[SPEAKER_00]: You lie, told a lot of lights about a cheap man Is it because you when they got you to believe in I'm a finger held to the forehead and an hell show Trapped in a cover on a sales game Let's fight back in, have you talked about class in the past Cost of the disaster's brought to ashes Not spank at your box It's a thousand natural shocks I'm bad with money, podcast
[SPEAKER_05]: Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcast.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm your host Gabe Dunn.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just me this week.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm coming to you from Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_05]: For those of you who have listened for a while, you know that I've been on the ground since June, working with anti-ice activists and anti-fascism, fighting the regime, protesting, and
[SPEAKER_05]: Doing rapid response for people that are being kidnapped, mutual aid, things like that, I got very involved in June after the National Guard and the military came to LA.
[SPEAKER_05]: So this week has been a tough one.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm saying this on Sunday, January 25th.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yesterday, a man named Alex Pretty was murdered and called blood on the streets of Minneapolis by ICE agents.
[SPEAKER_05]: They shot him like, I don't know, eight or more times, four or five of those I believe after he was already dead.
[SPEAKER_05]: This comes on the wake of the murder of Renee Nicole Good and Keith Porter, among others, who have died because of ICE or an ICE custody.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yesterday, I went to a vigil.
[SPEAKER_05]: I also went to a protest downtown in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can't tell if I've been desensitized to some stuff because I was surprised yesterday that I felt just incredibly nauseous and scared and anxious.
[SPEAKER_05]: Normally I could sort of power through and do do the work, but yesterday I all the way leading up to going to this event earlier that morning I went to a rapid response meeting and it was incredible because there were probably 800 people there.
[SPEAKER_05]: the line was around the block.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was amazing.
[SPEAKER_05]: I had never seen that many people.
[SPEAKER_05]: They they took some of us into the garage in order to do the training and we were sitting on the ground in the garage.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was overflowing.
[SPEAKER_05]: While I was waiting a woman came up and she asked what we were waiting for and I told her and she was getting emotional because she couldn't believe so many people had had come to do rapid response training.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that gave me hope.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was it was incredible to see.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it was like literally line lines around the block.
[SPEAKER_05]: Then I went to these protests and visuals.
[SPEAKER_05]: It seems like a lot of people are waking up to wanting to help.
[SPEAKER_05]: Still, there's some frustration from me in terms of what people try to tell themselves to be in denial.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's there's a lot of
[SPEAKER_05]: denial going around, which I understand because it's scary, but at this point I'm sort of losing my patience for that.
[SPEAKER_05]: A lot of people who aren't doing anything criticizing, people who are doing something.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yesterday we will have done a general strike, hopefully it's still going on when you're listening to this.
[SPEAKER_05]: We really need everyone to strike, and that means no school no work.
[SPEAKER_05]: But if you have to, it means no buying from corporations.
[SPEAKER_05]: Do not buy from corporations.
[SPEAKER_05]: Do not buy from big companies.
[SPEAKER_05]: Try to keep everything local.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, do keep everything local.
[SPEAKER_05]: You should be doing that anyway.
[SPEAKER_05]: The best chance we have is shutting everything down.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can go to, um, at General Strike US on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because something else happened last week, which is a couple of friends and I, well, like five of us went to Sacramento, which is the capital of California, we drove like five and a half hours up there for a couple days to try to speak to our assembly members and senators attend a couple of marches and try to speak to governor Gavin Newsom and the experience was.
[SPEAKER_05]: Radicalizing in a different way, because I've already been radicalized, but it was clear that a lot of these people are living in 2025, summer of 2025, like they do not have urgency, they do not have a plan, they do not have, they're they're fine to let legislation do the work.
[SPEAKER_05]: They said things like, you know, all we have is to protect democracy, even our mayor and Los Angeles is saying, um, don't give Trump any excuses to militarize and it's like they're already here.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're already here.
[SPEAKER_05]: DHS and I have been snatching people off the street in LA.
[SPEAKER_05]: Since June, they never left.
