohibited from putting on a self defense argument or defense of others argument. I think we can learn a lot from the way that our movements were targeted in this way. Right. We're like a lot of it was from text messages and Signal. And I think it's just like. It's also a really important thing to note. While Signal is a very important app to communicate, it's not bulletproof. Right. And it's only as secure as you make it. And it is still something that's in writing. And so I think I always try to remind folks, if you can open your phone right now and you can see your signal messages, someone else can too. Right. So I think a lot of people are under the impression that it's completely bulletproof. And I think it also calls the question of like, how we, you know, how we organize. And also, like, does everything we do need to go in text or writing? You know, is there more value to like actually talking with people? Because a lot of things that were said casually, I think in writing look much worse and much more serious than if you would just have a conversation talking ideas through which which again, as an elder, I did in the 90s when we didn't have cell phones.
- [132:38]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
I want to kind of piggyback on something you started to say, which is you said these tactics, these strategies have been tested on communities of color. And I think the significance of that statement, we can't overestimate how important it is to understand that. And you can watch it happening in real time. I mean, obviously we've seen this kind of state repression since the days of like abolitionists. Right. But we saw it really coming becoming very salient during the Nixon administration and thereafter. And you know, the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation army were Subjected to this. Black communities were then subjected to this. And Puerto Rican independence communities were subjected to this. And you can see it all the way through the 80s, even with like the so called gang legislation, right? Targeting of, quote, gang activity.
- [133:35]
Olive
When you say these communities have been subjected to this, what do you mean? What's the this?
- [133:40]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
Sorry. Have been subjected to. Have been targeted and surveilled and criminalized by the state for what we would understand to be First Amendment protected identities, beliefs, associations and activities.
- [134:02]
Bina Ahmed
Right.
- [134:02]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
And so people have been targeted for surveillance and criminalization on the basis of their political beliefs, on the basis of their associations and activities in a way that we now see being recuperated against more explicitly political, like protest movements. And we saw this during the no Dapple movement at Standing Rock. We saw the revival of a federal charge called civil Disorder. I think the last time it had been used had been during the standoff at wounded knee in 1974. Right. It was like a, a federal charge that seems like it was only used against people struggling for indigenous sovereignty. And then we saw it being used again during the Floyd uprisings in 2020. And that was the first time we saw it really being used against people who were not explicitly involved in struggles for indigenous sovereignty.
- [135:07]
Bina Ahmed
To give like, an example, you know, in terms of, like, what strategies are tested on the Muslim community or communities of color. The case that a lot of us within the movement at least, are still haunted by is against the Holy Land foundation and the Holy Land Foundation. Right. And it's shocking now to realize how many people outside of our circles don't actually really know about that case or even like, what material support is. I think only when it became now much bigger and being weaponized in more creative ways are people sort of realizing. But, you know, back for. Back in the day when the Holy Land foundation founders were targeted and then convicted and their convictions were upheld for just raising money for families in Gaza. It was so devastating and crushing to communities and to organizing, but it really didn't get the, I think, the broad attention that it should have, right. Or this other targeting of like using informants in the Muslim community. Just going back through history and I think we can learn from them now. But I think, you know, if we had had more attention on those cases and what, you know, communities of color were going through, I think there's a lot we can learn from or could have have organized stronger against having now seen, you know, what, what it's doing to communities of color.
- [136:19]
Joey Mogul
I think if there's a lesson for us to learn from this is that, you know, post 9 11, there was this massive persecution of Muslim communities. And we really saw this apparatus of the material support for terrorism being used against individuals. And as you say, Bina, often in isolation, without support. And part of that's because when you get charged with material support of terrorism, you know, not only are you facing massive criminal, like sentencing, but, you know, your organization is being taken down, you're getting debanked. You cannot, you know, be able to hold financial funds. And what happens is people don't want to get ensnared in that criminal prosecution. That often people don't come out and make those solidarity statements. You become essentially radioactive. And I think, think, you know, what I'm hopeful is that we can find new ways to resist this material support for terrorism apparatus, which is being wielded in ways that I think are unjust and unfair and illegal and wrong. And I hope there's ways that we can think about how we're going to counter that, whether it's in the Prairie Land, Texas case or in other cases as well. I think we need to get back to the roots of that law and we need to think about really who's it serving, who is it protecting, and who is it destroying so that we can really rectify the harms that have come from it.
- [137:49]
Olive
Material support for terrorism charges are not the only uncommon charges we're seeing being brought against anti ice protesters here in Minneapolis. We've also seen the use of the FACE act and federal threat and cyber stalking charges. Just to note, the use of the FACE act is specifically against Black Lives Matter protesters here who staged a protest in a church. And I don't think expected to have this random act that nobody knew existed come out. And now they're facing super serious charges. I'd love just for listeners to understand a little bit what these charges are. If there's other unusual charges you've seen around the country, what do people actually need to understand about them? People who are going out to protest, how much is it important to know about these different things that can pop up?
- [138:42]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
So the FACE act is a piece of legislation that initially was being pushed for by reproductive justice groups. And it was supposed to criminalize people interfering with folks who are attempting to access reproductive health care. Because at the time that it was being lobbied for, there was a pretty active pro life, you know, anti choice movement that was physically making it difficult for people who were seeking reproductive health care to gain access to clinics. And at the time, people who work in criminal defense and who work with criminalized populations were like, hey, this legislation is going to be mobilized against other kinds of protesters and it's probably going to be primarily dangerous to people who are perceived as antagonistic to state interests. And what do you know? That is what has happened. Because one of the things, one of the concessions that was made in order to get that piece of legislation passed was that in addition to criminalizing obstructing access to reproductive health clinics, it also criminalized obstructing access to so called places of worship for specifically people who are attempting to access those places in order to engage in first amendment protected religious expression. So now one of the things we're seeing is people using their churches or their synagogues to do things like have political meetings that are not particularly religious meetings, or to do things like sell real estate in Palestine to which they do not have title and cannot lawfully sell. And then when people show up to protest those activities, the federal government tries to charge them with violations of the
- [141:02]
Olive
face act in like the simplest way. What do people need to know? Like, there's one outcome here that everyone's like, oh my God, I didn't know that protesting in a church could get me federal charges for like handing out some flyers and using a megaphone. What else don't I know about other risks and random acts that can come up. How do you talk to people about that who are thinking about taking action?
- [141:26]
Joey Mogul
Yeah, I think that that's the again the changing landscape here in seeing the exponential rise of federal charges. I think that when organizers are thinking about the actions they're pursuing, I think they need to talk to attorneys and legal workers and others who have both an understanding of what their local laws and state laws are, but what the federal laws are as well. And again, I think that's just a different changing of the landscape. I do want to say, you know, there's a lot of important organizing that has happened in churches and synagogues and temples, and I don't want to discount that. But I do also want to say, I think again, we're seeing a misuse of this law, particularly the face act. And it's very, very scary. But, you know, I think that there are some really incredible lawyers and organizers in Minnesota who I think are fierce and who are going to fight this to the end. And I have hope that they will come out unscathed.
- [142:23]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
Yeah. And I do want to clarify. It isn't just protesting at a church. They have to be able to allege that people were by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injuring, intimidating, interfere with, with people who are trying to get healthcare or people who are trying to worship. So it isn't simply having a protest at a place of worship that remains First Amendment protected behavior.
- [142:54]
Bina Ahmed
I think in addition with the FACE act, it has a civil component. So again, like material support, it also has a civil component and many people are getting civilly sued. And so a lot of these Zionist groups have also brought got suits based on the Face act for people protesting the illegal sale of Palestinian land inside a synagogue. And that's a breach of international law and so many other crimes. And just also to think of just the disgusting use of this law and you think of sort of the historical targeting of black churches and like, still to this day, like it's, it's just such a slap in the face. But regardless. But I think also Olive to your question about, yeah, like a lot of this can catch people off guard and be like, I didn't. What, you know, I didn't know. And even, you know, even if they know, they really can't prove that you blocked, you know, access. They might still try to either sue you or prosecute you. I think that the thing is, like, none of us are ever going to know all the laws that are on the books and the way that they might creatively try to use them. So, you know, I don't want people to get paralyzed into not doing anything because it's, it is, you know, scary. There's just like, you don't know, you know, what, what laws are out there that can be used, you know, in some way now, you know, new way against you. But I think what Joey and Mo both have said is right about connecting to lawyers and legal workers, just being tight on our organizing, knowing what our rights are and knowing when you what to do when you encounter law enforcement, which is nothing and say nothing, you know, like all of that I think is like, hopefully like universally at least, like minimizes the harm that can happen to you. It's not bulletproof, right. As we know it's not meant to be. But I think like, you know, I don't want folks to like, be like now, I don't know, X, like this other random thing, you know, could be brought against me and that may happen and continue to happen. But that's what we all do, right? Like sort of like with this message of hope is that what we do is we fight. And like we have fought like state repression, like our ancestors have fought state repression. We're not going to stop. They're going to keep adapting, and so are we. This resistance is not going to stop, even if we have to figure out a new way to resist based on what comes next.
- [144:56]
Olive
To ask you all as a final question, with your repression forecasting, hats on. Anything you want to add about how movements can prepare to meet this repression that is already happening and that which is to come.
