Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season to twenty four,
Speaker 1: episode three of Days I See production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This is a podcast where we take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into America's shared consciousness. It is Wednesday, February six, which,
Speaker 1: of course, Miles means that it is National almondst Day.
Speaker 1: About damn time. Do yourself a favor and don't read
Speaker 1: how much water it takes to squeeze feeling like I'm
Speaker 1: eating that. That's the closest I ever come to eating
Speaker 1: wood is an almond. Little I remember when I caught
Speaker 1: you eating those little wooden pegs that give you an
Speaker 1: I Q like, okay, not the Yeah, I guess there's
Speaker 1: also other times when I just eat straight up wood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We always like strong my teeth are, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's not a way to prove that, but okay, chew
Speaker 1: on my man. Not just the teeth, the digestive system
Speaker 1: also very strong. I can I can takedown all right. Well,
Speaker 1: my name is Jack O'Brien ak Cowabunga. We are brothers.
Speaker 1: We are living within the sewers. Our visitors, I'll say,
Speaker 1: oh you're place. The smell just made my nosebleed. Pizza
Speaker 1: boxes overflowing. We don't mind. We are just turtles living
Speaker 1: in within what is firtile. Even Master Slennard can see
Speaker 1: this place is gross and he's a fucking rat. That
Speaker 1: is courtesy of I like doing the dumbest a k
Speaker 1: s and not dumb like in a bad sense, dumb
Speaker 1: in the well done serves when we have our most
Speaker 1: prestigious guests songs. That's courtesy of at Romhantok. Shout out
Speaker 1: to you and I'm thrilled to be joined as always
Speaker 1: buy my co host Mr Miles Grass, Miles Gray, a
Speaker 1: k a k Experimental Black and these artist Yo boy
Speaker 1: kassama a k A the Valley Legend hit Dyoh NoHo
Speaker 1: a K. Mr Her Majesty had that one on there.
Speaker 1: Yea yeah, in my in my honeymoon phase, my wedding bliss, Carrie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: congratulations again, thank you. I'm gonna keep saying that he
Speaker 1: looks great. You look yeah. What can I say? You
Speaker 1: know when I honestly agree with you. I think it's
Speaker 1: the lack of wedding stress that has contributed to me
Speaker 1: looking like like I have a glow to me, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Because I was not handling my
Speaker 1: wedding stress, well at all. People didn't know that on Mike,
Speaker 1: but Jack, you remember that week before I left, I
Speaker 1: was like, is it normal to be completely afraid out
Speaker 1: of your mind that you don't know if you're making
Speaker 1: a terrible decision or you're so confused about everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the process leading up to the wedding can be very difficult.
Speaker 1: You did had you had a nosebleed for two weeks
Speaker 1: in a row. It was just NonStop. It was pretty wild.
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyways, great to have you. My mom says,
Speaker 1: because I picked my nose too much, right, you do
Speaker 1: do that kind of get the get those fingers out
Speaker 1: of there. Well, Miles, We're thrilled to be joined in
Speaker 1: our third see by an American civil rights lawyer, social
Speaker 1: justice advocate, co founder of Equal Justice under Law, and
Speaker 1: founder and executive director of Civil Rights Court. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: he's a great follow on Twitter. That is the most
Speaker 1: important thing. Please welcome the brilliant and talented Alec carrikatsnics going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, good man. Your appearance has been
Speaker 1: teased by me talking about your Twitter threads for a
Speaker 1: couple of a couple of weeks. Now I discovered you
Speaker 1: during the great train robbery panic of Los Angeles from
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. And uh, man, you're you're
Speaker 1: doing great work. You're doing the Lord's work out there.
Speaker 1: What what's good? You did? You were just out in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles presumably robbing some trains. I wanted to see
Speaker 1: the trauma that you all are experiencing from the train
Speaker 1: robberies first hand. So I came out there and looked
Speaker 1: at the devastation. And I have to day, I've been
Speaker 1: worried about climate change and the lack of housing and healthcare,
Speaker 1: and rising domestic and global fascism, but I have to say,
Speaker 1: after my trip to l A, I'm now most concerned
Speaker 1: about whether the profits of the major train corporations and
Speaker 1: monopolies are are are going to take a hit from
Speaker 1: this train theft. Yeah. I mean those those Amazon boxes
Speaker 1: just scattered everywhere. What the what the hey? It's certainly
Speaker 1: what the Los Angeles media wanted me to be concerned
Speaker 1: about that in shoplifting. Absolutely, yeah, those are I I
Speaker 1: when I enter a write aid or a CBS these days,
Speaker 1: I always go, I do the buddy system. I bring
Speaker 1: a fellow consumer and we're just going back to back
Speaker 1: like double dragon with our with our dukes up, just
Speaker 1: making sure, you know, our heads are on a swivel,
Speaker 1: making sure nobody steals a three pack of old spice deodorant.
Speaker 1: That's right, you know where the real moneys at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So we're gonna get to know you a
Speaker 1: little bit better in a moment. But first we'll tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a couple of things we're talking about, mainly
Speaker 1: that mainly that stuff. I wanted to have you on
Speaker 1: to kind of dig into some of the details. We
Speaker 1: have a news story coming out of California that crime
Speaker 1: is out of control according to polling people, according to people.
Speaker 1: So I think I think that whole you know, media
Speaker 1: strategy from the police has taken a toll. So I
Speaker 1: want to I want to just dig into that, dig
Speaker 1: into the shoplifting and train theft crises. And also, you
Speaker 1: know Eric Adams's drill Rap band that he's proposing. You
Speaker 1: had a back and forth with somebody who's who's on
Speaker 1: board with that, and I just I thought it wasn't
Speaker 1: It was instructive in terms of like how this conversation
Speaker 1: is had, how how these arguments are had in in
Speaker 1: modern America. And then if we get to it. I
Speaker 1: also want to talk about the convoy, the latest and
Speaker 1: the convoys story. Trudeau has invoked the Emergencies Act to
Speaker 1: stop the conboy. But before we get to all that,
Speaker 1: like we do like to ask our guest, what is
Speaker 1: something from your search history. This is kind of embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but I was looking at the last thing just now
Speaker 1: that I searched, and it was best glue for wine corks.
Speaker 1: I've been collecting thousands of wine corks from friends and
Speaker 1: family for years and I'm trying to make a big
Speaker 1: mosaic out of them. I like to do a lot
Speaker 1: of big paintings in my sort of doing. Art is
Speaker 1: one of the ways I cope with the really painful
Speaker 1: and difficult work that we do around the country with
Speaker 1: with people who are confined in jail cells all over
Speaker 1: the country, and the work can be really difficult and stressful,
Speaker 1: and one of the ways I just personally cope is
Speaker 1: making art. And I now have been asking everyone I
Speaker 1: know to collect wine corks for me, and I have
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of them, but I have no idea
Speaker 1: how to actually make them into anything. So I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to actually glue them together.
Speaker 1: What do you think? What do you mean? What are
Speaker 1: what are we talking? You're like you would paint each
Speaker 1: one and sort of mosaic get out, or you're trying
Speaker 1: to use the natural graphics on the cork to inform
Speaker 1: how you get your image or what you know? Walk
Speaker 1: walk me through this process. I've been paying I paint
Speaker 1: each one and make them into sort of a colorful mosaic,
Speaker 1: usually depicting like some poem that I like or some
Speaker 1: aspect of the work that we do. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: maybe not the best use of my time, but I
Speaker 1: think the consensus seems to be a glue gunk. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, there we go glue gun when in doubt,
Speaker 1: it does feel like the glue gun is always is
Speaker 1: always good option. Like is there anything that a glue
Speaker 1: gun does not glue like, does not work on? Is
Speaker 1: my question? I mean, something that you need to guarantee,
Speaker 1: like structural integrity of you know, like crafting. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's fine, but do you you know, do you repair
Speaker 1: a baby's high chair, you know, with a glue gun?
