Hello and welcome to Live Like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This episode is your This Week in the Apocalypse for the week of August 28th, 2023. August 24th, 2026. We have with us our very good friend James, and we're going to talk about stuff going on at the border. But before we get into that, we want to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts by giving a little shout out to another one of the podcasts on the network via one of their jingles. So we're going to put that jingle right here. Jingle.
Hello and welcome to The Child and Its Enemies, a podcast about queer and neurodivergent kids living out anarchy and youth liberation. Here at The Child and Its Enemies, we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, but to anarchy itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and development and gender onto our necessarily asynchronous and atemporal queer lives. And youth and teens are at the center of this form of oppression. Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for youth that challenges all forms of control and inspires us to create queer, feral, ageless networks of care. I'm your host, MK Zario. I'm I'm 17 years old and I'm the youth correspondent at the Anarchist Review of Books, author of Debate Me, Bro, and organizer of some all-ages queer spaces in my city and online. If you want to learn more or join us on Discord and Signal, our website is thechildanditsenemies.nelblogs.org.
No rest is for the wicked. And we're back. Great jingle, as always.
Yeah, happy jingle. Love to hear a jingle.
James, I'm so excited that we get to have you this week because I know you're launching your new podcast, which we'll talk about more. But I'm glad that you made time to come and chat with us, especially because you know so much about what's going on with the border all the time and are so plugged in and, you know, generally have stories that like you can't necessarily get elsewhere just because it's stuff that you've seen in person firsthand. Thank you. That's very kind. Did you know, though, that the climate's a disaster? And that—
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's a shame, because the border's also a disaster. So it really seems like just an interesting time to be a human being alive on the planet.
Awesome. Also, your choice of fidget for today is giving us some nice background sound effects.
Okay, I'm changing fidgets. Moving to my silent fidget spinner now.
Yeah, we did our climate episode last week, but we mostly talked about the fires going on in Europe and somewhat in fires other places. But we didn't really touch on the flooding that had just started to happen in the Midwest due to some severe thunderstorms that they've got going on over there. Indiana is one of the hardest-hit areas. The White River in Indiana crested its banks and in fact surpassed a record-high water level that was previously set in 1913. And so there have been, you know, thousands of people and hundreds or maybe thousands of homes and other buildings that have been, uh, had to be evacuated, have been flooded. Um, there have been, uh, quite a few deaths at this point because of the flooding. Um, and that's only just started to go down, like, over this last few days as you're listening, as this— well, the day this comes out. The flooding has started to recede, but they are, um, expect to potentially get more storms. So there is still some risk, uh, going on there of additional stuff. Um, also power outage, uh, caused a massive power outage for a couple hundred thousand people across the region, and they're going on 2 weeks now since the first storms for some of those folks getting power back.
But with— Geez.
Yeah, with the flooding being so high and the waters being so high, it's hard for them to like get in to, you know, if they need to replace a pole. But the power poles, 5— not 5 feet, that's extreme, but, you know, 12 inches underwater, it's pretty hard to replace that until the water recedes, kind of a thing.
Right. Yep.
Some compounding of problems going on.
Yeah, for sure. I think it's funny, every time I see, like— every time I see power poles burn, right, the wooden ones, and then they'll go ahead and replace them with, like, sometimes other wooden ones, mostly metal ones, but, like, there is an option to underground power cables that would make them a lot safer for these things, but the utilities only seem And willing to do that when they're able to pass 100% of the costs on to the people who use their electricity, rather than absorbing any of that themselves and cutting into their massive profits. Yeah, for sure.
You might not know the answer to this, but I have a question for you as somebody who's lived in a country that does bury power cables.
Yeah.
I think. Or at least been around the world some more. What happens in a flooding situation to buried power lines? Are they at risk?
I think they're sealed. I think they're pretty deep and sealed. I'm not entirely sure. I'm not by any means a power lines expert. Yeah, like, I'm, uh, let me think. We might— my house flooded when I was a kid. Like, we lost pretty much everything on the bottom floor of our house.
