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2:31

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2:33

is continuing to happen. Staunks. But

2:35

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2:37

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2:39

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2:42

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2:44

returning to the show, Ellie Ehrman,

2:46

writer, comedian and creator, and host

2:48

of Going Down, with Ellie Ehrman,

2:50

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2:52

as well as joining us here,

2:55

is Teen Vogue's News and

2:57

Politics and Politics Editor-Mc Miniman

2:59

Welcome, both of you. Hi.

3:01

Hi, thanks. So we're going to

3:04

be talking about the recent Teen

3:06

Vogue special issue cover story on

3:08

Vivian Wilson, the estranged daughter of

3:11

Elon Musk. Ella, you put together

3:13

a fantastic piece last month and

3:15

this is what we're going to

3:17

discuss, how this article came

3:20

together, that viral photo shoot

3:22

in Japan, which is fantastic.

3:24

All the styling in that

3:26

shoot was lovely. But... I think

3:28

this particular piece was really relevant

3:31

for like trans people and also

3:33

relevant because of the way like

3:35

global politics has been shaken

3:38

up by a few specific people and

3:40

focusing in on Vivian I think was

3:42

really special. So I guess I would

3:44

first like to hear about like yeah

3:47

like the broad strokes of how

3:49

this first came together. From our

3:51

perspective, you know, I don't know that

3:54

like everyone is aware of this and

3:56

certainly I don't know that. all of

3:58

my friends in our various trans

4:00

cultures know this, but at team vote we've been

4:02

covering like trans politics and trans rights for a

4:05

long time, like far before I got here, but

4:07

I've been here for almost four years and it's

4:09

been a pretty big part of my beat in

4:11

part because of it being like a very unavoidable.

4:14

thing within like US state legislatures and

4:16

then obviously like a federal level which

4:18

has only intensified more and more in

4:20

the last year. And so that's like

4:22

one aspect of it but at the

4:24

same time we love young people that

4:26

shit post and so Vivian had been

4:28

on our radar for a while. Totally.

4:30

I also think people are maybe more

4:32

aware of this whole like comrade teen

4:35

vogue vibe of like we're really interested

4:37

in talking to people that have a

4:39

clear political leaning that have like a

4:41

sense of how they see themselves in

4:43

the world in a political context and

4:45

Vivian sort of came right out the

4:47

gate as someone who was really eager

4:50

to share her thoughts on these things.

4:52

So from last summer like within like

4:54

a month of when Vivian was kind

4:56

of introduced to the world through her

4:58

father talking about her on Jordan Peterson's podcast.

5:01

We were trying to get in touch with

5:03

her and it was something I was talking

5:05

a lot about within the office and we

5:07

didn't really know what to do because she

5:09

was just kind of she just kind

5:12

of emerged from nowhere onto the internet

5:14

and so I had been talking about

5:16

it a lot including with Ella because

5:18

we talk a lot and so

5:20

Ella eventually revealed like Oh, that's

5:22

oomphie. I am usual with him.

5:24

Not oomphie. You, you did kind,

5:26

I mean, are you threads oomphies?

5:29

What, what are you, oomphies? On

5:31

Instagram. Instagram, nice. I would never use

5:33

threads, my God. So over to you, that's

5:35

my, that's my teen vogue intro, but

5:37

Ella, if you wanna. Yeah. No, because

5:39

yeah, I, I have, I, I

5:41

have just, just, in contacting Vivi,

5:43

Vivi, Vivian, Like an unhinged number

5:46

of media requests starting last summer.

5:48

Yeah, that's that's true. Right. So

5:50

she did that one NBC interview

5:52

after after Elon went on Peterson.

5:54

And I do not work at Teen

5:57

Vogue, but Lex and I know each

5:59

other because your country actually obligated to

6:01

know everyone else who's part of the

6:03

you know deep state Illuminati doing

6:05

trans politics online club yeah I

6:07

was just gonna say trans people club

6:10

the pronoun the deep state yeah

6:12

the pronoun council exactly we're all

6:14

established members right we swear allegiance

6:16

once a year there's a whole

6:18

ritual don't don't worry about it so what

6:20

I got in touch with Vivian last

6:22

fall which I got in touch with her initially

6:24

to see if she would come on going down

6:26

and I reached out to her and I said

6:28

you want to come on my live comedy show

6:31

and she said no I'm actually not

6:33

sure live comedy is for me I'm

6:35

a little worried I'm not funny enough

6:37

and since then she has changed her

6:39

mind she's told me repeatedly that

6:41

she was saying that to me

6:43

that she has decided she actually

6:45

is funnier than everyone else alive

6:48

all of the things that a

6:50

prolific 20 year old poster might

6:52

say absolutely but so I got

6:54

in touch with her and then she

6:56

said no and I was like okay

6:58

Well, at least I have this mutual

7:00

now. And then a few months later,

7:02

I mentioned to Lex that I got

7:04

in touch with her and Lex said,

7:06

okay, so she doesn't want to

7:08

do a live comedy show that

7:10

nobody knows about. What if instead

7:12

we did a really fancy photo

7:14

shoot and put her in Teen

7:16

Vogue a legacy journalism magazine and

7:18

I said, honestly, I think that's

7:20

a better sales pitch. And it

7:23

was. Yeah, no, it is really compelling. I

7:25

mean, the photo shoot pulls a whole bunch

7:27

of people in. It's certainly, if I

7:29

was in Vivian's position, that would be

7:31

interesting to me. And it does help

7:33

spread around, like, so much of the

7:35

piece is talking about, like, the struggles

7:37

of living as a young trans

7:40

person in America and the fact that

7:42

you can use a teen-vogue photo shoot to,

7:44

like, spread writing about that around the internet.

7:46

It's like super, super useful. Yeah, I mean,

7:48

I just want to like second what Lex

7:51

has been saying. I think the work Teen

7:53

Vogue has been doing is really important. Like,

7:55

so many, I mean, Garrison, you know, like

7:57

so much trans media is like independently distributed.

8:00

and like DIY. And I love us

8:02

for that, but it is always really

8:04

heartening to see like mainstream media institutions

8:06

uplift trans voices the way Teen Gog

8:08

has been doing. And it's also like

8:11

Conde Nast as an institution which is

8:13

like Teen Vokes Parent Company is only

8:15

one of multiple media conglomerates that will

8:17

very proudly like use trans people in

8:19

a representative way like and like sell

8:22

magazine covers with trans people on it

8:24

like you could think of Hunter Schaefer

8:26

for example she's been on the cover

8:28

of several vokes but at the same

8:30

time Hunter Schaefer also received a misgendering

8:33

passport after the Trump admin so like

8:35

I think that if legacy media is

8:37

unwilling to connect the dots between profiting

8:39

off of like the aesthetics of trans

8:42

people but not actually. like talking about

8:44

the political underpinnings of like why trans

8:46

people are even able to be visible

8:48

at this time and like what the

8:50

you know trap doors turmoil calls it

8:53

of the transvisibility means then it's like

8:55

why even do this work in the

8:57

first place so Vivian was like a

8:59

really great opportunity for us to like

9:01

build on like we've done several photo

9:04

shoots particularly with trans women because I

9:06

in trans girls at Teen Vogue because

9:08

we like feel very strongly and Ella

9:10

makes this point in the piece that

9:13

like the way that trans them people

9:15

are like objectified and commodified and commodified

9:17

and commodified and of such extreme vitriol

9:19

is something it feels really important to

9:21

take a stand against. It just felt

9:24

like doing this with Vivian who's so

9:26

high profile, but also hadn't had the

9:28

opportunity yet to take control of her

9:30

own narrative in the public eye and

9:32

with this being her second ever interview

9:35

first ever photo shoot, like it just

9:37

felt like a really big opportunity that

9:39

was worth using as a big swing,

9:41

you know? No, like she is at

9:44

like the center of this like matrix

9:46

of trans commodification in so many ways.

9:48

was really like framed as the subject

9:50

matter of like any piece and like

9:52

framed as her own person for the

9:55

entirety of her adult life she's been

9:57

used as this rhetorical object like both

9:59

by her dad but as well as

10:01

like by people on the left who's

10:03

like objectified Vivian to use her as

10:06

a bludgeon against her father. And yeah,

10:08

like people are very willing to like

10:10

commodify or use use trans people in

10:12

certain ways, but to have like trans

10:15

people writing about other trans people in

10:17

a way that frames them as a

10:19

subject matter is so important. Yeah, I

10:21

mean, I think Vivian, one of the

10:23

things that drew me to the story

10:26

in the first place is that Vivian's

10:28

sort of case is such an interesting

10:30

microcosm of the transome experience as a

10:32

whole. Yeah. incredibly talked about for something

10:34

that is not her fault and not

10:37

under her control at all in the

10:39

same way that right now on the

10:41

national stage like trans femininity and transness

10:43

at large but specifically trans femininity is

10:46

the like problem to be spoken about

10:48

by especially conservative like butler calls it

10:50

a phantasm that like gender nonsense I

10:52

read that book you have my copy

10:54

I said I'm almost certain I do.

10:57

That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.

10:59

Almost certainly. That's the trouble with gender,

11:01

right? Gender trouble, yeah. No, no, that's

11:03

the original book. It's who's afraid of

11:05

gender. It's who's afraid of gender. Thank

11:08

you very much. I have your book,

11:10

but I haven't looked at it. In

11:12

a long time, except for to remember

11:14

the word phantasm. And so yeah, I

11:17

totally agree with what like said of,

11:19

it's really exciting moments in the piece

11:21

to me is, the moment where I

11:23

ask her about sort of the allegations

11:25

that Elon like shifted right word because

11:28

of her and she pushes back against

11:30

sort of that narrative very strongly and

11:32

I think that is the way we've

11:34

seen her being used both on the

11:36

left and the right as sort of

11:39

a this is why he's doing this

11:41

it's clearly the fact that he has

11:43

this 20 year old trans girl and

11:45

she's like actually that's a crazy thing

11:48

to say about a 20 year old

11:50

Well, and especially to like counter the

11:52

narrative of her life that's been driven

11:54

by Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography, which is

11:56

like so hostile and to have like

11:59

a prominent like. prominent biography like that

12:01

like trying to make a narrative out

12:03

of out of your existence and it

12:05

was something you have like no like

12:07

input in no control in that's like

12:10

so demeaning it's also like a very

12:12

like you know trans misogyny moments as

12:14

well like yeah it is interesting

12:16

how much of like Vivian is so

12:19

relatable like like a lot of trans

12:21

people have shall I say challenging relationships

12:23

with their parents maybe not to this

12:25

extreme but but Sometimes, frankly,

12:28

right, like there's a lot of people

12:30

are forced to cut off contact

12:32

with their family. Yeah, no, I've

12:34

just been thinking a lot about

12:36

this because, you know, Trump released

12:38

yet another executive order. I think

12:40

that this one was today basically

12:42

trying to codify, allowing transuse to

12:44

access gender affirming care as abuse,

12:46

quote unquote, which is like something

12:48

that the Republican Party has been

12:50

flagging for months that they were

12:52

going to do at the federal level

12:55

as a federal level

12:57

as well.

13:01

targeting trans

13:04

adults, like,

13:07

objectively is...

13:11

like abusive

13:14

and it's

13:17

not the

13:21

access to

13:24

health care that

13:26

is the abuse it's like the way that they're

13:28

dismissed yeah the way they're belittled it's the way

13:30

they can't even be like trusting their own parents

13:32

to be looking out for them and to the

13:34

extent that they have to push themselves out into

13:37

the world to clarify that point so like that's

13:39

one aspect of it I totally agree with what

13:41

you were both saying that it is like a microcosm of

13:43

the trans experience but I do think there's

13:45

like this other valence for like this allowing

13:47

her to like control how this is

13:49

being perceived or received sort of by

13:51

cis media and like cis like the

13:53

cis political sphere which is like how

13:55

trans people are just getting shoved into

13:57

that over and over and over again.