- [145:11]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
I can't see the future. As I tell my clients every day, I can't see the future. I am but a lawyer, not a wizard. What I can tell you is we know a lot about what the state has done in the past, and we have a lot of good models to look to. We have a rich ancestry of resistance and of movement lawyering and of movement lawyers who know how to work in community with people who are doing the heavy lifting. We have made it this far, as Bina said, we're just going to continue to fight. And. And I do hold out a lot of hope. Not because I have any faith in the law itself or believe that justice is on the table in our courts, but because we are actually really good at solidarity and because we have over a century of evidence that solidarity is not just good for our communities, it's legally effective. That's it. Don't talk to cops.
- [146:27]
Bina Ahmed
I might go with the cheesy answer route that I think what communities and movements can do to prepare is a lot of this right is like coming together and strategizing, especially amongst the lawyers. So uplifting. What Mo said is like showing solidarity with communities and lawyers showing up. But I think also, and like, Joey and Mo really modeled this for me as well, is lawyers showing up with each other and, like, working together because it is a lonely force fight. A lot of times being a lawyer, when you're not in a circle of solidarity or folks of radical politics or who, like, also believe in including each other in fighting and doing this work. And that is always going to be a losing fight, right? If you're doing it by yourself, you're not doing it with each other and with communities and with other radical lawyers. That's not what we do. That's also not the point of this work. It's for one sole lawyer to fight it and win. It's about us doing it collectively and that's the way that we win. And, you know, just uplifting, like you three, like, just even having this conversation and Joey and Mo, for all the work that you do and the work that you do inclusively, you know, that, like, gives me hope because I know I've had Like, many every day, you know, like, I just sit and I feel like, alone. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I have to first end with a message of hope. I have to find some way to keep going. It's really hard. And sometimes I'm just like, I don't know. And then. And then we have these conversations and like, all right, yeah, like, we have those moments we get, you know, like, we feel defeated, but, like, we have each other, you know, and, like, our movements didn't come this far, you know, our ancestors didn't come this far for us to give up now.
- [148:01]
Joey Mogul
Yeah, I think I would just echo what both Bina and Mo have said. I mean, obviously black, indigenous and other communities of color have faced fascism and authoritarianism before and have resisted and survived. This is not the first time in this country we've seen this, and it's likely not going to be the last.
- [148:20]
Olive
Last.
- [148:21]
Joey Mogul
But I think, again, I, you know, I would say that, you know, as Mariam Kama says, you know, hope is a discipline, and we have to keep pouring into hope, and we can't have to keep resisting. So I do have a lot of hope. And I.
- [148:35]
Bina Ahmed
And I.
- [148:35]
Joey Mogul
And I feel like, again, like, I want to look at what the organizers have done and how far we've come, even in terms of this latest administration. You know, I would say last year, after the onset of this administration, I don't think we were seeing a lot of resistance, not a lot of public resistance, and instead we were seeing law firms cave and deciding to create agreements with the administration. We are seeing educational institutions come, you know, cave and come up with a lot of agreements. But what we did see is we saw the people resisting, and that happened in la, and that happened in Chicago, and that certainly happened in Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota. So I take heart, and I think what we need to continue to think about doing is. Is how people are gonna do the mutual aid work and the care work. I think we need to continue to do the know your rights and know your risks work. That's essential. I think a big thing we need to continue to think about is the Insurrection act and getting information out about the Insurrection act, which may be invoked prior to this election. You know, I think that the ongoing work that people have been doing, again, it. It's about the people and the power of the people that have gotten us this far. But even if we look at what happened this past weekend, 8 million people coming out to protest and resist, those numbers didn't exist over a year ago. And So I feel like the resistance is happening. People are coming together. And despite institutional failures, I think the movement has grown significantly. And I think we have to even look at the last year and a half to see how far we've come. And so I have hope that we'll go even further. And I hope that we're not returning to the status quo and in fact, we are actually dreaming the world we want to live in and that we are going to fight for the world we want to live in, and that this is an opportunity for us to let things go and for us to create anew.
- [150:36]
Olive
Well, thank you all for those hopeful forecasting advice answers. You don't always get that twist, which is really lovely. And I feel like it's been something that's on my mind a lot here in Minnesota, that sometimes when things are the worst and you're the closest to violence and terror, it's also when you see how powerful people are and how powerful resistance can be.
- [151:03]
Joey Mogul
I mean, these are long fights and these are long hauls. Yeah.
- [151:07]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
I think that's kind of the lesson is, you know, not to get all piercing a vote, but you are not obligated to finish the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Like, these are long fights. Yeah, they are fights that we don't win alone. It's not possible or desirable to win these fights alone. Right. They're generational. I mean, they. They last multiple generations. So, you know, this like the ever receding horizon of real democracy. Right. There's no forecast that could even be adequate because it's going to go on for so long. But I think the advice is always the same. Right. Just don't talk to cops.
- [151:55]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [151:57]
Bina Ahmed
What you said is generational. And you're not free to just abandon the work. MO is like, I would like write that on a wall somewhere because I think things, people jump in, right. It's like, okay, this is hot, let's do it. Like, but it's like, once it's not a hot new thing, you know, people kind of move on to the next. It's like, no, that's when we need folks to stick in it and you can't. And I think that's just a really important, like, lesson.
- [152:17]
Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
Send me your mailing address. I'm gonna send you a. I'm gonna send you a poster.
- [152:22]
Bina Ahmed
Or can you crochet it? I know you can crochet. You could do together with flowers and everything. Yeah.
- [152:27]
Olive
Thank you all so much.
- [152:28]
Joey Mogul
You guys are awesome. I love you guys.
- [152:31]
Bina Ahmed
It's been so great. I feel like I a therapy session. Like oh I feel so much better about like what we're doing and like where we are and like I have hope.
- [152:39]
Mia Wong
I dedicate this one to you fam.
- [152:41]
Olive
Thank you for listening to Outlaw on It could happen here. If you like the episode, check out the show Outlaw wherever you get your podcasts and rate, review and follow Outlaw Pod on Instagram and Blue sky for anti repression updates, news and stories that you might want to know.
- [152:57]
Mia Wong
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Jackie Mae
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Mia Wong
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Mia Wong
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Mia Wong
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Bina Ahmed
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Deja Indigo
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Mia Wong
You know what I didn't expect?
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Jackie Mae
Becoming best friends with Chewy's customer service.
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Dana Al Kurd
Oh, been there. I've chatted with them as late as midnight, they actually get pet people.
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Deja Indigo
And if Pickles or Lucky hate something, I just send it back. 100% satisfaction guarantee. Gives you a whole year to make a return, no questions asked.
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Bina Ahmed
Meanwhile, I'm over here ordering everything for bill and brunch.
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Dana Al Kurd
Food, treats, beds, toys.
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Bina Ahmed
Because Chewy has over 100,000 products to choose from and it shows up in, like, a day.
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Mia Wong
I mean, my dog Sammy thinks the
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Deja Indigo
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Dana Al Kurd
And the health side is huge for me, too. Prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits.
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Deja Indigo
They're even opening vet clinics now. My cat pretends he doesn't care, but he benefits.
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Dana Al Kurd
Chewy just makes the whole pet parent
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Maura Meltzer Cohen (Mo)
thing easier for life.
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Bina Ahmed
With the pets, the answer is chewy.
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Dana Al Kurd
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Bina Ahmed
executive orders, thousands of anti LGBTQ bills.
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Jackie Mae
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Bina Ahmed
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Mia Wong
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Jackie Mae
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Febreze Announcer
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.
- [156:45]
Olive
You.
- [156:45]
Febreze Announcer
I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of May 20 to May 27. James, some small widdle itty bitty news items to start.
- [156:59]
James Stout
Yeah, let's talk about the little things. Then we talk about some things in more detail. The Trump administration has lifted a cap on refugee admissions by 10,000. This sounds like good news until you realize it is to allow more white South Africans to seek refuge in the United States of America. Great stuff.
- [157:21]
Mia Wong
Hey, this country.
- [157:23]
James Stout
I found the Federal Register thing. It's still the document. Still not up there. But I will link to the place where the document will probably be.
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Febreze Announcer
The Dutch will never be forgiven.
- [157:33]
James Stout
The United States has also continued its campaign of strikes in the Pacific. Yeah, the most recent one left two survivors, along with one man who was killed.
- [157:44]
Robert Evans
Killed.
- [157:46]
James Stout
So this Guardian published a piece a while ago about what happened to some survivors who were taken by a US Military boat. The US military boarded their vessel, stole their food and beer, and then transported them to El Salvador where they were questioned and then released to immigration authorities and eventually sent home, basically, I guess effectively deported for illegally entering El Salvador.
- [158:07]
Mia Wong
Wait, after they were brought there by
- [158:09]
James Stout
the US by the United States. Yeah, after the US bombed them.
- [158:12]
Jackie Mae
Incredible.
- [158:13]
James Stout
Yeah. So we don't know what happened to these two people, I guess. Coast Guard activated search and rescue after the strike, so hopefully they found them. It's better than them drowning out there. The Department of Homeland Security is auto extending the temporary protected status for Lebanon not because they affirmatively chose to do so, but because they failed to renew or terminate it in time. So it auto extended. Mark Wayne Mullen, the DHS Secretary, has claimed that the Department of Homeland Security is drawing up plans to not process incoming international flights in sanctuary cities. What? Yeah.