[SPEAKER_05]: And every day we watch people get taken.
[SPEAKER_05]: They take 100 people a week.
[SPEAKER_05]: They snatch people off the street indiscriminately.
[SPEAKER_05]: They'll go to where there's vendors and just take people as quickly as they can.
[SPEAKER_05]: So they're just doing numbers.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're not even checking who these people are.
[SPEAKER_05]: A lot of us have been brutalized by LAPD Sheriff's Department.
[SPEAKER_05]: CHP, one friend, LA Metro Police, went after her at a protest.
[SPEAKER_05]: So one of the things we went to Gavin Newsom's office with is we had a list of tangible demands and policy ideas.
[SPEAKER_05]: We had three pages of stuff we'd come up with.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we handed it to his staffer, Adrian Mata, who was incredibly dismissive and just was annoyed with us.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if I can include a clip of him being annoyed with us here, but maybe I will.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been on the front lines from day one.
[SPEAKER_01]: like on the ground, active, rapid response, we need help.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have not seen anyone do anything to make life difficult for ICE.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something as simple as just having the California Highway Patrol enforce basic traffic violations.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have shown up to city council, city hall, the mayor's office, a city budget meeting, a city budget meeting, literally a part of the congressional representative.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you are going to elected officials.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're elected officials.
[SPEAKER_03]: your opinion, what do you want him to physically do?
[SPEAKER_04]: Call in it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We would let like, can he call the National Guard or can he deploy the California Highway Patrol to a rest ice?
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to go through the right approach.
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to talk to the local.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you need to register this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to go to the local command, whatever it may be.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are trying to convey here at the governor's office is we have done all the appropriate proper channel things for a year by it right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it comes down to us that you're stressing that the governor needs to really understand that what he's going through, but the state is going through and I'm trying to tell you he does.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is Governor News from North Dakota State of Emergency?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a question only the governor can answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will pass him on to the governor.
[SPEAKER_04]: The positive being broke and we have like neonocies.
[SPEAKER_04]: Listen, that's a statement you're saying, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, have you been watching the news though?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you saw what happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: What happened?
[SPEAKER_05]: He worked really hard to shut down those private prisons, especially the one in California city.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then they reopened it.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's an ice detention center.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's running without permits, without licenses.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we would love to see him be like, wait, this thing that I worked hard to close.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's opening up.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the largest ice detention center in the entire state.
[SPEAKER_05]: Have him go down to Corset.
[SPEAKER_05]: Have to demand to go inside and see what's going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: a video of him getting turned away from the biggest detention center in California, that's really good evidence.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so obvious that our governor would show up for that, because that's like a personal stop in the face, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't get this office to even respond to anything happening in California City.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not seeing that from people in elected office is the same sense of urgency than they don't get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I say we've talked to everybody, they are pretending it's not happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When it comes back.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you come to have a local government or a federal government, I'm just going to be able to speak on your behalf.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need the governor to help.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: When they, I'm telling you, when ICE, when they come back, full force like they are going to do, a lot of people now they are going to die.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are on the street,
[SPEAKER_01]: You would see every single day if people are being kidnapped, and there's not a single officer in the entire state who will get between that person and the mass men with guns.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you guys are just raising your voice and yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it's like a response that I get, I understand.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there any male or somebody's email because that is like a lot of legislative demands, but we also have like specific things that we would love to send like supplemental materials.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you sort of work for them.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have on the website.
[SPEAKER_04]: We just want these people to use their power to band together.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we're doing on the ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they have way more power than we do.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they have money.
[SPEAKER_04]: We need action now.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Eventually he said we were raising our voices and so a bunch like three CHP officers came kind of closer to keep an eye on us, which is part of our ask was for California highway patrol to enforce basic traffic laws against ice.
[SPEAKER_05]: Ice has no license plates.
[SPEAKER_05]: Ice has illegally tinted windows.
[SPEAKER_05]: Ice and DHS are running red lights and
[SPEAKER_05]: creating traffic and causing accidents and speeding.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, there's all this stuff that they could be citing them for, at least to gum up their system.