13:59

with very little context felt like a

14:02

really valuable thing to be able to

14:04

do given how like frankly so much

14:06

of my coverage right now just feels

14:09

like it's like trying to raise attention

14:11

to the fact that like these are

14:13

kids these are young people like everyone

14:15

should be able to relate to a

14:18

young person saying like I have a

14:20

bad parent and that sucks and is

14:22

a formative thing for me like that

14:24

is something that like other children are

14:27

afforded the ability to do and like

14:29

we just don't let trans kids like

14:31

have that. as something that's part of

14:34

their truth when it's such a key

14:36

part of like growing up trans in

14:38

a hostile household. and how like the

14:40

landscape that like me, like her, Ella,

14:43

and like a lot of people that

14:45

our age, like, came out of is

14:47

not going to exist for the next

14:50

generation of like, trans kids, or at

14:52

least it's going to be very different.

14:54

And we need to do everything we

14:56

can to stop it from being as

14:59

bad as what it looks like it's

15:01

going to be. And Vivian, like, talked

15:03

about this at length in the piece,

15:06

with the restriction of puberty, the people

15:08

of like trans kids as as this

15:10

own demon of America that's that's that's

15:12

like invading or is like threatening. So

15:15

I think it is really cool a

15:17

50 and do talk about that at

15:19

length in the special teen vogue cool

15:21

photo shoot article. I will say I

15:24

think it's so important that that's talked

15:26

about and I'm glad she did. I'm

15:28

also really glad as someone who covers

15:31

like trans politics and news all the

15:33

time it was such a breath of

15:35

fresh air to be able to frame

15:37

this piece as like a look into

15:40

what like the joy of transition looks

15:42

like and and looking at like totally

15:44

yeah has brought her closer to the

15:47

life she wants to be living and

15:49

I'm not that old but like talking

15:51

to someone who's a few years younger

15:53

than me and who transitioned at an

15:56

earlier stage in life gave me like

15:58

such a beautiful vision of what the

16:00

future could look like if we if

16:03

we fix some of the bullshit that's

16:05

going on these days. All right I'm

16:07

being I'm being cloned on in the

16:09

chat. I'm not that much older than

16:12

Vivian is what I meant and now

16:14

I'm peaking my microphone and now I'm

16:16

peaking my microphone. I'm not that much

16:18

older than Vivian, but she started transitioning

16:21

at a much younger stage of life

16:23

than me and to see like what

16:25

that has done for her and like

16:28

the way I don't know it was

16:30

just really beautiful to talk to like

16:32

a 20 year old girl and be

16:34

like oh you're like trans but it's

16:37

like it's like not actually that big

16:39

of a deal. And it like it

16:41

also like confirms a thing that like

16:44

I mean I made a joke about

16:46

this earlier with like we love young

16:48

people that shit post but like I

16:50

think so much of. liberal and right

16:53

wing talking points about like young people

16:55

in general like sees them as so

16:57

humorless like they are like cancel culture

17:00

nah nah nah nah nah. Whereas Vivian

17:02

is so funny like we actually struggled

17:04

to cut jokes out of the piece

17:06

like Ellen Ella could tell you we

17:09

went back and forth for hours about

17:11

so many jokes that did not. And

17:13

just one-liners, like, she's so quickly, and

17:15

so, like, she's so funny. She's extremely

17:18

funny. A very dense style of humor,

17:20

as in, like, there's a lot, there's

17:22

a lot packed in, like, almost every

17:25

other sentence. Alex and I are both

17:27

some of the fastest talking people I

17:29

know, and I would put Vivian in

17:31

that same group of people who can

17:34

read that pace into the piece. She's

17:36

awesome. So much of our editing was

17:38

just like sort of taking out, yeah,

17:41

like little jokes or like, she's 20,

17:43

so she is swearing all the time.

17:45

Or- Dude, the amount of cursing, I

17:47

much love, but also that was the

17:50

editing process for this was much less

17:52

like stress and more just like, how

17:54

many F bombs are we? keeping today

17:57

hearthand emogies. The way edits go is

17:59

you send in a piece and the

18:01

editors give you like change some stuff

18:03

and then I get to look at

18:06

a new draft and I get to

18:08

be like hey why do you change

18:10

that and then we go back and

18:12

forth over and over again. Until eventually

18:15

it's not up to me anymore. But

18:17

at one point I did have to

18:19

I did have to say actually fem

18:22

boy is one word Correct. Yeah, it's

18:24

different from fem space boy and space

18:26

boy Yeah, specific and I felt really

18:28

like I was bringing I'd like to

18:31

clarify I was not in the grammatical

18:33

edit of that there were multiple editors

18:35

whose hands that as a subject matter

18:38

expert What can I say? who's able

18:40

to appreciate drag way more than what

18:42

I'm ever like able to even though

18:44

I can like appreciate it on like

18:47

on like a conceptual level having this

18:49

like complete sincere like engrossment in it.

18:51

is so thrilling, because a significant portion

18:54

of this piece is talking about how

18:56

much Vivian loves Drag. Oh my God,

18:58

and so much. Ellen knows nothing about

19:00

Drag also, so that was like a

19:03

really good combo for all of us.

19:05

That was, I, I, yeah, I sat

19:07

down with her and we started talking

19:09

very, very quickly. She brought up Ru

19:12

Paul's drag race, and I would just

19:14

like, she kept calling it RPDR, which

19:16

I'm pretty sure. Garrison, is that something

19:19

you call drag race? Have you heard

19:21

RPDR said out loud? I've never heard

19:23

this, no. Okay, whatever. What I'm here

19:25

to say is as someone who actually

19:28

watches a drag race, Ella, that is

19:30

actually not that uncommon to refer to

19:32

it that way. But you know, we

19:35

had two different roles, as the two

19:37

trans people whose brains were wiped by

19:39

the story, Ella's job was to... actually

19:41

writes the piece in mind was too

19:44

interfaced with Vivian. About drag race. So

19:46

clearly it all came together the way

19:48

it was supposed to. I did at

19:51

the very end of our first call.

19:53

I said, is there anything else you

19:55

want to say? And she talked to

19:57

me for another 15 minutes about about

20:00

drag race specifically. rules yeah like I

20:02

know I'm like sort of meant about

20:04

your dad or about like any of

20:06

the important things we talked about this

20:09

as you're like no so in season

20:11

15 of drag race that rules

20:13

that's so cool she's the best

20:15

but no I it's it's so

20:17

funny that you you talk about

20:20

how like there's this there's

20:22

this character of like humorless

20:24

trans people which is very funny

20:26

because like all of like the

20:29

biggest shit posters online right now are

20:31

mostly trans women the trans comedy

20:33

scene is is huge and like

20:35

this is something that if you

20:37

can talk about like spending the

20:40

COVID lockdown and like online queer

20:42

communities and how how like

20:44

the the like drama and like conflict

20:46

in those spaces trains you for how

20:48

to be like really like funny and

20:51

snappy how fighting with like fellow queer

20:53

teenagers like prepared you for for that

20:55

which has like certainly been like my

20:57

experience. I mean there's a reason you

20:59

can sort of tell and I'm sure

21:01

this applies to beyond trans people but

21:03

you can sort of tell which social

21:05

media you grew up on like if

21:08

you were a tumbler teen or a

21:10

redit teen or a for chanting you

21:12

can tell because your style of fighting

21:14

and making jokes changes because it's it's

21:16

it's such a deeply formative part

21:18

of it and I don't know what Online

21:20

forums the right were on growing up,

21:22

but they they were the wrong ones

21:25

Well a lot of fortune as well

21:27

Sure just the not funny parts

21:29

of the fun. Yeah, no, I'm

21:31

still trying to untrain my like

21:33

a defensive way of writing that

21:35

I learned on Twitter Because it's

21:38

a horrible style where you'd have

21:40

to like have like 12 prefaces

21:43

Exactly yeah, yeah, you're article one.

21:45

I am not a racist waffle

21:47

pancaking the entire time Which is it's

21:49

weird because like it's like Twitter does have its

21:51

own style of humor which I also like also

21:53

like also like picked up on but it also

21:56

has that defensive style of writing which which needs

21:58

to get untrained but it is you know a

22:00

work a working progress. I think it's downstream

22:02

of Tumblr. I remain strong on my

22:04

stance that the Tumblr porn ban ruined

22:06

the internet. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I guess

22:08

I'd like to talk a little bit

22:10

more about like the structure of the

22:12

piece and how it succeeded so much

22:15

in putting Vivian as a subject, right?

22:17

Because like the first half. is written

22:19

in more of like a traditional like

22:21

article format to give context and frame

22:23

Vivian as like a person. But then

22:25

halfway through it switches to like a

22:28

back and forth interview which allows Vivian

22:30

to just speak for herself. And I

22:32

think having both of those and not

22:34

just one or the other strengthens the

22:36

piece entirely and strengthens like being able

22:38

to see Vivian as a complete person

22:41

because like as I'm as I'm getting

22:43

the context like for her life and

22:45

the political situation in the first half.

22:47

Then I get to see how much

22:49

she reminds me of like, regular 20-something

22:51

trans girls. And you know, like half

22:53

of the friends I have, though I

22:56

do disagree on team Pita. Pita's a

22:58

bitch boy. It's team gale all the

23:00

way. Thanks you. Controversial. All right. All

23:02

right. All right. I'm excited that we

23:04

agree on this. But those sorts of

23:06

like offhand comments, like there's other things

23:09

that like give you like a, you

23:11

know, a view into into into this

23:13

person. it's so useful to have like

23:15

you know like at least 50% of

23:17

the piece be this like just straight

23:19

interview. We unsurprisingly talked a lot about

23:21

how we were going to structure this

23:24

piece and partially landed on Q&A format

23:26

for like we knew this was going

23:28

to be a behemoth like no matter

23:30

how we tackled it given the subject

23:32

matter and then ultimately how long the

23:34

transcript was and you know just like

23:37

it there were many aspects of this

23:39

that like we were like okay how

23:41

do we How do we do this

23:43

in a way that's going to read

23:45

well to people? Because something we also...

