Interviewer (2:36)

Which, thank God.

Listener/Guest (2:37)

Holy shit.

Raven (2:38)

Thank God.

Interviewer (2:38)

That stuff can really fuck you up permanently. Like.

Raven (2:42)

Yeah. I mean, it's been several weeks now of the feds just pummeling people with these stupid little pepper ball rounds.

Interviewer (2:50)

Yep.

Raven (2:51)

And like the core of it is like metal. You know, it's like this little bullet thing with like the pepper powder on the outside. So if you shoot someone in the face with those. I mean, like, we've seen horrific injuries these last few weeks among protesters, and also, like, people getting concussions from, like, you know, tear gas canisters exploding right by their heads and other things. Broken bones.

Interviewer (3:14)

Yep, yep.

Raven (3:14)

From these really violent arrests. And, yeah, it's just been awful, not gonna lie.

Listener/Guest (3:22)

Yeah.

Raven (3:23)

I was shot at, like, literally, I was, like, taking a photo of a Fed, like, in a press gaggle. We were all hiding behind this van while we're just, like, being shot at. And this guy, I mean, he stared right at me and, like, right down the barrel of my lens, like he knew what he was doing.

Interviewer (3:40)

Jesus Christ.

Raven (3:42)

Yeah. Another reporter. It was like, a similar situation where these guys, like, fucking ambushed them. Like, it was just two reporters, like, hiding behind a van, and these guys came up along the side of the fence and just started, like, shooting them in the face with these rounds.

Listener/Guest (3:58)

Yeah.

Raven (4:00)

So.

Interviewer (4:00)

And this has been at the protests at the ICE facility in Broadview.

Raven (4:04)

Yeah. Broadview is, like, just a tiny little suburb, like, just outside of Chicago. It's still in Cook County. Majority black suburb, actually. Black working class. The mayor's a black woman. And now this ICE facility has been there for a while, obviously.

Listener/Guest (4:19)

Yeah.

Raven (4:19)

People were protesting there weekly for, like, over a decade, but nothing like what we've seen these last few weeks.

Listener/Guest (4:27)

Yeah.

Interviewer (4:28)

Okay, let's go back in time a little bit, because in between the last.

Co-Host (4:33)

Time we spoke to you and now, there has been so much unbelievably horrible stuff in Chicago. I guess let's go back a couple of weeks and talk about the guy they murdered.

Raven (4:47)

Yeah. So shortly after this latest ICE surge began, they killed a man at a traffic stop.

Listener/Guest (4:56)

Yeah.

Raven (4:57)

Two ICE agents who were seemingly operating completely alone. Didn't seem to have any backup with them. It was just these two guys in this car who jumped out on the sky. And. Yeah, it feels. It feels like forever ago, but, of course, it was only a few weeks ago.

Listener/Guest (5:13)

Yeah.

Raven (5:14)

And, you know, that's. That's an example of just, like, a police killing that we may never learn more about because, you know, it involves the feds, Right.

Listener/Guest (5:25)

Yeah.

Raven (5:25)

You know, there's no timeline under which they have to release any information or, like, tell us anything about their. Their own investigation into it.

Listener/Guest (5:34)

Yeah.

Raven (5:35)

So that is, of course, really horrifying and horrifying to know there's kind of these. These missing few seconds of video. Right. Where we don't see the actual shot fired.

Listener/Guest (5:47)

Yep.

Raven (5:47)

Or shots. Excuse me. We can sort of piece together what happened? But, you know, this happened in a working class Latino suburb, a heavily Latino suburb, not. Not very far down the road from the actual ICE facility.

Interviewer (6:03)

Like, as you were saying, like, part of what's really frustrating about this is we can't tell you why they stopped this person.

Raven (6:09)

Right.

Interviewer (6:10)

Because they won't tell us.

Co-Host (6:12)

Right.

Interviewer (6:13)

We know very little about this other than they stopped a guy, he tried to drive away, and they shot him. That's like. That's all we know effectively.

Raven (6:22)

Right. I mean, they. They claim he had some traffic violations, which is true. But I mean, like, who doesn't?

Co-Host (6:27)

Yeah. Like, I don't know if we're shooting people for traffic violations. This country's gonna have like 10 people in it by the end of it. Like.

Raven (6:33)

Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't suspected of any, like, crime. No, I believe that it was just opportunistic that they were just looking for an easy target and these guys were acting like cowboys. I mean, just doing this jump out by themselves. And also, to be clear, I mean, when they say he drove away from them, I mean, some of the video that we do have, it shows him slowly reversing backwards away from them. It's not like he just drove over the agents.

Listener/Guest (7:03)

No, no, no, no. Yeah.

Raven (7:05)

Which is. Was, of course, their initial narrative that he, like, hit one of them with his car and all this stuff. That, of course, turned out to be false.

Listener/Guest (7:13)

Yeah.

Interviewer (7:14)

And it's also frustrating, too, because, you know, in the. Well, I would say in the absence of better information, but it's the media. They will just straight up print, you know, no matter.

Co-Host (7:22)

No matter just how unbelievably absurd the.

Interviewer (7:25)

Lies are, they will just straight up print Department of Homeland Security press releases as if they have anything to do with reality whatsoever.

Co-Host (7:35)

Even as it becomes increasingly clear, even more than it's ever been, that you simply cannot rely on police press reports to understand what happens in a situation. People will just keep printing that.

Interviewer (7:47)

And so that's the first.

Co-Host (7:48)

That's the version of the story that goes out first, which is what everyone sees. And they don't see the video where it's very clearly not what happened.

Raven (7:57)

Yep. It is a maddening situation. So, yeah, I mean, like, that happened. And then almost immediately, and like, concurrently, of course, all of this other ICE activity started ramping up.