Speaker 1: I don't know about that one. I do, but I
Speaker 1: mean that's just me just because I'm I'm wild with
Speaker 1: a glue gun. Do you remember when you're old enough
Speaker 1: to use a glue gun? That felt like a like
Speaker 1: the first like driver's license you get as a child,
Speaker 1: where it's like, man, you can't funk with this blug
Speaker 1: because that metal tip will burn the ship out of you.
Speaker 1: And then at a certain point it's like you are
Speaker 1: acknowledged as a child who is responsible enough to use
Speaker 1: a glue gun. And I felt that was a I
Speaker 1: don't know, a big point turning point for me. I
Speaker 1: keep that thing on me, man, that the glue gun.
Speaker 1: I got it holstered ready to go at all times.
Speaker 1: You never know when you might need to make a
Speaker 1: cool little doll out of corn husks or something. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So can you speak a little bit about the work
Speaker 1: that you do the like while you're like what you
Speaker 1: were actually out in l a doing. Yeah. We we
Speaker 1: are civil rights lawyers and advocates and and storytellers and
Speaker 1: and experts about the criminal punishment system in this country,
Speaker 1: and the bulk of our work over the last few
Speaker 1: years since been suing cities and counties and states and
Speaker 1: judges and prosecutors, sheriffs, police over sort of the rampant
Speaker 1: unconstitutional like conduct they engage in every single day all
Speaker 1: over the country. So, for example, as you and I
Speaker 1: are talking right now, there are four hundred to five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people depending on how you count, in cages
Speaker 1: in this country, solely because they can't afford to pay
Speaker 1: a cash payment to get out. These are people who
Speaker 1: are presumptively innocent. They're awaiting trial, they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: presumed innocent, and because their families don't have enough cash
Speaker 1: to keep them with their kids and their schools and
Speaker 1: their homes and their families and their jobs and their
Speaker 1: churches and their community, they're stuck in a cage. And
Speaker 1: so we have filed lawsuits all over the country. Last year,
Speaker 1: I argued a case that we brought in California that's
Speaker 1: struck down the money bail system in California as we
Speaker 1: know it. On behalf of our client Kindeth Humphrey, and
Speaker 1: so we've been doing a lot of work with people
Speaker 1: who have been directly harmed by the prison and jail
Speaker 1: system in California, advocates, public defenders, organizers, crime survivors, and
Speaker 1: others to try to figure out, like how to reshape
Speaker 1: the pre trial system in California and we do similar
Speaker 1: work all over the country, basically trying to resensitize our
Speaker 1: society to the extraor ordinary and senseless violence that the
Speaker 1: criminal punishment bureaucracy just inflicts on people with absolutely no
Speaker 1: evidence that it does any good or makes anyone any safer. Right,
Speaker 1: And that seems to be the biggest thing that whether
Speaker 1: it's like overtly being debated or subconsciously being debated, that
Speaker 1: seems to be the thing that many people are having
Speaker 1: a reckoning with, especially in California, is the idea of like,
Speaker 1: I just feel like maybe we just need to be
Speaker 1: cruel to people, so I read less stories about shoplifting
Speaker 1: or that you know, there's no acknowledgment, you know, like
Speaker 1: the work that it takes to try and go up
Speaker 1: against something like the prison industrial complex, and you know
Speaker 1: what what that entails. Well, a really basic thing that
Speaker 1: a lot of people just don't seem to understand is
Speaker 1: that if police and prisons and prosecutors made people safer,
Speaker 1: then the U. S would have the safest society in
Speaker 1: the history of the world. I mean, we cage people
Speaker 1: at rates that are five to ten times every other
Speaker 1: comparable country. We cage people, We cage black people at
Speaker 1: a rate six times out of South Africa at the
Speaker 1: height of apartheid. So if human caging and punishment and
Speaker 1: police and surveillance and batons and tasers and guns, if
Speaker 1: all that stuff made people safer, we would have an
Speaker 1: extraordinarily safe society. And yet we spend by far the
Speaker 1: most money on armed government bureaucrats of any country in
Speaker 1: the world, and those armed government bureaucrats specifically target very
Speaker 1: poor people in communities all over this country, and they
Speaker 1: have a terrible track record of improving public safety. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's it's a really important thing to
Speaker 1: keep pointing out to people that essentially every other society
Speaker 1: in the world has figured out ways of having lower
Speaker 1: levels of violence with lower expenditures on things like handcuffs,
Speaker 1: cages and prosecutors and cops. Right, yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: in our way of thinking, it's like, well, what's the problem,
Speaker 1: all right, spend money on it, rather than taking a
Speaker 1: little bit of a wider view, like, well, what's driving crime?
Speaker 1: Because that's the one thing I always see absent with
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting around things like crime rates going up.
Speaker 1: It's like crimes up, man, it's out of control, and
Speaker 1: we got to get rid of these d A s,
Speaker 1: and it's never I've I've yet to read like a
Speaker 1: or here a real sincere analysis of what crime even
Speaker 1: is in this country. And I think that's a huge
Speaker 1: blind spot. I think a lot of people have as well.
Speaker 1: In the discourse. There's a lot of powerful people who
Speaker 1: also are making a lot of money. Who I want
Speaker 1: you asking questions like, well, shouldn't we just be having
Speaker 1: shouldn't we just be spending more money on more technology
Speaker 1: for cops and more stuff for prosecutors and more prison beds,
Speaker 1: and you know that will help the union, the correction
Speaker 1: officers union, right, But they don't want you asking are
Speaker 1: things like should we pay attention to the research that
Speaker 1: shows that like having a stable place to live and
Speaker 1: having healthcare, mental health treatment, having good schools, having less inequality,
Speaker 1: having less starvation and poverty, those are actually the things
Speaker 1: that are correlated with violence and harm. But they don't
Speaker 1: want you asking those questions because that solution to so
Speaker 1: called violent crime would actually require deep investments in changing
Speaker 1: the levels of inequality in our society, and that's not
Speaker 1: something that most of the powerful politicians who control these
Speaker 1: narratives are actually interested in. Doing right. What's what's something
Speaker 1: you think is overrated? I think the police are very overrated.
Speaker 1: You know, they have all this propaganda. I think maybe
Speaker 1: that the police in the New York Times are probably
Speaker 1: the two most overrated institutions in our society. You've got
Speaker 1: police who claim that they're all about violent crime. They
Speaker 1: they are incredibly bad and actually solving or preventing violent crime,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they only spend four percent of all
Speaker 1: their time, and what they call violent crime, I mean
Speaker 1: of the rest of their time is just spent on
Speaker 1: on things like marijuana, driving on suspended license for people
Speaker 1: that have unpaid debt. Right, there's eleven million people with
Speaker 1: driver's license to suspend it just because they owe debts.
Speaker 1: That's the number one arrest in most of the places
Speaker 1: that I've seen across the country, many of the places
Speaker 1: in across the country, combined with disorderly conduct and trespassing
Speaker 1: by homeless people. This is what police actually are doing, right,
Speaker 1: And so to the extent you think they have any
Speaker 1: connection with public safety, they're incredibly overrated. And then you've
Speaker 1: got sort of there pr mouthpieces and sort of elite
Speaker 1: media who you know, when I was growing up, I
Speaker 1: always looked at The New York Times is sort of
Speaker 1: like an institution that you know, had a lot of respect,
Speaker 1: you know, and even had a slogan like all the
Speaker 1: news that's fit to print. It gives you the sense
Speaker 1: that it's some kind of objective, like really the public
Speaker 1: service that is telling us exactly what we need to
Speaker 1: know and only the things that we need to know.