23:47

about a lot of accessibility, like young

23:49

people famously hate reading now, but we

23:52

wanted this to actually be something that

23:54

like a young person could sit down,

23:56

dash through, still get some like, you

23:58

know, historical, political context out of, and

24:00

still come away being like, ha ha,

24:02

teen pita, team gale, or whatever the

24:05

hell, right? And so... And maybe have

24:07

like subway surfers on like another phone

24:09

at the same time. Yes, exactly. Exactly,

24:11

exactly, exactly. And then I would say

24:13

the... I want Ella to talk about

24:15

the transcript and like interview stuff, but

24:18

like the intro I think is probably

24:20

where I spent the most of my

24:22

time editing this piece and like adding

24:24

stuff and a lot of adding stuff

24:26

it ballooned like we wanted this to

24:28

be a lot shorter than it was

24:30

and then it just kept feeling like

24:33

there were more pieces to really tie

24:35

it together but I would say like

24:37

the reason that was the case is

24:39

because it was a really hard line

24:41

to walk to acknowledge that like people

24:43

would be clicking on this in part

24:46

because of Elon, but that we wanted

24:48

to like trick them into coming for

24:50

Elon, but staying for Vivian. Yeah, like

24:52

it's not about Elon, nor like should

24:54

it be? Yeah. Right. And so like

24:56

one, like Ellen and I had a

24:58

zoom with Vivian and. what November was

25:01

the first one or was that? I

25:03

think so. Yeah November, December to just

25:05

like so she could kind of get

25:07

our vibe and just kind of suss

25:09

out if she was willing to like

25:11

consider this at all. And one of

25:14

the earliest things she said was like

25:16

I don't really want to talk about

25:18

him, I don't want this to be

25:20

about him. And we were really down

25:22

for that like we don't think that

25:24

her story is about him ultimately. I

25:27

felt really important and it was also

25:29

challenging to make sure that. we felt

25:31

like people were coming away from this

25:33

without like a garbled interpretation of what

25:35

the stakes were for her to be

25:37

coming forward like we wanted it to

25:39

be especially right now while so much

25:42

a mainstream media is really fumbling their

25:44

coverage of like politics at this moment

25:46

it felt really important to be like

25:48

trans politics especially especially and then also

25:50

just like all of it so like

25:52

all of it and then especially trans

25:55

politics we just really wanted the intro

25:57

to be like as strong and also

25:59

like informative and also like kind of

26:01

funny and also like just all the

26:03

things because and I would say that

26:05

probably took the most time alone correct

26:07

me if I'm wrong but yeah I

26:10

mean I think the intro started off

26:12

as probably an eighth of the piece

26:14

and yeah now is is closer to

26:16

a half of the piece and there

26:18

were so many hands on it I

26:20

wrote like sort of a very loose

26:23

like skeleton of what that intro ended

26:25

up being. And I would say the

26:27

most, like, it wasn't that many people

26:29

adding text, it was mostly me. Mostly

26:31

Lex. But part of that is because,

26:33

I mean, everything like said, but also

26:35

that Musk is currently a high level

26:38

government official and is in the news

26:40

all the time. I mean, when we

26:42

started writing, the intro said that Musk

26:44

had 13 children and then we had

26:46

to update that. twice. New kid just

26:48

dropped, yeah. Over the edit process, things

26:51

wouldn't stop happening. And then also Vivian

26:53

wouldn't stop posting, which was a little

26:55

bit frustrating. At one point, I had

26:57

to DM her. I said, hey, if

26:59

you get any more information, can you

27:01

please just tell me and not post

27:04

it on threads? And she said, oh,

27:06

totally. That girl is a poster of

27:08

her for sure. But yeah, I mean,

27:10

I think I really love the balance

27:12

the piece found in the end. Early

27:14

on when we were talking about structure,

27:16

I think I pushed for more of

27:19

a standard profile, mostly because, you know,

27:21

then I get to show off my

27:23

writing skills more and I like to

27:25

write. But after talking to Vivian, even

27:27

after our early pre-interview, but certainly after

27:29

the full interview where I sat with

27:32

her for a very long time over

27:34

Zoom and a 14-hour time difference, I

27:36

immediately was like, no, if I write

27:38

this out, it's going to be... mostly

27:40

dialogue anyway because her voice she had

27:42

she's so voice and it's so fun

27:44

to keep it in in that voice

27:47

she's a very very distinctive voice yeah

27:49

yeah and so to you Ella and

27:51

so like it's like that's really the

27:53

strength of the piece in so many

27:55

ways is that like people come away

27:57

with it it doesn't feel like you're

28:00

in the background or like hiding by

28:02

something when you're writing this piece like

28:04

it very much feels like the success

28:06

of it is because you are a

28:08

part of it and um the New

28:10

York Times reported that this was Ella's

28:13

first freelance article so I just wanted

28:15

to add that you know Ella kind

28:17

of did her did her big one

28:19

with her first article thanks no this

28:21

is now everything I write the next

28:23

15 years will be underwhelming it's all

28:25

downstream from here it's not true barren

28:28

Trump I'm coming for you you're gonna

28:30

reenroll at NYU you Exactly. They'll never

28:32

see me coming. I am waiting for

28:34

him to get fixed by like a

28:36

bisexual she-they. It's gotta happen, right? No,

28:38

I don't think so. I don't know.

28:41

Obama was like into a bisexual she-they

28:43

and he still bombed the Middle East

28:45

or whatever. But no, like mainstream coverage

28:47

is just completely failing trans people right

28:49

now. I got so mad at a

28:51

Washington Post article yesterday that I that

28:53

I skied it about it, something I

28:56

never do. Was it the sports one?

28:58

The girl playing it? Girl. After President

29:00

Donald Trump banned transgender girls from competing

29:02

in girl sports, a Virginia high schooler

29:04

joins the boys team. She wasn't going

29:06

to let the president's executive order stop

29:09

her. Framers like a feel-good story, fucking

29:11

infuriating. And it's so like transparent, like,

29:13

and I, again, I feel like I

29:15

keep bringing the cis into the space.

29:17

I'm really sorry. One of my, like,

29:19

cis colleagues was like, this is disgusting.

29:22

Why did they write this, like, a

29:24

feel-good story? And it's like, my thing

29:26

is, if, like, if anyone with some

29:28

amount of critical thinking skills can see

29:30

exactly through what you're doing, why even

29:32

do it? Like, it's so transparent. clicks.

29:34

I mean I guess we you know

29:37

what got clicks was Vivian so I

29:39

actually don't know about that's true and

29:41

say that and I did and I

29:43

will. Do you want to talk about

29:45

the length of the transcript because I

29:47

am curious how long Vivian talked for.

29:50

Am I allowed to say you're not?

29:52

Damn. I think I'm legally damn. Can

29:54

we explain why? When we're not recording

29:56

I can explain why. Okay. I think

29:58

I got to say most of What

30:00

I want to say, I mean I

30:02

think Vivian's just like a delightful person

30:05

and I'm really excited for her that

30:07

she gets her moment in the

30:09

spotlight and that hopefully this like

30:11

helps her build herself as a

30:13

public figure outside of and away

30:15

from Elon Musk and she has

30:17

all of these aspirations to perform

30:19

and model and I hope she

30:21

gets to do her Anna Winter

30:23

Drag one day soon. Oh, me too.

30:26

I love that movie. It's a great movie.

30:28

Hi Anna Winter. Lex. Do you want to

30:30

plug your little outlet? What's this teen vogue?

30:32

Oh yeah, I don't know if anyone's

30:35

heard. Actually, so frequently people

30:37

haven't heard of it. So

30:39

it's actually fine. Yes, you

30:41

can find us at teenvogue.com.

30:43

We have no paywall. We

30:45

have a fact-checking department. Most

30:47

of mainstream media is not

30:49

doing it like us if you

30:51

consider those two points. So yeah.

30:54

Labor politics, especially teen vogue, it's

30:56

been phenomenal. If you love Kim

30:58

Kelly, she is our labor columnist,

31:00

so come through. I also do

31:02

some of our labor coverage, but

31:04

like, definitely not the extent Kim

31:06

does. Yeah, I'm on the things,

31:08

I'm on the socials, yeah, that's

31:10

it, that's all I had, Lil. Ella,

31:12

where can people find you on

31:15

the World Wide Web? I'm on

31:17

Instagram and X, everything, everything app

31:19

as Ella Yerman or Ella Dot

31:21

Yerman on Instagram. We're going to

31:23

get you on Blue Skyi. I

31:26

suffered through 2012 Tumblr once. I don't

31:28

need to do it again. That is

31:30

so not the vibe. I wish it

31:32

were, but it's not, oh, Fluske, guy.

31:34

No, it's, it's, it's more 2019 Twitter.

31:36

Yeah, I agree. You can also find

31:38

my show at Going Down TV on

31:40

Instagram, going down the show on

31:42

YouTube, going down show on Patreon,

31:44

I don't know, I make a transgender daily

31:46

show, you guys know about it. New Studio

31:49

looks great. It's so fun, we gotta get

31:51

you on there. We gotta get you to

31:53

come hang out. Hey, well I will I

31:55

will I will be in town shortly so

31:58

hell yeah. Oh fun! I go to the taping. so

32:00

I can crash. That'll be fun. You

32:02

should do it. Hell yeah. Are we,

32:04

did we do it? Yeah, we're done.

32:22

Hey, kids, it's me Kevin Smith.

32:25

And it's me Harley Quinn

32:27

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my wife has always said is

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just a beardless, deckless version of

32:34

me. And that's the name

32:36

of our podcast. Beardless Lickless Me.

32:38

I'm the old one. I'm the

32:41

young one. And every week we

32:43

try to make each other. And

32:46

every week we try to make

32:48

each other laugh. I'm the old

32:50

one. I'm the young one.

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35:39

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35:44

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35:46

podcast. Listen on the I heart

35:48

radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever

35:50

you get your podcast. Hello everybody.

35:52

It could happen here. and this

35:55

is Robert Evans. We're a show

35:57

about things falling apart and boy

35:59

howdy they sure seem to be

36:01

doing just that as they always

36:03

are and have been for years.

36:05

You know, in fact, anticipation of

36:07

the end times, I think, is

36:10

probably close to the number one

36:12

hobby in the United States at

36:14

this point. I suspect if you

36:16

counted up the dollar value of

36:18

all the collapse-themed movies, books, prepping

36:20

gear, monetize social media content, and

36:23

of course, religious sects in the

36:25

country, the apocalypse would be one

36:27

of our big industries. Doomsday prepping

36:29

alone was an almost $1.2 billion

36:31

business last year, and it's expected

36:33

to more than double by 2030.

36:35

Our popular fiction can't even imagine

36:38

a better future right now. 90%

36:40

of modern future media takes place

36:42

during or shortly after an apocalypse.

36:44

The odd exception today, like Bongshun-Ho's

36:46

recent Mickey 17, is so rooted

36:48

in Trump's politics that we only

36:51

catch occasional glimpses of anything beyond

36:53

it. In other words, in our

36:55

fiction, there's no respite from the

36:57

news. We watch a slow-motion self-inflicted

36:59

global economic collapse and then relax

37:01

with shows about mushroom zombies or

37:04

literal wage slaves created by mind-control

37:06

surgery. In other words, it's bleak

37:08

out there. Tomorrow could be the

37:10

day Trump invokes the Insirection Act,

37:12

or uses the military to occupy

37:14

Greenland, or like one of a

37:16

dozen equivalent horrors. We all just

37:19

know are coming in some form

37:21

or another, even if no one

37:23

can say when. And I'm not

37:25

here today to tell you how

37:27

we're going to get past all

37:29

of that or fix it, because

37:32

I don't know. So today, I'm

37:34

just here as a merchant of

37:36

hope. My job is to convince

37:38

you that our species will someday

37:40

get past our bullshit, and perhaps

37:42

even lay claim to the stars.

37:44

And no, Elon Musk isn't going

37:47

to have anything to do with

37:49

that. But in order to convince

37:51

you of all this, I'm going

37:53

to have to talk about a

37:55

movie. It's called War. And it

37:57

is technically a 1981 comedy adventure

38:00

film. about an American naturalist. This

38:02

guy lives on a nature preserve in

38:04

Tanzania filled with big cats. His family

38:06

comes to visit at the same time

38:08

as a grant committee shows up to

38:10

evaluate his project, which has an unclear

38:12

goal. He's apparently just trying to prove

38:14

people and giant cats from all over

38:16

the world can live together, which the

38:18

movie shows they can't. It's really immaterial

38:20

what happens in the plot. All I

38:22

can tell you is how Wikipedia describes

38:25

it. I've watched this movie dozens of

38:27

times and I have very little idea

38:29

what it's supposed to be about. This

38:31

is because, in any given scene, the

38:33

script is only ever a vague suggestion.

38:35

As each scene starts with actors trying

38:37

to read lines and evolves into those

38:39

same actors trying to survive while being

38:42

mauled by dozens of lions, tigers, and

38:44

panthers. I should probably step back a

38:46

minute to explain some things. Ror is

38:48

largely the brainchild of Tippy Hedron

38:50

and her husband Noel Marshall. If

38:53

you're on the younger side, Tippy Hedron

38:55

was the female lead in a little

38:57

movie called The Birds. It is a

38:59

horror film and also an early apocalypse

39:02

flick by Alfred Hitchcock. It's often credited

39:04

with inventing modern horror cinema. Hitchcock

39:06

himself sexually and psychologically harassed Hedron,

39:08

but his worst actions came during

39:11

a crucial scene where Hedron was

39:13

attacked by a flock of birds.

39:15

Up to the day of filming, Hitchcock

39:17

had assured Tippy the birds used in

39:19

this scene would be animatronic. But when

39:22

the time came to shoot it,

39:24

she spent five days having hundreds

39:26

of live birds hurled at her

39:28

in huge numbers by the crew.