Listener/Guest (8:10)

Yeah.

Raven (8:11)

And then around a week and a half ago, Bovino showed up and Border Patrol showed up, and now it's amped up even further because they're even worse than our regular ICE guys.

Interviewer (8:23)

Bovino and the border patrol people, those are the people who seem to have been pulled out of Los Angeles and deployed to Chicago.

Raven (8:30)

Yeah. Bovino moved this sort of larger border patrol operation here to Chicago. So there are border patrol units here from, you know, Arizona, from California, different places. And they've been doing sort of a combination of like, just strictly corny ass propaganda ops, you know, like driving around on their boats for photos combined with like actual terrors. Like a few nights ago, hundreds of feds raiding an entire apartment building of people in the middle of the night.

Listener/Guest (9:05)

Yeah.

Interviewer (9:06)

And I think we'll get to that raid in a second because it was unbelievably sort of gruesome and horrible.

Co-Host (9:13)

But yeah, I wanted to talk to.

Interviewer (9:15)

You just about sort of what the general sort of ICE operations and then the border patrol operations have looked like in the city and what it's been like being in a place where there's just guys in masks dragging people off the street.

Raven (9:29)

It kind of feels like screaming underwater and no one can hear you. Yeah, just sort of witnessing this every day. And it, and it is still highly dispersed. Right. Like Chicago and the metro area and the suburban counties where this is happening. It's a huge, huge area. Yeah. So like we talked about last time, it's a real challenge to focus people's attention on because it, it can appear like the waters are calm like where you live.

Listener/Guest (10:01)

Yeah.

Raven (10:01)

You know, like they're doing it in these very fast strike teams in this very dispersed way. So by the time you even hear about it, they're already gone. So many cars abandoned on the side of the road with like windows smashed out.

Interviewer (10:13)

Jesus Christ.

Raven (10:14)

Like landscapers. Work vans and stuff. You know, like people are just.

Listener/Guest (10:17)

Yeah.

Raven (10:18)

Rapid responders are just getting to, to sites where, where someone's reported something happening and all they find is like a busted out car. God. And then they have to piece together like potentially what happened.

Listener/Guest (10:30)

Yeah.

Raven (10:30)

And additionally the, the broad view. So like this, this ICE facility where people are protesting regularly, you know, it's, it's not set up to be a permanent detention center. It's just supposed to be like a temporary stopping point because Illinois doesn't have overnight immigration detention. So additionally, there are like so many extra people crammed into this facility that wasn't designed to hold them.

Listener/Guest (10:58)

Yeah.

Raven (10:59)

And of course the conditions are horrible. You know, like they don't have privacy, they don't have enough bathrooms. They're not getting fed, they're not getting medication. You know, like after the kidnappings, after the disappearances, then there's this pipeline of. Of detention horrors that people are enduring. So this is. This is why people are protesting. You know, I mean, this is why people are out there yelling at the fence. Because the people who are. Who are brave enough to go out there and yell at the fence or to take the pepper balls or what have you, they. They are in agony. They. They're aware of what's happening. They're witnessing all of this and feeling like this needs to stop. And there are a lot of people hiding in their homes.

Listener/Guest (11:41)

Yeah.

Raven (11:41)

You know, like. Like it's. It's true. Like, I don't always want to make, like, Holocaust comparisons because I feel like that that's what we always go to. But I mean, like, that's the most apt comparison that people comes to most people's mind. You know, they think of, like, Anne Frank hiding in her attic, like, those kinds of things. And it's like, that is literally where we are at right now. People are literally in hiding because they are worried that if they go to Sam's Club, they will be kidnapped by secret police.

Listener/Guest (12:09)

Yeah.

Interviewer (12:10)

I think the behavior that they've been exhibiting against the protesters, too, has been very, very similar to what they've been doing to the people that they're grabbing off the street. I wanted to talk to you a bit about, like, what it's been like dealing with the way that the feds have been attacking the protesters constantly.

Raven (12:31)

Yeah. Well, these guys are fucking monsters.

Listener/Guest (12:35)

Yeah.

Raven (12:36)

I'm trying to thread this needle for people of, like, all. All policing is bad, right? Like, all policing is violence. All cops are violent. But there is. There is something different happening here as a result of the fact that there is literally zero accountability. And I'm not suggesting that, like, police accountability isn't a sham, because in general, it kind of is.

Listener/Guest (13:00)

Yeah. Yeah.

Raven (13:01)

But I think, like, you know, when you take away every single guardrail, these guys don't have to identify themselves and they don't have to answer to anyone.

Listener/Guest (13:10)

Yeah.

Raven (13:10)

Their bosses aren't going to write them up. You know, it's. It's kind of like with any other job. Right. You know, take a city cop here in Chicago. Of course, it's rare that any of them ever actually get fired for the horrible shit they do.

Listener/Guest (13:23)

Yeah.

Raven (13:23)

But, you know, there's this sort of base level of knowing, like, well, I gotta show up to work every day with my name on my vest.

Listener/Guest (13:30)

Yeah.

Raven (13:31)

And I also have, like, all these other bosses and all these other people who are going to, like, you know, maybe make my day Harder if I, like, really fuck something up. Right?

Listener/Guest (13:41)

Yeah.

Raven (13:42)

And so when we're talking about the feds, there's just nothing. There's just nothing there. They can literally do whatever they want on top of, like, just not having the same level of, like, quote, law enforcement training. I mean, we've been watching these guys for weeks. Like, fucking hurt themselves with their pepper ball guns. Like, they literally are, like, dropping shit as they're, like, right around the process. It's like watching people have made, like, Call of Duty comparisons or, like, Proud Boy comparisons. And, like, it is kind of like that. It's like if you just gave a bunch of chuds a bunch of, like, material police gear, and we're like, all right, go out and, like, pretend to be a copy. And that's, like, literally what it feels like. And so I'm trying to thread this needle for people of, like, yeah, all cops suck. But, like, what's going on with this is, like, so much worse. Like, they're just out there, like, shooting at people randomly, like, and, you know, for no reason. Like, it is just one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life.

