It Could Happen Here Weekly 178

Summary

Podcast Summary: Behind the Bastards – "It Could Happen Here Weekly 178"

Release Date: April 19, 2025
Host/Author: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
Title: It Could Happen Here Weekly 178
Description: This episode delves into the challenges faced by mentors at Friends of the Children Portland as they navigate the complexities of unionization. Additionally, the podcast addresses global issues such as the devastating earthquake in Myanmar and its broader implications.

---

1. Introduction to Friends of the Children Portland Unionization Effort [02:57 – 15:36]

Overview:
Mia Wong introduces the episode by highlighting the unique and pressing unionization efforts within Friends of the Children Portland. The discussion primarily involves Robert Evans and Clayton English, both mentors and active union members, who provide firsthand insights into their experiences.

Key Points:

• Role of Mentors:
  Robert explains that Friends of the Children is a national nonprofit where mentors commit to guiding youth from kindergarten until graduation, fostering long-term, individualized support.
  "We are committing to youth when they are typically around kindergarten age level and they're being paired with a mentor and they will have a mentor until they graduate the program." [03:43]

• Challenges Faced:
  High turnover rates due to inadequate pay, lack of benefits, and the emotional toll of the job make sustained mentorship difficult.
  "We're not volunteer based. We are employees, basically social workers for all of the families that we work with." [07:00]

• Impact of Poor Support Systems:
  Mentors often struggle to maintain long-term relationships with youth, leading to trust issues and hindered program outcomes.
  "But within that, like everything good and everything bad that you could imagine. And our job a lot of times is like, we can't solve the things that are affecting these kids, but we can take in some of those negative feelings and that grief, that anger, we can take it in and almost like dissolve it a little bit." [09:08]

• Unionization Motivations:
  The mentors sought to unionize to secure better pay, benefits, and job stability, ensuring they can continue their vital work without personal financial strain.
  "They froze wage increases. So I've had the same, the same wage for the past two years, two and a half years that I've been working here." [25:45]

Notable Quotes:

• Robert Evans on the significance of long-term commitment:
  "I'm going to give so many props to one of our mentors who has stayed for, for 12 years and has graduated their youth." [08:42]

• Clayton English on the emotional sustainability of the role:
  "It could affect us so, so much. And that's where, yeah, the sustainability part of like 12 and a half years in this job, like that is a lot." [10:19]

2. Unionization Process and Strike Details [15:36 – 41:38]

Overview:
The conversation shifts to the specifics of organizing a union, the hurdles encountered, and the ongoing strike initiated by the mentors at Friends of the Children Portland.

Key Points:

• Initiation of Unionization:
  In March 2023, a petition to unionize was launched, catalyzed by post-COVID workforce disruptions and systemic issues like stagnant wages.
  "So we first brought about our petition to unionize in March of 2023." [15:56]

• Bargaining Challenges:
  Negotiations with management have been protracted and marked by bad-faith bargaining tactics, including delays and attempts to undermine the union's efforts.
  "Disputes over compensation and insurance are still our last two articles left." [28:40]

• Unfair Labor Practices (ULP):
  The union has filed for ULP charges due to management's stalling tactics and attempts to regress worker conditions, such as proposing to change salaried positions to hourly.
  "The chairman, Stephen Miller, says ™ handle this look." [32:03]

• Strike Actions and Solidarity:
  The union has organized various strike actions, including informational pickets and community fundraisers, to maintain momentum and solidarity among members.
  "We held informational pickets that had donations... We held like a big strike fundraiser." [37:05]

• Support and Morale Maintenance:
  Emphasis on building strong interpersonal relationships among union members to sustain morale and collective resolve during the strike.
  "Authentic conversations with people... like, like, like this is something that it really, really is." [149:10]

Notable Quotes:

• Clayton English on the emotional burden of the job:
  "Our job is like, we are paid mentors, which is the big difference... we're an emotional sponge for a lot of things." [07:00]

• Robert Evans on the necessity of union support:
  "It's a job that requires like, an unprecedented amount of structural support to keep people there for over a decade is failing to do that." [10:58]

• Harley Quinn Smith on management's antagonism:
  "But the issue with that PR wise is that now the bosses are saying in their... they've been saying eight people... they're like, oh, there's only." [146:02]

3. Global Focus: Myanmar Earthquake and Political Turmoil [41:38 – 97:56]

Overview:
The podcast broadens its scope to address the catastrophic earthquake in Myanmar and the ensuing political chaos, highlighting the military junta's oppressive actions and international responses.

Key Points:

• Earthquake Impact:
  On March 28, 2024, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck Myanmar, causing unprecedented devastation, particularly in Mandalay and Sagang.
  "It's the biggest earthquake in Myanmar since 1912, and it registered 7.7 on the Richter scale." [53:29]

• Junta's Response:
  The military junta exacerbated the disaster by restricting internet access, blocking international aid, and conducting airstrikes even post-earthquake, contributing to high casualties and ongoing conflict.
  "The military is detested in most of Myanmar... and its failure to even try and track people rescued under rubble won't help this." [59:32]

• Ceasefires and Continued Conflict:
  Despite calls for humanitarian pauses, the junta continued military operations, including bombing efforts and forced conscriptions, undermining relief efforts and escalating violence.
  "The junta began using paramotors to drop bombs on Hangu village in Saigan... which has been a thing that they've started to do recently." [62:15]

• International Involvement:
  Countries like China and Russia continue to support the junta, further complicating international aid and diplomatic efforts to stabilize the region.
  "China is competing with Russia in Myanmar. So both of them are interested in supporting the junta." [64:20]

• Humanitarian Efforts and Mutual Aid:
  In liberated areas, local communities rely on mutual aid structures to provide necessary support amid the junta's blockade of aid and resources.
  "In significant and growing parts of Myanmar, people are relying on each other instead of the government for aid." [64:32]

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Lod on the junta's oppressive tactics:
  "They dropped a bomb on Naikar village in Papua township... killing, at least, 72 people and injuring about a hundred." [60:12]

• Harley Quinn Smith on international aid hurdles:
  "They didn't allow entry to a Taiwanese search and rescue team... it's like, Sama, nada." [64:43]

• James Stout on the dire situation:
  "We've raised nearly $2,000... but that's just one township. All across the country, people are struggling for the basic supplies that they need to save lives." [43:28]

4. Current Developments and Future Outlook [97:56 – 220:30]

Overview:
The podcast concludes with updates on various political and social issues, including the ongoing refugee detention in El Salvador, the militarization of public lands in the U.S., and the rise of anti-autism rhetoric by public figures.

Key Points:

• El Salvador's Detention Camps:
  The Trump administration collaborates with El Salvador's President Bukele to deport U.S. immigrants to detention centers like Sea Cot, where return is nearly impossible, raising serious human rights concerns.
  "They're going to look for any way to like, make this test case work." [94:08]

• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Breach:
  The NLRB faces a breach where Doge, a malicious actor, infiltrated and stole sensitive data, threatening whistleblowers and exposing union and trade information.
  "This is a big deal because the NLRB has a lot of extremely sensitive data." [208:37]

• Militarization of the Roosevelt Reservation:
  The U.S. Department of Defense assumes control over critical border areas, facilitating increased militarization and weakening protections for indigenous lands, leading to environmental and cultural degradation.
  "They can continue digging through what are literally people's ancestors graveyards." [172:19]

• Rise of Anti-Autism Campaigns:
  Public figures like RFK Jr. launch campaigns that echo historical eugenics rhetoric, promoting harmful stereotypes and policies against individuals with autism.
  "Autism destroys families... it's called autism, a preventable disease, which it is not." [104:34]

• Tariff Talk:
  The episode touches upon ongoing tariff adjustments, particularly the reduction of tariffs on electronics from 145% to 20%, and the potential reinstatement of severe tariffs affecting global trade and technological sectors.
  "It's still a bunch of the parts of this production process that can only be done in Taiwan... it's a big rip to the big rip to the AI people." [163:05]

Notable Quotes:

• Harley Quinn Smith on the severity of deportations:
  "They just kidnap hundreds of people with no criminal records and send them to a foreign gulag." [93:55]

• Greg Lod on the lack of progress in negotiations:
  "We've had our whole proposal on ownership's table for a year and a half now. We had started with bargaining proposal by proposal." [153:29]

• Mia Wong on systemic failures:
  "We just turn away. And we just turn away." [155:33]

---

Conclusion

"It Could Happen Here Weekly 178" of Behind the Bastards offers a profound exploration of both domestic and international issues, emphasizing the critical nature of union support in vulnerable sectors and shedding light on oppressive global events. Through detailed interviews and comprehensive coverage, the podcast underscores the importance of collective action and informed awareness to combat systemic injustices.

Final Thoughts:
The episode serves as a cautionary tale, illustrating how easily adverse events and oppressive practices can escalate without vigilant and organized efforts. It calls listeners to recognize the signs of systemic failure and the vital role of solidarity in fostering meaningful change.

---

Resources Mentioned:

• Friends of the Children Portland Union Network Instagram: FriendsPDXUnionNetwork
• Educational Episodes on Myanmar: Available on Behind the Bastards show notes.
• Community Partners International: CommunityPartnersIntl.org
• Free Burma Rangers: FreeBurmaRangers.org
• NLRB Information Breach Report: Referenced in episode [208:37].

---

Note:
For more detailed information, supporting documents, and direct access to resources, please visit the show’s official website or the episode’s description on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Kevin Smith]

You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You, you'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code [e-mail] hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.

That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless.

Dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me.

I'm the old one, I'm the young one. And every week we try to make.

Each other laugh really hard.

[Greg Lod]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only.

[Mia Wong]

Or listen to it with your kid.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Greg Lod]

In 2020, a group of young women.

[Kevin Smith]

Found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Clayton English]

Someone was posting photos.

[Mia Wong]

It was just me naked.

[Robert Evans]

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lodd and this is season.

[Mia Wong]

Two of the War on Drugs podcast.

[Clayton English]

Last year, a lot of the problems.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports, this kind.

Of star studded a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes, we met them at their recording studios.

[Mia Wong]

Stories matter and it brings a face to it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It makes it real.

[Clayton English]

It really does.

[Greg Lod]

It makes it real.

[Mia Wong]

Listen to new episodes of the War.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

On Drugs Podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever your.

[Mia Wong]

Podcast.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Call zone Media.

[James Stout]

Hey everybody. Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week 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.

[Mia Wong]

Welcome to here, a podcast that asks the question, what happens when the people who are trying to help put things back together are also being exploited in the process? I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we are going to be talking about a union that is attempting to do exactly that. And with me to discuss this are Jess and Jesus, who are mentors for Friends of the Children PDX and members of the Friends PDX Union Network. Yeah, Jess, Jesus, welcome to the show.

[Robert Evans]

Thank you so much for having us.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, thank you.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I'm really happy to talk to you both because I think this is a very, very unique and interesting union. Especially, you know, talk about, especially right now, but to get people sort of rolling. Can you explain what Friends of the Children is and what it, what it is that you two do?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, so Friends of the Children is. It's a national organization, it's a non profit, but they're. There are individual chapters throughout different cities. We work out of Portland, which is the founding chapter and also the largest one. Some of the language I'll say that is like used from the website and from like the mission statement that really encompasses what our role is and also how it is told to like our community partnerships. And the families and youth that we work with is that we are committing to youth when they are typically around kindergarten age level and they're being paired with a mentor and they will have a mentor until they graduate the program. So that usually ends up being a total of 12 and a half years and that like, within that we are doing a lot of like individualized care and support. Um, we work with them in the schools, we work with them outside the schools, we help them get into extracurriculars, we help them with like social emotional regulation, developing relationships with other youth. In the program and really just like being a consistently reliable human being. And one of the big like pillars of our organization is the commitment to long term, which sometimes can be an issue when you are facing a lot of high turnover as an organization. We both have eight kids on our roster, as do most mentors. And within that we have youth. I personally have youth that have been assigned to me that have just started in the program, meaning that they were like maybe first grade when I was assigned to them. And then I also have youth that are middle school level that have had several different mentors in the past, Some that have stayed there for maybe a few years. And like, sometimes there's ones that have been there for months.

[Clayton English]

Yeah. If I can add to that. The kids we work with, they're enrolled into the program because they have some risk factors in their lives that would lead them to needing a little bit of extra support and help. So we work with a lot of kids that come from immigrant families, from families that have, you know, single parent households, foster care families and kids. Kids that like, unfortunately are likely to face some challenges that our society and the way it's built up will deal to them. And our goal is to help them through those challenges, Just be there for them so that they have a chance of graduating high school or entering adulthood without having, you know, having had kids or facing like the justice system. It's kids that we love dearly, that we work with in the similar way as like, you know, a program like Big brothers, Big Sisters. But we are paid mentors, which is the big difference.

[Greg Lod]

Right.

[Clayton English]

We're not volunteer based. We are employees, basically social workers for all of the families that we work with. It's honestly like, it's a great job. And I think right now especially like super necessary because things are falling apart.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And yeah, just adding like one that made me think of how within the work, like, I think social work is a very apt choice of words because we are paired with the youth and it doesn't like, stop there. Like, we work like, we work with the families. We also work with like the siblings too, because sometimes you'll have a youth that maybe is the only child in that family that for whatever reason got a mentor and then you support all. I mean, it's a choice. But I would say that most mentors definitely opt in to being there for siblings and family members in the household and making sure that they're also showing up for the caregivers to help them create a loving home.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And I mean, you know, I Think that you can, you can look at this and see how it's supposed to work structurally. And you know, you were talking about like, I mean, this is supposed to be a like over a decade long commitment to these kids, right? That ideally you're working with the same person and you know, you're forming really deep emotional attachments because you can't not do that if you're doing this kind of work. But then also, you know, but in order for that to work and I think this is, you know, you can see this, the outsides, like in order for this to work, this has to be a job that you could stably do for a decade, right?

[Greg Lod]

Like.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Which I will say we do. And I want to do. I want to give so many props to one of our mentors who has stayed for, for 12 years and has graduated their youth. But of all of her, of all of our coworkers, I believe it's only one that has currently been able to do that and has stayed there as long as I have.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, yeah. And the truth of the fact, like, yeah, a, for any job, 12 and a half years is a really long time, right. I mean, six years is a really long time. And with this job, we're like a, we're an emotional sponge for a lot of things, right? So our kids go through everything that you could imagine and within that, like everything good and everything bad that you could imagine. And our job a lot of times is like, we can't solve the things that are affecting these kids, but we can take in some of those negative feelings and that grief, that anger, we can take it in and almost like dissolve it a little bit. Right? But within that, like it could affect us so, so much. And that's where, yeah, the sustainability part of like 12 and a half years in this job, like that is a lot. And you, we need a lot for that to like at all be, be possible.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I mean like there's this way in which you're effectively like what this job is, is like you're the person who is trying to like mitigate the impact of like all, like literally all of the structural systems of violence that exist in this entire country and how like how they're just sort of targeted down on these kids and your job is to like, try to like protect them as much as possible. And that's unbelievable amount of like physical and emotional labor. And then also like, I don't know, it seems pretty bad that there's only been one co worker who's been able to Graduate their kids.

[Robert Evans]

Like, just to clarify for history, that's been in like our time.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know if like over the 30 years I hope that other people have, but yeah, in recent years it's only been the one. And also like, yeah, this is a job where you are not necessarily able to like, undo the systems at play, but trying to support them. And like, we as mentors are inevitably also facing those systems against ourselves. And like, one of the reasons that I think people gravitate towards this job is their empathy because they have those shared experiences. One of the things that is kind of heavy in the culture of friends is being asked your, why when you start, like, why did you choose friends? And for a lot of people it is because of wanting to be the person that they needed when they were going through those periods of time. So there's bound to be like a lot of like, reactivation of feelings inside yourself that I think we all, like, I want to say, like, every mentor I've worked with does an incredible job of like, handling that and like taking good care of themselves. But it is definitely something that like, takes a lot of regulation. And I think empathy is one of the greatest skills in this job. But it also, yeah, it also then leads to us needing greater needs of self care and things like that.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And like, I mean, I guess like, to put this in perspective for like, people listening to this is like, okay, your job is to be the person like in the friend group who like, manages like when someone's like having an emotional crisis, like, you have to like, help them and deal with it. And that is your job for like eight kids. Like the worst shit in the world. Like Jesus Christ. Oh, good Lord.

[Clayton English]

It's, it's honestly like, like hearing this, it's always really helpful to hear someone's outside perspective of our job. Right. Because we get so, so into it, so into the muck of like, what this job can be. And I think like, overall, like, like social work, it's not just like our, our job, but like, I'm sure other social workers and people in care industries, like, we have that like, continuous like vicarious trauma that makes us forget like how, how our job is sometimes. And then it's helpful to hear other people mention it because it's like, yeah, wow, our job is kind of crazy. And the work we do is like really important and really important for society. And also, yeah, like, it's hard. It's hard work.

[Robert Evans]

It's. It's hard and it doesn't like, really have an endpoint. Like we have the hours we work with kids and then we have the hours we think about them and the things going on in their lives. And sometimes it's like sweet things. Like a lot of times it's sweet things where I'll see something and be like, oh my gosh, you know, who would love that? And like, things like that are like, oh, great idea or oh, let's go see this movie. And a lot of times it's like worrying though too, and knowing that there is. There is only so many things we can control. And some things we just have to be the person that's there as they have to go through something which, yeah, it's. It's hard because we also obviously like develop such loving relationships with these kids. It's hard to see like kids that you care about so much that sometimes the most you can do is just be there. Yeah, it definitely is a job that like to some degree is sort of always with you.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. We have a joke about this with this job where it's like, like if do what you love and you'll never be free for a single second of your entire life, it's like, because you're just always on.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, it's so true. Yeah. As you say this, I. I worked till like 9:30 last night because I was like, you know what, I'm enjoying this so much hanging out with my guys. So I' just going to keep working.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of keeping working, we need to go to ads and then we will come back and talk about the ways in which this job that requires an incredible amount of structural support to keep people there for like over a decade is failing to do that. And we are back.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, now that we've sort of talked about what this is, let's talk about the actual union, which is the thing. Yeah, yeah. So can you talk about sort of how did organizing for this union start and what were the sort of issues that could have brought everyone to be like, okay, we need to do this.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, for sure. So we first brought about our petition to unionize in March of 2023. So that was two years ago. A long time ago. Right. But the work for unionization, obviously the organizing behind it had started like much before that. When I first joined Friends, it was in September of 22 and I knew that the work had already been like happening the summer before. What was the catalyst was post Covid A obviously a lot of people left. Given what Covid did to a lot of industries and especially care work but then likewise, a lot of people were fired and were, many would say, like fired without like a full on like due process that included a program manager who, you know, was. Was really listening to friends and advocating for, for the mentor role. And they were let go, which spurred a lot of people to want to start organizing. Some of the issues that we face, like the pay obviously, like within social work in general and nonprofit work, like it's never going to match up and never going to really be as good as like the cost of living, especially here in Portland. But the pay compared to like all of the emotional work and all the work that we do was just not there and not sustainable. It's why people were not like able to stick around because frankly we were looking at the same issues that our families were facing of like, you know, food insecurity and needing to like get food stamps or like needing like rental and like housing assistance because our pay was just not up to par. Those are a few of the issues. Jess, I don't know if you have other thoughts.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think you touched on a lot of them. I think it's hard to say in this job if you are looking to have a family. There's been issues. Yeah. With pay, with insurance, with other sorts of things that have led to mentors leaving rather than like staying there, even if they like really wanted to stay there, just wouldn't necessarily allow for them to have maybe like the life they wanted. And also just honoring. I think with like bereavement leave and critical issue leave has been areas that haven't really been addressed.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

We have had very tragic things happen in the, in our working community with the families and that have drastically affected. Yeah. The well being of mentors and staff members alike.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And I mean, you know, this is a job that structurally is designed to be a kind of like. Like again if. If the goal is to have one person from the, from, from like kindergarten to. Until they like like a graduating high school. Right. Like, that is something that requires like 1950s, 1960s style Fordism. Like you have one job for decades and the only way you can to that is if people are incredibly well supported. And it's like the fact that it's like, okay, you're trying to do this, but you're not paying people enough money to fucking afford food. Like, what the hell?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like Jesus Christ.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Just like.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Oh my God.