- [158:50]
Febreze Announcer
This is ahead of the World cup, right?
- [158:53]
James Stout
Yes. So let's, let's play a little clip.
- [158:56]
Robert Evans
We are currently, which we're not initiate yet, but we're currently drawing up plans
- [159:00]
James Stout
to say, listen, in these sanctuary cities
- [159:02]
Robert Evans
where the local radical left Democrats aren't allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn't be
- [159:11]
Deja Indigo
processing international flights into their, into their
- [159:14]
Robert Evans
cities either because they don't want us to enforce immigration, but they want us
- [159:19]
James Stout
to process immigration at their facilities.
- [159:21]
Robert Evans
Nothing about that makes sense to me.
- [159:23]
James Stout
The line he's drawing, I guess what I want to guess at is that he's claiming that in places where police won't support ICE by removing protesters from the streets outside ICE facilities, the United States is not going to allow international travelers to enter at airports in those cities. There's a lot to break down there. Like I'm not really going to, because suffice it to say that this would cause absolute chaos.
- [159:57]
Febreze Announcer
That's not going to happen because that's going to heavily disrupt capital. Let's just say that's just, that's just, that's just not happening.
- [160:01]
James Stout
Yeah, it's not. It's not really possible for this to work. Like, it's not that they can divert to non woke airports. Right. That's not how air travel works. This is silly. But it's interesting. Mullen has been a bit less kind of crazy in his posting as policy, but maybe he was just getting warmed up.
- [160:23]
Febreze Announcer
I mean, yeah, he obviously does not understand who his true master is. If he actually thinks that this is something that can happen.
- [160:30]
James Stout
Yeah, he, I don't know if he does or he was just talking to Fox News. And yeah, said what he thought Fox News wanted to hear. Mullen was talking about this in response to a large and growing protest at Delaney hall, which is a private detention facility in Newark, New Jersey where 300 detainees have been on hunger strike since last Friday. Mullen has variously claimed that they chose to do this on Memorial Day. Friday, of course, not Memorial Day. And that they want their ethnic food. Food. People in detention are entitled to religiously appropriate food, but that's not what's happening here. Right. People are on hunger strike because of the conditions in the facility. New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, who's been there for a while with protesters, he got pepper balled and tear gassed. He entered the facility to inspect it and he made a thread on x.com the everything website where he detailed horrible abuse in sight, including a woman who had been denied ob GYN care and a pregnant woman who had miscarried inside the facility. DHS has claimed in response that quote, in fact ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens. That's an incredible thing to say when someone has just detailed the fact that people are having unaccompanied miscarriages in your facility and being like, well, we do worse things to Americans here. Jesus, there are really a lot of layers there there. On Monday, one of the leaders of the hunger strike was transferred out of the facility in Newark to another facility.
- [162:00]
Jackie Mae
Right.
- [162:01]
James Stout
It's not uncommon for people to be moved around in immigration detention for various reasons.
- [162:06]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [162:07]
James Stout
To include in this case their organizing. Finally, the OPCW has published documents detailing a large haul of undeclared chemical weapons that it found in Syria. Syria.
- [162:19]
Febreze Announcer
What is the ocpw? For those who may not be acronym, aware.
- [162:24]
James Stout
It's the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Why this is interesting, firstly, there has been open source reporting detailing the use by Assad of chemical weapons against his own population for years. And this confirms that. Secondly, there is a particularly disgusting faction of the left in the United States and elsewhere which has spent years denying that this is the case. Spent years effectively running cover for Assad murdering little children with chemical weapons. We had very good evidence that this was happening before. We now have incontrovertible proof that Assad had the ability to do this and did do this. We already know that he did it. But it should really make you question the legitimacy of any media source that continues or ever has denied that Assad used chemical weapons or indeed any. Any politician or political actor. There's no instance in which it's okay to use chemical weapons against civilians, period. And anyone apologizing for that, in my opinion, is pretty despicable.
- [163:29]
Febreze Announcer
In other news, about two weeks ago, ABC News nuked the 538 archive, scrubbing all the articles with links now redirecting to the ABC Politics homepage page. As annoying as some of the 538 type people can be, this, this is a bad removal of, of like documented information going all the way back to 2008. It is unfortunate that ABC has done this. There still is third party archives of these articles that you can find. But it will make actually referencing information held or previously held on 538 much more difficult going forward.
- [164:07]
Mia Wong
Yeah, and I also just want to say this is a continuous problem with storing information on the Internet, which is, is that, yeah, information on the Internet is incredibly ephemeral. It is very easy for entire people's lives work to simply be deleted because a parent company decided to make a move. And yeah, there's a bunch of people who do good work in digital preservation, but all of the work that we produce online is significantly more ephemeral than we tend to think about.
- [164:33]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [164:34]
Robert Evans
As Jamie Loftus said in her last regular podcast that she did for us, this is a future piece of lost media. Right. Which is true of almost everything anyone puts up on the Internet. And there are groups of people who have worked over the years to try and mitigate that, including the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine. And they are currently under attack, as is from within the Wikipedia foundation, as we'll talk about later. But like, yeah, it's the only, the only way to make this stuff not be ephemeral and to actually like keep a permanent archive of culture is to support the people doing that. And the people doing that, that are never going to be entirely cool with, for example, the people who make movies or the people who put out newspapers. And there's an extent to which they just need the backing of us and of our government to say, you can't stop them from doing that because it's in the best needs of the human race. And that's not going to happen right now anyway.
- [165:33]
Febreze Announcer
Last weekend Fox News reported that that socialist live streamer Hassan Piker and the leader of the activist organization Code Pink had been subpoenaed by the federal government as a part of an investigation into a humanitarian aid trip to Cuba with a bunch of left wing activists and influencers last March. Fox claimed this investigation is part of a, quote, broader dragnet involving as many as 40American citizens who joined The Marxist convoy to Havana, unquote. After returning from Cuba two months ago, 20 US citizens were briefly detained and interrogated at the border, and 18 of them had their phones and other devices seized by CBP agents at the Miami International Airport.
- [166:18]
Mia Wong
Yep.
- [166:20]
Febreze Announcer
Fox reported that these new subpoenas show that Piker is now caught in a, quote, federal inquiry into whether activists who travel to Cuba in March March violated U.S. sanctions laws through financing, coordination or delivery of goods to Cuba, including potential contacts with Cuban government personnel or entities on the island, unquote. Also claiming that this investigation is part of a, quote, broader effort by officials at Treasury, State and Justice Departments to curb malign foreign influence operations inside the United States, unquote. Now, Hassan Piker has said that he learned about the subpoena through Fox's media reporting, and he has not yet been contacted by the government. Fox referred to these subpoenas as, quote, unquote, administrative subpoenas. And it turns out neither Hassan Piker nor Code Pink have actually been subpoenaed by the government. They've not actually been served by the federal government.
- [167:21]
Robert Evans
Oh, boy.
- [167:23]
Jackie Mae
Great.
- [167:24]
Febreze Announcer
On Tuesday, the leader of Code Pink told Ryan Grimm that she received an email from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control requesting information about the trip to Cuba, suggesting that there is some probe here, but it's not technically a subpoena. And there's still no indication yet if Hassan Piker has received a similar request for information.
- [167:49]
Robert Evans
And like, this is bad. It's not unusual if you go to a place like Cuba that American citizens are certainly not supposed to transit to directly to be stopped and questioned on the way into the country. And it's now not unusual for devices to be taken. None of this is good. Like the fact that they can just take your shit at the border remains bad. But yeah, as Garrison has said, right now, this is not what a lot of initial reporting made it look like. Quite.
- [168:17]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah, no, if anything, it seems Fox is trying to encourage this, this broader dragnet and manufacturer consent for there being subpoenas for people on this humanitarian age and influencer trip.
- [168:32]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [168:34]
Febreze Announcer
James, speaking of Cuba.
- [168:36]
James Stout
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about people seeking to become permanent residents of the United States. And we'll get, get to the Cuba tie in a minute here. So a USCIS policy memorandum has advised USCIS officers that most non US citizens seeking to adjust their status will now have to leave the USA to do so. What? It's adjusting. Adjusting is generally when somebody who is here on a non immigrant visa or here on Another immigration status adjusts to become a permanent resident Resident.
- [169:10]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [169:11]
James Stout
And previously they could do that inside the United States or they could go to a consulate and they could apply for a green card at a consulate outside the United States. Now they're saying that aside from cases of what they are calling extraordinary discretion, they're going to make people leave and apply from outside the United States. That is bad. What is worse is the way that this overlaps with their existing policies. Right. People already applying are facing huge delays. I've reported on that before. And now new applicants and possibly people who are halfway through their process will have to leave. That will often mean spouses leaving their spouse and their citizen children if they have them for an unknown amount of time.
- [170:00]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [170:00]
James Stout
This could take years. Very, very realistic to expect this to take years. This dovetails with existing visa bans on 75 countries. What that means is that people from many of these countries cannot obtain any immigrant visas. There are some very small exceptions to these visa bans. In the case of the 20 countries which run a complete ban, there are exceptions for athletes attending the World cup or the Olympics, for example.
