[SPEAKER_03]: Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks about with money podcast.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Gabe Dunn.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we have Katie LaFoon on the podcast today.

[SPEAKER_03]: We talk about California a lot, but you can transpose everything that we're talking about into your state, into perhaps a city very close to you, if not your city.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to get into basically the creation of what we believe are going to be slave cities and what you can do to help prevent money going to places that will facilitate that.

[SPEAKER_03]: a place like California City can be kind of hard to follow or explain.

[SPEAKER_03]: We spend the first part of the episode setting the scene, including the history of California City.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's current corruption, and then we delve into what is actually happening in the state's largest detention center and how water is being used to control it.

[SPEAKER_03]: The conversation delves into the harsh realities of detention centers in California and around the US.

[SPEAKER_03]: highlighting accounts and perspectives that reveal the cruelty and torture experienced by individuals within these facilities.

[SPEAKER_03]: Once that I would argue are concentration camps.

[SPEAKER_03]: No, I wouldn't argue it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I believe their concentration camps.

[SPEAKER_03]: The discussion emphasizes the need for awareness and advocacy regarding the treatment of detainees.

[SPEAKER_03]: For an example, look up Masuma Khan, look up anyone who's being held in Chrome, look up people who have died in detention.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, people are dying.

[SPEAKER_03]: These centers are being framed as detention facilities, but they are prisons.

[SPEAKER_03]: They are long-term prisons.

[SPEAKER_03]: People need to know about these human rights violations and community involvement is how we're going to fix this, so you need to open your eyes, see what's happening, tell other people what's happening, and then here Katie and I about how to get involved.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a rough one, guys.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there are some parts that might come across bleak, but really this is about educating you and letting you know what's happening, so that you can be on the same page as us and realize how far along we are.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, [SPEAKER_00]: You got to know a lot of lies about a cheating man Is it because you when they got you to believe in Dumb and finger-held?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is there foreheads in an L-show?

[SPEAKER_00]: Trapped in a cup of all the sales Gameheads, my back in I've seen talks about class in the mass Cost of the disaster's brought to fresh It's not spanked at the box It's a thousand natural shocks A bad-butt-money podcast [SPEAKER_03]: Hello, welcome to a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcast.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Gabe Dunn.

[SPEAKER_03]: And with me today, you know, where you like her, she's on the internet.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hello, Katie LaFoon, can you tell my audience who you are and what you do as of now, I guess?

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we all do as of now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, in the now times, this is so weird, what do I do?

[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, yeah, I'm a local activist, I guess.

[SPEAKER_01]: I guess that, yeah, is that what we would call ourselves community activists?

[SPEAKER_03]: like one of us who got activated like a sleeper agent when all of this started going down, one of us got kind of mentoring and candidate on pretty much yeah yeah it was like flipped a switch and came on I have not slept since June 8th and nice really so I know it's like always funny I had Eddie and Taylor on and it's always funny to be like I don't know these people six months ago [SPEAKER_01]: I can't imagine my life without you guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's so sad.

[SPEAKER_03]: We all just went down to the detention center or started caring about stuff at the same time.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then we were like, OK, hello.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was like, what do you guys need help with?

[SPEAKER_01]: OK, how can I help let's do that?

[SPEAKER_01]: OK, let's go over here.

[SPEAKER_01]: OK, they need help.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's this guy in a Luigi hatch just running around asking everyone who's their boss.

[SPEAKER_01]: Who do you work for?

[SPEAKER_03]: If you don't know that's Eddie, but you can go back and listen to that episode.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I wanted to have you on to talk about California City.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of a mess of what we can and can't say, but I was interested in how much you talked about in that video.

[SPEAKER_03]: And how much the response was either, yes, that totally makes sense, or absolute denial and like desperation for it not to be true.

[SPEAKER_03]: So can you talk a little bit about like, what, how did we end up down there?

[SPEAKER_01]: I saw a random post from the Dolores Warta Foundation that said that Core Civic had officially opened the former prison as an ice detention center.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it had been in the news in L.A.

here in the spring that that might happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And people were freaking out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a big story because we'd find the clothes that present.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a big deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it does open and there's nothing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, this can't be a real post.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was one of those things where I'm like, oh, this is internet fake something, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we would know, we're in the streets every day.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no way we wouldn't hear about this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out it was real.

[SPEAKER_01]: There wasn't any press.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I drove up and oh my god, now we're here.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was so, I don't even know where to begin.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just, yeah, as soon as I drove into that town, I just went, oh no.

[SPEAKER_01]: Molly, you and Team Jinger, all.

[SPEAKER_03]: Course civic is one of the two largest private prison companies.