[Clayton English]

Like, yeah. Or even I'm. I mean, it's still something that we're fighting, but like our, our workplace like doesn't provide Health insurance for dependents, which I think is.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

Really ironic, giving how much we care for K. And then some of our mentors and other coworkers that have kids, like, have to spend so much money on health insurance for their own personal kids.

[Mia Wong]

Friends of some of the kids. Apparently, this works.

[Robert Evans]

The kids, they pick.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And honestly, like, big, big picture thinking, like, the reason why we, like, started this whole unionizing project was because we care so much about our kids, right? Like, I, when I first started working at Friends, like, I, I think, was the first mask mentor to be hired in a fairly long time after a lot of firings of other mask mentors and two of the youth that. Actually, it's more than two of the youth, but the first two youth that I was matched up with, they hadn't had a mentor for over two years.

[Greg Lod]

Jeez.

[Clayton English]

Which is a really long time. Like when. When you, you know, are five, six years old and you're used to one person consistently picking you up every single week and hanging out with you and spending time with you for several hours for six or seven years. And then just like, next day, next week, maybe even that same day, you find out, like, oh, you no longer have a mentor and you're not going to have a mentor for two more years because people keep leaving. People aren't wanting to apply for this job because the pay isn't high enough. Right. That then, like, creates, like, a lot of issues with the kids that we're dealing with. It's not like we are these, like, saviors or, like, anything like, along those lines, right? But when someone has consistent support and then that support is lost for a long time, especially when you're a young kid, where it's been the majority of your life, you've been having that consistent support that then creates, like, a lot of trust issues and, like, over all, like, attachment issues that a youth could face. And for me, that was the main thing. Like, working with these kids and having to, like, regain that trust was something that's, like, still to this day is, like, really emotionally, like, daunting. And I, like, I will keep saying this. I love my kids so much. Like, I, like, can't stop thinking about them. And I want to be with my kids until they graduate, which would mean me staying at this job for another eight years, which. It's a long time, right? But I. I want to do that. So I want to, you know, get paid, have time off when one of my. Sadly, this is something that did occur where you've passed away that I worked with and like didn't have time off to like really grieve that hard stuff. And I just want to be able to stay there until they're done with the program.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And it's like there's just, I mean just like a litany of horrors where it's like one. It's like, you know, when there is like it's, it's not, you know, like turnover in a normal job sucks and but this is like when there's turnover because people can't afford to live their lives, it's like you're just like ripping a hole in these kids. Like like the fabric of their social lives. And then also it's like, yeah, one of these kids that is literally your job to care for dies and you just have to fucking go to work the next day. Like it is so hideous. And it's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, like it makes sense that like, yeah, people are organizing because it's like, you know, it's like this organization is just systemically failing both the people they're trying to help and the people whose job it is to like help them and.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one of the things that is like hardest to see while like working there is the ways in which this like job that you do like that like I care so much about and love doing but like seeing this like institution in a way be like part, be part of the problem. Because if we aren't like having it so that employees feel supported in the way that they need to, like life happens. Sometimes people leave and like move and get a different job for various reasons. But a lot of the times it's, it's because it's not sustainable and it's really hard to leave. And like it's a heartbreaking thing because I like, I want to graduate many of my youth and it is something that I think about of like how feasible is that like I want to do it and like also, okay, then that means I got to be frugal and all these other ways or et cetera and. Yeah. And working with youth that have already kind of experienced loss and wanting to continue to show up for them. The job itself feels so sacred and like I feel so lucky to be in these kids lives. And I think just a lot of the turnover has been out of like lack of sustainability for yourself, like for your well being.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, yeah. And I mean the turnover numbers were pretty wild. I think one time we calculated it and mentors were. It was like a 40 something percent like turnover rate for mentors. Yeah. And a lot of that happened because in this two year time period where we've been fighting for a contract, they also froze wage increases. So I've had the same, the same wage for the past two years, two and a half years that I've been working here. You know, in that same time period, inflation has been pretty crazy and rent.

[Mia Wong]

For me and it's about to get worse. It's about to get so much worse.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, yeah. Which, which, you know, gladly now we've had this fight and we're at the two year mark and not at the zero year mark and not.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Clayton English]

Looking forward to two more years of doing this. But yeah, it's, it's been hard to sustain this when everything is increasing in price and our wages are completely stagnant.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. So let's take one more ad break and then we will come back to talk about.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

How unionization efforts are going and, and yeah, we are back. Yes, let's talk about how this campaign is going. So you said you've been in bargaining for like two years.

[Robert Evans]

So we had our petition for recognition on March 23, 2023. So that was over two years ago. And then our.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Our employer didn't formally recognize us, but through the process of like voting we got over 93% of.

[Mia Wong]

Wow. Yeah, that's an incredible, that's incredible.

[Robert Evans]

It's super great. And it's also like, wow, we all really need it. Yeah, yeah. And like there were some other barriers including like not being formally recognized. Like we also had management contest a few positions that I believe most, if not all, we were able to successfully have be part of our unit. And then we didn't have our first bargaining session until September of 2023. So like almost six months I think if I did the math right after we formally presented our letter for recognition.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And like throughout that process. So now it has been like, Jesus is quite good at keeping track of it. But I think as of today we're about at 580 days of bargaining.

[Mia Wong]

God.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. It's been a long one and it hasn't been, it's been like also a choppy journey where there has been delays in scheduling, delays in just getting different articles back in time. One of the biggest ones obviously was compensation. And I think, I can't quite remember the period of time, but we presented it over a year ago. I think maybe, oh my gosh, I could be wrong. And it took like, it took several, several, several months. For us to get anything back from management, which. Yeah. Was a big bummer. Amongst other things.

[Mia Wong]

It sucks. It sucks.

[Clayton English]

And obviously that's the one that we have yet to finalize like as.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

As we're talking right now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it is. Insurance and compensation are still our last two articles left.

[Clayton English]

Yeah. And some of the, like the difficult things, I mean, when you are working on a project, I mean I, I wouldn't be surprised given like really when these conversations started if we're looking at like over 900 or a thousand days of like really talking about this. But then when you're dealing with bargaining for 580 days, like, it's exhausting. It is so exhausting. We have regular meetings that we attend to that our bargaining meetings are specifically scheduled outside work hours so that like the people on our bargaining team and other union members would have to put in that extra time outside of our 40 hour week. Yeah. And within that, like the hardest part is when you directly confront. Right. Your managers and your bosses about like the rights and the things that you need. So much of it like boils down to respect. Right. And your respect as like a worker and the value that you have as a worker in your organization. And when there is the pushback on that, it honestly is like for me at times was debilitating. Right. When you're doing this work and your workplace is stretching things out for so long and you're pouring your heart out on your kids, like really trying to do the best. That response from our, you know, our supervisors and managers, like, it really was hard. It was hard for me, was hard for other union organizers in our workplace and was hard for all of our workers. Where we started thinking like, dang, like, what is the value that we have like in this workplace? What is the value that we intrinsically have in the work that we're doing with our kids? It's a lot. And it's a lot when you're facing all these systems that our kids are facing and like taking those things in and then are trying to change those systems, finally able to try to change those systems. And we learned that like, oh wait, like the place that we're working is actually part of these systems too. And is doing the same things that we're like, fighting to have our kids have better lives. Like, we're facing it right now from inside the house.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. I wanted to add in to. Yeah. Very much realizing that like our management is also in a way operating, you know, maybe like a corporation, which isn't the hope you would have for a nonprofit. And one of the steps we had to take as a union was filing a uop. So unfair labor practice, which cited, like I had mentioned before, like, delays in scheduling and also regressive bargaining, which just means that, like, the way in which they were presenting things would have lessened our quality of conditions. So definitely not what you want to be getting. Not what you want to be handed across from the bargaining table.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Clayton English]

Within this process, they were currently salaried workers, but they tried to change us to hourly workers.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Which again, like, we're always working. You know, we're always working. So unless you want to pay me for 24 hours.

[Mia Wong]

You know, you're talking about, like, yeah, that they're behaving like a corporation is like, oh, yeah, this is exactly what, like, my employer did to me, which is like, like one of, like, one of the largest media companies in the world, and they dragged out negotiations for two years. And, like, you know, you're talking about the sort of like, just like, oh, they're like the feeling of disrespect where they're just not getting stuff back to you. And it's like, I remember, you know, like, we'd be sitting there for a bargaining meeting, and they wouldn't. And they would be an hour late. And they'd be an hour late because they hadn't like, bothered to beforehand spend time drafting out what their responses were going to be. So they were frantically trying to get it done before we were there. And we're all just sitting there for literally an hour waiting for them to show up. And it's like, okay, there are people in this unit whose job is to stand next to car bombs, like, and you can't show up on time to your, to this, to this meeting that you have known was going to happen for weeks. Like, yeah, it's just, I say this every single episode. Like, this is an incredibly common unit blessing tactic is draw out the first contract. Because that's, that's like the second point where unions fail after, like, the, after, after you get, like, recognition votes is like, here.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, for sure.

[Mia Wong]

You know, like, I mean, I, I, I think to some extent we expect corporations to do this, but it's like, okay, this is an ngo. That's like, the point of which is supposed to be, like, helping underprivileged, underprivileged youth. And then they're like, we're going to turn around and we're going to screw over different underprivileged youth. Like, yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Sucks.

[Clayton English]

Yeah. And I think that's, like, for me, one of the things that just, like, mess with my mind the most is that, like, we're not selling a product. Right. We're not trying to, like, get revenue or anything along those lines. Right. So, like, our job is a job that we actually, like, fully love and, like, want to stick around. Like, yeah. Not. Not just for our own, like, financial, you know, peace and, like, our own, like, financial security. Like, we want to stick around this job because we care about the job. And, you know, that's not to, like, like, other, you know, businesses and other workplaces that unionize. A lot of times people want to do that because they want financial security. Right. And I think for a lot of NGOs, nonprofits and care work, like, we unionize because we want to stick around, both because of financial security. Right. But also because we just, like, care so much about the work that we're doing. And to be faced with actions by our workplace that, you know, tried to dissuade us from that, try to, like, you know, in a sense, like, it felt like stopping us from wanting to stick around like that again really hard. Really hard. And I think, like, a really, like, psychologically hard part that comes with unionizing in the care work field and the, like, nonprofit space.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Like, this isn't a job that people are going to take for the money, but we do need to be receiving, like, equitable pay and benefits so that we stay at this job like this, by all means. And, like, still, like, it's. This is the same way I feel about it to this day. I remember, like, reading the little, like, job description for this role and was like, oh, this is. Dude, this is, like, my dream job. This is, like, a hundred percent what I want to spend my. My energy towards.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And, yeah, I think that's a huge part of why we were able to get, like, that 93%. And to have also, like, routine support for different actions and stuff is just because we have people that care so much about wanting to stick around.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And that's the thing that NGOs, you know, and you see this in abortion work. You see this in, like, you see this in nursing. You see this in all of these different fields. Like, that's the thing that these NGOs use to exploit people is, you know, like, I mean, is the basic human empathy and love and care that we have for the people who we're caring for. And they're. And these people are like, aha, look at this. Aha. These people, they care about the thing that they're doing. We can underpay them and overwork them. It's like, why does our system work like this? Like, it's just. What a terrible way to design an economic system.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, just.

[Mia Wong]

Good Lord. Let's talk a little bit about what kinds of organizing things you all have been able to do and the kinds of things you've been able to accomplish by working together, even in these really kind of like, I don't know, structurally difficult conditions.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we've had, we've had a multitude of different actions over the past, you know, over the past 580 days. I think one of our, one of our biggest ones by far, which was, I think also was just one of our most beautiful in a way was November of last year. We did an info picket. And it was one of those things too, where it was very well planned out. But also, even with the best of planning, midway through it, we had a shift location based off of just changing information we were getting. And we had one of our like, little bits is because our union is called Fun. A lot of our posters were spongebob themed. So instead of imagination, you know, it's compensation.

[Mia Wong]

Rules.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And I think it's indicative of like also how much people that work with us are playful and sweet and why we are good at our jobs of working with kids. And yeah, we had very high turnout. I think we had 40 something people within our own organization that showed up for that. We've done smaller actions too by just asking for community support. Like we've had caregivers write letters of support to different people in management. We've also done a few pack the rooms for bargaining sessions. Like, especially when there have been times that have felt like there's been some semblance of stalling. Yeah, Those are just some of them. Chime in with others.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, within that. And I think like an interesting thing about nonprofits, our revenue comes from donors. Right. So we have to play this like, fun game of like, okay, how do we communicate with our donors? Right. So that we make sure that they know that like, you know, this is part of like what they're donating to. But then within that also, like, you know, us ask for money as well. Right. Because we do want, you know, better pay and better benefits. Right. So we've contacted donors and we'll still plan to do that with both that ask of like, support the union and support our organization. Right. Because the thing that we care about the most is the work that we do. With our kids. And for that to happen, we want our organization to like stay afloat, truly.

[Mia Wong]

Right.

[Clayton English]

Yeah. Some of the wins that we've gotten. I mentioned earlier that they were trying to have us be hourly workers and that was a big campaign that we like were fighting back on for a long time. It's also like what precipitated the ULP filing. I made too many buttons that said you could never have too many buttons, truly. That said I work 40 plus hours a week.

[Robert Evans]

Week.

[Clayton English]

Because one of the people on the bargaining team for management at the bargaining table asked if we even work 40 hours a week while we were talking about this. And that's like one of those instances that I mean like, yeah, wow, that's like a little disrespectful and like really bites. So we all were wearing these pins regularly. We, you know, we signed a strike pledge where we had like 80 something percent of the unit say that like if we came to voting for a strike, people would strike. And the big win was like, okay, great, we get to stay as salaried workers. Because they walk back on that on that thread. We our time off. We have a time off contract or agreement now that like some of my co workers that have been around a long time, once the contract gets ratified, they'll have like two more weeks of time off.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hell yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah.

[Clayton English]

Because they haven't. They've been around for seven years and they're still at the same amount of time off basically that I'm at and that I've been at since the beginning. Yeah. And when it comes to wages, like we'll. We're still figuring that out. But some of the gains that we are potentially looking at is like incredible. Like I looked at the numbers yesterday of like what hopefully given like where we're at right now in. In the agreements, like what I would hopefully get. And I straight up like teared up looking at the number because it felt like such a big change in my financial status. Right. And yesterday, like, as I said, I worked till 9.30pm with my kids probably because I had this like massive like weight of, you know, this financial doom that I'm looking at. Somewhat lifted at the hope of the wins that we might get from this contract. So it's been incredibly hard, incredibly long, way too long. And all of it is. So it's going to be so worth it. Right. I hope that's something that the listeners really get that this is hard work. But in the end is the change that we were hoping for.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And recently One of the things that we did do, just a run through of, just to kind of boost morale since marketing has gone on for so long, was compile all the wins that we have so far just through tas, so. So still tentative, but, yeah, it did map out a lot of huge things. One of the things we do a lot in this job is drive, and we don't have many things in policy about cleanings or repairs. When something happens in your car with a youth, like, say, they throw up, it happens with kids. Like, that isn't necessarily something that would have been, like, covered. We would have had to just pay for that cleaning ourselves. And, like, mileage is a huge thing where one of our potential, like, big wins is that we'll get, like, full mileage covered, rather than having to, like, deduct time from, like, this illusion of having an office where we would have to minus some mileage in whatever way made sense with where our buildings were located, despite. Even if our kids were, like, totally somewhere else where we were picking them up, it definitely wasn't, like, the most sensical way for us to be like. Like being fully reimbursed for what we were doing.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And those are all huge wins that we do have. Like, obviously, compensation and insurance are two of the biggest that we're still working on. I think recently, like, almost within this week, we've started to tip in a way that feels like we may be close to having a contract soon, which I do want to say, like, you know, as inspiration to everybody out there that works for a nonprofit like Unionize. And you know what? You might. Yeah, it might fare well for you. I have hope for everybody. And, like, right now, I think a lot of our, like, a lot of my co workers are starting to have hope again. Because I do think, like you said, it is totally a manipulation tool to have it drawn out so long. And yeah, it is exhausting to be basically stalled in your wage for two and a half years.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But we are, like, gaining some traction again, which I do think is something that we're still being, you know, cautious with, just because right now it does feel like management is working with us a little bit more. But I also think that there are reasonings around that, like, we're about to have in a few weeks our biggest fundraiser for our work. Because, like Jesus said, we are majority donor based. And I do think there's an appeal to management to have a contract by then.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And it adds to the whole, we're doing good work and we treat our employees Well, I hope that that is something then that is fulfilled by them in an honest way, not just a superficial way, because we are still pushing for a little bit more right now and have bargaining coming up next week. So, yeah, I'm really hoping that what they're showing us isn't just performative, that we really might be able to get to a point where there is something that is truly good for us. Us. Because we're all ready. We're all ready for a contract.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, as. As, you know, as someone who got our contract, like, it doesn't. It doesn't magically solve everything, but, like, my God, does that make your life better? Like, it is. It is absolutely worth it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, so how can people support y'all both sort of locally here and then just, like, broader. Because most people are not here here.

[Robert Evans]

Honestly, most of our, like, people in, like, management positions, information is public. If you want to email them and support, go for it. Also, just like, encouraging either your workplace, if you work in kind of a social work setting, or, like, you know, if you know people that are. Because this whole field of work takes such a toll on people and it is the most necessary work. And I think it's really easy to fall into the mindset of, I'm doing this for the greater good, not, you know, not for money, not for these things. But, like, you also deserve to feel okay and taken care of and, like, have the things you need to be saying. Yeah, Jesus. Anything else you want to add?

[Clayton English]

Yeah, I mean, I would add that, like, we have an Instagram, right? That's Friends PDX Union Network.

[Mia Wong]

It's a mouthful, but we'll link that in the description.

[Clayton English]

Yeah, great. And then within that, like, if you're in Portland, like, make sure to, like, follow us and, like, pay attention to what we're posting because we, you know, hopefully we do not have to get to a point in striking, especially the place that we're at right now with our contract. But in truth, like, we're looking at 580 days, and that is quite a long time.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Clayton English]

And then also, like, if. If listeners do have the ability to donate, if they could donate some funds for Friends of the Children Portland and somehow in their notes, be like, I support the union. Like, I think that could also be a really interesting way to show the support that, like, our supporters have, like, for both the work that we're doing on the youth level, but then also, like, in the union side of things, too. There's been a lot of communication of, like, oh, this is really going to impact, like, the development side of our organization and, like, all of the things that, like, our fundraising team is going to have to do to like, meet these. Which again, I think, yeah, that would be more true if, like, our executive director wasn't making like, what, like five times as much money as I am.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Clayton English]

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

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So those are. We will, we will. We will have links in the description to all of that. And yeah, thank you two both so much for coming on the show and I hope you win. And yeah, I hope you get to go back to caring for these kids and not. And also while not having to worry about, like, being able to live your lives.

[Clayton English]

Thank you, Mia, so much.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for having us.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, of course.

[Robert Evans]

Honestly, it's been great talking about the work because it is, it is really important work and I'm happy we get to do it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, it's, it's wonderful. And yeah, and so this is, yeah, this, this bit, it could happen here. And yeah, also go unionize your workplace. You can do it. I guarantee it.

[Kevin Smith]

You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist. Today at talkspace.com save $80 with code.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

[e-mail] this is Courtside with Laura Carrenti, the podcast that's changing the game and breaking down the business of women's sports like never before. I'm Laura, the founder and CEO of Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Your inside source on the biggest deals, power moves and game changers. Writing the playbook on all things women's sports, from the heavy hitters in the front office to the powerhouse women on the pitch. We're talking to commissioners, team owners, influential athletes, and the investors betting big on women's sports. We'll break down the numbers, get under the hood and go deep on what's next. Women's sports are the moment, so if you're not paying attention, you're. You're already behind. Join me courtside for a front row seat into the making of the business of women's sports. Courtside with Laura Carenti is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Courtside with Laura Carenti Starting April 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. We ready to fight?