- [170:29]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [170:29]
James Stout
So like Iran is one of those countries. The Iranian team can attend the World Cup. They're actually staying in Tijuana, but crossing the border to come and do their matches. For everyone else, though, if you leave and then you have to come back to collect a green card, you re enter on an immigrant visa, then you get your green card. If you are prohibited from having an immigrant visa because you are a citizen of these countries, then you cannot re enter and thus you cannot get your green card. And thus this is a de facto bar to people from those travel ban countries getting a green card in the United States now, which is very bad. I also noticed that there is not an exemption that I can see for the Cuban Adjustment act here. The Cuban Adjustment act is a special expedited pathway for Cubans that allows them to adjust to legal permanent resident status. It used to be two years, now it's a year year. This is particularly interesting given the USA is talking so much about how terrible things are in Cuba, but also saying if you've made it here and you're safe and you feel safer, you want to stay, you can't. You have to go back to Cuba and apply, I guess, to adjust. It seems very hypocritical, but that's nothing new. Yeah, so I spoke to a couple of folks who would have expertise in this and. And I don't have their permission to sign their name. So I won't. There isn't a consular option for Cubans seeking to adjust. They can't do it outside of the country under the Cuban Adjustment Act. They have to do it inside the country. So they think that this would entirely not include them. But like everything else, it's a little bit unclear and we will find out, I guess. Last month USCIS also removed categorical deferred action for SIJS individuals. SIJS is special Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. It's granted to people in the US who are inside the United States without status who have been subject to abuse, abandonment or neglect as found by a court. The Trump administration has already deported many of these young people, but this policy memo formally removed categorical deferred enforcement, which the Biden admin began doing in 2022. Essentially, some people will be told on receiving Sijs that they would be safe from deportation and they could receive a work permit. Deferred enforcement is the same thing that people under DACA have, right? Commonly referred to as dreamers that has now been removed. The people with SoJS can adjust to being the SoJS offers a pathway to permanent residency. But now these people will evidently have to live in fear right up until they are able to become citizens. If they're able to become citizens.
- [173:13]
Deja Indigo
Jesus.
- [173:13]
James Stout
Yeah, these are some of the most unfortunate people on the planet. People who get sijs, use of it has increased for unaccompanied minors or children. I should say people who have come across in the last maybe since 2018ish. But still it's people who have often gone through really terrible things. The justification cited and I'm quoting from the memo here is that quote. The Criminality Gangs and Program Integrity Concerns in Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions report reviewed over 300,000 aliens SIJ petitions filed from the beginning of fiscal year 2013 through February 2025. Key findings included 853 known or suspected gang members who filed SIJ petitions with most receiving approval. Over 600 Ms. 13 gang members filed SIJ petitions and more than 500 were approved. Among them, at least 70 had been charged with gang related federal racketeering conspiracy offenses and many others charged with violent crimes in the United States, including murder or sex offenses. Additional SIJ petition approvals included more than 100 known or suspected members of the 18th seat gang, at least three trend Aragua gang members and dozens of Nortenhos gang members. If you go back and look at those numbers 300,000 petitions, I see 70 charges. Yeah, that's absurd that it's a fraction of a single percent.
- [174:40]
Jackie Mae
Yeah.
- [174:41]
Febreze Announcer
If they reviewed 300,000, even if this like 850 number is correct. Is completely correct, which is not. That's like less than one third of a percent.
- [174:50]
James Stout
Yeah, exactly. It is a minuscule fraction if every single person who they suspect. And given what we've seen about suspicion, that could be as much as having a tattoo.
- [174:59]
Jackie Mae
Right?
- [174:59]
Mia Wong
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [175:01]
James Stout
It's ludicrous to join one up with the other and say, therefore all of these young people, many of whom have gone through horrific things, now will have to live in fear again. That policy memo came out in April. I, I found it when I was looking through the policy memos on the USCIS website and I haven't seen any other reporting on it. Maybe I've just missed it, but it's certainly something people should be aware of. I want to do a scripted series on SIJS people for understandable reasons and not all of them want to get up in the media right now.
- [175:30]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [175:32]
Febreze Announcer
In terms of all the, like, immigration changes that have happened, this collection of stuff is like some of the worst that I've heard you talk about.
- [175:38]
James Stout
Yeah, it's really bad. Like they started deporting SIJS people and even, even immigration lawyers who have been like that. This second Trump administration is going to be really bad. The second Trump administration is really bad. People did not expect them to begin going after these people and they did when they were detained. Meaning another thing they've claimed is that like some of them are over 21, over 18, because they can still apply up to 21 in certain jurisdictions. Right.
- [176:02]
Robert Evans
Again, sure.
- [176:04]
James Stout
That doesn't mean that they haven't been through terrible things. Like many, many 21 year olds in America rely on their parents for things. These people often don't have their parents or have in some cases been abused by or abandoned by their parents and then sending them back to a place where they may be in danger, where they may not be safe. Right. There is no moral, ethical justification for this. Really. It's really bad. It's really horrible.
- [176:29]
Mia Wong
Yeah. It's pure undiluted violence.
- [176:33]
James Stout
Yeah. And likewise, we can very clearly see if we look at the list of travel barred countries is going to be a bar on people from a large number of countries where the majority of the population is not white getting citizenship and legal permanent residence status in the United States. Right. Something that has very clearly been a motivating factor of policy for a long time. So, yeah, more shit news from me about immigration. Talking of shit news, we have to pivot to advertisements.
- [177:03]
Bina Ahmed
We.
- [177:15]
Robert Evans
And we're back Back. Oh, boy. Well, that's all been very depressing. You know what's not depressing? Catholicism.
- [177:23]
Febreze Announcer
Oh, and that.
- [177:24]
Robert Evans
That too.
- [177:26]
Jackie Mae
Two great tastes.
- [177:27]
Robert Evans
They taste great together.
- [177:29]
James Stout
Two things that make us all happy.
- [177:31]
Robert Evans
Oh, man. This week, the same week that we're recording this, Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, that warned against equating machine intelligence with human intelligence. He declared we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of intelligence with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. This has been seen, I think, by most critics of artificial intelligence as a pretty good encyclical. It is very long. It's well over 100 pages. So this is not like a quick read. You should think about this as like going in and reading a book book. It's a really interesting document. Among other things, The Pope quotes J.R.R. tolkien at one point, which is a nice little bit. He also makes a lot of references to mathematics and specifically like kind of comparing the way Catholicism thinks about divinity and the Holy Spirit and all that to certain kind of like geometric shapes because apparently he was a math major. I did not know this, but it comes through in the writing of, of this. I would say my overall impression is like, oh, the Pope has a lot more understanding of like technical stuff than I thought he was gonna have. This is not like a bad thing from a basic understanding of how the technology works standpoint. Obviously a lot of this is based around the Pope's beliefs about what humanity is and the divinity within humanity, which is not something that everybody believes. But I also have found an awful lot of atheists and just kind of like non religious people who have been sharing this because while they don't agree that like, you know, human beings are sacred because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ necessarily, or whatever, or that we were made by God, they agree with the fact that there's something special about humanity that is not being recreated by these LLMs. And so I've seen a lot of like, praise as a result of that. However, I've also seen what I thought were pretty salient critiques. And the number one one critique here is that this encyclical was released at an event that was kind of co launched with people from Anthropic and the Vatican worked with Anthropic for this release and are in general kind of partnering, maybe the wrong term, but working alongside them to try and have a dialogue about the future of AI and what it should and shouldn't do. And Specifically, one thing that Pope Leo talked a lot about was the need to demilitarize or disarm artificial intelligence, as in remove it from use in like defense industries, and certainly make sure that it's not making the call to actually kill people.
- [180:12]
Febreze Announcer
And that's something that Anthropic has also took us stand on in so much as that now the US government is trying to remove any partnership it has with Anthropic.
- [180:22]
Robert Evans
Yes, yes, they, they at least were openly against that. Now that doesn't mean Anthropic is a company I like or a company that everybody should like. They still plagiarize huge, billions of people, basically. Anyone who's ever written. There's a lot of illegal things, objectively illegal things Anthropic did. And that's why there are numerous lawsuits against them now. And I think it is in fact a problem that one of Anthropic's co founders, Chris Ola, was invited to speak at this event in the Vatican because one of the first things he did after, you know, thanking the Vatican and the Catholic Church and the Pope for having him there is kind of disagree with what the Pope had said, that these systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence.
- [181:01]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [181:02]
Robert Evans
Because Ola said that these systems. I'm going to quote from an article in the registry here by Thomas Clabburn, quote. AI Systems, he said, are not the cold calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words. And as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways mysterious to those of us who trained them. This is what I have an issue with.
- [181:20]
Mia Wong
Yeah, no, they're not.
- [181:22]
Robert Evans
They're mysterious. Me in the same sense that like if you make a car that had always just been a simple ice engine, if you make that a hybrid and you throw like a computer screen and a bunch of shit in it, you're going to have a bunch of problems with your car as like a manufacturer that you didn't expect to have because you've added complexity.
- [181:38]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [181:39]
Febreze Announcer
We can't predict every single outcome of machine learning. Right. Yeah, but, but the way that, but the way this Anthropic guy is using, you know, basic, basic facts about like machine learning and neural networks, but framing them in a way to.
- [181:52]
Robert Evans
These are mysterious like the human brain is mysterious and.
- [181:55]
Jackie Mae
No.