[SPEAKER_03]: that exist.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's Corsific and Geo Group.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Corsific, like so wearing California City California, which sounds like it would be more important of a place for like regular Los Angeles people than it is.

[SPEAKER_03]: But basically, there's a prison there, and Gavin Newsom, like two years ago, was working on closing private prisons.

[SPEAKER_03]: He did it.

[SPEAKER_03]: He closed like five of them.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that was one of them.

[SPEAKER_03]: and so it was like a big thing like we've closed this private prison.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is like morally great.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then I showed up in California and all of a sudden, yeah, there were whispers that they were about to open, course civic.

[SPEAKER_03]: The one that Gavin used some closed in California City, which by the way, is in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing there.

[SPEAKER_01]: there's nothing there and that was the thing it was like at the idea that course civic might reopen that prison as a detention center people were like ugh clutching their pearls like no way and then they do it they illegally do it they have no permit no business license nothing and no one's stopping them and there's not [SPEAKER_01]: a peep, there's no press, there's not a single story, you don't hear Gavin Newsome, the Mayor of Elliott, nobody is talking about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, this is like a peep alligator alcatraz.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's people love talking about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like this is so much worse.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's nearly 3,000 beds.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's in the middle of the desert, the middle of the Mojave Desert, and Edward's Air Force base is on the other side of it, and I just was like, there's something this doesn't feel right.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's something going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I drove up there just to like check out a local town council meeting, be like, all right, let's see what's going on in this town, and oh my god, I did not mean to take the red pill, but fuck me.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, we can't even get into council, but basically, [SPEAKER_03]: So it opens there are 500 or so people there at that time they had failed in July a fire permit inspection they had no permits and to me if I'm that town and I'm in charge of it in any way [SPEAKER_03]: proper like fire safety, anything like that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it's deeply illegal.

[SPEAKER_03]: You would think they would try to stop it because it's like if you open an illegal business anywhere the government is supposed to come for you.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that wasn't happening and it seemed to me that the government there either was like impotent.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was just like the federal government can come in.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing they can do or they were benefiting from it in on it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it seemed like kind of a mix of both.

[SPEAKER_03]: So then we went to the City Council in California City.

[SPEAKER_03]: And California City, I want to paint you a picture.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing going on there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a patch of dirt with a Starbucks and a McDonald's and that's it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then there's like just some homes.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a population of 13,000 people, 15,000.

[SPEAKER_03]: So then, I mean, you have to like go to another city to go to the hospital.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think you have to go to Bakersfield.

[SPEAKER_03]: Bakersfield.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's far and California city's like two hours away from LA.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, two hours.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it is in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

[SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_03]: Also there is Edward's Air Force Base and then driving around, you discovered that there's a like private airport.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a, well, it's a public airport.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's called the Mojave Erin Spaceport.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's one of those public airports where, you know, you're training to get your pilot's license.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's something like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's where you would go.

[SPEAKER_01]: But as you're driving in, before I didn't know that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm driving in and I just see a ton of planes, like huge planes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking, I don't remember seeing an airport on the map.

[SPEAKER_01]: What the fuck is happening?

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's go check out this airport and then you drive up and it's an airplane graveyard.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't, you know, 47, 47's, like I thought.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also really creepy.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's just a bunch of dead planes out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: But as you drive around, like you can just tell it's one of those, it's so American pie.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like the early 60s America propaganda like stars and stripes on everything and like, yeah, it has like a NASA capsule out front in this, you know, model airplane.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's very that frozen in time.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you drive around and guess who's name we see, Northrop Grumman.

[SPEAKER_01]: They have a home base right there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's where they developed the stealth bomber.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that public airport, that sweet little public airport, not so little, it has a runway large enough to land cargo planes.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's huge.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's where they do all the flight testing for Edwards Air Force Base.

[SPEAKER_01]: So [SPEAKER_01]: It looks non-descripts, but it's not, it's not as innocent and non-descripts.

[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't look non-descript, but it looks crazy as hell.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's a border bumper on quote right there.

[SPEAKER_03]: So that's the other thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we walk around.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a diner, which is weird.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's never open on golf courts, on golf carts.

[SPEAKER_03]: So NASA's there.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then we walk around and there's like a garden thing that's for people that died.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, which is like then I'm Googling all the test pilots that have died, which is rough.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then there's a big plaque with a one of Ron Brown quote, who was a Nazi.