Oh, wow.
Probably had like 2 or 3 feet come through there. Yeah, it was an interesting day. And then I worked for a long time, for a long time, through like the rest of that year, I guess, like tearing up— Britain, we carpet our houses, right? And then we don't generally have drywall. We kind of have plaster on brick. So tearing out the carpets and the plaster of places. and then installing dehumidifiers to try and dry the houses out so that people could get back in.
Sure.
And I recall us having power throughout.
Okay.
So I don't know how useful that is as information. We did have overground power as well in the UK. That's not— we had wooden power poles until very— fascinatingly, actually, literally like 100 yards from houses that I helped dehumidify from flooding, there are now wildfires in the UK burning homes. And I'm talking August when we were pulling out carpets and shit. A place where our salient worry was it being too wet, our salient worry is now it's too dry. And that's well within my lifetime.
Yeah, and that's not even the longest of lifetimes.
Not yet.
We're not talking like 80 years ago, right?
No, no, we're talking like 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah.
Wild. Yeah, it's crazy.
Okay.
Yeah, things going well with the climate.
Well, that could be our listener challenge for the week, maybe, for those of you who maybe live in countries that have buried power lines and have dealt with flooding. Give us comments, shout out to us on social media and tell us more about that, because I am genuinely interested. I've always wondered about that when people say burying them would be better. I'm like, okay, but what about these other disasters that can happen?
Yeah, yeah. Or like an earthquake or whatever. It'd be interesting.
Yes, sure.
Talking of things, uh, I don't think they're really buried. I mean, I guess the border wall is, is, uh, they like to dig a hole and make some concrete and put the border wall in it. Let's talk about the border. I want to start, like, with the most recent stuff happening, like, at the physical border, because very often everyone wants to be a migration reporter now, right? It's cool, it's great. Where the fuck were you all when we had outdoor detention in 2023?
Right.
But still, people, we don't see that. Actually, I think, like, attention, uh, on the border has decreased. in the last 2 years.
Yeah, I would think so as well, actually.
Yeah.
And we get these Border Patrol numbers that are super low. I'm not always convinced that those— that represents the entirety of people crossing the border. But that's generally the justification given. But another thing that is— I mean, numbers are lower. And one of the reasons is that the United States is using its military to patrol the border now. A lot of it is.
Oh god, no!
Yeah.
When did that start happening? Why did I— how did I not hear about this?
That started happening last year with something called National Defense Areas. You didn't hear about it 'cause it didn't get a lot of good coverage, I think.
Okay.
NDAs, not that kind of NDAs, right? National Defense Areas. What these are is they're extensions of military bases. So for instance, the San Diego NDA, NDA Number 3, is an extension of Naval Air Facility El Centro. There's also one that's an extension of Fort Bliss, Fort Huachuca. And what that means, I guess, in legal terms, that is pertinent to our show at least, is that the Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits the military from engaging in law enforcement, right?
Right, right.
Not if they're on a military installation.
Oh, damn it.
So what these NDAs are doing— and this is just a straight-up end run around that, right? That's what this is. Is they are, in theory, able to hold somebody briefly detain them, right, while the Border Patrol agent in this case comes along, or whatever, an MP, for trespassing on a military facility, a military installation.
Oh, man.
Yeah. Now, the DOJ issued an opinion last week saying that, in its opinion, not only can they hold someone for trespassing on an installation, if they see that person trespassing and pursue them outside the installation, the DOJ believes they can hold them in that instance, too.
Okay, because it started as a trespass.
That's their argument. Exactly, yeah. So like a hot pursuit situation. This is something that ought to be getting more coverage because it's just a straight-up— it's seeing the Constitution as something you can work around, right?
Yeah.
Like, this is a very clear challenge to the Posse Comitatus Act. It is not very hard for anyone who has been paying attention the last 10 years in US politics to see how we get from this to more military law enforcement, right? We have seen more militarized law enforcement, uh, certainly in the last couple of decades, right? But, um, we can probably all remember in 2020 the use of BORTAC in Portland, right, to protect federal— the use of FPS to protect federal buildings, right?