39:30

Hedron later described it as brutal,

39:32

ugly, and relentless. Kerry Grant, her

39:34

co-star, told her she was the

39:36

bravest woman he'd ever seen. Now whatever

39:38

other impacts this had on Tippy,

39:40

she has no discernable fear of

39:42

animals after this point in her

39:44

life. Though she really should. Her husband Noll

39:47

is a bit more of a mystery

39:49

to me. He was an agent, a

39:51

producer, a film investor, and a serial

39:53

entrepreneur whose best financial decision was putting

39:55

money behind what became the exorcist. In

39:57

1969, he and Hedron were in Mosaic.

39:59

Well, she starred in the film Satan's

40:02

Harvest, about which Les has said the

40:04

better. This is only relevant because during

40:06

their time in Africa, they observed a

40:08

pride of lions lounging about an abandoned

40:10

home. And this gave them an idea.

40:12

They wanted to make a movie about

40:15

poaching and conservation, something that could use

40:17

the power of film to save these

40:19

majestic creatures being threatened by humanity. All

40:21

four of their children agreed to star

40:23

in it and to help with production.

40:25

But there were immediate snags. They wanted

40:28

the film to be set in a

40:30

big cat sanctuary, but actual lion tamers

40:32

warned them that it was flat out

40:34

impossible to keep so many large fee

40:36

lines together safely. This would eventually prove

40:38

to have been very accurate advice. After

40:41

a while, one tamer introduced them to

40:43

their first tame lion, and for reasons

40:45

known only to God, he suggested to

40:47

this traumatized movie star and her family

40:49

of charmingly deranged Californians that they could

40:51

just get their own big cats and

40:54

train them by adopting animals confiscated from

40:56

their previous owners. Generally, sketchy zoos and

40:58

circuses. So a lot of these cats

41:00

had never known the wild and they'd

41:02

often been badly mistreated. Given that this

41:04

was the 1970s, we must assume that

41:07

some had been confiscated property of coke

41:09

dealers. Tipianole had no professional or legal

41:11

qualifications to care for dozens of big

41:13

cats. When the authorities eventually found out,

41:15

there was trouble. Although since Hedron and

41:17

Marshall were rich, they bought their way

41:20

out of said trouble by purchasing a

41:22

rural compound and having a house built

41:24

specifically for they and their dozens of

41:26

apex predators of apex predators to live.

41:28

While lions had inspired the initial vision

41:30

the compound in California soon filmed with

41:33

big adopted cats of every kind Tippy

41:35

and her husband took them in and

41:37

raised them among and around their own

41:39

Children who came to see the animals

41:41

as something between pets and family When

41:43

they actually started filming the movie that

41:46

became war making any kind of movie

41:48

had become secondary to the act of

41:50

caring for these many many giant traumatized

41:52

kitties as I noted earlier the plot

41:54

to war is kind of immaterial I've

41:56

never watched. it with the sound on.

41:59

I can tell you though that none

42:01

of these cats were trained in any

42:03

really meaningful way, which meant that every

42:05

scene devolved into the same spectacle. The

42:07

cast, surrounded by dozens of giant cats,

42:09

stumbled through a few lines before one

42:12

or all of the cats began to

42:14

bite and claw them, at which point

42:16

each scene becomes about surviving from one

42:18

moment to the next. Ror took more

42:20

than five years to film and more

42:22

than a decade to actually make. No

42:25

cats were harmed during the production of

42:27

this movie, but more humans were injured

42:29

than in any other film production on

42:31

record. Of the 120 or so cast

42:33

and crew on Ror, more than 100

42:35

suffered significant injury. Often more than once.

42:38

Yandebant, the cinematographer, had his scalp ripped

42:40

off by a lion, requiring 120 stitches.

42:42

He went on to make speed and

42:44

twister. Melanie Griffith. Tippy's daughter and a

42:46

future star herself left production at one

42:48

point because she was worried a big

42:51

cat might rip her face off. She

42:53

ultimately returned and immediately had a large

42:55

chunk of her face ripped off, requiring

42:57

extensive surgery. This all sounds horrifying and

42:59

impossible to justify. But before you make

43:01

a final judgment, I want to remind

43:04

you of two things. One, for all

43:06

its horrors and severe injuries, fewer people

43:08

were killed on the set of war

43:10

than an Alec Baldwin's recent film rust.

43:12

The second thing that you must remember

43:15

is that Roar is a work of

43:17

art on the level of Moby Dick.

43:19

If you watch it enough, among the

43:21

right people, and in the right headspace,

43:23

you can come to a deeper understanding

43:25

of every facet of human existence. I've

43:28

taken a lot out of it over

43:30

the years. Recently, it has convinced me

43:32

that we will one day get over

43:34

our bullshit and escape the present hell

43:36

that our species seems mired in. I

43:38

know that doesn't make much sense now,

43:41

but give me some time. I'll explain

43:43

why. It's probably time for some ads.

43:45

We're back. And the first thing I

43:47

need you to understand about all of

43:49

these fucking cats is that an every

43:51

mauling caught on tape and there are

43:54

dozens of them. I see no anger

43:56

or malice in the actions of these

43:58

cats. I don't even see hunger. It's

44:00

clear to me as a cat owner

44:02

that the cats didn't see these people

44:04

tippy in her family in the cast

44:07

and crew as prey or as a

44:09

threat. If anything, they saw them as

44:11

fellow big cats, cousins and close-kin, who

44:13

they extend a kind of familiarity, and

44:15

perhaps even a kind of love that,

44:17

since they are cats, is expressed primarily

44:20

by batting at them with claws that

44:22

hit like bowie knives embedded in the

44:24

hood of a speeding camry. If you

44:26

have cats of your own, you understand.

44:28

Now, given that nearly every person on

44:30

this film was badly injured, including Tippy,

44:33

who got gangrene from infected cat wounds,

44:35

and all of her children, you might

44:37

feel inclined to judge who are a

44:39

knoll or both of them for risking

44:41

their kids' lives to make this insane

44:43

movie. I understand the impulse, but I

44:46

believe it to be an error. The

44:48

first thing you need to see to

44:50

understand the deeper dynamics going on with

44:52

war is a picture from a Playboy

44:54

magazine photo shoot of Tippy husband and

44:56

co-star star, Noel Marshall. He's in his

44:59

office on his typewriter and this fully

45:01

grown male lion gets up on his

45:03

desk because it wants attention. Again, normal

45:05

cat behavior. Now despite the best efforts

45:07

of this animal, who has to weigh

45:09

500 pounds, no old marshal won't stop

45:12

focusing on his work. And so the

45:14

cat inches away from his face, roars.

45:16

The sound of a male lion's roar

45:18

is deeply imprinted on all of us,

45:20

an epigenetic memory passed down by the

45:22

handful of our ancestors who heard the

45:25

sound up close and lived to tell

45:27

the tale. It has such a foundational

45:29

impact on our mind that Metro Goldwyn

45:31

Meyer, the film studio, used it to

45:33

open every movie they made from 1928

45:35

on. I believe they did this because

45:38

the sound is a sort of hack

45:40

to compel our attention. It pulls an

45:42

audience out of whatever state of mind

45:44

dominates their outside lives and makes them

45:46

more attentive to the film that is

45:48

to come. And so the first thing

45:51

you need to understand about the people

45:53

who made war is that Marshall, upon

45:55

having a living adult lion... inches from

45:57

his face, roar, gives the creature a

45:59

look that says, hey man, can you

46:01

give me a second? I'm like, I'm

46:04

in the middle of something. I bring

46:06

this up so that you will understand

46:08

that these were not people operating on

46:10

anything close to the same wavelength as

46:12

you and I. Their lives and their

46:14

choices are to outsiders, inconceivable. There's another

46:17

great photo from the set of that

46:19

playboy shoot. While the camera people roamed

46:21

the Hedron compound, one of them caught

46:23

a shot a shot of Tippy's adolescent

46:25

daughter, Melanie, An adult male lion, which

46:27

she must have considered to be in

46:30

some way a member of the family,

46:32

steeze this girl passing by in the

46:34

corner of its eye and that motion

46:36

ignites an instinct inside it. So like

46:38

any cat of that size in the

46:40

same situation, it reaches out to bite

46:43

her. Afterwards, the Hedron family and the

46:45

cast and crew had complicated feelings about

46:47

what happened that extended to the present

46:49

day. Tippy divorced Marshall almost as soon

46:51

as the filming finally wrapped. She has

46:53

alleged that while Roar was being made,

46:56

he utterly ignored her well-being. She also

46:58

does not seem to have ever seriously

47:00

considered leaving. She later wrote that she,

47:02

quote, was into it every bit as

47:04

much as he was, and that production

47:06

was an obsessive, addictive drama. John Mitchell,

47:09

Noll's son, who acted in the movie,

47:11

and like everyone else, was mulled repeatedly,

47:13

came to own the rights to Roar

47:15

when his dad died in 2010. Dad

47:17

was a fucking asshole to do that

47:19

to his family, he said recently. He

47:22

said this. It was amazing to live

47:24

through that. I should have died many

47:26

times, but I kind of want to

47:28

do it again. If you have any

47:30

friends or family who have survived extended

47:32

periods of every combat, there's a good

47:35

chance they may have expressed a variation

47:37

of the same feeling. This is because

47:39

trauma is sometimes a drug. Taking it

47:41

can be more than just hell. It's

47:43

often also a high, which is one

47:45

thing that drives a lot of people

47:48

crazy. I need to take a moment,

47:50

away from roar. to talk about some

47:52

people that I met in 2017 in

47:54

Iraq during the desperate and ferocious urban

47:56

combat against ISIS. The closer I drew

47:58

to the front the more guys... who

48:01

were elite veterans of the Iraqi Special

48:03

Forces. They did the bulk of the

48:05

fighting. These were mostly young men, ranging

48:07

from the tail into their teens to

48:09

their twenties. Many had grown up in

48:11

places like Fallujah, fighting from the time

48:14

they were seven or eight, sometimes younger.

48:16

They'd been born into the US occupation

48:18

in many cases. Their earliest memories were

48:20

as runners, faring supplies and information to

48:22

the older men and teenage boys who

48:24

did most of the fighting. When the

48:27

opportunity presented itself, they sometimes dropped grenades

48:29

or improvised explosive devices on U.S. troops,

48:31

most of whom were teenagers themselves. Now

48:33

they fought against ISIS in close quarters,

48:35

building to building a few weeks at

48:37

a time. Periodically, they'd rotate off the

48:40

front and would go to Erbil, an

48:42

hour or two away. Many of them

48:44

were gangsters in their spare time, running

48:46

drugs and guns and brothels. They spent

48:48

their days off in a drunken haze

48:50

of Turkish amphetamines. Then they would drive

48:53

back to the front and new brightly

48:55

colored mustangs and dodged charges. The trunks

48:57

folded bursting with so many machine guns

48:59

and rocket launchers. They can only be

49:01

closed with bungee cords. The guns and

49:03

rockets were useful at a distance to

49:06

soften up enemy positions in the impossibly

49:08

dense warren-like urban environment of Mosul's old

49:10

city. In every building on every block,

49:12

the fighting terminated with door-to-door, room-to-room battles,

49:14

where the most useful weapons were hand

49:16

grenades, combat knives, and pistols in that

49:19

order. I don't know if any of

49:21

these guys were at that point that

49:23

I met them, capable of feeling what

49:25

you or I would recognize as fear.

49:27

These were the men and boys whose

49:29

bodies formed the cutting edge of the

49:32

fighting against ISIS and Mosul. On occasion,

49:34

when they kidnapped ISIS fighters, some of

49:36

them committed war crimes with the ease

49:38

and with as much thought as you

49:40

and I give to breathing. This is

49:42

bad, of course. Unforgivable. But I've never

49:45

really given much thought to judging them

49:47

for it. Where would I even start?