[SPEAKER_03]: biggest Nazi of them all big Nazi he actually we have him to think for our entire military industrial complex so thanks man we can yeah that's all on him thanks and the quote is something like they say man can't go to the stars but man can go wherever he wants where I was like yes okay colonization so then you leave and you go and there's nothing and so went to city council [SPEAKER_03]: and sea council is wild.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if we could stream that, we would put secret lives of Mormon wives off the air.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, people would eat that shit up.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is unreal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, the drama, the drama in this town.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't understand, their city council meetings are, it's like real housewives have nothing on them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They got nothing, they got nothing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Five hours long, which honestly, like the city council could take a note because everybody gets to talk.

[SPEAKER_01]: That should be their punishment.

[SPEAKER_01]: L.A.

City Council has to sit through a California city.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's small grievances, and then there's like saying, like, hey, there's a prison open.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's no decorum.

[SPEAKER_03]: The mayor is a former rapper who has no footprint on the internet.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a clientele.

[SPEAKER_01]: DJ clientele.

[SPEAKER_03]: He has no real connection to the city, Marquette Hawkins.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he is kind of just like a fish out of water there.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know how he became mayor.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we do know.

[SPEAKER_03]: Idea.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he ships and people in devote for him.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what people are saying.

[SPEAKER_03]: Conjecture.

[SPEAKER_03]: Conjecture.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he appears three years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he just appears in California City and then suddenly becomes mayor.

[SPEAKER_01]: This guy in the middle of Kern County.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Kern County, it's the most racist place in California.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like arguably, it is the Alabama of California.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he's black.

[SPEAKER_03]: So he becomes mayor.

[SPEAKER_03]: out of nowhere and then the city council is just kind of stacked with or he clears the city council out to be stacked with his accolades.

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically he has stacked the audience every time they have a meeting and so he'll have the audience suggest things or accuse things and so as of now three city council members have left the council but at the time it was only two the one that first one that you and I went to and like right on the spot right there they just they skipped an election and they just appointed two people [SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember if we talked about this, it is illegal because the reason the other council member was waiting and he didn't come back till he did on September 9th is because you could only appoint somebody within 60 days.

[SPEAKER_01]: And 60 days expired on September 7th.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he was trying to stop basically.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: like them being able to just appoint some random people that were, you know, laptops to the mayor.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now let me say speaking of laptops.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the big thing that they were accusing, the first meeting I went to, the big drama, the big accusation, was that [SPEAKER_03]: This guy, this council member, had used the fire department to deliver dog food to his house.

[SPEAKER_03]: That was the scandal of a lifetime.

[SPEAKER_03]: That was crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: He was getting screamed at.

[SPEAKER_03]: Screamed at.

[SPEAKER_03]: He buys food from a pet store.

[SPEAKER_03]: Donates it to the shelter.

[SPEAKER_03]: The fire department was bringing it to the shelter and they dropped his own food off at his house.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was like he took the private jet to like die or something.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: So that city is like right with illegal stuff, scandal, corruption.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's known a little bit because there was a really good podcast about the origins of California City.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's called California City.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it talks about the land scams.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's just, I mean, that place is just, it was built on the scams.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the, it's like the dream land of scammers.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the scam was that they were selling the land to people and then the land like wasn't there's at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were selling land to people with the idea, the promise that it would be valuable one day, even if it wasn't.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which was basically repackaging the original idea of what California City was.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is here by these plots of land because a city will be here one day.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they have all this infrastructure to be like a massive city.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is the third largest city in California by land.

[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing there.

[SPEAKER_01]: But nothing there.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the infrastructure is there, which is so huge.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're driving through a ghost town.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's so creepy, man.

[SPEAKER_01]: It really, it is eerie there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's, I'm telling you, it is the hell, mouth.

[SPEAKER_01]: I get sick every time I come back from that place.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like the energy up there is so dark.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is so dark.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, not to get all woo woo.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like my soul's like, nope, nope.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are in the fetal position the entire next day.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's, it's weird.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it goes under the radar, like the largest detention center, second largest?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's the largest ice detention center in California.

[SPEAKER_01]: They legally have just over 2700 beds, but I think.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's safe to say they're gonna go well over 3000.

[SPEAKER_01]: but we have no idea how many people are actually inside right now.

[SPEAKER_03]: We heard 500, but we don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just think that's a bullshit line because it was 500 on August 29th or September 1st and it hasn't changed, there's no way.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are only reasons to not have more would be staff and that was just not an issue up there.

[SPEAKER_01]: They wouldn't have a hard time staffing that prison.

[SPEAKER_03]: A big thing is that they're going to have jobs for everyone in the town to be ice officers, I guess, or not ice officers necessarily, but to like work in the kitchen or work as security or whatever they're.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's about to be a full-on company town and they're about to bend the knee.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, a big selling point is like, yeah, over time, and all these good paying jobs.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, once these corporations, these big companies have their hooks into your town, why do they need to pay you a good wage?

