[SPEAKER_01]: The lighter lights are about a cheat man, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you when they got you to believe in I'm a finger-held, is there foreheads in and hells you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Trapped in a cover on the salesgate, Lips my back in, I've seen talks about class in the mass across The disaster's blocked, Fashes, not spanked at the farce It's a thousand natural shocks I've had with money podcast Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks I've had with money podcast I'm your host, Gabe Dunn
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm in sort of a strange mood because I'm grappling with a few ideas, one is
[SPEAKER_00]: that there's so much information coming at us, and it's hard to know what to do with any of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's a privilege that I don't feel particularly targeted by an awareness campaign that I feel like, well, surely everyone must know what's going on at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what good is it to make videos explaining it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or to show clips of brutality by ICE and CPB and DHS.
[SPEAKER_00]: What uses it to keep convincing people that what's happening is really happening or that they're on the wrong side of history or that more and more bad stuff is coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have to think about my own radicalization and the ways in which I was new to this or came to this after a particular event.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not that I've changed my stances, but I've become more informed about Palestine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I truly was someone who never thought about it and then I started thinking about it or eight months ago when I didn't really know that much about immigration and now I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: If there's hope for myself, then there must be hope for other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the problem becomes, what do you do once you're awakened?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm seeing a mix.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some people on social media who, I feel are, almost becoming pundits.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that they're providing any new information other than,
[SPEAKER_00]: trying to be the first to break a story, and I also don't know the use of people who talk about going through democratic means.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've tried.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mayor here in Los Angeles just approved 410 more officers to be hired.
[SPEAKER_00]: The LA Olympics are going to be a full nightmare.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we'll do another episode about the Olympics soon, but there's going to be so much militarization on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be just a war zone, truly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I want to get out of LA before that happens, which is not something I ever thought I thought I would be here forever, but I just see the writing on the wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to probably imprison a lot of the homeless people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to cause rents and hotels and things like that, housing to skyrocket.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to put a lot of small businesses out of business.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to cause traffic and climate.
[SPEAKER_00]: issues with smog and who knows what else people are going to be doing in massing in a mass of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The impact on almost every city that's hosted the Olympics has been absolutely disruptive.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can take a look at Rio, for an example of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other question is what helps?
[SPEAKER_00]: Our Tuesday episode with Hunter Dunn from the 50-51 movement, people had questions about particularly that movement, which I think he and I addressed in the episode, but there was some pushback on the rhetoric being populist, which I think they took to mean that there was sort of a democratic nothingness attached to it, that there was a lot of
[SPEAKER_00]: quirky things to say and good things to say but nothing behind it and I think radical behind it at least nobody had any particular problems with Hunter obviously he's very smart and I think he's way more to the left of the organization he works for and I'll say that that is not coming from him that's coming from me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do understand, and I did feel the discomfort that a lot of you felt where it's kind of a now what, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we know that protests exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that 50, 51 is hoping to create more protests.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of a big national movement is appealing, but I also know that for the listeners of this show,
[SPEAKER_00]: may be less anarchist leftist than I personally believe right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's important to hear these movements out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel the same way about the episode of J.
[SPEAKER_00]: B. U. me and Allison did with of just between us if you don't know that my other show did with Johnson Benson, who's a Secretary of State of Michigan, where pushback a lot on sort of platitudes that she
[SPEAKER_00]: kept repeating about fighting and accountability and not letting Trump without any sort of real information.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the response to that episode was largely positive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was really worried that people were going to be mad at me for pushing, but it was very positive because people felt that way too.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted specific answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't want us to just have someone on to let them spew their talking points.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then come off looking like someone who's fighting Trump and part of the hashtag resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got a little bit of that feeling coming from 50-51 as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: To be honest, I think Hunter's at really great things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen Hunter doing the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen him around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen him speak at City Council.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is genuine.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hear some of you on these newer movements that have sprung out of wanting to fight back against Donald Trump, but in a way that
[SPEAKER_00]: I myself am finding increasingly no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm grappling with what matters is going after our local officials worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have any power really when you think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm starting to believe there's a mix of not caring being complicit and also just being impotent, not really having any power or any real power.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all been consolidated into the White House.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's use for news and stuff that you have to be aware of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of very interesting information out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one guy that I've been following who's in the medical field, and he's been talking a lot about signs that Trump is suffering from some sort of dementia or Alzheimer's.
[SPEAKER_00]: very very interesting to take a look at and sort of contextualize everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll put the link in the description.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's people talking about how there will be migrant fees.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when somebody's apprehended, they may be charged $5,000 themselves for being apprehended.
[SPEAKER_00]: All kinds of new things are cropping up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it is good to be informed.