Right.
The United States military has installations in or near cities, right? So seeing This, as an end run around that, I think is something we need to be keeping an eye on, right? Even if it's just saying, oh, this recruiting office is a military installation, maybe we can defend the recruiting office. I'm not entirely sure how this will be played, but one thing the Trump administration has been very good at is coming up with, I guess what I would generously call, a novel legal justification for doing things, right?
Yes.
And it is genuinely like, this is something they are good at. We should acknowledge that. Look at Title 42, right? The use of a public health law to expel and exclude migrants.
Yeah.
Now, the Biden administration did that for much longer than the Trump administration, but nonetheless, that was a Stephen Miller joint. Miller came up with that, and it worked for what he wanted it to work for. So I think we should be very conscious of this, especially because NDA, they're asserting a really broad forfeiture of rights, essentially, right?
Yeah.
NDAs are generally, according to signage, they perceive that laws forbidding you photographing sensitive military equipment or installations would also apply to NDAs. The ACLU has a pretty good website on this where they say if something's in plain view and you're standing in a public area, then they don't think you shouldn't be able to photograph it. I'm also not aware of anyone being prosecuted for photographing it, But the signage seems to suggest that is something they are— that is the legal position of the Department of Defense, right? So in theory, this could prevent people taking photos of border wall construction along large parts of the border, because it's within a military installation.
Damn.
As I said, I'm not aware of prosecutions for that, but it's a thing people should be aware of.
It could be used that way, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It certainly— and again, right, these things start— everything The encroaching growth of fascism in the United States began at the border.
Right.
And it continues to innovate ways of oppressing us at the border. And because the legacy media has for a long time regarded migrants as people without rights, people who exist outside of the constitutional protections that the United States gives to its citizens, this has sort of been allowed to grow. Uh, and now we are seeing it visited in our cities, in our towns, in our neighborhoods, right? And, uh, We ought to pay more attention to it at the border because it will not stop at the border. And even if it would, right, like, we should be in solidarity with migrants. We should be in solidarity with people who live at the border whose whole lives are getting upended by this shit.
Right.
And, uh, I think it doesn't get enough attention.
Yeah, you know, as an Indigenous woman, you're all a bunch of migrants to me.
Yeah.
Some of you more recently and some of you, you know, worse than others.
No, 100%.
Like, uh, like, you know, you All of us that are here, and even you know a portion of my ancestry, of course, because I'm not 100% indigenous. You know, sure, bloodlines, whatever.
Yeah, you know, and I think like we should be particularly conscious of the impact of this on, for example, indigenous people whose land is is severed by the border, right? Who are divided from their own community, from their own land. Look at the Otham. Look at the Kumeyaay, right? The Tohono O'odham are currently suing the federal government. They trespassed a bunch of border wall construction people off tribal land last week.
What?
Yeah, no, the Tohono O'odham have been very forthright in defending their land, and obviously— I love it. I fully support them doing so. It is ludicrous to see people whose, you know, fucking, your name is Miller or Trump, suggesting that migrants shouldn't come here. But yeah, the damage done— one of the waivers for border wall construction is in Native American graves, Protection and Repatriation Act, which, as we saw in 2020, right, the route of the wall went directly through Kumeyaay ancestors' remains.
That's right.
People protested that, and they sued using the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act as one of the justifications, but that's now been waived, right, along with almost every other protection. So we saw actually on this point, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, He went down to Big Bend, right, on the Rio Grande there, the national park in Texas, which BP is trying to doze walls and roads through right now, to conduct a personal evaluation of the construction there, which is the most insane shit.
Yeah.
This is what we get now, right? We don't get the NAGPRA, we don't get the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, we don't get the fucking bald eagle and golden eagle protection act, right? All these environmental laws, all these cultural protections, all these things that we've had for decades, so you can't just fucking bulldoze somebody's cultural resources, so you can't just be like, oh fuck, I didn't realize that was a golden eagle nest, sorry I drove my D8 over it. Like, they're all gone now. So what instead we get is one dude going down to Texas and being like, looks good to me, champ! Yeah.
