Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside. It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals.
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Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of Footloose? I'm comedian Rory Scovel, and I'm here to tell you Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.
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Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know the shade is always shady. It's right here. Season six of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Giselle Bryan and Robin Dixon is here, dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives of Potomac, we're giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday.
Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether it is getting swatted or just hateful messages online, there is a lot of harm in even just reading the comments. That's cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart Gloucester on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast.
Every season is a chance to grow, and the Therapy for Black Girls podcast is here to walk with you. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, and each week we dive into real conversations that help you move with more clarity and confidence. This episode, we're breaking down what really happens to your information online and how to protect yourself with intention.
Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did the Stop Cop City movement face?
They're human and they get scared. The fear that I think had them so tight until May of 2022 was a fear that manifested itself in a lot of paralysis. Fear is a normal human remotion to danger. So whether you're the most hardened SWAT team guy going up against the craziest eco freak in the world, fear is a normal reaction to that.
But what really had them so tight was fear as a matter of them being paralyzed by it, that they could not find out how to move. And once they did find out around May of 2022, we really start to see things change. And they were scared enough in the woods to shoot someone to death. They were still afraid.
We were able to instill an immense amount of fear in our enemy, which is an absolutely necessary tool if you're going to be on the very nimble, small, green team insurgency side of things. You have to make your enemy afraid of the dark. but also you have your defensive strategy against fear. You would hear all the time in Atlanta, the whole let the fear wash over you and through you mantra.
That was a thing that people talked about and said constantly because you have to find a way to move through that paralysis, unquote. Eventually, and with the help of a multi-agency task force, the cops in Atlanta were able to move through that fear and continue their actions. They were not totally paralyzed by it.
In contrast, the pseudo-paralysis affecting Stop Cop City only set in very late into the movement as a cumulative result of a coordinated sequence of oppression tactics.
As the movement has been winding down and transitioning to court support, something people in Atlanta have had to balance is the urge to keep Stop Cop City in this sort of unalive zombie state, where you're still kind of acting like it's an ongoing thing, even though the immediate local result is pretty clearly finished.
But in keeping this kind of zombie version of the movement alive, it prevents you from actually moving on and internalizing what happened here and using that for whatever comes next, which is, at this point, a burgeoning police state and right-wing power bloc.
Quoting an anonymous Atlanta anarchist, quote, internalizing not just in terms of like lessons learned and things that you need to learn from and skill up on to keep that honed combative edge in Atlanta, but to think about fighting on a larger scope than just Atlanta.
As the cops took their lessons learned here nationwide in terms of how they're doing repression towards Palestinian liberation movements, towards a lot of the way that ICE operations are currently happening, that necessitates that we also take our lessons learned here and also go to a larger scale with them.
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Chapter 3: How did the movement evolve over time?
as Trump now signs executive orders expanding military equipment, federal training, and legal protections for police, deploys the National Guard to quell civil disturbance, and targets anti-fascists, anarchists, and left-wing activists or NGOs as domestic terrorists.
Quoting an Atlanta anarchist, quote, what we are seeing is the logical conclusion of our adversaries' lessons learned in Atlanta, taking the things that they learned how to do here, the skills they honed, taken to a nationwide scale. This is the logical conclusion of that. And there's a reason that they are doing that. And if they are doing that, then we should also do that.
Like, there's logical conclusions and escalations of the things that we learned in Atlanta that it would be silly for us to not try and push those further, including expanding the physical and metaphysical terrain of battle, unquote. The immediate terrain for Stop Cop City was obviously the forest and now the Cop City site itself.
But there was also the rest of Atlanta and all the other construction sites, and then all the subcontractors around the country and everything that supplies them. This same model can apply to, say, the Palestine protests.
There's a network that exists beyond Columbia University campus that extends into the weapons manufacturing industry, which could be targeted beyond consumer boycotts, like what we saw with Shaq, like what we saw in Atlanta, where boycotts were an aspect, but by far not the most effective aspect.
And in fact, forcefully inflicting monetary damage caused a much greater degree of hurt to the companies involved in the Copsity project as opposed to the infighting caused by a Waffle House boycott. When reframing what the terrain of battle could entail, it is actually intimidating to think about what the reality of stopping these things might look like.
And as soon as you realize that these fights go beyond a physical building, it becomes this Lovecraftian entity that exists everywhere. And it's unnerving to contemplate what you'd be forced to do to actually realistically confront that.
quoting an anonymous Atlanta anarchist, quote, it's important to not get trapped in the, you know, we're doing an occupation on college campus and we're just going to keep trying to do an occupation on college campus over and over again. And the cops are really good at clearing us up, but now maybe this time,
And I think a part of the struggle here, though, for people is when you decentralize like that, the thing that you're doing starts to take on a much different vibe. It can be everywhere versus this is the college campus where we're doing protests. I generally think at the end of the day, it starts to feel a little bit too much, like terrorism-y. It starts to feel too much like an insurgency.