[Mia Wong]

I'm ready to fight.

[Greg Lod]

Is that what I thought it was? Oh, this is Fighting Words.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Okay, I'll put the hammer back.

[James Stout]

Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with the second most banned book in America.

[Greg Lod]

Now more than ever, we need to.

[James Stout]

Use our voices to fight back. And that's what we are doing on Fighting Words. We're not going to let anyone silence us.

[Greg Lod]

That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of black history or queer history, any history that challenges the.

[James Stout]

Whitewashed norm or put us in a box.

[Mia Wong]

Black people have never, ever depended on.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The so called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great. We are the greatest culture makers in world history.

[Greg Lod]

Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio.

[James Stout]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.

That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless.

Dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me.

I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard.

[Greg Lod]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A lot of Cuss. Listen a lot of bad language. It's for adults only.

[Mia Wong]

Or listen to it with your kid.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Greg Lod]

Hello and welcome to the show. It's me, James, Today, and I am joined by Garrison Davis. Hi, Garrison.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hello.

[Greg Lod]

Hello. Garrison has just said some words about something that's happening on social media that I don't understand, and it's made me feel very old. That's what's happening today in my world. It's very sad. We're gathered here today to talk about the earthquake in Myanmar. Right. I think most of you will probably have been made aware of the earthquake. It's somewhat odd that corporate media has really not reported on the revolution in any substantial way since 2021. But the earthquake apparently justified a lot of networks sending people to Myanmar for the first time. Very amusingly, people DMing me on Bluesky and Twitter asking how to get a visa from the Burmese Hunter, which is not a thing I have ever done. The last communication I had with them came in the form of a car bomb that they set off near to a place where we were. But if you're not aware, the earthquake happened on the 28th of March of this year, just before one in the afternoon. It was the biggest earthquake in Myanmar since 1912, and it registered 7.7 on the Richter scale, which is huge because it's very hard for foreign journalists to get a visa to enter Myanmar. The initial reporting focused on Bangkok and the damage done in Thailand, but the epicetter was in Sagang, which is near Mandalay. Mandalay is the second biggest city in Myanmar, and that was where the worst of the destruction happened. Almost every street in Mandalay has collapsed buildings. It's a little difficult for us to get a sense of the exact scale of the damage because the Hunter refuses to allow. Some media has been allowed in the BBC, I saw, like, sneaked somebody in. It's very difficult for media to move and report freely. And in addition to this, the Hunter has continued its practice of cutting off Internet for people in Myanmar. Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Even during, like, emergency situations.

[Greg Lod]

Yes, yeah, especially during emergency. Like, they've cut it off, like, as a response to this because I guess they perceive it to be something that makes them look weak. This is a tendency that the Hunter has displayed before. So in 2008, Cyclone Nagus affected Myanmar and killed over 130,000 people. And they blocked international aid. They said that people didn't need the, quote, chocolate bars that the US and other countries were trying to deliver and that they could exist by, like, hunting frogs in ditches was their suggestion. I don't think people realize, like, how far down the North Korea scale the, the Burmese hunter is. But, like, they're very worried that any interaction with the outside world, specifically with like, I guess Western neoliberal powers, will be damaging for their ability to control the population. So for that reason, we don't know how many people have died. Right. From what I've heard on the ground, the death toll is substantially higher than the 3,600 number being reported. The U.S. geological Survey estimated that an earthquake of that magnitude in that region would kill between ten and a hundred thousand people.

[Mia Wong]

People.

[Greg Lod]

Obviously there's quite a big kind of delta there. What I can tell you is that I've heard firsthand that there are some parts of Mandalay and Sagan where the stench of rotting bodies is so powerful that people have stopped returning to their homes. There have been so many aftershocks that people are still sleeping in the street because they're worried about the damage, structures falling down. The UN has an estimate 17 million people across 57 townships. Townships are like the administrative districts that are used in Myanmar have been affected with over 9 million people facing severe hardship. And of course, this is all compounded by the fact that there were already 20 million people in Myanmar who needed humanitarian assistance. And There are about 3 and a half million internally displaced people as a result of the fighting that's happened after the revolution. So, like, it really came at a pretty difficult time in. In a place where the government is not willing. They said after the earthquake they wanted international aid, but as we'll see later in this script, they've only accepted it from certain countries. I spoke to a friend who has family in Mandalay yesterday. He told me that the way they're assessing the damage is using open source intelligence. They're trying to look in the backgrounds of people's videos on Facebook to work out if their childhood homes fell down. That right. They were using satellite imaging software when I spoke to them yesterday to, to try and ascertain if their families were okay. They told me Sagang has very famous pagodas, and the pagodas are all on a hill, and apparently a lot of those pagodas have fallen down and even the hill itself is like, listing. So there's been like, massive cultural damage as well. Another way in which the Damage was compounded by Myanmar's politics. Was the quake struck, like I said, at 1pm on a Friday. Right. Friday prayers. This happened during Ramadan, specifically the day before Idol Fitr, which is a very busy day for mosques, if you're not aware. Right. Successive governments of Myanmar since the 1960s have refused to allow even basic maintenance for mosques. That means that these buildings were in great states of disrepair. Right. Myanmar, there is an ultranationalist Buddhist movement which has been embraced to a great degree by the hunter, but also limited even like the National League for Democracy, which was the relatively neoliberal aligned party that had previously been in power in Myanmar, or somewhat in power, I suppose. Ultranationalist Buddhist monks like Ashin Murathu and his969 movement have kind of condemned anything that they did as, as making them pro Muslim. And they have this essentially they have a great replacement theory. Right. That Muslims are trying to come in through Bangladesh to replace Buddhists in Myanmar.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Lots of people here have this like very orientalist perspective of like Buddhism TM as this, like, you know, like, like, like peaceful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like. No, like Buddhism, like every religion has a variety of sects.

[Greg Lod]

Yes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And the Buddhist nationalist sects can be particularly nasty.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. I mean, as vicious as any other people I'm sure will be familiar with the Rohingya genocide. And like there are a lot of monks that supported that, including Wirathu is the most notable there. There are plenty more. Right. And they're part of this. I mean he's, he's literally explicitly expressed like how much he looks up to the English Defense League.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Jesus.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah. Like these are people who like, they are part of this, this global nativist movement. People's Orientalism, I think sometimes stops them seeing that or appreciating that it extends outside of like white global north countries.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

One thing that I did think, think that really touched me in the days after the earthquake was young Buddhist Bama people of the majority ethnicity reaching out to me and being like, hey man, this happened in Friday prayers during Ramadan and it has devastated the Muslim population. Like thousands of people, hundreds of mosques are gone and thousands of people are trapped in a rubble. And like, no one's talking about it. Why is no one talking about it? This is terrible. And like it would have been inconceivable to hear young Burma Buddhist people so concerned with the well being of like their Muslim countrymen. Before the coup in 2021, this was a country that had been manufacturing consent for genocide against its, its Muslim minorities for four or five years by that point. Right. Specifically on Facebook, there's a Behind the Bastards episode on this. You can also listen if you're new to the show. Robert and I have made two scripted series about the revolution in Myanmar which we'll include in the show Notes. But that change to a real genuine solidarity and care between these two groups was really touching in the moments after the earthquake and the days after the earthquake. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about the revolution and I want to talk about how the revolution has been responding to this and the impact it's had on the revolution. We are back. And of course the revolution hasn't stopped because of the earthquake. Right. The, the conflict is still ongoing and, and the PDFs and their allied ethnic resistance organizations are still fighting against the junta. In fact, within an hour of the earthquake, the junta began using paramotors to drop bombs on Hangu village in Saigan. This has been a thing that they've started to do recently in a sense. I guess it's a good sign because it shows that maybe like that, like their jets and other aircraft are in a poor state of repair or that they're struggling to keep enough of them airborne. Initially I wondered if they were using the paramotors because their runways had been damaged, but that doesn't seem to be the case. They've been air striking just as much as they ever do did, which is unfortunate. Satellite images, reports from my sources on the ground suggest that they're able to continue carrying out bombing rates at a pretty similar rate from when they did before. Despite this, the National Unity government, which is kind of the shadow government composed mostly of people who are elected and then deposed by the coup in 2021. And the PDF, who in theory are commanded by the National Unity Government, called a two week ceasefire right after the earthquake to allow for a humanitarian pause. The Three Brotherhood alliance, which is an alliance of the three most powerful ethnic resistance organizations in Myanmar, also called what they call a humanitarian pause for a month. In both cases they said they wouldn't undertake offensive operations, but they would defend themselves because I think they had a sense that the junta wasn't going to stop attacking them.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Them.

[Greg Lod]

The Hunter did declare its own ceasefire on April 3, and the Kachin Independence army, which is another ethnic resistance organization, followed shortly thereafter. Notably, that ceasefire from the junta came the day after its troops fired on a Chinese Red Cross convoy, which, which is not a great look for them.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No, never love to see that.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, we, we don't love to see people firing on the Red Cross. This is especially bad for the Hunter because China has been growing closer and closer to the Hunter and supporting it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It.

[Greg Lod]

China's had this weird back and forth relationship with the revolution. At times. It supported the revolution, it seems like specifically supporting the Myanmar National Democratic alliance army, which is a group that broke off the Communist Party of burma in the 1980s.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. There's also the United War State army, which isn't part of the revolution, which is the. Which has the strongest relationship with the prc. And they're just chilling. They haven't really entered the conflict.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's called straight chilling, by the way, James.

[Greg Lod]

Straight chilling.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, there you go.

[Greg Lod]

That's how you say it. I've marked myself out yet again. Straight chilling. The United War State Army.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Thank you, Garrison.

[Greg Lod]

Actually, it spoke to some cadres from the Burmese Communist Party recently. The Communist Party of Burma re entered after 2021 and they're not focusing on proselytizing the Maoist gospel to people. They're focusing on fighting the Hunter and developing alliances. And it's kind of, it's interesting to see where that will go given. Yeah, Marxist Leninism. Maoism is definitely not the majority ideology of the revolution. Most people are committed to some form of federal democracy, which when you speak to different fighters, varies from like, we want what you guys have in the US to something more akin to the democratic Confederalism that people might be familiar with in Rojava. China is competing with Russia in Myanmar. So both of them are interested in supporting the Hunter. Right. Like, and obviously both their ideologies are far from liberatory that they're interested in propping up a totalitarian state. So we have seen both Russia and China send support to the junta, send like rescue teams after the earthquake. Meanwhile, the US offered $2 million, which I was kind of surprised they offered.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Anything that is low key. Surprising considering.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Mark Rubio, right?

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Well, I think Rubio is more of a, like a slightly ruby as a neocon.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, I guess. Like it makes sense. Mark Rupio, like, five years ago. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Like post like you say to being gutted. They're like, oh, you're still doing that kind of stuff, huh? Yeah, there's like a weird, like, mix of things because, because, yes, like a traditional neocon style Rubio. This, this tracks. But, but all of the movements that the Trump administration's been doing more recently, this seems like, seems like a. Some kind of DEI shenanigans. If you ask me.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, actually they added another 7 million later, 9 million, which is. Yeah, it's not a lot of money compared to what we would normally expect. And at the same time they did it, three USAID workers, at least three, I should say three that I'm aware of, were laid off. Like literally. They received emails telling them that they no longer had a job while they were on the ground assisting earthquake survivors.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Department of Government efficiency strikes again.

[Greg Lod]

Highly efficient. We'll send you the money and then also pull out our own people who I guess are supervising. How the money is spent on would be. It definitely shows though like a strategic shift in the region. China, Russia. China obviously is interested in Myanmar because of its rare earth metals, because of jade. China has traditionally had a lot of jade trade with, with Myanmar and then because it controls a large amount of seafront. Right. Which China wouldn't want to fall into what it would see as someone with adversarial interests. Russia is still interested in just kind of projecting itself as a global power even as it continues to shrink every day in terms of its global ability to project power. But there definitely are both Chinese and Russian assistance helping the Myanmar hunter now. Now, meanwhile, the US doesn't seem to give a shit what happens here. Now like this is kind of. Not that the Biden administration was doing very much either, but at least we had USAID and USIP was very invested in Myanmar and actually did a really good job of kind of almost like being the foreign affairs, not branch, but like they explained the revolution to the world. Like whenever a journalist wanted to understand the revolution in Myanmar, it was USIP they went to. Obviously all the contacts I have at USIP have now been doged, which is a shame. So despite the ceasefire. Right. I said they fired on these Chinese troops. The junta has in fact not stopped bombing earthquake struck areas since the earthquake. Madalay PDF who I'm in contact with, they're the revolutionary forces in the area that was most affected by the earthquake on April 7th told me that they're aware of 10 airstrikes in their area of operations since the earthquake. A three month old baby and a ten year old child were killed in an air raid on Naikar village in Papua township that was in Karen state. On April 10th. They bombed a school, something that the hunter likes to do a lot. They dropped two 500 pound bombs on a food court. They then circled back and dropped another bomb on the people responding to and giving aid to the people they'd initially bombed in the food court by Food court here. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about like, at the shopping mall. I'm talking about like a market where people can buy, like, prepared food. Right. They've killed the best I can collate from various sources, at least 72 people and injured about a hundred people. In addition to thousands who died after the earthquake, there are also reports that hunter, quote, unquote, recruiters here are engaging in forced conscription in the disasters zone. I read of at least one person who was on a search and rescue team, like they were a trained search and rescue volunteer. Right. So they were moving rubble to rescue people and they were forcibly conscripted while they were doing that. Obviously, that's had a chilling effect on people going out to help others. Right. What the Hunter is not doing is rescuing its citizens. The military is detested in most of Myanmar, even in the areas that it controls, and its failure to even try and track people rescued under rubble won't help this. There was a video that went viral recently of Hunter troops, literally a line of soldiers rescuing bricks. They've gone to a collapsed building and they're inspecting the bricks to see if the bricks are whole and then passing them down the line and stacking them up.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Don't worry, the bricks are safe.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, the bricks are safe. The people are not. Which just like. It was genuinely, like, infuriating to see it. I can't imagine for people who have lost family members, how it must feel. Even rescue workers, like I said, have been forcibly conscripted. Equality. Myanmar has noted more than 100 cases of forced conscription since the earthquake. So that's. Myanmar has a conscription rule law. So anyone, men and now women between certain ages can be forcibly conscripted into the Hunter's army.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So they're just finding people displaced from the earthquake and forcing them.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. It's people who have been hiding in their homes. Right. Who now don't have homes to hide in.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Or people who came out in order to save their neighbours and now they're forcing them to be to fight for them. Just as the junta did with Cyclone Nargis. They've also delayed and, in cases, blocked aid. A team came from France to assist in a search and rescue. They spent 24 hours sitting in an airport waiting for their visa to be approved and then they spent one day working in search and rescue efforts before being told that search and rescue efforts had now finished and they were to go home. They traveled around the entire world, didn't save a single life.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Abundance.

[Greg Lod]

It's great. Presumably because the Hunter wanted To placate China, a Taiwanese team was straight up refused entry into Myanmar. Taiwan had a search and rescue team that they were willing to say, send, who could have saved people's lives, and that they weren't allowed to enter. All tourist visas have been suspended. So it's not like the Hunter is overwhelmed with visa applications, but they're not allowing search and rescue teams to enter from countries, I guess they're not politically aligned with. This kind of horrific indifference to human suffering has characterized the Tatmador for decades. And it's really unlikely to change as it grows even more desperate and it loses even more territory. It's just going to clamp down harder and harder on its people. Meanwhile, in the liberated areas, aid is being mobilized using the mutual aid structures which have existed for decades in the absence of the state. In significant and growing parts of Myanmar, people are relying on each other instead of the government for aid. And that has its benefits, right? Like, people have been out rescuing people from the rubble, but they're also desperately short of resources. I spoke to Mandalay PDF rescue team at the first week of April, and they literally sent me. They have a notebook of a list of, like, we've run out of gauze, we've run out of tourniquets, we've run out of adhesive dressings, We've run out of elastic bandages. Right? They're like the literal nuts and bolts of saving people's lives. They run out. We did a fundraising campaign for them through behind the Bastards. We raised nearly $2,000, which is great. So they. They're restocking their supplies, which is fantastic. But that's just one township. All across the country, people are struggling for the basic supplies that they need to save lives. The military has also blocked aid and medicine from entering their areas. Right. So the military controls a lot of roadblocks, and it uses its control of those roadblocks to stop aid in medicine. Often it's kind of hoarding it in the capital city, which is Naypyidor. If people aren't familiar, Naypyidor is a city that the Kunta built for itself to govern from means seat of kings. Also in Naypydor right now is the US Aid agency Samaritan's Purse. Are you familiar with Samaritan's Purse, Garrison?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I don't think so. It sounds vaguely familiar, but all of these humanitarian organizations all have, like, the same, like, four words that they shuffle around in different ways. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Samaritan's Purse, perhaps most famous for being run by Franklin Graham.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Okay. Yes.

[Greg Lod]

Son of Billy Graham. Yes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We know what this is and who this is. Yes.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Having all their volunteers sign, like, a statement of faith and being extremely homophobic for some reason. Samaritan's Purse is establishing a field hospital in Naypyidaw right now.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

They're going to force people to convert to evangelical Christianity before they give services like they do in some cases.

[Greg Lod]

Yes. Yeah. Or just leave them like they did in Afghanistan if they're not Christian. I cannot work out for the life of me what the fuck they're doing. Because, like, the Hunter has made a consistent policy of bombing Christians in Myanmar. Right. In Karen and Kareni state, there are a lot of Christian people. On Christmas Day, the Hunter bombed people going to services because it knew that Christians would be going to services at churches.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Right.

[Greg Lod]

The Kareni Christians this year I saw celebrated Christmas in caves because they were so afraid of being bombed. Right. Like, I have no idea what logical leap you have to make.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Bizarre.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, it's. And they're like, they're not even at the. In Sagang. The only people, the only international aid I'm aware of that was able to make it to Sagang was a Malaysian team who were able to save some lives. Unfortunately, there were really strong rains this week and that made all the collapse structures even more. And stake table. And the Malaysian team I saw have now returned home. We're going to take another ad break here. When we come back, we will talk about what you can do to help. All right? And we're back. First, I want to, I guess, have some good news. Despite everything, the military has still been taking massive losses. The All Burma Students Democratic Franchise Front captured remaining Hunter positions in Indore. They almost units. Democratic Front are a group that's been around since 1988. Right. And they have armed up and re entered the revolution since 2021. One of the things that they captured on Monday was a underground Japanese field hospital from World War II, which I guess had been like a entrenched position. I guess they're not covered technically by the ceasefire, but there was a unit under the National Unity Government's command that operated with them. And from what I understand, this began as a defensive action. They'd surrounded the Hunter, I think it's called. Yeah. Japan Cave Hill. They'd surrounded them on Japan Cave Hill for a long time. And then the Hunter, obviously, seeing the earthquake and everything thereafter, decided that, like, now was the time for them to break out of this encirclement. They did not break out. They took a fat literally and as a result, they've all been captured. Now meanwhile in Qinland, if people haven't listened to the episode I did a couple of weeks ago with Azad from the anti fascist Internationalist front, I would suggest going back and listening to that to understand Chinland. But the AIF and a lot of their allied forces from the Chin Lang Defense Force and the Qin Brotherhood had a significant victory in capturing the rest of the junta's positions in Falam last week. And I think it's very much on the table that we will see the whole of Qinland liberated in the next few months or by the end of the year, which would be great to see. So people are wondering what they can do to help. And I think it's a very valid question because I saw today that the UN was meeting with the Hunter in Naypydor and I just have no faith that any money that goes to the Junto is going to get to people who need it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, no, absolutely not. You cannot.

[Greg Lod]

Like they want them to die. I don't.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No. They're like evil. Why?