- [181:56]
Robert Evans
Yes.
- [181:57]
Mia Wong
Yeah, but, but it's, but it's also like, of course you can't predict what the output is. Your entire process is you're just multiplying matrices against each other over and over again and then checking to see if the output of the random matrices multiplication you've done is what you want. Like, yeah, no shit.
- [182:12]
Robert Evans
A good dumb person comparison might be if I were to buy an empty house and I were to fill that house with random shit for 30 years, for so long that I've forgotten what I've put in the house, and then I sent you into the house to grab something at random from it, I might be totally surprised by what you bring out. That doesn't mean anything mysterious or sacred has occurred. It just means, yes, I'd forgotten all the shit I put in that house, you know?
- [182:34]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [182:35]
Deja Indigo
Or it's like.
- [182:36]
Mia Wong
It's like if you make a machine that just, like, spits out a random output. Yes. You don't know what it's going to be like. Yes, this is. This is what you have done.
- [182:46]
Robert Evans
Exactly. It's a random output. When it has been trained on the course corpus of, like, human knowledge. Right?
- [182:52]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [182:52]
Robert Evans
And one of the things that I find very frustrating is that Ola made the statement that AI systems are made from us and from our words. Right. And he says that in a way as to, like. And that's good. It means that, like, we all are a part of this and it's a part of us, and so there's humanity in it. No, no, no. AI isn't like, made from our words. They stole our words without our consent in order to monetize them for themselves. That's different. Different. That's real different.
- [183:17]
James Stout
Yeah. In the same way that back in the day when I began teaching, people would plagiarize by copying and pasting things from books. Those are also made by people's words. It doesn't make them sacred, makes them stolen.
- [183:30]
Robert Evans
Now, Ola lists in here three questions for discernment. And he phrases this like, and I hope the Catholic Church can, like, help us figure out how we should move forward with these things. These are the big questions behind AI. And I want to quote again from that piece in the Register, because the author of that, Clapford, has a funny bit. Hola. How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this. We have many. One is called taxes. Another is litigation, already ongoing. We also have the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, among others as well, sharing models when nothing else works. It's a good piece.
- [184:04]
Joey Mogul
I recommend reading.
- [184:05]
Febreze Announcer
That's good. Yeah, that's good.
- [184:06]
Robert Evans
That's what I've got to say on this.
- [184:07]
Febreze Announcer
I mean, yeah, obviously the synthropic guy is going to frame certain things, things as Marketing for the company. Right. He's. That, that's going to determine the way that, that he uses certain words and the way that he discusses machine learning and neural networks.
- [184:19]
James Stout
Right.
- [184:19]
Febreze Announcer
When he's saying that this is like based on the human brain, roughly, it's because. Yeah, it's because it, because it's a machine learning neural network.
- [184:26]
Deja Indigo
Yeah.
- [184:27]
Febreze Announcer
So it's, that's going to frame the way that he's doing it. I think it makes sense for the Catholic Church to try to enter into dialogue with a company like Anthropic.
- [184:33]
Robert Evans
Sure.
- [184:34]
Febreze Announcer
Especially if they can, you know, unite against Thiel's efforts and even maybe some of, some of the efforts of, of, of OpenAI. But obviously anthropic has their own motivations for doing this, which is to enrich themselves.
- [184:44]
Robert Evans
Yes, yes.
- [184:45]
Febreze Announcer
But it's, I don't think it's surprising that the Catholic Church will, will also try to enter into dialogue to influence the outcome of these things. I think in general, the Pope's statement is, is, is fine.
- [184:56]
Robert Evans
I think the Pope statement is fine. I do think this might be a data point in terms of in the future Church may need to recognize that you can't actually work with these guys. Perhaps that will be the outcome we'll see.
- [185:07]
Mia Wong
Well, but I mean, I think that's part of what's happening here though, right. Is that the reason the Church is taking anti AI positions while working with them is that they're trying to have it both ways in terms of co opting both the anti AI movement and also work with these companies to sort of build their influence base.
- [185:27]
Robert Evans
I don't see it fully that, I think for the Pope's, because he's been very consistent about being horrified by the growth of the arms industry and the idea of AI weapons and war. I kind of suspect from the Vatican standpoint when that all erupted with Anthropic pulling out and saying they weren't willing to work with the Department of Defense on the things the DoD wanted them to do. That that's probably when the Vatican made the call. But I don't actually know. You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say that the more sinister outcome is definitely not what's occurring. But I think there's a number of ways to kind of look at what the decision that was made and why it was made.
- [186:01]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah, I mean, the Catholic Church is one of the most globally influential bodies on the planet. They do have like their theological reasons for opposing AI as well as sort of ethical reasons that it's illuminated by the Pope in terms of like worker protections, in terms of the anti war stuff. And I, I, I do believe he has like actual, you know, legitimate spiritual beliefs about like what humanity is. And something I appreciate is that he doesn't just take this like AI skeptic point of view view and just to deny that like AI will, you know, significantly transform our world. Right. Because I think AI is, is transforming production and in some pretty significant ways. The Pope's not just hoping that AI will go away, he's affirming that we actually need to do something about this to protect our own humanity. And even though AI is not human, it, humans do determine how it will be developed and therefore we should act. And I think that makes sense for his position.
- [187:00]
Robert Evans
Yeah, I don't, I'm not surprised as to the fact that he's doing it. I guess my long term doubt is I don't think any of these companies have the ability on their own to make responsible choices. No, certainly not the future of these, of these. And I don't think they have the ability to contribute to responsible decisions.
- [187:21]
Febreze Announcer
Sure.
- [187:21]
Robert Evans
I think they need to be manhandled.
- [187:23]
Febreze Announcer
Yeah, totally.
- [187:25]
Robert Evans
By armed agents, agents of the state. Otherwise armed us are going to have to do it. You know, that's the reality like no 100%. And that's the reality not just with AI. That's the reality with every mega corporation. Right. If the government does not stop them from destroying life for large numbers of people, then large numbers of people are going to do crazy things to them. You know, and if you want crazy things to stop happening to for example, the CEO of OpenAI, maybe he should stop saying his technology market might kill everyone.
- [187:55]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [187:56]
Febreze Announcer
On a related note, Wired has recently obtained thousands of documents from the dhs, FBI and state level info sharing anti terrorism. They're called fusion centers where information is shared between the feds, the state and local, local law enforcement.
- [188:13]
Deja Indigo
Yeah.
- [188:14]
Febreze Announcer
And a report from the New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau has warned of widespread upheaval in response to the adoption of AI and has coined a new term, quote, anti tech violent extremism, unquote. This is, this is a, this is a quote from this report. Quote. The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large scale protests that devolve into civil unrest, arrest and anti tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City, unquote. This is interesting. Also according to Wired, the Intelligence Bureau report referenced the Zizians and warned that quote, paranoid views regarding AI may proliferate in the aftermath of the Zissy's trial thanks to their quote, attempt to reason the belief that a godlike incarnation of AI is imminent. It and belief that humans must best use their time in the present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality or face existential consequences for failing to do so. Unquote. God, this is really interesting, this stuff that Robert's been talking about for quite a while.
- [189:35]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [189:36]
Febreze Announcer
And like I, I, I think this report was actually written before the Sam Altman Molotov cocktail attack or at least was written around the same time time but I, I, I think probably a little bit before but considering the Molotov cocktail attack on Sam Altman's property and the gunshots fired into the home of a pro data center city council person like it makes sense that law enforcement is considering anti AI violence as an emerging threat vector. But it also makes sense to be concerned that non violent opposition may get caught in a federal or state level dragnet.
- [190:09]
James Stout
Yeah, that's what fusion centers do, right? They dragnet a whole bunch of shit.
- [190:14]
Febreze Announcer
And that's exactly what fusion centers do. And most of this Wired report is talking about documents from fusion centers. And like as we have already seen, law enforcement's surveillance capacity and scope has been empowered and extended by the National Security Presidential Memorandum number seven.
- [190:29]
Mia Wong
Yep.
- [190:29]
Febreze Announcer
And public organizers and protesters are much easier to target than the small minority of people that actually end up committing violent crimes. Wired reported that federal, state and local agencies are gathering and circulating intelligence about alleged threats to data centers. The intelligence documents that Wired quotes from outline a variety of threat actors and models, not simply data center protests. Quote adversarial actors including state sponsored entities, criminal groups and extremists such as homegrown violent extremists. Extremists or environmental extremists may target U.S. data centers. These actors could also exploit the strategic importance of data centers to the US economy, using them for activities like cryptocurrency mining or leveraging third party entities such as front companies to gain access to US data and infrastructure. Unquote. So that outlines not just like environmental or like the general anti data center minor beliefs held by the American public. Like this, this shows like actual, you know, like threats to national security by hostile state actors or criminal groups as well as people with their own environmental or ethical reasons for opposing AI. Domestically though Wired also reported that a fusion center in Northern Virginia created a report on Tesla takedown protests and in person assemblies like demonstrations at an Arlington county budget meeting meeting and a Fairfax county school board meeting where people voiced opposition to AI.