Speaker 1: And then when you actually look at their articles, you
Speaker 1: look at how biased and and how evidence free, and
Speaker 1: how sort of it's almost like, on at least on
Speaker 1: the areas that we're talking about now, it's almost like
Speaker 1: they're just routinely publishing climate science denial. I mean, the
Speaker 1: extent to which The New York Times is is repeatedly
Speaker 1: just publishing lies and misleading information by police and prosecutors
Speaker 1: and private corporations that benefit from the prison system. It's
Speaker 1: almost as if you know, they're they're playing a pr
Speaker 1: function for a lot of the most powerful and wealthy
Speaker 1: interests in our society. And I mean the like too,
Speaker 1: just kind of the overall kind of logic behind the system.
Speaker 1: You have people who are being caged for not having money,
Speaker 1: and then the people who who you're talking about, the
Speaker 1: police have massive, like many multimillion dollar like PR wings
Speaker 1: that are you know, in out there constantly putting pressure
Speaker 1: on the media, right, Like that's kind of how and
Speaker 1: that was that was something that in in your kind
Speaker 1: of writing on this was first revealed to me, was
Speaker 1: just like how much goes into like that not only
Speaker 1: just four percent on violent crime and then everything else
Speaker 1: on like low level crime. They also have like massive
Speaker 1: propaganda wings, right and like that are constantly pushing I
Speaker 1: didn't fully appreciate this myself until I started digging into
Speaker 1: it over the last eighteen months to two years. I
Speaker 1: think that what one thing most people don't appreciate because
Speaker 1: the police do a very good job of hiding this
Speaker 1: in their budgets. But there was just you know, taking
Speaker 1: Los Angeles where you all are, the l A Times
Speaker 1: in investigation after the George Floyd protests that found that
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Department alone in l A County had forty
Speaker 1: two employees working on public information PR stuff, and you know,
Speaker 1: the head of their strategic communications division was making two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a year. And the l A p D,
Speaker 1: which is which is another you know, another large police force.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Los Angeles County has many municipal
Speaker 1: police forces. Los Angeles Police Department is just the biggest one.
Speaker 1: They had an additional twenty five employees working on PR.
Speaker 1: So if you just count the two largest police departments
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles County, the Sheriff's and the l A
Speaker 1: p D, they have sixty seven people spending millions, millions
Speaker 1: of dollars a year just on manipulating the information that
Speaker 1: is told to the public about what they do. And
Speaker 1: that's astonishing. And then that doesn't even count the external
Speaker 1: consultants that are paid after any bad you know, instance
Speaker 1: of a police shooting or a beating or any kind
Speaker 1: of like crisis management. You know, a lot of these
Speaker 1: departments across California in the country are hiring specialized PR
Speaker 1: firms and and and that's how you know. It can
Speaker 1: be in many of the places around the country that
Speaker 1: the initial narrative given to the to the media is
Speaker 1: so wildly different from what later emerges. If if we're
Speaker 1: lucky enough to have body camera footage of a particular
Speaker 1: incident or other officers of giving inconsistent reports, we often
Speaker 1: later learned that the initial version of the police is
Speaker 1: completely off and in fact was a deliberate lie, and
Speaker 1: these pr companies that police pay a lot of money
Speaker 1: to are actually helping with that construction of that lie.
Speaker 1: What is something you think is underrated? I think that,
Speaker 1: like I would say cats, You know, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people that don't appreciate how majestic cats are.
Speaker 1: That is a daily guys to ask pivot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what we do, constantly, pivot between silly songs
Speaker 1: about how much the teenage mutant Ninja turtles house would
Speaker 1: smell like ship into really salient points about social justice.
Speaker 1: But perscy, I just wanted to applaud that really cool, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think and I think there's a very
Speaker 1: real argument to be made that that cats appreciate the
Speaker 1: sort of violence and senselessness of the policing bureacracy. And
Speaker 1: that's one of I think the best things about them.
Speaker 1: And are you basing that on Andrew Lloyd Webber's work
Speaker 1: or just cats personal experience with cats? It's it's mostly
Speaker 1: personal experience. It's it's it's an almost entirely anecdotal but
Speaker 1: every cat I ever met has hated the police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's fair EIDs definitely not. Also very
Speaker 1: few feline units and in police forces the feeling is mutual. Apparently, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't funk with twelve. Ask any cat, ask anything,
Speaker 1: Ask any cat. You say, pause the podcast, go ask
Speaker 1: any cat right now, him, right now. They do not
Speaker 1: funk with twelve. All right, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back. And we're back. And so
Speaker 1: so there's apparently some polling that says Californians across the
Speaker 1: political spectrum are concerned about rising crime. We we covered
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks back. This l a magazine article, Alec,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you had a chance to read
Speaker 1: this work of brilliant journalism, but basically like talking about
Speaker 1: the hysteria, describing crimes in great detail. Then they will
Speaker 1: add like a paragraph with some statistical sanity about like
Speaker 1: how this is not some sort of unprecedented crime wave,
Speaker 1: and then the report the writer will use the phrase
Speaker 1: but still and then go into how people but still.
Speaker 1: It feels like the joker just rode into town is
Speaker 1: an almost direct quote from from the article. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it does seem like the you know, in
Speaker 1: local politics, you have a more progressive district attorney that
Speaker 1: one office, and who is now like being recalled basically
Speaker 1: on the on the regular and the recall campaign is
Speaker 1: being funded by like Hollywood big wigs, like the sort
Speaker 1: of people who usually donate to big d democratic causes,
Speaker 1: like George Clooney's producing partner, And it seems like people
Speaker 1: are buying, buying this narrative that you've done a really
Speaker 1: good job sort of deconstructing and kind of at least
Speaker 1: anybody who reads your explanation around these stories. I feel
Speaker 1: like I don't know how they're coming down on the
Speaker 1: side of let's give the police a couple more a
Speaker 1: couple more bill, they need some more helicopters. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like does the story worry you guys,
Speaker 1: Like do you? I think we've learned to take some
Speaker 1: polling with a grain assaut over the past five, six,
Speaker 1: eight years, But like the I do feel like there
Speaker 1: is we are seeing this narrative sort of win out.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that police department spend so much money
Speaker 1: on this stuff. There's a reason that propaganda has been
Speaker 1: so vitally important for powerful political interests across the world,
Speaker 1: especially over the last hundred years. But but even before that,
Speaker 1: and I posted a tweet the other day about a
Speaker 1: very similar propaganda effort in Victorian England to to fillment
Speaker 1: fear around rising thefts. And it works, right, and so
Speaker 1: that's why these people are doing it. So yes, I
Speaker 1: am very worried. I'm very scared because the extraordinary extent
Speaker 1: to which the media is creating a sense of urgency
Speaker 1: around so called rising crime is very troubling because a
Speaker 1: lot of people will be hurt. And let me explain
Speaker 1: what I mean. So, what the media chooses to cover
Speaker 1: every single day breathlessly with all these stories that you're
Speaker 1: talking about, with stories you seeing every day, effects what
Speaker 1: all of us think are the urgent threats to our health,
Speaker 1: safety and well being. So, for example, if every single
Speaker 1: morning the media was doing breathless stories about the number
Speaker 1: of illegal evictions or the air pollution deaths, right, so
Speaker 1: ten million people die every year because of air pollution,
Speaker 1: it dwarfs by orders of magnitude all reported homicides, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not even in the same league. Much
Speaker 1: of the air and water pollution is actually caused by
Speaker 1: criminal activity by large corporation. So if the media every
Speaker 1: single morning reported the the very documented and very regular
Speaker 1: pollution violations in water and air in l A County alone,
Speaker 1: people might have a different sense of urgency about what
Speaker 1: the real threats to their health and safety are. The
Speaker 1: same is true of wage theft right. Wage left is
Speaker 1: about a fifty billion dollar year problem, but it's mostly
Speaker 1: large corporations and wealthy people stealing from poorer people and
Speaker 1: working class people. And as a result, even though wage
Speaker 1: theft dwarfs by a fact about five all other reported
Speaker 1: property crime um, you never see daily news stories about
Speaker 1: wage theft. So imagine if if the local media in
Speaker 1: l A had daily beats where they talked about wage
Speaker 1: theft and pollution and evictions and illegal foreclosures and the
Speaker 1: things that are actually affecting the health, safety and well
Speaker 1: being and actually killing people at far higher rates. We
Speaker 1: have a different public understanding of the sense of urgency
Speaker 1: around these problems. That's what worries me because as as
Speaker 1: a result of this this sort of media focus, we
Speaker 1: are not dealing with the central problems of our day
Speaker 1: and the world is creating towards ecological devastation, are political
Speaker 1: system and shambles. Were still two years into a pandemic,
Speaker 1: not offering basic health care for many people in this country,
Speaker 1: basic housing, right, So these are the things that should
Speaker 1: be urgent problems. And because of this nonsense like the
Speaker 1: LLI magazine article you're talking about, um, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of well meaning people who are urgently afraid of
Speaker 1: a problem that is just miniscule compared to all the
Speaker 1: other problems that I just mentioned and more problems, right,
Speaker 1: and the like irony of not actually talking about those
Speaker 1: pressing issues as a as a sort of contributing factor
Speaker 1: to even the things they want to see about crime
Speaker 1: or property crime and completely just being like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's just some bad people out there, and that's how
Speaker 1: it begins, and that's how it ends without you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, if we have a consistent sort of
Speaker 1: cadence of proper reporting, people would start to connect the
Speaker 1: dots to say, oh, you know what, people are desperate
Speaker 1: and that there's a desperation that drives people to do
Speaker 1: things that are outside of what we define as you know,
Speaker 1: legal activity. And yeah, it's it's it's you know, I
Speaker 1: think we see the all the time. But that's why
Speaker 1: the media and you know, the established powers are just
Speaker 1: so hand in hand because to begin reporting like that,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, but will begin to create a level
Speaker 1: of urgency and people that are more inclined to say
Speaker 1: what about like inequality, Like isn't that a thing? But
Speaker 1: it's easier to say, oh, my gosh, did you see
Speaker 1: how many forty TVs that one guy had in his arms? Right?
