It Could Happen Here Weekly 253

This is an "I Heart" podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of The What Happened to Her Podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. "You never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise, sometimes it's a police uniform." And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an I Heart True Crime+ subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to I Heart True Crime+ subscribers. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts, search for I Heart True Crime+ and subscribe today. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of SCAM Goddess Podcasts. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Which week I bring on an amazing guest. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to SCAM Goddess on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman, Angel Jaretana, and we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcasts. The improvised character comedy podcast were each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency, and it's not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going. They are playing y'all for foes. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Mathers and her husband, Michael, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to death of an artist on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here. And I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch. If you want, if you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. We live now in a world defined within your total victory of the capitalist class. Their wildest fantasies are inflicted upon us all. They burn the earth we live on and poison the air we breathe to create their hideous mechanical god for the human personification of the housing bubble, orders wars and ethnic cleansings from his garish golden palace, an age in which the words, the genocide, cannot unreasonably be answered with the question, which one demands an explanation? And here I have partial one, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the people who make their money by owning things and stealing the labor of those who work for them have been allowed to rule the world. To ask how this came to be is to ask another question, how did the greatest enemy of the international workers movement come to be so totally destroyed? This is it could happen here, I'm your host, Mia Wong, and that today is our task to chart at least in part the decline and fall of the international workers movement. It is easy to forget that the workers movement wants seem to be the inevitable protagonists of history. As the anthropologist David Graber remarks, the ruling class in Chicago in the late 1800s were so sure of the calling revolution, they built their mansions on a road to the nearest military base. That revolution obviously never came. So what precisely went so wrong to answer this question, we followed the unraveling of two threats that together wove the fabric of the workers movement. The first thread is that of assembly, before anything could be accomplished, it was necessary to create the image of and then the organized reality of the collective worker. It was necessary to assemble the movement to gather the working class together from among its thousand nations and thousand tongues and forge an identity and then a movement that could change the state of things. This alone was a Herkulean task. As the journal end notes points out, class was perhaps the least immediate form of collective identification. Sure, class could be argued to exist on an objective sociological level defined by one's relationship to the means of production, but it does not cause people to speak the same language. In this way, it was easier to adopt other identities, nationality, race, gender, even more localized ethnic backgrounds than it was to believe oneself to be part of a single united working class. And so this became a great task of the workers movement to create an identity capable of displacing or at least joining other forms of identification, which would then allow collective action. But once this identity existed, the movement still had to act and here arose the second problem. What was the workers movement to do once it actually assembled? And this is no simple question. It is in fact one of the questions by which the movement came to be divided against itself. And once that division happened, it became easier to attack the material basis of the formation of the movement itself to destroy the conditions that made the first phase of assembling the collective worker possible. And that is how they did it, how the ruling class maintained its power even with vast wastes of the world, dominantly arrayed against them. They first helped the workers movement divide itself and began to exterminate each other. And then in the world that conflict created, they and the process and unfolding of capitalist history itself began to unravel the movement at its core, to destroy its ability to form the collective identity necessary to even make those mistakes in the first place. So let us begin then, perhaps counterintuitively, with action, for it was here that the workers movement first began to unravel. This unraveling began perhaps paradoxically in what seemed to be the moment of their great triumph. By the end of the 1800s, movement had, in certain places, accomplished the seemingly impossible. They had, in fact, managed to assemble in various forms, a great collective worker. It was an age of confidence, full of the certainty of inevitable, historically ordained victory, of a sense that history inexcerably unfolded towards the victory of the working class. Even in the wake of its defeat in the crushing of the Paris Commune, it had assembled veritable states within a state in places like Germany, with the great social democratic parties and emerging unions built a massive network of cooperative mutual aid. These institutions seemed to be the shell of the new world being birthed in the ashes of the old. And that world seemed to hold great promise. It was a world in which workers administered the schools and daycares and welfare programs themselves, in which they made decisions collectively and democratically, but the movement quickly faced a series of questions of what fundamentally it was going to be. That question, who should actually control the means of production and moreover, what does control actually mean would haunt the movement for its entire history? question, as we have so many questions. what are already stated was really two questions. The first, who should legally and socially own the means of production, which is to say the tools, the factories, everything used to produce things? And thus, who should be able to divide the results of that production? Should the capitalist own the factories and divide its proceeds how he sees fit? Should the state own the factory and do likewise? Should the workers own the factory directly? Should ownership itself be abolished? This is the classical form of what was known in the 1800s as the social question. It is the conflict that has passed down through the generations as the great conflict between capitalism and socialism. The question of who would own the means of production? But there was always another conflict lurking just beneath the surface. How would production actually be organized? Who was making the decisions about how our paper mill is run? Are those decisions made by a boss, or realistically a series of bosses, but we are operating here in a series of abstractions? Is it a boss who answers to the capitalist owner of the company? Is it a different boss who answers to the state? Would workers make decisions collectively? And if so, how? Would they elect their own bosses? Would they vote on their decisions together? Would they begin to form consensus about what should be done and how? This question is significantly less explored, but is perhaps just as crucial as the first. It is not hard to tell why. This question is ignored, liberal democratic capitalists, fascists, social democrats, and Bolsheviks alike would come to the same conclusion. One man rule in the factory, the boss tells you what to do, and you shut up and listen. This was no mere rhetoric. The social democratic parties went to war with their own bases, ripping decision-making power on the shop floor itself away from their unions, and attempting to de-skill those workers, giving that power to managers in the name of efficiency and better building a collective worker. And notes has an account of the German Metal Workers Union doing this precisely to their own Metal Workers, but it was a broad and general process. The Bolsheviks, who had once come to power, under the slogan, and I cannot emphasize this enough, "all power to the Soviets," that is to say, "all power to the workers' councils." Would one year after their revolution be seeing a rather different tune? Here, as I have quoted before in this show, is one of Vladimir Lenin, writing in Prov to a few months after the October revolution, in a piece called the immediate tasks of the Soviet government, "Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labor processes that are based on large-scale machine industry. Today, the revolution demands in the interest of socialism that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labor process." Soviet rule in the factories, then, would be the same as capitalist, fascist, or socialism-ecratic rule. It would be unquestioning submission to a single will of the leaders of the labor process. Thus, the normally socialist state itself would come to be comprised of a nightmare combination of forwardism, dictatorship, and bureaucracy. These decisions in the shop floor had social consequences as well. bureaucracy and dictatorship would characterize all aspects of life in such societies. The welfare state, whether implemented by the Soviets or the social Democrats, would be carried out not by the democratic organization of workers, but by the centralized bureaucratic state. The bureaucratic welfare state, as the anthropologist David Draper points out in his book The Utopia of Rules, was perhaps first implemented by arch-conservative Otto von Bismarck as a very explicit way to buy off the working class. Bismarck himself said of his efforts, quote, "My idea was to bribe the working class, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake, and interested in their welfare." This bureaucracy, the state that Bismarck produced in order to crush the workers movement, increasingly became synonymous with socialism itself. Marx had infamously foretold that it would be the bourgeoisie who produced their own grave diggers. In reality, it was the workers movement that worked tirelessly to produce their own destruction. The war of one man ruled the factory, the clash between democracy and dictatorship on the shop floor would become a key element of destroying the identity of the class itself. And it is to this identity that we need now turn. What is a worker? What was the workers movement itself? This after the break. So let us now turn to the mythical collective worker. This was the worker's movement's interpretation of what Marx described as the class for itself. For Marx, the class existed, so to speak, in two forms. In itself, which is to say that there were objectively in the world a class of people who survival was dependent on selling their own labor. That was the class in itself. But to become the class for itself, that class would have to realize this. It would have to create an identity, although Marx would never have put it in this terms as endless points out. It would have to create a class that was capable of recognizing that it was, in fact, a class and then began to act in its own interests, which, from Marx, although increasingly not for his successors, was to abolish the class system itself. But what did this identity, once it came to be forged, actually looked like from the journal and notes, quote, "supporting workers claims to respect ability was a vision of their destiny with five tenets." One, workers were building a new world with their own hands. Two, in this new world, workers were the only social group that was expanding, whereas all other groups were contracting, including the bourgeoisie. Three, workers were not only becoming the majority of the population. They were also becoming a compact mass, the collective worker, who was being drilled in the factory to act in concert with the machines. Four, they were thus the only group capable of managing the new world in accordance with its innermost logic. Neither a hierarchy of order givers and order takers, nor the irrationality of market fluctuations, but rather an even more finely-grained division of labor. Five, workers were proving this vision to be true, since the class was realizing what it was in a conquest of power, the achievement of which would make it possible to abolish class society and thus bring man's prehistory to a close. These beliefs were at the core of the new identity of the collective worker. A worker being forged every day in the factories, drilled to work together by their constant labor on the assembly line. They were the builders of the new world, and they were its inheritors. But this identity, and the beliefs underlying it, just as all others, had to be constructed, and it had to be assiduously maintained. If the underlying assumptions beneath it proved to be untrue or were challenged by other revelations, everything would begin to fall apart, and even during its opening phases, during the nominal triumph of the movement, that identity was already being undermined. Socialists and Communists did not see that it was only and so far as workers had a hand to determining how production took place, but they were able to identify with their work as what defined who they really were. Once that right and its corresponding experience disappeared, so did the worker's identity. Here we see two crucial elements of this identity threatened simultaneously. Workers in a workplace need to be able to control and make decisions in their workplace. And secondly, on an even more basic level, there had to be large-scale workplaces to begin with. The worker Chris Movement, although with the assistance of the capitalists, was, by the midpoint of the 20th century, well on their way towards extinguishing the ability of workers to have control over their workplaces. And the capitalist class had its sights on the second element, there being a large-scale collective workplace at all. And yet the identity of the collective worker faced other problems. There were, in fact, other identities. And these identities, in some cases, proved to be more real than that of the collective worker. As end-notes and eventually even the most assiduous Marxists were forced to acknowledge, the collective worker, though it should not inherently have been, came to be a quote-unquote respectable man. And that he was a man, despite the attempts both nominal and real of the workers' movement to fight for the rights of women and the rights of people of other genders, stood until the workers' movement's death. This, obviously, is a problem. I need not mention, obviously, what percentage of the population is not, in fact, male. But there was another crisis here, one which the workers' movement would fail to engage in, or rather, its attempts to engage here were insufficient to the necessary task. Now, in the old Marxist schema, there was production, the production of things, under the capitalist context, the production of commodities to be sold on the market. But there was also reproduction, social reproduction. This was another form of labor, in which workers are produced and maintained, in extremely literal senses of the term. We are speaking here of having and raising children, of making food, and washing clothes, of cleaning and doing dishes, of the forms of labor that create and sustain life. And we are speaking of forms of labor, that the male collective worker, broadly, to be somewhat crude, did not give a shit about. It was able to not give a shit about it, because it could assume that that labor would be done by someone else, by classes and genders of people who were excluded from the collective worker, or incorporated into it only selectively. For there are, to take the name of a movement, no wages for housework. This form of production, this form of labor, this social reproduction that makes life in the world possible, that is as much a core of the production and reproduction of capital, as the production of commodities itself, was never renumerated as such. This was as true when socialist period, China, where women were not given work points for the domestic labor they did at home, as it was in the capitalist United States, where women were likewise not paid for the domestic labor that they did at home. These tasks were primarily done, of course, by women. And this was a sphere, into which the capitalists would make a series of attacks by relying on the inattention and ability to divide the class, that were twin characteristics of the sphere of domestic reproduction. When neoliberalism came, it came with Reagan era anti-feminism in homophobia. It came with the one child policy in China. It came, in other words, with massive expansions of the control of the bourgeoisie into the process of domestic reproduction, and there were other problems, of course. The process of domestic reproduction does not produce for capital an unmarked worker. What do I mean by unmarked? To take a non-specific example, I, unfortunately, do not simply get to be a worker. I am, an Asian trans woman, with all of the associated violences, that those identities imply in a world such as this. And this too was a worker of production, just as the worker's movement had to seriously maintain its identity as the worker. No other sectors, assiduously work to produce women through constant, disciplining violence. The totality of the social processes that play were also busy producing race, even being allowed to access to proletariat, itself, being able to reach the status of an exploited wage laborer, and not a debt beyond a sharecropper or a slave, or someone simply exterminated altogether. This was the process of the production of race. It too complicated the simple collective worker, for even joining the exploited working class itself, became a privilege. The suffering of the mere white proletarian was freedom to someone who had been enslaved, and in these distinctions, in these gradiations of violence, in the structural and systemic racism of societies across the world. Here, the constituent elements of the collective worker had other interests. Group workers in the US, instead of attempting to abolish their class, could reap material rewards by working with their employers to maintain segregation. So too, could workers reap the rewards of nationalism. For there were, at least to some extent, real benefits to be found in imperialism, and central colonialism, indeed, many working class theorists in the 1800s in the US, a time in which the contradictions between class and settler identity were perhaps at their most stark belief that the class problems of Europe could be solved in America by simply continuing to steal land from indigenous people and giving it to workers. This violence would be replicated by the socialist states of various stripes, from the Indonesian conquest of West Papua under Sukarno to the settler colonial occupations of Tibet and Xinjiang to, and I did want to attempt to write a list of all of these and simply could not list all of them. The participation of socialist parties and their unions in, effectively every act of colonialism that Europe has ever done. There were good factory jobs in building the bombs of fell over Vietnam, replete with union benefits in healthcare, just as the social democratic parties of the 1910s had succumbed to nationalism, and backed their respective countries and slaughtering each other in World War I. So too, would workers back their nations in a path of untremble butchery, leading to Bosnia. The workers of the world were slaughtering each other. And yet another question would come to haunt the movement. Would these workers even remain workers? It began as we have discussed ad nauseam, to distribute production across massive supply lines, using massive containerized ships to produce parts in one country and ship those parts to another, pitting workers of every country against each other in a fight for a rapidly decreasing number of jobs, the great urban factories that had been at the core of the formation of the workers' movements identity and ability to reproduce itself were likewise replaced by smaller, decentralized rural factories built further from each other to make it more and more difficult for any kind of collective identity to emerge. Worse still, the shift to massive supply chains was accompanied by the transformation of large parts of the working class into contractors or small business owners, lodged in various positions up and down the supply chain. The supply chain would still be controlled by massive corporations, but crucially, it would no longer own the various stages. Instead, portions of what were once workers would become the nominal owners of tiny shops that made one part of a process that would eventually become a larger product, every step meticulously and rigorously controlled by a corporation, but not owned by them. In this way, Nike, as Anna Singh points out in her famous work, Supply Chains in the Human Condition, does not to really actually produce shoes, it simply buys them by setting up a massive production process across a sprawling supply chain, each of which is run by nominally independent companies that are forced to act as contractors. This is offered up as freedom as encouragement of workers to abandon their identity as a collective worker and become business owners themselves. This shift would have a massive impact on both the ability of the worker to form a collective identity and also on the possibility of struggle itself. For this shift would displace the side of struggle, from shop floors owned directly by corporations themselves, to shop floors owned by petty producers who would want simply half-end workers, thus neatly dividing the working class against self. While denying these new nominal small business owners the capital necessary to even accede the demands of their workers, the old class basis of social democracy and the core of the old workers movement was the shattered and single stroke, the combination of the freedom of movement of capital and the unfreeting of movement of labor as we have seen so horrifically in the deportation ethnic cleansing sweeping the United States. Alongside the clash-shattering effects of supply chain management and the transformation of the working class into managers themselves fundamentally shifted the terrain of global class struggle. They wouldn't time become the emergence of the service economy. They would herald the collapse of the industrial proletariat, the mass expulsion of workers in the labor process altogether, in a word the conditions of modernity. But the effect was the same, where once at least some workers were able to claim their part of the identity of the collective worker, now we face the near total atomization of most of the world's population. And yet for all of the bourgeoisie's power, for all that it appeared that their victory was final, that history was over, and that liberal democratic capitalism had triumphed over the world forever. On the very day that NAFTA, the crowning achievement of the bourgeoisie in North America, came into effect. Something else happened. For to misquote the lengths in Hughes' poem, in the 1990s, it was not Lenin who walked across the world. It was Zapata. And so, to borrow the words of the great poet, Zapata walked around the world, black brown and white receive him, language is no barrier, the strangest tongues believe him, Zapata walks around the world. The sun sets like a scar between the darkness and the dawn. Their rises are red star. This could happen here. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and in my new podcast what happened to her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled as suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck because by all rights I should be done. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these grave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. I never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Debris, Lamor and Morris and Nicole Byer. Ooh, I scam them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 1800s, all the way up to today. I also warn you and keep you safe against scammers. Call your grandparents, tell your parents to stop clicking on links, please. If there's a scam, I'm here to protect you. And I'm also here to laugh with you. So if you like fun, if you like comedy, and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Hamza, and I'm Martin, and we're the host of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen to ours? Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world, and we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had, or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious. Or we'll talk about the Med Gala and the looks that they wore. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. Because our opinion matters. And so does yours. And this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect. So what are you waiting for? Come connect with us. Listen to Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's me, Debbie Campbell. This season of my podcast who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly, one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. Everything up to that point, Bill G was a comic. Us going on the road, doing Battle Mountain in Ely. Yeah, you took me, you were one of the first people who took me on the road, which is funny because at the time, I was like, I don't know if I like this guy. With rapper, actor, David Diggs. The jump off for me was Hamilton, and it was the most popular thing in a very long time, but it was still for me, it was me and my friends making something dumb. Bruce Lee's daughter and Brandon Lee's sister, Shannon Lee. Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to Who's With Me with Debbie Campbell on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Mathers, and her husband Michael, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died. By suicide. By the time you get the shalliter of both Petra and I will be dead. Wonderland and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nayvak. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters. As one married couple, trying to understand another. Listen to death of an artist on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At the moment, there's a great deal of discussion about alternative currencies, specifically cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. But there is another form of alternative currency. One that is largely overlooked. I'm talking about local currencies, money that's created and distributed by a local community. Back in the 19th century, banks in America often printed their own currency, backed by gold and silver, and the U.S. Treasury was not involved. The practice started back in pre-revolutionary times when the British did not mint enough silver and copper coins for the colonies. To keep the local economies going, banks printed up paper bills to be used for goods and services and to pay back debts. After the American Revolution, in the 1800s, commercial banks in the U.S. began to issue their own local money in exchange for gold deposits. The dollar bills printed by the banks did not travel far since they could only be redeemed at those same local banks. Trouble arose during the Civil War. When the federal government began to print its own dollar bills, those initial dollars called greenbacks became a common target for counterfeiters. And thus, in the years just after the Civil War, it's estimated that one third of paper money circulating in the U.S. was counterfeit. The chaos created by so much phony money in the U.S. led to the creation of the Secret Service. they protected the press. President, Secret Service Agents, first order of business was protecting the American money supply. Then came the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. That legislation changed the whole monetary picture when it created centralized banking in the United States. That same act also made the U.S. Treasury the sole legal provider of dollar bills. With its passage, local banks stopped printing their own money. There were no more local currencies. The question we consider today is, what if we went back to that old model of local currencies? It's totally possible, and it's not illegal as long as the money you print isn't dollar bills. Most importantly, this movement is already happening. Right now, there are communities all across the country that print their own money. And this keeps more of their money in the hands of the citizens of that community. So would you like to learn how to print your own money? Not only is it legal to make your own money, it's surprisingly easy, and there are multiple ways to do it. For instance, in 1989 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the owner of a restaurant called The Deli needed capital to finance a relocation. And so he issued Deli dollars. For customers who traded $8 of American cash, they received $10 Deli dollars, which could be used at the new location to buy $10 U.S. worth of Deli food. The Deli dollars were essentially a gift certificate. Over in Ithaca, New York, a man named Paul Glover offered local folks paper notes called "hours." They were worth the average hourly wage in their small town, which at the time was $10. Folks in Ithaca could trade those paper notes for goods and services in the community. In both cases, paper notes were printed up, and the new money had a specific value in terms of the U.S. dollar. You can do the same thing. Design some paper notes, print them up. Once you make the physical cash, you invite people to exchange dollar bills for your new notes, and then folks can trade your new money for goods, services, debts, all the same things that you can do with dollar bills. Now it does work better if you can get a local bank to help out with the exchange of U.S. cash for your new money. If the bank is willing to act as the exchange point for the real U.S. Treasury backed currency for your new money, it helps your local currency to earn trust in the community, and for you to handle the accounting. That's how easy it is to start printing your own money. It feels like this should be illegal, but again, it's totally legal to make your own dollar bills, as long as what you print up isn't mistaken for U.S. dollars. That's what keeps your new money from being considered counterfeit cash. As an investigative journalist and podcast host, I've long been curious about the idea of making your own money. So doing what I do best, I track down an expert, a person whose job it is to administer a local currency and ask him everything you'd want to know about printing your own money, the benefits, the challenges, the practical legalities, and I asked about the financial freedom that comes from creating a local currency. We'll get into all of that in this episode. I'm Zaren Burnett from the podcast Ridiculous Crime, and very special episodes, and I'm the guest host for today's episode of It Could Happen Here, How To Print Your Own Money, The Case For Local Currencies. The idea of local currencies has always intrigued me. You see, back in 2010, in my hometown of Davis, California, a guy named Nick Berry created what we're called Davis dollars. They were a local currency meant to benefit the economy of the small college town. Berry's goal was to create a way for the community to have greater control over how money flowed in and out of the town's economy. Davis dollars promised to keep more money in the hands of its citizens and small business owners. The idea was well intended, but the adoption of the alternative paper currency was not what you would call robust. Yeah, it was, you know, and I won't say a big deal, I mean, it's in the local paper a couple of times, so we got good play. I don't know if the TV stations in Sacramento did a piece on it. They probably did do a piece or two. If somebody got a hold of them, they probably didn't find it on their own. But yeah, the rule I was was, you know, I think most people knew about it. That's Bob Dunning. You could call him the voice of Davis for 54 years. He was a columnist for the Davis Enterprise newspaper. As such, he reported on what all was newsworthy in our sleepy college town. And now, keeping with the times, Dunning has his own newsletter in which he continues to comment on what he's lovingly dubbed the People's Republic of Davis. As the respected chronicleer of our town, naturally, Dunning has some thoughts about Davis dollars. So he can't remember ever writing about the alternative currency. Not unless they paid me. You know, I don't think I did. I may have made passing restaurants. Like, well, I better pull out my Davis dollars and go to buy a little, buy a slurpy, buy a stoco in a literally game or something. So only in passing reference because I like the eliteration. When asked if he remembers ever spending one or if he ever saw an actual Davis dollar, Dunning recalled, "Ah, man, making a Christmas stocking. Uh, I don't think I actually saw one." Well, Davis dollars may have failed to capture the imagination of the townsfolk and students of Davis. This had less to do with the promise of a local currency and more to do with the timing. Davis dollars was launched in 2010. At that same time, the world was still mired in the economic downturn of the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009, which meant folks weren't looking for novel new ways to spend money. They were looking for ways to save the money they still had. Basically, it was a rough time to launch a new form of money. Absolutely. It's the worst time to do anything. We hear it with COVID now. Well, everything changed with COVID and it did. Right. It's poor timing. Dunning does agree that as an alternative currency, Davis dollars, "It sounds like a good idea. It sounds like a clever idea, but so many small businesses are on such a margin. So, I think that hurt it a little bit. And so carrying a Davis dollar that you could only spend in downtown Davis, you could go anyplace else with it, and even some merchants were reluctant to be part of the program. I think it was ultimately doomed." The failure of Davis dollars to win over the people is less of a critique of the potential of local currencies and instead, a real world example of the challenges a community faces when they decide to make their own money. If you plan to launch an alternative currency, timing and practicality are key. It needs to serve a real need. It can't just be theoretically attractive. To investigate a far more successful real world example of a local currency, we spoke with Peter La Rochelle. So I work at the Schumacher Center where a non-profit think and do tank based out of Agramont Massachusetts. So my primary responsibility with the Schumacher Center is to administer our local currency program. To walk us through the house and wise of printing your own money, Peter La Rochelle is here to discuss the vast potential and the practical realities of making your own money. Who better to explain the value of printing your own money than someone whose job it is to do just that? The local currency he administers is called "Burkshares," which is an on-the-ground example of a local currency right here in the Berkshire region that the Schumacher Center helped found. A local currency was a savvy way to keep more of their economic power in the area rather than seeing money flow in and then quickly flow right back out. The Berkshire's program was started back in 2006, and 20 years later it's still going strong. The credit for that belongs to the Schumacher Center for a new economics, which was founded by E.F. Schumacher back in 1980. The think and due tank, as Peter La Rochelle called it, advocates for a new form of economics. It's right there in the name. Its founder, E.F. Schumacher, believed in something he called "an economy of permanence." According to the Schumacher Center's website, "In today's global economy, national currencies have had the effect of centralizing ownership of wealth and of widening the gap between rich and poor, all the while undermining local communities, devastating indigenous peoples, and polluting the environment." Standing in opposition to this global trend is the Schumacher Center, and a key tool to bring more economic power and independence to communities is a local currency. As their website argues, "Besentralized regional currencies are an important counter-force working to redistribute wealth more broadly while supporting unique regional identities, cultures, and communities." Back to Peter La Rochelle. I think people want to feel like they have a say in the systems that dictate their lives. All of the Schumacher Center's projects that they've helped found and they support are democratic, people-based projects that run by nonprofits that are members of the community that run these projects, whether it's local currencies or community land trusts. or any other project. The idea really is that people should be able to have a say in the communities they live in. I know this may sound like some weird libertarian crypto nonsense, but as we'll explain it is a totally different thing. And to that point, Peter LaRochelle would like to assure you that the Schumacher Center is very much a capitalist idea. I think the way Berk shares the structure should reflect capitalism at its best. We absolutely believe in for-profit enterprise private ownership of businesses, and we believe that when it's done right, that's what makes a community thrive. What the Berk shares program seeks to disrupt is the concentration of wealth. The trouble with centralized wealth is that it's typically controlled by people with no connection to a local community. That's why the Berk shares program acts as a bulwark against the conglomeration of businesses that- "Only speak to the values of shareholders who want to see more and more and more profits over time." A local currency is a tool created to minimize the outsized power of billionaires, private equity, and stockholder-focused banking interests. Because quite simply put, their monetary interests are often what- "Sucks the life out of communities." In stark contrast to that dynamic, a local currency becomes a means for a community to tend to their own economic garden, so to speak. And that's why, as an alternative currency, it's meant to work in conjunction with the US treasury, not as a means to replace it. Or, as Peter LaRochelle puts it, "Businesses are taking Berk shares the same way they would regular US dollars, and they do it to make a profit. So I don't think there's anything so dissimilar about Berk shares compared to regular capitalist systems other than that we're prioritizing the little guys and individual communities." And really, a thriving capitalist business scene on your main streets and business corridors that are supported by a ton of different people and small businesses that fill in all the niche needs in their communities. The Schumacher Center defines a local currency as an umbrella term for any sort of currency that is place-based and intended to build a more sustainable or resilient local economy. So those are two key aspects to it. And I can think of examples that make this distinction clear. For example, a currency might be place-based, but if it's not intended to build a sustainable local economy, we don't call it a local currency. Ultimately, this is what separates a local currency from, say, a cryptocurrency, which technically is another form of alternative currency. As Peter La Rochelle explains, this distinction was made clear during. "The crypto craze of the early 2020s, one such cryptocurrency was called Miami Coin. It was place-based in that when people mined the Miami Coin, some percentage of the value that was created went to a wallet owned by the city of Miami. So, in a way, it produced wealth for the city of Miami. It's place-based. It's in the name, Miami Coin. But it's certainly not about creating a sustainable or resilient local economy. It was speculative. It didn't really even represent a real currency in that it couldn't be used to purchase goods or services within Miami or within any other region. It was purely speculative." Another form of alternative currency, one that is quite different from crypto, is the far older concept of script or company dollars. For example, in coal country, there used to be company towns. For their local money, they had something called script. It was a form of currency that coal workers and their families could use to buy things from the company store. Which, as Peter La Rochelle points out, that's. "The place-based currency, but it is not about building a sustainable community or community economy. We would never refer to that kind of thing as a local currency. And certainly, we would never try to model a system after that." Conversely, what the Berkshire's program is designed to do is to give their community more control of their local economics. You see, a Berkshire is seen as a form of power, handing the power of a dollar back to the people, rather than handing that power over to the banks. "Well, what comes to mind when I think of money having power is the ability for money to create more money. Where take your money and you store it in some investment account, off the mill and nowhere. And once you generate enough money, you can just keep generating more and more and more." Berkshire's does not work like that. Berkshire's is power. It's power on an individual level to shape your community. So money, the power in money is not about who you can influence or how much wealth you can generate for your own personal game. The power behind Berkshire's is more about where you're spending your money and what kind of money you're spending. How does that impact the people around you? How does that impact your community? And that's in a way, something that feels lost in traditional currency. People don't think twice about where it goes, where it came from, or who it's supporting. Whereas with Berkshires, their local currency makes that same power of money manifest and highly visible for the local community. They know where their money is going and what good it's doing for their community. Berkshires are play space and they bring it back to those values of supporting a local economy and local resources for local needs. So I think that it flips power on its head by making people think not what money can do for yourself and what kind of wealth you can generate for yourself and where you can store your money to be able to influence the right people, but rather it's about empowering you and your fellow community members to shape the kind of community you want to see. Since money is a form of power, a local currency is a way to take some of your power back. Well, local currencies may come off like some brand new idea like crypto. And while it's advocates may pitch it as the sort of economic idea that Bernie bros could get behind and that aging hippies could equally love, a local currency is primarily a means for community members of all ages and walks of life to more meaningfully engage in the economic life in their cities, towns and hamlets. And as the local currencies of the 18th and 19th centuries prove, this idea is not new. Also, it's not unique to the United States. During the Great Depression over in Austria, a small town called Virgo was having a tough time. Unemployment was rampant, debts were skyrocketing, and infrastructure was falling apart. The town desperately needed money to combat all three issues, so they introduced a local currency called labor certificates. That Hail Mary Economic Act saved the town. Unemployment fell by 25% at the same time that it was rising by 19% across the rest of Austria. The secret to their success was that this new form of money stayed in their town as it circulated, thus their introduction of this local currency blunted the devastating impacts of their Great Depression. This unexpected success became known as the Miracle of Virgo. Unfortunately, when the town's mayor shared stories of their success at a meeting of 170 other mayors, the central bank of Austria caught wind of it and outlawed their local currency. Guess they saw this local currency as too much of a threat for their business model of debt and centralized banking. More recently, in 1972, a man named Ralph Borsati created a local alternative currency experiment in Exeter New Hampshire called the Constant. It was called the Constant because it was a citizen-issued currency backed by an index of world commodities to give the local currency real purchasing power and to keep that purchasing power constant as the years went on. Unfortunately, due to the ill-health of Ralph Borsati, his experiment with local currencies had to be discontinued. However, the spirit of this idea remained vital, particularly in the New England area where the Berkshares program would come to be decades later. Meanwhile, overseas particularly in Europe, the idea of a local currency remained quite popular. In 2015, it was estimated that there were nearly 400 local currencies circulating in Spain. And in the UK, there's a local currency called the Brixton Pound. Here on the west coast of the United States where I live, we've seen a number of local currencies over the years. There's the aforementioned Davis Dollars from my hometown, and down in the area of California near Yosemite National Park, there's a local currency called the North Fork Share, which is similar to the Berkshares notes. Up in Oregon, back during the Great Depression, the town of North Bend saved their local economy by minting wood-based coins called "Mertle Wood Money". Around that same time in the town of Hepner, Oregon, locals created their own local currency printed on sheepskin. But once the Great Depression passed, those local currencies were no longer necessary. At the present moment, our economy may not be as bad as the Great Depression, but the power of a local currency to protect a local community remains the same. As Peter Larochelle points out, "The values that are guiding systems like Berkshares, honestly, often feel amplified in the modern age, where people are starting to recognize the disconnect that they feel through modern systems, whether that's digitally, or a more globalized economy when. their communities don't have identity. I mean, there's almost a romanticization of the past right now. I'm seeing a lot in the urbanist field. It's very trendy right now. But it's because people are looking back at the time where they felt like communities had a real identity and individuality and strength of their own. And people want to see a future like that. And I don't think there are many tools quite as unique as a local currency to inspire people and create that hope and make people feel like the direction of their community is in their hands. In order for a local community to grab hold of the wheel and steer their community through the rough economic seas ahead, La Rochelle believes that a local currency is one of the greatest tools available. That's the beauty of a local currency, is that we're not talking about big systems change on the individual level. We're just talking about where is your money going? For a system, small nonprofit can oversee it. That takes some work, but on the individual level, you're creating change in your community just with where you spend your dollar and what kind of dollar you're using, which is something that I think a lot of people can latch on to. Like I said, I think I'm seeing a lot of movement within this country for people to do things more on a community level, on a face-to-face basis, and on a human scale, really. And that's where local currencies shine. It's human scale. It's about a region. It's not about growth for the sake of growth. As a thriving example of a local currency, the Berkshares program has enjoyed 20 years of success. The simple reason for its success is that it works well as a form of money. Let's check the numbers. There are currently 111,000 Berkshares in circulation. There are more than 300 local businesses that accept Berkshares as a form of payment. Here's Peter LaReshelle to explain how it all works on the local level. So Berkshares are exchanged on par with US dollars. So it's $1 for one Berkshaer. There's no secret reason to use Berkshares beyond supporting your local economy. So let's say you want to spend a Berkshaer. How exactly does that work? The way Berkshares work is anyone in the community can walk into one of our exchange points, which happen to be community banks. People walk into the bank, go up to the teller, and just do a transaction like they would any other time they walk into a bank. They ask for the teller to exchange US dollars for Berkshares. And they do it pretty seamlessly. And once they have Berkshares, they can spend them in any business it's willing to take them. When you use a Berkshaer to buy something or to pay for a service, it's designed to be a painless exchange. There's no weird or wonky extra math to do since a Berkshaer has the same value as US dollars. So an item that costs $10 would cost 10 Berkshares. Consumers can spend with that business in Berkshares, get their change in Berkshares or US dollars. Note that we do not have coins because it's against the law, but you are allowed to have paper notes. So if people need change in coins, they just get regular US coinage. And then when the business receives that Berkshaer, they have two options. They can bring it back to the bank or they can go and spend it elsewhere in the community at other businesses that are willing to accept Berkshares. Now, what happens when that business wants to exchange a Berkshaer and convert it back into US dollars? Is that equally painless? So business could take it back to the bank and then they would have freedom with their US dollars to spend that money wherever they want. So that's probably the easiest decision. There is a one-time transaction fee to convert a Berkshaer back into US dollars, but that cost is exceedingly low. - We do have a 1.5% reverse exchange fee. So when you're obtaining Berkshares, there's no fee, but if you're trading Berkshares back for cash, there is that 1.5% exchange fee. So that's lower than what businesses are used to, whether that's with credit cards or with mobile payment platforms like Venmo when they cash out. So it's not this massive barrier to participating in Berkshares, but it's a number that's high enough to make them think, maybe I would just be better spending them in the community rather than bringing it to the bank. - In other words, that 1.5% fee to convert a Berkshaer back into a dollar is meant to encourage a community member or a business to continue circulating the Berkshaer in the local economy for other goods or services. - And the reason that we support that is because we know when they're not bringing the Berkshares back to the bank, that money has to stay in the community and it stays within that tight network of local businesses that decide to take Berkshares. And it also encourages new businesses to sign on because maybe when business gets some good that they're selling, they do get locally and they say, I have all these Berkshares would you be willing to accept them and then you get more people on board that way. So that's as simple as it gets, we call that recirculation of Berkshares the local multiplier effect. - This local multiplier effect is another major reason for the success of Berkshares. A local currency holds the power to generate two to four times more local economic impact than say traditional money that gets spent at some big box store. - Study after study will show that spending your money at independent, small, locally based businesses will generate considerably higher proportion of downstream economic effects within that local economy. By keeping their dollars in their local economy thanks to their local currency, the people of the Berkshares region strengthen their local businesses and protect the area from economic troubles that are wrecking shop in the larger economy. - That's really the selling point for Berkshares. So on your end, you bought a $5 item for $5 or five Berkshares but your purchase is a little bit more power within your community. So you feel more empowered as a consumer to create local economic development. This is also the key distinction for a Berkshares versus say Bitcoin or other crypto coins. - A local currency is play space and it's meant to build a sustainable local economy. So a cryptocurrency could be either one of those things but in general, cryptocurrencies are speculative. Bitcoin, dogecoin, Miami coin, which we mentioned earlier, those are speculative. The purpose of cryptocurrencies is not to invest in your community even in large geographic areas. It's about personal financial gain and often they're not even treated as currencies. They're not used to exchange goods. They're used to hold and then sell one more people by them and the price goes up. - Which raises an interesting question. Could a local currency like Berkshares issue its own cryptocurrency? One that is specifically designed for the same local community usage? - We did have a digital currency in a beta form in mid to late 2022. There were a lot of benefits to the app. We were bringing in a lot of new businesses. It didn't really want to deal with the paper currency but we're happy to deal with a more frictionless platform. We saw a lot of people get excited over the fact that they could use Berkshares without always having to walk into a bank. It was as easy as taking out their phone and scanning a QR code. But there were many things that needed to be fixed within the app and sort of systemic things that made it not sustainable at that time, including the cost of maintaining the app. So we do want to restart a mobile payment platform with Berkshares and other digital ways to use them. But we only want to do it if we're doing it exactly right. We don't want to roll out a product that is not meeting the needs in the community. - This leads to another key question. These days, who is still using paper money for their purchases? Well, we already know the answer to that, older generations. So does that limit the impact of Berkshares if younger people are less likely to use cash as a form of money? - Speaking to generational gaps, in general, we find that Berkshares are used more often in older populations, people who are more familiar with the nature of walking into a bank or even just using physical currency and keeping that on their person at all times. That is admittedly getting a bit antiquated and especially ever since early 2020s, where it seems like every sort of digital platform, whether it's payment or even doing business digitally by purchasing things online, we find that younger people are using those platforms who are often and are many of them have never even walked into a bank in their whole lives. So that's where we start to see a generational gap, where there's a lot of friction for a young person to use Berkshares because doing those kinds of things are not part of their daily life, they're not used to it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) While young folks aren't as likely to step into a bank to exchange dollars for Berkshares, they do tend to notice them when someone else spends them in a local business. The reason is immediate, it's the artwork that colors a Berkshare note. On each denomination of Berkshares, there's a different local hero who's celebrated, both for their value to the community and to our American culture writ large. For instance, on the $50 Berkshare note, you find a portrait of Norman Rockwell, a legendary artist whose artwork itself, I think, fits a lot of the themes of