- [192:00]
Mia Wong
Yeah, and this is again also like, historically what these fusion centers have been used for, as James was talking about. I mean, like, all the way back to like, God. I mean, like, I probably should have worked out in what order I wanted to talk about these. But like, yeah, fusion centers have been used to target everything from like, anti Iraq war protest stuff in like the mid-2000s through like, yeah, like, like fusion centers were like one of the big coordinating agents for like, all of the repression in 2020. They've been used in like, anti Palestine protests in like 2024 during the campus occupations. So like, yeah, like these sort of like intelligence reports are talking about like, different threat factors, but going after protesters is like what these fusion centers in a lot of cases are designed to do. So, yeah, yeah, it's definitely a thing to be concerned about given what these things are and what they do.
- [192:47]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [192:48]
Febreze Announcer
Speaking of cryptocurrency mining.
- [192:52]
Mia Wong
Oh, boy. So, yeah, yeah, speaking of using large entities for crypto bullshit. So last week we talked a bit about Kevin Warsh, the new Federal Reserve Board chairman's like, ties to the tech. Right, right. Ties to Thiel, ties to Andreessen, ties to this whole sort of world of like, tech venture capital, money. And today I want to talk about, about. There's an executive order from May 19 from the Trump administration that orders the Federal Reserve to consider allowing crypto companies and other non FDIC insured entities to use Fedwire. Okay, so what is Fedwire? On a macro level, Fedwire is the reason the entire American economy functions. It is the payment service that banks in the U.S. use to both send money to each other and to the. The Fed. If you wanted to do an analogy, right, you. You could say that fed wire is PayPal for banks. But like, the reality is not that, like, PayPal is like fed Wire for people. Right. Fed Wire is, may be the single most important infrastructure piece of, of the entire American economy. I was going to talk about this a bit later, but the surface. On an average, the Fed estimates that it moves $1.1 million per year. Year.
- [194:10]
James Stout
Whoa, where does a quadrillion fit in the, in the number bigness scale?
- [194:14]
Mia Wong
That's a million million dollars a lot per year, right? Like the entire American financial system moves, moves through this service. And you can also like, move money, like, to the government through this. So you can, you can do exchanges with the Federal Reserve itself or the different Federal Reserve banks now in order to get Access to fedwire. You have to be an actual bank. Bank, right? You have to be, like an FDIC insured bank. And crypto has not had access to this system. Like crypto. I, I, I, I, I really don't want to call them crypto banks because they're not banks. And that's why they haven't had access to the system, because they're not banks. Crypto is not money. And it's not, none of this stuff is subject, I mean, it's subject to, I guess, to a little bit of, like, securities regulation, but it's not subject to actual, like, FDIC regulation or important deposit insurance, because, again, these are not banks. Now, crypto has been trying to get access to the Fed wire system for years because in order for crypto companies to sort of, like, interface with the rest of the banking system, they have to, like, basically, like, get a bank to act as a partner for them instead of being able to, like, directly move the stuff around because they can't access the system. And so Trump has at least given executive order for the Fed to consider doing this. Now, Trump cannot actually force directly. Like, he can't just sign an executive order that says you have to let crypto do this because of Fed independence. But the Fed had already sort of, like, opened a period of public comment on this. And this is something that I think Wash is, this is, this is why, it's, why it's important that this is happening after, like, the appointment of, like, Kevin Warsh or like, after he'd been, technically speaking, before he'd been confirmed, but like, after. Or like, like before he'd been sworn in, but after, like, they knew he was gonna, he's gonna get through because he is extremely friendly to these groups. This is also a thing that's sort of, that's sort of important for the crypto industry because one of the issues that crypto has is that actually trying to, like, move cryptocurrency around is just a nightmare. That's like, one of the reasons why no one, no one actually, like, uses it to purchase things because it's, it's such a disaster. And getting access to the Fed's payment system suddenly kind of, it gives you a sort of, like, you can use the Fed's payment platform, which actually works, unlike theirs, which do not. Now, the other reason I'm bringing this up, so it's worth mentioning that even if the Fed were to allow them to create accounts with the Federal Reserve, they wouldn't for now, have access to a lot of the services that the Federal Reserve provides, like, they wouldn't be able to do, like, they could take advantage of like repo injections and like, stuff like that. Like a lot of, a lot of the stuff that the Fed uses to stabilize the economy through like injecting money into the banking system and injecting bonds and stuff like that into the system they wouldn't have access to. But it's pretty clear that these crypto groups want that eventually because that gives them access to like the actual sort of banking capacity of the federal government, which allows them access to things like very low interest, short term loans and liquidity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, etc, and what I want to close on is that this is what Warsh's thing is, right? He wants there to be more integration between this sort of like, I call it like fintech, right? Like the financial tech things, but, you know, between these very fascist right wing tech companies. They want them to be more and more directly integrated into the payment services and into the banking capacity of the US government. I mentioned earlier that Fed wire moves again, $1.1 quadrillion a year. Year. Now this, this is also what's very dangerous about Trump's people being in control of the Federal Reserve because there is so much infrastructure inside of the Federal Reserve that if it breaks even a little bit, things that we don't think of at all, like no one, like literally no one thinks about, like, even, even, even if you do banking stuff, you tend not to think about Fedwire because it just works. And this is, this is less of a risk now that like Doge Graperies aren't running around. But one of the dangers of Trump attempting to take control of the Federal Reserve is that his people will break something like this while doing something like attempting to integrate crypto companies into it. And so that's just going to be a continuing risk that we all sort of have to deal with because tech companies and the Trump administration and now the President of the Federal Reserve want to fuck with these systems on which everything in all of our lives depends on in ways that we never foresee.
- [198:37]
James Stout
Cool.
- [198:38]
Mia Wong
All right, speaking of the things that all of our lives depend on, here are the products and services that support this podcast.
- [198:44]
Robert Evans
Products and services. That's right.
- [198:46]
James Stout
Lovely.
- [198:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah. All right. And we're back. So I have to unfortunately talk about, about Wikipedia or at least the Wikimedia Foundation. Obviously, I think everyone here is pretty big fans of Wikipedia, which is at this point has gone from the thing my teachers used to tell Me, I couldn't use in projects to like, by any objective measure one of the most significant projects in the history of human knowledge and like, storage of things that human beings know and have learned. It's one of the last like, gasps of the promise of the old Internet. And it's also the thing that under underpins all of the AI chatbots alongside Reddit in one way or another and the answers that they give people like, Wikipedia's incredibly important for AI, which is why, like, the Wikimedia foundation has made deals like with the AI industry in order to get money for letting them scrape like Wikipedia. Which is kind of part of why the Wikimedia foundation is currently doing really fucking well monetarily. They've got a little under $300 million in reserves, which is about a year and a half worth of money for them.
- [200:01]
Febreze Announcer
So first off, wait, so you're saying those little banners that fill half of the screen every time I use Wikipedia are lying?
- [200:09]
Robert Evans
I don't want to. Actually right now I do want to discourage people from donating to Wikipedia. Historically I have not. But yes, you should first off, know if you've been feeling bad about not donating, they don't currently need it, they're okay right now and they shouldn't get more of your money until they stop doing the shit that I'm about to tell you about. Because over the course of 10 days in May, the Wikimedia foundation has engaged in what you could call major union busting, firing employees who are trying to organize their fellows and trying to like, represent those values within the Wikimedia Foundation. And my source for main source for this is a pretty good article that Jake Orlowitz put out on Medium. Recently, Big Tech's anti labor playbook has come for Wikipedia. And it starts with the firing in mid maybe of Brooke Vibber. She was the very first full time employee of the Wikimedia foundation and its first CTO, the chief technical officer. And for more than 20 years she's like one of the main engineers that has made Wikipedia work. Right. And she's also a union organizer, so she's a very important person. She's the lead developer for MediaWiki, which is the platform that runs Wikipedia and had been since 2003 and is just a very big person both in terms of how Wikipedia works and in terms of like, the way in which like their union efforts have gone. She was laid off without any like, real costs given. And then a week later, on May 21, the foundation disbanded the Community tech team, which consisted of five engineers and a manager. The community tech team had the job of listening to Wikipedia editors, which are number one, the reason Wikipedia has content, and number two, volunteers. Right. So these are regular employees whose job has been to hear what Wikipedia editors want, want, and then help make sure that the salaried employees on the team fulfill those desires in as much as that is possible. Right. And so when you fire these people, you are saying we don't really give a shit about the volunteer community. And it's also noted in this, in Jake's article that most of those engineers were union organizers. Now there is currently a solidarity petition for Wikipedia editors. So if you are an editor of Wikipedia, I think it would be great if you signed that solidarity petition. This is the first time that editors have had to do an organized solidarity action with paid foundation staff. And yeah, it's a whole thing. The salaried staff there are not on one side about this. This is extremely controversial. It has a lot to do with the fact that a number of the old guard, including you know, the folks who are like a number of like some of the oldest people at Wikipedia, have a kind of libertarian bit to them, you might say. And in January 20th of 2026, Bernardette Meen was recruited as CEO of the foundation. And her prior career included work at JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers, as well as a spokesperson role for the nsc, the National Security Council. She was on the Obama foundation. She was the U.S. ambassador to Chile.
- [203:10]
Mia Wong
Oh great.
- [203:11]
Robert Evans
So this is someone who comes from a background in which fucking with you. Union attempts are very like normal and accepted. The union's demands are not extreme. They would not have any meaningful impact whatsoever on the pile of cash that Wikipedia has. There's no excuse for the Wikipedia foundation doing this. You should be pissed at them and not give them more money until they make things right. Anyway, that's my opinion. I'm done.