Co-Host (14:45)

Yeah. And I also. I want to put this into perspective.

Interviewer (14:47)

Like, you have also covered a lot of protests in this city.

Raven (14:50)

Yeah, I've covered a lot of cop violence. I've been to a lot of protests. I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds at this point. Right.

Listener/Guest (14:56)

Yeah.

Raven (14:57)

And there's just certain, like, things that you're used to seeing and certain. There's a certain predictability sometimes to, like, a lot of their movement.

Listener/Guest (15:05)

Yeah.

Raven (15:05)

And what's interesting, too, is, like, in some ways, they are actually more militarized just in terms of, like, their riot formations and, like, how tightly coordinated their units are because they practice and they train for, like, crowd control stuff all the time. And then you have these just, like, ice chuds running around with, like, way more gear, and they look way scarier, but they're, like, way less organized and way more chaotic.

Listener/Guest (15:30)

Yeah.

Raven (15:31)

And there's not enough of them. Right. So, like, they're not even, like, doing a good job of, like, backing each other up, you know, like, in the field. Like, I'm just watching them, like, leave their own backs unwatched and, you know, like, doing. Doing things that are, like, dangerous.

Listener/Guest (15:46)

Yeah.

Raven (15:46)

For. For them, like, they want to act like a military unit, but they're, like, definitely not.

Co-Host (15:52)

Yeah, it's.

Raven (15:53)

I mean, people have made the comparison of, like, Proud Boys, which I think. I don't know, it kind of works. In a sense, like street fighters.

Listener/Guest (16:01)

Yeah.

Raven (16:02)

Because what they're acting like, you know. Yeah. It's just. It's just been super violent, super awful. Chicago does not have really any experience with like these just feds in general, like, to this level. I know that out in Portland for years now, like, there have been various protests outside of the ICE or something. Like, there's just. There's been like a lot more. A lot more fed presence out in Portland. Seattle.

Co-Host (16:27)

Yeah.

Raven (16:27)

Throughout the past few years of protests, I've seen, you know, people interact with them and. And we just. We've had nothing like that here. So this is also like.

Listener/Guest (16:35)

Yeah.

Raven (16:36)

Very unprecedented, like, for this region.

Co-Host (16:39)

Yeah. Because usually CPD is like, brutal enough that they don't. You don't end up with like. Yeah, federal deployments. And now it's like, oh, boy.

Raven (16:48)

Yeah. Well, and also keep in mind, this is all happening in broad view, so like, they don't even have. I mean, there's been. There's been tensions and arguments and discussions around what's happening with their local police department and just sort of the interface here too, because it's like this tiny little police department is now having to sort of manage what's going on with this ICE facility. And they're not directly like assisting ICE with crowd control, but they are like basically setting up a perimeter around the area. Right. And so then like, their guys are getting tear gassed and like complaining about it.

Co-Host (17:24)

Yeah.

Raven (17:24)

Was.

Co-Host (17:24)

Was it Bronzy, the police chief who like, finally was like, oh, holy shit. I've never been treated this racistly by a police officer before. I was like, oh, my God, like you're just now realizing that you're the baddie, like, when it finally like happens to you, like, come on.

Raven (17:41)

Oh, yeah, he. He went on. On like ABC or whatever and was just did this whole interview about like, well, ICE is disrespecting me as the police chief and it's just like, like, what did you expect?

Co-Host (17:55)

Yeah, man, you signed up for the racism organization and you were like, I'm in charge of my local by local chapter of the racist association, so it'll never happen to me. And it's like, oh, shit. You mean there's other people who are higher up in the racism police? Like, oh, God.

Raven (18:14)

Yeah. So that's been. That's just been like a weird side story to this of kind of like the mayor and the police chief and the fire chief are not thrilled about what's going on and they're like looking into the legality quote of the fence that ISIS put up just like across this street that goes past their facility, which is in this kind of like tucked away sort of industrial park thing. But there are homes like right on the other side and you know, they've just blocked off this entire street and there is like a business on the other side. You know, it's like obviously a huge fire hazard to just like block a whole road like that. They didn't ask permission to like put this up.

Interviewer (18:55)

Yep.

Raven (18:56)

Not to mention a hazard for the people in the detention center which is now boarded up and has this huge fence across the street. It's like, oh my God. If there was a fire or like an emergency and they needed to evacuate the people inside. Yeah, I mean, like, obviously people would die.

Co-Host (19:10)

It's this incredible mix of both blatant disregard for the safety of anyone involved and also just wanting to hurt people. And it's this incredible fusion of they are both incompetent and malicious, which is. Yeah, right.

Raven (19:27)

Which is not a great combination.

Interviewer (19:29)

No.

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Narrator (Havoc Town) (20:37)

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it, Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

Raven (20:51)

You know how waking up from a dream, A familiar place can look completely alien.

Co-Host (20:57)

Get back everyone. He's got Dax.

Narrator (Havoc Town) (21:00)

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

Podcast Announcer (21:11)

As a warning from Iheart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is heaven. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater audio universe. Starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Narrator (Havoc Town) (21:32)

The devil walks in Alistone.

Interviewer (21:40)

Let's talk about this raid in South Shore.