I didn't see any bones.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I, uh, not a big, like, always look at— I'm not a big laws guy, but, uh, there's a reason that these things existed. And when the structure of the state that we had, they helped prevent some of the worse and more egregious damages. And now they're all gone. Um, and we just have a dude.
I was, I was having the thought when you were talking about how this administration has been so clever in their use of, of the law and manipulation that, ah, it's, you know, why can't, why can't we be just as clever back? And we can be, but also some of the laws that are The kind of laws that we would want to make use of or, you know, be clever with and back are just being outright, like you were just saying, uh, you know, ignored, uh, you know, obliterated, dismissed, whatever. So it's, you know, we don't even necessarily have this same tool of being able to sort of manipulate the laws, uh, you know, or find the loopholes in the laws to our advantage because—
Yeah, exactly. Certainly, like, uh, we didn't see the Biden administration, you know, like the things that all the, uh, like vote blue, no matter who folks told us would happen, didn't happen. We didn't see the Biden administration innovating to make things better. We saw it accepting that what Trump had done with a new status quo. Look at Title 42. Biden expelled more migrants under Title 42. He kept it for longer. He saw higher migrant deaths. This is a ratchet that moves in one direction under the current bipartisan system.
It sure has been.
Yep, it's been great. Another thing that I don't think has been getting enough media coverage is that there's been a series of DOJ lawsuits. They announced a couple last week. I've spoken about them a little bit on It Could Happen Here, but I know some people listen to both, but I wanted to talk about them again here because again, I think that they're really important and don't get enough attention. What the DOJ is doing is trying to sue states that provide in-state tuition to undocumented people. And they've had some success with this. Where they've had success has been in Republican states where you've got state officials agreeing with the DOJ and asking courts to vacate their policies. They have also— they, like, I guess the piece of the law, the statute, the language of the statute in question has the language— I'm just going to read from it here, right? I'll read this whole thing. It's kind of hard not to. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state or a political subdivision for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit in no less amount, duration, or scope, without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.
Okay, I might have fallen asleep in the middle, so you're gonna have to translate.
Yeah, well, fucking, uh, let me tell you, Minnesota had not fallen asleep because they came up with what I mean, lawyers can be annoying, right? But someone in Minnesota was being annoying for a good cause here. Because in Minnesota, I guess your status with regards to tuition reduction depends on whether you went to a Minnesota high school or not.
Oh.
So, the last 3 words of that annoying, convoluted, and bulbous sentence I just read, such a resident Because they're not using a residency test, they believe that therefore they are not in violation. And they won this case, right? The other one, which I thought was really interesting, the law that I just read, the boring long one, said unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit, it did not say all citizens.
Okay.
Or nationals of the United States. So they said because a citizen, a single unique individual, could theoretically benefit from in-state tuition while not being a state resident by going to a state high school, they're in compliance with that law, right?
Oh, wow.
Because they're a US citizen. And they succeeded with this. Now, they find themselves in a relatively novel position compared to other states, right? The DOJ has just announced its lawsuits against New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. So in each of these cases, they will have to make a legal case that they are compliant with that long and boring sentence that I just read. This is important not just because it's another attack on migrants, but like, it's a very clear attempt to create an underclass of people in this country who don't have access to education, right?
Right, clearly.
And like, that is where capital and the state come together, is to create people who are afraid to organize, afraid to have rights, and who do not have the means to find other labor, which could be give them a better quality of life, right? They're trying to create like a lumpenproletarian underclass that they can continue to exploit, right? And this is like one of the front lines of that. But again, I don't see people joining the dots enough in coverage. That is what's happening here. It is. On It Could Happen Here, I played a clip of George Herbert Walker Bush and Ronald Reagan in a debate, I think it was 1980, the 1980 presidential primary, where they talked about this, and it is fucking mind-blowing to see how far we have swung to the right since then.