- [203:34]
James Stout
Nice. All right, so we need to update once again the situation with the United States war in Iran.
- [203:42]
Robert Evans
Iran.
- [203:42]
James Stout
The USA this week again bombed Iran in violation of ceasefire, calling it a self defense strike. I mean it's still a violation of ceasefire. The negotiations are ongoing. Both sides remain a long way apart. There have been various like leaks and reports of where, where negotiations were at. One suggested that Iran would exchange, freeing up its assets and other sanctions relief for, for removing highly enriched uranium. Iranian state TV leaked details of a supposed memorandum of understanding which would be like the memorandum that they would sign in order to say like hey, let's get back at the table. Until then, these are our rules, kind of. This is the rules we're operating under while we negotiate. The MoU said the blockade would end and the Strait would be reopened, but the USA has denied that mou. I don't want to go into the blow by blow of, like, leaked and denied things because it's just a waste of time. None of that's real.
- [204:38]
Mia Wong
It's all stock market manipulation. Like, it's. It's all. It's all just. That's.
- [204:42]
James Stout
Yeah, sorry, that's literally my next sentence. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't stop people killing. It doesn't stop people dying. It does change the oil price and it does change the stock market. And I think if we report on this too credibly, we miss the fact that, like, that is the real impact. That is how we should frame this in our reporting. Not do the Barack Ravi thing of rushing up eight bullet points of something that someone told you and never consider why.
- [205:06]
Febreze Announcer
Well, James, you will never have a career at Axios with that attitude.
- [205:09]
James Stout
Yes, I. I think that that bridge has been burned, Garrison. But my path in life has been lit by the bridges I burned. One thing I do want to note is that Trump has attempted to. He appears to want to tie a peace deal to having other countries in the region sign the Abraham Accords. Abraham Accords? You're not familiar? 2020 agreement in which the UAE, Bahrain, later Sudan, and Morocco normalized relations with Israel. Interesting. That is unlikely to happen.
- [205:42]
Mia Wong
You killed the Ayatollah. Now you think they're gonna sign the Abraham Accord? Like, what are we doing here?
- [205:46]
James Stout
Yeah, I mean, he's just going through a wish list of shit, I guess, that he or people close to him want.
- [205:52]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [205:53]
James Stout
Meanwhile, Iran is continuing to attack southern Kurdistan. Right. I think this offers a very clear vision of what Kurdish groups could expect if they decide to ally with the US and serve as a ground force. And of course, there are very many reasonable reasons that they would want to do that.
- [206:09]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [206:10]
James Stout
To include liberating themselves from an oppressive regime. But the United States, as it has done every other time, would probably abandon them and they would be subject to this. They are already subject to this just because of rumors that they were associating with the United States this week. One strike injured, nine Pak Peshmerga, several of them very critically injured. Talking of strikes, let's pivot to Nigeria, where AFRICOM is claiming its strikes have killed 175 or more ISIS members. I know that I am like the lonely voice on this. The second I and the second S in ISIS stand for Iraq and Al Sham or Iraq and Syria.
- [206:52]
Robert Evans
Yep. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. It's constantly frustrating.
- [206:56]
James Stout
Isis, Khorasan province. That's not what it means. Isis, West Africa.
- [207:00]
Robert Evans
Africa.
- [207:00]
James Stout
Know what it means?
- [207:01]
Robert Evans
So it's the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham in Africa.
- [207:07]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [207:08]
Robert Evans
Incredible.
- [207:08]
James Stout
It's now made it into. You like.
- [207:10]
Robert Evans
Well, it would be like if there was like a Christian fundamentalist, like the Georgia Baptist School of London, something like that.
- [207:18]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Or it's like the United States of America.
- [207:21]
Robert Evans
Yeah, the United States of America.
- [207:23]
Deja Indigo
Japan.
- [207:25]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Come on.
- [207:27]
James Stout
Not what the word means.
- [207:28]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [207:29]
Febreze Announcer
I mean, yeah. In the new counterterrorism doc, I think they almost exclusively refer to it as isis. K. Yeah.
- [207:36]
James Stout
So that's Khorasan province.
- [207:37]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [207:37]
James Stout
Which again, not in Iraq or Al Sham in what we would call Afghanistan today.
- [207:42]
Robert Evans
It's fine. It's fine.
- [207:43]
James Stout
Yeah. This is where we're at with the fucking acronym. Is not an acronym. It's just a word, I guess. Now I remain angry. Meanwhile, fighting between Boko Haram and iswa, which is what I'm going to be using in Lake Chad, continues to threaten even worse famine in the region. And Hegseth is claiming that these strikes were part of a campaign to defend Christians.
- [208:06]
Mia Wong
And I just want to note one more thing to give you a sense
- [208:09]
James Stout
of how committed this president is.
- [208:11]
Mia Wong
Maybe a year ago, he heard the call of Nigerian Christians who were being targeted and killed by ISIS in Nigeria. And he said, pete, I want the War Department to focus on ensuring that we do everything we can to protect those Christians. Partnerships like that can take time behind the scenes. But he never wavered on it. And we got the assets there. And over the last month, and there hasn't been much coverage of this, we killed ISIS number two in Nigeria, who is most responsible for killing Christians and trying to target the US Homeland. And have since, because of the intel we gathered, killed hundreds of ISIS ISIS members who are targeting and killing Christians in Nigeria, creating a whole new opportunity there. So there's a lot of things we do that the media pays attention to and a lot of things that the
- [208:54]
Deja Indigo
president empowers the department to do on
- [208:56]
Mia Wong
behalf of the American people that he
- [208:58]
Deja Indigo
deserves great credit for.
- [209:00]
James Stout
So here we are paying attention. As Pete asked, you will notice that the Africom claim of 175 is not hundreds. However, Hegseth in that statement, claimed hundreds. Maybe we are missing something. Or maybe he's referring to the December 2025 strikes. And including all of those and rolling them up together, it's of course, worth pointing out that Nigerian government has pushed back on this narrative, that these strikes are to defend Christians. There are Christian bishops in Nigeria who have pushed back on this narrative because as with many Islamist terror groups, the majority of people these people have killed are not Christians. Right. Many of them are Muslims. Many of them are people of various other faiths. Like Boko Haram. Right. The name roughly translates to, like Western style education is forbidden. It's Haram. Right. Like they're going after people who are in that community who have sought out Western education. There are many, many, many instances I could cite of these people killing Muslim people. Hes wants to make this a crusade and that's just not how things are on the ground. It's a very simplistic understanding of a much more complicated reality. Reality. But yeah, that, that is what I have on Nigeria this week. He is right that the US Media covers Africa less, much less than it should. But trying to do our best here.
- [210:17]
Febreze Announcer
We have one more story, big story before we close. But first, we should mention the Republican primary in Texas on Tuesday. After gaining Trump's endorsement last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the runoff election in the Republican Senate primary race. Paxton won by almost 400,000 votes, beating the four term incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn at 64% to 36% of the vote. This is the second week in a row where Trump has successfully intervened to steer a congressional primary win away from incumbents and toward staunch mega loyalists. Paxton will now go up against Talaria in the general election this November.
- [211:04]
Mia Wong
Should we mention Paxton calling Tabariko transgender?
- [211:07]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [211:08]
Robert Evans
I mean, it's not just Paxton, it's Miller.
- [211:11]
James Stout
Miller, yeah.
- [211:14]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah. There seems to be a whole GOP move to brand him as trans potentially as part of their. Which I kind of see as some degree of desperation. Although I can't really imagine imagine Paxton losing this election. So maybe it's just that they're completely out of other ideas.
- [211:33]
Febreze Announcer
Paxton does seem to have more liabilities than Cornyn would.
- [211:37]
Robert Evans
Sure. But he's. He's Paxton and this is Texas. You have to keep that in mind.
- [211:42]
Mia Wong
They're not going to take Texas.
- [211:43]
Robert Evans
This guy has been charged with crimes and the GOP tried to get rid of him. Texas refuses. Yeah, like Texas is like absolutely not.
- [211:53]
Febreze Announcer
I mean, I never am putting my faith in Texas, as we all know.
- [211:57]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [211:58]
Febreze Announcer
But if, if I were to set up a pairing, sure. Talarico v. Paxton pairing is the one I would pick as opposed to Talarico v. The Cornyn or, you know, Crockett v. V. Paxton.
- [212:13]
Robert Evans
Sure. I'm not gonna say there's no way that Telerico wins.
- [212:18]
Febreze Announcer
It would be an astonishing.
- [212:20]
Robert Evans
But it would be really.
- [212:22]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [212:22]
Robert Evans
Look, I'll come on here and admit I was wrong and I'll be thrilled.
- [212:26]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [212:27]
Robert Evans
I just spent too long living in Texas.
- [212:29]
Mia Wong
I'll say this as like the person who's been the most consistent. Like, assuming there's an election that even sort of functions normally, this is going to be like a 2008 style wave. They're not. Like, they're not going to win Texas. And until I'm proven wrong, I've been saying this the entire time I've been doing this show and I've been right every single time. So, like, prove me wrong. Texas.
- [212:52]
Robert Evans
You know, when I see a flip for Texas coming, I'll call it out. But I don't right now.