49:49

I think I've come to understand that

49:51

my travels is that human beings are

49:53

capable of contorting themselves of contorting themselves

49:55

into the most incredible shapes in order

49:58

to live in. This has been the

50:00

story of our entire long journey on

50:02

this earth, and if there is one

50:04

reason our species has survived... above all

50:06

the others, it is our capacity for

50:08

infinite variety and infinite contexts. We can

50:11

make ourselves into anything if we're given

50:13

the right incentives, and to an extent

50:15

you can't judge individual humans without judging

50:17

the incentives the world we collectively create

50:19

presents for them. We evolved and we

50:21

still live in a world where trauma

50:24

and pain are inevitable, and those of

50:26

us who survive the worst things that

50:28

life can throw at us tend to

50:30

become addicted. sometimes to the cause of

50:32

the trauma, but nearly always to the

50:34

people we experience it with. This is

50:37

why the cast and crew of Roar

50:39

often reported feeling almost addicted to spending

50:41

time among these gigantic predators, and it's

50:43

why many kept coming back despite being

50:45

repeatedly maimed. Roar happened because the core

50:47

cast and crew exhibited radical empathy for

50:50

roughly 140 large cats and for each

50:52

other, and almost exercised zero critical judgment

50:54

beyond that point. Now I will understand

50:56

if you still feel that nothing could

50:58

justify the decision of two parents to

51:01

risk their children's lives in such folly.

51:03

And I know this essay is supposed

51:05

to be my ultimate enduring optimism about

51:07

mankind's potential, and I'm going to get

51:09

to that, but you know, we still

51:11

live in 2025. So first, here's ads.

51:23

So here's my best step at explaining

51:25

why I find Roar inspirational. There's a

51:28

scene about three quarters of the way

51:30

through this movie. After roughly an hour

51:32

straight of watching the Hedron Marshall family

51:34

and their friends get repeatedly mauled for

51:37

real by giant cats. And in this

51:39

scene, John Marshall finds a dirt bike

51:41

and engineers a scenario that I am

51:43

certain has never happened before or since

51:45

in the history of this planet. He

51:48

rides away from the home where his

51:50

family is trapped and draws several dozen

51:52

lions, panthers, and tigers away by making

51:54

them chase him. The cats assume this

51:57

is a game and repeatedly try to

51:59

murder or maim him. But he continues

52:01

building up... in an ever greater tale

52:03

of the most lethal killing machines to

52:06

evolve on this planet. You can see

52:08

from the look in John's eyes in

52:10

this scene that he has no idea

52:12

if he seconds away from death. It

52:15

would have been physically impossible to stop

52:17

or control this number of giant cats.

52:19

The only reason this number and variety

52:21

of lions, Panthers, and tigers would ever

52:24

have existed together at any previous point

52:26

in world history would have been across

52:28

a distance of thousands of miles of

52:30

rugged wilderness. But thanks to Tippy and

52:33

Noll's insane dream, and thanks to the

52:35

deranged and utterly unjustifiable commitment of many

52:37

of the crew and their family, a

52:39

moment of utter novelty occurs, where the

52:42

singular assortment of big cats watches as

52:44

a man fleeing in terror from them

52:46

on a dirt bike does one of

52:48

the sickest jumps in film history and

52:51

lands directly into a river and then

52:53

keeps riding until he is charged by

52:55

a juvenile African elephant, which the Edrons

52:57

also kept on their property. In its

53:00

uniqueness, this moment has to rival if

53:02

not exceed the moon landing. After all,

53:04

considerably more men have stepped foot on

53:06

the moon than have achieved what John

53:09

Marshall does in this scene, although some

53:11

of that may be due to the

53:13

fact that it is extremely illegal for

53:15

anyone today to even try. And this

53:17

is why I encourage you to watch

53:20

Roar, my dear friends, during the Dark

53:22

Times, not because it's a good movie,

53:24

but because it reveals what is best

53:26

about humanity. What piece of art could

53:29

better illustrate the infinite possibilities within us?

53:31

If a group of human beings can

53:33

learn to live among lions and tigers,

53:35

despite the constant guarantee of severe injury,

53:38

without really understanding why, is it so

53:40

mad to think that perhaps we too

53:42

can transcend the barbarities of our age,

53:44

and become something better, or at least...

53:47

Something far stranger than money-grubbing fascists. I

53:49

don't know how we escape the darkness

53:51

that seems to encroach a bit further

53:53

with each passing day, but I do

53:56

know this. If we can make war,

53:58

we can do anything. Hey

54:15

kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me,

54:17

Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who

54:19

my wife has always said is just a beardless,

54:21

dickless version of me. And that's the name

54:24

of our podcast, beardless, dickless me. I'm the old

54:26

one. I'm the young one. And every week,

54:28

we try to make each other laugh really hard.

54:30

Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing,

54:32

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

54:34

Or listen to it with your kid. It

54:36

could be a family show. We're not quite sure.

54:38

We're still figuring it out. It's a work

54:40

in progress. Listen to beardless, dickless me on the

54:42

iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get

54:44

your podcasts. Do you

54:46

remember what you said the first night

54:48

I came over here? How goes

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And Santi was gone. I've been spending

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55:22

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life... Well, I guess I'm saying I

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like you. You like me? He actually

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is too good to be true.

56:09

This is a con. I'm conning

56:12

you. To get the DeLado painting,

56:14

we could do this together. To

56:16

pull off this heist, they'll have

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the deep end together. That's a

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huge leap, Fernando, don't you think?

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After you, Trudeau. But love is

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of the Mike Wintuda podcast network

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available on the I-Hart radio

56:42

app, Apple podcast, or wherever

56:44

you get your podcasts. I'm

56:47

Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting

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a new podcast, Dub Dynasty. The story

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of how the Golden State Warriors have

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dominated the NBA for over a decade.

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Once again, our NBA champions. From the

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Dub Dynasty on the I-Hart Radio

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app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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you get your podcast. Welcome

57:53

to Itcadap Here are podcasts

57:56

where here is the rapidly

57:58

encroaching rise of fascism. My

58:00

name is Mia Wong and one

58:02

of the major factors of fascism

58:04

that we have been covering on

58:06

the show has been the increase

58:08

in just effectively straight up black

58:10

baggings by ICE and Immigrations Enforcement

58:13

in general. We have spent a

58:15

good amount of time covering a bunch

58:17

of different angles of this, but

58:19

there is another incredibly distressing angle

58:22

that we have not covered as

58:24

much yet, which is their targeting

58:26

of labor organizers. And with me

58:29

to talk about that is Mark

58:31

Medina from Portland Jobs with Justice

58:33

and the Coalition of Independent Unions.

58:35

And yeah, Mark, welcome to the

58:37

show. Hi, thanks to having me. Yeah, I'm glad

58:40

to have you on. So one of the

58:42

most pressing sort of black baggings

58:44

that's happened fairly recently is ICE's

58:46

kidnapping of Alfredo Juarez, E. Federino,

58:49

otherwise known as Lalo. Can you

58:51

tell us about... sort of

58:53

his work and the projects

58:55

he's been doing and Famila's

58:57

Unillas Prolegesticia? Yeah,

59:00

so it's been a very

59:02

disheartening and scary couple of

59:04

weeks since this happened because

59:06

it opens up a new path for the

59:08

state to go after organizers to

59:10

go after workers and the most

59:13

underprivileged in our

59:15

society in a way that I

59:17

suppose we all expected, but now that

59:19

we see it. now that we see it

59:21

happening, now that we see it happening to

59:23

people that we know in our community,

59:25

it's becoming apparent. There is no turning

59:28

back from the idea that we have

59:30

to be able to take this on

59:32

headfirst. We as activists, as organizers, have

59:35

to look at this and then see it

59:37

as an actual thing in our day to

59:39

day that we have to combat and

59:41

incorporate into our organizing. So maybe it might

59:43

be a little helpful to start off with

59:46

a little bit of a backstory.

59:48

So the union has its origins going

59:50

back to 2013. The area in

59:52

which they organize the Bellingham or

59:55

the Washington, Walken, Skagit areas, has

59:57

a very particular type of immigrant

59:59

community. Lelow himself is

1:00:01

of Mexico background. There's a lot

1:00:04

of indigenous Mexican populations in the

1:00:06

region. It's also one that has long

1:00:08

roots. A lot of these people go

1:00:10

back generations, have been here for quite

1:00:12

some time. This area also happens

1:00:15

to be a very particularly

1:00:17

with the non-Hispanic population, particularly

1:00:19

the white population, a very

1:00:22

conservative, particularly conservative, for the

1:00:24

area. It's one of the very few

1:00:26

areas of North West that Donald Trump

1:00:29

came to visit. It's an area that

1:00:31

has had repeated attacks on

1:00:33

the Indian community. And so

1:00:35

it's in this context that workers

1:00:37

are organizing in 2013 for this

1:00:39

first independent union. And two,

1:00:42

it's important to mention the independent

1:00:45

part of it. A lot of the

1:00:47

organizers from the start of this of

1:00:49

the union came from a tradition

1:00:51

of the United Farm Workers in

1:00:53

California. Some of them worked with Ses

1:00:56

of Chavez. in the in the heyday

1:00:58

of the United Farm Workers. And in

1:01:00

the years and decades since then, since

1:01:02

the Delano void costs and other things,

1:01:04

there's been a growing rift of what

1:01:06

the next steps should be. And I

1:01:09

think that a lot of farm workers,

1:01:11

because they don't organize under the general

1:01:13

labor law that we have for most

1:01:15

workers, there is a sort of patchwork system

1:01:18

for how farm working organizing

1:01:20

happens in the United States

1:01:22

that's dependent upon different

1:01:24

states and legislatures. And for

1:01:26

the most part, with the exception of

1:01:28

only two states, farm workers don't have

1:01:31

the same kind of protections that

1:01:33

regular workers generally in the

1:01:35

society have for union recognition

1:01:37

for collective bargaining. Only Washington

1:01:40

and New York at the moment,

1:01:42

I believe, have laws that allow

1:01:44

for elections for farm worker unions.

1:01:46

And there's a very particular reason

1:01:48

for that being the case. Farm

1:01:50

workers were excluded from the Wagner

1:01:52

Act for having general labor rights. in

1:01:54

the 1930s because precisely it

1:01:56

was seen as immigrant labor.

1:01:59

Yeah. and immigrants were not seen

1:02:01

as meriting the same rights as white American

1:02:03

in the same way that domestic workers

1:02:05

were removed because I was seen at the time

1:02:08

as black labor. So it has its roots in

1:02:10

racism. And yeah and that's something that

1:02:12

you know like you you can tie

1:02:14

that exclusion true like there's a straight

1:02:16

line between that and Japanese internments which

1:02:18

also to a large extent is just

1:02:20

is about land seizure and the sort

1:02:22

of like fusion of racism specifically racism

1:02:24

in the farming sector with with tax

1:02:27

and labor rights and with this desire

1:02:29

to just sort of sees literally the

1:02:31

land and labor from non-white people. Yeah.

1:02:33

Yeah, so it's a long and bleak

1:02:35

history. No, absolutely. And I'm sure your

1:02:37

audience is well aware of a lot

1:02:39

of these subject matter. It is a bleak

1:02:42

history. And it wasn't until groups

1:02:44

like the United Farm Workers in

1:02:46

the 60s and the 70s, that

1:02:48

they began to create the possibility

1:02:51

for something new for the Hispanic

1:02:53

community. It was United Farm Workers

1:02:55

that. built not just a lot

1:02:57

of solidarity with other immigrant groups

1:02:59

in the California area, but they also

1:03:01

built a sense of pride and identity

1:03:03

and belonging for a lot of communities.

1:03:06

I grew up in Boyle Heights, East Los

1:03:08

Angeles, since Chavez and the farm worker murals

1:03:10

are everywhere. You know, me and my friends

1:03:12

would often joke that such Chavez is like

1:03:14

the patron saint, if he's Los Angeles, even

1:03:17

though it's nowhere near Delano. And there's a

1:03:19

reason for that. I think that a lot

1:03:21

of us looked up to the United States

1:03:23

Farm Workers, we looked up to the Farm

1:03:25

Workers Union movement and we saw

1:03:27

in them our heroes, our modern day heroes.

