In the concrete jungle of downtown Portland the fireworks of fourth of July celebrations echo into a thundering drum beat. The scene harkens back to Portland’s controversial Black Lives Matter insurrection in 2020. When this very park was occupied by thousands of protestors laying siege to the Multnomah County Justice Center. Back then the fireworks were launched at lines of riot cops.

The crowd is smaller now, just over a hundred and many are heavily armored, the Antifa boogeyman in black facing off with Portland Police’s Rapid Response Division with the newly reinstalled Thompson Elk dividing them. The label of ‘anti-american’ is played out, almost exclusively a reason to ostracize voices of dissent. But in this case the label might just fit.

The theme of the night was fury. Fury over the expanding mass deportations of immigrants and residents through ICE's illegal steamrolling of court orders and statutes. Fury over the genocide of Palestine, and America's support for the state of Israel. Fury over the Epstein Files, and the "pedophile billionaire class" who protestors believe govern the nation. And fury over America's 250th anniversary, a date many protestors labeled a 'white supremacist holiday', celebrating '250 years of genocide'. As American flags burned with the send off of bagpipes, their fury found a suitable outlet in a right wing live-stream troll, Tommy Allen.

Allen has become a regular presence at Portland’s protests, building a following online by harassing protestors he sees as ‘domestic terrorists’. He has been arrested several times over for physical assault and disorderly conduct for his activity.

Allen had staked out the park since that afternoon, sprawling in a bench on his live steam and harassing passers by, seemingly at random. When I arrived at the site of the protest, he was nowhere to be found. That changed thirty minutes in when he returned with his entourage of live streamers, positioning himself amidst the bike cops and trading insults with the protestors who quickly stepped up to him.

Tommy's entourage was slowly driven from the park as the sun fell. Then all at once they turned and ran, with a faction of the protestors giving chase. The police retreated and seemed to give up on protecting the live streamers. I hopped on their stream and watched the provocateurs high tail it all the way to Portland State University before turning back, and leading their pursuers directly to the front door of the Portland Police Precinct in the back of the Justice Center where a standoff ensued with police looking on.

“Two illegals doesn’t make a legal!” Shouts Tommy, arguing against birthright citizenship, “Just like two wrongs doesn’t make a right!”

“If two wrongs doesn’t make a right then how were you born, Tommy?!” A protestor jeers to a host of laughter, “Make it make sense!”

This argument would be their last, as Tommy bowed out of the scene. Did he feel he’d accomplished his goal of antagonizing the group and siphoning a number of the protestors? Had he gotten all the stream engagement he could? Or did he simply want to go watch the fireworks? I cannot say. But he served as only the opening act for that night’s battle.

With the agitators gone, protestors focused their attention on Rapid Response, the division of riot cops staging around the corner of the Justice Center, trading insults with police until they were ordered to retreat, handing off the side of their white van. They became a permanent fixture of the night, watching on from various street corners as protestors began to stretch across the roadway through the center of the park, the Elk looming large behind them.

It wasn’t long before the police broadcasted several arrest warnings on their LRAD system.

“They’re grasping at straws because they don’t have anything to work with.” Snorted one of the journalists I’d connected with. The ‘criminal activity’ being cited was the “reckless burning” of American flags, and the blocking of the minor roadway of main street. Still many protestors refused to back down as a fireworks show on the waterfront reached its crescendo in one long thunderous uproar resonating off the artificial faces of the Justice Center.

The standoff plateaued as the sidewalks were flooded with crowds of onlookers leaving the fireworks show to wander unwittingly into one much more contentious. Perhaps the protestors and the police both realized that the presence of these bystanders would make tear gas far less suitable. Because the protestors suddenly did an about face, pivoting to block the much busier three lane 3rd avenue flowing in front of the Center.

This blockade would be short lived.

I'd sidelined myself with the announcement of impending arrests, seeing as I was still on probation from my last arrest for standing in a roadway during a protest. So I only saw the stream of bear spray fly through the air and the blockade coalesce into a brawl. I ran to catch up, rounding the corner in time to hear the thwack of a man's face striking metal. The air still tasting of pepper petro-chemical sticking to my clothes and my skin.

“Just walk away!” Protestors barked at him as they drove the assailant back. Following him across the park to be assured of his exit.

Then it rippled through through the line like a shockwave. “Gun. He has a gun.”