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah. They are literally genocidal. They have done a genocide that has been prosecuted. International Criminal Court I have no understanding why people continue to like international organizations, continue to funnel money to them other than because like they have a status quo bias, I guess. So don't be doing that. But there are groups who are making a really big difference and one of them that I wanted to highlight and Robert and I both very familiar with their work from the last time that we were over reporting is Community Partners International. CPI are really cool because they work by empowering members of the local community to be health volunteers as opposed to dropping in some doctors from America or doctors from the United Kingdom or whatever. And then when those people leave, they take their skills with them. Cpi, the thing is to educate folks within the community so that they can take care of one another. And I saw that CPI has a matching donations thing right now, which is pretty cool. So like if you donate, someone else will match your donation and that will double the amount that that you receive. Otherwise, I will provide a list of mutual aid funds that have been shared with me. Most of them are like gofundme or things like that. I'll put it all in the show description. They've all been vetted and like I know people are sometimes reluctant to give to GoFundMes and they'd rather give to like a 501C3 or like an organization which has a little bit more, I guess like online presence in this case, you have to understand that like a lot of orgs just aren't operating in the liberated areas. The two that I'm aware of, CPI and Free Burma Ranges. Right. I spoke to Dave from Free Burma Ranges. They're trying to get to as many people as they can as well. That would be another great place to donate. And I would include a list of vetted GoFundMes if you want to have a look through those and see if any of them kind of speaks to you more. You can do that too. What this will mean for the future of Myanmar, we don't know yet. Right. We have really no sense of how many people have died, of what it's done to the hunter's ability to control those areas. But until the revolution has a way to stop planes bombing people, we will continue to see the same dynamic, right, of the hunter losing terrain on the ground, pulling back its soldiers, and then bombing civilians in the areas that it's lost. That is its game plan. It's continuing to get more drones from China, it's getting aircraft munitions and jet fuel from China. And until there is an embargo on jet fuel and munitions to the junta, then we will see this same pattern continue. Right. They lose terrain, they bomb a school, they lose terrain, they bomb a hospital. It's the same stuff that Israel is doing. And they've of course, previously been armed by Israel as well. But we don't see as much solidarity for the people of Burma. If you want to stay in touch with what's happening on the ground. I think the Irawari I R R A W A D D Y does a really good job of doing daily summaries right now. So I would suggest checking out what's happening there. And of course, we'll keep you updated on developments in the spring revolution as they come.

[Kevin Smith]

You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule, wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner, or just need a little extra one on one support talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code [e-mail] this is Courtside with Laura.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Carrenti, the podcast that's changing the game and breaking down the business of women's sports like never before. I'm Laura, the founder and CEO of Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Your inside source on the biggest deals, power moves and game changers. Writing the playbook on all things women's sports Sports from the heavy hitters in the front office to the powerhouse women on the pitch. We're talking to commissioners, team owners, influential athletes and the investors betting big on women's sports. We'll break down the numbers, get under the hood and go deep on what's next. Women's sports are the moment, so if you're not paying attention, you're already behind. Join me courtside for a front row seat into the making of the business of women's sports. Courtside with Laura Carrenti is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Courtside with Laura Quarenti Starting April 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. We ready to fight?

[Mia Wong]

I'm ready to fight.

[Greg Lod]

Is that what I thought it was?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Oh, this is fighting worse. Okay, I'll put the hammer back.

[James Stout]

Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with the second most banned book in America.

[Greg Lod]

Now more than ever, we need to.

[James Stout]

Use our voices to fight back. And that's what we are doing on Fighting Words. We're not going to let anyone silence us.

[Greg Lod]

That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of black history, queer.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

History, any history that challenges the whitewashed.

[James Stout]

Norm or put us in a box.

[Mia Wong]

Black people have never ever depended on.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The so called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great. We are the greatest culture makers in world history.

[Greg Lod]

Listen to Fighting words on the iHeartRadio.

[James Stout]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Foreign hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man.

Who my wife has always said is just a beardless version of me.

And that's the name of our podcast. Beardless Me.

I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard.

[Greg Lod]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only.

[Mia Wong]

Or listen to it with your kid.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out.

[Mia Wong]

It's a work in progress.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Chris, listen to Beardless with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is it could happen here. I am not going to El Salvador. It's not gonna happen. No way. No. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout.

[Greg Lod]

Hi, Garrison.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We're here to talk about possibly the most upsetting thing I've seen in American politics in like the past six months to maybe even, I don't know, viscerally. It hit me for like the past few years, like, yeah, what happened on Monday in the Oval Office was. Is kind of the most black pill I've ever been. Which is not a great way to start an episode.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, it like, it made me feel like I. I found 2023 very hard. Like going out and seeing people freezing in the desert and then coming home and seeing Joe Biden the ice cream on. On the, on the timeline. But like this was so like blatant.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

There's like a level of like intentional depravity that you're reminded of more. More blatantly so.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

And like Bukele's trolling of. Of yes, everyone.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So we're gonna be talking about an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and El Salvador President Bukele. I guess I could learn his first name.

[Greg Lod]

Naive Bukele.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

There you go.

[Greg Lod]

You know he's Palestinian. Salvadarian.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Are you fucking serious?

[Greg Lod]

No. His dad's an imam.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I don't even have time for that.

[Greg Lod]

This is just fucking. I'm sorry if anyone's driving and has had an accident upon hearing that.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So as you probably know, recently the United States government has sent upwards of 300 people immigrants to the El Salvador terrorism confinement Center. This prison black site that people never return from. I guess I could point to for a pop culture reference which feels a little bit in bad taste, but you could point to like the prison in the TV show andor as being a very comparable facility, frankly. Except they turn off the lights in Andor they do not Turn off The lights in Seacot, lights are on all the time. They put but 10 to 20 people per cell. It's pretty bad. Jameson has done episodes on CCOT in the past. We'll probably keep doing more.

[Greg Lod]

The lights thing, by the way, was a specific policy change by Bukele. There was a particularly violent weekend in El Salvador and as a result, he stopped letting people who were detained for gang crimes go outside and stopped building windows into the prison and just put the lights on, like as a way of punishing, I guess, the gangs by punishing the people who were detained there.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, they can't go outside. They stay in their cell for almost 24 hours a day. They might occasionally get 30 minutes outside, but that's not even confirmed because no one's even allowed inside to see what's going on in there. And we've sent 300, upwards of 300 immigrants there, the majority, vast majority of which have no criminal record. Even if you do have a criminal record, being renditioned to a foreign, a foreign prison camp is still bad. But this is something that Trump hopes to expand on greatly and they are currently defending their ability to do so in the courts since it has been learned that a few people sent there may have been partially sent by accident. But the Trump administration is refusing to return these people and is instead still trying to convince the public that these are dangerous terrorists that deserve to be disappeared. So let's, let's kind of start with, with that main case. The case that's receiving the most public attention right now is of a Maryland man named Kilmere Abrego Garcia, who's the subject of a district court case that has been sent up to the Supreme Court and then sent back to the, to the district court on whether this man can be returned home to his U.S. citizen wife and child. And then on Monday, April 14, in the Oval Office meeting, President Bukele said that he will not return this Maryland immigrant with protected legal status back to the United States, who ICE admits was sent to see COT based on a, quote, unquote, administrative error. Bukele said, quote, how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous, unquote. The El Salvador president also balked at the idea of releasing Garcia from Sikh since he can't have a, quote, unquote terrorist free in his country and lying about Garcia being a criminal. I am going to play a few clips in this episode because I think it is necessary to listen to These people actually say the words that they are saying in the tone that they're saying them. And the exact phrasing on these, I think, is actually pretty important right now. So, unfortunately, you are going to have to hear the voices of a few people who you might not rather hear from, including the. The President of El Salvador. So I'll play this first clip. Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him?

Well, I guess supposed to have suggested.

That I'll smuggle a terrorist into the United States.

[Greg Lod]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

How can I smuggle. How can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States or what do I do?

Of course I'm not going to do it.

[Greg Lod]

It's like, I mean, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I don't have the power to return.

Him to the United States.

But you could release him inside of Salvador.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, but I'm not releasing.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I mean, we're not very fond of.

[Greg Lod]

Releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country of the Western hemisphere. And you want us to go back into the releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? No, that's good.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That's not going to happen.

[Greg Lod]

Well, they'd love to have a criminal, you know, release. I mean, I mean, there's a fascination. They would love it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

They're sick.

[Mia Wong]

These are sick people.

[Greg Lod]

It's just insane. Like, the whole pretense of any, like, serious engagement with reality there, it's just gone. Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And they're both like, miming that neither of them have the ability to make any kind of deal between each other to send people back, even though they have the ability to make a deal to send people there.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. As they sit in the same room.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The whole time Bekele is talking, Trump has like this, like, growing smirk on his face.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

As Bekele is talking about this, this preposterous notion of smuggling a US Immigrant back into the United States despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of this immigrant back into the country. The whole smuggling framing is, is obviously absurd with him saying, like, I don't have the power to return him to the United States States. All he needs to do is release him from sea cot and the US can fly him back. Right. Just as we flew him to El Salvador. Like, the two heads of state are sitting right next to each other. They could agree to do this at any time. But now everyone's pretending that suddenly they don't have the power to undo what they seemingly had the power to do in the first place.

[Greg Lod]

Like, Bukele has ruled. And we're going to do a whole episode on Bukele and his rise to power and then his use of power. But like he's ruled under a state of exception for years in El Salvador which allows him to detain people without warrants, without trials. Right. And like it's that state of exception that is now the norm there. And that's kind of what he seems to be referring to. Right. Like. Like we just get to lock people up. Why would I not do that?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

In effect, they are arguing that every single human being that is sent to seekot by the United States States is unable to ever leave the prison alive.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, that's basically what they're saying. They're saying both, both parties, both Trump and Bukele are unable to have someone who's been sent there returned. So they're just, they're just saying like, like no one's able to do anything. Like they're just stuck there until they die.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And like this is part of the design of C cot. The person who runs like the C cot, like security has said that they do not intend in any person ever being released from secot caught. You are not designed to get out. You are stuck there forever. No one's ever left there.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

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

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Bukele is very reticent to release anyone for that reason. And like, there are plenty of allegations and like, I think like Time magazine has published this. It's not hugely controversial that he, he made deals with gangs in the past in El Salvador. Right. To get them to reduce the murder rate. And like, he certainly wouldn't like to hear that testified to, certainly not in the United States court. Right. So like he doesn't want people to be released from there either. Like you say, they don't want anyone to be able to go to any international human rights courts and testify as to what happened to them. There's there. So it's kind of in his interest to never have anyone be released. It's not just also, I guess, like, in his interest, he's also being paid, right, $20,000 per detainee per year by the United States right now. So he also has a financial interest in keeping people in there.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Even this per year deal makes, now kind of makes zero sense because both of them are arguing that there's no way to send anyone back, right? So, like, it's not that it's even like, oh, they're only going to be there for one year. It's like, like they're just, they're just there and like, who knows if they're gonna like, be, still be alive by the time that some of these people would be able to get out. Whether that's through the miraculous Donald Trump impeachment of 2026, which will never happen, or, or like, however, like these people are, they, they are just stuck there because he's not going to release them into his country. We are seemingly unable to take anyone back from there. I, I think, I mean, unwilling, right?

[Greg Lod]

Like, like the US Is theoretically able.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's argued that we're unable as, as we will get into more after this ad break. Okay, we are back. One thing that we've seen across the Trump administration the past, past 80 days or so, something that we saw very evident in this meeting is that whenever a single person is asked a question about the outrageous, possibly illegal, possibly not, but just immoral or evil things that are being done, the first instinct is always to pass the buck on to someone else. We saw this a lot with Signal Gate, how it was always someone else's fault. No single person could get hammered down of being like, okay, you are the person that's going to be accountable for this, this. And throughout this Oval Office meeting. Eventually they started taking questions from, from journalists and reporters and propagandists who were in the room. And you saw this trend of, you know, someone asks Trump about what's going on, he passes the buck to Stephen Miller, who passes the buck to Bukele, who then passes the buck to Mark Rubio. And it's like this big circle of like, everyone's just talking around each other because no one really has the authority to, to speak on what's going on or how to fix this problem because they don't see it as a problem. So instead they just talk in a circle. And I think Miller was one of the most effective at this. And unfortunately, we're going to play the longest clip in this episode, just, just under two minutes from Stephen Miller where he, he lays out the Trump admin's thought process and strategy behind what they are doing. And I apologize for this, but it is useful to hear from Himmler too. So here, here we go.

[Mia Wong]

With respect to you, he's a citizen of El Salvador. So it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point, as two immigration courts found that he was.

[Greg Lod]

A member of Ms. 13.

[Mia Wong]

When President Trump declared Ms. 13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that he was no longer eligible under federal law, which, which I'm sure you know you're very familiar with the ima, that he was no longer eligible for.

[Greg Lod]

Any form of immigration relief in the United States.

[Mia Wong]

So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our law, he's not even allowed to be.

[Greg Lod]

Present in the United States and had.

[Mia Wong]

To be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation.

[Greg Lod]

This issue was then by a district.

[Mia Wong]

Court judge completely inverted.

[Greg Lod]

And a district court judge tried to.

[Mia Wong]

Tell the administration that they had to.

[Greg Lod]

Kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly back here.

[Mia Wong]

That issue was raised to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed.

[Greg Lod]

90 unanimously stating clearly that neither Secretary.

[Mia Wong]

Of State nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador.

[Greg Lod]

Who again is a member of Ms.

[Mia Wong]

13, which is, I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world. And I can promise you if he.

[Greg Lod]

Was your neighbor, you would move right away.

[Kevin Smith]

So you don't plan.

[Mia Wong]

And what was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve? Was it nine to nothing? Yes, it was a nine zero in our favor, in our favor against the district court ruling saying that no district.

[Greg Lod]

Court has the power to compel the.

[Mia Wong]

Foreign policy function of the United States. As Pam said, the ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El Salvador's sole discretion, was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. No version of this legally ends up with an ever living here because he.

[Greg Lod]

Is a citizen of El Salvador, that.

[Mia Wong]

Is the President of El Salvador. Your questions about it for the court can only be directed to him.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So there's a lot there. Yeah, I think I'm going to start with I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would move right away. And I think that is really the heart of what this Trump administration is, is doing. Like it's Appealing to this most basic, like suburban crime panic, fear, racism of. Well, if. If he was your neighbor, you. You wouldn't want him living next to you.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, Like a. There goes the neighborhood kind of.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, just completely lying about, like the, the context of this case.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

With, you know, Miller saying it's arrogant. Suggest that we, the most powerful country in the world, or it used to be before the tariffs, can tell El Salvador how to handle its citizens. Falsely claiming that immigration courts deemed him a member of Ms. 13, which just. Just is not true.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Talking about kidnapping him from sea cot to return him to the United States. As if ICE didn't just kidnap hundreds of people with no criminal records and send them to a foreign gulag. And then also lied about the supreme. About the Supreme Court ruling, saying they found the district court order to return Garcia unlawful and grossly mischaracterizing the scope of what the Supreme Court ruling was and how it was sent back to the district court to work with the details on what facilitate the return actually means. And again, I think like the. The. One of the most telling parts is, is how he ends by saying, quote, no version of this ever ends up with him living here. And, and, yeah, like they're going to look for any. Any way to like, make this test case work.

[Greg Lod]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And if, and if they, if they can do this to someone with protected legal status who is not a. Who is not a terrorist, who is not a actual ms.13 gang member. Right. This is, this is kind of ideal for them because that means they can paint anybody as. As a foreign policy threat, enough to be sent to a foreign gulag. Then at the very end of the clip, he passes the buck off to. To Bukele. To have him answer this question again, perfectly laying out their strategy.

[Greg Lod]

There's a lot to break down in what military. It's also just kind of interesting how Miller is amongst the press. He's not one of the people sat on the couches supposed to be giving the press conference. Right. He just kind of wades in to, I guess, offer this opinion and kind of be the kind of embassy of their response. I guess, in a sense.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

I think crucially, like Abrego Garcia's protection was from being returned to El Salvador. Right. Because he had been harassed by gang members when leaving El Salvador and when living in El Salvador.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

He's lived in the states since 2011, and he left El Salvador to flee harassment and abuse from. From gang members.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. The gangs that he's been accused of being a part of. But like it then follows that, like, it would be legal for them to deport him to a third country. Right. And that is the path that they've followed with all the Venezuelan migrants. Right. They've accused him of being members of Trender Agua. I have not seen a compelling case made that any of them are yet. I'm sure people from Trenderagua have come to this country, but no, they have not provided any evidence that the people they have sent to say got are those people.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No, like, we've had like, 14 people are, like, accused of some kind of, like, violent crime, like murder or rape. And the other, like, 275 do not have a criminal record whatsoever.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

And the bulk of this is reliant on some kind of idea that they have entirely created from fiction that there are tattooing practices when one enters Trenderagua. And for them, right. Even if they can't be returned to Venezuela, they feel like they have this endram, which is, okay, we'll send them to El Salvador, but for the Salvadorians, that's a different question. Right. And that is what they're trying to find here. And that is worrying because the case here that is getting the most publicity, that seems to be the one that the Supreme Court has taken up, is about the Salvadorian man. And I hope that doesn't mean that, like, the ship has sailed for the Venezuelans. Right? That essentially. Yeah, no, like, that they don't have a case because that was the vast bulk of them. I think there was something like 60 Salvadorian citizens and the rest Venezuelans.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No. Hundreds of people have been, like, forgotten in this. After Miller's rant there, Mark Rubio jumped in to state that, quote, no court in the United States has the right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States, unquote. And Stephen Miller hopped back in to talk about this Supreme Court case that they're falsely saying they. They won 9 to 0, which is not how that case went. And they start talking more broadly about what can be allowed if it has to do with the foreign policy of the United States and how the courts don't have the ability to intervene in that process.

The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court. And no court in the United States.

[Mia Wong]

Has a right to conduct the foreign.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Policy of the United States.

It's that simple.

[Mia Wong]

End of story. And that's what the Supreme Court held.

[Greg Lod]

By the way, Marco's point.

[Mia Wong]

The Supreme Court said exactly what Marco.

[Greg Lod]

Said, that no court has the authority to compel the foreign policy function of the United States.

[Mia Wong]

We won a case 90 and people like CNN are portraying it as a loss, as usual because they want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Part of what I find so disturbing about this idea of, you know, no habeas corpus, no due process if you aren't on foreign soil is that like this idea of the courts having no jurisdiction over foreign policy decisions means that as long as you, whether you're a citizen, whether you're a permanent resident, documented or undocumented immigrant, as long as you are forcibly removed from the United States States soil, your rights and your due process has been forfeit. And the US has neither the obligation nor sometimes the ability to return you to US Soil if that is their foreign policy interest. And this is such a troubling broad concept that the portions of the courts are kind of allowing them to claim right now. And the, the complete removal of due process is like slowly getting encroached upon at first with undocumented immigrants and green card holders. But as we will see in the, in the next section, they are also absolutely going to be targeting U.S. citizens.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. I think like we should just point out, obviously the court is not conducting the foreign policy of the United States. It's ruling on the legality of the action taken by the President, which is exactly what it's supposed to do.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. And as it relates to your rights for due process, if you are in the United States.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah. Like, like every single US Person, Right. US Person would be any, anybody who resides in the US Be they documented or done, documented migrant citizen, what have you, like, has a stake in this.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We're going to go on break and then come back to discuss the expansion of the sea cot detention program and the possible targeting of U.S. citizens. Okay, we're back. So on April 7th, a few weeks ago, while on Air Force One, President Trump told reporters that he would be, quote, unquote, honored for the President of El Salvador to take a U.S. citizens, quote, unquote, American grown and born criminals and put them in seacot, the terrorism confinement center prison black site, saying, quote, why should it stop just at people that cross the border illegally, unquote. A few days later, the White House press secretary reiterated that this is something that Trump is discussing both publicly and privately. And later, during the April 14th Oval Office meeting, Trump said that if Salvador was to build more of these torture mega prisons, the United States would, quote, unquote, help them out. If the Trump administration could disappear more American immigrants and US Citizens, prisons to these prison black sites.

[Robert Evans]

For those facilities to be opened, if.

[Kevin Smith]

New ones were going to be built, I do something.

[Mia Wong]

We'd help them out. Yeah, we have the great facilities, very.

[Greg Lod]

Strong facilities, and they don't play games. I'd like to go a step further. I mean, I say, I said it to Pam.