1:03:30

We saw them, we saw people who said, be

1:03:32

proud to be brown, you know. There's a courage

1:03:34

that comes from that history. The Union

1:03:36

movement that then sprung up in

1:03:38

2013 in the Bellingham Northern Washington

1:03:40

area was coming out of that milieu.

1:03:42

They understood that background, they understood

1:03:45

that history, but they also understood

1:03:47

that there was very little organizing.

1:03:49

in the region. There was a lot of

1:03:52

fear in the region. It's very difficult to

1:03:54

organize farm workers. To have access to

1:03:56

a lot of these areas, you have

1:03:58

to cross just private property. for quite

1:04:00

some time before you reverse farm

1:04:02

workers. And it becomes very,

1:04:04

very difficult to have organizing

1:04:07

happen. And it's intentional that way.

1:04:09

The rise in farm worker unions

1:04:11

that happen in 60s and 70s

1:04:13

had a massive plummet by the time

1:04:15

that we get into the 90s and

1:04:17

2000s. And so these workers had heard

1:04:19

these stories, had heard by

1:04:21

this legacy, but had been

1:04:24

essentially dealing with increasing frustration,

1:04:26

racist behavior by bosses, lower and

1:04:28

lower pay. and the use of certain

1:04:30

types of immigrants to try

1:04:32

to scab their jobs. It be the

1:04:35

capitalist class using one type of

1:04:37

worker against another type of worker,

1:04:39

picking them against each other. It's in

1:04:42

this context in 2013 that this

1:04:44

union starts to form. They go

1:04:46

public at that time period. They

1:04:48

call for recognition and they

1:04:50

start taking action directly. And

1:04:53

they organize this years and

1:04:55

years-long boycott campaign. to gain

1:04:57

recognition to get the employer

1:04:59

to start bargaining. And after years

1:05:01

and years of this, in court battles

1:05:03

and the employer trying to lay everyone

1:05:06

off and hire certain types of newer

1:05:08

immigrants coming in to replace all them,

1:05:10

putting one worker against another, all these

1:05:12

types of maneuvers. By 2017, these workers

1:05:15

win a contract. And the philosophy

1:05:17

of the union since then has been

1:05:19

not just to grow this union, but also

1:05:21

for them to be able to stand on

1:05:23

their own two feet. Their idea is that...

1:05:25

they are very proud of their independent

1:05:27

nature of that union. They're not part

1:05:30

of, you know, the ASL, CIO, they're

1:05:32

not part of the United Farm Workers,

1:05:34

they're not part of any other organization.

1:05:36

You know, when I spoke to some

1:05:38

of their leaders last year, one of

1:05:40

the things that came to mind was they

1:05:43

brought up a quote from Eugene Debs in

1:05:45

the notion of like, if we were to

1:05:47

lead you into the promised land, someone else

1:05:49

would just lead you out. And the notion

1:05:52

of their union is their union is, Tomorrow

1:05:54

they'll hold something over us. That's the

1:05:56

notion that farm workers leave this movement

1:05:58

and leave this union. is an

1:06:00

incredibly powerful statement of what working

1:06:03

class people can do. The kinds of

1:06:05

workers that everyone else kind of looks

1:06:07

at, they could never do it. These, you know, these

1:06:09

workers could never handle this kind

1:06:11

of level of struggle and couldn't

1:06:14

do this kind of organization, have

1:06:16

built one of the most powerful

1:06:18

independent farmer for unions in the

1:06:20

West Coast. Lelo, Lelo Juarez, was a

1:06:22

founding member of this union. He was

1:06:24

a farm worker starting at the age of the

1:06:26

age of 12. And since then, devoted

1:06:28

his entire life to organizing,

1:06:31

to helping workers, to being

1:06:33

the kind of person who

1:06:35

commits himself, to the work of

1:06:37

making the world a better place than

1:06:39

he founded. You know, at 25, he is

1:06:41

significantly younger than me.

1:06:43

And when I think of people who I

1:06:45

look up, too, who I think of, wow,

1:06:48

when I grow up and want to be

1:06:50

someone like that, I think of Lelow. Yeah.

1:06:52

I have met Lel many a times over

1:06:54

the years. He's a very soft-

1:06:57

owes him a bit of a

1:06:59

debt now. It is time

1:07:01

that we as a whole

1:07:04

stand up for him.

1:07:06

Yeah, yeah, we are

1:07:08

going to go to

1:07:10

ads regrettably and

1:07:12

then when we

1:07:15

come back we are

1:07:17

going to start

1:07:19

talking I think a

1:07:22

bit more about the

1:07:24

repression. The sort of

1:07:26

capitalist class out in

1:07:28

Bellingham, and you know, this sort of,

1:07:30

I mean, this has been true of

1:07:32

the broader capitalist class since it's kind

1:07:34

of organizing, starting like, has been

1:07:36

trying to break these unions this

1:07:39

entire time. You know, that has

1:07:41

been a major focus of everything that

1:07:43

they've been doing. And, you know, what

1:07:45

we're seeing right now seems like a

1:07:47

massive sort of escalation in the decree

1:07:49

of repression. So, yeah, can we

1:07:51

talk about the recent blackbagging of

1:07:53

Lalo and... Yeah, and sort of

1:07:56

what happens and where we

1:07:58

go from there? Yeah, the... The weaponization

1:08:00

of the state to go after

1:08:02

immigrants and go after activists is,

1:08:05

I'm sure, to your audience is

1:08:07

well known is nothing yet. And

1:08:09

it knows party affiliation. The Democrat

1:08:11

administrations have been doing this to

1:08:13

immigrant communities and have been using

1:08:15

it to silence political activists. The

1:08:17

Trump administration, however, is now

1:08:19

doing this on a level that is, at

1:08:22

least to a lot of us, unheard of in the

1:08:24

modern day, which is to go

1:08:26

after specific union leaders in

1:08:28

the labor movement. to go

1:08:30

after civil rights leaders. You've

1:08:32

seen this happen also when

1:08:34

it comes to Palestinian rights

1:08:36

activists around the country. The

1:08:38

idea is pretty simple. It's

1:08:40

to silence the loudest voices

1:08:43

to cut the leadership from

1:08:45

the movement. On March 25th,

1:08:47

Alfredo Lelo Juarez was dropping

1:08:49

off his girlfriend at a

1:08:51

nearby farm for work and was

1:08:54

accosted by ice agents as he

1:08:56

was exercising his rights. or what

1:08:58

he thought to his rights were

1:09:00

at the time, because of the regime, who

1:09:02

knows what your rights are. They broke

1:09:05

his window, they dragged him out of

1:09:07

his car, you know, this was

1:09:09

obviously very traumatic incident,

1:09:11

but also it was a real shock

1:09:13

to the union to see the community

1:09:15

group that works with the union and

1:09:18

to the local Hispanic community

1:09:20

in the area. Within hours of

1:09:22

that, workers organized his community

1:09:24

went to move to try

1:09:26

to carry a response. knowing

1:09:28

that time was of the

1:09:30

essence. It was then taken

1:09:33

to a localized facility. He's

1:09:35

now since been moved to

1:09:37

a detention center in Tacoma,

1:09:39

Washington. A large rally of

1:09:41

hundreds took place calling for

1:09:43

his immediate release. What we know

1:09:46

now, seemingly, is that at the

1:09:48

very last minute, apologies I

1:09:50

forget the exact day, but

1:09:52

it was within a couple

1:09:54

of days of the kidnapping,

1:09:56

He has an automatic stay of

1:09:58

deportation in place. At this point,

1:10:00

no longer has any legal authority

1:10:03

to remove Lello. This came at

1:10:05

the last minute. He was in

1:10:07

line for deportation and was removed

1:10:09

at the very last minute. However,

1:10:12

while this is good news, this is

1:10:14

not good for someone's personal

1:10:16

health and well-being. These

1:10:18

are massively cramped facilities,

1:10:21

underfunded facilities. You know,

1:10:23

there are horror stories around the

1:10:25

country of... the conditions in some

1:10:27

of these places every day

1:10:29

that Lello is stuck behind

1:10:31

these prison walls is an injustice

1:10:33

to our movement. Yeah. Yeah. The thing

1:10:36

the thing it immediately reminds me of is

1:10:38

the story of Thomas Payne who was like

1:10:40

slated to be executed in the French Revolution

1:10:42

and they didn't they didn't execute him because

1:10:45

his door was open so they didn't see

1:10:47

the slash line on the cell that was

1:10:49

supposed to execute him and then like the

1:10:51

next day the reign of terror ended with

1:10:54

the coup against the jokovins it rides me

1:10:56

a lot of that but you know but

1:10:58

on the other hand here's the thing we

1:11:00

have gotten the the stay of the deportation

1:11:03

but we have not we have not brought

1:11:05

down the rate of terror yet so yeah and

1:11:07

it would hope a little doesn't have to wait

1:11:09

four more years for that one yeah good lord

1:11:11

good lord Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a bit

1:11:14

about, so I mean, obviously, you know, what we're

1:11:16

seeing here, and this is, you know, the

1:11:18

connection that you made, is where we're

1:11:20

seeing just on a sort of broad

1:11:22

scale, the use of the state and

1:11:24

of the sort of blackbagging and of

1:11:27

these deportations as a way to

1:11:29

target organizers from Palestine to

1:11:31

label organizers. That's only going to

1:11:33

expand as this goes on. And I think

1:11:35

something critical about, you know, one of

1:11:37

the first things you were saying here

1:11:39

about. the fact that they're targeting sort

1:11:41

of the loudest voices in the community.

1:11:43

And I think a big part of this

1:11:46

is that they know that their position isn't

1:11:48

as strong as they're making it out to

1:11:50

be, right? Like they have just detonated

1:11:52

a nuke across the entire economy. They

1:11:54

are systematically going through and individually fucking

1:11:56

over every single group of people who

1:11:58

are supposed to be there. base. And

1:12:00

I think part of what they're

1:12:02

doing is they're trying to

1:12:04

spread sort of raw terror and

1:12:06

spread fear and you know and

1:12:09

and attack the critical infrastructure of

1:12:11

organizing because they want to make

1:12:13

it look like resisting them as

1:12:16

impossible. And that's just not

1:12:18

true. They can be. Yeah, absolutely. I

1:12:20

think that oftentimes, particularly

1:12:22

fascistic power. wants and

1:12:24

needs to present itself

1:12:26

as inevitable as overwhelming

1:12:28

and impossible to defeat. In

1:12:31

part because it's meant to hide the

1:12:33

ultimate weakness of some of these powers.

1:12:35

The actual power that these farm workers

1:12:38

showed against the Sakuma farms when they

1:12:40

went on strike and boycotted for years

1:12:42

and years and years out in the

1:12:44

fields talking to workers for years and

1:12:46

years and years and years. It showed

1:12:49

that no matter how powerful some of

1:12:51

these companies are, that the power of

1:12:53

workers overwhelms and the power of

1:12:55

solidarity overwhelms. And they know that.

1:12:57

Going after leadership, going after some

1:12:59

of the most, some of the

1:13:01

bravest people in our movement is a way

1:13:04

of trying to hit the movement

1:13:06

at the knees and trying to

1:13:08

convince folks that struggle is impossible.