Raven (21:43)

Yeah, well, you know, we don't have a. We don't have a ton of details on the true extent of this because it happened at 1 in the morning. So two nights ago, hundreds and hundreds of federal agents showed up to an apartment building in the South Shore neighborhood, which is a predominantly black neighborhood, where a number of newly arrived migrants settled because there's cheap housing there. Yep. So when Governor Abbott started busing people here a few years ago, that is one place where, you know, a number of people found housing. And unfortunately, also too, there's like a lot of slum wards down that way.

Co-Host (22:26)

Yeah.

Interviewer (22:26)

Cheap housing means in Chicago.

Raven (22:28)

Yeah.

Co-Host (22:28)

Like, of course I can see tenants organizing that shitty. I have seen that. Like, I have seen people sewage, like, running out of their bathtubs. I have seen. I have seen places with no electric, like, literally no electricity, no lights, no running water, like actually literally like frozen solid in the winter and no one can contact a landlord. And those were in parts of the city that were like, not even that badly off. The apartment that I had there almost fucking killed me from dust inhalation. And like, that's like. That's like a. Like a normal cheap apartment. It gets so much fucking worse that the pictures from like inside of the apartment, not even just the parts where.

Interviewer (23:07)

Like, yeah, all the doors are blown off. It's like these apartments fucking suck because they're run by. They're run by fucking slumlords. And yeah, like, the housing situation in Chicago, so much of it is so shit, it's never going to get repaired because these landlords don't give a shit because they can just keep extracting money from it because no one can go anywhere else.

Raven (23:28)

And yeah, Yeah, I mean, these people were living in really bad conditions. I've heard that, like a lot of people were like tripled, quadrupled up in units. You know, I don't. I don't know what it looked like before it was rated.

Listener/Guest (23:42)

Yeah.

Raven (23:42)

But it's like virtually empty now. I mean, like, there. There were some. And. And to be. To be clear, like, what happens to back up a little bit? You know, they. Hundreds and hundreds of feds showed up at this building in the middle of the night and reportedly detained everyone in the building. So there were like, yeah, you know, people in the building who aren't immigrants, like Black people who live in the neighborhood. You know, there was one woman being interviewed on broadcast who was like an older black woman, you know, who was just like, yeah, I was like, detained by the FBI, you know, like in the middle of the night, like, asking me if I'm a citizen, you know, like, it's just absolutely fucking wild that this happened also as of today. Granted, this might change by the time your podcast is out, importantly.

Co-Host (24:27)

So we're recording this the night of Wednesday, October 1st. Who fucking knows what we'll have learned.

Interviewer (24:35)

About this or what will happen in between this. And when it comes out, probably Monday.

Co-Host (24:40)

Probably there will be new horrors. If you've heard about, like, the horrors in Chicago, and it's not in this episode, it's probably because it happened after we recorded. Things are happening at a terrible rate.

Raven (24:50)

Yeah. So as of today, Wednesday, October 1st, I could not find a story on the Sun Times or the Tribune website about this raid. And I think, of course, a lot of people want to indict mainstream media for not covering things, which, like, is fair sometimes. Don't get me wrong, they've been trying. Things are happening so fast now, and there are so many horrible things happening every day that, like, no news room can keep up.

Co-Host (25:17)

Wait, red alert. Red alert. They did finally get a story up five minutes ago.

Raven (25:21)

So mid recording, I checked the board.

Co-Host (25:23)

They got one up. They got one up.

Raven (25:25)

Is it the tribute or the Sun Times?

Co-Host (25:27)

Sometimes Sun Times.

Raven (25:29)

Okay. Okay. Well, it only took them two days. Okay, sure. I haven't read it yet. Maybe. Maybe it's a good story. I don't know. Maybe they went really in depth.

Co-Host (25:37)

It's not terrible. Yeah, it does actually seem. I mean, it's pretty long. I mean, I. I'm going to read one quote from it to get people. And this is, like, I actually think is pretty representative of, like, the independent media coverage that I read of it. Armed federal agents and military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments. Some naked residents. Witnesses said. That is the thing I've seen in every report about this is that a bunch of the people just literally didn't have clothes on because they were dragged out of their bed. They were like fucking naked children. Like naked people holding naked babies being pulled out of their fucking apartments. Like, Jesus fucking Christ.

Podcast Advertiser (26:15)

God.

Raven (26:16)

And. And this was, like, such a huge number of beds that, like, the buses were rerouted around the scene. I mean, like, there's questions. There's questions right now over, like, the level of CPD involvement in, like, Protecting the scene. And this was not just ice. There were a ton of FBI and a ton of atf.

Listener/Guest (26:35)

Yeah, yeah.

Co-Host (26:37)

Which, you know, it's like, okay, what, what, what, what is the FBI doing right now? They are fucking dragging naked children out of their fucking homes. Like out of their fucking apartment at one in the fucking morning.

Raven (26:47)

Yeah. And they were, they were in, in fucking moving vans, like Patriot Front. Like.

Listener/Guest (26:52)

Yeah.

Co-Host (26:53)

Fucking horrible. I mean, like I got, I remember seeing a statement where it was like they were denying that they had loaded any immigrants into moving vans.

Raven (27:00)

Yeah.

Co-Host (27:01)

Which, like, maybe that's true.

Raven (27:04)

I don't know. Maybe only the FBI.

Co-Host (27:06)

Yeah.

Raven (27:08)

Like, I, I don't know.

Co-Host (27:09)

Yeah. I wasn't just like haunted by like what other reports that I saw where they're talking about, like they separated all of the black people into like one van and all of the non black people to another one. And it was just like, oh God, like these people. There's another one thing. I think this is in the story that you, that you wrote about this where they literally like fed. Literally said, fuck them kids.

Raven (27:32)

Oh my God. I don't, I definitely didn't write that, but I believe that someone said it.