I hopped into the grass past a protestor sprawled out as others flushed out his eyes. Then I cut across the park in time to see police surround the man who had pulled a gun. Not to arrest him, but to escort him to safety. A protestor was then simultaneously arrested for allegedly “banging his stick” on a metal box too loud.

I began to collect witness statements to piece together what had happened.

“Did any of you happen to see the gun?” I asked one group of people recovering in the grass.

“No. He came up and punched me so I was down.” Said the woman recovering in the grass with her friends.

One of them spoke up, “Yeah I saw it, he pulled it on me.”

I nodded and collected several other witness statements and pictures to corroborate their story.

In spite of the chaos of the moment, the story remained consistent no matter who told it. The man, who has not yet been identified had approached the road blockade and started an altercation with a woman. He yelled at her about ‘hating America’, and when she refused to back down, he allegedly hit her. This was when the bear spray was deployed against the man, and several people gave him a short beating to subdue him. Then as he was driven from the park he brandished a firearm, it seemed to do little because he continued to retreat to the edge of the park, where police finally intercepted the altercation. After a brief conversation he was escorted away with the protection of the police, apparently free to go.

The firearm appears to be a compact Glock 43x with an extended magazine, possibly a ten round glock 19 magazine.

As protestors jeered at the police in the aftermath of the incident, I witnessed one of the bike cops stop abruptly, leading to a protestor bumping into him. The officer turned and accused the man of assaulting him. Protestors came to his defense, pointing out they had recorded the interaction and the officer eventually abandoned his attempt to arrest the protestor.

Tommy Allen later alleged in a post on X that around 3:30am that same night, someone slashed his tires, smashed his bedroom window and bear-maced him and his wife while they were in bed.

Unless otherwise specified, all pictures are my own.

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The woods are home to many things. In that place everything is- or has been alive.

I wandered through the woods until the day I turned eighteen. In every step I found the beauty and decay between the mist shrouded evergreens of the pacific northwest. And many odd things too. By far the oddest things calling the woods home are the people, and I do include myself in that estimation. All of us are in one way or another, a bit stilted. Off kilter. A bit too stuck in our own company. When people can’t stomach being alone with themselves anymore they tend to turn towards distractions. Dissociating through drink and smoke and fumes.

But when everything around you is alive, you care never truly alone.

Once in the dead of night I snuck out along the gravel roads to clear my head of all that weighed on me. Grappling with myself and my trials, all the ways I overworked myself to avoid confronting myself and my life. Anything to put as much distance between myself and that house slowly sliding down a landslide.

My plate was full of sour things. I wanted so badly to be normal, to be somewhere I wasn’t. Somewhere I wouldn’t be so alone. Even worse, I had a crush on a boy. I didn’t think there was understanding for such things- not in my family. I must have prayed. Perhaps I demanded answers. Perhaps I offered a challenge in the way that an angsty teen grappling with the recognition of their queerness might challenge god to a game of truth or dare. I don’t remember what I said alone to the world in the dead of night. But I remember what happened next.

The sky was overcast, but the light of the moon still filtered through. And I let my eyes adjust to the dark for me, carrying a flashlight only to signal to passing cars so they wouldn’t strike me by mistake. Perhaps I preferred the serene meditation of the dark, or perhaps I was chancing death playing hide and seek with the cars that flew down those gravel backroads kicking up dust and rocks like the shrapnel of a grenade. It happened suddenly, and only the once as I reached a bend in the gravel road holding my breath as the last of the dust settled in the wake of a passing car. At once the night was overwhelmed by the oppression of thunder. And yet there was no flash, nothing lit up the veiled sky and no trickle of rain began to fall as one might expect. Just the single thunderous charge and I alone to bear witness. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and my midnight escapade ended there and then.

But my journey didn’t. When I was sixteen, my mother forced me to come out to her by going through my phone. She interrogated me about the boy I was talking to, once she extracted her confession, she claimed to accept this aspect of me even as she accused me of lying by hiding it. My vulnerability was exculpated as both expectation and execution all at once. In spite of this I worked up the courage to ask that boy out after going swimming together over the summer. He said yes, and I gave him my virginity. And when summer drew to an end I came into my own as the president of my high school’s queer social club.

This too, was Sasquatch’s fault.

That is, according to Wayne. That was not his name, but it’s what we’ll call him, all things being the same in the end. Wayne was old, potbellied with a wild grey beard down to his naval. He wore a cattleman hat and wielded an ornately carved and polished cane that he leaned on to get around. He liked to chew tobacco and spit and every movement came with a host of grunts and grumbles at the effort of overcoming his own inertia.