Speaker 1: Huh Yeah. And there are a handful of very real,
Speaker 1: very horrible crimes that have just been that We talk
Speaker 1: a lot on this show about sampling error and the
Speaker 1: fact that the media overcovers, like over samples a handful
Speaker 1: of very like horrifying crimes and it just gets them
Speaker 1: out there and makes it seem like it's a danger
Speaker 1: to to everyone, like those are what all they want
Speaker 1: to talk about, and they store the stories that they
Speaker 1: are completely ignoring that you talk about so much. Shall
Speaker 1: are contributing factors, Like so it's not just look here,
Speaker 1: not there, it's like, look, if you looked at this,
Speaker 1: like those other stories would be fewer and further between.
Speaker 1: But right, yeah, I don't know that. But essentially to
Speaker 1: look at this thing, right where like the polling where
Speaker 1: they say sixty five percent of Californians that say that
Speaker 1: crime has risen over the last year and that's an
Speaker 1: and rather than like saying, here are the statistics about
Speaker 1: crime rates, this is merely saying, hey, man, six people
Speaker 1: are pretty fucked up off of all this, you know,
Speaker 1: sensationalized reporting, right, and have completely fallen into this column
Speaker 1: of yeah, man, crimes out of controllers, and we got
Speaker 1: to do something about it. Apparently we need to throw
Speaker 1: the brakes on any kind of progress that addresses a
Speaker 1: completely imbalanced, like judicial legal system. Yeah. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a product of the media's propagandas free on this
Speaker 1: and and you know, I think it's really more copaganda.
Speaker 1: It's really it's it's really an attempt by a very
Speaker 1: coordinated and very successful attempt by police unions, police departments,
Speaker 1: and in many local jurisdictions like l A in particular,
Speaker 1: by very very powerful real estate development interests that have
Speaker 1: a very particular interest in police controlling unhoused populations and
Speaker 1: low income populations and and play an outsized role in
Speaker 1: the deployment of police resources. And there's a really great,
Speaker 1: amazing report about Los Angeles in particular, um called Automated
Speaker 1: Banishment by the Stop lap D Spying Coalition, which is
Speaker 1: a group of amazing directly impacted people in skid row
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles who have done this incredible analysis of
Speaker 1: the connection between real estate developers and sort of big
Speaker 1: technology companies and police departments. And so you have to
Speaker 1: understand it's not just that they're not just doing this
Speaker 1: because it's fun for them. They're not just doing this
Speaker 1: because they want to, like, you know, have fun manipulating people.
Speaker 1: They're doing it because they're very real interests that benefit
Speaker 1: from the way that our policing system looks. So, for example,
Speaker 1: there were people who benefited from the War on drugs.
Speaker 1: The War on drugs was not like some like very
Speaker 1: neutral objective attempt to reduce drug usage. Right. If you
Speaker 1: look at the last like forty years, right, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've spent trillions of dollars in the world drugs. We've
Speaker 1: caged tens of millions of people, We've separated tens of
Speaker 1: millions of children from their parents. We've surveiled global populations.
Speaker 1: We've essentially destroyed much of the pristine wilderness and farmland
Speaker 1: and jungle throughout South America through various pesticides. We've we've
Speaker 1: had people who are spending hundreds of millions of years
Speaker 1: in prison at this point if you sort of add
Speaker 1: it all up, like we've we've got a terrific costs
Speaker 1: associated with with this right, and for what benefits. Drugs
Speaker 1: are easier to get now, they're they're they're more potent,
Speaker 1: way overdose deaths, more young people using drugs. So it's
Speaker 1: not that the people that that created and have profited
Speaker 1: from our still pushing the war on drugs. It's not
Speaker 1: that they're stupid. They don't. They're not blind to this evidence.
Speaker 1: They know that overdose deaths are worth they know that
Speaker 1: drug usage is even worse now than it was forty
Speaker 1: years ago. It's just that they're not pursuing the goals
Speaker 1: that they told us they were pursuing. And we need
Speaker 1: to understand that the people that are controlling this criminal
Speaker 1: punishment deureaucracy are not doing it because it is the
Speaker 1: best way to create healthier, safer communities. They're doing it
Speaker 1: for other reasons, and they don't tell us those reasons overtly. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the role of real estate, by the way, is interesting
Speaker 1: on the on the automated banishment front. And just when
Speaker 1: when you look into the background of the person, like
Speaker 1: I get, I just couldn't believe what I was reading
Speaker 1: when I read that l AMaGA article, and so I
Speaker 1: just dug into the author's background. And their background is
Speaker 1: reporting on real estate for the Hollywood Reporter. So that
Speaker 1: that then builds up sources, the and you know, help
Speaker 1: them portray a worldview that's like, Yeah, I party with
Speaker 1: Rick Caruso every weekend, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but now I'm right about crime. You got me this
Speaker 1: sick gig ell a magazine to just you know, sound
Speaker 1: the alarm on these property crimes. Yeah, and the um shoplifting,
Speaker 1: the train theft like that. That is something that they
Speaker 1: were really pushing in December, the shoplifting and the run
Speaker 1: up to They love to get a consumer based panic
Speaker 1: going and the lead up to the holidays. We've talked
Speaker 1: before about how they there every year you can kind
Speaker 1: of guarantee there's going to be a Christmas tree shortage
Speaker 1: story or a candy can shortage story. We talked about
Speaker 1: that in early December, and sure enough it hit. It
Speaker 1: hit big. That that gamble hit big because they were
Speaker 1: both all over Fox News and you know, the Drudge
Speaker 1: Report and ship but the they're still bringing that ship.