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Chapter 4: What lessons were learned from the Stop Cop City movement?
government websites, and other Doge officials have moved to agencies which they administered cuts to. A former Doge team member, Zachary Terrell, is now the chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Jeremy Lewin, who assisted the slashing of USAID, now oversees foreign assistance at the State Department.
Yeah.
So those guys got jobs out of this organization, all of the people who got fired or got negatively impacted by the government shutdown are probably not going to be coming out as well as Mr. Big Balls here.
Well, and there's some evidence that a number of folks who worked with Doge are now feeling left in the wind and potentially in danger because there are a lot of people who want these folks to be prosecuted for what they did. There's definitely talk about that if there's another Democratic administration. We'll see if they would ever have the big balls to do it. Uh-huh.
But there was an article in Politico recently, and I'm going to read a quote from that. Musk had not just been their visionary leader. For them, he was their protector, the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they were suddenly exposed.
A senior Doge figure named Donald Park tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still brothers in arms and that Musk would continue to protect them. That led to another protesting and advising, guys, seriously, get your own lawyer if you need it. Elon's great, but you need to watch your own back.
watch your backs guys yeah and these guys would be some of the more like presumably very easy to prosecute and and like obvious targets if we yes another democratic administration it's some really obvious crimes in terms of like protection of information you know like some some pretty obvious rule breaking that went on that's not being prosecuted now but yeah they're right it could be prosecuted in
future that was like first three four months of the trump admin yeah what it really was just full steam ahead on this on the silicon valley version of things right like the move fast and break things yeah that's such a wild time to look back on not only just in terms of how much damage they did but the idea that if they were going to continue at that pace for the rest of the term the government already is fundamentally different in some ways but like how much worse that would have been yeah
And if Musk's ego is in part what sabotaged that from being complete and really kind of doing that more like Yarvin-inspired project, hubris kills the man once again. But there is aspects of the Doge idea and this government efficiency thing which aren't fully going away. This still is an aspect of the Trump administration. There still is some of those guys at the
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Chapter 5: What are the complexities of discussing international human rights?
And I also believe that we have to follow through on the international human rights, and I know that still today those are being violated, and that continues to be work that has to be done no matter where we're speaking of.
Man, that's so complicated, so conflicting. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. On one hand, it's really good that somebody on record said in the White House that the U.S. is enabling Israel and continuing a genocide. I'm glad that that happened. On the other hand, the fact that it's off-roaded so quickly to, now let's talk about what we want to do for New Yorkers.
And it is like, yeah, it's not, I don't know. It's the only way this was going to happen at all, I suppose.
He is the mayor of New York.
He's not a national figure. No, I agree. I agree.
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Chapter 6: How does the conversation shift from genocide to local issues?
But he's also a person. It's totally awkward. Yeah, it's totally a little awkward. Especially when the topic is genocide. The vault from genocide to housing affordability, and I understand that both are serious issues, it's still a tonal shift that is jarring. And like, yes, it's absolutely fair to say he's the mayor of New York. He has no ability to influence U.S.
policy in terms of selling arms to Israel. And the fact that he brought it up at all is positive. But boy, is that a wild minute or so of talking.
Yeah.
I think the reason why he brought that up is to talk about specifically like funds that we are sending to Israel should not be sent to Israel.
No.
There's funds that should be being used in the United States to do things to help people here. And that is like why he brought that up as a segue. Well, and reiterating that Trump supporters often agree with the idea that we should not be spending this much money on this sending weapons over the world to fund wars overseas. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if shit continues with Venezuela. Yeah.
How how that all moves. But I think it's valuable to like really slam that home in the White House that like, hey, you ran on getting the U.S. out of these kind of violent entanglements overseas. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad someone said it, I guess. Yeah. It's just weird. This is all a very weird meeting. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing was jarring, I guess.
There was another point there where he was talking about like, like local, local New York businesses and how Trump's father like went to this pharmacy and I think stuff like that is tactics that he used to get Trump to be friendly with him as well as a Trump later spoke about how, uh,
In one of the rooms that they were meeting in, there was a portrait of FDR, which Trump had personally picked out of the storage vaults to hang. And Zoran asked him about the portrait and asked if he could get a picture with it. And this seemed to please Trump a lot. Trump wasn't even able to talk about how he picked out the picture. And then Trump said a few really interesting things.