Berkshares. It's the inclusive of everyone. There's no sector of American life that hasn't been touched by Norman Rockwell's artwork in some form or no kind of person who hasn't been represented in some form. So Norman Rockwell is natural for including the Berkshares in that sense, but also Norman Rockwell has a long history in the Berkshares, hundreds and hundreds of his paintings were made at his studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which is in Berksha County, just north of Great Barrington. The Norman Rockwell Museum is in Stockbridge and his legacy plays a really foundational role in Berksha history and people often drive down through Stockbridge or even other Berksha towns and say, wow, this town looks like it's straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And at least in the town of Stockbridge, that's because it is directly out of a Norman Rockwell painting. So we honor that history by featuring them on the $50 Berkshares and of course also honor the themes of his artwork as well, which often centered on small town life and the beauty of personal relationships at the local level. For the $20 Berkshares note, the Schumacher Center opted to celebrate another famous son of New England, who's also another world famous American. We feature Herman Melville author of Mobey Dick. Herman Melville did not grow up in Berksha County, but he eventually moved here because he found inspiration in the natural landscape of the Berkshares. He settled down at Arrowhead or what is now Arrowhead in Pittsfield, which at this point is a museum, but at Arrowhead, that was his workplace and in fact, one of my favorite hiking spots in Berksha County at Monument Mountain in Great Barrington and Herman Melville frequented Monument Mountain to gain inspiration for his ratings. And I think that's really cool that Herman Melville found that same inspiration in the Berkshares landscape that so many people who come here every day feel. So we honor his history and the Berkshares on the $20 Berkshares. Just for the $10 Berkshares note, it celebrates a hero of the local agriculture movement. If you've ever taken part in community-supported agriculture, who you've ever signed up to receive a CSA box of fresh produce, you have Robin Van N to thank. Robin Van N founded the first community-supported agriculture project in North America. Her work created a movement out of it. Now we find hundreds and hundreds of farms across the country using a CSA model to raise money before the growing season and lock in capital. And instead of having to pay it back with loans with ridiculous interest rates, they just pay back that money with really delicious food that they grow. We of course honor that history because it's so related to our mission of community-supported industry more broadly, community-supported agriculture would fall into that umbrella. So she's on the $10 Berkshares notably her CSA farm was located in Berksha County. It was in the town of Egremont. It still exists for Robin Van N passed away unexpectedly at a pretty young age. But the farm still has a thriving CSA program. It's on community land trust land. So there's a lot of connections with her legacy in the Schumacher Center. Next up we have the $5 Berkshares note, which features a local artist portrait of. W.E.B. Du Bois, which is actually a, I think, a really inspiring story out of the Berkshares organization. W.E.B. Du Bois has really become the face of the town of Great Barrington and has been recognized as the son of the town. You'll find throughout Great Barrington there are all sorts of murals and landmarks and historical sites that recount his history and are dedicated to your murals that include his face. The middle school actually has been renamed to W.E.B. Du Bois Regional middle school. And it feels like every month there's some new project in town to further honor and educate people on his history. Recently, Statue of W.E.B. Du Bois was added outside the Great Barrington Library, Mason Library. So, in general, the town has taken on a much more active role in honoring his history. But Berkshares has been doing that for a long time. So, we're glad to have played a role in changing that perception and getting the town to more actively celebrate his history. And lastly, for the $1 Berkshares note, rather than celebrate an individual, the Schumacher Center opted to celebrate a whole community. It's the only Berkshares that doesn't feature a specific individual, but it does feature a stockbridge-mohican, the Mohicans were not actually native to the Berkshares region, but they were pushed over here during colonial times. And I think it's an interesting story because nowadays they actually look back to the Berkshares as their homeland in a way, even though it wasn't necessarily where they all came from originally. But the Mohicans were one of the only Native American tribes that fought alongside the revolutionaries and the revolutionary war. But of course, they were pushed out of the Berksha region eventually. But there is still an active presence with some local groups to maintain their history in the Berkshares. And we hope that Berkshares is one small part in doing that to remind people of the people that were here before us. Due to the 20-year success story of the Berkshares program, other communities across the country and around the world often approach the Schumacher Center for help to design, create and distribute their own local currency. We are kind of that go-to institution for people that want to learn how to start their own currencies or other similar systems. And the number one challenge that I bring up to them, challenge, but also what we see is the most important thing for obtaining success with a local currency in the United States would be working with community banks. Berkshares is very unique in that we do not exchange currency ourselves. You don't walk into a Berkshares office and trade in dollars for Berkshares. You walk into a community bank. In general, when you're working with a small community bank, they have all the infrastructure needed to account for a currency. This is equally key for the success of a local currency since it is money and it's important that people have full faith and trust in their money. To build trust in that system, you can't tell people I'm keeping track of how much money is wear and I'll be able to make sure you can always trade your money back in. That's not going to build trust, but when you're doing it through an institution like a bank that has the resources to just manage Berkshares like they do any other account. So it's not a crazy load on their part. That's how a system like Berkshares can thrive for so many years. If this sounds good to your ears and if you'd like to see something like this in your local community, Peter LaRose-Shell has a few recommendations for how to make it happen. So if you're looking to start a local currency in the United States, the challenge you're going to have to face, but also probably gives you the best opportunity for long term success, is finding banking institutions that you can work with and work out of that share your mission. You're not going to be able to work out of the Bank of America. This should surprise no one, much like the Austrian local currency that saved the town but was outlawed when the central bank heard about its success. In today's banking world, a major transnational bank like Bank of America has similar reasons to not want to see the success of a local currency. It offers direct competition for their bottom line, which is what matters most to big banks back to Peter LaRose-Shell. I say that all the time, if those are the only banks in your community, you might have to explore other options because they don't want to get involved with initiatives like this. You have to work with the kinds of banks that share your mission and you can work through a credit union perhaps or in the Northeast. We have mutual banks that are operating similarly to a credit union, but still they're the small community-focused banks that actually have ownership within the community, so they're more likely to sign on on an initiative like this, and since they share your mission of local economic development, that's also an easy sell. Norman Rockwell, who was mentioned earlier, celebrated small-town life and a local-based idea of Americana, and as such, his work serves as a reminder of the importance of embracing a local identity as a point not just of pride of place, but as a source of community power in order to survive those storms that blow in from far away places and threaten a community. Norman Rockwell serves as a beautiful reminder of the past, and also what lessons we can pull from our history. The people that we feature on the Berkshire's, like Norman Rockwell or W.E.B. Du Bois. These are people who everyone in a community can rally behind and can share something with. We're speaking to shared values that I think Americans across the political spectrum, Americans across generations that they share. People want to see a vibrant, thriving local economy within their community, and that's what we are ultimately looking for, and what's more American than teaming up with neighbors from any background, from all identities to identify shared values, and do work together to achieve that community and vision that you want to see. That's the American dream and a nutshell. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly rolled a suicide. [BLANK_AUDIO] starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. - Stories of survival. - The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck. Because by all rights, I should be dead. - Cases that everyone else called closed. - They can't convict her, right? - These stories all start in the same place. With a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. And we were babies. - She did all of these grave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year. - I never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise. - Listen to what happened to her on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. - I'm Hamza and I'm Martin and we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. - I know, there's a lot of them to listen to these days. How are you gonna get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. - We are the best podcast in the entire world. I swear. - I know, bold. But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? - So sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. - And how nice they were or if we tip them or not, come and find out. - Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about, trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground or drama music or TV shows or the Med Gala and what the actors wore. What we're saying is we're not afraid to talk about everything under the sun. And if you wanna see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out, anyone, wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods or wherever you get your podcasts. - I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, standup, comedian, creator and host of SCAM Goddess Podcasts. - The True Crime Comedy Podcasts, all about robbery, fraud and those who practice it. - Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Debris, Lamor and Morris and Nicole Byer. - Ooh, I scammed them. - What? - I could talk to you for an hour. - You're a generational yapper, like me. - That's why I had to make yapping a job. - And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 1800s. All the way up to today. So if you like fun, if you like comedy, and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to SCAM Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. SCAM Goddess. - Hey, everybody, it's me, Debbie Kompel. This season of my podcast, who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. - Everything up to that point, Bill G. was a comic. Us going on the road, doing Battle Mountain and Ely. - Yeah, you took me, you were one of the first people who took me on the road. Which is funny, 'cause at the time, I was like, I don't know if I like this guy. (laughing) With rapper, actor, David Diggs. - The jump off for me was Hamilton, and it was the most popular thing in a very long time. But it was still for me, it was me and my friends making something dumb. - Bruce Lee's daughter and Brandon Lee's sister, Shannon Lee. - Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. - Listen to who's with me with Debbie Kompel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. - In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Mathers, and her husband Michael, nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. - By the time you get to shredder both Petra and I will be dead. - Patre and Michael were by all accounts, healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? - I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. - I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan. - Do you think of him as having killed her? - Yes, I do. - I'm Leon Nayvak. - And I'm Alice Gregory. Together, we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters. - Listen to death of an artist on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - If money makes the world go round, delivery workers make New York City go round. From delivering morning coffee to sweet green bowl slop or midnight Taco Bell, food delivery workers shuttle snacks and treats 24/7 via bicycle and scooter. While a network of last mile couriers fill my apartment lobby with Amazon packages. Seriously, one of my new more well-off neighbors must like never go to the store. They get every single thing delivered. I'm talking almost 10 Amazon packages a day for the same person. But there's an odd little quirk with how Amazon transports orders from the fulfillment center to your doorstep. In that, they don't. The worker delivering your Amazon package may be wearing an Amazon vest, driving an Amazon van and peeing in a water bottle so they don't fall behind on a delivery route scheduled by Amazon. But technically, that worker is not employed by Amazon. They work for a subcontractor, which Amazon calls a delivery service partner or a DSP. Why might that be? Picture this. A hurricane is rolling into town, but Amazon still needs to deliver those prime two-day orders. While drivers are in the middle of their route, the storm suddenly gets worse. And a driver gets into a bad accident. Because that driver is technically employed by a subcontractor, Amazon isn't responsible for the well-being of the worker and can't be held liable for any damages. Then let's say those drivers unionize due to dangerous working conditions. Rather than negotiate with the union, Amazon can just terminate their contract with the delivery service partner. I'm Garrison Davis and this is, it could happen here. And this is one of those, this is already happening type stories and actually has been for some time. But now people are organizing to do something about it. About a year ago, the teamsters teamed up with Democratic Socialist New York City Council member Tiffany Caban to introduce Bill 05182026, also known as the Delivery Protection Act, which, among other things, would require companies like Amazon to actually employ the drivers and warehouse workers who handled the so-called last mile of delivery, getting your package from the local warehouse to your doorstep. The bill was reintroduced this past February and for the past few months, the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialist of America have been organizing to push the bill over the finish line. My name's Pamoreska, Olivia and I are both on the labor working group organizing committee for NYC DSA. I am the legislative coordinator, the labor legislative coordinator for the group. I'm Olivia and I serve on both the labor working group organizing committee as well as the steering committee for the entire chapter. Currently, anyone you see delivering packages in New York City to you, to your apartment building, to your house, wearing the Amazon vest, with the Amazon truck, all of those people are subcontractors. They work out of what are called delivery service providers or your BSPs and these, again, kind of basic subcontractors, but the problem with that model is that Amazon does that to avoid all accountability either to their workers or to the city. So anytime that workers express dissatisfaction with working conditions or seem like they're organizing because of those conditions, or if the city is noticing that one of these DSPs is causing way more accidents on the road than other providers of delivery. Anything like that happens and they start, people start looking into one of these DSPs, Amazon will just cut their contract with the subcontractor and say, that wasn't us, that was Matt Mareska, LLC or Garrison Davis, LLC, and nothing to do with me. It sounds silly, but it's actually pretty strong legal defense, apparently. The Delivery Protection Act seeks to change all that. The bill would require last mile delivery facilities to obtain a license from the Department of Consumer Worker Protection and establish a minimum safety training and worker protection standards. But the big thing this bill would do is force Amazon and other companies that use third party contractors to directly employ their delivery and warehouse workers. According to the office of Mayor Zora Mamdani, the Delivery Protection Act would give the city the tools to regulate. late last mile operations and ensure major companies like Amazon are responsible for their workers and the consequences of the business decisions they make. So what this bill does is mandate that any package delivery service from Amazon or another large logistical company coming into New York City has to directly employ drivers. So that means all of these drivers now in those vests in those Amazon trucks need to be directly employed by Amazon, which means that Amazon is both directly responsible for any problems that cause them road or their emissions or things like that. And also means that if their workers start organizing, Amazon can't just cut them all into place with different people nearly as easily. So beyond that, that's the main bulk of it. It also does give workers extra protections for expressing their organizing rights on the job. So it gets close to giving them what we might call just cause protections on the job, although it's not quite that strong. But that means it's much harder for them to be fired for speaking up. And it also allows for independent safety inspectors to go into these warehouses and provide the education you to make sure the drivers safe and also New Yorkers are safe when they're delivering their packages. So it's really a holistic bill to regulate Amazon in the city and especially make sure that the workers are protected and have their rights to organize protected. And that protection is really important because right now, if a delivery driver gets hurt or gets into an accident, because those drivers technically work for a quote third party, Amazon can't be reliable, even when it's Amazon who orders quote delivery service partners to send out drivers in dangerous weather conditions. A Bloomberg investigation from earlier this year detailed a series of such incidents with a delivery service partner in Southern California. In summer of 2022, Amazon complained to the DSP that drivers were falling behind on their schedule while temperatures reached 107 degrees. The DSP manager told an Amazon rep that Amazon failed to apply their own policy on easing workloads during extreme heat. But the Amazon rep responded by saying it was too late to change the day's delivery assignments and the manager would need a written affidavit to prove that workers were too sick to perform and Amazon threatened breach of contract if packages were delayed later that winter during a historic storm. An Amazon rep told this DSP that quote delivery must be attempted, despite flash flooding, road closures and grounded flights. So drivers were dispatched out of fear that Amazon might terminate their DSP contract. But then a few months later, their contract was cut anyway after the workers tried to form a union. And this is not an isolated incident. Per Bloomberg, the teamsters have filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Amazon of terminating contracts with several DSPs because the workers unionized. Just a few weeks before the delivery protection act was introduced last year, Amazon fired over 150 unionized delivery drivers in Queens by cutting ties with the third party delivery service partner. Even calling DSPs quote third parties is misleading because they don't operate as such. Everything about how they run is controlled by Amazon. Through a FOIA request, Bloomberg was able to obtain thousands of pages of confidential Amazon records related to an NLRB case against Amazon for firing that DSP in California after its workers unionized. A case, by the way, that was settled in favor of Amazon after Trump appointed a former Amazon lawyer to serve as National Labor Relations Board General Counsel. But that's another episode. Per Bloomberg, these confidential company documents quote, lay bear, Amazon's intimate and intensive regulation of workers, it insists aren't its employees, including governing which drivers DSPs can hire when they work, what they wear, what they say, how they smell and much more. Amazon requires that DSPs make drivers sign non-disclosure agreements and take drug tests when an Amazon rep deems appropriate. On the job, drivers are required to wear Amazon polos and Amazon pants or shorts with the options of an Amazon hat never to be worn backward and in Amazon coat. Amazon also requires that drivers be quote neat and clean, including quote, prevention of unpleasant breath or body odor, modest perfume slash clone, and clean teeth face slash ears, fingernails and hair, unquote. If Amazon isn't satisfied with a particular driver, it can quote deactivate them, unilaterally terminating their authorization to deliver its packages. According to company records, Amazon also formulates performance rankings of DSP drivers and creates leaderboards for each DSP owner, ranking each of their staff. Amazon's systems also use bright, yellow, orange or red to mark quote, areas where a driver has spent excessive amounts of time. Amazon also controls AI powered cameras in driver's vans, which are supposed to flag unsafe driving. Drivers say the cameras can tag them with undue infractions, for yawning or drinking water, or just having breasts that obscure their seatbelt. Unquote. And because of the high delivery quotas, drivers are still routinely forced to pee in bottles to meet their assigned deliveries. And due to these new AI powered cameras, some drivers are forced to move around Amazon boxes to block the cameras from seeing their genitals before peeing. Amazon also has the live location of all of their drivers. And if something goes wrong, those drivers are supposed to call a hotline operated by Amazon, not the delivery service provider. Amazon offers DSP's templates for job listings and has to approve each new hire, who is then required to attend a multi-day training program, also facilitated by Amazon. According to these internal company documents, Amazon outlines seven steps drivers must follow for a successful delivery and instruct drivers to quote, help validate the customer's investment by greeting them with a smile, being enthusiastic, and thanking the customer for choosing Amazon. Unquote. And again, Amazon insists that these drivers do not in fact work for Amazon, even though Amazon tells these DSPs that these drivers, quote, represent Amazon to our customers. Bloomberg interviewed a dozen drivers from various DSPs who described these subcontractors as essentially shell companies that quote, force Amazon's extreme rules, constant surveillance, and grueling quotas that in some urban areas can reach thirty stops an hour. One says her DSP manager suggested a funnel that she could use to pee into a bottle in her van. Others say their managers told them they must precisely follow any route Amazon's software lays out for them, even if it makes no sense to help the algorithm learn. Amazon says that such characterizations are quote false algorithmic management is a big part of this model. How else could Amazon manage hundreds of thousands of drivers across thousands of allegedly independent subcontractors? Amazon plugs all the surveillance data from location tracking delivery metrics and live cameras into an AI, which creates evolving minimum efficiency standards to apply to all workers, like a form of digital Taylorism. Contrast that with the teamsters, UPS union, who in their last contract, banned inward facing surveillance cameras and prohibited UPS from disciplining drivers solely based on GPS data, algorithmic metrics, or surveillance technology, meaning workers can't get punished just for falling below an algorithmically projected quota. And if they do, they can file a grievance. But essentially this subcontracted last mile DSP model allows Amazon to maximize delivery speed without having to worry about the workers well-being and the safety of both the drivers themselves and the neighborhoods on the delivery routes. Amazon gets to pass the buck to these quote third party subcontractors. This whole last mile scheme is just a method to evade accountability for underpaying workers while forcing them to work at an excruciating pace in unsafe conditions. (upbeat music) There are thousands of DSP subcontractors with hundreds of thousands of drivers delivering your Amazon packages all across the country. In the past few years, last mile delivery facilities have rapidly expanded in New York City. Since 2017, 18 such facilities have opened across New York City, 11 of them since 2020, driven by the pandemic era e-commerce boom. In 2017, about 1.1 million packages were delivered every day in the city. By 2024, that number more than doubled to 2.5 million packages per day, indicating that nearly a third of New Yorkers receive packages on a daily basis. According to a report by the city controller between 2022 and 2024, more than 2,000 severe workplace injuries at last mile facilities were reported to OSHA. The injury rate at Amazon DSPs was nearly five times higher than the national average. And after these last mile facilities opened, surrounding areas saw a 137% rise in truck injury crashes. Currently, there are seven ongoing investigations into these third party last mile facilities by the Department of Consumer and Work Protection. According to the teamsters who have been fighting to organize Amazon workers in New York City for years, if the Delivery Protection Act gets passed, New York would become the first city to outlaw this exploitative subcontractor model and require companies like Amazon directly employee and therefore be responsible for their last mile delivery workers. And this past summer, the NYC DSA labor working group has been working with the teamsters to pressure the city council into passing this bill. How long has Delivery Protection Act been been something that the organization has been focused on organizing for? So we decided it should be a priority in the spring. Our term on leadership started in January and we did a process of looking through city and state bills that we wanted to work on. It really began to high gear over the summer though. When we knew that our allies in the labor movement were looking to push this for a vote in the fall. So we really started our kickoff in July and then we've been canvassing a bunch of different districts throughout the city since the start of August. And it's been going ever since. Yeah, and I should just note, you know, that's when we kicked into high gear. But of course, Tiffany Cavan, our socialist and office and the city council has been working with the Amazon teamsters and the workers, these Amazon locations for quite a while and the team that helped draft the legislation and move in and introduce it in city halls and been working on it for a lot longer. So we're building on a really strong foundation. What has the organizing around this