Co-Host (27:36)

Yeah, it was.

Interviewer (27:38)

Oh my God, I believe it.

Raven (27:39)

I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm glad to hear that. Five minutes ago the sun signs covered it, you know.

Co-Host (27:45)

Yeah. They finally got around to it.

Raven (27:47)

Yeah.

Co-Host (27:47)

Good for them.

Raven (27:49)

To be clear. Like, they probably interviewed a lot more people than we had capacity to. You know, it's been obviously a huge challenge to even cover all this stuff like as this tiny, random, weirdo ass news outlet. Like.

Listener/Guest (28:03)

Yeah.

Raven (28:04)

And we're still figuring it out as we go. But yeah, I mean, this, this, I am still, it has been two days and I am like still trying to wrap my head around this raid, this specific raid, because it's just, yeah. So horrific that this happened. And of course, like the timing, like they knew what they were doing by timing it in the middle of the night. Of course. Yeah.

Co-Host (28:28)

I'm going to fucking read the Times article because I've just been reading while you were doing it, like, Watson, somebody lives across the street said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes and into U Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers. It was heartbreaking to watch, said Watson. Even if you're not a mother, seeing kids come out buck naked and taking from their mothers, it was horrible. They're literally ripping kids from their fucking mothers at one in the morning and throwing, apparently allegedly throwing them At U Haul vans.

Raven (29:00)

Like. Yeah. I mean this is like psycho. The last three weeks, four weeks has just been a gradual progression of like the most evil shit you've ever seen in your life. I don't even know what to say about it anymore, honestly, because it feels like.

Listener/Guest (29:14)

Yeah.

Raven (29:14)

Feels like our only way of grappling with things like this is by making comparisons to other things.

Listener/Guest (29:19)

Yeah.

Raven (29:20)

And I don't know that that is really helping anybody right now, but you know, it's. It's. It's ethnic cleansing. It's genocide. It's like literally. Yeah, I was just saying earlier today when, like when you drill down to it, like they're disappearing. Like vast majority Latino men. There are, there are some women. It's not only men, but like they are definitely targeting like mostly Latina men. And like these are people who are migrating here from Central America who are like, if you look at their lineage, mostly like indigenous to this continent on like white people. You know, it's just an extension of like the American project, like of the white nationalist, like extermination of the people indigenous to the Americas. Like that is literally what's happening like right now. So it, yeah, it does not feel like, I don't know, like, like enough people get it to the level that they should.

Listener/Guest (30:16)

Yeah.

Interviewer (30:17)

Well, and that's, I think, like one other thing I wanted to talk to you about was like the way the press bubble has worked around this where again, the fact that federal agents dragged naked children from their homes at one in the morning in the third largest city in the United States.

Co-Host (30:39)

That is a story that is hitting the mainstream Chicago press today two days later. And I think the only national coverage of it that I've seen are from people who are basically like repeating the scoop that was given to this like unhinged UFO outlet.

Raven (31:00)

What?

Co-Host (31:01)

Who were the people that got the exclusive? Oh, have you not ran into this yet?

Raven (31:04)

No, I have no idea what that is.

Co-Host (31:07)

Hold on, hold on. Let me, let me. God. Fuck. Okay. I'm very excited to tell you about this. This is so unhinged.

Raven (31:12)

I saw like the propaganda video that they made about it.

Co-Host (31:15)

Yeah. So the group that got like the exclusive like press release thing from the feds, which is basically being like reprinted by Newsweek, who are just a joke at this point. Like their description of it is like, ah, federal agents repelled from blackhawk helicopters.

Interviewer (31:29)

In the rooftops of Chicago residential buildings.

Co-Host (31:31)

Targeting trend agua gang members.

Raven (31:34)

Right.

Co-Host (31:34)

According to News Nation.

Interviewer (31:35)

And I was like, what the fuck is News Nation?

Co-Host (31:37)

Like, I have I have a pretty good grasp on, like, all of the weird right wing news outlets. I'd never heard of this one. I looked them up and the first, like, big thing that I saw about them was that, well, a, they're the people. They're the person that Chris Cuomo went to after he was like, publicly disgraced as a journalist. And the second thing I saw about them was that their big thing is that they like, quote, unquote, take UFOs seriously. And these are the people who were given, like, the exclusive scoop on. This is like the UFO outlet.

Raven (32:07)

That is so funny. That is when I watched the propaganda video that we were watching about it. Yeah, it was News Nation. I just thought it was like, I don't know, some right wing outlet, like any other.

Co-Host (32:19)

Yeah, that's right. That too. I looked at it and like, the Wikipedia article was like, there's a section titled UFOs. I was like, what the fuck?

Raven (32:27)

Great. Great. I didn't know about the UFO connection. I mean, I saw them. I saw their reporters, like, actually at the protests, like, interviewing, like the one guy in a MAGA hat who showed up to counter protest. Like, of course that's who they interview.

Co-Host (32:43)

Yeah, of course. Of course.

Raven (32:44)

So that's good to know that they. UFO weirdos.

Co-Host (32:48)

Regime approved. Regime approved media outlet. The UFO guys.

Raven (32:53)

Oh. I mean, the.

Narrator (Havoc Town) (32:54)

The.

Raven (32:55)

The official, like, like DHS line on this entire thing. Is that trend Aragua was this, like, this entire apartment building was a trend Aragua hideout.

Co-Host (33:05)

Just like. No, it wasn't.

Raven (33:08)

Like, like, it's literally just the same fucking thing that Israel does about Hamas. Right? When they're like, oh, yeah, this hospital that we're bombing.

Co-Host (33:16)

Yeah, it's a Hamas hospital.