[Mia Wong]

I don't know what the laws are. We always have to obey the laws.

[Greg Lod]

But we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subway ways, that hit.

[Mia Wong]

Elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're.

[Greg Lod]

Not looking, that are absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in the.

[Mia Wong]

Group of people to get them out of the country, but you'll have to.

[Greg Lod]

Be looking at the laws on that, Steve.

[Mia Wong]

Okay.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So this is just the start of a long process that is going to be deeply troublesome and worrying. And again, like, this is something that they keep talking about. I think they're still looking for some kind of legal justification or they're looking for something that maybe, if not allows for this, explicitly prohibits this in a way that they can't, like, get around.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Did you notice he called out Miller? He said, you'll have to look at the laws on that, Steve. Obviously, Miller is not the Attorney General.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

He also did mention Attorney General Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi, who's also also looking into this option right now.

[Greg Lod]

Right. But Miller is often credited with being the kind of mastermind between behind title 42. Right. Which was an extremely obscure piece of public health law that was then mobilized by the first Trump administration to immediately return migrants to Mexico without giving them their right to an asylum hearing. Right. And like, that's what I'm wondering if they're going for. Again, like, like, Steve Miller has been very good at this, at finding obscure justifications in United States federal law for shit that they want to do.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I think this is why they're definitely trying to stretch this foreign policy claim as far as they can, that if it's, if it's outside US Soil, there's a limited way US Courts can actually interfere or undo things that have already been done. And again, the idea that we're going to fund the construction of even more of these El Salvador mega prisons just to house American grown and born criminals as well as immigrants. Like, we're just funding, like, gulag camps on foreign soil to send the undesirables to. And no matter how much Trump talks about how we're only going to send, quote, unquote, like, American criminals there, as we've seen with, with seacot so far, like, no, like they, the majority people they are sending do not have criminal criminal histories. I don't think anyone can trust the Trump administration's definition of what is and isn't criminal to this extent anymore. Later in the same meeting, Trump reiterated the same idea about sending US citizens who his, who his administration deems criminals to this foreign black site. Here's another clip.

[Mia Wong]

Just a follow up question, a clarification.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You mentioned that you're open to deporting individuals that aren't foreign aliens but are.

[Mia Wong]

Criminals to El Salvador. Does that, does that include potentially U.S. citizens, fully naturalized Americans? If they're criminals and if they hit.

[Greg Lod]

People with baseball bats over their head that happen to be 90 years old and if they rape 87 year old.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Women in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah, that includes them.

[Mia Wong]

Why do you think there's special category of person?

[Greg Lod]

They're as bad as anybody that comes in.

[Mia Wong]

We have bad ones too, and I'm all for it. We have others that we're negotiating with too.

[Greg Lod]

But no, if it's, if it's, if.

[Mia Wong]

It'S a homegrown criminal, I have no problem.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

He's really obsessed with the spaceball bats thing. I don't quite know what that's about.

[Greg Lod]

Seems like a specific case that he's referring to.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Maybe it's something he remembers like 30 years ago that really got stuck in his head.

Right, right.

But also later he says that they're negotiating with other countries to send U.S. citizens to not just El Salvador.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. I mean they've sent migrants, third country migrants to Panama before. Right. And detained them there. Honduras, I believe is building like a prison that's not dissimilar to Secot. Like I'm guessing this will be their sort of way of courting allies in the hemisphere. Like, like they'll sort of pay them a relatively large amount in order to attempt to offshore people they don't like.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. And again, like as we've seen the past few years and increasingly so now the, the effort to, to label like activists or people who are vocally opposed to the United States foreign policy, the United States or the state of Israel deeming them terrorists and then by extension if you charge them with a crime, then you know, criminal. The idea that they can be housed in a place like seacot now with very, very limited to no due process. The whole due process question is still very up in the air for how they're going to handle that aspect. But you can't just take this as like, oh, you Know, that's just Trump talking like, no, this is. This is something they really want to do. And it's like one of the freakiest things that I've seen in, like, domestic US Politics in a long time. Earlier, Trump was recorded half whispering to Bukele, telling him that El Salvador needs to build five more sea cot style torture prisons to house US Citizens. As Trump says homegrown criminals. Bukele replies that they will have enough room. And then the entire Oval Office laughs.

[Greg Lod]

Next, the home runs.

[Mia Wong]

Bill, you got to build about five more places.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, that's big, all right.

[Mia Wong]

It's not big enough.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's the bleakest clip I've, like, ever seen before.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Talking about homegrowns are next. Got to build five more places. Oh, we have enough space. Everyone laughs. And then Trump shows off the new gold frames for the portraits in the Oval Office.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, it's like a dinner party joke for them. It might just be worth noting that, like, every totalitarian regime has housed its dissidents outside of the imperial core. Right. Like, Germany did this in the east. Right. Russia sent people to Siberia for Russia, Soviet Union.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Creating these stateless zones where the regular laws of your fatherland state do not apply.

[Greg Lod]

Right. And where the horrors are so far from the populace that the populace can't really grasp them.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. No, this is like elementary school stuff. Stuff it says, like, like, the first thing you learn about is concentration camps and gulags and how that's like, this symbol of evil. And now it's something you laugh about in the Oval Office. To send homegrowns to five disappearing torture camps.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

And, like, just to be, like, even clearer, I guess, what. What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison is that there is no due process. Right. People are sent there because of who they are, not because of what they did.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, if you're a Venezuelan man who may or may not have a tattoo.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Like we are. I don't know what it will take for some people to realize what's happening here.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And, like, the president of El Salvador is so on board for this.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. I mean, he doesn't hide from that reputation. Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

He embraces it.

[Greg Lod]

His Twitter for a while had world's coolest dictator in the bio. I don't know if it still does.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, and, like, both him and Trump have openly aligned themselves with quote, unquote, nationalism and nationalists. They're openly saying this. Trump said dictator on day one. That wasn't just a rhetorical device. That was literal. This is what he's doing. The El Salvador president told Trump, you have 350 million people to liberate, but to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. And he followed that up by saying that he is eager to help with that. In fact, Mr. President, you have 350.

[Greg Lod]

Million people to liberate it. But to liberate 350 million people, you.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Have to imprison some. You know, that's the way it works, right? You cannot just, you know, free the.

[Greg Lod]

Criminals and think crime is going to go down magically. You have to imprison them so you.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Can liberate 350 million Americans that are.

[Greg Lod]

Asking for the end of crime and the end of terrorism.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And it can be done.

[Greg Lod]

I mean, you're doing it already.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So I'm really happy to be here, honored and eager to help. This. This whole, like, liberation through imprisonment thing is elementary school stuff here.

[Greg Lod]

You don't have to have a PhD in the history of the 1930s to have someone tell you that, like, liberation of the chosen nation by purging of the undesirables is fascist shit. But, like, I'm here with one to tell you if that's what you need. You know, like, this is textbook stuff. Like, Garrison's saying. Like, this is not debatable. Like, I know we spent the last four years debating, is Trump a fascist or not? I don't think that matters hugely. Right? Like, this is a fascist thing.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's so much more disturbing that now, according to, like, polls, like, half. Around half the population, maybe a little bit less, just agree with the current way that deportations are happening and Trump's immigration policy, like, on a completely, like, flat basis. And if you spend any time on X, the Everything app, watching videos of these press conferences, it's full of people just, like, cheering this on completely. Like, completely blankly.

[Greg Lod]

I think that's a very skewed sample of people who paid for Elon Musk's app.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Of course. Course, of course. But, like, the number of people, yeah.

[Greg Lod]

It'S real humans saying, like, these are.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Real people who just. Just completely, completely blankly think this is a. This is. This is a net good. And, like, this is. Those people are unreachable. You cannot come back from that. Like, you is. There is no coming back from that if you believe that the way deportations are currently happening is fair, just and right. Like, I cannot understand you as a human anymore. That is so divorced and alien.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. You've gone past the point of no return. Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Liberals who shield their eyes from the horrors at the border. I don't agree with that, but in some ways I can understand it. The open cheering on of this, a whole other level.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. It's not like I can't bear to see it. I'm going to ignore it because it'll cause me to confront the contradictions. I'm seeing it, I'm watching it, and I think it's fucking great.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The last thing I'm going to, I'm going to play here. A CNN reporter asked Trump if he would obey a Supreme Court order to return someone to the United States. Instead of answering this question, Trump attacked the reporter and complained about how she wasn't praising him for deporting criminals. Well, the President, Mr. President, you said.

[Kevin Smith]

That if the Supreme Court said someone needed to be returned, that you would abide by that.

[Greg Lod]

You said that on Air Force One.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Just a few days ago, and they said that must be facilitated.

[Mia Wong]

Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country? Why can't you just say that?

[Clayton English]

Why do you go over and over.

[Mia Wong]

And that's why nobody watches you anymore. You know, you have no credibility. Please, go ahead.

[Greg Lod]

President Trump. Yeah, mad.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Very textbook authoritarian. Like blanket stuff. Like there's, there's nothing to, like, commentate about that. It just is what it is, I guess. We do, we do have some breaking news because we're recording this on Tuesday. James, do you want to impossibly, five minutes or less fill us in about the update from the district court on Garcia's case since it was sent back to the district court from the Supreme Court last week regarding his possible facilitated return to the United States?

[Greg Lod]

Right. So much of this has hinged over what facilitate means. Right. Like, they found a legal concept that they can argue ad nauseam, and in this case, it's the word facilitate. The DOJ didn't present any new information today, but we see that, like, there's some hopeful things from district court judge, and then it kind of all goes up in flames. But I think Chinis is X I, N I S is how the name is spelled. I believe it's Chinis said that every day that he's there is a day of further irreparable harm. And then she talks about the process being at the roots of the Constitution. Right. She's ordered for like two weeks more of discovery, which is going to mean that both sides have more time to repair their cases. Right. She wants people to testify in front of the court. She is. So the administration has argued that Facilitating his return would consist of them allowing him to enter the United States if Bukele released him and possibly providing a flight for that to happen, but not crucially ensuring his release from Secot. Right. And so anything else subsequent to that doesn't matter. Chini said that their interpretation of the word flies in the face of the plain meaning of the word quote. When a wrongfully removed individual is. And then I'm adding to the quote here, I guess, or context. She means when a wrongfully removed individual is taken outside the US it's not so cut and dried that all you have to do is remove obstacles domestically. She also said, quote, to the Department of Justice here, you made your jurisdictional arguments, you made your venue arguments, you made your arguments on the merits. You lost. This is now about the scope of the remedy. Right. This is, this is a case that Miller is claiming they won. That's pretty unequivocal for a justice.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

However, she does not seem to think that it is within her power to request his return from El Salvador. So she's, she's calling for things to move quickly. Right. They want to conduct depositions by the 23rd of April. She said, quote, cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I'm usually pretty good about it. It not this time. I'm going to be available if you need to do it. Odd hours or weekends. That's what I'm talking about. Anything short of a judge saying you have to go to Secot, remove him from the cell, put him on the plane and bring him back to America, it's going to be interpreted by the Trump administration to mean that they don't have to do that. Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

They're going to weasel their way around it. The same way you heard Stephen Miller weasel his way around every question. And with truth being used as a flexible medium to shape a sculpture of.

[Greg Lod]

Their choosing, like they've done that. Right. The word facilitate, I think most people who are first language English speakers have a fairly good grasp of what that means. And it doesn't mean like remove barriers domestically. That's what they've gone for. The only way that he is getting out is a majority Supreme Court decision that is extremely explicit that directs the Trump administration to go to El Salvador and remove him from that prison. I haven't seen anything to indicate that we're getting that anytime soon. And as the judge said, every day he's there, irreparable harm is done to him. And that's where we're at right now. Right. With people arguing over the definition of a Word as hundreds of people are locked up having done nothing wrong in a giant torture prison.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And this is not the only person who we believe was, quote, unquote, mistakenly sent. There's reporting today coming out of documented New York.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, good outlet, by the way.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A father of a 19 year old legal immigrant from Brooklyn. This 19 year old with no tattoos was kidnapped off the streets of New York. The quote from his father reads, quote, the officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said, no, he's not the one. Like they were looking for someone else.

[Greg Lod]

One officer, to be clear.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Correct.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But the other officer said, take him anyway, unquote. And now this father, exactly a month later, is still looking for his missing son who is disappeared into an El Salvador torture prison.

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Jesus. Like I've said before on this show, like one of the things that I learned in the daring gap was how much people can care about their kids. And like the shit that I saw people do to ensure their kids have a better life, like, like broke my heart in a way that war hasn't. That like anything else I've seen in my life hasn't. And it's like, honestly really hard for me to hear stuff like that and not react. Just being really sad or really angry. It's fucking brutal.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Things are looking a lot more grim in my mind than they were when we recorded that. Should you leave the United States episode? I still think the things I said there I stand by and I stand by. The only recommendation I have is to create options for yourself. And I think those options should be created as soon as possible, especially if your citizenship is a topic of debate according to the United States government. But even that will not keep you safe. As we've talked about today, your options.

[Greg Lod]

Include creating networks to take care of one another. Right? The things that will probably affect more of you than direct state violence are economic downturns, are recessions, things like this. Those are things that you can take care of one another through. And you should plan to do that too. You should think about how you're going to pay your bills, how you're going to feed each other, how you're going to take care of your medical needs. Because I don't think that the world is going to want to keep doing business with the country that acts like this, both economically and in terms of its conduct towards migrants. So your plans don't have to be to leave. Your plans should also include what to do if things get really bad in an economic sense. I'm not going to tell you what that means, but it's all the stuff we've already talked about. It's mutual aid, all the basic preparedness stuff that is not as big and scary as leaving the country but is nonetheless like vital.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We will continue to report on the Garcia case, other court cases regarding these 300 people. Rendition to El Salvador and CKOT in the next few weeks.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, just to finish up. As things continue to get worse, people keep reaching out to us, which we appreciate. If you would like to, you can email us coolzonetipson me. We will read it. We might not get back to you. Your email is not end to end encrypted unless the email that you're sending from is also encrypted. But you can reach out to us there.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

See you on the other side.

[Kevin Smith]

You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code [e-mail] this is Courtside with Laura.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Carrenti, the podcast that's changing the game and breaking down the business of women's sports like never before. I'm Laura, the founder and CEO of Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment, your inside source on the biggest deals, power moves and game changers. Writing the playbook on all things women's sports sports from the heavy hitters in the front office to the powerhouse women on the pitch. We're talking to commissioners, team owners, influential athletes and the investors betting big on women's sports. We'll break down the numbers, get under the hood and go deep on what's next.

[Greg Lod]

Women's sports are the moment.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So if you're not paying attention, you're already behind. Join me Courtside for a front row seat into the making of the business of women's sports. Courtside with Laura Carenti is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Courtside with Laura Carenti Starting April 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network. We ready to fight?

[Mia Wong]

I'm ready to fight.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Is that.

[Robert Evans]

I thought it was.

[Greg Lod]

Oh, this is Fighting Words.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Okay, I'll put the hammer back.

[James Stout]

Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with the second most banned book in America.

[Greg Lod]

Now more than ever, we need to.

[James Stout]

Use our voices to fight back. And that's what we are doing on Fighting Words. We're not going to let anyone silence us.

[Greg Lod]

That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of black history, queer history, any history that challenges the whitewashed.

[James Stout]

Norm or put us in a box.

[Mia Wong]

Black people have never, ever depended on.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The so called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great. We are the greatest culture makers in world history.

[Greg Lod]

Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio.

[James Stout]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man.

Who my wife has always said is just a beardless d Ckless version of me.

And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me.

[Mia Wong]

I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

[Mia Wong]

It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mia Wong]

Welcome to Happened Here, a podcast increasingly well named as, as the days go on. I am your host, Mia Wong, and it, it occurs to me over the course of the many, many, many, many, many union episodes we've done in this podcast, we haven't really done much coverage of. Just straight up, how do you do a strike? So today we are going to be covering a pretty long running strike. We're going to see how many days it's been going. It's unclear when this episode is going to come out. So who fucking knows how long it'll be when, when, when you hear it. But yeah. With me to talk about this strike is Spencer Jordan who is a rank and file member of the urban or workers union. Spencer, welcome to the show.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. So this is what, what day is it today? I should know this? April 15th. And as of April 15th, you've been on strike for 25 days.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yep, that's just about right. Yeah, it started on the 22nd of March. We held our strike vote like a solid 12 days before, before we actually went out on the picket line and won that strike vote with 14 yeses, a single no, and I think, think four, four abstentions.

[Mia Wong]

That's pretty good.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So 93% of those voting voted yes.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Which. Good, good ratios. Good ratios. I think like, typically you want at least like mid-70s if we're going to do this kind of thing. But you know, as listeners to the show, hopefully understand by now you can't just like call a strike and have it happen. You know, you have to do a whole bunch of organizing. So I want to kind of start at the dynamics of the organizing of how this shop got going. Because this is a pretty small shop from the sounds of it and.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So do you want to talk a bit about what the basic process of getting this organizing started was like and what the sort of like social mapping looked like and stuff like that?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, so the organization process started around like a year and a half before we actually had our unionization vote, which was actually we had the vote in March and we got our win on April 7th two years ago. So we actually just had our union two year birthday.

[Mia Wong]

Aw. Happy birthday.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But yeah, so preceding that was like, like I said about a year and a half of organizing that involved, you know, the typical thing of like one on one conversations with like all the staff making the, you know, color coded spreadsheet and everything, which all of this was not my, my purview. I'm a lot more involved now than I was at the start of the process. And I was approached by like one of our lead organizers really shortly after being hired just to kind of, you know, read the dipstick as to like my sentiments about it and whatnot. I was pretty on board right away. I mean, you know, like, like I'm from the Bay Area. So.

[Mia Wong]

There are only two types of people from the Bay Area. We wouldn't be having one of them on the show.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm of the latter type. So, you know, being pro union is. Isn't. Isn't like a foreign thing to my background, you know.

[Mia Wong]

You don't look like a tech worker.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, no, no. Yeah. Especially like my family's from the Midwest and everything, so they're. Yeah. My. My aunt actually just learned that she was like a clerk working for the railroads back in the day when like railroad jobs were still like a big thing you could have anyways. But yeah, so I had had my like own sort of like just observations of like, whoa. Like what's. What's going on in the workplace, aside from like my own just like predilection to thinking, you know, more worker power is better.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Also kind of seeing like some of the factors that precipitated it. Like for instance, like when I was hired here, I was hired in my interview, it was the. One of the owners and the manager of my department. My department being salvage and recycling department of Urbanor, which is kind of like not super public facing. We like go to the dump and like root around through the garbage like hyenas or whatever, get to get stuff for the store. But that manager, you know, he was there in the interview. And we got to the portion where the owner explained what at will employment is. Oh boy. And she went, so we're at will here. So Samwell Samuel's my manager. Samuel, how long have you been here? 21 years. He's there, hands folded on the table. Yes. What at will means is it could be tomorrow. I could say, you know, Samwell, it's been a great 21 years. I really appreciate all the work you've done. Today's your last day.

[Mia Wong]

What?

[Greg Lod]

Why would you say that?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And he has to sit there and go, Jesus Christ. And then she says, of course, likewise. Tomorrow Samwell could come to me and say, hey, Mary lou, it's been 21 years. I've enjoyed it. I'm quitting. So you know, the sort of sword over his neck is being cast as somehow equal to him not being like indentured.

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

What are we doing here? This also just, I mean, like, you know. Yeah. On the basic level. Yeah. It's like, okay, your opponent, I guess they are going to put it, your boss can just instantly fire you for any reason whatsoever for any amount of time. And then also you could quit the job.

[Greg Lod]

Like, what?

[Mia Wong]

And then secondarily I feel like playing fields just, like, as a management tactic. Like, are you, like, trying to piss off your subordinates? Like, what? I have never had a boss, like, just do that in a hiring meeting.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

What?