bill looked like on the ground and also, you know, in the digital sphere? On our end, so as the labor working group, we've really been focused on a large scale canvassing operation for the bill. So we've been having canvases every two weeks started in a council district of Rita Joseph in Flatbush. We printed a lot of literature with her face on it demanding that she get onto the bill and she immediately got on. So I have about 4,000 pieces of literature that I can no longer use, which is a good problem to have. Since then, we made new lit. It doesn't have anyone's face on it because we've been flipping more council members. So we did three rounds of a canvassing for four different city council members. We're also not on the bill. We're going to canvas in Speaker Julie Mennon's district because right now we actually already have a supermajority on the city council. So really, the only thing standing in our way is getting the speaker to introduce it for a vote 'cause she ultimately really controls what goes up to a vote even if the bill already has a supermajority. So that's the main thing we've been doing, but in addition to that, we've been working with a research team to look into the subcontractors that Amazon uses for these, they call them DSPs, delivery service providers to get a feel for who actually owns and operates these and how safe they are for workers. And that's really been something we're working on closely with our teamster partners. And we've also had a number of rallies and things as well at City Hall. So that's all really been in the last few months. It's not just Amazon who's using this last mile subcontractor model. FedEx also uses subcontractors called Ground Contracted Service Providers and they too would be affected by the bill. Obviously Amazon is the biggest company that would be affected by this, but it's not specifically targeted at Amazon. Targeted at any business that is operating what's called a last mile delivery operation in the city of New York. So there are other companies that would be affected, I believe, Walmart also operates sometimes on this model, but Amazon is obviously by far the biggest, they have the biggest market share. So of course, they're the ones who are most afraid of this. And afraid of it, they are. As of August, Amazon has spent at least $5 million lobbying against the Delivery Protection Act and according to DSA, that spending has only increased. - You know, you asked about in the digital space, certainly our opponents have been hard at work in the digital space. Amazon dropped how much money you met? Like millions of dollars. - It's $8 million now. I believe $8 million. - Yeah, and it's not just Amazon. They got their friends in Red Knee, the real estate board of New York, to believe that this is also something that they should oppose. So they've been spending money against this, lobbying against this. And there are ads right now that are digital ads, you know, trying to convince people that this bill is somehow going to be harmful to small businesses, which is ludicrous because you know, Amazon is biggest killers of small business. Some of that money has gone to a corporate lobbying group called the five bureau jobs campaign, who commissioned a study that miraculously concluded that the Delivery Protection Act would raise annual delivery costs for New York households by $664 a year and threaten 10,000 city jobs. Amazon themselves told the City Council that the Delivery Protection Act would prohibit their agreements with more than 40, quote, small businesses that is delivery service partners and put over 5,000 jobs at risk. Now, the bill includes a retention clause requiring Amazon or whatever company to offer to rehire subcontracted drivers and warehouse workers who were previously employed through a DSP before offering to hire any other workers as employees. Brendan Griffith, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, put it really well, quote, "To be clear, when these companies raise the alarm of fewer jobs, higher prices or service reductions, they are describing choices that they may make, not in the best interest of consumers and workers, but to protect their bottom line." And of course, any potential job loss would be the choice of Amazon and not because of this bill. And it's not like Amazon doesn't already regularly lay off these workers. According to a Teamsters report, since 2018, Amazon has closed 35 DSPs in New York State, resulting in the loss of over 3,500 jobs. And that was without the bill, which would, of course, give those workers more protections. Remember, Amazon fired over 150 DSP drivers last year in New York City after they unionized. The most insidious part of this delivery service partner subcontractor arrangement is how it allows Amazon to have this sort of work around for union busting. When these last mile delivery workers attempt to unionize, rather than recognize or deal with the union, Amazon can just cut off the entire subcontractor, putting all those workers out of jobs, while Amazon can just switch to a new non-union subcontractor. And this is apparently legal because these workers aren't directly employed by Amazon. So in effect, it's illegal union busting without actually having to do a legal union busting. So you can see why this model is so attractive to these corporations, because using these delivery subcontractors gives you this little loophole to avoid negotiating with a union. And it's insane that they're able to get away with this. As much as they fear monger about how, if there's unions, deliveries will cost each household $600 more dollars that doesn't seem to be the case for UPS who is still profitable after its unionized delivery drivers secured pay raises in their 2023 contract to quote the famously socialist outlet the Wall Street Journal quote a large body of research has shown that when companies stop employing their own workers for tasks and instead push those jobs out to smaller firms or to freelancers, wages and other job protections tend to decline. The New York bill is quote very innovative said Paul Osterman, a professor emeritus at MIT and the author of Disposable Workers, a new book on the transformation of employment. His own surveys of work arrangements indicate about 12% of US workers are contractors employed by intermediaries. So as I've already suggested, this model is a much bigger problem than just Amazon. Amazon has also threatened that if the delivery protection act passes, it would force them to quote consider relocating delivery operations outside the city. Specifically, Amazon has threatened to move its distribution centers to New Jersey, which they say would extend delivery times for New York City residents. But then in August, New Jersey sued Amazon alleging their use of last mile contractors is illegal with New Jersey claiming per the Wall Street Journal quote, the e-commerce giant illegally used its dominance over its package delivery network to suppress wages and working conditions for thousands of delivery drivers while preventing them from organizing. Amazon has said the complaint is quote, not grounded in fact, unquote. So I think it's unlikely Amazon will actually move all of their facilities from New York City to New Jersey. Cause one, companies never actually move out of New York and two, doesn't seem like they're going to have much more luck in New Jersey anyway. If the state is claiming the very same things that lawmakers have here in New York, which has prompted the delivery protection act. But that's the type of propaganda that Amazon is running to try to push back on the bill. And we mentioned Amazon running ads, but they're not just running ads around July. I got sent this very oddly worded survey from Amazon with all these leading questions about like, would I support a bill that made my deliveries more expensive take longer or force independent delivery drivers to work for big corporations? It had maybe like 10 to 15 of these questions that were all phrased very oddly so that they could engineer specific responses so that Amazon could have a survey that shows you like X number of New Yorkers think this bill is a bad idea or think a bill that would do XYZ is a bad idea. You know, they've been sending those all over people keep texting me. I got the survey mad or sending me pictures of the, the mailers, but in reality we're actually doing the work and like mocking on I think we've knocked over 9,000 doors now. And you actually talk to New Yorkers about the bill. It's extremely popular. You know, Olivia and I have both been a lot of canvassing for electoral candidates, people like Maramondani. And it's a lot harder to go canvas for electoral candidates, right? There's a lot of people who tell you, you know, get out of my face. But when you knock on a door and say, this is a bill that's going to get Amazon under control, it's going to help these workers, you know, organize unions and get protect their rights. People are immediately on board. Sometimes all you have to say is this bill is, you know, about controlling Amazon. People are like, where do I sign? So, you know, New Yorkers in reality are really ready to find a way to bring this company in. That's more and more controlling every aspect of their lives. So don't worry, you know, the survey, notwithstanding the bill seems to be extremely popular when anyone actually learns what it does. Part of Amazon's fear around the delivery protection act, girls will be due to the Mumbdani administration's aggressive approach to enforcing worker protections and cracking down on big corporations exploiting delivery workers. Last month, Mayor Mumbdani and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced a record 131.5 million dollar settlement from DoorDash for underpaying or even not paying their delivery workers. This is the largest labor enforcement action in New York City history, the largest labor settlement in municipal history. Over 115 million dollars will go directly to more than 260,000 workers who were denied the pay that they earned with DoorDash paying an additional 16 million in civil penalties, including funding to build a city and worker run wage theft monitoring tool to keep DoorDash accountable. Here's the deputy mayor for economic justice, Julie Sue. DoorDash built a system that was quietly leaving out categories of trips and on call time so the real amount of work by deliveries does wasn't counted. Worse, that practice was hidden from workers, making it almost impossible for them to know when they were underpaid. Some were paid late, some weren't paid at all. This historic settlement is not just the result of increased investment in the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection by Mayor Mumbdani, but also the tireless work of Deliverista's advocates and organizers at the workers' justice project. Effected DoorDash workers don't even have to file a claim. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has already identified all individuals owed money through their analysis of DoorDash's records and will reach out to workers later this month. The Department poured through terabytes of paid data to discover the huge magnitude of wage theft and systemic violations of New York City's delivery worker laws like the minimum pay rate. Now, two months ago, Tony Shue, the CEO of DoorDash, gave business owners a piece of advice. A CEO, he said, has to take the greedy algorithm and keep going all the way to see if there is more. In computer science, a greedy algorithm is one that makes the most optimized best short-term outcome choice at every step and never weighs the consequences. New York City and the tens of thousands of delivery workers who call our city home have reckoned with greed as a business model for far too long. For years, DoorDash failed to count every hour worked by delivery workers. This was not a rounding error or an accidental mistake. In 2023, when the city began enforcing a minimum pay rate for delivery workers, DoorDash left time out of the count, time on cancelled trips and trips that crossed city limits. Investigators at our incredible department of consumer and worker protection went through terabytes of DoorDash's own data. After analyzing a 152 million payments and 110 million hours of work, they arrived at a staggering conclusion. DoorDash had underpaid more than 260,000 delivery workers across New York City between April of 2022 and June of 2026. According to the mayor's office, these workers will receive compensation calculated at approximately 200% of the amount that they were underpaid. Just last year, DoorDash spent over a million dollars to prevent Mamdani from being elected, and now they must pay over 131 million. After Mayor Mamdani announced this settlement, DoorDash took to social media to post a notes app style apology, reading, quote, "We messed up. Our mistakes meant some NYC dashers were underpaid or paid late. That's unacceptable. And we're deeply sorry to the dashers we let down." We've reached a settlement with the city of New York, and we will make this right by paying every impacted dasher the amounts they are owed. Unquote, "Bitch, you stole over a hundred million dollars. That's a big oopsie. You didn't just let some dashers down." Per the mayor's office quote, "This enforcement action builds on the Mamdani administration's broader effort to vigorously enforce the laws that protect delivery workers. The administration has already secured more than 104 million in additional tips." by cracking down on deceptive app design, and 725 million in increased wages for delivery workers since January. Mayor Mamdani ended the DoorDash announcement with a warning to other companies. And to any corporation that has built a business model on greedy algorithms and worker exploitation, consider this your notice. If you keep trying to rip off New Yorkers, we will be happy to make history again. This is New York City, where hard work pays, and greed will cost you. Corporations like Amazon build billion dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting. As last mile delivery centers have exploded across New York, so too have traffic accidents and worker injuries. The Delivery Protection Act is a common sense regulation that protects delivery workers, safeguards the communities where these facilities operate, and ensures that the corporation's benefiting from workers' labor are responsible for the consequences of their business practices. New Yorkers should not be forced to subsidize corporate profits with less safe streets and more precarious jobs. The people that make these companies run deserve dignity, stability, and a safe workplace. It's time to end the subcontracting model that puts profits over people and build an economy that works for working New Yorkers. One of the best things we've had is we've had the support of the mayor. Mayor Darnam Dany and Deputy Mayor Julie Sue come out really strongly in favor of the bill. There was like amazing press about that, so a lot of earned media around that. And a lot of our coalition members have also been hard at work doing a lot of additional research, putting out really amazing press. In fact, just this week there was a wonderful story that featured the work of our friends in Align. They did some really great research, locating like all of the different topic violations and parking violations. Amazon has incurred because this bill isn't just a worker safety bill. This is a street safety bill and a climate bill, you know, our SIO Tiffany Bust to talk about how this last mile delivery sector is kind of like the Wild West. It's just exploded and there really isn't a whole lot of rules of the road of guidelines or regulation. And so they're just kind of running roughshod and this really uses the power of the city, municipal legislation to really regulate in a very sensible way how these businesses should operate for the safety of workers, for the safety of consumers and everybody out on the street for the city. As Matt from DSA mentioned earlier this episode, after sending over a hundred letters and knocking on thousands of doors, city council member Rita Joseph and flatbush almost immediately flipped and signed on to the bill this past August. But she's not the only one who's changed tune since DSA and the teamsters up to their organizing this summer. We've had a big influence since we started the canvassing operation. I think in New York politics at this point, people know what it means when a bunch of people at DSA signs start showing up in your neighborhood and knocking doors. People get very freaked out very quickly, which is good for us. So like I said, when we not Rita Joseph's door, she decided to get on the bill right away. We also then got another council member named Sean O'Brien to flip on to the bill as well. I think the same. It was also right around when Mary Mamdani put his video out. So I'm sure for a lot of council members, it was really time to get on board time between us and in the mayor. But then since then, we also were able to move council member Camilla Hanks onto the bill as well. And she's really important to get on because her district is actually on Staten Island and overlaps a lot of the Amazon organizing going on there that goes all the way back to like the Amazon labor union and the ALU. So it was really important for us to make sure that Staten Island is part of our plans because those were aggressive in the Amazon fight longer than anyone. And we were really proud of that one as well. So in total in the last two and a half months, we flipped three people onto the bill and we've also really developed a kind of citywide feeling that this bill was very, very important for workers rights. And we really see more and more people talking about it now. And I think that that has a lot to do with the publicity we've given it over the last couple months. You know, again, we already have a supermajority. With a supermajority in city council, now the pressure is on Speaker Julie Menon to call the bill to a vote. Last Saturday, DSA canvassed Speaker Menon's district in the Upper East Side and they plan to do another neighborhood canvas sometime next week. We want to get the bill passed on November 12. So that's the new deadline. So we're going to be doing more canvassing, hopefully have a more rallies. DSA also has an online tool to help you send your city council member or speaker menon, a letter expressing your support for the delivery protection act. You can send a letter to your council member or to speaker menon. I think sending it to speaker menon at this point is the most important thing. So anyone who's a New York listener, she definitely should definitely do that. In terms of rallies, DSA is planning a big last hurrah in support of this bill outside city hall on October 22nd, which will be the last city council meeting before November, when organizers intend for the bill to be brought to a vote. So we're going to have a big showing right outside city hall on October 22nd to really demonstrate our power and really put out the call out there for the bill to be agendized and brought to the floor for a vote on November 12th. Yes. So if anyone wants to come out and canvas or come to rally, this is really the final push. And we're feeling pretty confident that we need to end strong. The Delivery Protection Act could be the wedge that cracks open Amazon by strengthening workers' ability to organize through closing the illegal union-busting loophole and ensuring that corporations like Amazon or FedEx can no longer get away with using third-party shell companies to shield themselves from liability. Samuel Levin, the commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Work Protection, put it plainly, quote, "The Delivery Protection Act affirms a simple idea. Those who profit from our labor and public spaces must also be responsible for the people and communities that make it possible," unquote." Chipping away at Amazon's vast network of delivery subcontractors could also have national ramifications. If the Delivery Protection Act passes in New York City, it could provide a template for other cities across the country to start to regulate Amazon, to protect last mile delivery workers, and shut down the hyper-expoitative subcontractor model dominating huge sectors of our economy. And if we succeed here in New York, surely it can be done elsewhere. In New York City, DSA, we really feel strongly that taking on Amazon is a really important existential battle for socialists and the labor movement. So we see this as really the first step in using the power we have and canvassing in the electoral arena, but also our ability to mass mobilize people to figure out a way to rein Amazon in and really help the labor movement take it on, because it's more and more infiltrating every sector of the economy. They're going into entertainment. They are also going into groceries. They're going into web technologies and AI. They're really everywhere. It's said to be the first company they could trillion dollars in profit. But if we're going to have a socialist future in New York and in America really anywhere, we need to be Amazon and get it organized in the same way that they have to organize steel or the auto industry in the 30s. The fight now really does have to go through Amazon if we're going to see the socialist future we're all fighting for. Yeah. And I would just add, you know, for me, especially, and I think for a lot of DSA members, what makes the DSA difference isn't just that we are taking on the corporation and the way that the legislation really empowers workers, it's how we campaign. It's literally the way in which we fight. We are doing it as Matt said using all of the same tools that helped us win the mayoralty and helped us win big in recent primaries. It's just literally the basics of organizing. We are just talking to people and lo and behold, as Matt said, none of them like Amazon. They want it to be regulated, you know, that is the DSA difference. We organize people. We have member led and worker led campaigns. That is transformative. To keep up with the Delivery Protection Act, you can follow NYC DSA on Instagram or NYC DSA Labor. As mentioned, there will be a canvas in Julie. Menon's District sometime next week and a hopefully final rally on October 22nd. I'm Melissa Jeltsin and in my new podcast what happened to her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck because by all rights I should be dead. Like she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place. And we were babies. She did all of these grave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year. Listen to what happened to her on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator and host of Scam Goddess Podcasts. Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Debris, Lamor and Morris, and Nicole Byer. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I'm talking about scams from the 1800s all the way up to today. So if you like fun, if you like comedy and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the host of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen hours? Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world. And we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives like the cool Uber driver we just had, or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. And so does yours. Listen to Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. It's me, Debbie C'mon Bell. This season of my podcast who's with me, I speak with two-time Emmy winner and weirdly one of my best friends, Kevin Avery. Yeah, you took me, you were one of the first people who took me on the road. Which is funny because at the time, I was like, I don't know if I like this guy. With rapper, actor, the beat digs. The jump off for me was Hamilton and it was the most popular thing in a very long time. Listen to who's with me with Debbie C'mon Bell on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On big lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Richard Pryor. And we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archive. We're talking iconic moments in broadcast history. I'm not just a boxer. I'm educating. I can talk all week on millions of subjects. And forgotten interviews that change how we see these giants of our culture. Well, if changing the system from the ground up is revolutionary, then I'm revolutionary. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. And when I go on stage, I like to dress as slutty as possible because it makes me dance better for some reason. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Rae. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get podcasts. Hello everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Elkford. I'm a researcher and analyst of the Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I'm talking with Yada Asi, who is a Palestinian scholar, author, and public health researcher, studying how conflict, structural violence, and political systems shape health and human security. And she's also a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center of Washington, where I'm also a non-resident fellow. And she's been doing a lot of excellent work highlighting the health impacts of Israeli policies and American policies in the Middle East generally, but also particularly in Israel Palestine. So today we're going to talk about what are the health conditions in Gaza? I think that we have seen a lot of the spectacular violence. We understand and even the most unaware, understand the degree to which Gaza has been devastated, but she breaks down for us what that looks like and what are the policies that are being used to attack Palestinian health in Gaza and in the West Bank? And then what it means for the Palestinian people to be so de-developed, not only economically, but at every sector, including the health sector. It's a very bleak episode. Not in my episodes are good, but this one is particularly hard to listen to. There's also a mention of sexual violence, not in detail, of course, but I do want to just put that out there for listeners as fair warning, because that is a very triggering conversation, regardless, even if it is at the simplest level of detail. But without further ado, this is Yada about the health impacts of Israeli policy on the Palestinian people. Thank you for listening. Yada, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. So I want to start, we're going to talk both about Gaza and the West Bank, but I want to start with Gaza at the beginning here. Could you give us a rundown of what health conditions are like in Gaza right now? Yeah, absolutely. You know, this has been obviously the focus of a lot of health research over the past three years since the beginning of the genocide, and for good reason, because it's kind of a microcosm of every possible public health disaster. You could imagine in a single, very small, very populated setting. So just, you know, some top line numbers, we know that at the very least 74,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th, and epidemiological projections estimate that the number is likely much higher, especially when you add in all of those that have died from starvation, malnutrition, or lack of access to health care because they had cancer or they needed a heart, you know, surgery or brain surgery or something. And we know that at least 20,000 around 20,000 people in Gaza, many of whom are children, require immediate medical evacuations for some sort of procedure unrelated, typically to trauma. We're talking a lot of cancer cases, high-risk pregnancies, complex surgeries that they can no longer get in the Gaza Strip because the health care system has been essentially decimated. As of this past month, there's also, you know, more than 100,000 injuries. Many of those are life-changing injuries, amputations, nerve damage, spinal damage, brain damage that will require lifelong rehabilitation and, you know, obvious question is, who's going to do that and who's going to pay for that and what's going to happen to those people. Less than half of Gaza's hospitals are even partially functioning. So prior to the genocide, Gaza had about 36 hospitals, many of which offered, you know, a variety of services, but some of which were specialized, you know, cancer care, pediatric hospital. Now we're at a point where the hospitals that are even still open because so many were damaged to destroyed or just have no resources. I was just basically able to do basic care, emergency care, triage, basic wound management. Israel is still restricting at the border, medical supplies, you know, basic pharmaceuticals, medications, things that would be available in, basically any other context on earth, even in low-income countries, are not available in the Gaza Strip. We know that 1700 health workers and humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza, many of whom were directly targeted, either in their homes or in aid convoys. And, you know, it's an environmental disaster. So there's sewage in the streets, there's lack of clean water, there's rats, rats, yes, fighting people in their tents. God knows what floating in the air that people are inhaling on a daily basis, including babies and children. So it is just as bad as we imagine. And, you know, we're about what a year now from this quote-unquote cease fire, more than 1400 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed since the quote unquote ceasefire and others are dying in other completely inhumane ways such as building collapse that we saw a couple of weeks ago because many people to avoid the rats and the cold because winter as coming have just decided I'm going to go back to a structure even if it is half collapsed damaged damage and we're unfortunately seeing that some of these structures are collapsing with with people and families inside so although the health crisis in Gaza has kind of disappeared from the news as soon as the ceasefire process started the health gets past your feet is just as bad and it is not getting better you know I get stuck on this question it's like like you said what's going to happen to these people even if the ceasefire stopped killing people which you know like you said there are still people dying like we need something so dramatic and it shouldn't be the case that the rest of the world steps in to pay for Israel's crimes you know like anyway that's a that's a that's a whole other issue but I want to highlight some of the work that you have been doing for the Arab Center Washington in particular and I'll put all of these in the show notes as well but you wrote a piece for the Arab Center Washington about medical evacuation and that Israel is controlling this process and using it as a tool of war so could you break down this argument for us and describe it to listeners who may not be as familiar yeah absolutely so due to the blockade in Gaza we're talking the pre 2023 blockade as well as the import restrictions in the West Bank that have kind of put a ceiling on what the local health systems are able to do so certain medical equipment is banned by Israel from entering Gaza or the West Bank and so for decades there has been a medical permit system that Palestinians have to apply to a permit apply to Israel mind you receive permission from co-gad paid for by the Palestinian Authority so Israel is not paying for these medical evacuations and they would leave the West Bank or Gaza to receive care usually in East Jerusalem sometimes in Israel sometimes in neighboring countries like Jordan and Egypt as of October 7th Israel essentially closed that process that had existed and this was an already broken process and I could talk to you all day about that process before even all of the current situation but what has happened is Israel is really tightly constricting who is able to leave the Gaza Strip even to go to the West Bank which is both occupied Palestinian territory to receive the medical care that they need I was just at an event last week where the CEO of Augusta Victoria Hospital which is one of the main hospitals in the East Jerusalem Hospital Network which is where many Palestinians go especially for cancer care he said he hasn't seen a single patient from Gaza since October 7th the World Health Organization has a list of again approximately 20,000 cases of people that need to leave to receive care and aside from the fact that Israel is often delaying the approval of these permits and anyone listening knows when you have a health issue you don't have infinite time they're usually time sensitive especially if you're dealing with something like cancer or pregnancy obviously very time sensitive if you delay you're going to need more care greater care and your prognosis is just worse you're much more likely if you do have cancer wouldn't we rather treat it when your stage one than when you're stage four and you're finally able to get the permit so we are seeing people dying while waiting for these permits we have heard reports that for some people who did manage to leave Gaza to receive care that they were being forced to sign forms that would basically not allow them back into Gaza so yes we will let you leave to get the care you need but you can't return and we're just seeing a blockage of this system so there have been countries that have been willing to pay for and take these medical evacuees but even in in some of these recipient countries we're talking dozens of cases may be hundreds in a few we need thousands of cases here and also at the same time we need to think about what rebuilding the health system in Gaza looks like so we don't need to engage in this you know medical permit system as broadly now that I don't think we'll see that anytime soon so Israel uses its control of the territories to affect health conditions inside not just the health system but also as I said sewage lack of electricity lack of nutritious food then it controls the process that Palestinians have to use to leave to get care even if it is not Israel where they are going to get the care even if Egypt is willing to accept them or Italy is willing to accept them or the UAE or whoever um ultimately this isn't Israel permit process and this has been a situation again since especially the blockades started in 2006 in Gaza and we have long argued that this is unjust but to put someone's health in the hands of an occupying power and what we what we saw over the years was not just denials going up of the need for these permits but delays such that people are missing appointments people are not getting timely care and people are dying while waiting for services so this has long been a really unjust process and now we're kind of seeing the inevitable you know outcome of not challenging that process the impunity that Israel has had in controlling basically every aspect of Palestinian health and now we have people who are dying while waiting for chemotherapy it's really inhumane I think at least some of us who like you know follow this more closely at this point it's like ridiculous how accustomed we have become to the news item that says this person died at a checkpoint waiting to go to the hospital but this this is this on a massive scale it's truly dystopian the degree to which Palestinians have no control over any part of their lives it's heartbreaking and dystopian also in December you wrote about how Israel suspended 37 humanitarian groups including the Norwegian refugee council the IRC and these groups provided more than half of Gaza's food assistance and supported the hospitals as well if I if I understand correctly so what justification did Israel give for suspending these humanitarian groups and what is really going on here so Israel has used the same justification that it has used basically for every restriction that it has placed on Palestinian life which is this kind of blanket unquestionable 100% urgent necessary security needs so all of this the checkpoints the permit system the incarceration of Palestinians the I mean all of it this whole system is justified by Israel again and it's allies as this kind of we need this for security and so we have seen that with humanitarian organizations as well now I won't get to into the the preamble of this but even before this new registration rules for humanitarian organizations Israel has been working very hard to whittle away the power and access the humanitarian organizations have perhaps most notably to your audience in Unurwa which it has been discrediting delegitimizing for decades and because you know Unurwa is for all its flaws an organization that does recognize the rights of Palestinians to return to their homeland and so Israel kind of you know placed all these accusations on Unurwa that members were aligned you know aligned with October 7th or participated in October 7th it caused a lot of countries to cut funding now independent investigations have since found that of course these accusations were completely unfounded in most cases and at the very least did not justify kind of dismantling the entire organization but as it has happened many times nothing really was done I mean this kind of happens people say well gee that's not fair and then everyone just kind of moves on so the inevitable has happened which is now Israel again an occupying power which is not in debate according to international law is trying to impose new restrictions on humanitarian organizations who are working particularly in the Gaza Strip and part of what they're requiring is the name and address of every local worker that works at these agencies now let's think for two seconds about why these agencies may not want to engage in that humanitarian and health workers have been killed in their homes by bombs with their families there aid convoys that have been clearly marked I'd probably your audience is very familiar with the world central kitchen convoy and that kind of infamous image of this van with the logo on it with a bomb right next to it and so many of these organizations said we're not going to be able to do that we're not going to do that but we're essentially you're asking us to give you all the personal information of our staff now Israel had initially said if you don't comply with these by March at the time that I wrote that piece then they would be deregistered we've since seen many organizations come out and say that they would not participate some have so we have seen some compliance by some organizations and of course their argument is always well we need access and this is what we have to do for the access so we have seen some delays in Israel's courts as to actual implementation of this and organizations like and others that have a heavy local Palestinian staff presence on the ground. They don't need internationals to get entry permits, which Israel is blocking. And we've seen this increase in recent months, basically foreigners of all types, including foreign ministers who are trying to enter the West Bank, let alone Gaza are being turned away. But we have seen those organizations are still functional to some level. But I have heard whispers and people are very, very concerned about what this means for the future of these organizations as it relates to their work with Palestinians. Local staff need to be paid. They need to be sure that they're safe. They need to have the equipment and resources that they need to help people. And so again, Israel creates rules and then basically says you have to submit to these rules or you won't be able to do what you need to do, what you're tasked to do. What you had previously been permitted to do, again, the rules themselves are unquestioned. Again, we saw some condemnations of this, but primarily from the humanitarian organizations themselves. We saw quite a strong statement early on signed by many of them that said, this is completely unacceptable. But unfortunately, the global powers and the funders of these organizations have not meaningfully pushed back on this. We're seeing a lot of upheaval and I won't go too much into this in the Israeli Supreme Court. And of course Israel has elections coming up. So a lot of these processes have been kind of delayed and put on hold. So we're really interested to say the least as to how a lot of this unfolds after Israel's elections. Correct me if I'm wrong with this because obviously this is not my area of expertise. But I was at a meeting with the commissioner general of our recently. I mean, let me before I ask the question, also tell the listeners without bearing the lead. The reason they wanted this mental honor was because it keeps alive. Or they think it keeps alive. This issue of the right of return as if like that is a right that can disappear if honor what disappears. Now that said, honor was been under attack. And like you said, they've attempted to dismantle it in a variety of ways. But based on what I heard at that meeting, honor what does comply with the state of Israel. Or does provide lists and fires people based on Israeli suspicions. And at least this is what I got out of that meeting. Maybe I misunderstood the degree of coordination. Yes. So we could have a whole other episode, right about critique about honor. Yeah. And that would be a whole interesting conversation. But honor what has rightfully so been critiqued by Palestinians. So when you look at camps and they're really underdeveloped, overcrowded, very, you know, dusty, very thin streets. And then you look at the honor was school, big, shiny, the foreign staff that are coming in to overlook these schools and hospitals are paid much higher salaries than the Palestinian staff. There's a whole host of arguments about honor what. And it's important to remember that when honor what kind of was founded in the late 1940s to deal with this new and expectedly short term Palestinian refugee problem. At the same time, there was another, you know, kind of strain that was meant to deal with the political side. So Uder what was never meant to be a political actor. It was only meant to kind of provide relief in these new camps that had sprung up that went from tents to buildings to basically towns. And so in some ways, they are critiqued for something that is not their mandate. They are a relief organization. And so as long as Palestinian refugees need relief, their argument is we're going to give the relief. Someone else needs to work at the political side and we can again argue about how that relief and how humanitarian ecosystem as a whole has kind of enabled Israel's actions and made it so that Israel does not have to comply with its obligations as an occupying power to provide food to provide medicine to not transfer populations. For example, from occupied territory to Israeli jails, we can have a conversation about that. And unruwa is very publicly, I would say conservative when it comes to critiquing the Israeli government. So when you look at recent statements from organizations like Oxfam, or even MSF, which typically really prioritize neutrality, even they have been really willing to say now, you know, they've used words like Jen and I. This is ridiculous. Yes, this is ridiculous. This is a complete affront to the entire infrastructure of humanitarianism as we developed it after World War II. Unruwa is much more conservative with its statements. And again, it claims that its priority is access. It is the biggest service provider for health and education in the Gaza Strip. And it is one of the biggest in the West Bank. So, you know, it's this kind of catch 22 that pal, the Palestinians that depend on those services are in. Now, as far as I know, because unruwa is in the UN system, their argument is that they do not have to be subject to the same restrictions that Israel would place on non-UN humanitarian organizations. And recently, we've seen other Israeli activities such as they bulldoze the unruwa headquarters in East Jerusalem, like they are trying both bureaucratically, administratively, and physically to kind of remove this entity. But as far as I know, and things change very quickly on this, they did not comply with the new registration details that said they did really internalize these accusations that Israel had levied against them after October 7th. But they did fire some staff. They, in the opinion of many, did not forcefully defend their staff as much as they could have. And when you talk to people that work with or work in unruwa, again, they say, we are just trying to get through this period and maintain as much of an infrastructure as we can. And they have been through ups and downs before. I don't know if they've been through downs that are this down at any point. You know, the past, especially since the first Trump administration, we've seen really targeted attacks against unruwa, which the Biden administration continued. But yes, it is undoubtedly unruwa is not as vocal in terms of defending its staff in terms of making political proclamations in terms of, you know, just what we would kind of hope that one of the primary actors that is tasked with protecting a very vulnerable population would do. I mean, defending its own mandate, right, defending its own mandate, right, to provide relief. And it's kind of constantly and so much of the international community is kind of constantly playing by Israel's rules. Israel makes an accusation makes a rule. And instead of being like that accusation is insane or this rule is based in nothing, people just start arguing about, well, how can we get against that rule or how do we defend against that accusation? And this has been the playbook for a really long time. I think unruwa has not been very effective in defending against that. Again, I think they would probably argue that's not what we're supposed to do. There's supposed to be political entities that defend against that. And we have seen some of the funders that pulled funding initially after October 7th have reinstated funding. That's said, unruwa is in a very precarious position. And I and others are really interested in seeing in five years, what will unruwa look like? Will it be an organization kind of in name only, you know, there's so much uncertainty. I think coming up and they're a huge part of that because if their services go, we suddenly have hundreds of thousands of people with no school, no hospital, no clinics. And a lot of Palestinians that work for unruwa with no jobs and no salary and to contribute to the already insane unemployment rate and, you know, kind of economic doom spiral that the West Bank and Gaza are in right now. So it's a really complicated, nuanced issue and there's just so much uncertainty. I couldn't even begin to speculate on what what comes next. Yeah, like you said, there's so much to talk about on that on that topic and on Gaza as a whole. I just felt like despite how much they comply, you know, there's no winning. No winning. That's it. Yeah, that's the main takeaway. Yeah, Israel isn't trying to cooperate. Obviously, like, right. Yeah. So let's move on to the West Bank now. I've talked in a recent episode about how the West Bank is being ethnically cleansed so listeners can refer to that episode if they want more info. But in July, you wrote for the Arab Center, Washington about specifically the use of sexual violence in both territories, but let's, you know, since we're talking about the West Bank. How is sexual violence being used in the West Bank right now? How is it being used and by whom and what is it accomplishing? This is a tough topic, you know, and that was a really tough piece to write just because I think part of what we as kind of Palestine focused scholars or people, even just observers of the situation, there are just so many pieces and mechanisms of displacement and ethnic cleansing utilized by Israel. And I think it's very a lens that I used to look at that is degradation, de-development and destruction of the health system. But I think, you know, what we've seen, especially since October 7th and all of these accounts that are coming out of Israeli prisons is that sexual violence is wielded as a tool of essentially abuse and torture primarily of Palestinian prisoners. It's in villages that were being kind of rated by Zionist militias of sexual violence of women and girls as a way to kind of show power. I mean, that's really the core of sexual violence. It is a way to show power. It is a way to induce powerlessness. It is a way to say, I can do this to you and there's nothing you can do about it. And I'm going to do it publicly. There are many reports from the Nakba and the years afterwards that indicated that sexual violence was being used. And then the women, in some cases, were being paraded around Jerusalem as kind of a warning to other Palestinians. So it's been a part of this ecosystem for almost a century. So what we've seen lately is many Palestinian prisoners, male and female have reported sexual violence under Israeli guards. There have been, in fact, there was, I'm sure your audience is familiar with that famous video from, I believe, the state demon prison of a Palestinian male prisoner who was being sexually assaulted. He needed medical care for his injuries. And there has been many reports that, along with other forms of torture and medical neglect, so lack of clean food, lack of showers, lack of bathrooms, lack of care for medical needs, that sexual abuse and violence have been used against Palestinian prisoners. And this includes stripping people publicly, including women. This includes sexual assault in some cases. Sometimes it includes threatening sexual assault upon people's families that are back home if they don't collaborate or cooperate or give information. You know, it's all used as a form of torture. And this is a very difficult issue to discuss throughout the Middle East. We have, unfortunately, very little good comprehensive data on incidents of sexual violence and assault. Much of this comes from first-hand testimonies of those who have experienced it. But there has been an undeniable increase in those reports. I mean, Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians just since October 7th. Many of whom, no charge, you know, kind of under administrative detention. And there is no access to these prisoners by the Red Cross or others. Sometimes they won't even allow their lawyers or their families to talk to them. So all of this is kind of happening in secret. And it's those lucky prisoners who are released or have some contact with the outside world that are able to kind of tell people what is happening. And so we've seen this increased brazenness with Israeli soldiers. They are kind of even boasting about their crimes online, posting videos, posting pictures, posting, you know, what they see is kind of funny stories about how they're treating Palestinian prisoners. And we're seeing sexual violence reported by them as well. So it's not just the prisoners reporting this. The perpetrators are also saying, yeah, we're doing this. No one can do anything. I think much of that has gotten lost in the conversation of what's happened to Palestinians because, you know, there's so much overt things happening, you know, the destruction of Gaza, the genocide, the settler violence throughout the West Bank. But the settler violence has also taken a tone of including sexual violence and abuse. There was this story that I recount in the piece of a man who was sexually assaulted by settlers then kind of paraded through his own village. So we are seeing this kind of tool of domination utilized more brazenly, more openly, more explicitly by both primarily Israeli prison guards and Israeli settlers. And again, the incentive structure is that you can do this and nothing is going to happen to you. And so in that kind of bubble of impunity as we've warned about and many scholars have warned about and many observers and many Palestinians, the more you let them get away with crimes, even documented crimes, the more they are going to perpetuate these crimes and escalate when we're in the escalation phase right now. Yeah, there's this dynamic of like also even the threat of sexual violence is pushing Palestinian families to leave because they're worried about their children, they're worried about their-- Exactly. So yeah. It's really interesting because settler violence, it can come in several forms. It can be very explicit. They attack or threaten you. They attack your car. They kill your livestock. They burn your fields. They spread garbage on your cross-conquater. Exactly. There's a million mechanisms. And what we're seeing lately is that added to that list is either sexual violence or, as you said, the threat of sexual violence. And in that piece, I recount how some families said, that was the line for us. We were willing to stay. We were going to stay. We could deal with the physical attacks. But once it got to the point where I could no longer sleep because I felt feared for my mother or my daughter or my sister or people in my family at the risk of this sexual violence that was threatened, we have to go. And so you can see how it is a tool of the ethnic cleansing that you pointed out because it is the way to, without actually even doing, enacting the violence, you can force people to leave their homes. And what happens after people leave their homes is settlers immediately take over that land. And we've seen that happen over and over again. And it's not an empty threat because, like you said, they get away with it. So if they did enact the violence. So these Palestinian families are making rational choices. Exactly. That's just such a hard topic. Yeah, it is. And just to know, we've barely even scratched the surface because we know that because of religious and cultural context, many people who experienced this are simply too ashamed to share. They certainly won't report to a researcher or even a field worker, even if they're a local Palestinian, it has happened to them. So undoubtedly, this is happening to people and not being reported at a much wider scale than these publicly reported stories. Yeah, absolutely. I always think also, like, first of all, the second and second of all, the sexual violence was used. And they weaponized that shame. They weaponized that secrecy. And now we're just seeing it at such a scale that there are some brave people who are ringing. It's our attention. That's a great point. It's become so unavoidable and overt that people are even willing to kind of overlook or overcome that shame and stigma because I think one thing that Palestinians have been trying to say forever is, look what they're doing to us. Please just look, at least acknowledge that you see that it's happening. And there's been a million instances of that and a million different ways that Palestinians have tried to tell their story. And this is now, unfortunately, in a horrific part of that story. [MUSIC PLAYING] Finally, for the publication, "Current History," in an essay titled, "When Health Is the Target?" Violence Restriction and Neglect and Palestine. You examine the systematic degradation of the health care infrastructure that's long been used as we've been saying, like, as a political military tool against Palestinians. And you describe a lot of the tactics we just talked about. But could you explain to us specifically in this last part what "D" development means and how Israel is pursuing that goal? Yes, definitely. And so, "D" development is kind of been, especially as it refers to specifically Palestinians, and especially in the Gaza Strip, was a term coined by political economist Sarah Roy, which described not an underdevelopment, which you would see with lack of money, lack of financial ability to build better things, to do more, but an active "D" development, which basically placed a ceiling on the level of development that Palestinians had. So, it wasn't suddenly about how much aid was coming in or how educated Palestinians are. Do you have the specialists that can do this or that? Do you have college-educated people? As we know, Palestinians are among the most educated populations in the Middle East. Lack of skill was never an issue. But through, primarily, this system of movement restrictions, import restrictions, preventing the movement of people in and out of Palestinian territory, Israel has been able to de-develop. First, Dr. Roy referred to this in the Palestinian economy. So, Palestinians used to have a small territory, but