[SPEAKER_01]: There's nowhere else you can go.

[SPEAKER_01]: They own everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: They own the local gas station.

[SPEAKER_01]: They own the markets.

[SPEAKER_01]: They own you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like you can quit and get a different job.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_03]: What job are you going to get once everyone works at that detention center?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or works is some way affiliated because it is a company town, which is what they are doing.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're going to move everyone in.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're going to take over the town.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so the big thing is the town is also hugely in debt.

[SPEAKER_03]: They did sell off the fire department.

[SPEAKER_03]: That was a big thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: They were going to privatize the fire department and EMT services, and they did it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They did, they did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so they now have no paramedics in the entire town.

[SPEAKER_01]: No paramedics.

[SPEAKER_03]: So they have the city infrastructure and they have no nothing there and they're putting all these company men in there.

[SPEAKER_03]: They have access to multiple airports.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to talk about the trains?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so essentially where this prison is, it sits right next to Edward's Air Force Base and like we said, there's a small airport, there's a couple of those small airports up there actually, but what you will notice when you're driving into Mojave is that you are following the train tracks and if you actually look at the rail system, the cargo system, like the cargo rail system.

[SPEAKER_01]: It goes straight to Edward's Air Force Base.

[SPEAKER_01]: It goes straight through that desert because that is the former line that they used from the port of LA to Edward's Air Force Base in World War II when they were building stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: So right now there is a direct line from downtown LA where they are [SPEAKER_01]: kidnapping people, straight up to the middle of the desert, to an air force base, where there isn't a fly zone, where it is impossible to get eyes out there by that prison, by that air force, you can disappear people and no one would ever even know it's happening.

[SPEAKER_01]: They would never know.

[SPEAKER_03]: My thing too is even if you escape your in the middle of the, to quote, to quote, ocean's 11, you're in the middle of the fucking desert.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no escape.

[SPEAKER_01]: You'll die.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the Mojave Desert.

[SPEAKER_01]: You will immediately die.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so there's the airports.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a no fly zone.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's all of this way that they can say you can't be here because this is a military.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the trains, I love the people in the comments of the video that were like, um, those are cargo trains.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, yeah, bitch.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they're going to put the beat, you're so stupid.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that they thought it was going to be like the surf liner, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: We're taking people on the surf liner.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to stand a Barbara.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like with the [SPEAKER_01]: We're laughing because it's so horrible and we're laughing because we're so exhausted and we're so real and we've actually kind of kind of seen it like, oh, no, like I can see the trains in my head.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so the big thing from the video that we ended up putting out about I would say a quarter of the information that we have also I want to make the point that it is a prison it's set up as a prison.

[SPEAKER_03]: and they're calling it a detention center as a technicality so that they can bring people there and say, well, it's on their way to deportation.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the problem is is that this has the infrastructure of an indefinite prison.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they're being treated like prisoners.

[SPEAKER_01]: So all of these ice detention centers, they're all being brought out of prisons.

[SPEAKER_03]: We have intel about what it's like inside.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I mean, we do know what it's like inside.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have we talked to people.

[SPEAKER_01]: So like when we go to those California city council meetings, people call it family members call in and they've spoken to people who are inside that facility.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in touch with lawyers who have clients inside that facility.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've spoken to people who have been inside that facility.

[SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: The point is cruelty.

[SPEAKER_01]: The point is torture.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are not being treated like humans.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a detention center.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a prison.

[SPEAKER_03]: So every council meeting this little girl calls in and she's like crying and she's maybe 13 12 and she's asking where her dad is and she thinks he's in [SPEAKER_03]: and they just go like, thanks, and then that's it.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's so bad.

[SPEAKER_01]: That little girl called in the first time, I went up there, the time before you went up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was so in shock because we're coming off of LA City Council and our local government and just getting absolutely nowhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: like they don't care asking these questions just asking anybody for help like just will somebody help us will somebody answer a question and we have five months later we still have nothing but I went up there and you have this little girl who again we don't know what she looks like we don't know where in California she's even calling from but you can tell that she is a little girl looking for her dad and she was told that he was transferred [SPEAKER_01]: to California City and can anyone help her.

[SPEAKER_01]: She is called all of these various numbers and she's called all over the state and this little kid is calling into a Zoom meeting in California City like not even a council meeting, a city planning commission meeting.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what she was calling into and just asking if anybody could help her.

[SPEAKER_03]: And just nothing, I just the absolute silence of we can't help you because there's a thing of like you're not supposed to respond on city council to comment, but as a human being I don't know how you don't just like break decorum like everything that's happening is illegal so just be a human it's bizarre when that call came in I had to leave the room I went outside I was gone for like 20 minutes I went outside.