Yeah.
Um, look, I'm obviously not a big George H.W. Bush guy, not a big Reagan guy, uh, but you've got Bush like talking about how like he— the first line he says like, I would like to see a response to this that is so— and then he pauses and you're, you're thinking he's gonna say fucking, I don't know, punitive or like aggressive or Whatever, right? And then he says sensitive.
Wow.
And he's talking about like how nobody should want to have— again, not a fan of this guy, not a fan of the shit he did, but he's talking about how like it doesn't benefit anybody to have an underclass of children who can't read and write, who don't have access to education. Like, how would that help anyone? How would that help our communities? And then he gets like a big ol' ovation. And like, it is remarkable how quickly we've moved to this completely inhumane position. I guess that tells me we can also move back quickly.
I hope so. You know, it doesn't— it hasn't felt like that for a long time. No, it has.
Like, migration has not been part of the US political discourse other than on the right. Like, no one has really stepped up and said migrants are important members of our community. We love them. We want them here and we want to keep them safe. Right? Like, they've been used as a rhetorical tool by the right. And the left has just been like, oh, well, yeah, that, but 10% less cruel. The left, when I'm saying the left here, I'm saying the Democrats, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, the DSA does have an amnesty provision in their platform, but the mainstream DNC has been really shit on this.
Right.
I think if we're ever going to see change, it will be now, right? If we're ever going to see people wanting to reevaluate that position, it will be after the last 2 years, when people have seen migrants ripped from their communities and realized what it does to their communities and how much they value them. Is the DNC still out of touch with everyone else? Of course it fucking is, right? Like, that's what it does. But like, now is the time, I guess, to move things back in that other direction.
Right.
Some other notable shit the Trump administration has done, uh, this last 4 weeks, uh, it's announced that it will on the 18th of September rescind the DHS rule on public charge determination. They're not making a new rule. They're just taking away the old one.
Okay.
Maybe there will be some guidance in the future, but what this does is create a great deal of uncertainty. Public charge is the idea that someone who is or will be primarily dependent on the government for subsistence may not be eligible for— either they might not be admissible—
Into the country?
Yeah, I'm about to— Go down a legal rabbit hole. I'm going to try not to. When you are admitted to the United States, you might already be inside the United States. For instance, if you entered without inspection and then tried to claim asylum benefits, right? If you're an undocumented person, you might be admitted at a time when you're not entering the United States through one of its physical borders, but rather when you, like, present to an immigration officer or ask for an immigration benefit. So admitted is a little broader than— Like coming back at the airport or crossing the land border.
Okay.
Yeah. It also means people might be ineligible for permanent residency, which is a green card.
Oh.
Yeah. This again, like, could be a really nefarious thing. And it again will have the very much intended but unspoken consequence of making people who are either people who are here on visas and one day hope to obtain a green card, or people who are undocumented, afraid of accessing benefits that they need.
Right.
It's gonna make people afraid of getting WIC. It's gonna make people afraid of food stamps. It's gonna make people afraid of state-sponsored safety net healthcare programs. Like, all these things which, like, help people, right? Like, WIC helps people's babies have enough to fucking eat. All of these things people will be afraid of, especially with the absence of clear guidance. What does that mean? Like, it means that mutual aid is more important now than it ever has been. Right?
Yeah.
People are very afraid to approach the state for help right now. If you'd like to listen to my podcast, Natural Causes, which you can listen to wherever good podcasts are given away for free, this week I spoke about the fires in Spokane. And I spoke about the Washington State National Guard soldiers deciding to post a picture of themselves while they were on a fire, different fire, they were on the Little Giant Fire, with a Rhodesia flag. A really fucking—
What?
Yeah. Yes.
What?
I'm not gonna fucking go into Rhodesia other than to say there's no reason to show that flag unless you're a repugnant racist piece of shit.
Okay, yeah.