1:13:10

But I think it is important to

1:13:12

remember that what we're doing, the

1:13:14

struggle now, the response, this is how

1:13:16

we show the population, the world, you know,

1:13:19

our communities. that they're not

1:13:21

inevitable. It is not

1:13:23

insurmountable. And so in by

1:13:25

taking action, responding to the kinds

1:13:28

of assisted behaviors of the state,

1:13:30

we show how feeble the state can

1:13:32

be at times, even when it seems

1:13:34

its most treacherous and awful. Yeah, and

1:13:36

I think a lot of times when we win

1:13:38

fights, it can be very, very hard

1:13:40

to actually see our victory because

1:13:42

we don't see the world that could

1:13:45

have been if we didn't fight. And that's

1:13:47

the thing I think about with the First Trump administration,

1:13:49

where in the First Trump administration, they absolutely wanted

1:13:51

to be doing this kind of shit. And they

1:13:54

were able to do a lot of terrible stuff,

1:13:56

but they weren't able to sort of go this

1:13:58

far because of the kind of... mass mobilizations

1:14:00

that shut down a lot of

1:14:02

the kinds of things that they

1:14:05

wanted to do. And I think

1:14:07

that's a kind of victory that

1:14:09

is hard to kind of like

1:14:11

process because all we see is,

1:14:13

you know, the suffering that did

1:14:15

happen. And we can never see an

1:14:17

image of like all of the people,

1:14:19

you know, who got to continue

1:14:22

living their lives because we stopped

1:14:24

them. And that I think is another sort

1:14:26

of powerful tool here, but also we do

1:14:29

have an opportunity to make sure that we

1:14:31

can beat them right here and right now

1:14:33

in a way that's very very public and

1:14:35

visible. And that's a question mark about that

1:14:38

in my mind because, you know, my entire

1:14:40

adult life I've heard stories of the state

1:14:42

repression against union organizers in the 20s and

1:14:44

the 30s and the 30s in the 40s.

1:14:47

You hear the stories if you're an organizer

1:14:49

about the violiderideradaresas

1:14:51

and and how hard it was in

1:14:54

the past and we forget. that a

1:14:56

lot of that does continue on is

1:14:58

just not where you would imagine it,

1:15:00

where a lot of American workers imagine

1:15:02

it. And so they don't see it

1:15:04

in their shops and their factories and

1:15:06

their unions. But this right here

1:15:08

is an attack on the labor movement.

1:15:11

Had this been the head of the

1:15:13

electricians union, the head of the SCIU,

1:15:15

had this been an attack on what a

1:15:17

lot of Americans would view as

1:15:19

the mainstream labor movement? This would

1:15:21

be headlines. The fact that it

1:15:23

isn't shows and that it has been

1:15:26

so much work to try to get

1:15:28

attention to a union leader being picked

1:15:30

up and kidnapped by the state should

1:15:32

be, you know, a blaring red light on the

1:15:34

labor movement to take action immediately.

1:15:36

I hope that what we're doing is

1:15:39

the first steps of that because, you

1:15:41

know, this is one of those moments,

1:15:43

you know, they went after the trade

1:15:45

unions unionists and I was not a

1:15:47

trade unionist. Well, they're going after the

1:15:49

farm workers. I am not a farm worker.

1:15:51

common upon us morally to stand

1:15:53

up one another at this point

1:15:56

in time. Yeah, and I think there's

1:15:58

been a real kind of real... power

1:16:00

this and a real sort of appeasement of

1:16:02

power and a real sort of demonstration of

1:16:04

where a lot of these unions politics are.

1:16:06

I mean, we saw we saw the way

1:16:08

that the Teamsters like leadership just, I

1:16:10

mean, just, you know, openly went to

1:16:12

speak at the RNC, right? We've been

1:16:14

seeing the UAW, which traditionally has had

1:16:17

better like immigration politics in the last

1:16:19

few years than a lot of these

1:16:21

other sort of mainstream unions, but has

1:16:23

also been sort of going to bat

1:16:25

for Trump's tariff. I've been calling you

1:16:27

the turf tariffs because of the wages of

1:16:29

transphobia, but you know, they've been going to

1:16:31

bat for like the turf tariffs, right? And

1:16:34

that I think is like part of why they've

1:16:36

been sort of unable to like respond to

1:16:38

this moment and why they've been unable to

1:16:40

respond to the past fucking 50 years of

1:16:42

moments, which is that like if you're

1:16:45

sort of like labor politics is rooted

1:16:47

in this sort of like American nationalist

1:16:49

like American jobs for American workers stuff.

1:16:51

right and it's not actually based in the

1:16:53

power of workers and the power of workers

1:16:56

everywhere then you're going to lose it's not

1:16:58

it's not just sort of reactionary politics also

1:17:00

it is it's also bad politics and we're

1:17:02

seeing it right now yeah and I think

1:17:04

that the history of the labor movement

1:17:06

has been an interesting one in my

1:17:08

adult life because you know I'm as pro-laborous

1:17:11

they come however the history of the labor

1:17:13

movement in the modern day has been a

1:17:15

fascinating one it is one that when it

1:17:17

came to large strikes was that it's nadier

1:17:19

at the mid and late 2000s. I think

1:17:22

at one point it was just over a

1:17:24

dozen strikes over 2000 workers and you compare

1:17:26

that to the hide the labor movement in the

1:17:28

40s and the 50s when it was in

1:17:30

the hundreds and you had strike actions all

1:17:32

the time and that is what built so

1:17:34

much of what we called middle class for

1:17:36

some and it was this really historic moment

1:17:39

at the time and we're in a

1:17:41

historic moment now where I think the

1:17:43

labor movement now where I think the

1:17:45

labor movement for so long from that

1:17:47

point has been trying to kind of

1:17:49

reshaped the labor movement and the thoughts

1:17:51

and the ideas of the new. But it

1:17:53

comes with its own regressive setbacks

1:17:56

and it comes with its own

1:17:58

shortcomings of leadership. You know, the

1:18:01

teamsters making statements around

1:18:03

immigration rights was a very unfortunate

1:18:06

thing to be said in the modern

1:18:08

day, in the modern context. I think

1:18:10

that, you know, other unions seemingly looking

1:18:12

to, you know, circle the wagons

1:18:15

rather than take the risks that

1:18:17

need that need to happen in

1:18:19

this current time has really shown

1:18:21

a lack of imagination

1:18:23

from some of the mainstream unions. And the

1:18:25

thing is... I hope for the best for

1:18:27

them. I want them to succeed and I

1:18:29

want them to get better. Because the world

1:18:31

is a better place for having these larger

1:18:34

unions. However, it's the independent movements,

1:18:36

the independent unions, like Familius

1:18:38

Unidis, what else, Thesea, like these

1:18:40

other unions in the region, that can be

1:18:43

the kind of canary in the coal mine,

1:18:45

the kind of labs of experimentation that can

1:18:47

be the first people out to do some of

1:18:49

the most radical and interesting and

1:18:51

worker-centric type of movement building

1:18:54

and messaging messaging messaging and

1:18:56

messaging. I think there is a reason

1:18:58

why it was the Coalition of

1:19:00

Independent Unions here in the Pacific

1:19:02

Northwest that came up with the

1:19:04

notion of having Trans-Day of Solidarity,

1:19:07

this idea of patterning contracts together

1:19:09

to have inclusive and protections for

1:19:11

trans workers and having that be

1:19:13

a thing that unions take up together.

1:19:16

I think that it's incredibly notable that

1:19:18

it's groups like Familius Unida

1:19:20

Ses, Polozizia, that carry out

1:19:22

this long years-long boycott and created

1:19:24

a model by which other workers

1:19:26

in the region can not just

1:19:29

organize themselves, but organize themselves on

1:19:31

a low-cost member-led democratic model. I think

1:19:33

it's important to see that sometimes

1:19:35

the large unions have to start looking

1:19:37

at some of the radical pragmatism that

1:19:39

comes from the necessities of these smaller

1:19:42

independent campaigns. Yeah, and I mean, before

1:19:44

we go to ads, I think the last thing I want

1:19:46

to say there is like, you know, the other option

1:19:48

they have is to do the option of what the

1:19:50

unions didn't during the rise of the Nazis. Which is

1:19:52

like during the rise of the Nazis the unions fell

1:19:55

in line, right? They fell in line because they were

1:19:57

scared and they thought that they could fucking win benefits

1:19:59

from it and And you know, it saved

1:20:01

some of them, like there were a

1:20:03

few of those people, like just became

1:20:05

Nazis, but the rest of them got

1:20:08

fucking liquidated anyways. So those are your

1:20:10

options, right? You either stand and fight

1:20:12

now with the independent unions, or you

1:20:14

become part of the regime and eventually

1:20:17

get liquidated when, you know, Trump in

1:20:19

like, two and a half years,

1:20:21

science executive order that says unions

1:20:23

are illegal or whatever. And what does

1:20:25

that do at the end of the day?

1:20:27

Even if it saves you, even if you're

1:20:30

the head of some of these large unions,

1:20:32

and by working with the administration today,

1:20:34

by selling your soul, by selling the

1:20:36

movement out, you give up the moral high

1:20:38

ground of our movement, of our

1:20:40

working class democratic movement, you give

1:20:42

it up for another generation.

1:20:44

Then when workers, when people like

1:20:46

myself growing up, looking at images

1:20:49

of the United Farm Workers, There are

1:20:51

similar, I presume, there are similar people

1:20:53

in the United States growing up who look

1:20:55

that way up to the United Auto Workers, who

1:20:57

look that way up to the teachers union.

1:21:00

What happens to those children, to those kids,

1:21:02

those young people who want to be the

1:21:04

next leadership, the next era of the labor

1:21:06

movement, they will not look at us

1:21:08

as having the moral high ground. We give

1:21:11

that up. We give our role in history,

1:21:13

our moral role in history to fight for

1:21:15

the working class when we do things like

1:21:18

this. Yeah, and what you've become instead is

1:21:20

just another extension of the state. You've become

1:21:22

like one of the like the national syndicates

1:21:24

in like Franco is Spain. And what that

1:21:27

does to you is people, people don't look

1:21:29

at you in a generation as a labor

1:21:31

movement. They look at you as just another

1:21:33

arm of a fascist regime. And it

1:21:35

doesn't have to be like that. It really

1:21:37

doesn't. But yeah, I take no pleasure in

1:21:39

saying this. But it's an unfortunate

1:21:42

reality and hopefully the turn around

1:21:44

can come from anywhere. It can come

1:21:46

from unexpected places, and I hope that

1:21:48

there is one. And things like solidarity

1:21:50

for Lello, I hope it be a

1:21:52

small link in the chain that moves

1:21:54

the pendulum right back into the direction

1:21:56

of unethical and moral superiority that

1:21:59

comes with. for working

1:22:01

class folks. Yeah, we're

1:22:03

going to take an ad

1:22:05

break and when we come

1:22:07

back we're going to talk

1:22:09

about what we can do

1:22:12

for Lillow right now as

1:22:14

you are listening to

1:22:16

this. We are back. So

1:22:18

let's talk about both the

1:22:21

operation, I mean just immediately

1:22:23

the plans to sort of... Put

1:22:25

pressure to free Lelow and also

1:22:27

would then I guess we'll get

1:22:30

into sort of more broadly the

1:22:32

kinds of fighting that we need

1:22:34

to be doing in order to resist this.

1:22:36

Sure, sounds good. So, like I mentioned

1:22:38

earlier, and you need an aftermath of

1:22:41

Lelow is kidnapping by ICE. Workers in

1:22:43

the region began organizing and

1:22:45

unions came together and supportive Lelow

1:22:47

and helped a rally in front

1:22:49

of the tension center in Tacoma.

1:22:51

Now what we're trying to do is

1:22:54

trying to spread the word further.

1:22:56

There are other communities, particularly here

1:22:58

on the West Coast, that can

1:23:00

stand solidarity, that should stand

1:23:03

a solidarity, and when we heard

1:23:05

this use go down, activists within the

1:23:07

CIIU ask themselves, we can't stand idly

1:23:09

by while a leader in our movement

1:23:11

is kidnapped by the state. We need

1:23:14

to take action. And so we did.