a relatively important role in importing olives and olive oil and olive soap. Gaza had its strawberries. Yafa had its oranges. It was a country, it was a place, I suppose, that was active in terms of a global market. And through, first, the Nekba and the establishment of the state of Israel, but especially through the occupation. And then, of course, through the economic restrictions of Oslo, Israel has been able to essentially, with a metaphorical dial, control how the Palestinian economy could grow. And by preventing collecting taxes, withholding taxes, preventing import of goods. So, you want to be an entrepreneur. How are you going to import the goods that you're going to sell? How are you going to export the goods that you create? And we started seeing this across sectors, the agricultural sector. Palestinians couldn't import the fertilizer and the seeds that they needed. They were, the land was getting smaller and smaller. So, what we're seeing in the Palestinian health care system is this same de-development phenomenon. How it's enacted in the health sector is in a multitude of ways. So, they prevent literal building materials from entering the territories, particularly Gaza. I mean, we're talking cement, we're talking wires, pipes. They prevent import of those materials that would build the infrastructure that we need. But, of course, infrastructure is not all a health system needs. You need educated staff and providers. they have limited the types, especially in the Gaza Strip of specialties that medical schools can teach because they simply don't have the equipment or they don't have the staff. Then they prevent Palestinians from being able to leave to get that training and then return to the Gaza Strip. So part of what has been so horrific to witness in Gaza is not just the killing of health workers, but so many of them who had experience, who were specialists, who had gotten training in Switzerland or Saudi Arabia or somewhere come back to Gaza. Now what we're seeing in Gaza is of the remaining health care system. A lot of it is new graduates or trainees. You have lost decades upon decades of experience of wisdom, heads of departments, deans of medical schools. You know, these people that kind of had the infrastructural knowledge and know how and knew how to make things work and knew how to connect people together. You strip all that away, you have a quote unquote health system, but it's very limited in what it can do. In the Gaza Strip, you had limitations on import of pet scanners and CT scanners because of the argument that Hamas could use materials from that equipment to batatat security risk. Don't ask questions. We've seen a limited amount of import in the West Bank. In the West Bank, we also see destruction of ambulances, attacks on paramedics, paramedics of the Palestinian Red Crescent are now wearing bulletproof vests. We're seeing, as you noted, ambulances and other people stopped at checkpoints. There have been hundreds of births by birthing mothers at checkpoints who are on their way to the hospital. I include, as part of the redevelopment of the health sector, the kind of environmental degradation. So health includes your ability to eat good, nutritious, clean food. It includes your ability to drink water. The West Bank is under significant water restrictions at all times, essentially. In the Gaza Strip, there's very little clean water, even prior to the genocide. It's something like 95% of the water was non-potable and had to go through different treatment facilities, sewage in the streets, lack of public services. I could really go on and on. So through its system of deprivation and restriction, Israel has essentially created a health care system that is never operating at 100%. So even when the WHO talks about fully functional Palestinian hospitals, there was still so much they could not do that their colleagues in Jordan, or Lebanon, or Syria, or any other country even in the region can do simply because they can get the tools, they can get the specialist, they can get the skills. It's not a matter of, again, more money. We don't need more humanitarian agencies on the ground. It's Israeli restrictions that are purposefully kind of creating this environment where there is a ceiling to how well the health system can do. And so the kind of pressure valve for that was the medical permits. So a huge part of the Palestinian authorities budget towards the health ministry was paying for Palestinians to leave Palestine. And in some cases get care in Israel. So I mean, think about the logic of that. You have a struggling health system. And sometimes your best option for patients is to pay your occupier exactly pay the occupying power or pay the Jordanians. You know, Jordan has an entire corridor for Palestinian patients because it takes so many of them. Similar Egypt has the specific hospitals that are well known for taking Palestinian patients. Much of the East Jerusalem hospital network, which used to be the heart of the beating heart of the Palestinian health care system was severed from the West Bank, especially after the second and defada. And now Palestinians, even that live in Ramallah or Bethlehem that are what 45 minutes away, it takes weeks or months of waiting to get a permit. And then it's not just you that needs a permit. Let's say you're sick. Maybe you want your partner to come with you or maybe you want your mother to come with you or maybe your child is sick and they need you, of course, to come with you. Israel also controls the companion permits. And sometimes that is an entirely separate process. And then you need a permit for every visit. So there's not a single aspect of health care, whether it's in a Palestinian hospital, in Palestinian territory, broadly speaking, or needing to leave Palestine to get care somewhere else that Israel has not actively de-developed through deprivation and restriction. And so that is what we talk about when we say, it's not just, oh, this is a war torn country. And if only they had more aid, if only they had more this than that, they things would be better. No, this is a policy situation policy created by the Israeli state. And I mean, I guess fortunately for us, they've only become more explicit about saying what their goals are, which is this, what they're calling voluntary immigration, but is essentially kicking Palestinians out of the land so that they can take it. And they have utilized every sector, education, agriculture, economy, and health to enact that goal. And by, you know, public surveys and by what we're seeing, it is successful. There have been hundreds of villages ethnically cleansed in the West Bank in just the past few years. More than what 60% of the Gaza Strip is now basically inaccessible to people in Gaza. And we have seen polls of younger Palestinians who are saying, I can't do this. I can't live here anymore. If an opportunity comes for me to go somewhere else, to study somewhere else, to get a job somewhere else, I'm going to take it. And this is the voluntary, quote unquote, immigration that the Israeli authorities are talking about making life so difficult, such that anything you need is a challenge. Every journey when you leave your house is a question. Will I come home? How long will it take? You know, my son wants to go to a wedding in a neighboring village. What will happen to him? I'm having, you know, cramping while I'm pregnant. Should I go to the hospital and risk it? Or should I just stay home and see what happens? I mean, just think about like the daily stress and decision Palestinians. The grind. Yeah. It's unimaginable. And, you know, I haven't even talked about mental health yet with you. I mean, that's a whole other aspect of it. We need you back on a different episode. Just like talk through like every single aspect of this, because it's like, I am Palestinian. I was born in Columbia, hospital. Like I lived there. Yeah. And I still can't fathom how bad it has gotten. I don't understand how people are are living. I don't understand. They've been under attack to this to this level. Yeah. I will say, you know, my family is primarily in the north and in around Nablus. And I mean, some of the elders in my family, you know, they, and I've said this many times lately, they lived through 67. They remember the jets flying over the village. They lived through the first and to father. They lived through Oslo. They lived through the second and to father without exception. They are reporting that now is the worst, the worst I can remember. And for the first time, because as you know, it's like a very Palestinian, you know, the smooth, right? This, I will, I will rather stay and die on this land and go somewhere else. That is like such a, a rally and cry, a cultural thing to grow up with. But for the first time, they're saying, I don't know if we can expect the next generations to do what we did. No one's getting paid. And if you are getting paid, there's very little to buy. And if you can buy something, you worry about going to the store. I mean, it's, it's every level of life. And imagine raising a child trying to go to work. And, you know, the settlers, just the knowledge that they are out there. People are so terrified of going anywhere. I mean, not even leaving the village or the town, leaving your house. If you live near a settlement, leaving your house is a threat. Yeah. And then they'll come to your house too. Like, don't worry about it. You stand in your house, they'll also come. Right. Oh, yeah, it's very bleak. I apologize that we ended on such a bleak no, but this is really the reality facing past and ends. No, it's important. Yeah. And I really appreciate your time breaking all this down for us that this is such a crisis on so many levels. But yes, like health, like human health and the human condition is so under attack in both territories. But thank you so much, Yada, for your time. I really appreciate it. No, thank you for having me and for asking, you know, I think such detailed questions so that we can, I mean, I feel like we've barely scratched the surface. But I hopefully your audience has a good look at just how holistic and comprehensive the current emergency is. You know, this is where past the point of is this a humanitarian crisis? What is the political solution? This is an existential crisis for Palestinians at this point. And what happens in the next few years? Well, I think really determine what happens to us as a people. Yeah, no, I agree and hope that it isn't too late. Yeah. Thank you again. I'm Melissa Jeltsin and in my new podcast, what happened to her? I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck because, by all rights, I should be dead. And we were babies. She did all of these grave things and came out and spoke about it, and he I've got a year. - Listen to what happened to her on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. - I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator and host of SCAM Goddess Podcast. - The True Crime Comedy Podcast, all about robbery, fraud and those who practice it. - Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Deppery, Lamor and Morris and Nicole Buyer. - What? So if you like fun, if you like comedy, and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. ♪ Scam Goddess ♪ - I'm Hamza. - And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. - Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. And so does yours. - So what are you waiting for? 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On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - On big lives, we take a single cultural icon. - People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Richard Pryor. - And we pull apart the story behind the image. - And we do this by digging through the BBC's fast archive. - We're talking iconic moments in broadcast history. - I'm not just a boxer, I'm educating. - And forgotten interviews that change how we see these giants of our culture. - Well, if changing the system from the ground up is revolutionary, then I'm revolutionary. - We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. - And when I go on stage, I like to dress as slutty as possible 'cause it makes me dance better for some reason. - I'm Emmanuel Jochi. - I'm Kai Wright. - And this is Big Lives. - Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts. - This is, it could happen here, executive disorder. Our weekly newscast, covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis, today I'm joined by Robert Evans, James Stout and Mia Wong. The whole gang, back together. This episode, we are covering the week of September 30th to October 7th. James, I think you're gonna take it away with your barrage of news. - All right. So yeah, we've got a lot of small things this week. Another person has died in ice custody, making this the deadliest year on record with 37 reported deaths so far. Of course, it's only October. Yeah, like we're entering the final quarter of the year, like this week. Julian Kuro-Turata, died in Louisiana. After being transported from a ritual correctional center, the ritual correctional center has a longer dark history of neglect and even homicide of linked to an article about that in the show notes. This week, the president suggested in a rally that it would be acceptable for him to allow Iran to bomb San Diego and Los Angeles. - A small price to pay. - Yeah, I remain neutral on the issue of Los Angeles, but we're not having that in San Diego. He's not so much remarkable. He always says crazy shit, right? His rallies, he just goes on a world one. But like, what's remarkable? I think it's a response of the administration. - It is itself a kind of interesting thing for a president to say. - It is a remarkable choice in the month before an election. - It's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. - That's, this is a large price to pay. - The cheering is what's also very interesting. - I'm looking at the faces of the people immediately behind him. - It's a dark turn to make sure. - Yeah, they all look a little confused. I'm gonna read a post from Rapid Response 47. It's one of the White House associated Twitter accounts. The LA Times had said that like the Trumpet suggested it would be okay to take out Los Angeles or San Diego because that is a phrase that he said, quote, "No, he didn't, you buffoons." He was saying the US is fighting to stop Iran from having the ability to take out LA and San Diego with a nuclear weapon, which they would have they had the chance. That's not true. - That's just not what Trump said. That's just very clearly. And this isn't, you know, this isn't taken out of context. He was saying that if Iran nuked Los Angeles or San Diego, that would be a small price to pay for us to beat Iran, for us to then, you know, like destroy Iran. That's what he's saying. - He was previously talking about gas prices. - Yes, there's no other context like he was saying, it would be awesome if this liberal city was wiped off the face of earth 'cause it would let us do what we're gonna do already. - We also have like most of the Pacific Fleet, a massive marine core base, fucking nuclear submarines. Like it would be very inconvenient for you to state to be Los Angeles or San Diego. But yeah, there's this line in 1984, the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was a final, most essential command. - No, he didn't, you buffoons us. - Yeah, the people love to be fucking wrong about George Orwell. It is the bane of my existence. This is an excellent time to be quoting in 1984 by George Orwell because this is the kind of shit it is about moving on. A lawsuit in Texas has stopped the border wall construction, not just a big bad national park, but also in the region at large. - Oh, well. - Yeah, yeah. People seem a little confused about implications it is. Border wall construction is still ongoing in other places. There are other areas where there are still waivers for land protections, which they're still using. And I think it's worth noting that the ultimate victory is at a temporary pause in the wall, right? The ultimate victory is the wall comes down and the land is restored as best it can be. Like this wall is still doing damage, the construction has still done damage. And I think sometimes people get a little lost in the source, but it's still a good thing. United States troops have completed their withdrawal from Iraq, leaving the Kurdistan region of Iraq, especially vulnerable without the air defense that it's relied on. So heavily since February, there have been a thousand drone and missile attacks on Kurdistan. Following this withdrawal, there was an Islamic State attack in Kirkuk last night. It looks like they attacked the PMF position and killed one person, but they already claimed responsibility for destroying a thermal camera. - Can you swim with the PMF as well? - Yeah, a popular mobilization forces like militia that was mobilized to fight the Islamic State. - Right. In the fighting against ISIS and Mosul, you had like two primary non-state militias. There was the Peshmerger, which is like the Kurdish militias from the North. And then you had the popular mobilization forces, which were the Iranian-backed guys. And the dudes you want to do avoid when you were there to be honest. - They were, they were not the least trustworthy of the Iraqi state forces. - Yeah, some of those guys run a wild one. - Yeah. And remain on a wild one to this day in come cases. - Yeah. - Oh boy. - I know Iraq is supposed to be doing some sort of regularization there, but they keep pushing back the deadline of that. - It's a big ask. - It is. Yeah, that's a lot of people with guns, you don't want to come back. - Well, the Iraqi state has never in its modern incarnation managed a functional military without huge numbers of like non-state but state-aligned militias. - Yeah. - And so it's just a massive change for them to make. - Yeah, right. They, they, they're monopoly, they have a legitimate violence, it's very tenuous of a tool, right? Like, it's just, it's just not, it's not the way that it is in the US. - It's certainly not a monopoly. - Yeah. - The Iraqi state is like the Microsoft of having like a legitimate. - Get it? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's like an monopoly. - There's like an apple out there. There's an android. - Yeah, you've got sunshine of the catacombs. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good analogy. - Yeah. - I want to move to Spain, right? It's been a huge series of protests in Spain following the eviction of an 87 year old woman. name Maria del Carmen Abascal. She's known as Marie Carmen. It's pretty common to contract your name. Yeah. People began occupying the Puerto del Sol in Madrid. Many of you will remember this as one of the very early seeds of the Occupy movement, right? Or of the movement that became known as the Occupy movement. Pedro Sanchez attempted to pass a reform package, but he ran up against right-wing opposition in Parliament, which he then dissolved and called a snap general election. He has now proposed a new set of steps which would need to be ratified by an interim legislature because Parliament has been dissolved, right? In Barcelona, over the weekend, there were huge protests, cops, order people out of the street. The protestors in Glacier were used to live, filled the streets with burning trash, and through stuff at the cops instead of leaving, you love to see it. It's so funny to me that I can picture the exact street that is being filled with burning trash because I have been there several times where that has been happening. The circle of life continues. On the rambler, people use construction materials to try and hold, like arguably one of the most iconic boulevards on the planet. It's ironic this is happening. Ninety years and a couple of months after Catalan workers fought the country's army and defeated it in the same streets. Moving on to crocodile news. Florida crocodile. Did you guys know they have crocodiles and Florida? What? No. Yeah, apparently. Yeah, I've heard from Florida, the men and their allies on this one. It does seem they have crocodiles. James, I have heard from the Floridian. See, I thank you. And let's put people in quotation marks there. We're talking Florida. The Floridian French genders are cool. I'm talking about that. I'm talking about people from the northern part of Florida. Yeah, the Florida Georgia people in quotation marks. Well, unfortunately, there is one less crocodile in Florida now. Yeah. Crocodile has been found dead from lead poisoning. It got into a pool and started behaving weirdly and had this kind of foul smelling, I think like vomit. And then they got it back into a canal and then they found it dead the next day. It didn't autopsy and it had, bunch of lead in its stomach, 23 air rifle pellets and a fishing sinker. This is important because this is a policy issue, right? Like specifically, the use of lead projectiles for hunting is something that's been prohibited in California and in condor. I don't think it's prohibited in condor. I think it is prohibited in condor parts of Arizona, but it's also like a voluntary program where they'll pay for you to have copper, monolithic ammunition. And there's been a whole lot of pushback on this recently. In Florida, I know a lot of people hunt iguanas with air rifles, but like this is a very direct causal relationship that we can point to from like lead to dead animal. I don't know how common place this is, but I thought it was interesting as a relatively rarer species. I don't want to get into depth on this on natural causes, but I'm going to find some people to interview. So it can be clear on like whether science stands on that. Finally, in the straight of hormones, hormones news, Iran is once again attacking ships with anti-ship cruise missiles. Things that they still have, despite months and months and months of the US trying to bomb them, I think there have been six attacks since the UN General Assembly happened in late September that were recorded as a Wednesday. It seems like they've taken along about one a day at a minute, so there might be a couple more by the time you hear this. Also this week, Paramount has closed the 111 billion dollar acquisition of a Warner Brothers forming a new conglomerate called Skydance, which is the Ellison company that originally bought Paramount a few years back. So now both CNN and CBS are in control of the Ellisons. Ellison sent out a day one memo to all these new employees, which warned them, quote, "integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce." Layoffs are obviously expected in the next few months. The state of California was able to secure concessions such as a promise to release about 30 movies a year for five years and a five million dollar fund for independent movies. Cool. That will fix it. Yeah. This will put a dent in obviously the absolute and total consolidation of media in general, of all forms into the hands of an extremely small number of people who absolutely suck. This is the worst merger that I can like remember in my life. It's the worst thing that I can like see and remember as a conscious living human. Yeah. The scale of this is absurd. It shouldn't be allowed. Yeah. No, it very clearly violates antitrust. If Lena Khan was in charge, it's obviously wouldn't happen. No, they would have the Navy SEAL. Yeah. Listen, Comp out. Yeah. Hey, minimum viable 2028 program. Yeah. No, breaking up this company should become a project that gets promoted by people like Khan and us. And if we're going to have Navy SEALs, this is what you use them for. Yeah. The anti-alescent SEAL division. Yeah. I will note that the very last Warner Brothers production as an independent studio was the movie digger. It's actually pretty good. It is not doing well. It's a catastrophic box office. Very divisive. It's really good. I'm looking forward to seeing it. Very divisive film. Yeah. Very divisive film. I'm not anti-digger, but it is very funny that that is their last release is Tom Cruise's biggest box office bomb at a generation. Yeah. Obviously, David Zazlov has been in many ways a disaster from Warner Brothers and his, his reign of the company is this partially what's led them to being acquired here. But Warner Brothers has put out a bunch of really interesting and good films the past few years and the current batch of executives promoted and fought for those movies like sinners, movies like one battle after another. Those executives are already gone. Those executives are not going to be sticking around David Ellison's new, new Warner Brothers. So the people that brought you one battle and sinners are no longer at the helm. So I wanted to update everyone on what's been happening here. If you didn't listen last week, you can get the very basics, but I was there last week, not there now. A number of people had been defending a pair of cottonwood trees that had once been part of the stand of cottonwood trees that joined canopies over the border, border construction workers for Fisher Sand and Gravel. I previously dropped three of them in their construction of the border wall, at which point someone had been sitting in the one remaining tree on the northern side. There's another tree which seems to be very close to us banning the border, which had been sat in briefly by someone who'd come from the Mexican side before they came down. On the 5th of October, border patrol staged a huge raid on this camp. The camp forward is worth it on private land. Generally, BP doesn't need a warrant to enter private land, unless it's a domicile, if they're 25 miles or less from the border, which they were in this instance. So the raid of the camp, they then came in with a cherry picker pulled the person who was in the tree out of the tree, detained them, and then pushed over the tree with an excavator very, very quickly. They moved extremely fast to do this whole thing. They detained 10 people that day, not quite sure what those people or if those people have been sighted or charged yet, still trying to get that information. The next day, five more people were detained and somebody began defending by sitting in it. The other tree, the tree that it straddles the border perhaps, or the tree that people thought was in Mexico, but it's not exactly clear, like without seeing the border monuments exactly where they line up. The thickness of a line on a map is way too thick to have this kind of definition. And so currently, the other tree is still being defended. That doesn't mean the border war construction has completely stopped. It seems they're working a very frenzied pace. As we record some Wednesday, they began working overnight on Tuesday night. And what they're doing now is it appears that they are building. So this is an area where they have double barrier, right? Two walls about 60 foot apart. One wall just inside the Roosevelt reservation and then one wall just inside the United States. And then there's a road between them that BP can drive, right? And it kind of, it seats hundreds of acres of the United States to border patrol control, right? Most of it was public land in this case, right? Forest service or some of its state wildlife refuge, some of it, I think BLM manages. That Roosevelt reservation for what I can understand because BLM posted notices that they were closing it last week. So what Border Patrol is now doing is building that northernmost wall first to prevent access to the southernmost wall. And it seems that they're doing this to very frenzied pace. It seems like they might be skipping some of us just from pictures I've seen. They might be skipping some of the usual smart wall fiber optic conduit that they would put in there and just trying to get up a barrier as quickly as they can, obviously to prevent people continuing to protest. The protest had the permission of landowners to be on their land and their local sheriff had said that he wasn't going to be arresting any of the protestors. So BP decided to do it themselves after 71 days of that tree being defended. So that tree is now gone, but the other tree remains. It's also very sweet that people have taken cuttings from the trees that were taken