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Chapter 7: What insights are shared about political strategies in the context of the RNC?
Some, you know, regular populist rhetoric, talking about the crossover between, you know, voters, between Trump and Mamdani, just his general love of New York, FDR, New Deal.
You can see all these things that were used to, like, navigate through this meeting to get Trump to actually cede ground on a lot of stuff, with, I think, very minimal concessions, if any real concessions, even from Zorin, like, at all. Yeah.
I think in general, Trump was the one that moved rhetorically throughout this meeting and moved on actual promises to withhold funds, to invade the city with National Guard troops. I think Trump was the one who actually ceded territory in this meeting. I do not see much evidence of things that Mamdani could have personal impact on actually losing ground on those things throughout this meeting.
it is also important to remember that he has a rhetorical, Mandami too has a rhetorical role to play, right? And yes, he is mayor of New York. He is also an extremely popular politician at the moment. And like when he talks about things like the genocide in Gaza, that that has rhetorical value.
I'm not saying he can go to New York city council and stop it, but like him saying that it is a genocide at the white house is important. And like, It is important that when he has this podium in front of the whole world at the White House that he used it to talk about the genocide. And he did. But I don't think we should only think about this in terms of New York.
It is important that someone said that. And I hope he keeps using that platform he has right now to say that as someone who is definitely looked up to nationally in DSA circles. I mean, yeah, I think, and this goes into some of the, I guess, kind of, I mean, some of them are critiques. A lot of them aren't even really critiques of this meeting.
I think a lot of them are people jumping on the opportunity to just attack Soran with no real constructive critique there. But this kind of relates to these two different forms of politics that people use on the left.
Like politics as a form of personal expression, as a form of like posturing, as a form of like maintaining of moral purity versus politics as an actual practical method of achieving equality. systematic change. People engage in these two different modes. And I think there's a role for both of these modes of politics, actually. I think both of these have a degree of necessity.
And Zoran has taken one specific path. And there's others who are very clear in having taken the other path. And there's a bunch of critiques from this meeting, quote-unquote critiques, including from a formal Seattle city councilman who's now running for Congress as a socialist. Kashama Sawant, quote, unquote. These are things Zoran's already participated in.
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Chapter 8: How do gaming and political identities intersect in current discussions?
Like Trump doesn't need to be humanized, right? Like it's like Zoran's platforming Donald Trump. He is the president of the United States. He wins. He has that position. He has bought the legitimacy. I don't think Zoran being there actually rehabilitates Trump's image in a meaningful way.
I think what he's doing is trying to actually make New York a safer and more affordable place to live by doing a kind of complicated political maneuver, which I'm sure is kind of upsetting to kind of go through. But he's doing it. And the wave of criticism that has kind of...
based on that sort of, you know, humanizing argument or this stuff on, like, why doesn't Zoran just protest instead of actually trying to, like, cut deals or, like, not even cut deals because that sounds so, like, slimy, but, like, actually, like, negotiate with the president. And, like, this criticism comes from
on the tail end of like a week's worth of very reflexive criticism of Zoran for his retention of New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch, as well as advocating against the New York City DSA's endorsement of city councilman and new DSA member Chi Aussie's primary campaign against Congressman Hakeem Jeffries.
Some of these criticisms, I get the Jeffries one a little bit more, but some of these criticisms I find to be a little odd, mostly considering the fact that Zoran's been open about his plan to retain Tish for literal months, for literal months. And just this week, people acted like it was this massive betrayal in his like ideological purity or his stated promises, which just isn't true.
He's been open about this like since like last summer. And on the Jeffries side of things, I think Zoran's point of view here is that a difficult primary campaign, one that's probably going to be unsuccessful based on the Zoran 2025 general vote map, it shows that that'd be very, very challenging.
But this difficult primary against Jeffries would also inhibit Zoran's ability to implement the affordability agenda in the city effectively. The New York Times quoted a leaked portion of the DSA's endorsement meeting with Zoran saying, quote, The choice before us is not whether to vote for Chai or Hakeem at the ballot box. The choice is how to spend the next year.
Do we want to spend it defending characters of our movement, or do we want to spend it fulfilling the agenda at the heart of that very same movement? Unquote. Zoran has a very specific focus right now on the New York City government and implementing the agenda for New York City.
And the congressional campaign would, in his view, only put more roadblocks to that at this point in time versus keeping a left-wing ally in the New York City Council. I guess I don't see why they can't do both. Like, they will be defending caricatures of their movement for the next forever, right?
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