[SPEAKER_05]: If we were breaking these laws, we would be stopped and ticketed.
[SPEAKER_05]: I, if I didn't have a license plate, I would be in big trouble.
[SPEAKER_05]: So why aren't they enforcing those traffic laws against ICE or against anyone that they believed to be from the federal government?
[SPEAKER_05]: Even if they don't know they're from the federal government, you should be stopping cars that have that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like why are some cars that you
[SPEAKER_05]: Suspect our federal government, DHS and ICE employees, why do they not have to follow traffic laws?
[SPEAKER_05]: Because it obviously you're in cohoots with them.
[SPEAKER_05]: Someone told me there's an unspoken rule or perhaps a spoken rule that cops don't pull each other over.
[SPEAKER_05]: But how do you know that they're cops?
[SPEAKER_05]: They're running badges, they're faces are covered.
[SPEAKER_05]: They don't have license plates you can run.
[SPEAKER_05]: So how do you know that they're police?
[SPEAKER_05]: We don't.
[SPEAKER_05]: And ICE and DHS, we don't know who these people are.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're just kidnapping people off the street, throwing them in vans.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not going to follow that car.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not going to try to figure out what's going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: People are just allowed to be kidnapped by people who we don't know who they are.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the answer is yes, yes, all local law enforcement is.
[SPEAKER_05]: in collaborating with ICE.
[SPEAKER_05]: So Gavin Newsom staffer, who was incredibly dismissive of us, who took our paper, but of ideas, but just kind of side.
[SPEAKER_05]: Told us, what do you want the governor to physically do?
[SPEAKER_05]: Told us we were raising our voices, told us the governor does understand the urgency and was just like so, so, so dismissive.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it just kind of defeated us in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it made clear that no one's coming to help us.
[SPEAKER_05]: Newsom either likes what's going on or wants to use it to run for
[SPEAKER_05]: of a country that my friend Addy said is no hunger going to exist, so I don't know what he's going to be president of.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm tired of being called hysterical.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've been called hysterical this entire time.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've been told every step of the way the things that I saw happening were not happening or that they weren't going to happen and I don't know how to
[SPEAKER_05]: help these people, I feel a huge disconnect between the people in my life because everyone's kind of acting normal or they're telling me that I'm being crazy and so I just emotionally remove because I'm like, I can't help you.
[SPEAKER_05]: If you're not going to protect yourself or be aware of the dangers, I don't know how to help you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can't force you to care.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it creates this distance where I can't bring myself to be to invested because I don't know what's going to happen to you.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I've tried to to talk to all of the people I'm thinking about.
[SPEAKER_05]: Since June I've been trying to talk to everyone that I love in my life and there's been no response So I don't know how I don't know how else to to save them and when I would try to talk like that over the summer I was told by a couple people that I sounded evangelical that I sounded like the people who say well I love you, but you're going to go to hell so in less you convert to Christianity So like that's what I was told I was told I sounded
[SPEAKER_05]: evangelical and judgmental and like I was telling people that they were going to go to hell.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's maybe what it feels like.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like right.
[SPEAKER_05]: They were saying the idea that I was saying that I was saying, well, I can't save you.
[SPEAKER_05]: It sounded evangelical and maybe it is at this point.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I'm crazy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I'm sounding the alarms and I sound like someone who's saying, well, you're gonna go to hell so I can't really invest in you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I made a video initially about going to Sacramento when I first came back where I talked about how I felt like I had wasted an opportunity or that I had somehow not done enough.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's this weird thing where you go in, you're really, really upset.
[SPEAKER_05]: Alex pretty hadn't been killed yet, but Renee Goodwood was and Keith Porter was.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you go into these offices and you're met with such stone faced like,
[SPEAKER_05]: nothing that you start to think maybe I am crazy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I'm crazy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I'm being oh maybe I'm overreacting.