[SPEAKER_00]: My question remains about what to do about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that is everyone joining together in a no-kings type situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rally that 50-51 was a part of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's something that we can only speak about offline.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel a little bit concerned like I have all these things that I want to say and these ideas and I don't particularly worry about my own safety, but I am, I'm not well versed enough in what some of the retribution could be, whether it's passport, revoking or charging me with something, I don't know what they would charge me with.
[SPEAKER_00]: if I'm out at protests, focusing on grabbing me, which has happened to friends of mine, not me, but certain friends of mine are definitely targets because of the way they've spoken up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also feel that there's something inevitable about being put on some sort of list that Pam Bondi is putting together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a email from Gemini, Google Gemini yesterday, saying that I was opted into Google Gemini, and no matter how much I use a VPN or have alternate email addresses or communicate with encrypted means somehow it is always connected to me, it is always found out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can try, I mean, I'm going to try some of these apps, but
[SPEAKER_00]: The surveillance state feels inevitable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm worried about being surveilled, you gotta imagine that the surveillance is absolutely fixer level on mayor's city council people, anyone who could possibly stand up to Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so deep, it goes so deep.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's decades old.
[SPEAKER_00]: the level of information they could have on a person or a family that could go forward to be a political dynasty, a political family, read about the policies, read about the new sums.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very hard to think about fighting it on a day-to-day level when what we're really fighting against is like a dynasty, like a true series of dynasties.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, who am I, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The target could be on me and it wouldn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The target could be on the mayor of one of the largest cities in the country, Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_00]: The target could be on a governor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The target could be on a senator.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's coming to this spiral where I just wanna know who's in charge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like who is in charge?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is actually in charge?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then beyond that,
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I speak to that person?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or how does anyone get to that person?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is that person valuable in any way?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just a spread out spider web.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious how long it will take for all of us to get bitten.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like focusing local.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like trying to see what little things people could do, but a lot of them are not interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what recourse do we have?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's
[SPEAKER_00]: obvious quote about in the Constitution about how when the government becomes tyranny, the only answer is to fight it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's actually in the Constitution or if it's a Thomas Jefferson quote, which by the way, fuck Thomas Jefferson, but when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a friend of mine in activism who says that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: appealing through political movements even democratic socialist of America.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm coming into this very new.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't act like I know exactly what every branch, every person, every, every type of political official does and is doing and has the capacity to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that what 50-51 does is right and helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that, you know, Mayor Bass doesn't have her hands tied by some sort of threat from LAPD or some sort of threat from a fixer in Washington.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not an expert on any of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm consistently overwhelmed and confused.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I may not always get it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I may not know every single thing that people want to point out to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope none of you find me to be arrogant or think that I'm coming here trying to tell everyone what to do because I also don't know what to do and I don't know what's dangerous and I don't know what's not dangerous and I don't know who has good intentions and who has bad intentions or who's intentions are just sort of misguided.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really really don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just trying to present everything that's happening and then come to my own conclusions about what to do about it, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe this feeling is a feeling of wanting to move on from going ham on city council or from trying to get something from the mayor that we're never gonna get or from trying to unpack.
[SPEAKER_00]: where Newsom stands on things when he was on Charlie Kirk's podcast, before obviously before Charlie Kirk was killed, talking about how trans people in sports is controversial.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are any of our elected leaders, are any of our democratic movements, are any of our organized groups with funding and spokespeople?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are any of them going to do anything?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked to other mayoral candidates for mayor of L.A. And all I'm looking for is solutions, is specific ideas and solutions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we need more pundits, and I don't think we need more money thrown around in ways that I can't visibly see it changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just my opinion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people spend a lot of money promoting things and not a lot of money making them happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you an example.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking about how I print out these flyers and I put them up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It costs, let's say, 25 bucks to print out the flyers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are those 25 bucks spent printing out my really fun flyers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it matter?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are people going to see them in change their minds, putting them on social media?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that going to do anything?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is that $25 you send to an organization?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or that you hand to a homeless person?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think these are things everybody's grappling with and I think there's just a lot of confusion and obviously I sound confused because I am confused but I'm going to head towards clarity and hopefully I'll come back to you guys with some soon that I'm allowed to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though I don't have the power of city hall behind me, the flip side of that is that nobody important is giving a shit what I say or do, so I'm probably fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know what you guys are doing in your cities.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to know everything that's happening with your city councils, everything that's happening with your mayors, everything that's happening with your activist groups there, what are you guys doing at your detention centers, is there a detention center near you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you decided to just work in direct mutual aid?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a lot of hope for democratic organizations?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about the continued need to protest?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that it's worth it to try to change laws and go through legal systems?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like suing dHS for example, or suing ice?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know what you think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I need other opinions and not just ruminating on my own.
[SPEAKER_00]: A thousand natural shocks a bad with money podcast is a production of noted bisexual, produced by Melissa D. Montz and Diamond M. print productions, edited by Diane Kang, post-production sound by Coca Lorenz, and music by Zach Sherwin as sung by Sam Barbara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, love you, bye!