Wayne was assigned into my life by convenience, he was someone with a reliable truck, someone who lent out a ride when needed. And they often were, in our farmhouse twenty miles from civilization with a rotating cast of barely functioning vehicles slowly amassing into a junkyard. I don’t love that he was treated as simply one of very few available resources, even if I didn’t love the man himself.

His truck was barely holding together. It’s engine rumbled like a combine or a backhoe or some other great beast of machinery. Wayne fancied himself something of a backyard mechanic, my mother- or more accurately, her boyfriend (who introduced us to Wayne) had sought his ‘services’ to fix our cars on several occasions. These ventures always ended the same way. Repairs would be dragged out indefinitely. Wayne would pocket a couple hundred bucks and we would add another addition to our junkyard. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Still he approached a semblance of reliability as a ‘taxi service’. And it turned out he knew our winding slippery gravel roads well. Our street was his memory lane, as he gave us a ride one day he reminisced about the days of his youth drag racing his buddies along those very backroads, outrunning the police with his friends. He was quite proud that they’d never caught him. Not once in all those years, and he’d never flown off the road and ended up in a ditch either, as had happened with so many others who rolled those same dice.

I only nodded along. It was a romantic vision he laid out as he ferried me along. The hardy mischief of youth. I was almost jealous, having no car to live such a life myself. My mother must have noticed the kernel of mischief beginning to take root because she promptly told me off for my interest. Adventurism was a life I never had, stranded alone on a farm far from anyone I could call a friend. Every day felt as though I were running out of time, I was the last of my class to get a cell phone, the last to have internet, the last to get my license. The world was passing me by, and I was stuck in a house rotting at the foundation.

And so I encouraged Wayne to tell his stories, if only to absorb vicariously a bit of the lust for life he’d once held. So I laughed that he was very lucky he’d never been caught, given the tendencies of the police in a small town like ours where the police are a tight knit pack defending their own. Although considering he was white he might’ve come out of it alright.

He only snickered that if blacks don’t want to get shot by the police they shouldn’t run.

His argument is logically consistent. In a racists eyes some people are more worthy of life than others. The cognitive dissonance disappears once this hierarchy is accepted.

Wayne had been a friend of my mother’s boyfriend, a significant dynamic considering he was himself a dark skinned mulatto man of Black and Hispanic roots, and it later turned out by virtue of a DNA test, deeply Ashkenazi as well. Although to say they were friends might be a stretch. Wayne was, as far as I could tell, the closest thing he had to a friend. Yet when Wayne was on his death bed of cancer a year later my mother’s boyfriend didn’t so much as ring him up to check on him. Wayne was only ever a resource to be extracted, his racist disposition a mere inconvenience, a familiar hazard of existing in rural Oregon. Or maybe he pocketed the money for his shoddy handywork one too many times to get a visit on his deathbed.

I only sought a ride from him on one other occasion once all other options had been exhausted, of which there were not many. As I climbed into shotgun I clutched my bag to my chest. It was my guardian prepared to defend against whatever mental gymnastics I would be confronted with on this encounter. I’ve always had a slight build, even more so when I was sixteen. I would have been content riding in silence and getting the whole thing over with. But people in the boonies spend too much time alone. When they finally have an audience they don’t much care much if they want to listed, especially not if they’re captive.

And so Wayne began to recount his wild life of huffing paint and drinking moonshine as I nodded along, accepting my lot in life as Wayne’s sounding board. It was not an unfamiliar position for me to find myself in, as the defacto audience to the ego’s of old men. It quickly became clear he didn’t much care if I had any part in our ‘conversation’ at all, so I decided it would be more entertaining to wade this out by at least steering the conversation. But my ironic interest devolved into a genuine one as every word that came from his mouth became more insane than the last.

Wayne held the conviction that Sasquatch was real. A non too rare belief in itself. Towns across rural Oregon are dotted with statues of the cryptid with varying degrees of sincerity. Sasquatch sightings stretch across all of north america, and some date back centuries, connecting them even to the stories of various indigenous tribes. Of course in these communities none can agree on what Sasquatch look like, how tall they are, or even what they are. The missing link of evolution, a forest spirit, an entity, or a wild man. The creature has been attributed uncanny supernatural powers the world over, teleportation, hypnosis, invisibility, the list continues infinitely.

But in America is isn’t enough to be a cryptid, it leaves too much wanting. There must of course, be a conspiracy. Wayne was convinced that Sasquatch is an alien. There was no doubt in his paint fumigated mind whatsoever.