Speaker 1: You you were pointing out an Axios article from like
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago that is kind of portrayed
Speaker 1: as this like digest of the entire problem, and now
Speaker 1: they've added this new element where it's like the you know,
Speaker 1: people are doing this because it's so easy to sell
Speaker 1: stuff online now. But but yeah, like the the article
Speaker 1: for on axios from a couple of days ago, shoplifting
Speaker 1: has gotten so bad nationally, the chains like right Aid
Speaker 1: are closing hard hit stores, sending terrified employees home and
Speaker 1: ubers and locking up aisles of seemingly Monday and items
Speaker 1: like theodor want and toothpaste. That's from a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago, And it's been repeatedly pointed out, not just
Speaker 1: by you, by like many how like New York Magazine
Speaker 1: and other places. By the way, the source they link
Speaker 1: off to for the idea that right is closing is
Speaker 1: the New York Post, and it is sourced to a
Speaker 1: Right Aid employee or I I forget, like an unemployee
Speaker 1: with knowledge of the situation, something like very vague, but you,
Speaker 1: You and many others have pointed out that there's just
Speaker 1: like no evidence that this is actually hurting their bottom line.
Speaker 1: It's just a complete bullshit story. But there's still like Axios,
Speaker 1: who who I don't think is like known for being
Speaker 1: a copaganda outlet necessarily is just out here still still
Speaker 1: rocking with that story. Well, not only that, not only
Speaker 1: is there no evidence, it's affirmatively false. So the reporting
Speaker 1: has established that right aid Walgreen CBS, they've been telling
Speaker 1: investors for a long time that they're planning on closing
Speaker 1: these stores to keep profit margins and and and because
Speaker 1: of the loss of business to online. So one of
Speaker 1: the things you have to understand is more and more
Speaker 1: people are buying their prescriptions online, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of these drug stores are becoming less profitable because they
Speaker 1: have high margin products that people The way they make
Speaker 1: their business, much of their business is people mean for
Speaker 1: prescriptions then buy other stuff that's really high margin on
Speaker 1: their way to the register or you know, on the
Speaker 1: on the same trip. Because a lot more people are
Speaker 1: getting prescriptions online, there's just like less foot traffic, these
Speaker 1: businesses are becoming less profitable. So they're making very strategic
Speaker 1: business decisions that have zero to do with shoplifting, and
Speaker 1: they're very clear about that and their investor briefings, investor calls,
Speaker 1: and so this is just a totally false narrative. But
Speaker 1: what is going on is a bunch of retail industry
Speaker 1: people are pushing a bill in Congress to crackdown on
Speaker 1: electronic marketplaces. And so all of this pr plush is
Speaker 1: actually time to coincide with the federal lobbying to try
Speaker 1: to get sort of it's an anti kind of Amazon
Speaker 1: marketplace set of regulations they want because they are worried
Speaker 1: that the small businesses that are able to now sell
Speaker 1: much more efficiently online are actually going to cut into
Speaker 1: the major big box retailer profit margins. And so that's
Speaker 1: what's really going on here and what And then of
Speaker 1: course you've got local cops and prosecutors who will take
Speaker 1: any kind of excuse to try to pad their own
Speaker 1: budgets and to try to fear monger because a climate
Speaker 1: of fear around so called crime actually helps everything that
Speaker 1: they want to do. And so you've got this alliance
Speaker 1: between big retailers and you know, so called law enforcement interests.
Speaker 1: I used I used the term law enforcement always with
Speaker 1: air quotes, because they want you to think that they're
Speaker 1: just like out there enforcing the laws. But they only
Speaker 1: enforce some laws against some people. Some of the time,
Speaker 1: you're not out there enforcing tax evasion laws. Right, They're
Speaker 1: not out there enforcing wage theft laws. They're enforcing like
Speaker 1: theft laws against the poorest people in our society. That's
Speaker 1: what they do. Right. So anyway, I think there's a
Speaker 1: much more to the story, and it's unfortunate to see
Speaker 1: you know, newspaper and online reporters sort of just parenting
Speaker 1: this this highly self serving and false set of claims
Speaker 1: by the industry. Well, right, and then it's you know,
Speaker 1: without drawing those direct lines, you know, like I'll look
Speaker 1: on you know, Reddit or other places, and I'll see
Speaker 1: post stories like this posted and p bowl you can
Speaker 1: tell them the comments how are completely disconnected from what's
Speaker 1: actually happening, Like, man, it's it must be so out
Speaker 1: of control in California, Like yeah, man, I guess they
Speaker 1: need more cops and things like that. With again not
Speaker 1: understanding like you're saying, like what I remember the Walgreen
Speaker 1: story a few weeks or maybe that was back in December,
Speaker 1: when they're like they're gonna have to shut stores down,
Speaker 1: and people like did you read their like actual business
Speaker 1: reporting They talk about how they're like real estate plans
Speaker 1: they completely fucked up and we're over leveraged in markets
Speaker 1: where the rental costs were just too high and it's unsustainable.
Speaker 1: It's not because people were stealing en famil or something
Speaker 1: from their stores. It's because of these other business decisions.
Speaker 1: And then to the other point of like these vested
Speaker 1: interests of law enforcement or prosecutors. You look at the
Speaker 1: cities that have more progressive d a's, and those aren't
Speaker 1: the people who are gonna go lockstep with the retail
Speaker 1: trade groups to be like, yeah, yeah, I'm with you,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. Yeah, let's let's let's figure out a
Speaker 1: way to make this work for you. And when they're
Speaker 1: not like that, you begin to see these like recall
Speaker 1: campaigns sprout up to and it's very very convenient to
Speaker 1: begin to say, look at all this rampant theft, all
Speaker 1: this shoplifting, the train crimes, and then look at this
Speaker 1: progressive d A. I mean, it's it's just all right there, folks,
Speaker 1: we need more law and order, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: very very convenient catch all for many many different aims.
Speaker 1: When most like to your point, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's just to enrich the same sort of
Speaker 1: group of people. They're just finding really clever ways to
Speaker 1: dress up the problem in spookier ways for you know,
Speaker 1: the the everyday consumer. Yeah, all right, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and then I want to talk about this
Speaker 1: thing that I see a lot where people treat anyone
Speaker 1: who wants to talk about the real underlying issues as
Speaker 1: like childish or like not serious or like two idealistic.
Speaker 1: So we'll be right back, and we're back. And actually, Alec,
Speaker 1: the thing that made me think about this is you
Speaker 1: had pointed out that Erica Adams is trying to get
Speaker 1: drill rap videos banned from social media after some rappers
Speaker 1: were killed in New York recently, and like it's a
Speaker 1: it's become a high profile news story, and you I
Speaker 1: think I had a tweet to the effect of, you know,
Speaker 1: Adams is also planning on banning the opera because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people who engage in wage theft and tax
Speaker 1: evasion like tends to go there. And so this guy
Speaker 1: DJ is serious on Twitter and the lest you doubt
Speaker 1: his journalistic Bonafide's came at you and was like, like,
Speaker 1: you can't be serious. You think like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to solve those problems, like the things that you know,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about on this podcast, like wage theft,
Speaker 1: caging humans, lack of funding for schools and programs that
Speaker 1: invest in the humanity of underserved commune and he's he
Speaker 1: he dismissed as like, you know, unrealistic or childish. And
Speaker 1: then and just like cloud chasing, I guess and I
Speaker 1: I actually a couple of weeks ago, we had somebody
Speaker 1: on the show and we were like they made some
Speaker 1: point to the effect of like that the system is
Speaker 1: is fucked up, and you know that kind of aligned
Speaker 1: with what we've been talking about. And then like stopped
Speaker 1: and was like, I, I know it sounds childish, and
Speaker 1: I I think that's something that like I also internalized
Speaker 1: at a certain point. Is like just like pointing out
Speaker 1: these very basic problems is like idealistic and childish and
Speaker 1: like not something like the realistic people are out here
Speaker 1: pointing out individual like acts of violence. Like when you
Speaker 1: go to the guy who you arguing with on Twitter's thread,
Speaker 1: he like has these posts of like like a video
Speaker 1: of a murder happening, and it's like the bronx is
Speaker 1: out of control and like so he's the the serious one.