[SPEAKER_03]: I needed air and I was like gonna throw up.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the other time that that happened was when we were at the detention center and I saw kids waving through the window and I had to like sit down and breathe like not into an actual paper bag but I was like I'm having a panic attack.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't think people realize there are kids in the MDC don't like in downtown.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like there are kids being held in that building and they do heart hands in the window and devastating.

[SPEAKER_01]: awful.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are kids are being imprisoned in the middle of Los Angeles.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's awful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then the people like trying to be like, please don't imprison them are getting shot by L.A.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yep, with the less than lethal, which whatever, then so this girl calls in, I don't know with with L acity council and listeners, if you know about your city council right in or if you've been because some people were like, oh, it's like parks and wreck, but it's that that show I think did some damage because it's not funny, I mean it's funny because it's insane.

[SPEAKER_03]: but it's like not funny to be like, oh, L-O-L, it normalized city councils being useless.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think, believe me, you don't want to get into how I think Parks and Rec is a sign-up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, so- But no, I love Leslie, no, don't, I love, I just think it's a, I think it's a neoliberal sign-up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're number first fight.

[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, so I think people were like, oh, City Councils are supposed to be dumb.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it's really ridiculous to go like people didn't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like we would post clips of us like screaming and begging for help from LACD Council.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they don't even pay attention.

[SPEAKER_03]: They don't listen.

[SPEAKER_03]: Marky Sarasdawson is like eating and like yawning.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's like Caesar Flickman from the Hunger Games.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then he wishes he was dressed that well.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, so then sure he really, he doesn't have hats of style.

[SPEAKER_03]: So then going to California City, there was like a precedent of city council meetings.

[SPEAKER_03]: They just don't react.

[SPEAKER_03]: The council members are stoneface.

[SPEAKER_03]: They don't react.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if there's a level of their, they're so tuned out or they're used to it.

[SPEAKER_03]: They like kill off a bit of their emotions.

[SPEAKER_03]: So do you want to talk about the water and the electricity and all that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I mean, that video, I mean, it was interesting, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because we had a plan to roll out several things, and then, um, [SPEAKER_01]: we basically had uncovered some stuff and saw, we saw the map, we saw what was being laid out.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we thought, okay, we have to do some more investigating and be more intentional about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all really wanted to do the ethical thing and make sure whatever we put out, we had fully vetted and researched.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, because we don't want to be conspiracy theorist.

[SPEAKER_01]: So everything that we put out is true in facts.

[SPEAKER_01]: We wanted to do more, but basically, like, we're working on this California city of it all, and then I stumble onto water.

[SPEAKER_01]: California city sits on an aquifer, and one of the meetings that I was in, I had heard them mention a pipeline.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, in real time when I heard it, you know, in the five hours of just boring meeting, using pipeline, you think, oil pipeline.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then I thought later, I went, I wonder if that's a water pipeline.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I go back, rewatch that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it is, it's a water pipeline.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it, it's connected to rich crust.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so anyway, the water sense, and it completely different direction and like what was actually happening in the state.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, [SPEAKER_01]: water is very precious in California as we know California city sits in an interesting location.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's on an aquifer.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's in Kern County.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the like southern part of the central valley where all of the food in California is grown.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's where all the agriculture is.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the water flows from the north through the central valley.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you have the LA aqueduct and that flows through California city.

[SPEAKER_01]: And with all of the water part, it just suddenly all of the military bases look different and then looking at the congressional map looks very very different and you see where troops are being sent.

[SPEAKER_01]: And where the railroads are, it just, it's suddenly the map starts to look really different when you see who's donating to whose campaigns, who's buying more water futures, and where they're investing that money, what corporations are moving into places like California City.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very, very alarming.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very alarming.

[SPEAKER_01]: They clearly have a plan in place and they don't want anyone to see it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want anyone watching.

[SPEAKER_03]: All of those areas, you think that California is blue, blue, blue.

[SPEAKER_03]: All of those areas that we're talking about are red.

[SPEAKER_03]: All of those very red officials are donated to by [SPEAKER_03]: big like defense contractors all that stuff water is more precious than gold like they're the investments in water are it's going to be that's going to be at the end of the world you've seen Mad Max that's going to be the thing so there's a couple called the Resonix [SPEAKER_03]: And if you want to look into the Resnix, look into the Resnix, and there's a documentary called Water and Power, and the Resnix own a lot of the water in California, and they do, they do palm, they own a lot of companies.