down and those cuttings are already growing too, which is nice to see nature, spring's eternal. But yeah, I'm going to cover this in a two-part or a natural causes. It will not be the Monday after you hear this, but it will be the Monday after that. And that'll be the first episode and there'll be two episodes so you'll have to wait to then together. the long version of this. Talking of long, we've got a long time without advertisements, Chano makes a list of his sad. Let's hear from Fischer-Cyndan Gravel. So we mentioned earlier that there are large protests going on in Spain. There are also very, very large student protests going on in France right now. These started September 8th, where high school students and this is an interesting development because most of the written history of student movements is about college students. These are high school students and they have started on mass blockading their schools and taking to the streets. These protests started in the Parisian suburbs. It is worth bearing in mind that French urban infrastructure is effectively the exact inversion of the way a barrican infrastructure worked with white flight. In the US you have white people fleeing the urban core into the suburbs. France has built the opposite where working class and non-white people were forced into the suburbs because they were not able to live in the urban core, which is predominantly wider and significantly richer. Everyone watched Le Hain. It's great. I wish I had any idea what that was, but yeah. It's a French film about this. It's about people living in these sorts of suburbs. It's a two immigrants and I think a a young Jewish kid who then travel into the city center and bad things happen. It's very similar to the story that you're going to be talking about. But it's like looking at the conditions 20 years ago and the same conditions now. Yeah, and it's not the same actually. Yeah. So these protests spread very, very quickly and it has now spread effectively everywhere. It's not just in Paris. It is across the entire country. I think right now the last number that I saw and this this changed while I was writing this, the the last number that I saw is 500 of France's 3,500 like high schools or fully shut down. Yeah. So these protests again started a couple of weeks ago on September 18th. As of Wednesday, the 7th, they are not just continuing but escalating. Now we're going to get into the police response in a second, but I can't count the number of times on this show. I have said there was a giant police crackdown and the images of the police crackdown spread the protests, but that's what happened here. Why is this happening? Why is it specifically high school students who are now in the streets in full on conflict with riot police who are reacting to and treating them the way that they treat? I mean, frankly worse than most protesters get treated in France, which is sort of astonishing. Yeah. So there's actually a good crime thing piece about this. There's a lot of things happening here. Part of it is a reaction to class sizes where you have, I mean 30 and 35 kids, sometimes a lot more than that. Class sizes is an issue that's familiar also to, I mean, a lot of these demands look like the demands you see in teachers strikes effectively everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. This class is enormous. Part of it is the structure of the French education system, which is French schools have breaks, but also you're in school from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. which is longer than most places and also causes, you know, this also causes teachers to have to work longer hours. And that means that, you know, be because they're working longer hours, the number of teachers you have is strained because you're covering more time. This plus, you know, decades of neoliberal austerity has led to conditions where there will just not be a substitute teacher. So a teacher will get sick. They'll have like maybe a person there, but it's not even a substitute teacher who could take over lesson plans. You just have a week at a time. We're in a subject that's on the national exam system. And there's no teacher, which is just sort of appalling given one of the other things that they need to protest or about, which is this sort of algorithmic program. I remember we had a much less, I don't know, ferocious, a luscious, strict version of this when I was in high school. But in France, they have this sort of student program where you're supposed to like put in your choices and it looks at your test scores and it spits out what you should be doing after like high school. Okay. And this is one of the things that like it feeds you into what track you're going into, right? So it feeds you into vocational schools, it feeds you into like what kind of colleges you can get into it. And I started into the system kind of like we talked about with the Indian student protests where there's this like it's incredibly intense pressure on students to like fight against each other basically for, you know, like it's promoted intense competition. And then also it's just it's a weird algorithm system and everyone is like forced to manage these issues you have with this weird algorithm taking what your information you're giving it and spitting you out this thing that like determines the rest of your life. I mean, there's a lot of other problems. The actual conditions in the schools themselves are very bad. Like, you know, it's leaking roofs, things like that. There's also I saw a thing about like lunch breaks where students weren't able to eat because the lunch break wasn't like they don't have cafeteria staff. The lunch break wasn't long enough for all the students to like get food. Cheese. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah, these conditions are emblematic of, I mean, just a lot of what what if the sort of deterioration of social services and, you know, the sort of death of opportunity for these students in a way that the more I'm thinking about the more it's just, oh, this reminds me a lot of the end of the Indian protests. And so the protest themselves, the Macron administration made a decision very, very early on that they were not going to negotiate with the students. They are kind of become more open to it. In the past day, we'll see what happens there. But their immediate response was, you know, a brutal police crackdown, which has been the Macron administration response to most things. And this has been this has been a full-on French police assault on a bunch of children. A 15-year-old got his hand blown off. I've seen conflicting reports about this. It seems like he was tried to pick up what he thought was a tear gas canister, but was actually a stun grenade. Yeah. But I've also seen reports that like it hit him. I don't know, but regardless of somehow the police fired a grenade and it blew this kids hand off. Yeah. Another student has lost an eye. I think that kid was 16. The kid he got his hand blown off again was 15. I'm going to quote from crime thing here because there's another really bleak case. But currently the 14-year-old boy can't open his mouth as all of his bottom teeth were knocked out by the impact and all of his upper teeth are broken. Jesus. So yeah, that kid is, that kid is 14. Yeah. Again, I cannot emphasize enough. These are actual children. And this is also kind of part of what's complicated in covering this because I think it's important to mention that a cop should not be knocking out the teeth of anyone. The fact that doing this to 14-year-old is particularly brutal. And also I think that it's true. And this has been one of the debates that's been sort of raging across French society is like, are these students legitimate political actors? Like, do they have the right to have their voices heard? And, you know, like, go and take political action like this. And the right has kind of said no and argued that these people are sort of pawns of, you know, they're pawns of what I would describe as the center left party, France on Boudre. The media will describe them as hard left, but like, come on, like, they're like to the right of the old PCF. And the old French Communist Party was like not a particularly like communist Communist Party. But it's worth noting that while France on Boudre has talked to students and like spoken at some of their protests, this was not a protest that was organized through the parties at all. There's an interesting interview in Le Monde with the French sociologist Vincent Tobage, where he points out that, you know, France is a country that has seen high school organized high school student protests too, but these are not those kind of protests. You know, 2006 was kind of the last big high school student protest, but those ones were organized by leftist student unions that were directly affiliated with the parties. This is not that. This is a bunch of students taking action autonomously. They are self organized and they are not particularly connected to any of the French political parties, even the sort of far left ones. And the scale is like huge, right? For something that's more autonomously organized, like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of participants. Yeah, I like it all across the country. Yeah, I mean, they fully have shut down. Okay, I'm not gonna try to do the math on there. Hold on. One in seven, five hundred and thirty five hundred. Yeah, that sounds, that sounds right. That's why they call him PhD James, everyone. Yeah. Parking historian over here. Hell yeah. Oh, yeah. I pick an anthropology degree specifically. So I wouldn't have to do this kind of math. You just get to measure people's skulls instead of an anthropology and do that kind of matter. Yeah. Well, look, anthropology consists of two things racism and a discourse about whether or not it's doing racism. So, you know, this is why I'm a podcaster now a discipline has never done anything wrong. That is most of what my anthropology class is. Yeah. There's some good stuff in there every every once in a while, they accidentally started social with it, but yeah. Oh, you do linguistic anthropology and melts your brain. Oh, that's not scary. Yeah. From the perspective of La Hone's into me is a French word for France and Boudre. It's like a damn sock in that it has people who are left of other people in the business, right? This isn't a particularly radical party, at least sort of on a global scale. You've seen some politicians do a lot better than others. I'm sure everyone by now will have seen the Bali, Baguioco video of the mayor getting to take us with the kids. Yeah, but like, yeah, it's not about politicians and like attempts to make it about politicians, other than being pissed off at them. Yeah, and people asking for like huge, like structural changes. Yes. And frustration at both the left's inability to address this political situation in France and, you know, continuing is sort of like, like we talked about in like Brazil and in some parts of the state. It's sort of like geratocracy, even among the left, we have these kind of old guys who may've done good things, but they're still in their 80s. And you need to pass the torch and like a lot of what I'm seeing from these protests in France, it is a very like generational uprising. Yeah. Also built on the frustrations about how like 10% of the school budget is being diverted to the pension system. So there's a lot of this kind of generational frustration and the left in France is also run into that. I was going to say like I did I did use calculate for this one, but it is 58 years since 1968. And but you have this like this generation of like swastle wheat, like like 68ers, yeah, they've gone in a number of directions, right? But like to include like part of the electoral left. And like it's not like we haven't seen protests since 68 in France, right? But like, yeah, it shouldn't be the one generation gets to have the like we were the radical students who changed the world. And therefore you students now have to listen to us, even though we're old as fuck and don't understand the shit that you're going through. Yeah. And I think the sort of structural issue in terms of how yeah, on a generational level, like how the left has been and has not been connected to these students. I think it's also very important to get like where this started and the kind of like working class suburbs that the French left has had a really tenuous relationship with like kind of since the 70s that we talked about this. Like so like I got three years ago now, there was a huge series, a huge uprising over a police killing in a different set of in a different set of French suburbs that really came in this moment of what had been really fearsome people in France like in the wake of the yellow vest and all these other protests. Other pension protests. Yeah, right. And this this was the one where like the non white people in this suburbs went up and the rest of France was like, Oh God, no, fuck off. We hate you. You're like the to this day, like that, that the interview with the sociologist I was talking about in the mom, which is like the biggest newspaper in France is talking about how well all these students are like actually different than like the like urban disturbances from those 2023 protests about police brutality and social racism and class violence. And when you look at it, it's like no, they're not like they're actually a lot in some ways or a lot more similar to that than they are to the other protests which have been going on, which is where I kind of want to close this where we have also started to see the rest of French society move slowly in sort of line with the student protest where, you know, obviously part of the student protest are about this neoliberal kind of austerity budgets that the Macron administration keeps trying to pass. And so there's also been a one day strike of about like 300,000 workers from the sort of like traditional like leftist unions. Also about 11% of teachers and faculty are now on strike in the middle of this too. So it remains to be seen exactly the extent which the rest of the French left is going to join into these protests. I want to mention something briefly about schools here and why it's important that it's that these are starting here, which is that schools are not just places where you get education. They're also, you know, it's not just the basic part of like the reproductive labor that reproduces capital. It's not just that it produces future workers, but it's also a place where like the basic care for students and the basic social reproduction of like children is carried out by the state which allows workers to work, right? And this is why shutting schools down is also a giant lever that allows you to like like actually fully shutting down schools on mass is a lever that allows you to disrupt the rest of the economy because it forces parents to like not work. It's not exactly analogous, but it can serve the effect of what coal strikes used to where if you shut down the supply of coal, it shuts down all of the workers down the line. Where if you force all of these parents have to stay home and like all of these workers are no longer, you know, are now also on strike as a sort of secondary thing of shutting these schools down. This is why the state always tries to make it really hard for teachers unions to strike because schools are a lever of power that you can use in the labor system if you use them correctly. I want to close by mentioning that as this has been going on, there's been unrest building in France over, I mean, a whole bunch of things. There's a police bill. I think we talked about in this show that is trying to allow the French police to basically what it would do is it's a proposed bill that if it was passed, if a French police officer shot someone, they would be immediately assumed to have killed them legitimately and then they would have to be proven that they illegitimately killed them instead of there being an investigation immediately. So it's a bill that says that if a cop drags you to now and shoots you and there's no one there, there's nothing you can do about it. That's been causing unrest. And one of one of the one of the old sort of signals that's been set up in the middle of this and it's unclear who is doing this, but there's been this giant call put out from these mass demonstrations on October 17th. And there's this question, you know, I probably think it's talking about this. I've seen this in other places of already student protests going to last until then until that giant uprising, are people going to come out into the streets before then? And at this point, all we can sort of do is wait and also, I guess if you're in France, go now, you're not going to get a better shot. If you're trying to overthrow the government, stay in line, you know? Yeah. I want to end up like one actual important note, which is you see this a lot in the nature of French protests, you see this in American protests, we're like one section of society will go into revolt and everyone else just kind of waits. And you get these like cycles were like the people who were kind of in the streets and occupy, like weren't the same people necessarily. I mean, some of these either as cross ever, but they weren't the same section of society that went into revolt and Ferguson, right? They like waited until the next one was out or like you see this was like the British student movement. And then right after the British student movement kind of gets crushed, there's like the riots in London 2010. And you've seen this here where there were a bunch of like strikes by like the organized left and there was like the yellow vests. And then when the suburbs went up in 2023, everyone else stayed home. And if you do that, they're going to, they're going to line you up and they're going to knock you out one at a time. And the only way that you can win is like when one sector of society goes out, even if it's not yours, go with them. Yeah. Don't leave, don't leave the kids to die alone, like go support, we'll go fight with them. I do have something that's not on my script that I wanted to bring up really quickly because this just came out today. And I do think it's an important story. This happened back in August, but it we didn't know about it until today. So a congressional candidate in Arizona, Bernadette Green, Placincia, who is running in Arizona's eighth congressional district and trying to enceit incumbent Republican representative Abe Hamada was raped in August while she was repairing a damaged campaign sign in Sun City. This was like a regular thing for her signs would get damaged, you know, either purposefully or just like by the climate. And she would go out and fix them in the morning. And one day when she was out doing this in August at about 2 a.m. She was struck in the head and lost consciousness and regained consciousness to a man sexually assaulting her. She believes he had said something about her being a democratic bitch, although she's not 100% certain about what he was saying. I think this is just kind of an important thing for people to be aware of for obvious reasons. God that's bleak. Yeah, it's pretty fucking horrifying. Yeah. Anyway, this story came out within hours of us recording this. I don't have much more on that than that. The way that we tend to talk about like sexual violence, we tend to talk about it is something that's like an individual phenomena and not as a regime of violence that's done to discipline people into falling in line. And this is a really bleak and blatant example of like, oh yeah, no, sexual violence also is a social phenomena that is designed to keep people in line. And fuck that. I mean, it just worth noting that like even in a position of like relative cultural power to certainly the average victim, she didn't feel safe coming out about what had happened there for months. Yeah. So that's pretty worth acknowledging too. Moving along on October 4th, 2026, Russian public health regulator, Ross puttrin, Ross, sorry, I guess it's going to take a second. It looks rough. I'm not going to try it. The Russian public health regulator, they're equivalent of the Department of Health. I'm not going to try to say the name. You don't listen to this podcast because of my pronunciation of foreign language. - Just, right, I'm not even gonna try here. Famously our strongest suit. - I've never seen a B in an N come together without a vowel right now. - It's really soft in here. - Yeah, there's some complicated phonetic shit going on in that word, it's gnarly. - Fascinating. - Well, now I have to try to say it, Ross Putt-Rabnaz, Nadzor. Ross Putt-Rabnaz. - Ross Putt-Rabnaz, the Russian department of health. - It took a long time to get to the meat of this. It should a public statement that one employee of the anti-plague institute of Siberia and the Far East had perished due to her accidental exposure to pneumonic plague. This employee, 28 year old Daria Shippelova, had apparently broken a vial containing plague bacteria and contracted the degly disease. In short order, 200 Samad people who had close contact with Daria before her death were isolated and put under observation. Multiple hospitals and other facilities in the area were closed and or put under observation. As news of this all trickled down to the wider world, people began to freak out. I think I first came across this story and like it was pushed to me. I don't even follow this subreddit, but the prepper subreddit cut, like pushed it to me. - Right, right. - Because people were freaking out about it so much, right? - Yeah, that makes sense. - That makes sense. - To be fair, this is not not worth being concerned about, right? And I think this panic was an equal mix of PTSD from COVID and quite frankly, the enduring popularity of Stephen King's best novel, The Stand. I bring up the stand because I can't lie. I initially got a little worried because the way in which this started is exactly how the world ending plague and the stand begins. There's like a US scientist in a bio weapons lab who like breaks a vial and it kills everybody and it escapes containment and it wipes out, you know, the whole world, right? And to be clear, this is the sort of story that should generate some anxiety. It's not unreasonable if you were concerned about this, but on closer inspection, I truly don't believe the specific case is worth freaking out over. For one thing, there's zero evidence that it has spread beyond its initial victim. It sounds scary to hear that hundreds of people have been contained after an accident of fatal plague exposure, but that's what you'd want the Russian government. - Who are any government to do, right? - Yeah. - To take this kind of precaution, all right? They are, I don't normally say this about the Russian government, but they seem to be responding responsibly to this. They seem to have an understanding that you have to respond very seriously to this sort of thing. - Yeah, and it being the plague institute where this happened does raise the odds of the people dealing with it knowing what to do. - Right. - The plague institute. - It's the plague institute. - And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. - I do want to note here, so far, 60% of the people who have been detained have already been tested and been declared free of any sickness, and it seems like the rest are going to be given a good bill of health soon. A spokesperson for Russia's public health entity that I will not try to pronounce and form the New York Times. Laboratory tests have identified two cases of COVID-19, and two cases of rhinovirus infection, or the common cold, the regulators said, according to the Interfax News Agency, no other infectious disease pathogens were detected in any of the contacts. Where I wasn't directly to the Times was to enter facts. And you do have to imagine that those like four people who had the cold or COVID were like freaking the fuck. - Yeah, yeah. - The person like, oh my god, is this the interfaxing? - Worst days of your life. - I don't think sniffles are a sign of the pneumatic plague, but I would imagine you're not thinking super logically in this instance. - Now, the pneumatic plague is insanely deadly. It has a 71% case fatality rate for some idea of how bad that is. The case fatality rate for Ebola is only around 50%, right? Although rates and past outbreaks have varied wildly, there's a lot of factors that can influence that. Ebola case fatality rates in different outbreaks have been anywhere from 25% to 90%, right? There's different variants of Ebola, right? Just as we don't exactly know what variant of the pneumatic plague this is, right? If I'd actually have a lower or higher case fatality rate, this may be the only case of someone getting infected with this specific strain of pneumonic plague that we have. I don't know that we really know exactly what she has, but yeah, this is a scary, deadly plague, but that also makes the case that like, if it had broken containment, there would be way more sick and dying people by now. And given the overall competence of the Russian state, if this was an out-of-control plague in Siberia, I don't think they'd be able to keep this locked down very long, right? - Oh, yeah. - No, if 71% of people exposed to this were dying, right? Like I had contracted it and were dying. I don't think they'd be able to keep this down. I'm like, we'd be able to keep this thing secret, right? The other thing I should point out is that scary as that case fatality rate is, that's not the only thing that should make a disease worrying to you, right? That's super worrying if you catch it, but pneumonic plague is not widely transmissible. Think back to COVID. If one person on a bus or a plane or in a room has COVID and sneezes, not back to, but think, I mean, COVID's still here. If one person in a room has COVID and sneezes, a bunch of people around them have a very good chance of getting infected, especially if they're not vaccinated, right? Numeric plague does not work this way. There's a very good CNN interview with virologist Angela Res Musin, and she points out that this plague variant requires a lot of contact with the infected person, and even someone dying of plague is not coughing up a bunch of infectious material, right? It's just not the same kind of illness. In any way, shape or form, this is why none of the contained people who were close to Daria have gotten sick. Numeric plague victims are not super infectious. That interview with Dr. Res Musin also brought up a very good point. This anti-plague lab is being described often as like a bio-weapons factory, and the Russian state has surely done weapons research at this and other similar facilities. I'm not gonna doubt that. But if absolutely no one anywhere on planet Earth was doing any bio-reppens research, this facility would still exist because plague is endemic to the region, right? It's not, there's not plague in this facility 'cause the Russian government loves cooking up plague. It's because this part of Siberia, tons of animals have the plague, and people get plague all the time in this part of the world. - This is the exact same thing with Wuhan, like the Wuhan CDC there, which is like, yeah, there's a bunch of infectious disease research there because that's where it is. - There's a bunch of bats there. This is where you do it. - Yeah, you put the lab in the place where stuff is happening so you can study it. And yeah, plague is carried by animals. And by the way, Siberia, this part of Eastern Russia is not the only place where plague is super endemic. The Midwestern U.S. is riddled with plague-carrying prairie dogs and occasionally a person here. - Right, California, I'm not saying that's not the end. Those aren't the only animals that can give you plague. Occasionally a person will catch bubonic plague in this country, which is a variant of the same disease as pneumonic plague and they'll get it from some fucking animal. You may recall that the whole U.S. has not been wiped out by an outbreak of the bubonic plague. This is because the bubonic plague is super treatable, but also not super easy to spread