Speaker 1: While arguing for the banning of rap music on social media,
Speaker 1: Like do you do you run up against that a lot,
Speaker 1: like just sort of the you're being unrealistic or childish
Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, I think he's maybe a
Speaker 1: bad example because he's not really a serious person, because
Speaker 1: you know, like he he really showed who he was not,
Speaker 1: just with all the insults he was hurling at me
Speaker 1: as I was trying to just like have a reasonable
Speaker 1: like debate, but like he then said that Eric Adams
Speaker 1: is also trying to address all these root causes, and
Speaker 1: then he excited to Adams's crime plan, which is literally
Speaker 1: the exact opposite, Like, you know, Adams is trying to
Speaker 1: beef up uh you know, roll back bail reform and
Speaker 1: beef up cops and all this stuff and and not
Speaker 1: addressing things like healthcare and housing and inequality and so
Speaker 1: you know, this guy is not a serious person. But
Speaker 1: I think what was really revealing about the exchange, and
Speaker 1: which I do see a lot, is politicians and sort
Speaker 1: of very comfortable people are constantly trying to just to
Speaker 1: distract us from having the real conversation about structural inequalities
Speaker 1: in our society, about divestment from safe places to live
Speaker 1: and systems of care. And what they want us to
Speaker 1: do is focus on like bad individual bad apples, or well,
Speaker 1: this week, the problem is music, so like we don't
Speaker 1: have to confront poverty and inequality and deprivation and loneliness
Speaker 1: and and toxic masculinity and all these other things that
Speaker 1: are sort of big social structural problems. All way, if
Speaker 1: you do is banned this type of rap music, and
Speaker 1: tomorrow it's going to be all we have to do
Speaker 1: is get rid of bail reform, And the next day
Speaker 1: it's going to be all we have to do is
Speaker 1: get rid of this district attorney in Los Angeles, because
Speaker 1: everything was so much better the last thirty years before
Speaker 1: we had this district attorney, right, And and every single
Speaker 1: day they point to some other little thing that is
Speaker 1: not fixing the deeper structural problems in our society. And
Speaker 1: to me, that kind of argument is just such a joke.
Speaker 1: It's hard to even engage with someone seriously about it.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of well meaning people that
Speaker 1: get trapped up in this, and so I think it's
Speaker 1: important sometimes to treat this is a serious argument and
Speaker 1: to point out sort of why it's so flawed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's again, it's so much easier to just
Speaker 1: say to to ignore like all of the root causes
Speaker 1: like you're talking about, and just turn it into this
Speaker 1: thing of like this like very understandable evil that exists somewhere,
Speaker 1: and it's this this drill wrap. I mean, the dishes
Speaker 1: are too violent and that's what's causing all of this chaos.
Speaker 1: But again, people like the example of people always fail
Speaker 1: to like really think about two is like, well, how
Speaker 1: come you know what what about why is there not
Speaker 1: a drill scene in Beverly Hills. You know, why is
Speaker 1: there not a drill scene in these more affluent areas?
Speaker 1: And what would happen then with that, with those people
Speaker 1: suddenly be overtaken by the demonic drill music and then
Speaker 1: begin killing each other? Or is it about the the
Speaker 1: outcomes that people are offered based on their their place
Speaker 1: in this and like in this sort of cast system
Speaker 1: that we have in the in the country, and rather
Speaker 1: than saying, like, you know, when people are deprived and desperate,
Speaker 1: we we begin to do things that have to ensure
Speaker 1: our survival and to distill it too well, these lyrics
Speaker 1: are too hot. Again, everything is just sort of about
Speaker 1: avoiding the real solution to something, which is we need
Speaker 1: to address rampant inequality. We need to address this stuff.
Speaker 1: The the greed of the wealthy has only exacerbated these things.
Speaker 1: But again, I think that's much easier for people who
Speaker 1: probably feel that, you know, their livelihood or something is
Speaker 1: at risk with some kind of increased equality in society.
Speaker 1: I think those kinds of explanations help those people wrap
Speaker 1: their minds around it, because like, well, certainly it's not
Speaker 1: this other thing that I've been completely turning a blind
Speaker 1: eye to my whole life, drill music. And if you
Speaker 1: think about yeah, I believe drill music was around, uh
Speaker 1: even in the sixties, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: what why is it always this like changing, uh, this
Speaker 1: evolving sort of like fake target that you know, allows
Speaker 1: people just to avoid again, like always avoiding the part
Speaker 1: of the conversation, which is, yeah, we have to we
Speaker 1: have to fundamentally change a lot of things. And there's
Speaker 1: something about this guy that I just wanted to underline
Speaker 1: because he's a Pulitzer Center grantee, which I don't really
Speaker 1: know what that means, but it sounds impressive, and like
Speaker 1: he has a picture like his Twitter header is like
Speaker 1: a picture of him like doing war reporting and like
Speaker 1: being on the ground and like being there for violence
Speaker 1: happening in other countries, and then he has this post
Speaker 1: of like a video of somebody being murdered. And the
Speaker 1: degree to which like it's ingrained in our values and
Speaker 1: the values that I like grew up with, where like
Speaker 1: the you know, action movies are about the police and
Speaker 1: like doing like real serious things and like serious people
Speaker 1: taking care of serious problems and like that that sort
Speaker 1: of idea that you're serious because you were kind of
Speaker 1: focusing on the like very short term like cause and
Speaker 1: effect of like violent conflict, like that that is the
Speaker 1: serious thing to do, and then actually talking about structural
Speaker 1: issues is like the not serious thing like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just especially now with social media, which
Speaker 1: I feel nine years old every time I complain about
Speaker 1: social media, But like it is so like every aspect
Speaker 1: of this value system of like you know, being able
Speaker 1: to over index whatever problem you want to exaggerate is
Speaker 1: like so deeply ingrained in like how how we communicate
Speaker 1: and get information that I'm I don't know, like I
Speaker 1: is there anything that makes you feel hopeful ale like
Speaker 1: about the struggle that you're kind of engaged in. I
Speaker 1: think it's easy to feel hopeless because the problems in
Speaker 1: front of us seems so daunting, and and you've got
Speaker 1: very powerful interests who not only are controlling how all
Speaker 1: this money is being spent all these policies, but they're
Speaker 1: also you know, the ones who own the media system
Speaker 1: in which these discussions are being had. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, there's a whole new generation of people that
Speaker 1: are seeing through this stuff, that are having conversations that
Speaker 1: we just weren't having ten years ago. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I was a younger lawyer just starting out in
Speaker 1: this space, there was really no one talking about the
Speaker 1: need to shrink the size of the chrome punishment bureacracy,
Speaker 1: to take money away from police departments, to invest in
Speaker 1: in communities of care. No one in in sort of
Speaker 1: these elite spaces. That is obviously the people in these
Speaker 1: communities that are directly targeted. I've been talking about this,
Speaker 1: you know, from the very beginning, but there's a I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons we've seen this incredible pushback
Speaker 1: from the police and from these media interests and is
Speaker 1: precisely because they were threatened by a lot of the
Speaker 1: growing social movement to change the way our society thinks
Speaker 1: about its investment priorities, and so I think that is
Speaker 1: a positive. We we are definitely seeing a movement of
Speaker 1: people led by the people that are most targeted by
Speaker 1: these systems of of human caging and surveillance and brutality
Speaker 1: and violence, and that's encouraging. And we're in a reactionary
Speaker 1: backlash right now, but the thing that it's reacting to
Speaker 1: is is a very encouraging set of developments. And I
Speaker 1: think it's very, very important that anyone interested in this
Speaker 1: comes together with other people who are interested in it
Speaker 1: and starts getting involved in their own community, whether it's
Speaker 1: in mutual aid, whether it's in bail funds, whether it's
Speaker 1: in organizing around environmental issues, health issues, housing issues, criminal
Speaker 1: punishment system issues, mutual aid like efforts, immigration issues. There's
Speaker 1: so many ways to plug in that, you know, around
Speaker 1: something that you're personally really passionate about that all are
Speaker 1: sort of factoring into us building the systems of hair
Speaker 1: that we need that are going to replace this horrific
Speaker 1: system of violence. And I think that's all positive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, Like to your point, it's clear that
Speaker 1: the that like a moment of clarity for people over
Speaker 1: in the summer of where many people are just like,
Speaker 1: hold on, yeah, is this the right thing? Is this
Speaker 1: the way we get out of this? That scared the
Speaker 1: ship out of law enforcement clearly because you've seen them
Speaker 1: pour every single thing they can into countering the sort
Speaker 1: of clarity that something that many people are beginning to
Speaker 1: arrive to, which is sort of like, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that this partial system is the way that we
Speaker 1: solve things. It sounds like we need to actually help
Speaker 1: people rather than solving the failures of our capitalist, capitalist
Speaker 1: society by just investing more in punishing the poor. I
Speaker 1: think people are begin to be like, that doesn't quite connect.