1:23:16

And the point was to move as

1:23:18

quickly as possible to try to build

1:23:20

a larger voice. for Lelow while he

1:23:22

is in detention. So there is a good number

1:23:24

of activists here in the Portland

1:23:26

area. We can be of service to

1:23:29

the Farm Workers Union. You know, we

1:23:31

have a strong core of independent unions

1:23:33

here in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in

1:23:36

the Portland area. We can do what

1:23:38

other unions are hesitant to do, which

1:23:40

is take action immediately and stand firmly

1:23:42

with our resident sisters at Manosi Edmanis

1:23:45

up in Northern Washington. So what's

1:23:47

happening is the call from the

1:23:49

union is... workers individually for people

1:23:51

individually to call into the attorney

1:23:53

general in Washington state and Call

1:23:56

to the release of Lelow also calling

1:23:58

the new governor up in Washington to

1:24:00

call for the release, bring a wider

1:24:02

attention, making me know that this

1:24:04

person is someone who is important

1:24:06

to the community, cannot be spirited

1:24:09

away to another country where they

1:24:11

are not from, where that is

1:24:13

not their home, and taken away from

1:24:15

their family, the community, and

1:24:17

from the good work that they do. And

1:24:19

the other thing that we're trying to do

1:24:21

is we're trying to get local

1:24:24

officials to also use their voice

1:24:26

to maximize the pressure, to give more

1:24:28

attention to this issue. So that's the

1:24:30

call so far. This rally that we're

1:24:32

having in front of City Hall on

1:24:35

Saturday, April 12th at 2 p.m. is

1:24:37

the beginning of what we hope is

1:24:39

a larger campaign that will not

1:24:41

end until Lello is free and

1:24:43

until these raids stop attacking the

1:24:45

labor movement in the Pacific Northwest.

1:24:48

You know, just because we in

1:24:50

Portland, you know, are not farm

1:24:52

workers, because we don't work with

1:24:54

farm workers, because a lot of

1:24:56

the workers who work here. and maybe never

1:24:58

met a farm worker, it does not mean that

1:25:00

we should not stand shoulder to shoulder and

1:25:03

arm and support the farm workers doing it

1:25:05

up in northern Washington to the hills. And

1:25:07

this begins this fight of building that kind

1:25:09

of level of solidarity begins by showing up

1:25:11

for them. They're doing what they can't do.

1:25:14

Right now they don't have the resources to

1:25:16

go state by state and city by city to

1:25:18

bring attention and awareness to one of their

1:25:20

leaders being attacked. But we can do it. And

1:25:22

if we can do it, we should do it. It's

1:25:24

a moral imperative that little be free. Yeah, and so

1:25:26

I mean statistically there are a lot

1:25:29

of you in Portland listening to the

1:25:31

show but statistically most of you are not

1:25:33

in Portland. Are there other things that people

1:25:35

in the rest of the country and I

1:25:37

guess the rest of the world I know I

1:25:40

know there's some of you statistically don't live in

1:25:42

the US. Yeah, are there things that people

1:25:44

in other places can do to put

1:25:46

pressure specifically for Lalo, but also just

1:25:48

can do in their own communities to,

1:25:50

you know, I mean, put pressure to

1:25:52

stop pressure to stop these raidss. The CII,

1:25:54

the Coalition of Independent Unices, Coalition of

1:25:57

Independent Unions here in the Pacific Northwest,

1:25:59

it was trying... to do and is trying to

1:26:01

do with transient solidarity. The idea is we

1:26:03

are trying to make this work here in the

1:26:05

Pacific Northwest, and if it's useful, if it's

1:26:07

good, if people are paying attention to it,

1:26:09

then we can export this to other cities

1:26:11

and other areas to bring more attention to

1:26:13

these causes. And so with that, when patterning

1:26:16

our contracts together, particularly

1:26:18

on this one issue of transgender

1:26:20

health care and trans inclusive language

1:26:22

in contracts and codifying that between

1:26:24

unions, and having that demand of labor

1:26:26

movement that they not walk away from this

1:26:29

from this, we want to. also do the

1:26:31

same thing with this fight for freedom for

1:26:33

the farm workers union and their leaders

1:26:35

and workers everywhere and the attack will

1:26:37

come soon enough I suppose I would

1:26:40

imagine from this this regime in Washington

1:26:42

yeah if this works we want workers

1:26:44

in other cities that are assisting the

1:26:46

farm worker union taking up the

1:26:48

call of action and fighting for

1:26:50

it so not just let up

1:26:52

whoever comes afterwards because there will

1:26:54

be little's in the future unfortunate

1:26:56

as it may be So if this works here,

1:26:59

if workers hear, as they hear more

1:27:01

updates, we would hope and we would

1:27:03

love if workers elsewhere, if organizing groups

1:27:05

elsewhere, would want to take up this fight

1:27:07

and bring attention to the cause. Hell yeah,

1:27:09

yeah, and I think there is a lot

1:27:12

of, you know, potential and sort

1:27:14

of mobilizations, there's a lot of potential

1:27:16

in getting people to understand that this

1:27:18

stuff's happening and there's a lot of

1:27:20

potential in... cross-union organizing, and also, and

1:27:23

I will say this too, because like,

1:27:25

you know, obviously statistically, like, there are

1:27:27

a large number of people listening to

1:27:29

this who are like union staffers, but

1:27:31

also like most of you are not, that also

1:27:34

doesn't mean that whatever kind of organizing

1:27:36

that you're doing doesn't overlap with this

1:27:38

and doesn't have capacity that they can

1:27:40

bring to bear to stop the entire

1:27:42

deportation regime that we're facing right now.

1:27:45

And that's something that you have to

1:27:47

do, both on the level of solidarity,

1:27:49

on a moral level, and also on

1:27:51

a strategic level, because, again, he is

1:27:54

going to come for you too. So... Yeah. You know,

1:27:56

without making it too personal, like,

1:27:58

I know level personally. I have met

1:28:00

a little many a time over the

1:28:03

years. He's a fantastic person. The reason

1:28:05

why a lot of us as organizers is

1:28:07

why we do this kind of work to

1:28:09

begin with is because we believe as

1:28:11

bizarrely as it may be that we

1:28:13

could be a link in the chain

1:28:15

that makes the world a better place,

1:28:17

that we can leave the world better

1:28:19

off than we found it. And we

1:28:22

also believe in what we're doing because

1:28:24

when we look at people who have

1:28:26

been attacked by corporations and attacked

1:28:28

by the state, we feel a moral

1:28:31

compulsion to help. And what I would say

1:28:33

to folks who are outside of Portland, who

1:28:35

are hearing this story, who hear the

1:28:37

calls to call the Attorney General

1:28:39

in Washington State and demand that

1:28:41

they'll be released to follow up

1:28:43

with the unions by millions on

1:28:46

US Polo Svisia, further direction on

1:28:48

how they can assist and potentially

1:28:50

holding their own rallies and support

1:28:52

and solidarity and bringing attention to

1:28:54

the issue. I would hope that they do this.

1:28:56

Imagine if Lalo were your brother. Imagine

1:28:59

if Lille were your cousin, your father,

1:29:01

your friend, act as if they were

1:29:03

them, because it requires that

1:29:05

level of empathy to have

1:29:07

the kind of solidarity that we

1:29:09

need in order to fight this fascist

1:29:12

regime and everything that it does.

1:29:14

It is easy to say, I will

1:29:16

wait for someone else to do the

1:29:18

work. I will, someone else will come

1:29:20

along and it'll get resolved that way.

1:29:23

No, if you don't do the work,

1:29:25

it just will not get done. And

1:29:27

so we have to go in every

1:29:29

day as part of civic engagement and

1:29:31

assisting the working class as part of

1:29:33

our daily routines and using the kind

1:29:36

of the kind of sense of moral necessity

1:29:38

and of immediate action it requires

1:29:40

that you would do for someone that

1:29:42

was close to you. Because this person

1:29:45

is you just by another name. This

1:29:47

person is your family even if you've

1:29:49

never met them. We are all in this together

1:29:51

as working class people and if we start coming

1:29:53

up with boundaries and reasons for why we shouldn't

1:29:56

stand up for one another, those reasons

1:29:58

then become excuses for everyone. else.

1:30:00

So I would hope that when people hear

1:30:02

this, they look and see the struggle of

1:30:04

this person and they can imagine what

1:30:06

would happen to them in the future

1:30:08

and they say, I would want someone

1:30:10

there for me in my corner in

1:30:12

my time of me. So I will

1:30:14

be there for them and theirs. Yeah,

1:30:16

it reminds me a lot of this

1:30:18

line from Peggy Seeger who wrote an

1:30:21

anti-fascist song called Song of Choice. And one

1:30:23

of the verses that's always stuck

1:30:25

with me is, today the soldiers took away

1:30:27

one. Tomorrow they may take away two.

1:30:29

One April they took away Greece, but surely they

1:30:31

will never take you. And, you know, I mean,

1:30:34

that's the thing that people in the 30s

1:30:36

woke up to, right, is, you know, if you're

1:30:38

in this country, then this is the thing

1:30:40

that you're waking up to now, is that,

1:30:42

yeah, the soldiers are taking people away. And

1:30:44

every day they're taking you away more

1:30:46

and more people. And one day you

1:30:48

wake up, and they've taken entire countries.

1:30:50

And the only way that you can

1:30:53

stop this is by making sure that

1:30:55

the action that you're taking is not

1:30:57

just waking up and going back to

1:31:00

sleep, right? You have to take a

1:31:02

stand, you have to fight, because no

1:31:04

one is coming. The only person

1:31:06

who is coming, for these people,

1:31:08

the only person who is coming,

1:31:10

for these people, the only person

1:31:13

who is coming, for these people,

1:31:15

for the people coming next to

1:31:17

them, right? There always been a

1:31:19

thing about fascism. is that it

1:31:21

relies on us not fighting them,

1:31:24

it relies on us, on our

1:31:26

passivity, it relies on us not

1:31:28

caring enough about the people that

1:31:30

they take first, you know, to sit

1:31:33

back and do nothing and think that

1:31:35

we can wait. And you can't.

1:31:37

You have to start right now, and

1:31:39

you have to stop them before

1:31:41

they advance any further, and

1:31:43

you have to roll back what

1:31:46

they've already done. And this

1:31:48

is our opportunity to do that.

1:31:50

Yeah. Do you have anything else that you

1:31:52

want to add before we head out?

1:31:54

And we will put links to a whole

1:31:57

bunch of things in the description

1:31:59

to this. Yeah, I suppose to those

1:32:01

that would want to know more about

1:32:03

not just the struggle of the

1:32:05

Farm Workers Union, but also

1:32:07

the general experiments in independent

1:32:10

unionism here in the Pacific

1:32:12

Northwest, I'd highly encourage the

1:32:14

folks take a deep dive

1:32:16

and see that to organize

1:32:18

your workplace to have the kind

1:32:21

of solidarity with your coworkers.

1:32:23

You need not be dependent

1:32:25

upon someone else and other

1:32:27

organizations to come in. and sort

1:32:30

of rescue you from the

1:32:32

mystery and drudgery of non-union

1:32:34

workplaces, you can do it too. You can create,

1:32:36

you have it in your head, in your own

1:32:38

mind, in your own hands, the ability

1:32:41

to organize, the ability to fight

1:32:43

with your coworkers, you have the

1:32:45

kinds of clever problem-solving skills that

1:32:47

every worker has in order to

1:32:49

combat the boss and create a

1:32:51

better world than the one that

1:32:53

currently exists, and also that when

1:32:56

it comes to issues like standing

1:32:58

up, for this struggle now and

1:33:00

struggles in the future. I would say you

1:33:02

have it now, the creative capacity

1:33:04

to in whatever city you're

1:33:06

in, to make connections to build

1:33:08

inroads with the labor movement,

1:33:11

to build inroads with working

1:33:13

class people, and to try to

1:33:15

create those bonds that happen. We

1:33:17

here are trying to build closer

1:33:19

bonds with city workers. and farm

1:33:21

workers out in the country. It's an important

1:33:24

struggle because one is going to be more

1:33:26

and more important in the future. You don't

1:33:28

have to wait for anyone else to tell

1:33:30

you how to do that. You yourself can

1:33:32

show solidarity and work together to build those

1:33:34

kinds of bonds now so that in the

1:33:37

future, you can create working class movements

1:33:39

that whether that takes the form of

1:33:41

collective bargaining or something else. Organizing for

1:33:43

the common good is useful no matter

1:33:45

in what legal capacity it happens. Yeah,

1:33:47