Yeah. I mean, have you, have you worked at, like, a, like a, like a sort of small, like, mom and pop, quote unquote business before?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I mean, that, that, that's probably. That' Probably. Why? Because I've usually had, like, larger e. My shitty jobs have either been like, government jobs or like, like larger companies. So there was less of the, like. I, I, I heard a line recently that I, I wish I remember where it was from. It might be a line from Star Trek, like one of the Ferengi rules. There's this, like, treat, Treat your employees like family, exploit them ruthlessly, which I love.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You know, that's, that's a traditional line in business, especially in small business. And it's no stranger here. Yeah. That question of wanting to piss off your subordinates or whatever. I don't know if pissing off is necessarily the concern, but ownership here, definitely. I've gotten the impression that they enjoy showing their power. And I've gotten the impression that the sort of, like, uncertainty and like. Yeah, my mom would call it jockeying for position that you have to do is a dynamic that they. I can't say. I really can't say. They. Honestly, because the other owner, he hasn't been very active in the business since, since my hiring, but at least Mary Lou.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Tends to lean on. That's kind of like the, the special quality that you get with, like, a small business and organizing in a small workplace is that, like, you know, you can see sort of in their public communications the way that, like, the Zucks and Bezos and the rest of them feel about their employees. And, you know, you can get a sense of perhaps how they might act towards their employees if they, like, interacted with them on a daily basis. But in a small business setting, you really get a keen view into how the power of the employer mixes very readily with a person's predilection towards discipline, predilection towards personal. What'd you call it? Personal battling, almost.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Well, and that's. And it's also, like, it's inescapable in a way that it isn't with, like, you know, if you're dealing with people who are, you know, you're at a larger company, you're not dealing with the person. Like, there's an old Chinese expression that's like, heaven is high. And the Emperor is far away. So, you know, it's like, Like a lot of times you're dealing with. Okay, yeah, there is like, you know, your Zuckerberg is there, but he's like, he never interacts with you, but with this, it's like, no, the small business tyrant is right there in your face all the time. And all of the weird petty shit that they want to do and all of this sort of like, you know, and I would say this isn't. Isn't just like a unique thing of, like, small business owners, like people in all positions, like, in all portions of. Of like the class society, have in them kind of like the capacity for cruelty. And there's just people like that, but they don't normally have the ability to just do it to you directly in your face. And that's. Yeah. And that's like, that's, you know, this is what you've been talking about is like, yeah, you have like, these small business tyrants, like, every suddenly in the same way that, like, I don't know, you're dealing with like, like one of the random King Louis and you're like, in the court, and suddenly just like, the fact that this guy doesn't like people going to the bathroom means that everyone around him doesn't get a. Doesn't get. Doesn't get a shit.

[Greg Lod]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Like, it's just like. Yeah, it's just this weird tears.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, no, exactly. It's like, it's actually an argument that she's deployed in her Reddit correspondence, which. Which has been seemingly a pretty active part of her spare time that she's not spending at the bargaining table with us. You know, made this comparison of like, this isn't a question about oligarchs or whatever. And it's true, like, the small businessman is not an oligarch, but the small business is a microcosm of, like, the larger capitalist social order. And while the small business man might not have the scope of power of the oligarch or like the actual capital resources of an oligarch, the behavior certainly rhymes, at least.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And again, it's like, it's a lot of it is about. It's just how much power you have access to. Right. Like, lots of people can be like this, but only the few, the proud, the small business tired, get to do it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, totally. And, you know, ultimately the employer, wherever they are, they're in this privileged position of being able to, you know, you spend most people more than like a third of your life at work.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The employer has this Unique power to dictate what that third of your life looks like, you know? Yeah, we talk about. I mean, shit, we don't. People are not so much talking about democracy writ large in the US in the same way now that they used to. But, you know, you talk about this idea of, like, living in a democracy, but democracy ends at the shop door.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. And. And like, the. The kind of power that these people have is something that, like, these people get to control. When you can go to the bathroom, like, what clothes you wear, like, literally what you can do, what you can say at any given time. If you employed the exact level of control that your boss has over you on a state, it would be a totalitarian state. And yet everyone seems to think that this is sort of like, you know, and this is an argument I've been making about, like, Trump is that, like. Yeah, this is. This is. This is what sort of Trump and Elon and like, that whole cadre and Beatrice, if you want to go into the sort of ideologues behind it, too, this is what people like Peter Thiel want. When, when they say run the government like a business, what they mean is that they want to, like, to import the sort of, like, just the pure tyranny of the workplace and expand it into the entire political system so that their. Their, like, sort of just pure, like, totalitarian corporate rule can't be challenged.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, wasn't it Mussolini who coined the term the corporate state?

[Mia Wong]

Probably. Although it would not surprise me if it was like some other fascist theorists and Mussolini just started saying it because. Yeah, but, yeah, like, that's, you know, that's a substantive thing here. And what this also means is that, like, even in ways that are sort of hard to see, like a fight over democracy in the workplace. Right. Is a. Is a part of the larger struggle against all of all the things that's happening. Because if, you know, if we're going to survive this and if we're going to make sure that we don't all live in a world where, like, if you say the wrong thing, you can be sent to a prison camp. Camp democracy, if you want this to survive, is going to have to march into, like, into the lair of the beast. It is going to have to go into the source of this tyranny itself, which is the workplace, and it's going to have to crush it there.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you said it very, very aptly there. Like, the corporate structure mirrors the totalitarian structure. And, you know, not only does, like, fighting the corporate structure at the level of labor makes sense in that. Right. Labor is what enables the flow of capital that sustains the totalitarian state. But also, like you said, you're addressing the structure in its. I don't know, I almost think of it as like the, you know, like Grendel's mother in the fen or whatever. And like, like, you know, the authoritarian thing is like, is like Grendel maybe and like Grendel's mother is like this capitalist hierarchical structure.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You know, you take it on with an insistence on workplace democracy as kind of Libby as that sounds.

[Mia Wong]

Okay. Speaking of capitalist totalitarianism, here are the ads that we are required to run by our corporate.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Let's hear them.

[Mia Wong]

And we are back. So let's get back a little bit towards the, the more concrete, concrete parts of the union. Although I do have more to say eventually at some point about the way that sort of labor liberalism co opted democracy in the workplace from like, you know, the old sort of like anarchist idea of workers control.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

But okay, so one thing I wanted to talk about before we sort of get into the more formal stuff about the strike is I was, I'm really interested to hear you talk about what the process of kind of onboarding you to get more involved in the union is, because this is something that like, okay, every functional union wants to do this. Like, if your union is not trying to bring people like its members like more to get more involved in the union and become more of the people becoming like core organizers and becoming, you know, like the people who are doing your bargaining, people who are doing anything. Like your union is. There's weird shit about it and you should probably like be looking into that, but it's pretty hard. So. Yeah, can, can you talk a bit about the process of, of how you were brought in and what sort of worked and what didn't?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, I think ultimately the easiest thing is a sort of ramping up degree of responsibility within the organization. Right. So like at the start I would come to some of the meetings, I would miss some of them. I would be like, oh, I'm fucking so busy with whatever is going on in my life. And you know, I was supportive and sort of involved, but you know, I wasn't like, I mean, I certainly wasn't doing things like this. And you know, eventually one, we like kind of persisted as a union over a longer period of time. The necessity of involvement became more like obvious to me. Right. And that's, that's a hard ask, you know, like you're Organizing, you want momentum and you want, you know, you want to be able to change your conditions for the better as soon as possible.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And with, with Urban or, you know, lots of workplaces that need unionization have high turnover. Right. And Urbanoa is no different. And so I saw, you know, like, like some of the more committed elements of the bargaining unit be fired or quit or whatever.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And you know, they would be replaced with other people and you have to begin the work of organizing over again. And with some of them you succeed, with some of you don't.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You know, you have different dynamics. I feel like the hiring procedures may have changed a little bit after we won our election, but, you know, I can't say that for certain. So the sort of necessity of keeping that flame going, especially after we had won the election, we were in contract bargaining for a long period of time, made me feel a sort of sense of I need to be more active in this because this is an important struggle. And I see our main organizers taking on a fuckload of work, like needing more voices at the table, needing more, more. Needing more people to be more involved. And so like I, you know, volunteered to like run for treasurer. I was the only candidate. Yeah. But theoretically I could have been voted down. They could have been like, I don't know about Spencer and you know, like, ended up having like, like a little bit more direct responsibilities. Like I was like receiving some of the donations to our strike fund once, once we started fundraising for the strike and I had to keep track of those and you know, put them in a special bank account and then eventually take that money, get it to like the, the IWW branch, hand it, hand a big check to Dino, that kind of stuff and just like having like little things to be doing, like. Yeah, spurs involvement. Other people, you know, became responsible for like parts of social media outreach, making graphics, stuff like that and also like sort of, I guess giving people the opportunity to leverage their individual connections within the workplace. Because every workplace is like clicks and groups and subgroups and all that to leverage those connections in like, like service of bettering everyone's conditions. So like to a certain degree I've, I've been like, important as like an envoy to my particular department because it's our job, takes us away from the job site or like from like the main domain work site often and stuff like that. So there's less of a direct avenue for communication there.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So I can say that's my experience.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

As far as organizing goes, like, I'm easy, you Know, I was already. I was already believing in it. And there are others that it's been harder. I will say, though, that the strike itself is. I mean, a strike is a conflict, and when you're in conflict together, it's an extremely cohering force.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Which isn't to say that necessarily you want your unionization to come to a strike break, but perhaps, like, raising a sort of consciousness of, like, the fact that, like, you are ultimately, like, in conflict with the boss.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The boss doesn't want you to unionize. The boss doesn't want you to force concessions out of them. And that, like, as a union, we are taking on this, like, responsibility to look after each other's interests.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, definitely.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And to, like, support each other, like, tangibly in terms of what we do and also intangibly in terms of the kind of conversations we have around morale, planning and stuff like that to succeed together. I think those are really potent cohering forces, and it helps to have a good opponent. The boss is the best organizer. And at Urbanor, you don't go along without coming head to head with conflict with ownership or with ownership through the mediator of management. Although support for the union might be divided a bit at the workplace, one thing that's pretty universal is frustration with ownership.

[Mia Wong]

So, okay, speaking of. Speaking of a frustration with ownership, it is time for us to go to ADS one last time.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Beautiful.

[Mia Wong]

But then after we come back. Strike, Strike.

[Greg Lod]

Strike.

[Mia Wong]

Strike.

[Greg Lod]

Strike.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Strike. Strike. Just after this message.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, God. Okay, we are back from. Bunch of people who almost assuredly do not want you to go on strike. But yeah, so let, Let. Let's. Let's get into the process of how you actually organize a strike. Yeah, let's start from just like, the very beginning. What are the kind of things that were happening that, you know, made people think that you needed to do this in the first place?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So the strike itself is a result specifically like, like, this is a ULP strike. So it's in response to something that falls under the category of unfair labor practice according to the National Labor Relations Act. And it's, you know, backed up by charges filed with the board as opposed to, like, what's called an economic strike, which is a strike that is specifically about, you know, economic issues of the workplace. So this. The specific ULP that's being cited for our strike is Bad Faith Park. And, and for us, what. What that's looked like is two years of completely stalled negotiations where we are basically being faced with a take it or leave it offer of the status quo. In the vast majority of our proposals.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Bargaining is very, very slow and ownership has held tightly to the offense at us having unionized it all, which to my understanding is pretty typical of small workplaces. Ownership takes it very personally and that personal feeling of betrayal or whatever becomes a stumbling block in the negotiation process. I know that was the case with Mo's, another bookshop in Berkeley that also unionized with the iww.

[Greg Lod]

Hell yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So, you know, we've had our whole proposal on ownership's table for a year and a half now. We had started with bargaining proposal by proposal. They said, well, how can we possibly agree to any of this without understanding the full context, especially the economic context?

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And so we gave them a full proposal and they said, oh my God, how do you expect us to read all of this in time to bargain? This is way too much. How are we going to evaluate this all?

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

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

[Mia Wong]

That's literally your job.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

You're a contract. You have one job.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. You would think like a lawyer would have like a little bit more of a Jesus, beyond like a tweet. Tweet sized reading capacity, but well, they.

[Mia Wong]

Give anyone law degrees.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Or like ownership saying like. Well, I just thought it was so ridiculous I didn't feel the need to read all of it. Stuff like that.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Just these readers. Bad faith. Barkner.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, that's bad. By like the standards of like normal, it takes two years to do a fucking contract because they're just not doing shit. Like, good Lord.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Usually in those long contract negotiations, by two years at least there's like been some progress.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, they've read the proposals like. Yes. Okay. Will, will, will your boss show up to your meeting an hour and a half late? Because they didn't bother to look through the proposals until literally right the time they meeting was going to start. Yes. But will they have done it usually?

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

In fact, in the sort of company propaganda where they're claiming that this like bad faith bargaining charge has no grounds. They're like, ownership has come to like 25 to 30 bargaining sessions, neglecting to mention there have been somewhere in the range of like 50 to 60 and.

Of course, half of.

Maybe they've shown up more than half. I don't want to be libelous, but.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, but still, like if, at the point at which you are failing to show up for any bargaining session, I think you can, like, look, I, I have always advocated that if, that, if, that if management doesn't show up to a bargaining session, you should just be allowed to take the company because clearly they're not serious about it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But hey, you know, they've been talking about a worker co op for 20 years.

[Mia Wong]

Non reformist reforms.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But yeah, so those kind of things. And then like finally like one of the bigger precipitating factors is like we've been trying to bargain over economics. Ownership has implied a lot of times that they cannot afford to pay what we're asking. They say it'll ruin the company. They say the company will go bankrupt. They say it's unsustainable. They say this and that. And then when they get to the table, they say, we have never and will never argue inability to pay pay. Because the thing is that to say inability to pay.

[Clayton English]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It obligates you to furnish information and prove that. And they for whatever reason do not want, wow, I wonder why furnish financial information. So these have been some of the sticking points and that's why we've been out on the picket line for about three weeks now, still waiting for them to come to the table.

[Mia Wong]

God damn it. So, okay, let's talk about, about just sort of the process of how the discussions went for doing this. What did those sort of look like and how did you sort of just plan this thing out?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, I guess the process towards deciding that it needed to come to a strike was like that is a sort of thing that builds over a long period of time. You see ownership doing bad faith bargaining. You go, what more conciliatory approaches can we take first? You know, can we try this, can we try offering this to make, you know, can we try this display of good faith? Can we offer this compromise? One of the things that was a big part was of some of the not exactly contract related discussions, but like ownership has been talking for a long time about a co op transition that has never happened. You know, it's been 20 years and you know, now that we've unionized, they're like our people who we were talking to about doing the co op thing. They don't work with unions. And so the only way there's ever going to be a co op is if the union goes away. And so in response to that we said, well, we're totally open to a transition to a co op that involves the union. And here is such and such organization. It was our lead negotiator who actually provided the information summer the name of the organization. But here's such and such organization that actually specifically deals with union co op workplace transitions was not received with interest. So it's like you master this catalog of bad faith bargaining and you end up in your strategy discussions with the whole unit testing the wires of like, when is too much, what's our red line that we need to take more direct action? And what that began with for us was first, well, if we're gonna have a, if we're gonna have a strike, we need funds for it. The IWW is an organization that affords its unions a lot of freedom and a lot of mutual support and solidarity is not an organization with a huge amount of money. And so we did start with trying to get a sense of what we could get from you know, the, the, the branches reserve and we moved on from that to how we were going to fundraise and stuff like that. So we held informational pickets that had donations. We sold shirts, posters, stuff like that. We held like a big strike fundraiser.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

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

[Mia Wong]

Sometimes it works. I've seen it before. I've seen it before.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sometimes it works. Yeah, and sometimes, you know, sometimes you end up on, on a podcast talking about how it didn't.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, look, you never know until you try.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, you never know. But we did. Yeah, we did give them that sort of early warning and our readiness to strike kind of like depended then on like where we were at in the fundraising process.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So we continue sort of soliciting donations, reaching out to various organizations in the area that are, you know, pro labor. You know, we talked to like DSA and whatever because you know, they have their like workplace organizing committee.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I think it's Ewok.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah, and various other, you know. Yeah, organizations that are pro labor. And once we got to a point where you felt like we were reasonably like prepared to sustain a open ended strike because that's what we're doing.

[Greg Lod]

This is a strike.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

With no set end date, then we announced our intention to hold a strike vote. We held our strike vote. Strike vote passes. The ownership was made aware at the bargaining session before the strike vote. So it was like the Monday before the strike vote, which is on, I think, a Saturday. So in total, it was around maybe like two weeks. And change that they knew, like, definite possibility, pass the strike vote. Twelve days later, the strike begins with unfortunately, no bargaining in between.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, good Lord. Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The whole way. You hope that they'll come to the table. You hope that they will come to their senses. Yeah. Take. Take the risk seriously. Take the risk seriously. And unfortunately, this is. Is not what's happened here.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And I think part of that is maybe an age thing here. Ownership is. Is in their 80s, and they've pretty consistently held the view that, like, the union is like a bunch of young people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. You know, even though, like, the age range of our union span is the age range of the workplace, we've got people in their 50s and 40s and 30s and 20s, you know, which is. Which is, of course, the problematic group, but. Yeah, the radicals. Yeah. So there's. There's been this sort of patronizing attitude that I think has resulted in, like, a real strategic failure on their part to seriously prepare for the strike or, you know, bargain to avoid it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. One more fundraising thing that I just. I just want to mention this for people. If you're trying to fundraise for your own thing, something that's actually. We've had a lot of success with up in Portland is getting bands to do benefit shows. So, like, I mean, because it's Portland, right? Like, the local hardcore scene has a lot of bands that, you know, are just supportive of stuff. And we've done this for a whole bunch of different causes. And this is. This. This can also be a good way to just sort of do fundraising things that are fun and also raise morale because. Yeah, you're doing the show.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I was hoping to have that be more of a thing with our fundraiser.

[Mia Wong]

But, yeah, it can be hard to organize sometimes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. The people I knew were. Didn't get quite the response I was hoping from the community.

[Greg Lod]

If you are a hardcore band.

[Mia Wong]

If you are a band in Berkeley, there's still time.

[James Stout]

I believe in you.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That is. That is totally. Hey, a good option. What we did, we ended up doing. There was music, but it was also like. One of our organizers is really into cooking. He, like, did like a barbecue thing. Yeah. Sold Food, stuff like that, and had a raffle. A raffle is a great way to fundraise for us. We, like, raffled off, like, stuff we have. But honestly, you can even do like a straight monetary raffle is still a great fundraising tool. You know, where everyone puts in money. The winner, the top three winners or whatever get like a certain percentage, like the total pool and the rest of the pool is to the cause. Really simple, really effective.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. There's a reason it's not good, but there is a reason why a whole bunch of state education budgets are funded. Are funded by the lottery. Like, it does work. And we're.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

People love to gamble.

[Mia Wong]

Much better. Yeah. Having turned off her lunch, her path of exile to lunch break to come to this interview. It's many such cases. Okay, so let's, let's. Speaking of, I guess this is something that's been tied into sort of all we've been saying here. But yeah, let's talk about, you know, sort of maintaining the strike when it starts and sort of.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

What. What have been the processes of, like, keeping morale up and keeping people engaged and.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely when you go into a strike, you want to go in with a militant core group. You want to basically be sure that everyone is committed to holding the line until a collective decision is made. Otherwise, you don't want people, like, peeling off. That's really bad PR for your strike.

Yeah, yeah.

And like, the bosses will grab on that. So, like, for instance, like, you know, we have some people who are. Are respecting our picket line but chose not to pick it with us, which is fine as far as I'm concerned. But the issue with that PR wise is that now the bosses are saying in their, like, tallying up of who's working and who's not working, they're counting them as working. You know, they're like, oh, there's only. Yeah, whatever. They've been saying eight people. I think it's more like nine or 10 who are on the picket line, but the rest is. The rest of the employees are working. Working. They count themselves as employees in that count, of course. And they count these people who are not crossing the picket line but not on it also, as among that count of the rest of the employees that are working.

[Greg Lod]

What?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And they've had the opportunity to really inflate that count because in sort of classic move. Really. All the moves are classic. You read your organizing books and you're like, like, can it happen here? And it does. So, like, we got a lot of new assistant Managers after we won our election. So right now, like the composition of the workplace, right. Got 34 people, 15 managers.