Speaker 1: And yet when you see them this all in thing
Speaker 1: of like man, the shoplifting, this that that that, that's
Speaker 1: the drill music it does, you can tell that they're
Speaker 1: in a much different posture than before, when I think
Speaker 1: people were just much more willing to accept whatever the
Speaker 1: local news said and just be like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if that's the cops say, yeah, go ahead. And now
Speaker 1: I think with story after story about abuses that occur
Speaker 1: in the in the legal system, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: I don't know how you counter that, aside from just
Speaker 1: going further into your bad habits of stoking more fear
Speaker 1: without really being able to like present the people with
Speaker 1: actual winds that law enforcement has been behind, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're not out here being like, hey, you know
Speaker 1: what we revamped. We turned half of our force into
Speaker 1: like first responders for people who are in need of
Speaker 1: like a mental health intervention and things like that. And
Speaker 1: look at the crime it's gone down, baby, every You
Speaker 1: could leave a bike out and nobody's gonna steal it
Speaker 1: because they're just unable to do that because that the
Speaker 1: way the system works for them is no, we just
Speaker 1: have to keep brutalizing poor people. That's the only thing
Speaker 1: this thing is set up to do. So we're just
Speaker 1: going to turn up the heat on that. And I
Speaker 1: think it has this effective on one side a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Really. I see it all the time people
Speaker 1: I used to go to high school with on Instagram
Speaker 1: or like looking at taking a picture of a dumpster
Speaker 1: that has graffiti on it, and you can tell how
Speaker 1: like cop brained they are because they're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: do I need to get a gun now? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's graffiti on this dumpster behind my office building, and
Speaker 1: I see, this is what's happening right now because people
Speaker 1: are running just out here doing whatever they want because
Speaker 1: there's no law enforcement, while many others are just sort
Speaker 1: of like no, no. I All I see actually is
Speaker 1: a lot of pain suffering that has gone unaddressed, and
Speaker 1: that to me is a more pressing concern than oh,
Speaker 1: do we have to lock up you know, the mock
Speaker 1: three razors at the fucking pharmacy. And so yeah, like
Speaker 1: I that yes, with all the with all the momentum,
Speaker 1: clearly that you know, this narrative that's been introduced by
Speaker 1: you know, the powers that be in law enforcement, et cetera,
Speaker 1: there is like there is just that little bit of
Speaker 1: clarity that you're beginning to see a lot of like
Speaker 1: people sort of step into as it relates to like
Speaker 1: what's actually playing our our country. I mean, I I
Speaker 1: think it's worth talking about the the convoy that's happened
Speaker 1: up in Canada because like they without any without any
Speaker 1: coherent worldview other than like sort of an underlying white
Speaker 1: supremacy that everybody seems to be on board with, they
Speaker 1: were pretty successful and like making everyone's lives miserable and
Speaker 1: like grinding everything to a halt for for a number
Speaker 1: of days. And they definitely have the built in advantage
Speaker 1: of the police also being on board with the fact
Speaker 1: that they're waving Nazi flags. I feel like if you
Speaker 1: replace those flags with Black Lives Matter flags, were we're
Speaker 1: dealing with a whole different situation. But so, I mean,
Speaker 1: the latest in this story is that Trudeau is invoking
Speaker 1: the Emergencies Act, which is the Canadian Act that was
Speaker 1: used to has people's rights during World War One world
Speaker 1: War two in internment camps, and then in they reshaped
Speaker 1: the War Act to like give it a little bit
Speaker 1: more congressional oversight. But it's it's a fair it's a
Speaker 1: pretty problematic, like and scary use of force that the
Speaker 1: government is like kind of coming in and using or
Speaker 1: like invoking I guess, And I'm just like wondering, I
Speaker 1: don't know, do like is there any part like the
Speaker 1: movement for Progress and social justice like should we be
Speaker 1: looking at like these sorts of actions that actually like
Speaker 1: fucking disrupt an entire city, Like this is not a
Speaker 1: well thought out plan, but it's just something that's happening
Speaker 1: in the news, and I'm just like wondering without them
Speaker 1: having any coherent argument or complaint, they are succeeding. Like
Speaker 1: if what if a you know, the movement too and
Speaker 1: wage theft, Like did something like this a thing that
Speaker 1: actually affects more truckers than the six percent of the
Speaker 1: anti vax or truckers in in Canada? Like why why
Speaker 1: don't we see more things like that? Should we see
Speaker 1: more things like that? Where it's like a very disruptive um,
Speaker 1: you know, behavior like this absolutely, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: why you've seen states, particularly conservative states across the country
Speaker 1: criminalized to extraordinary degree these kinds of direct actions. So
Speaker 1: now if you did this in a number of states
Speaker 1: in the US, you could be hit with huge felony charges,
Speaker 1: go to prison for life, you'd be called a terrorist.