Raven (33:17)

There's Hamas tunnels underneath. I mean, it's like the exact same shit.

Listener/Guest (33:21)

Yeah, the.

Interviewer (33:22)

The connection you made earlier to this functioning as an extension of like, the genocide that founded this country. I think it might have been Hannah Arendt. I.

Co-Host (33:34)

Okay, I. I want to attribute this to her Hannah Arendt, which is, I.

Interviewer (33:37)

Guess, kind of a mess because of her.

Co-Host (33:39)

Don't. Do not ever look up Hannah Arendt's stuff on segregation. Or actually maybe do, if you want to see the worst argument you've ever seen in your life where, like, famed intellectual Hannah Arendt says that segregation is like a defining quality of like, a free society.

Raven (33:54)

Oh, no.

Co-Host (33:55)

Awful, horrible, rancid.

Raven (33:57)

I'm not like a super expert on Hannah Arendt, but I definitely did not know that, so.

Co-Host (34:02)

Oh, yeah, no, that people don't. I'll say this White people do not be bringing that shit up. Everyone EL like, oh, God. Holy. You were like a major segregation, like, intellectual who got brought out to be like, segregation is actually good. No, because it's free association. But I think it might have been her. It might have been someone else I've been trying to look for who had this idea, and I haven't been able to find who it was. And I vaguely remember being a rent. But her. This has all been a very long.

Interviewer (34:35)

Winded for saying, like, there's an idea that I ran into back when I was in my sort of, like, days in the academy about the way that societies reflect their founding violence. And, you know, the founding violence of the United States is the genocide of indigenous people in slavery. And you look at what they're doing right now, you're just watching sort of in miniature, that violence just being replicated over and over again where, like, you're tearing fucking mothers from their children in the dead of night. And it's the same people, right? Like, this is an apartment building where almost everyone is black and the people who aren't black are immigrants. Right? And obviously, like, some of them are both. But, like, you know, but like, you're just, like, watching the founding violence of this country just being played out over and over and over again every night. And it's this thing where, like, I don't think on a fundamental level that this thing that we've built, this sort of, like, this conception of what democracy is, like this conception of what the state is, this conception of, like, what this country is, is going to survive this moment. Either it's going to change completely, or the part of it that was nominally a democracy is going to be consumed by the part of it that's just doing this genocide over and over again. I don't know. I quote this song a lot. Song of Choice by Peggy Seeger that's about the rise of fascism that I think about a lot that has one of the lines is, today the soldiers took away one, tomorrow they may take away two. One April, they took away Greece, but surely they will never take you. And, yeah, they're just fucking taking people away in the night right now. That's the stage of this, where we're at. And either something fundamentally changes or, you know, like, the end of that song is either, like, they take you or at the end, they don't take you because they know you didn't care.

Raven (36:40)

Right? And, yeah, I mean, look, I've been. I've been covering civil conflict and violence, you know, like More or less for the last five years. Right. I was at January 6th, like literally in the middle of the mob. I've seen a lot of shit reporting on it.

Co-Host (36:59)

Make this very clear. Reporting on it.

Raven (37:02)

Yeah. To clarify, I was there as a reporter. I was not Carl. Although my fascia stalkers might insist I was part of like an antifa conspiracy to.

Co-Host (37:17)

But.

Raven (37:19)

But you know, I've seen a lot of shit the last five years, obviously. And I think this particular moment feels like. Yeah, yeah. Like we're kind of, you know, like we're a marble at the top of like a spiral. And it's like either we're going to keep rolling down or somebody like jams it or takes the marble up. You know, like there's just. This is a, this is a spiral. Like there are so many factors that are going to contribute to this getting worse if we do not significantly alter course. And I think, you know, this feeling that we have locally of like we're screaming underwater and nobody can hear us, I'm sure is share a sentiment that is shared in la, that is shared in dc, that is shared in. Yeah, all of these cities all over where ICE is doing similar shit. It can make us really angry. I mean, I've been really angry at times in the last last month about the lack of like, attention, whatever. But then I think about how everyone is overwhelmed because there's so much horrible shit happening every day on so many places. Like, like we just can't keep up anymore. Like none of us can keep up.

Co-Host (38:32)

Yeah, like, I mean like I'm in.

Interviewer (38:34)

Portland right now and like it's my.

Co-Host (38:35)

Job to keep track of this and I can't tell you at this exact second whether a federal deployment to Portland is on or off. I think it's currently off. But also by the time you're listening to this, who the fuck knows.

Interviewer (38:48)

And like, yeah, like, right. I don't know. There's an andor line about how it's easier to hide a thousand atrocities than it is to hide one because you can just keep ramping the tempo up.

Raven (39:00)

Exactly.

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Narrator (Havoc Town) (40:08)

There's a vile sickness in Amberstown. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

Raven (40:22)

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien. Alien.

Co-Host (40:29)

Get back, everyone.

Narrator (Havoc Town) (40:31)

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

Podcast Announcer (40:43)

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Narrator (Havoc Town) (41:04)

The Devil Walks in Abbostown.

Raven (41:12)

I don't know. I'm not a historian, I'm just a journalist. So maybe, maybe you would know better than me. But. But I feel like we are literally already in a civil war. We just don't know it yet, or like we're waiting for, like, some specific thing to, like, prove it, you know? Like, I don't. I don't know.

Listener/Guest (41:29)

Yeah.

Raven (41:29)

I think generally nobody knows until it's like, already. You're. You're already in it. To me, it feels like we're in it.

Listener/Guest (41:35)

Yeah.

Raven (41:36)

And. But I. But I also wonder if that's just the cognitive effect of, like, us being here literally in it, because so much is going on and. And then thinking like, well, if the ice surge subsides two months from now, is it gonna still feel this way? I don't know. I mean, to me, it feels like we've got several more years of the Trump regime, at least.