[Mia Wong]

I, I really wonder when we're going to see the day where you have companies that have six, like non managers and 55 managers. Like, I feel like we're not that far out.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, we're leading the charge here. We have a department that's two people people, a manager and assistant manager. Who's the assistant manager? Managing. Oh, God. So, yeah, you know, they're, they've, they've had these particular angles to, you know, sort of do their propaganda from. And I mean, honestly, I think a big part of, again, the boss is the best organizer. And like a thing that keeps you committed on the line is like, like reading all this bullshit they say about you and knowing otherwise and being able to talk to each other and be like, have you seen this? Isn't this crazy? Like, what the hell? Yeah. Also, you know, is this is where the sort of like seeds of organizing all the way that you start all the way back at the beginning of your union campaign become, you know, they show themselves like really important again because like, the start, right, anyone will tell you is just like getting to know people, like, being like, you know, being on like a, hey, how's it going? Kind of level, you know, and having like a personal rapport with the people you're on the line with is vital just in the sense that, you know, obviously, like, you know each other, you're sort of friends, you're going to be more likely to stick up for each other, but also, like, you're out there nine hours walking in a circle with these people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You know, you gotta, you gotta have positive, strong relationships with them. You want to be able to have the kind of rapport where like, you can talk to people about like, what they're feeling anxious about, you know, like where they're worried. In like the strike strategy, like, you know, you need to have that like, trust between each other that you can have like an open dialogue about how it feels to be on the picket line because you're not going to maintain morale if ever. If like, like everyone feels like they've got things, they gotta hold in about it. Like, yeah, there's room to be like, like, are they gonna close the business? Like, and what are we gonna do? And like, sort of like talk through that from a, from a place beyond. Like, you know, like what you're not letting in. Speaking to a crowd of a million people or whatever. You're just like two people. Yeah. Going through a stressful experience together.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. And you have to actually grapple with that in a way that's not the sort of like. Like weird corporate, like, we gotta improve morale. Things like. That's not what that means. It means, like, you know, it means actually grappling and engaging with people's feelings and how. And what they need in a moment and.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And their fears and their concerns and. Yeah. You can't just sort of brush them aside. You have to actually grapple with it. Because that's what doing this stuff means.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, exactly. Having like these authentic conversations with people. Because like, like. Yeah, that's like a totally great point you bring up there. Like, the HR speak, that's the boss's tool, and it's the boss's tool to divide and create disunity. So you can't lean on that model for morale within your union. It just creates distrust.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And I mean, I've seen that happen with unions where it's like, you guys did not do a good job of, like, talking to people about this. And like. Yeah. And it can be really disruptive to attempts to do this. But on the other hand, if you, if you do it well, it's like, it's the most powerful single thing that you can, like, possibly do is like, forging relationships that are based on, like, the. At the actual experience of having gone through struggle together and having had to, like, literally had to face your feels on the picket line.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah. Like, ideally, you know, the union is a. Is a community, and it's a community of interest. Right. It's a community of. Of work interest, but it is ideally a community. It's not a family. Right. And it's certainly not. Not, not a family in the way that the bosses will tell you the workplace is. But it is a community, and it's a community in the way that. That an employer's idea of a community is fundamentally, like, incompatible with.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. There's this Vicky Osterwalt line that I think about a lot from her book in Defensive Looting, where she talks about how I feel like it was Ferguson, that this is about where, like, the police chief is talking about the damage to the community. And they keep saying, our Walmart, it's like going into a Walmart and buying something is not a community. Right. Like, you know, they like that. Like those, those kind of relations are not actual community relations. But when the bosses talk about community, that's what they mean. They mean, like, like our collective community, Walmart. They mean preserving the relation of extraction that they have.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And we are, you know, using the same word and meaning something literally so.

[Greg Lod]

Radically different than that.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And you have to make sure in the way that you're acting that that radically different meaning is clear.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And, yeah, it's funny you bring that up because that's just bringing to mind like. Like, you see the difference in those attitudes, like, when you're out there on the picket line, like, interact. Because, you know, our picket line, a really pivotal part of it because there are so many managers in there that they're able to maintain this, like, skeleton crew, is the community outreach part is like, talking to every single person who's coming up and being like, hey, how's it going? I've been on strike such and such long. This is what's up. Please don't cross the picket line. And I've noticed you get this real funny situation where there are the people who are like, I've shopped here for 20 years. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't know you. And I have to be like, well, I'm normally at the dump getting the merchandise you're buying. And who attribute the entire. Attribute everything that they like about the business to the bosses. And then there's the other part of the community that is coming by frequently and, like, hanging out with us on. On. On the picket line. You know, I pet the dog and we chat about what's going on. They're like, how's the strike going? They're like, yeah, you know, I know it's been rough on you guys for such and such. And, like, these people are. Are our shoppers too.

[Greg Lod]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But they, like.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, they.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It highlights that, like, sort of divide in, like, what you think of as, like, community and your responsibility to your community. Because, like, these people also love urban or come here all the time, but they recognize that, like, it's the workers at Urban or that create it every day, you know.

Yeah.

And it is a company that was, like, founded by an individual. The individual still owns it. He did found it with his. With his labor and all that. He did the labor, you know, back when it was, you know, only a few people and stuff like that. But ultimately, a business, like any sort of social phenomenon, has to be constantly recreated in order to exist.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And like, the people who do the work that makes it more than just like a room full of Garbage R Us. And. Yeah, a lot of. A lot of the, like, regulars recognize that, and a lot of them, you know, flip me off as they cross the tick line, whatever.

[Mia Wong]

And I think this is a good place to sort of start coming to a close of on. This is a fundamental question about what the nature of our society is going to be. Right. Like, is. Is the fundamental nature of our society that a community is a bunch of people who buy things and a bunch of people who make money from you buying things and who make money from the labor that you do and then take credit for the labor. And take credit both financially for the labor and in public for the labor. Right. Is our society going to just be a bunch of pure commercial relations where a bunch of people get very, very rich off the labor of everyone else in the society and get to rule them as sort of like these petty, tight tyrant kings? Or is it going to be a society where the people who produce the society control it? Right. And that society is a democratic society, is an egalitarian society, is a society where people are free to do the things that they need to do. And people are free to, you know, have a life where they can pay for their groceries. Right. We're like, you know, where they're. Where they're not forced to go to the market for all of the things that they need to. To live where you can survive in a way that doesn't involve, like, subjecting yourself to just a tyrant for like, a third of your life.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Where. Where, like the place that you spend, like a third. Yeah. A third of your life is a place where you actually have, like, dignity.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Dignity and freedom. And where, you know, where you don't have to go home at the end of a day of making your boss money, worrying about whether you're going to be able to eat or not. And it's. And that's also a society that does not involve, again, at the very highest level, like, you getting thrown into prison camps because your God king hates you. And we can do this. We can live in that society.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The demands are not that crazy.

[Mia Wong]

No.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And that's like the thing that we've encountered over and over again is this constant push and pull of people saying that like, like the expectation of bettering our conditions, whether it be like us on the picket line just trying to get, like, a stable wage and just cause employment and stuff like that. Or whether it be, you know, those larger societal changes that, like, you're talking about, you just butt up against these people who, who have such, like, a posity of imagination about what's possible.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And like, about the legitimacy of trying to make something better. The legitimacy of saying, sure, I can subsist on this. But you know, there's so much more that's possible.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So I'm maintaining that there are some and more that's possible.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I, I, I, I think it's possible too. And that, that's, that's, that's the thing about this world, right, Is that our enemies have figured out that it actually can change.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That's why they have to fight so hard.

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

But the thing is, the fact that it can change for the worse also means that it can change for the better.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Better.

Oh, beautiful stuff.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, where can people find your strike fund? We'll also put it in the, in the description.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Oh yeah, great. So it's on GoFundMe. I'll send you the link and it'll be down there. But also people can hit up our union Instagram. It's urban or workers with underscores between the words urban, underscore or underscore worker that we've got the link to, like strike fund. And also, hey, if you, you're, if you're in Berkeley, you can sign up for a picket shift and you get to enjoy listening to me discourse for nine hours instead of one.

[Mia Wong]

It's great. It's fun. Pickets are cool and good. If you haven't been on one, you should go on one. They're great. They're great. Yeah, it's a good time.

[Kevin Smith]

You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist. Today at talkspace.com save $80 with code.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

[e-mail] this is Courtside with Laura Carrenti. The podcast that's changing the game and breaking down the business of women's sports like never before. I'm Laura, the founder and CEO of Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Your inside source on the biggest deals, power moves and game changers. Writing the playbook on all things women's sports Sports. From the heavy hitters in the front office to the powerhouse women on the pitch. We're talking to commissioners, team owners, influential athletes, and the investors betting big on women's sports. We'll break down the numbers, get under the hood and go deep on what's next. Women's sports are the moment, so if you're not paying attention, you're already behind. Join me Courtside for a front row seat into the making of the business of women's sports. Courtside with Laura Carrenti is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Courtside with Laura Quarenti Starting April 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. We ready to fight?

[Mia Wong]

I'm ready to fight.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Is that.

[Robert Evans]

I thought it was.

[Greg Lod]

Oh, this is Fighting Words.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Okay, I'll put the hammer back.

[James Stout]

Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with the second most banned book in America.

[Greg Lod]

Now more than ever, we need to.

[James Stout]

Use our voices to fight back. And that's what we are doing on Fighting Words. We're not going to let anyone silence us.

[Greg Lod]

That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of black history, queer history, any history that challenges the whitewashed.

[James Stout]

Norm or put us in a box.

[Mia Wong]

Black people never, ever depended on the.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great. We are the greatest culture makers in world history.

[Greg Lod]

Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio.

[James Stout]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man.

Who my wife has always said is.

Just a beardless, dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard.

[Greg Lod]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only.

[Mia Wong]

Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress, Congress. Listen to Beardless with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Dr. James Stout and Reverend Doctor the Honorable Robert F. Evans.

[James Stout]

That's right. That's right. Reverend Doctor the Honorable Evans. Who is currently hacking up a fucking lung. No idea why. I feel otherwise fine.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, I'm sure you, you feel otherwise fine due to this great week in American history we've all been through together.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Which started with a meeting between President Donald Trump and El Salvador President Bukele on Monday morning in the Oval Office where they discussed the possibility of the United States helping to build more Sea Cot style facilities to disappear US citizens and immigrants that the Trump administration deems criminals or terrorists.

[James Stout]

Yes. I mean, I keep getting asked, is this the panic moment? And I don't think panic is particularly productive. But like, yeah, this is the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is happening. The President's talking about Cinderella, sending citizens overseas to a concentration camp. Honestly, I'm on the verge of thinking it's okay to call it a death camp, but we just don't have the data yet. There's some very concerning satellite shots that appear to show piles of bodies.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, that's from March of 2024.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

I mean, yeah, but it won't have gotten better.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No, no.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah. So I don't. I don't know. This is. This is about as bad as it could be. Folks, folks, we're in it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

During that meeting, both President Bukele and. And the Trump cabinet argued that there is simply no way for people sent to seacot to ever return to the United States. Coming up with a whole bunch of absurd, absurd reasons for why that is. That is impossible due to. Due to foreign policy and safety of both El Salvador and the United States. Me and James did a whole episode on this earlier this week that you can check out on the it could happen here here feed. I'm going to move on to an update on the student crackdowns. So ICE has targeted a third green card holder for deportation based on pro Palestinian activism. Moon Mari is a Palestinian from the west bank who has lived in the US With a green card for a decade. While studying philosophy at Columbia, he co founded the Columbia Palestinian student union in 2023, with Mahmoud Khalid deal. Marui was arrested by ICE last Monday, April 14, at his citizenship interview in Vermont. Now, after Khalil was arrested last month, Marui went into hiding. And he suspected that this citizenship interview could be a honeypot, but decided to go anyway. After waiting a long time for this appointment, his lawyers quickly filed a habeas corpus petition arguing his detentions unlawful and violates the First Amendment. A U.S. district judge issued an order hours later that he was, quote, not to be removed from the United States or moved out of the territory of the District of Vermont pending further order of this court. Zionist doxing accounts targeted Mari in recent weeks. I'm gonna play actually this. This two minute clip of Marui talking. This is from December of 2023 on the program 60 Minutes.

[Greg Lod]

What was your initial reaction when you heard about the Hamas attack on October 7?

[Mia Wong]

I could not believe what my eyes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Were seeing, where I see Hamas members.

[Mia Wong]

Getting into settlements and so on. But also the first moment I saw.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That, I put my hand on my heart and I started praying, knowing that.

There will be a huge level of revenge from the Israelis.

[Mia Wong]

And I was praying that this will not be the result because it would be disastrous.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The night of the rally, I believe.

[Greg Lod]

Someone in the crowd said something very anti Jewish. Not just anti Israeli, but anti Jewish.

[Mia Wong]

Yes. This was a walkout on November 9, and a person who is not affiliated with Colombia, we've never seen him. We don't know who is this guy.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Comes down the stairs yelling, death to Jews.

[Mia Wong]

I was shocked. And I walked directly to the person and they told him, you don't represent us because this is not something that we agree with. And directly, what I've done, I took the megaphone and they gave a speech.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And they said, we here are conscious.

[Mia Wong]

Educated students and we know how to separate right from wrong. And what this guy has said is wrong. What this guy has said is clearly.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Anti Semitic against Jews.

[Greg Lod]

Anti Semitic.

[Mia Wong]

To be anti Semitic is unjust.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Is unjust.

[Mia Wong]

And the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I mean, he said everything that would make him a respectable protester, at least based on, like, what the fucking Dems were saying last year. Like, there's nothing in there that's pro Hamas. There's nothing in anything. I can tell this guy has done that. His advocacy towards terrorism, like, but obviously that's not what matters. What matters is they have the ability to get him out and they're doing that because of his speech.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

He took a step back from protests in March of 2024 during the, like, second wave of student protests at Columbia.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. And like, I believe he didn't. Isn't he like a member of the university Buddhist Club?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes. Part of why he took a step back was to focus on his role in the Buddhist Club as a, as a, for I think the past like two years, he has been, he's been participating in that on campus.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

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

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Hard to see how, but I think as we're seeing it, that doesn't really matter.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Now, last Friday, a Louisiana judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration to allow the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, upholding the government's argument that the rarely used Cold War era statute of the Immigration and Nationality act allows for the Secretary of State to deport aliens that pose, quote, adverse foreign policy consequences. The only quote, unquote, evidence presented in court was a two page memo written by Mark Rubio that alleges that Khalil's presence in the country threatens, quote, U. S. Policy to combat anti Semitism around the world and in the United States. Based on information provided by the dhs, ICE and Homeland Security investigations regarding the participation and roles of Khalil in anti Semitic protests and disruptive actions which foster a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States, States, unquote. So there's no real evidence in this document. It is just Mark Rubio's opinion for two pages. And this is the only evidence that ever has been held in court that resulted in the judge ruling in the government's favor.

[James Stout]

A lot of what we're seeing here is the natural conclusion to what was happening with like Vance last year talking about Haitian immigrants and admitting like, yeah, it's not literally true, but like, it's true to how we feel. So it's like fine for us to spread this lie. Like they're just declaring these people terrorists and even attempting to get evidence for that claim, like they, they certainly have no need to. And the media that, like, I, I'm seeing coverage on Fox particularly that's just repeatedly framing this as like, the left is angry that like a terrorist got deported, Right?

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I mean, this is the same stuff that we saw at the RNC where they referred to students as terrorists. Like just completely, completely flat.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like every single person at a college campus who is upset about a genocide or criticizes the state of Israel, that person is a terrorist. Lawyers for Khalil have until April 23 to file an appeal to halt the deportation and they plan to file an asylum case on his behalf. A separate habeas petition case is playing out in a New Jersey court. This week, NBC News reviewed over 100 pages of documents from the federal government and Khalil's legal team containing information about his immigration process, work experience and activism. These documents showed that the government used unverified tabloid reporting against Khalil and contained contradictory information.

[James Stout]

Yep.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So essentially using New York Post style publications as a pretext for ICE to execute arrests against people who are green card holders, legal permanent residents of the United States. States. We're going to go on break and come back to talk about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

[James Stout]

Finally, finally something fun.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

All right, we're back. I'm going to throw to Robert Evans for an update on everyone's favorite roadkill consumer.

[James Stout]

Yes. Yes. RFK Jr. He's not just strapping the carcass of a dead whale to the head of his truck and driving down the highway now. He is, well, kind of launching a genocidal campaign against people with autism.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Kind of doing a national eugenics program.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Kind of calling a large group of people in this country useless eaters.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Jesus Christ.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Fucking.

[James Stout]

And the gist of what's happening is they just had a new quote, unquote study come out that looked at like, apparently rising autism rates. And again, I've covered this a lot. The reason why rates of autism are increasing, every credible scientist agrees, is because we're, we're looking for it more.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And so we're finding more of it, and we have a broader understanding of what it is. RFK Jr is obsessed with the idea, the image of autism as a disease that is spreading due to an environmental contagion region. And he is trying to make the case that this is a calamity. He has promised. The most recent promise he made is that by September, the government will release exhaustive studies that will identify the environmental causes of autism. And he made a statement. Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering. Like this is called autism, a preventable disease, which it is not. While there is evidence that some of the factors that can be relevant in autism expressing are environmental. The vast majority of it seems to be genetic. There is no evidence and there have been repeated studies that has anything to do with vaccines. He's posited a couple of other theories as to what causes it, including mold and diet. And these are largely based on what are already kind of questions. Quack Both autism treatments and quack autism causes that are are popular within the biomedical movement, the experimental biomedical movement, which is the. The fake autism medical industrial complex that we covered recently on the behind the bastards. One of the things I think is really worrying about the language that Kennedy is using is how similar it sounds to a lot of what you were seeing in the early 1930s out of the Nazi state state what we know of as the Holocaust, which is generally a term generally primarily when people use that term, they are talking about the mass killing of Jews and other ethnic minorities in central Europe by the Nazi state. That got a lot of its start. And there's a couple of different places got it start. Obviously the wild concentration camps and the political concentration camps are in that heritage. But when it comes to the actual mass killing of people, the very origin of that was in getting rid of the disabled. Right. The term that was used in Nazi propaganda for these people was useless eaters. And this is the first time that the Nazis tested out gassing, right. In large numbers. And he hasn't used literally the term useless eaters, but he talks a lot about one of the terms he uses is severe autism, right. Which is not the term that is popularly used now for people who have kind of profound autism, I think is the preferred term for people who. Who do have a significantly higher degree of like, disability as a result of of their autism or that correlates with their autism. Right. As opposed to the vast majority of people who can be diagnosed as somewhere on the spectrum who are able to like, live independently. Right. And Kennedy sort of does the thing that is very common within this community of sort of number one, correlating that to everybody with autism and talking about it as if it is a disaster that justifies any kind of response. Because the people who have profound autism aren't real people in his eyes. He made a statement, quote, these are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children. And first off, having taught a lot of kids with Profound autism. Yes. They could play baseball. Like, a number of them held jobs, now do. A lot of them need assisted living. Sure. But like, like number one, that's always been the case. There's no, there's no evidence that people with this kind of autism that there's any sort of raise in this. Right. What's. What's raised is the number of people who are being diagnosed. Right. And he's using this kind of scare term. Right. This idea that, like, parents, you need to be frightened that something is going to steal your children from you.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

In order to justify the dehumanization of, of everyone with autism, as well as, like, radical biomedical experimental procedures that are going to do harm at scale to lots of kids. One of his favorite new terms is epidemic denial, which is the term that he's using for people who say that, like, this is not an epidemic. This is something that we're now screening for more. He's kind of, kind of repurposing the language of like, like vaccine denial and whatnot as like a denial that this is sort of an immediate crisis that needs to be hit, which I find interesting also.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like co opting, like Covid conscious language.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, yeah. Like the way he and his, his group were referred to during COVID he's now using in the same fashion.

[James Stout]

Yeah. And it's interesting. His initial promise was that, like, by September, we'll know why autism rates are on the rise. That's not really a thing. You can't make science work that way. Like, you can't guarantee that.