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I'm being too intense.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we would leave the offices and that was when we heard about the kidnapping of Liam Ramos in Minnesota, the little boy in the blue hat, five years old.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you go, well maybe I wasn't hysterical enough.
[SPEAKER_05]: I
[SPEAKER_05]: worry that handing over policy and asking this stuff is, I should have done more, it should have been more radical.
[SPEAKER_05]: I should have changed myself to the desk.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: Part of what's good is that we're not naive.
[SPEAKER_05]: We go there to film.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's no expectation that these people are help us.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, there's a little bit of hope, but there's really no expectation at this point from everything I've seen.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, there's this
[SPEAKER_05]: Sort of commenter on those videos who says I can't believe you guys thought Newsom was going to save you like when our liberals going to realize or like all this stuff that kind of takes the video at face value without realizing that there's a benefit to filming this kind of stuff because if you show that you tried.
[SPEAKER_05]: the average person might wake up.
[SPEAKER_05]: The videos are less for us and more for other people to see what's going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: This idea that we were dumb and we went there with no strategy and that we're idiots and that we're posting this stuff because we're idiots is so, so short-sighted and it doesn't give us any benefit of the doubt.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's no idea that we might be smart, and that's because it's women and me, a gay man.
[SPEAKER_05]: So there's no idea that we might have reasons for getting this footage, which is to get the message out to people.
[SPEAKER_05]: We would love if Muslims people had invited us into a conference room, chatted with us, even 15 minutes of looking over what we had handed them, seeing, you know, oh,
[SPEAKER_05]: This is something that we are working on or oh, this idea is really great.
[SPEAKER_05]: We've thought about this just anything instead of being met with combativeness and defensiveness and what do you want us to do?
[SPEAKER_05]: And the governor does care and what do you guys want from him?
[SPEAKER_05]: He can't tell CHP to do anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: He can by the way.
[SPEAKER_05]: He can't tell CHP to do anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: You have to go and lobby CHP not to not to do this and not to collaborate with ICE.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we were like, we can't the governor and this guy says, you have to.
[SPEAKER_05]: We are five random people.
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't know how to read a budget a year ago.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is these people's job.
[SPEAKER_05]: Why do you five random people have to do the job of the governor?
[SPEAKER_05]: Makes no sense.
[SPEAKER_05]: He kept saying go through proper channels.
[SPEAKER_05]: We have.
[SPEAKER_05]: We have gone through all the proper channels.
[SPEAKER_05]: Part of the reason we film and try to get these policy ideas to these people, which by the way, if you're on film in your politician or you work for a politician, I kept thinking, wouldn't you be embarrassed?
[SPEAKER_05]: You don't care that you're on camera, even just to pretend that you care, even just to make the office look good and say, oh,
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, you know, let's go over these a little bit just to just to please the camera.
[SPEAKER_05]: You don't care at all the videos have have gone so viral You just like you're not even going to fake it for the camera this guy Adrian you're not even gonna fake it for the camera You're not even gonna care that constituents would see this if it were me I would have put on a smile and and made everyone feel
[SPEAKER_05]: like they were listened to catch more, more flies with honey than vinegar like I don't understand the the thinking behind knowing your on camera talking to constituents and being so rude and awful and mean and dismissive.
[SPEAKER_05]: I just can't wrap my mind around that at least at least fake it.
[SPEAKER_05]: So the problem is is that people see those videos and they think that we are stupid and naive and neoliberal idiots.
[SPEAKER_05]: But the point of those videos other than like the hope that these people will care and to be able to show people that people care.
[SPEAKER_05]: We would love to make a video that's like got some hope behind it.
[SPEAKER_05]: But part of it is to show us delivering policy, show people what it's like to meet with these staffers and these offices and sort of gauge the level of urgency
[SPEAKER_05]: Show people who are not awake who think Gavin Newsom's a good candidate for president because of his Twitter feed or whatever to show them that that they need to get up and get activated and do the work and you know people are are constantly saying what can I do these groups exist you can reach out to mutual aid groups and see what they need close or money you can call your reps and senators spend she and is a great person to follow who tries to make that
[SPEAKER_05]: a tangible, helpful thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can get out into the streets with us in protest.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's protests all the time.