Those are also the people doing the checkpoints at neighbourhoods which were evacuated due to fire, right? Directing traffic around the fire when I was there. One can understand why people who are undocumented, people who are not white in the instance of the fucking Rhodesia flag, might not feel safe going to state shelters, getting fire benefits, right? Getting some of these resources, even replacing documents that were lost in the fire. Like, this is why it is more important than ever that we build ways to take care of each other, which are outside of the mechanism of fucking immigration enforcement, which, which, which do not pull from the same pot as ICE and CBP, right?
Right.
And, and so, like, I know, like, my thing is the solution to everything is stronger communities and mutual aid, but, like, I'm gonna fucking say it again. because I think it is. The state is not becoming any kinder in the near future. We need to find ways to be kind to each other that don't rely on the state. And everything about this stuff just reaffirms my belief that that is the way through this.
Absolutely, absolutely. And it's building those networks and communities. We've talked about that a lot here on Strangers. We've got some good recent episodes too about talking with strangers and building community.
Yeah.
Can help with that.
Now is the time, uh, and like, that is the way we can all feel empowered in a time which feels really disempowering right now.
Yeah.
Let me do a 2-minute summary of this, uh, other immigration story. The United States has been allowing Iranian government officials to meet with people claiming asylum from Iran inside detention centers. So these are people who have been detained by ICE Okay. Or CBP in some instances. They're being held in detention centers, and they are being forced to meet with representatives of the Iranian government. Many of you will be saying, but James, Iran doesn't have an embassy in the United States. How does that work?
Yeah.
The Iranian Interest Section within the Pakistani embassy or consulate represents Iran in the United States.
Oh.
And it is staff from the Iranian Interest Section who are going to tell migrants, not only going to tell them that it will be safe for them to come back, which is something I'm very, very, very skeptical about, but it might be, but also telling them that they have seen their asylum applications in which these people detail why they're afraid of being tortured by the Iranian state because they participated in the Jina Amini protests, right? Because they participated in anti-government actions because they are people who are not Muslim, generally. A lot of these people are Christians. All of those people have now had all of their— where they lay out to the United States, I participated in these things that the Iranian government would kill me for. The US showed all of that to the Iranian government.
Oh, holy shit.
Yeah. So not only do these people have to fear deportation, they know that the case against them has already been made by them.
Right.
And then passed over to the Iranian government. I've confirmed that this has happened to people right here in San Diego at the Otay Mesa detention center. This is fucking— every day we're kind of appalled by a new depraved level of cruelty, but this is something else. These people have all been threatened with third-country deportations, quote unquote, to Africa.
Oh God.
Right.
And the Iranian government person's role is to get them to try and sign voluntary deportation papers to Iran.
What is the point? Is the point just to not have any immigrants and send them back? It seems like we're mad at Iran right now, and people that want to dissent from the country, shouldn't we want to support that? I'm so confused what the thought process is behind what they're doing here.
Some of this occurred— this certainly has occurred since the US started its strikes against Iran last year, right, when it bombed those nuclear facilities. We're a little unclear just because of the date of the documents in the court case if it's still ongoing. in the recent— since February, when we started bombing Iran on a bigger scale. From what the official at the Iranian embassy related to the lawyer for some of these detained people, I guess the idea was that the United States was pissed off that these people were basically not deportable, because they would have a Convention Against Torture protection, right? Right. And so it started working with the Iranians to get these people out of its detention, and off its roster, I guess.
Wow.
Yeah. There's some incredible shit in this court case where the Iranian consul— they call him the consul, right? Not a consul. Iran doesn't have a consulate, but that's what the BP or detention officers are calling him when referring to him to the migrants. When these people— there were 3 direct— they're not direct flights, they go through somewhere else, but there have been 3 flights to Iran. On one of them, he He went to Costco and bought clothes for everyone because he was upset at the conditions that they were being kept in and the state of their clothing.
Wow.