[Greg Lod]

Like you said, we already know because people are seeking out diagnoses, like, because.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Greg Lod]

We have better awareness of it now.

[James Stout]

But he's kind of altered that recently, being like, no, we'll have some answers by September. And, you know, we're gonna get those answers by removing the taboo so that doctors won't get gaslit, by blaming autism on vaccines or, you know, mold exposure or the like. So that's, that's what we can look forward to in the near future from our good friend RFK Jr. Who definitely doesn't pay taxes or write poems. I just want to make that clear. I don't think either of those are particularly good bars for whether or not you're a human being. But he for sure doesn't do either.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Also, like, frankly, I know way too many autistic people who write poems.

[James Stout]

Oh, tons of them.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. I was going to say, yeah. The Rain Poe things was a really fucking.

[James Stout]

The poet laureate of Washington State since 2023 is a, is a woman with aut. So, yeah, like I.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Writing poems, nonsense. Extremely common activity for, for my fellow AI, my fellow autism people out there.

[James Stout]

Okay, okay. RFK Jr. Again. But he was talking about, you know, people with what he calls severe autism. But he also doesn't ever care to like specify his language because there's no, there's no benefit.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That's not a real medical thing.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And there's no benefit to his ideology in acknowledging that like, well, most people, people who get diagnosed with autism may need some accommodations. It's a difference. Right. It's a difference in the way your mind works. But they're fine.

[Greg Lod]

Like they're living healthy, happy lives.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, I talk slightly differently in the Cool Zone work chat, which is kind of the extent of it for me. Yeah, that's the extent of it. But that is an aspect. Speaking of the Department of Health and Human Services, they released a report page on their website for you. The, the, the vigilant citizen.

[James Stout]

Oh yes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

To report trans minors receiving health care.

[James Stout]

Finally.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And so another one of these like snitching hotlines, this time on a federal government website that I'm sure will only get real, real complaints sent to it and not the B movie script and not repeatedly.

[James Stout]

The B movie script.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Speaking of trans people, I do have a few updates on, on some, some of the transgender stuff. Stuff. During that meeting between President Bukele and Trump, they went on a small tangent about trans people where, where Trump said that he actually doesn't like talking about, quote unquote, men in women's sports because he wants to wait and save that issue to use for the next election.

[James Stout]

Amazing.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I'm going to play the clip and.

[Greg Lod]

I don't like talking about it because I want to save it for just before the next election. I said my people don't even talk.

[Mia Wong]

About it because they'll change. And, but I watched this morning, it was a congressman fighting to the death.

[Greg Lod]

For men to play against women in sports.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That's like super interesting, like very clear insight into how like Trump sees like the trans sports issue and treats it as this like election winning superpower. And like he certainly he is directing like the DOJ and with his executive orders, like he, he still is targeting trans people, especially trans people like in school. So it's, it's not, it's not that he's treating this as like a hands off issue to like ensure that it can remain a hot button thing for the next election. But I, I think, I think in his mind, like he doesn't want to stop Democrats from caring about this issue in a way. Like, like the, the more that. That they. That they fight for it, in his mind, is like, what gives him ammunition for the next election, whether he's going to run for a third term or just like Republicans, like, mega stuff in general. But I think that it is an interesting look into, like, his personal insight on, on this issue. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice just announced on Wednesday, April 16, that they are suing Maine's Department of Education for not complying with Trump's anti trans executive order by continuing to allow trans people to compete in sports, claiming that they are, quote, failing to protect women in women's sports, unquote, which. Which they say violates Title 9. The suit aims to get an injunction to force Maine to strip away rights from trans people in schools, to take away two winning titles from. From trans school athletes, and are considering to, quote, unquote, retroactively pull all funding that Maine has received. Maine's Attorney General, Aaron Frey, said on Wednesday, quote, our position is further bolstered by the complete lack of any legal citation supporting the administration's position in its own complaint. While the President issued an executive order that reflects his own interpretations of the law, anyone with the most basic understanding of American civics understands that the President does not create law nor interpret law, unquote. So Maine, and specifically the Maine governor, are adamant that this is going to be an issue that's only going to be settled in the courts and in fact, challenged Trump at a recent meeting to see you in court over this issue. We are going to go on break and then return to close out this episode of Executive Disorder. Okay, we are back. I'm now going to throw to myself and Mia to discuss Tariff Talk in a future recording.

[Mia Wong]

Welcome to Tariff Talk, the talk where I talk to you about the turf tariffs. So, all right, the big thing that happens last week in tariffs was that Trump exempted smartphones and electronics. There's a whole suite of electronics that are exempted from the 145% turf tariffs from Liberation Day. Now, there is still a 20% tariff tariff on. On all these electronic goods from the earlier round of tariffs. In one of the initial rounds, there was a whole thing where he put a bunch of tariffs.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I'm so confused, though, because. Because I thought it's 10% tariffs for non Chinese companies.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. But okay, so here's the thing, right?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

China, like additional or. Or no.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, so, so what's happening with these is that in the very, very first round of tariffs that went out there was a 20% tariff on all Chinese goods. And so the Liberation Day tariffs, which, and then the subsequent retaliatory tariffs pushed.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It pushed all goods now like what, 250%?

[Mia Wong]

No. Okay, we're going to, we're going to get the 250%. That number's bullshit. Okay, but we're at 145% like tariff from the Liberation Day stuff. But that also had included an earlier 20% tariff. And you see why, you see why reporting about this is so fucking hard. Right?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

So that was stacked on top of that other tariff. So he's removed the Liberation Day tariffs, but there still are 20% tariffs on all, like iPhones and all these electronic goods that are still in effect. So the tariff rate for those goods is now 20 instead of 145. But this is where things get even more murky. So even before the exemptions for the semiconductor stuff had been released, Trump had been talking about imposing a bunch of tariffs specifically on semiconductors from all countries, which is going to like, again, if this is just also, if you want to just kneecap your entire economy, you put in a tariff on all semiconductors from other countries, which is what this is looking like. It's possible the levels are going to be that high anyways. It's again worth pointing out that like, there's a bunch of the parts of this production process that basically can only be done in Taiwan, which will presumably have these new tariffs on them. We don't know what they're going to be yet. They're coming and who fucking knows? But. So it seems like these tariffs are being withdrawn for now due to market sort of backlash, but probably they will come back at some point in the future. We're not, we're not 100% sure. There's also another thing I want to mention where. So the number that you said, the 250% tariff thing, so Trump tweeted that out, but that's fake. What that is is that there are a couple of items and I mean when I say a couple, I mean like we're talking like single digit items, like things like medical syringes that already had like 100% tariffs on them. The 145% tariffs stack on top of all tariffs that were already in effect. So there's like, like three or four items already had 100% tariffs on them. So when you stack the 145 on top of them, they're 250%. But again, it's like, it's like three things right. So, like, that's fake. On the other hand, like, substantively, and this is something that a lot of people have been talking about, the difference between 145% and 245%, like, isn't that relevant because at 145%, you stop doing trading. So it's, you know, the numbers at this point are just sort of in comedy levels. But yeah, so that's what's going on with the 250 number. People have been going around from. It's. It's not real. It's still 145 for all non electronics goods, 20 for electronics. There's also been a bunch of. So China's been doing retaliatory stuff for a little bit, and they've been ramping up this program to restrict U.S. access to rare earth elements that are necessary for a whole bunch of advanced engineering and particularly sort of defense projects. Now this is something that could genuinely devastate the American defense sector. Trump's plan for this is that he's threatening to use the Trade Expansion act of 1962 to impose even more devastating tariffs. Now, it is genuinely unclear to me, like, what is he gonna do? Impose it 1000% tariff? Like, you need to buy these goods?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, you say that, Mia. And yes, he probably will.

[Mia Wong]

He probably will. Like, two weeks ago, 1,000% tariffs would have been a joke. But no, they might legitimately do 1000% tariffs.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Why not?

[Mia Wong]

There's also been the beginnings of, on the US End, sort of export restrictions from chip exports to China and countries like Nvidia and amd. And this is a fucking big rip to the big rip to the fucking AI people. Eat shit, get fucked. Yeah, so, like, so that, that, that's roughly the state of, of the tariffs right now. More, more bullshit will happen. We'll be back on Tariff Talk next week with another round of unbelievably hideous turf tariff shit. But I wanna, I wanna move on to one more thing, which is things that have been happening at the, at the nlrb. So the nlrb, for people who are not regular listeners to the show, is the National Labor Relations Board. They were in charge of, of a whole bunch of things related to negotiations between employers and unions or the people who certify union elections. They handle unfair labor practices disputes. And DOGE effectively broke into the NLRB and has seized a whole bunch of information that they shouldn't have. NPR broke the story and has been doing a lot of good coverage of it. So it came in right. They technically had some Kind of, like, order saying that they're supposed to be able to come in and do this stuff. And they set up and they disable all of the security stuff and all of the sort of, like, logs and all of the sort of. All the sort of stuff that's supposed to, like, verify what someone's doing on a computer system. They go in and disable all of them. They delete all traces of what they do. And this is a big deal because the NLRB has a lot of extremely sensitive data. It has extremely sensitive data on unions. It has a lot of extremely sensitive trade data on private companies. Now, the NLRB person who blew the whistle on this to NPR described how. So he complains about to his superiors about Doge Again, just like, sort of breaking into this fucking, like, office and just, like, stealing all of this data. Because, I mean, he. So he notices this program that they're building that's literally just called, like, Backdoor, which is, like, again, what you would do if you were literally running a hack. Right? And we'll come back to that in a second. So the NLP person complains to his superiors, like, hey, these Doge people are just, like, stealing all of the data from this. And then, like, the next day, someone from Doge tapes to his door pictures of him and his dogs with, like, a threatening thing on it. Like, drone footage of him and his dog, like, walking, which is so fucking weird. I don't even know. I don't even. So, yeah, that's extremely alarming. This is. They're just blatantly threatening a whistleblower.

[Clayton English]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So the other reason that this is really concerning is that. So a lot of the corporate media is focused on the fact that there's a lot of trade information in there. There's also a lot of very personal information about unions, about union strength, about size, about tactics, about the history of negotiating things, about just where unions are and who's in them. And it's deeply unclear what Doge is going to do to this information, but it's not good. And again, and I need to emphasize this, so I talked to friend of the show, Maya Arsoncrime W about this, who is someone who knows a lot about hacking. And I said to it, okay, so this is what you would do if you were. If you were just straight up, like, hacking the nlrb, right? Like, these are the things you would do. And they went, yeah, pretty much. So it's great. It's great. Yeah, the dojo just stole a bunch of information. Who knows what's going to happen to it. Who knows what's going to happen with their escalation of attacks on whistleblowers, but things bad things continue to go bad.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, thank you for that uplifting story, Mia, about Doge breaking into and stealing data from the NLRB and posting overhead drone photos of people's houses who threatened the Doge supremacy.

[Greg Lod]

We're back. Thank you, future Garrison and future Mia. So it's my role here to update you on the board of fascism. Right. And that's what I'm here to do. Where I want to start this week is in the Roosevelt Reservation. This is something that's been reported on a little bit. It's wreaked largely by people who maybe only found out about it this week and looked at the Wikipedia page and then wrote a story. The Roosevelt reservation is a 65 foot easement that runs along the southwestern border of the United States from the coast in San Diego all the way to New Mexico. Doesn't cover the Texas border. I've written about it before for the Sierra Club and for Drilled News four or five years ago and I'm going to include a link to the Sierra Club piece in the show notes. The drill piece is down now. They, they don't have that print side anymore. It was established in 1907 by Teddy Roosevelt and it was transferred for three years from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Defense by the Trump administration in 2019 using an executive order this year in 2025, all of the Roosevelt Reservation that is not part of federal reservation land was placed on the Department of Defense jurisdiction. A lot of reporting seems to have missed this exemption for federal reservation land, which makes up a significant part of the border, especially in Arizona, right in the Tornado Reservation. I'm going to quote from the language of the executive order here. Here, quote to provide for the use and jurisdiction by the Department of Defence over such federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation, and excluding federal Indian reservations that are reasonably necessary to enable military activities directed in this memorandum, including border barrier construction and in placement of detection and monitoring equipment. The way I read this, it also doesn't limit to the Roosevelt Reservation. It seems to include other federal land right, which could include national monuments, national parks, BLM and the national Forest, all of which exist along the border. The Trump administration this week also obtained waivers. The waivers waive dozens of laws that have been limiting construction in the San Diego sector. I'd like to quote a little bit from that Sierra Club piece that I wrote because I think the aspect of the damage done to the sacred space of indigenous people is being completely overlooked by the legacy media and the this not perhaps surprisingly so. One of the laws waived was the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation act was enacted by Congress in 1990 to protect and safely relocate Native burial sites. When construction takes place on sensitive sites, the tribe in question should be consulted. And in the event remains or other archaeological objects are found, construction should be altered so as not to disturb the site. Site in the areas of San Diego where they are digging, what's called midden soil has been found. Midden soil is soil that contains evidence of cremated human remains. Right. In this case of Kumeyaay people with this waiver, they don't have to comply with nagpra Native American Graves Protection and Relocation act, which means that they can continue digging through what are literally people's ancestors graveyards. Here's another quote from that 2020 story. If this were another country's government destroying a region's holy land, the US would go to war and the people would feel it justified. Activist Thomas Barber told Sierra. But it happens here at home in front of us, and we just turn away.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yep, we sure do turn away.

[James Stout]

Seems to be most of what we do these days.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, it's not even. What bugs me is like not so much of folks, you know, not doing anything. I get that it's overwhelmingly horrible at the moment. It's that this doesn't even get reported. Yeah. Big outlets with a massive budget who are supposed to have a border reporter who's never fucking set foot on the border. Doesn't take the time to talk to the indigenous people whose land the border crossed. Right. Like, doesn't take the time to hear their concerns. Doesn't take the time to think about when you dig 30ft into this ground to build your border wall. That's 12,000 years of someone's history. How do they feel about that? And like that is a failing of the legacy media. Has been a failing for a long time and it will continue to be one for a long time. And pisses me off.

[James Stout]

Yep.

[Greg Lod]

I guess to talk more broadly then about this militarization of the Roosevelt Reservation and other public land. There's been some speculation about what this might mean. I don't think that you're going to see soldiers pointing their guns at the southern border and shooting anyone who comes across. I do think it's likely. A lot of the people who have been deployed to southern border so far are MPs, military police, right. And it's possible that those MPs will be able to detain people and, and potentially charge them with trespassing on a military installation. That would just be another string to the bow of their attempt to rapidly deport people because they already have many other kind of options through executive order of doing that, which they're already implying. Right. It might also make it easier for them to waive some of these other laws and to construct more surveillance equipment. In the Eprego Garcia case, which we've covered for several weeks now, the Supreme Court has unanimously asked the United States government to, quote, facilitate his return. The US Government has embarked upon a unique definition of the word facilitate, which it feels like means allowing him to enter the country and providing transport if El Salvador releases him. Bukele refused to release him, saying that doing so will be to, quote, smuggler terrorists into the United States. Garrison and I did a whole episode about this yesterday that you can listen to today. Senator Chris Van Hollen went to San Salvador. Right. Capital of El Salvador. If you're not aware, he met with the Vice President. Because Bukele is still out the country. Van Hollen held a press conference right afterwards that I watched right before we recorded this. In the press conference, Van Hollen basically said that he'd asserted to the Vice President of El Salvador there was no evidence nor any conviction of being a member of Ms. 13. And he asked the VP why he was holding Mr. Abrego Garcia. And the VP said, because the US is paying us to hold him.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Which.

[James Stout]

Yeah. They won't even lie.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah, no, he's not lying. That's why they're doing it.

[James Stout]

I believe that.

[Greg Lod]

Yeah. Credit to this Maryland senator for being the only one to do something. And it's not enough. And it's just one person. There are 300 people there. Right. They're not even going for the hundreds of other innocent people who are there. It's one guy, but at least he's doing something. The rest of the Democrats are collectively, I don't know, like, voting for Trump's nominees. He asked to meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia and was told that they needed more time. He said, I'll come back next week. They said they don't know if they can organize it in a week. He asked if he could call him. They said they didn't know if they could facilitate a call. They said maybe the US Embassy would have to be the one that requests that. So he has now requested that the embassy request that he be allowed to call Mr. Abrego Garcia. And Mr. Abrego Garcia be allowed to speak to his wife. Garrett and I spoke about how it's not in the interest of the government at El Salvador to have people leave this prison and testify as to the conditions that are in it.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No one has ever left this prison.

[Greg Lod]

That we're aware of. Yeah. That no one who's been detained there has left. The government wouldn't give him a date when he could meet Mr. Abrego Garcia or when he would be luckily able to make a call in a separate case. Judge Boasberg, who we've spoken about before as well, Judge Boasberg was the judge who issued the tentative restraining order on the rendition of people to El Salvador, which the government then ignored, has found probable cause that the administration is in contempt of court. What does this mean? It doesn't mean, despite what you have seen on your timeline, that this will mean these people will be brought home. When they're found in contempt, they have two options. Right. They can purge themselves of the contempt. And the way they would do that would be by providing habeas, not by bringing all these people home, at least not yet. Right. Or they could present the people who are responsible, and then either an attorney could be appointed by the DOJ to prosecute them. I guess I don't quite know how that works. And since. Or the judge himself can appoint an attorney to prosecute them for criminal contempt. Again, like, at least the guy's trying, I guess.

[James Stout]

No, I mean, like, I got nothing to say against him right now. Like, this is what they all should be doing. He went there. He's just something. And he's not mincing his words, saying that this man was disappeared.

[Greg Lod]

No. Yeah, and he's asserting that, like, they need to listen to the court. They are supposed to listen to the court.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Greg Lod]

Judge Gines in, who is a judge on the district court that had its case sent to the Supreme Court for review in the Abrego Garcia incident, also quoted the Merriam Webster dictionary and said that the government's understanding of the word facilitate flew in the face of the common understanding of the word. Yeah, Again, like, I've seen it asserted. Like, oh, legal experts can disagree. Meanwhile, you've got the actual judge in the actual case being like, no, this is what the dictionary says. Your definition is ludicrous. I would caution people to be very careful looking at, like, blue. Checked legal experts on X.com or people on blue sky.

[James Stout]

Oh, God.

[Greg Lod]

There has been so much misleading stuff about immigration law and the laws in these particular two cases and about the Roosevelt reservation. Actually, just be really careful where you're getting your information, especially on immigration law from. Maybe go back and check what that person was doing in 2023 when thousands of migrants were detained in outdoor detention camps. Because I've seen so much misinformation. And people understandably who aren't expert in this, because it's extremely complicated, are likely to be taken advantage of by people who are grifting off what is a moment when a lot of us are afraid and a lot of us are un. So be very careful what you're reading out there.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

All right, I think that's all for us today on It Could Happen here.

[James Stout]

Yeah, I think that's, that's our, our new erectile executive dysfunction episode, Erectile Order. All right, well, we're done. Go away.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We reported the news. We reported the.

[James Stout]

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

[Mia Wong]

It Could Happen Here is a production.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

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.

[Robert Evans]

Or wherever you listen to podcasts, you.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.

[Mia Wong]

Thanks for listening.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Listening.

[Kevin Smith]

You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code [e-mail] hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.

That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a Beardless.

Dickless version of me.

[Greg Lod]

And that's the name of our podcast.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Beardless Me.

[Mia Wong]

I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make.

Each other laugh really hard.

[Greg Lod]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad laughing language. It's for adults only.

[Mia Wong]

Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Greg Lod]

In 2020, a group of young women.

[Kevin Smith]

Found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Clayton English]

Someone was posting photos.

[Mia Wong]

It was just me naked.

[Robert Evans]

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levitt, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lod.

And this is season two of the.

[Mia Wong]

War on Drugs podcast.

[Clayton English]

Last year, a lot of the problems.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in in music and sports.

This kind of star studded a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes, we met them at their recording studios.

[Mia Wong]

Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It makes it real.

[Clayton English]

It really does.

[Greg Lod]

It makes it real.

[Mia Wong]

Listen to new episodes of the War.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

On Drugs Podcast, Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.