Speaker 1: The federal government can prosecute you. You know, they just
Speaker 1: prosecuted two women in Iowa for you know, disrupting infrastructure
Speaker 1: and they prosecute them as terrorists. And this is when
Speaker 1: when it's being done on the left wing side, all
Speaker 1: of the incredible bureaucratic apparatus of state violence is a
Speaker 1: raid against you, and you're called a terrorist. Whether it's
Speaker 1: people who are trying to disrupt animal agriculture or or
Speaker 1: you know, toxic fossil fuel infrastructure. And there's a really
Speaker 1: interesting and thought provoking new book called How to Blow
Speaker 1: Up a Pipeline by Swedish climate activists and philosopher, which essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, makes the case that you just made, Jack,
Speaker 1: but makes it really beautifully. It's really fun and short read,
Speaker 1: even more beautifully than I just made it. I thought
Speaker 1: it really nailed it. Well, obviously not as beautiful, stuttering
Speaker 1: and uh and pauses. I thought I thought I really
Speaker 1: nailed it. Yeah, sorry, notice it's a it's a I
Speaker 1: think you should send him some notes and maybe the
Speaker 1: next version of the book can be can be a
Speaker 1: little bit more eloquent. But How to glub of Phipeline
Speaker 1: is a really inspiring read about the need for direct
Speaker 1: action on the level that actually confronts the enormity of
Speaker 1: the ecological disaster and collapse that we're about to confront
Speaker 1: as a sort of a global world. And and you know,
Speaker 1: the more that starts to happen, the more repression we're
Speaker 1: going to see, the more things like what true Joe
Speaker 1: just did are going to be arrayed against anyone remotely
Speaker 1: pushing environmental or social justice, and it's going to be very,
Speaker 1: very scary, especially as significant migration of hundreds and millions
Speaker 1: of people starts to become sort of the monthly norm,
Speaker 1: right the Yeah, I guess any anything that somebody is
Speaker 1: learning from this should be taken with a like, like,
Speaker 1: I think it has been allowed to go on this
Speaker 1: long because it doesn't have any coherent agenda or argument
Speaker 1: that is like picking up steam with anybody that that
Speaker 1: I can tell other than just white supremacy. Like, so
Speaker 1: I feel like they're like, yeah, sure, they hang out,
Speaker 1: you know, but take a picture there. Their examples or
Speaker 1: the Ottawa police were letting the truckers these convoy protesters
Speaker 1: take selfies in the back of their squad car and
Speaker 1: then so that they could spread misinformation that they had
Speaker 1: been arrested to like get people outraged, but of course
Speaker 1: the place weren't arresting. Yeah. Well, I mean it's telling
Speaker 1: when you're in the back of a squad car with
Speaker 1: no handcuffs on, when you're when you're looking out to
Speaker 1: that and they're like, help, no, that's that's not what's
Speaker 1: happening there. And you know it's funny too, Like they
Speaker 1: talk a lot about you know, they don't want to
Speaker 1: send in the military or they don't want to really
Speaker 1: start you know, rounding people up like they would uh
Speaker 1: you know, protests that would have involved disenfranchised people of color,
Speaker 1: First Nations people, But you know, there's been this insistence
Speaker 1: that they're there don't want this imagery of people actually
Speaker 1: being suppressed and being brutalized by the state, and I
Speaker 1: you know, part of me is like, well, that's really
Speaker 1: just for them, because most people who are protesting, they
Speaker 1: don't need to be brutalized by the police at a
Speaker 1: protest to get in touch with their oppression. Most people
Speaker 1: already are whereas this serves a very much visual narrative
Speaker 1: to be like you see, even because what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is total vaporware and bullshit. But if they get
Speaker 1: out here and start arresting us, then we can add
Speaker 1: a little bit more emotional energy to this to help,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of build some momentum, because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, like you're saying, it's not many
Speaker 1: people are confused, you know, especially if you're outside of
Speaker 1: this anti vax truck or convoy world, where they're like,
Speaker 1: what are these fucking people doing? Like this is nonsense.
Speaker 1: But you know, they're very much in the in pursuit
Speaker 1: of those visuals to help sort of solidify or validate
Speaker 1: their sort of victim narrative, which is just truly not there.
Speaker 1: So actually not when you're hugging the police when they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be clearing you out. I mean, like, and
Speaker 1: I think that's the other part. Two. It's very hard
Speaker 1: for people who you know, have somewhat of a brain
Speaker 1: to look at that and go, that's weird. They hug
Speaker 1: those protesters but are firing rubber bullets straight into the
Speaker 1: eyes of the other people, and they're not They weren't
Speaker 1: holding up global commerce. Okay, interesting, Yeah, Alec, such a
Speaker 1: pleasure having you. Thanks for hanging hanging with us for
Speaker 1: an hour. Where can people kind of find you, follow you,
Speaker 1: read you all that good stuff. Yeah, you can follow
Speaker 1: our organization at SIEV Rights Core on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: and the course spelled c rps like the Peace Corps.
Speaker 1: And you can follow me on Twitter at Equality Alec. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And is there a tweet or some of the work
Speaker 1: of social media that you've been enjoying. I've been watching, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, repeatedly recently the old fifty year old recording
Speaker 1: of Muhammad Ali reading his poem but the Attica prison
Speaker 1: riot you can watch on YouTube. It's an amazing poem
Speaker 1: that that Ali made that just describes the violence and
Speaker 1: brutality of the US prison system. And it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me just how like all of these problems are still
Speaker 1: the same, and because we're continually refusing to actually confront
Speaker 1: the ways in which state violence is weaponized against the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable people in our society, it just keeps recurring.
Speaker 1: We keep having these same conversations about whether it's prison
Speaker 1: conditions or police brutality or whatever it might be, inequality, poverty,
Speaker 1: and all of these systems continue to function and to
Speaker 1: get bigger and to get more even more monstrous, to
Speaker 1: kill more and more people. You know, police killed more
Speaker 1: people in one and they did in twenty after all
Speaker 1: the attention that had been put on police killings, after
Speaker 1: the murders of Brianna Taylor and George Floyd and others.
Speaker 1: And so I've been I've been watching him read this
Speaker 1: beautiful poem and and thinking about the defiance and the
Speaker 1: brilliance that he exhibited. It's very inspiring, and so that's
Speaker 1: something I point people to and the fact that I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that existed, Like the is just such
Speaker 1: a testament to like how the system is, like how
Speaker 1: against the grain that sort of thing is, Like that
Speaker 1: that's one of the most iconic, greatest like American celebrities.
Speaker 1: America fucking loves the celebrity like talking about one of
Speaker 1: the defining problems of his time and errors and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh that exists. Cool, m right, Yeah, that that seems
Speaker 1: like that should be absolutely iconic. I will go check
Speaker 1: that out. People should do the same. Miles where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Follow you Twitter, Instagram at Miles of Gray. Also,
Speaker 1: if you like, you know Fance like how four twenty
Speaker 1: day Fiance was Sophia Alexander and I. That's a podcast
Speaker 1: and the live stream, so check that out. A tweet
Speaker 1: I like is from at and a fun not fun tweeted.
Speaker 1: This is your reminder that tem percented bitcoin owners have
Speaker 1: the bitcoins. They need new crypto buyers to be able
Speaker 1: to sell their whole things without taking the market all
Speaker 1: these crypto ads or them trying to offload their position
Speaker 1: in the Ponzi scheme. Okay, that's interesting thing to consider.
Speaker 1: And along with that, listener big Al at pork cop Express.
Speaker 1: We were joking about, like, you know, if the Sopranos
Speaker 1: are around now and they're talking about crypto and ship
Speaker 1: most of this picture of like Christopher wearing like a
Speaker 1: leather jacket and sunglasses with a cigarette and says it's
Speaker 1: called a non fuckable token. There were so much money
Speaker 1: because they're made of computers. Well done. Let's see. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien, Uh
Speaker 1: tweet I've been enjoying At dooter Main at six twelve,
Speaker 1: Jack tweeted, Uh, this guy, I'm taking just ran across
Speaker 1: the stream to lose this sin. We've all been there.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeitgeist. Were
Speaker 1: at the dailies. I guys on Instagram. We have Facebook
Speaker 1: fan page on our website, daily zeitgeis dot com where
Speaker 1: we post episodes and our foot note where we link
Speaker 1: off to the information that we talked about in today's episode,
Speaker 1: as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles,
Speaker 1: what song do we think people might? Oh? Man, this
Speaker 1: is a this is gonna be an iconic performance from
Speaker 1: Slide the family Stone. If you've ever seen the Woodstock documentary.
Speaker 1: The Sly section is one of my favorite parts of
Speaker 1: that whole documentary because there's a section where he's doing Higher.
Speaker 1: It's like a medley and he just has this whole
Speaker 1: fucking crowd going up, just screaming higher, and it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite performances. But you can also listen to
Speaker 1: it because they're the Woodstock album is out on most places.
Speaker 1: So this is the medley of higher slash music Lover
Speaker 1: from Woodstock, from Slie the Family Stone. But I really,
Speaker 1: I would really suggest you watched the deal first because
Speaker 1: when the when the fucking song really kicks in and
Speaker 1: they start getting loose, it's pure joy nice all right. Well,
Speaker 1: The Daily is like guys, a production of by Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcast My Heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: We'll link off to that Slive video and we will
Speaker 1: link off to the Muhammad Ali reading of the poem
Speaker 1: on Attica. Also in the footnotes, Um, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it for us this morning. We're back this afternoon to
Speaker 1: tell you what is trending, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you all then. Bye bye,