No, you don't have to hand it under any circumstances to the Iranian regime, but that's pretty telling. In another case, people cut their own wrists when they were placed on these flights, which I think hopefully makes people realize what the stakes are here, right? This is life and death for them, and it's not a not a pleasant or rapid death that they might be facing in Iran.
Oh, God.
Yeah. It's not a great time for covering migration in the United States, but this one, again, fucking mind-boggling to me.
Yeah.
As you said, we are once at war with Iran, and trying to encourage people who have opposed that regime to accept going back there where they will face torture. Sent another flight to Myanmar. this weekend as well, where again, everyone on that flight will be sent to interrogation. Many of those people, if they are men, will be conscripted, and within weeks they will be fighting the revolution that would have liberated them, on behalf of the government that wants to oppress them, the government that they fled. Many of them will die, because they will be trained like shit, and they will be fighting people who are motivated to fight for their freedom and liberation and the liberation of their nation, right? I've spoken to so many young fighters in the Burmese Revolution, the Myanmar Revolution, who are deeply traumatized by the amount of fucking conscripts they've killed, because they know that these conscripts are not particularly choosing to be there. But it is particularly, even as wars go, that it's a very difficult situation to be in. And the US is contributing to it now, which is also great.
Awesome. We are the Center of the apocalypse.
Yep, everything's falling apart. I went to Spokane for the fires, um, in the Spokane region. I went to the Colville Tribes Reservation and the Reservation of Spokane Tribe.
My mother used to live on that reservation.
Oh cool, that's right. Yeah, um, really lovely people, really wonderful people. And like, I just, I guess, want to reinforce to people that indigenous communities have been looking after each other without the state Even in the time that the United States has existed as a state for thousands of years.
Mm-hmm.
That hasn't particularly changed since the United States became the relevant state to the state that claims control over their indigenous lands. And I was once again inspired by how much, like, I have to learn from people who are so good at taking care of one another. I spent a lot of time driving around Eastern Washington with a rental car. Full of sacks of food for people's animals and generators and such things. And yeah, it's always nice to see a mutual aid response being so effective, like making a disaster less disastrous for people, showing people that their communities can hold them and take care of them even at this devastating time. So I guess like that's my little hopeful thing, is that even as like fire resources were pulled to the city of Spokane, which is always going to happen in this country, right? Like, then they're not going to be, of course, fighting the fire on the reservation when there's a fire in the city. It was incredible to see people just, uh, pull together and take care of each other there. And folks from outside the tribal community continuing to show up even when, you know, their city had burned down because they knew that there would be a lot of resources for the city and that there wouldn't.
Right. Yep. Yeah, the resources are scarce and pretty minimal, but we pull together and many of our communities have been really fortunate in the way that That people outside of the reservations have understood that and come to be a helpful part of it.
Yeah. And just really cool to see people— cool's the wrong word, but just genuinely, it reaffirms my belief that we can all take care of each other without the state, seeing people take care of each other without the state.
Yeah.
Seeing people cut fire lines around their neighbors' houses with their bulldozers, or donations flooding in, not just for people, but for their whole— people were— I moved some food that apparently is a good kind of multipurpose food. just left it out because a lot of the animals will be losing a lot of— I mean, it's the right time of year for berries, right? Berries are very important to a lot of wildlife. Bears eat berries, get fat for the winter. They eat other stuff too, of course. Because the wildlife will be suffering too, making sure to take care of the whole community that you're part of, not just the people in it.
Right.
Yeah, that was my happy thing. That's what I've been thinking about when I get sad.
That is really happy. There's another happy new thing in your life though that we're really excited for. For you, even though it means that you're going to be extra busy and we might not get to have you on our pods for a little bit. But you've got your own whole Your James's Podcast that you get to do now, and it's really neat. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it? Thank you.