[SPEAKER_03]: So look into wonderful corporation and Paul and look into everything that they own.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're one of those companies that likes to present themselves as a philanthropic endeavor by saying, oh, we love our workers and look, we're building neighborhood playgrounds, but they pay them less than slave wages.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like they are trafficking people and they hide behind.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, but look, we built a [SPEAKER_03]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_03]: And everyone kind of knows it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And also on that video that you made the wonderful company commented nothing to see here nothing nothing screams were innocent like commenting on a social media post tag to all of us and then was like this isn't true and it's like there's a full documentary about it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like what are you talking about?

[SPEAKER_03]: It is interesting because you were trying to get journalists before you made this whole video.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like you were trying to get journalists to cover this and it was like dead until the SF Chronicle did something.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I just, I just wanted somebody to cover course civic in California City because it made zero sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, everyone's freaking out about alligator alcatraz because it's illegal, but that's run by the state, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's freaking out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all over the news.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has the, the hip, you know, marketing, click, baby name, and it's like, okay, that's 800 people.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is 3000.

[SPEAKER_01]: And our governor who's trolling the shit out of the president isn't saying anything nothing like it makes it makes no sense like I'll be honest if it's it's it's it's just hard for me not to think This is where it gets conspiracy theory right like it's hard for me not to think that [SPEAKER_01]: the elected officials are just complicit in some way, because if you would just say, hey, this is happening, but we don't know what to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: At least you're saying something, but like there have been people in the rooms with the governor, he will not comment on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He will not comment on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody will comment on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I couldn't get a single news outlet to pick up the story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why it is such an easy story, it's a juicy story.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the easiest story to pitch.

[SPEAKER_03]: and no one would pick it up and and then we just kept finding more stuff and it was like well yeah I guess we're doing this now and so you put it out on social media which got a lot of attention which is wild because then there was the SF Chronicle story I wrote something about it for auto straddle and then we run into so many people who were like oh the largest attention center in California is open [SPEAKER_01]: And we're like, yeah, they're like, what people at a lay don't know, they're literally driving straight from the detention center right up there, that's where they're tracking me to California city.

[SPEAKER_03]: So once we started looking at this, my big thing and you said it in the video, so I'm just going to say it is that I was like, oh, it's a slave city.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like what they're going to do is they're going to take people by cargo train and by these planes and move them into this no-fly zone and then there's all this infrastructure in California City.

[SPEAKER_03]: So you can have people living there who work for nothing.

[SPEAKER_03]: You can put people up in housing or build little shacks or whatever.

[SPEAKER_03]: You can have them in the prison and then have a whole community there.

[SPEAKER_03]: You have the water.

[SPEAKER_03]: You have water to power electricity.

[SPEAKER_03]: and you can also hold the water hostage.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I really see them doing is because the prisons on the very outskirts of California city and then it just is endless, Mojave, you're in Death Valley, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Maga, the president, they're not lying when they say they're bringing manufacturing back to America, they very much are.

[SPEAKER_01]: Manufacturing is coming back, but they're not gonna be any jobs.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're not bringing jobs back.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're actually, that's such a white people move by the way, is verbiage.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're, they're very specific.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're bringing manufacturing back.

[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't say they're bringing jobs back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so they're going to build everything in towns like California City and probably like 11 North Kansas.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are all these, if you look it up, there are so many in your state, you probably have one of these cities being built.

[SPEAKER_01]: it'll be a rural town.

[SPEAKER_01]: They pray upon them.

[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be a place where they can hide stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: It depends on what they're going to be building.

[SPEAKER_01]: But like this is why California City is so scary in particular.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's because you can do a lot out there and there's no way for anyone to ever.

[SPEAKER_01]: see it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're just going to build labor camps out there and there will be manufacturing for what is it batteries, literally any cars like the stuff that people buy on a daily basis, whatever it is that you buy from Walmart, whatever it is you buy from Starbucks.

[SPEAKER_01]: That stuff is going to be made.

[SPEAKER_01]: by labor camp people like this is it's going to be slave labor and they're going to build these cities and there's going to be a whole operation that builds up around it but scares me in particular about California City though is the biomedical testing because you just know I mean that's already out there biomedical and aerospace technology that's there and you have the trains you can just [SPEAKER_01]: traffic thousands and thousands of people and no one would ever know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, think about how many people could disappear into medical testing.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, think of how many people they say that they want to quote unquote deport from this country.

[SPEAKER_01]: Think of how many of those people are in LA.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's millions of people.

[SPEAKER_03]: how do you get them out of the city they can deport them and say we don't know where they are and then they're in California City.

[SPEAKER_01]: They quote unquote deport them they're just they're just at like a biomedical test.