Listener/Guest (41:59)

Yeah.

Raven (41:59)

If we look at this in the sense of, like, well, they're escalating and then also this is going to keep going for several more years. Yeah. That's a terrifying concept.

Listener/Guest (42:08)

Yeah.

Raven (42:09)

Where do we go from here if it's just gonna, like, get even worse?

Listener/Guest (42:14)

Yeah.

Interviewer (42:15)

And I don't know. I think I've been There a lot recently. I don't know. It's the thing I've been telling listeners of this show is that the upside of all of this is that everyone hates them.

Raven (42:27)

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Interviewer (42:29)

Their proof of ratings are so bad, everyone fucking hates them. And all of this stuff is hideously unpopular. And the giant economic collapse that is very obviously going to happen when the giant AI bubble that is like a third of the US GDP pops, when.

Co-Host (42:44)

It inevitably dies because it doesn't make any money. They're doing all of this in a situation where the economy still appears to be functioning. And when that shit implodes on them, shit is going to be even worse.

Interviewer (42:58)

For them than it is now. But also, on the other hand, unless people do things about it, then it doesn't really matter how popular or not they are, as long as no one is willing to stop them. And I guess that's like the last thing I kind of want to close on is about, like.

Co-Host (43:16)

Can you talk a little bit about.

Interviewer (43:17)

Like, what you've seen organizing wise, that you can talk about that have been effective?

Raven (43:23)

Well, I think people here are still figuring it out. These protests outside of the ICE facility, you know, there has been a lot of autonomous organizing. Chicago does not have the same entrenched autonomous organizing culture that you see in like, Portland or Seattle for, like, a ton of reasons.

Listener/Guest (43:43)

Yeah.

Raven (43:44)

Which are like, beyond the scope of this episode and the minute, the minutes.

Co-Host (43:47)

That we have left, like 15 part series of the history, the history of.

Raven (43:52)

Organizing in Chicago and like, how we're in this specific moment. You know, it's important to remember, like, this is a city where, like, the FBI murdered Fred Hampton, right? It is.

Co-Host (44:01)

Yep, yep, yep.

Raven (44:02)

So there's a lot of tension between different organizing factions about how they want things done. And a lot of it is fear driven.

Listener/Guest (44:09)

Yeah.

Raven (44:10)

For good reason. Because people are terrified.

Listener/Guest (44:13)

Yeah.

Raven (44:13)

And, yeah, they're still figuring stuff out. I mean, I think for lack of a better term, last Saturday, people got their shit rocked by border patrol. You know, they were so violent, they were so aggressive. They were just so out of hand. Just, like immediately, too. I mean, it was just like, yeah, zero to 60 instantly. Like, there was just Saturday we saw them just immediately tear gas and shoot at people over nothing, like nobody was doing anything. And they just assaulted the crowd with the most tear gas I've ever seen in my life. So I think folks were definitely underprepared for that. But that doesn't mean that it's insurmountable to resist something like that. I think there are questions surrounding the best way to protest this specific building because of the location. And it's tough because it's not in Chicago. It's hard to get to for some people.

Interviewer (45:08)

Yep, yep.

Raven (45:09)

But I don't want to. I don't want to write anybody off. I mean, I think people are just still figuring things out. Like, it's. It's ICE is adapting, border patrols adapting. And so then organizers also have to adapt. Like, it's like this tennis match, right?

Listener/Guest (45:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Raven (45:23)

And so, you know, we are also very much here, our activists are not used to, like, and our press also, by extension are not used to, like, a huge amount of chemical weapons.

Interviewer (45:35)

Chicago doesn't use tear gas.

Co-Host (45:37)

Like, historically, like, they just beat people.

Raven (45:38)

Right.

Interviewer (45:39)

Or like shoot them with riot munitions. Like, they don't tear gas.

Co-Host (45:42)

The thing I was literally always told.

Interviewer (45:43)

Like, growing up in the city as an activist was like, if they start using tear gas, they are one step away from shooting you.

Raven (45:48)

Right.

Co-Host (45:48)

And they finally did it in 2020.

Interviewer (45:50)

Which is the first time anyone had seen it in, like, decades.

Raven (45:52)

Right.

Co-Host (45:53)

And the fact that, like, they're just doing it all the time now, like, Jesus Christ.

Raven (45:58)

Well, the feds, I mean, we saw this in LA at the beginning of this summer where like, Border patrol specifically just has this enormous amount of chemical weapons that they, like, I don't know, maybe they're going to expire soon and they have to use them all. Like, Like, I don't know. I don't know what the rationale there is other than just being evil.

Listener/Guest (46:21)

Yeah.

Raven (46:21)

But it's like literally their first choice of, like, they're just. I mean, they're fucking enjoying it. They're fucking enjoying it. They're enjoying.

Listener/Guest (46:30)

Yeah.

Raven (46:30)

Shooting at people, tear gassing them, playing G.I. joe. Like.

Listener/Guest (46:36)

Yeah.

Co-Host (46:36)

I mean, I will say it does also raise the question, like, how much of this stuff do they actually have? Because, like, 2020, they went through decades of stockpiles. Right, Right.

Interviewer (46:43)

And like, this is the thing that, like, I don't know, someone who has.

Co-Host (46:45)

A lot of time and as an investigative journalist should try to go track down how much of the, like, country's tear gas supplies they've been able to replenish because they used a lot of it on us in 2020 and.

Raven (46:58)

Right.