Yeah, it's called— I was going to joke it's called James Fest. It's not. It's called Natural Causes. It's a podcast about the land we live on and the things and people and animals that we share it with and how we can do that better when the world's on fire. And so, so far we've had an episode on javelina. Javelina are little peccaries that hate golf. I also hate golf. So that was a beautiful coincidence for me. We have also had an episode on Cyclospora, which is a little parasite causing the diarrhea outbreak that's killed 2 people in the Midwest. And I think the cringe— yeah, just, I'm going to say it, the cringe liberal response blaming workers as opposed to blaming the giant corporations that have a chokehold on our food chain. And in this particular instance, Taylor Farms, right?
Right.
There's this idea that Taylor Farms had this direct quid pro quo to stop the implementation of a a new FDA regulation. And I think that you're missing the wood for the trees when you go after it like that way. There is a much broader alignment between Taylor Farms and Trump administration because they love to threaten their undocumented workers with calling ICE so they can pay them like shit.
Yeah.
They love to treat workers in Mexico like shit because they know that those Mexican workers are going to find it much harder to move to the United States and make more money, right?
Right.
They have a much broader— capital and the state have a much broader alignment than not just passing this one rule. You're not going to get that from the Dems because they also have that same alignment. So we're trying to bring you a little different perspective on the outdoors. My episode that came out, if you listen to this the day it comes out, my episode that came out yesterday would be my first of several episodes about fire and about mutual aid responses to fire. And traditional ecological knowledge and what we can learn from indigenous people who have lived with fire for much, much longer than there have been people called James in this country.
Yeah, my people are fire keepers. That was our responsibility, was to carry and care for fire. Whole long story, we can do that after the pod. Post-pod notes.
Yeah, friends, just got longer.
Yeah. If people want to reach you out in the real world, can they, and how?
Yeah, you can show up and do something at the border, and I might be there in San Diego.
Awesome.
You can find me on bsky.app, fighting my hardest battles with the Blue Anons. It's just James Stout. I have a newsletter, which I need to be better about keeping up with, That's— you can find that on Patreon and Substack, just my name. Uh, you can also email now naturalcausespod@proton.me, I believe.
Wonderful. All right, I look forward to going and listening to your, your new— the start of your new series.
Thank you.
Particularly the fire bits. Thanks for that and for being here with us.
Of course, thank you for having me.
You can find Strangers on social media as well. We are on Instagram, we are on Bluesky, and we are on Patreon, generally some variation of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness or just Tangled Wilderness, like our website is, uh, tangledwilderness.org. Um, love to hear from people. We love your feedback. We love your notes if we ever need to make corrections on things and interacting with everyone. So please feel free to reach out to any of us on on those platforms. We are particularly fond of our Patreon supporters. They are the reason that our podcasts exist and that we're able to pay people for our podcasts and being on here. And the folks that support Patreon at the $20 a month level or more, we give them a shout out to themselves or the person or the animal or the entity of their choosing. And so this week, those folks that we would like to celebrate are: Please Fight Anti-Fatness 2, Arizona Sunsets, Bunny Bionics, Bike Smut Film and Performance, Patrick Harnett Marshall, All Wiener Dogs Everywhere, Joseph, the first 2 chapters of The Eden Project by James Hollis, Kiwanis Socialists, the Athens People's Assembly of Athens, Georgia, Mr. Kraft, your Canadian friend, Tiny Nonsense, Sarah, A Future for Abby, the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association, Hyunhee, Max, Lancaster County Chooses Love, Karen, Astoria Food Pantry, Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island, Feral in West Virginia, Blinkcat, the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, Shulva, Jenny and Phoebe the Cats, Jason, Aiden and Yuki the Dog, Alexander Gopal, Sunshine, Opticuna, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Julia, Appalachian Liberation Library, Lord Harken, Baby A-Cab and Her Three Great Pups, Ephemeral, Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell, Boldfield, Allie, Papa Runa, Milicia, Theo, SJ, Paige, Pocono Pink Pistols, Nicole and Tikva the Dog, David, Towser's Love of Bumblebees, Carson, Dana, Chelsea, Amber, Marjorie, We Will Outlive Them, Kirk, Mikaya, Chris, the incredible Rennerai, Micah, and Hoss the dog. Thanks so much.