[SPEAKER_01]: They go missing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Elon Musk's neural link thing they basically said what they're fast tracking how do you do that?

[SPEAKER_01]: That means you have to start testing on people.

[SPEAKER_01]: They have to start testing on people who you think they're in his head.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is straight up Nazi shit, which is straight up American shit.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, prisons already do this.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like they already have people, yeah, manufacturing stuff for peanuts.

[SPEAKER_03]: They have firefighters to paint nothing.

[SPEAKER_03]: They have all these things in place anyway.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a leap that it would be like, oh, you're in prison, actually, or you're in a detention center, actually, and your job is to start making batteries, actually.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they've been slow rolling this for decades.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, they started in the 70s into the 80s with mass incarceration, and they've just slowly been seeing how much they can get away with.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the truth is, if people don't have to see it, and people aren't made uncomfortable by it, and when I say people, I mostly mean white people, then [SPEAKER_01]: You know, not really might issue not my problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it can exist in the background.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it is going to be exactly that right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Literally, this is going to get worse and worse and worse.

[SPEAKER_01]: until they start disappearing, people who look like me off the street and sending them to labor camps.

[SPEAKER_01]: Truly, that's what's gonna, it's gonna have to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: It really sucks.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's don't have interest.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't disappear myself just, you know.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was about to say neither of us are suicidal.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are not suicidal.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: My password is, no, I'm just kidding.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's dark, but real.

[SPEAKER_03]: 1,200 people went missing from Algheter, Alcatraz.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, they don't know where they are.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you start being like, this isn't conspiracy.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is happening and if nobody's gonna cover it, then we'll just put it out.

[SPEAKER_03]: And all you can do is put it out and see what people say.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that video did really well.

[SPEAKER_03]: You would think even as a former journalist myself, or a guest current journalist, if I saw that video, I would also make a post about that video.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I haven't seen anyone do a response to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, that's a good point.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know we were a little worried.

[SPEAKER_01]: about conspiracy theory stuff when we put it out, but that's where I was like okay we're only putting out facts.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not really putting out that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, except like okay this is the perfect way to hide a slave city.

[SPEAKER_01]: Should they want to do that?

[SPEAKER_01]: That was the only conjecture.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't get a lot of like bullshit like this is conspiracy crap.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a lot of, oh wow, look at the train tracks.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you look at the math like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a lot of like I do think we're just so used to seeing information piecemeal that when you put it all together Things look scary and that's where I don't know the last five months [SPEAKER_01]: I just, nothing's conspiracy anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't mean that in like a Laura Loomer way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean that in like, everywhere we look, people are doing really, really bad evil things.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just don't think it's a leap to think that someone else might be doing really, really bad evil things.

[SPEAKER_03]: So another big comment, I'll close with this.

[SPEAKER_03]: Another big comment was, well, what can we do about it?

[SPEAKER_03]: Which I'm fucking hate.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me tell you something.

[SPEAKER_03]: Two things I hate.

[SPEAKER_03]: One is when people comment, well, okay, what are we supposed to do about it?

[SPEAKER_03]: And two, when people say, well, it's time for the second amendment, I'm like, okay, then you do it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what are you saying with that comment?

[SPEAKER_03]: That's what you want?

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, if that's your stance, how about you take that risk or how about you put your body on the line?

[SPEAKER_03]: And then I've just started responding, are you going to bail me out if I do it?

[SPEAKER_03]: And like, they're not because I'm not going to because they're not going to, like, yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: So then there's that.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then also the people that are like, well, what are we supposed to do about it?

[SPEAKER_03]: Or there was a video this girl made that was like, [SPEAKER_03]: look it up like you're an adult like get involved you're a grown up and then people were like on that video were like okay well what do i do like where do i look it up and i'm like i'm gonna straight up explode yeah what can people do kv well right now actually there's a very clear action that people can do and that is the blackout that is the boycott look i think i'm the [SPEAKER_01]: Our friend Taylor, who's on your podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's been screaming.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's been screaming about this for months and she was screaming about it before we even met but I remember the first time she brought up the general strike and look I am your typical [SPEAKER_01]: like left, do good or NPR, liberal-leading, you know, I think I'm like doing good in the world, but then you don't really know what you don't know until you really don't fucking know and then you know it and you can't see it and that's where I am and so when she said General Strike I'm like [SPEAKER_01]: How do people just like not spend money for a week and like people who people can't just like not go to work and I Here's the thing here's what you can do guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually not that hard.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have been conditioned.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have been conditioned [SPEAKER_01]: to give our money to corporations, as opposed to keeping it within our communities.