- [212:57]
Mia Wong
Nope.
- [212:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [212:58]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [212:59]
Robert Evans
I'm not saying it'll never happen because demographically probably will at some point. Like, unless they, they really succeed at their genocide dreams. But that ain't happening now.
- [213:09]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [213:10]
Robert Evans
Now this cycle.
- [213:13]
Febreze Announcer
Finally, let's talk about another one of these redistricting cases. Cases and one related to the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.
- [213:20]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [213:21]
Febreze Announcer
On Tuesday, a federal court blocked an Alabama congressional House map drawn by Republicans in 2023. A three judge panel found that the drawn map was intentionally discriminatory based on race. Just two weeks ago, the Supreme Court cleared the way for this same map to be used in the 2026 midterm election elections. Alabama Republicans have since labeled the district court panel activist judges. It's worth taking a look at who these judges are. I think the 11th Circuit judge was first appointed to a district court by one Ronald Reagan. The other two district judges were appointed by Trump.
- [214:03]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [214:04]
Febreze Announcer
And this exact same three judge panel had already found this exact, exact same map to be intentionally racially discriminatory years ago. This new district court order also rejects the state's claims that the 2023 map was just drawn with partisan, not racial, intent. Writing, quote, the purpose of the 2023 plan was to distribute black voters across districts to dilute their votes, at least in part because they are black, unquote. This latest ruling is part of a specific redistricting battle that has stretched a on for five years, with Republican maps being repeatedly struck down, appealed, redrawn, and struck down again. Now, I've seen some confusion on the exact series of events here, like what the Supreme Court has ruled on which maps are being used. So I want to just Briefly go over the the sequence of events as I understand it. In 2021, a district court ruled that a new map drawn after the 2020 Central Census likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court upheld this decision in 2023, barring the use of this 2021 map. After the Supreme Court decision, the Alabama Legislature adopted a new map in 2023. But a federal court again found that this newer 2023 map also likely violated Section 2, and the Supreme Court let a ban on the use of this map go through through by declining to block the order. But they did not rule on the map itself. So the court appointed a special master to draw a new Alabama House map to use going forward. In 2025, following a trial, the district court officially ruled that Alabama's 2023 congressional map did in fact violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, finding the map was, quote, an intentional effort to dilute black Alabaman's voting rights strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way, unquote. Importantly, the Supreme Court had yet to rule on the actual 2023 map itself. After the district court's ruling in 2025, Alabama did appeal to the Supreme Court, but they delayed consideration until after the Louisiana case. Now, as we know, that ruling effectively nullified much of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Merits act, establishing that intent of racial discrimination must be shown, not just discrimination, as an effect in the drawing of voting districts. But after that ruling, Alabama asked the Supreme Court again for a quick appeals decision before the state's scheduled primary and to put the lower court's order barring the use of the 2023 map on hold considering their recent ruling in the Louisiana case. And on May 11th 11th, the Supreme Court granted Alabama's emergency shadow docket appeal, vacated the order blocking the use of the 2023 district map, and sent the case back to the lower court for further review in light of the Louisiana ruling. So that's a lot. But remember that the district court already ruled that the 2023 map intentionally discriminated based on race, the very requirement set by the Supreme Court's Louisiana ruling. So when the district court reconsidered the case this past week, they found that the Louisiana decision only strengthened their original ruling that the Alabama GOP map was intentionally discriminatory and deluded black voters. This is pretty much what sort of wrote in her dissent when she argued that there was, quote, unquote, no reason to send the case back to the district Court because that court had already concluded that Alabama, quote, violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of black voters in Alabama. That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of and unaffected by any of the legal issues discussed in the Louisiana case, unquote. So that's essentially what happened. That's essentially what the district court found. The three judge panel also rebuffed opposition to the court ordered map in Alabama on the basis is that it bears a similarity to the map at the center of the Louisiana case, writing that it's their understanding of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that race as a districting criterion cannot be used when drawing maps, but that quote, unquote, relevant racial data may be considered for a lawful purpose, like checking that the drawn maps comply with Voting Rights act precedent incident. It's not that racial data is used in the drawing of maps, but after the maps are drawn, they can be checked against racial data to make sure they comply with Voting Rights act law. The district court wrote that Louisiana's black population is not as concentrated as in Alabama, requiring a black majority district to slice through multiple metropolitan areas to scoop up black voters. Whereas in Alabama it's, quote, unquote, relatively easy to drive draw a reasonably configured majority black district. Quote. We are unsurprised that race blind relief is available here but was unavailable there. Here. It has been consistently obvious to us from our visual assessment of the geographic dispersion of Alabama's black population and statistics about black population centers in the state that black voters in Alabama are relatively geographically common, compact, unquote. So essentially, it's actually pretty difficult to draw a map that separates out the black population to be a minority force in all voting districts. As for demonstrating intent, the district court found that the Alabama legislature only enacted the discriminatory map after knowing it would dilute the impact of black voters and by having prior knowledge of the disparate racial impact impact, including from federal court findings, and then passing the map anyway that itself shows intent. Furthermore, the judges wrote that the case's quote, enormous record contains no evidence of a partisan motive unquote. In the drawing of the 2023 map. I'll quote again from the recent order quote. In the simplest terms, the sequence and substance of extraordinary legislative of events against the backdrop of the legislature's knowledge compels us to conclude that the legislature doubled down on racially discriminatory vote dilution after we and the Supreme Court found that it was racially discriminatory vote dilution. The same evidence leaves us no room to conclude that when the legislature did all this it had party politics in mind. The only available intent evidence tells us that consideration of rules, race were the key reason, unquote. So the court ordered Alabama to use the alternative court ordered map already used in the 2024 election for the rest of Alabama's 2026 congressional elections, after which the legislature can then create a new congressional district plan. And of course, the state of Alabama has already appealed this to the Supreme Court. And we will wait and see if they decide to hear this.
- [221:21]
Deja Indigo
This case.
- [221:22]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [221:23]
James Stout
This will continue to be a thing we're going to have to report on, we should say for some time.
- [221:26]
Deja Indigo
Right.
- [221:26]
James Stout
Like, yes, this is going to result in massive changes and yeah, we will continue to cover them.
- [221:32]
Febreze Announcer
I guess it is interesting that this is the first time I've seen a court really like, interpret the Louisiana ruling for like another case to a. Like this is, this is like an over 70 page, like, like ruling.
- [221:45]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [221:45]
Febreze Announcer
And they discuss like, where the Louisiana case does apply and where it doesn't and what it means to quote, unquote, consider race in the evaluation of these districts. And it would be interesting, you know, if the Supreme Court decides to hear this, if they're going to affirm this court's interpretation of their ruling or if they're going to say, no, you got it wrong and strike down their interpretation. But you know, right now they, they did really outline like, what, what it means to, to use race in reference to these districts and how it cannot be used in the drawing of the district.
- [222:20]
Deja Indigo
Right.
- [222:20]
Febreze Announcer
But that it can be considered to make sure that it complies with the Voting Rights act. And that does not mean that it was used as a instrument in the actual drawing of the district.
- [222:29]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [222:30]
Febreze Announcer
And I think that that specificity is, is. Is an interesting part of the new ruling.
- [222:35]
James Stout
Definitely. And I think, like, it's just like any other Supreme Court decision. Right. Things tend to sort of bounce around before they're entirely clarified.
- [222:44]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [222:44]
Febreze Announcer
Like I said, this is like a five, a five year long case, all stemming from the 2020 consensus.
- [222:49]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [222:49]
Febreze Announcer
And the, and the maps that the Republicans have tried to. Tried to draw after that, which, which as multiple courts, Supreme Court and, and the district court have already concluded the GOP tried to intentionally dilute the, the votes of black Alabamans. Right. And because of the way that the black population is concentrated in Alabama, there needs to be an intentional effort to do that. Right. Whereas in this Louisiana case, the drawing of districts had, you know, had to like, looked more gerrymandered to create these black majority districts. Whereas in Alabama's case, that's not really necessary. And in fact, a lot of the maps that were referenced in testimony were like algorithmically generated.
- [223:27]
Mia Wong
Huh.
- [223:28]
James Stout
That's interesting that it wasn't like they didn't get their crayons out and like draw lines like Elbridge Jerry did back in the day.
- [223:36]
Mia Wong
No.
- [223:37]
Deja Indigo
Great, Great.
- [223:38]
James Stout
I love that. I'm sure we can expect much more wonderful algorithmically generated electronics action. Well, yeah. Content. What a time to be alive. If you want to email us Cool zonetips Proton me hold off for now. If you're with the Ferrets, I've heard from the Black Footed Ferro community and I. I do appreciate that. Unless you can get me on one of those ferret accounts, in which case,
- [224:01]
Mia Wong
please email Put a trans girl on
- [224:03]
Febreze Announcer
your couch we reported the news.
- [224:06]
Olive
We reported the news.
- [224:14]
Robert Evans
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
- [224:19]
Dana Al Kurd
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Description.
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Mia Wong
Thanks for listening.
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Oh, been there. I've chatted with them as late as midnight.
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Bina Ahmed
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Mia Wong
I mean, my dog Sammy thinks the
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Deja Indigo
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Dana Al Kurd
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Mia Wong
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Jackie Mae
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