Co-Host (46:59)

Like, I mean, this is. I don't know if it is famous. I guess in my circles it's kind of a famous story that one of the. One of the South Korean military dictatorships was taken down by a student, like, protest movement that calculated exactly how much Tear gas. The police had and did this thing where they would do these marches where they would. A whole bunch of people would show up and the police start kicker gassing them, and they would just slowly keep retreating and keep retreating until they ran the state out of tear gas.

Raven (47:27)

I mean, I hope to see that level of strategy in America at some point.

Co-Host (47:33)

Yeah, inshallah. Yeah, inshallah. Like, you know, like, nothing is impossible with the power of really, really pissed off students.

Raven (47:47)

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what the. I'm not familiar with the manufacturing process for these chemicals. Like, how long does it take to, like, replenish and where do they source it from?

Co-Host (48:00)

Yep, this is. This is 100% A. Hey, I know a bunch of journalists listen to this podcast. If one of you wants to go do this, you would be doing a great service to everyone in this country.

Raven (48:10)

Like, right? I'm like, assuming that it's not made in the United States and they're like, importing these things.

Co-Host (48:17)

A lot of it is a huge, huge amount of it. Maybe I'm wrong because, like, American. American tear gas ends up, like, all over the world because we're like, one of the big suppliers of it.

Raven (48:25)

Okay, well, then I was mistaken.

Co-Host (48:27)

The.

Raven (48:28)

The Popper Ball gun dispenser company apparently is based in Lake Forest, so it's actually local.

Interviewer (48:35)

Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's in Chicago.

Raven (48:37)

Ooh.

Co-Host (48:37)

Well.

Raven (48:39)

Oof. It's just like a glorified paintball gun, basically. Yeah.

Interviewer (48:45)

The thing I've been getting from listening to you talk about this and from talking to other people is that both part of what's making this so horrible and also maybe where they fail is that these people don't know what they're doing. They just like violence.

Raven (49:00)

Right.

Interviewer (49:01)

And liking violence and being willing to hurt people is a very effective short term strategy for causing violence.

Raven (49:09)

Right.

Co-Host (49:09)

But it remains to be seen whether it's an effective long term strategy for.

Interviewer (49:13)

Like, holding power and accomplishing their goals.

Raven (49:15)

Yeah, I would agree with that for sure. It feels like. It feels like their. Their operation is brittle. Like, it wouldn't take a lot to, like, impede it. But because they are so violent and so out of hand at just like the slightest resistance, it's still really challenging to figure out. I mean, and. And to your point earlier about everybody hating them, I mean, that is palpable. I have heard the anger and the rage pouring out of people at. At these guys, you know, like, yeah, of course it's palpable how much people Hate them How much? What's going on? Of course they're struggling to hire. Of course they're all wearing masks because they're fucking terrified they're going to be docs, you know, like they know that they're hated.

Listener/Guest (50:00)

Yeah.

Raven (50:01)

But that's also a double edged sword because I think knowing that everybody hates you anyway, well, that's just also sometimes going to make you even more violent because you don't care anymore.

Listener/Guest (50:11)

Yeah.

Interviewer (50:11)

And I mean, I think the traditional social movement gambit has been like, the more people can see how violent they are, the more people will go out to resist them.

Co-Host (50:22)

And I think right now we're in this scenario where because of the sort.

Interviewer (50:26)

Of media blackout and like the media.

Co-Host (50:28)

Bubble that's been put around this, it.

Interviewer (50:30)

Just hasn't been getting out the things that they've been doing. And I think that is also a thing that you random listener can do things about in terms of like, hey.

Co-Host (50:42)

Tell people, you know, that like, yeah, there's like a federal occupation of a city and they're like dragging naked children screaming from their homes, like tearing them away from their parents. Like that's a thing that you can, like this is that you could directly do. That is a very, very low lift.

Raven (51:02)

Yeah. And also countering this like National Guard misdirection thing that is just like. Yeah, constantly going on where it's like every fucking two days Trump and Pritzker are arguing about, you know, 100 troops coming to town who are essentially just infrastructure for ice. They might block some roads, but like they're not the main threat.

Listener/Guest (51:24)

Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer (51:25)

Do you have anything else that you want to tell people? And then also, where can people find.

Co-Host (51:29)

And support your work as you go?

Interviewer (51:31)

Hopefully not get shot again?

Raven (51:35)

Well, I've, I've resigned myself to the fact that I get shot again. But they can find us at Unraveled on all the social media platforms, you know, unraveledpress.com and I think the only other thing I want to say is, as bleak as this episode sounded, we do have to keep the fighting spirit alive and not just resign ourselves to total doomerism. We have the moral high ground here. We are doing the right thing and they are not. And we can win this.

Interviewer (52:11)

I want to close on the story that came to mind when you said that, which was the story of the liberation of Turin in World War II, where Turin was one of the great industrial cities of Italy and it's directly under the occupation of the Nazis by the end of the war and ahead of the Allied advance, the city plans an uprising and the SS commander who is running the city explicitly tells them, if you do this, we will turn this into another Warsaw. And they do it anyways. And they beat them. All of these factory workers who had like, had guns smuggled in successfully do an uprising and defeat like an SS Panzer division and just kick the shit out of them and liberate Turin.

Co-Host (52:54)

And you know, those were people facing.

Interviewer (52:56)

Odds that were so much worse than.

Co-Host (52:59)

The ones that we're facing today. They were facing a straight up military occupation by the ss and they beat.

Interviewer (53:06)

Them and they freed themselves. And you know, history is replete with dictators who thought that their occupations would last forever. Until one day the Americans were withdrawing from Iraq and the only thing that's eternal is their fear of the uprising that will one day destroy them.

Raven (53:28)

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

Narrator (Havoc Town) (53:49)

There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out from.

Podcast Announcer (53:58)

Iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Raven (54:16)

This is an iHeart podcast.