[SPEAKER_01]: So a general strike, all that means don't spend money at corporations.

[SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't mean don't send money.

[SPEAKER_01]: It means shop local.

[SPEAKER_01]: It means like instead of going to Starbucks, go to your local barista, go to your local coffee shop.

[SPEAKER_01]: It means instead of going to Barnes and Noble, support your local bookstore.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're someone who knows what a book is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it means like going and supporting a like a local cafe as opposed to going to the cheesecake factory.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's coming for the cheesecake factory.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I love me some cheesecake.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: But like come on, cheesecake factory is fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Don't go there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are a billion dollar business.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of these, all of these chains, these corporations, target Walmart, all of these companies, they have gotten us conditioned to pay them [SPEAKER_01]: to sell us back the things that we can buy down the street like and so we're sending our money here you know what's interesting is when I was growing up I don't know if you remember this or maybe this was just my really racist growing up a really big talking point like anti-immigration was like oh well you know they come here and they [SPEAKER_01]: They work our American jobs and send our American money away like out of the country that was like I grew up hearing that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's interesting, I don't hear that anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: I never hear that anymore because, man, it's so easy to draw that comparison because what the fuck does a corporation do?

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: You pay a corporation and that money does not stand your community.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't even stand your state.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hell, it doesn't stand the country.

[SPEAKER_01]: Most of these corporations, we're paying them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're not paying American workers.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're not even paying for American goods.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we are paying them and we are just sending money out in a way.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the way people can actually like regain their power.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think if people are feeling powerless, or you feel like, you know, there's nothing I can do.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a frontline person or ice is not in my town.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a really, really easy way to join the fight and to see exactly how powerful you are.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because, [SPEAKER_01]: These billionaires, these corporations, they do not exist without us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Literally, they can't function.

[SPEAKER_01]: Their money is our money.

[SPEAKER_01]: They only become trillionaires because they're taking the money out of our pockets.

[SPEAKER_01]: They only become that because we show up to work.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if people actually just all got together on Black Friday and said, you know what?

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's stay home.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's not stream anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's...

[SPEAKER_01]: not shop, or you know what?

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go out and support our local smoothie shop or local cafe instead.

[SPEAKER_01]: That would think of the money that goes into your local economy because that goes to a local vendor who will keep that money in that community in that town.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I really think it would be like game stop, but global.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like think of how cool it was to see game stop, like the them rig that [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we've done an episode on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, I mean, you, you could see like, oh, you're tired of paying all this money, you're tired of being taken advantage of you're tired of the cost of living.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is how you get back at them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Their wallets are the only thing that they care about, so just don't give them your money.

[SPEAKER_01]: They hold you anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: They will do anything to get you to open your wallet.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I guarantee you, if people just stopped, [SPEAKER_01]: what would come out of like the government trying to get people to spend money would be fascinating because they are broken without us.

[SPEAKER_01]: So just don't spend your money at Target.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hell, even just pick one thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: If it's not everything, just pick one thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, right, don't I still go to Starbucks.

[SPEAKER_03]: Once you get rid of that stuff, I don't miss any of it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I found alternatives in terms of getting rid of streaming.

[SPEAKER_03]: What's been interesting is I have a library card.

[SPEAKER_03]: and you can get hoopla and you can get canopy.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's movies for free, TV shows for free.

[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of it is British TV, which is fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: The point I'm making is that you can discover new stuff.

[SPEAKER_03]: So like when I go on canopy, let's say I type in, I can't find what I'm looking for, but I'm like, we're typing Harrison Ford and I'm like, what are you gonna say here's some Ford binning?

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, here's a move I've never heard of.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, let's watch it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm watching stuff that isn't like spoon fed to me.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: off of you know, oh, these are the default settings.

[SPEAKER_03]: You'll be like, you know, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like you just, I've just found so much joy in not doing the default settings and figuring out the local places and getting to know like I live in West Hollywood.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's its own city.

[SPEAKER_03]: getting to know all the people there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's not presenting it not as a boycott, but to me as a procott.

[SPEAKER_03]: Procott.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I've made all these lists.

[SPEAKER_03]: If people want them, I'll start posting them.

[SPEAKER_03]: All these lists of local grocery stores, local coffee shops that you can use in each part of LA instead of galsons or whatever.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for joining us.

[SPEAKER_03]: Weirken people [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Katie LaFoon on Instagram.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm probably yelling at somebody or crying for sure.

[SPEAKER_03]: A link tree slash makeup ruckus is has a lot of good stuff that we've put out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you want to follow local activists here in LA and some specific people around the country that we think are doing really good work, yeah, our link tree is great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just go make a ruckus.