[SPEAKER_05]: Posting about it is the bare minimum.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sort of scattered.
[SPEAKER_05]: A man was killed and called put on the street.
[SPEAKER_05]: A white man.
[SPEAKER_05]: And many, many, many, many, many other people have been killed by police in the exact same way with no one giving a fuck.
[SPEAKER_05]: If people can't believe what they see with their own eyes,
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think a lot of the people commenting negatively about Alex Predi are bots.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a lot of the same photo used for multiple user names.
[SPEAKER_05]: They don't have any followers.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're private accounts or they haven't posted anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's very clear that a lot of them are bots.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, they want it to seem like we're overwhelmed by people who agree.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we're not.
[SPEAKER_05]: They want it to seem that way on the internet.
[SPEAKER_05]: And there are people who...
[SPEAKER_05]: DHS and ice, Greg Bavino, Christina, they come out and say, they explain the video in a way that it doesn't show at all.
[SPEAKER_05]: It is a lie.
[SPEAKER_05]: They lie straight up and you can see like the video shows and it's not AI.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've had a lot of AI experts on on Instagram say it's not AI.
[SPEAKER_05]: Also AI doesn't
[SPEAKER_05]: really do a good job making videos over a minute long.
[SPEAKER_05]: There were so many in-person witnesses and it's recorded from so many angles.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's cognitive dissonance.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's there's ways to help.
[SPEAKER_05]: Even just DM me, ask me.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, there was an episode we did a little while ago where the person was wealthy and they were confused about how to help and they were saying, well, you know, you'd have to give a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_05]: or you would have to go through an organization or you would have to.
[SPEAKER_05]: And rich people have the wrong idea about how to help.
[SPEAKER_05]: She was saying, you know, oh, what kind of size of, you know, donation and what would really help and how much would someone on the ground need?
[SPEAKER_05]: And they can't wrap their minds around the fact that someone might need $50.
[SPEAKER_05]: That $20 would help get them through the day in this work, in this activism.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can give $5 to someone's Venmo, and that could change their whole day.
[SPEAKER_05]: People with money tend to not understand this.
[SPEAKER_05]: don't give a thousand dollars to cheerlea.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, they'll do if you want.
[SPEAKER_05]: But find the GoFundMeace for these people.
[SPEAKER_05]: Find people on the ground who've been doing the work and send them fifty dollars, twenty dollars.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think when people think that that's a drop in the bucket, like when they're...
[SPEAKER_05]: down to spend a million on something or if they're down to live in lavish apartment or sneakers for $400 by facials for $200 or whatever it is, they might think it's insulting to send someone doing the work on the ground or a mutual aid group, 10 bucks, 20 bucks.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not insulting.
[SPEAKER_05]: You just don't understand the way other people live.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you don't understand how much that could make or break someone.
[SPEAKER_05]: So find activists on the ground, find mutual aid groups that are that are doing more visible and more immediate stuff, give to cheerlea, give to immigration defense.
[SPEAKER_05]: But there are people on the ground that 50 bucks.
[SPEAKER_05]: 20 bucks the smallest a hundred bucks whatever it is that's life-changing for them and it helps us continue to do this work So thank you everyone who's been listening.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you everyone who's reached out and said this has been helpful and See you on the front lines Thank you for listening to a thousand natural shocks a bad with money podcast This is a noted by sexual production edited by Ali Mims
[SPEAKER_05]: logo art by Dakota Becker.
[SPEAKER_05]: If you like this show, please consider subscribing to the Substack, a thousand natural shocks.substack.com.
[SPEAKER_05]: The Substack has episodes of this show ad-free and also videos and also my original writing.
[SPEAKER_05]: It would mean so much to me if you would subscribe even as a free subscriber but a paid subscriber really allows me to keep doing this work and I can't do it without you guys.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, love you, bye.