in the modern world. This may sound weird given that bubonic plague wiped out much of Europe, but that was because the primary vectors for plague are wild animals that bite people and flees from infected animals. The OG plague took centuries to get its teeth into the populace and only succeeded because back then people lived in super close contact with livestock and had no real way of dealing with flees. And we also didn't have antibiotics, right? - Yeah. - You know? There's a ton of reasons why that happened then and it doesn't happen now. - Now, not to say a treatment-resistant form of the plague that's more infectious, couldn't spread and evolve under these conditions, there's just not any evidence that that's happened, yes, right? And so I would say this is not really something that should be on your front burner of concern. - And in terms of where a disease like this would come from, did this something that Angelus talked about before the odds that this comes from a bio-weapons lab, he's significantly lower than the odds that it comes from just a factory form, where you have all these animals in really close containment and diseases spread extremely fast and get to mutate, extremely quickly, that's the primary disease factor risk. The stuff is that and the human contact of the wild. - Yeah, that's a great point, Mia. And we should probably move to ads right now. And then when we come back, I will talk about Brazil, which is honestly a little more worrying than the plague right now. (upbeat music) And we're back. So moving across the world to what some people call Russia of South America, not me and not anyone I know, but you could call Brazil that. It wouldn't be very accurate, but you could call them that. - It's big. - Flavio Bolsonaro emerged ahead of the current Brazilian president Lula in the first round of voting. Neither candidate emerged with an outright majority, so the election will proceed to a runoff, but most experts seem to consider Flavio's victory all but a foregone conclusion at this point. Political consulting firm think policy told Reuters they estimated Lula would need to win 62% of voters who supported other conservative candidates in the first round of voting to have a chance. This does not seem likely. If you read a lot of coverage of this election, one thing you'll encounter is that every expert on Brazilian politics is very convinced that Flavio's presidency will be an extension of Jair Bolsonaro's presidency. A lot of Brazilian voters are convinced, and in fact, it's probable that most people who voted for Flavio did so because they wanted another term for Jair, right? Flavio himself said at a recent rally, I ask God for the opportunity to walk up the ramp of Plano Alto Palace next year alongside President Jairo Messias Bolsonaro, right? It's a pretty pretty clear signposting there. Yeah. Jair is currently serving a 27-year sentence from house arrest. He is legally forbidden from holding office again as a result of this conviction over the coup attempt. Flavio has promised to seek amnesty for not just his father, but for the rioters who marched on Brazil's capital to keep his father in office. He's also promised to impeach the Supreme Court justices who ruled against Jair and his supporters. This is deeply concerning for a number of reasons. I want to quote from a New York Times article that came out today on the subject. The Bolsonaro families come back mures the enduring hold of other powerful political dynasties around the world, including the marcuses and the Philippines, the Shariffs and Pakistan, the Fujimori's in Peru and the Kirchner's in Argentina. But Mr. Lulis political movement has failed to produce a successor and appears to have lost touch with its bases. Many Brazilians link it to corruption and government mismanagement. If Mr. Bolsonaro now succeeds in unseating his left est rival in the October 25th runoff, he would gain unusually broad powers to shape Brazil that ex-President will be able to appoint up to four new justices in this nation's Supreme Court, which has 11 seats in total. So one thing that's really worrying about this is that Flavio and Jair kind of through the transit of property will have nearly total power when he takes office for a lot of very frustrating reasons to do with the way Brazil's democracy is structured. There's very little, if anything, in the way of constitutional governing rails that would limit what Flavio can do. This is an extremely concerning situation. It's very dispiriting. It's a good reason not to listen to quite frankly most of like the Western left's takes on politics outside of, and sometimes including the United States, because if you would listen to what people were saying about Lula prior to this, it's entirely like he's this wonderful like leftist hero. And the reality is, you know, Lula's done some great things. He has some great political stances, but you can't look at his regime as anything but a failure if it's led to Bolsonaroism, right? It failed to stop this, you know? It just as poised by the way just as Clinton failed, right? Just as Obama failed to stop the rise of Trump, right? We can't pretend that in this case, because we can ignore the downsides in the failures of Lula's regime because we don't live in Brazil that like he didn't fail. He did, you know? And that's just something the left has to grapple with. Like this is a guy who said and did a lot of the right things and who went pretty hard after prosecuting Bolsonaro. And it was a catastrophic failure. I don't know what else to say. Yeah. I mean, I think something I've talked about, got back back back in the last election. I did a very long series of episodes on Lula and one of the circumstructural problems of the program of the workers party was it was always dependent on the commodity boom. And you know, the massive extra prices you get from that. And the moment the commodity boom collapsed, the entire project was on borrowed time because it became impossible to do the kind of like sort of class negotiation of redistributing a bunch of the profits from the commodities they were selling overseas and like raising living conditions for people while paying off deliveries sort of like oligarchical ruling class. And the moment that coalition fell apart. Yeah. You know, everything went to shit. And the problem is like there isn't really a way to deal with Bolsonaro without like systemically going through and like destroying like the BD oligarchy and like a whole bunch of different sectors of the Brazilian ruling class. But yeah, Lula wasn't it was a difficult position for them even in the 2000s when they had a really, really strong political mandate. And there wasn't any way to do it, even if they'd wanted to under the last electoral coalition, which was this very fragile coalition with a bunch of sort of like anti Bolsonaro conservatives. And this like weird parliamentary left center right coalition that ended up with a bunch of sort of like very shitty like neoliberal economic policy going through that like discontinued to enable sort of Bolsonaroism. And yeah, you have to grapple with like if you aren't able to fundamentally destroy like the material basis of your opponents, they're eventually going to overthrow you and they're going to be back here. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, I don't know. It's disappointing. We'll we'll have more coverage on this and the future because this is really important. Right. Just as it's very important to look at what's happening in a hungry right now as like an example of what a post Trump United States might look like. It's very important to look at Lula's and his coalition's failures in terms of like, well, number one, this also does mirror in in some ways mirrors what happened with Biden. But this is also evidence of like, you know, you don't want to take anything too directly because again, the these are all very different countries and very different from the United States. But there are since there are some lessons here for the entire world and like how hard it is to unseat an authoritarian regime that is entirely predicated on making stupid easy promises to people, right? As opposed to coalitions that are attempting to do the very difficult job of governing. Right. And that you're always going to be in an uphill battle if the other guy is just spouting fantasies. And if the media goes along with it, that's a huge part of it. The media aspect is a huge part of that. As much as this is a warning for us going forward, I think this is an example of like, what if you know someone even much more progressive than Joe Biden would take office in 2028? What if we get a sort of like ineffectual social democratic administration? Right. Who might who might actually do some things that are might say the right things and fail or might even do things that are kind of sensible might actually put forward some good policies. But that just not end up mattering because of whatever, whatever kind of structural limitations they hit, whatever kind of media narratives really, really take hold. You see this kind of really big focus on like fraud and corruption on on the right right now. Yeah. About, you know, that's a big part of what government is is is supposed to do. And this is something that is orange, tried to take by the horns and try to like make sure that the right can't fully co opt like co opt. That sort of language would be like if we're going if we want to have a socialist or a social democratic government, it needs to be efficient. And that should be actually real efficiency. I continue to think one of the things that any leftist movement trying to unseat authoritarianism in the United States, particularly needs to have as a central issue is fighting fraud and fighting scams. Yeah. Almost nothing is more important from an electoral standpoint in my opinion. Yeah. There's a new poll from KFF looking at issues that that voters care about for the midterms. Cost of living is the top issue for democratic and independent voters. Yeah. While Republican voters, while Republican voters want candidates to discuss, quote, fraud. And I think that's a really interesting look at where we are right now as a country. Yeah. And I think I think tying this back to Brazil too. Like this is one of the problems that the PT the workers party had was like the way that the media was able to steer like all anti-corruption stuff in Brazil like ended up going after the workers party even though all of the corruption scandals implicated literally everyone across the entire political spectrum. Yeah. And like this is part of what happened this election where like there's a bunch of fraud scandals with like this Supreme Court, but that's been like tied to Lula. And he's the one who's taken the hit from it even though it also involves like all of the right-wing political parties. And that's that's like one of the dangers of sort of, I don't know, it's like one of the persistent problems of like the way that frog and the way the anti-corruption politics get deployed by the right. That's just this like yeah decades long issue. Another weird example of this is that the Mayor of New York went on to a podcast by a guy named Theo Vaughn if you're familiar. Yeah. I know. Theo Vaughn is here. And one interesting thing that that happened is Zoran was talking about how the city just secured a historic $130 million settlement from DoorDash and 115 million of that is going to go directly to DoorDash workers who DoorDash was underpaying for years with workers receiving anywhere between 500 to thousands of dollars in pay that was stolen from them. Yeah. But part of this, part of this settlement is also $16 million in civil penalties and funding to build this tool which will be operated by the city and workers to monitor DoorDash to make sure that they don't rip off their workers going forward. And it's something that was very interesting. When Theo heard that, he's like, why? Why would you use that money? Why not just give that money to the workers? You know, he kind of inquired about this as a possible example of fraud. I'm like, why is the city taking $16 million? Is it actually going to be good or is that another example of fraud and corruption? And I think that's a really interesting look at the mind of the kind of right-wing focus on fraud. I was like, no, that money is actually going to build a tool to make sure that DoorDash cannot defraud its own workers going forward and will be operated by the city and workers themselves. But it's a really interesting look at this sort of distrust. And even in something like a $130 million settlement, which is because, you know, his story, that's the largest worker, like, labor settlement in municipal history. That's massive. Yeah. Even in that, there's this kind of, like, you know, like a worry in the mind of the right. That somehow this will be used for, you know, fraudulent means. Yeah. I do want to reiterate here, like, when I say that, like, Lula failed. That's not even coming from a point of necessarily, like, moral condemnation. It's just like, we lost. We have to be factual. It didn't work. We have to look at what went wrong here. You can't just pretend that this, this was a good presidency because he said the right things and went after Bolsonaro. We lost. Right? We have to deal with that. We have to play the ball where it fucking lies, right? Anyway, let's talk about Dennis Haster. Huh? Everybody loves Peter Files. Oh, Danny. Danny was this thing. Unfortunately, too many people still do love Danny. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people sharing our profession have some serious fucking issues. All articles that I've read today all pointed out that he went by the nickname, Danny, and was considered a very cool and approachable Republican speaker. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. It was real approachable. It was approaching some fucking other people. I'm saying this because Dennis Haster, the longest serving Republican speaker of the House and a serial pedophile died earlier this week on October 5th. Haster's legacy, such as it was, was ruined after he left office when regulators know this a bunch of really weirdly structured payments that he initially characterized as blackmail payments based on false allegations. Oh, some guy made me, you know, is blackmailing me and it's all bullshit, but it's just easier to pay. This was a lie. The payments were to a man who as a boy had been molested and I think raped by Dennis. This was during his time as a high school wrestling coach. This guy was 14 when Haster abused him. And when he approached the former speaker of the House decades later, Haster agreed to buy his silence with $3.5 million in hush money. This is not an amount you would spend on like bullshit blackmail allegations, right? This is a fortune. That's a lot of money. The financial crimes are the only ones Haster was actually convicted over. His abuse of his students had occurred too long ago. The statute of limitations was up, but the resulting investigation in court case revealed at least four victims and I don't know that I know of any convicted pedophiles who had four victims and only four victims, right? Yeah. Once you're doing it a lot. Four came forward. This is a guy who was abusing kids in his years long time as a wrestling coach. He had other victims. The judge in that case declared him a serial child molester. Now the kind of abuse he engaged in varied sort of the most common thing that he did was he had a recliner that he set up outside of the boy's locker room. What? So he's this. He also engaged in fondling and outright rape on at least one occasion in the form of forced oral sex. Make no mistake. Dennis Hasterd was a serial child rapist and molester. During his court case, he made a he stated that I want to apologize to the boys. I miss treated when I was their coach and the sisters of one of the victims said to him. Don't be a coward, Mr. Hasterd. Oh, the truth. What you did wasn't misconduct. It was sexual abuse of a minor. Now that was solid. Speak it out in court on her part. A lot of journalists and media figures could stand to take a lesson from that. The AP's obituary for him just read Dennis Hasterd. Long time Republican house speaker who went to prison dies at age 84. Oh my gosh. Went to prison. Went to prison. Yeah. Lucky went on a visit to check it out. Boom. Why? Yeah. What could have happened there? Now Fox's main article on him did note, although I think this may have been. I'm not sure if this was like something they added after the fact, but it did call him like a child molester. However, and I'm going to quote here from an article in Yahoo news Fox News gave former Republican house speaker Dennis Hasterd and in memoriam send off Monday memorializing a man whom the federal judge called a serial child molester while relegating a sexual abuse of teenage boys to a brief reference to allegations that had tainted his reputation. As we go to break, former house speaker Dennis Hasterd has died, Bayer said. As archival footage played beneath a banner reading in memoriam, former house speaker Dennis Hasterd dies at age 84, Bayer then highlighted Haster's political resume, noting that the Illinois Republican served as speaker from 1999 to 2007 was the longest serving Republican house speaker in American history. Then came an extraordinarily sanitized depiction of why Hasterd became one of the most disgraced political figures in modern American history. His reputation was later tainted by allegations he and molested athletes during his career as a teacher and wrestling coach, Bayer said, he spent more than a year in prison. Allegations, allegations, a judge called him a serial child molester. You don't have to say allegations anymore, Brett. You can just say he fucked kids. You're legally in the clear hey, you're not going to get sued to just being a coward. To the judge, like, who's going to sue you, Dennis Hasterd's people? Yeah. Like, do they really want that discovery? Like, yeah, okay, man, go for it. Anyway, that's, that's all I got. Last Tuesday in a short and unsigned order, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue sending people to countries that are not their own. It's a protest. It's often referred to as third country deportation. It's hard not to see this. It's just rendition, right? Like, you're sending people to places where they have no ties often to be tortured. The court will hear oral arguments about this in December, but for now, this practice can continue. This is manifesting in New York, for example, in the removal of people who have a status called withholding of removal, according to reporting in the city reporter and documented people with this status, which there's a very high burden of proof for this, right? It's a higher burden of proof than just saying they have to prove they will be in danger if they're returned. They're being called into federal buildings for a quote, ice check-in. They're sent these like very brief letters or like document update or like some, some pretext for bringing limited buildings where they're then detained and sent to third countries. Yeah. The Trump administration has been doing this more and more right. It's trying to find loopholes in the law, which is very clearly designed to protect very vulnerable people and prevent a risk of what is called chain refoundment. Chain refoundment, if you're not familiar with the process whereby someone is sent back to their country where they have proven they're not safe, by root of a third country. So let's say I'm trying to send tariffs to Canada, but I send them to France and France and so to Canada, right? People deported to third countries have faced torture, harassment, extortion and worse. The Trump administration has managed to cajole nearly two dozen countries into accepting people this way. Previously, this practice was extremely rare, obviously, rendition, which did not really an immigration procedure when it was carried out as rendition has happened before. There was also a practice of returning people to Mexico who had crossed a southern border. Biden did that, Trump won did that, right? Those people weren't being removed when they had withholding a removal. They were being removed under Title 42, which is again legally distinct. In several cases, there has been an effort by the states involved to cast doubt about who is legally responsible for people remove this way. So in the United States case, it claimed that people moved to Secod. If you remember that scandal, I guess, I don't know, travesty, the U.S. claim that they were the responsibility of the Salvatorean government. Panama has claimed that people who are non-Panamanian there were in the custody of the UN, but the UN said that they were in the responsibility of the Panamanian government. The government clearly uses this practice, I guess, as a punishment. We can see it in the case of Kilma Abrago García, who was offered a chance to be deported to Costa Rica if you play guilty and threatened with Uganda if you did not. You hear this a lot from people, migrants who have signed a quote-unquote self deportation paperwork, perhaps saying, "Oh, I didn't want to get sent." Generally, the way they wave this is, we'll send you to Africa, large portions of the United States population still believe Africa is a country, not a continent. This is an ongoing issue, but for migrants who have never been anywhere in Africa, that is extremely scary, a continent where you know no one, where people's human rights are abused. Well, and honestly, as you noted, James, we're probably, for most people, your only knowledge of the continent is like war and disease. Yes. Through this dark continent. Right. Right. Yes. People's understanding of Africa is extremely problematic, but it's understandable that people are very afraid. But that influences why this is such a scary thing. Yes. Absolutely. So let's take the example of more than a dozen people who have been sent to sootini. They were held in a maximum security prison without meaningful access to counsel. For nine months, the government there prevented them from meeting a local attorney and denied them unmonitored calls to attorneys in the United States. The government of Aswatini has repeatedly said that they want to participate in chain refalement, saying the goal of the procedure was, quote, "facilitating their eventual repatriation." This is happening all over the world, like right out in the open. It's a very clear attempt to evade the protections that these people have, evidently international law is not a real thing for powerful countries, and that's what we're seeing here. here. All of this comes as ISIS, once again, surging arrests, they were in San Diego. I saw ice SRT in San Diego today. There's been a sharp increase reported in Los Angeles. These callins are happening more and more in New York. Like, I think we can probably expect to see them doing liberal cities before the midterms. Yeah. But they're all over Chicago right now too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're really going after it at this time. And they think that's because it's red meat to their base, right? They want to kind of own the Libs, especially New York, where Mamdani has had success, right? And they don't like that. It is also going to result in people who have every right to go to the polls and vote being afraid to do so. Yep. And that is not a coincidence. This is all part of a coordinated strategy going into next month. Now, that's what we talked about a little bit last week with this new save verification system. Yeah. And part of the system is so that people who are eligible to vote might be too scared to even register to vote if the system flags who is a non-citizen and puts you into contact with ice. And even if you are legally here, maybe you're living with someone who isn't. Yep. And it could just scare people out of exercising their right to vote. Yeah. Maybe you just don't think it's worth all that stress. Yeah. Right? You don't want those people around your neighborhood. All of those are very real concerns, especially if you feel like your vote doesn't matter or whatever. Yeah. It's all part of voter suppression. Yeah. It's really a really kind of advanced and city is tactic of voter suppression. Yeah. Obviously the Trump administration wants as few people to vote in these midterms as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. Certainly going forward. Yeah. Speaking of voting, it could happen here as well as two other cool zone media shows behind the bastards and weird little guys are nominated for a signal award, which is not related to the encrypted messaging app. As cool as that would be. Yeah. That would be a good zone if they had a podcast award for some reason as opposed to an award for the people who have said the most things on signal that they would not have wanted to say on any other app. Which is I think we might also be in contention for a victory reward for most bonkers group chat would also be. Yeah. Oh my god. If you would like to vote for us for this signal awards, voting is open till October 15th. This is a good prep if you intend to vote for the midterms. I know voting is scary. Yeah. Not everyone believes in it. But if you could at least vote in the signal awards, that would be appreciated. This is not electoralism, folks. Yeah. This is not going to give us any power. It will give some of us small statues. I don't know. I think it is harm reduction to beat prof G market. Yeah. Can I just say one of these people represents fuck me. Yeah. Yeah. We got to beat G markets. Prof G markets. The fuck is it. Yeah. Yeah. Prof G. It's an economist who talks every fucking day about capital markets. I cannot imagine what that does to the human soul. Why nightmare? I mean, I don't I guess not why. But yeah. We are polling at 41%. We are a few points ahead. But it's still it's still fluctuating. So if you would like to be a big part. Yeah. If you're in line, stay in line. Yeah. If you want to be a big part of helping beat prof G markets, follow the link and some other shit and some others housing. Why a daily polling at 1% LOL. Yeah. Owned. Look, you can't stop Flavio Bolsonaro from winning in Brazil. But we can stop him from winning a signal award. And of course, by that, I mean, prof G would clearly hand his signal award over to the Bolsonaro. We all know that a vote for prof G is a vote for Jair Bolsonaro to win the signal awards. And I discovered this was happening. I did go on the prof G markets YouTube and they were discussing what the Bolsonaro would mean for the market. Well, there you go. There you go. Let's not look any further into that. I have a high threshold for stress, but I wasn't able to watch that. I've seen too much. But what will the markets think? What will the markets think? They'll think vote for cool zone. Yeah. If you would like to help us beat prof G, follow the link in the show notes. Does G stand for Jair? No, because that's spelled with a J. But it might theoretically it might, you know, vote for us just in case. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to email us, it's cool zone tips at proton.me unless you're a marketing person and you know, fuck yourself. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. 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 IHART radio 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. Her family never bought it and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an IHART True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple podcasts, available only to IHART True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait, head to Apple podcasts, search for IHART True Crime Plus and subscribe today. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator and host of scam goddess podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcast, all about robbery, fraud and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scam them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. Start listening to scam goddess on the IHART Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. 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