Not only was Sasquatch an alien, there was not just one, but an entire species of aliens. A species Wayne insisted, that was actually in league with the Federal Government. A secret agency of sorts, tasked with running errands along a massive network of underground highways stretching across the entire continental United States. Built perhaps to ship weapons, or as a bunker in case of a nuclear holocaust or invasion. Never mind that this is the stated purpose of the actual highway network that already exists.

The arrangement went like this: the Sasquatch had agreed to do the bidding of the federal government in exchange for protection. This was how they had stayed hidden all these years, and why the government went to such lengths to obscure and cover up the existence of this magnificent cryptid.

Suffice to say I was enraptured. It all made so much sense I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself. The only question was why? Why would the government do such a thing?

To spread the gay agenda of course. Wayne huffed as though it were obvious, to corrupt the minds of the youth and to turn them gay. To enact population control in the grand vision of replacing the white race by keeping the youth from reproducing.

Slowly I reached into my bag and clutched at my pocket knife I always secretly kept on me. The one I wasn’t supposed to have. My boyfriend had been blindsided and sucker punched sideways at school not a month before. He hadn’t even caught a glimpse of his assailant, and I was on edge. Was Wayne testing me- toying with me? Or could he really not tell I was queer? I slowly uncrossed my legs and straightened my chin, trying probably in vain to present less effeminately. Perhaps he had never actually known a queer person, and didn’t know what signs to look for. Because for all his opinions he didn’t seem to have the nose to pick up on what was obviously right in front of him.

I conjured up the courage to interrupt him, cutting through his unending diatribe with a request to be let out of the car. We were still four miles from my house along hills and gravel roads. He asked me if I was sure. And I said yes without mustering an excuse.

I closed the door as softly as I could, as though disarming a bomb, and he peeled off, disappearing on top of a dust cloud. It was leaving the atmosphere, escaping the orbit- in that pocket of space-time where reality bends to Wayne’s gravity.

Lunacy has it’s own charisma. All these years could a ten foot tall hairy alien with an FBI badge have been whispering gay thoughts in my ear? Puppeting me on the whim of someone else’s agenda. Part of a plan far larger, more sinister, and more secretive than a secret race of aliens could ever be. The machinations of the united states government.

Of course it goes without saying, huffing paint has probably done far more to curb the reproduction of the youth than Sassy ever could. What a convenient scapegoat something that doesn’t exist can be.

But somewhere along the line it became easier to believe in a sasquatch cabal than to believe that minorities deserve respect.

And once again I was alone on those backroads listening for the rumbling of rubber parting gravel- in no particular hurry to get home. The sun was up and the view was breathtaking from my vantage point over hills of rolling pastures and vineyards and forests way off to the mountains guarding the coast. Oregon is a beautiful place full of weird people.

I never asked Wayne for a ride again.

I’m currently heading into a very tumultuous time as I face moving to a new city with my cat, Misdemeanor. If you liked this work and have the ability, please contribute with a one time donation or a paid subscription with bonus perks including access to extra premium content in addition to my regular free work.

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A jeering crowd spits fury at the haggard delivery driver as he lowers the ramp to his rig, soda pop cargo in tow. The crowd waves signs and accuse the driver of scabbing on the union. Bigfoot Beverages, the soda factory in Eugene has seen its work force on strike for over a year to date. Rather than negotiate, the factory fired all of the striking employees and hired on ‘scabs’ such as the man making this delivery to fill the workload. A permanent picket line of tarp tents and lawn chairs occupies the edge of the road in front of the factory. A metal fence topped with spools of barbed wire and police surveillance towers leer over their encampment.

Bigfoot’s refusal to negotiate in good faith is a clear violation of the National Labor Relations Act, a law as commonly broken as jaywalking, with less legal consequences usually amounting to mere restitution fines. Simply a cost of doing business.

In exchange for this toothless law, unions have been saddled with harsh legal limitations on the scope and ability of organizational power as they struggle to incorporate new workplaces, all while suffering demobilization, historically low membership, and illegal antagonization from management. These “outsider unions” don’t have the enfranchisement of a union shop to fall back on, so to survive these challenges they adapt into dynamic and antagonistic forces embattled against the managerial class on behalf of the workers which comprise it.

Yet much of this energy falls to the wayside once a union is successfully established, becoming little more than a bureaucracy to manage labor and the fruits of that labor rather than a genuine antagonist to the ruling class. But unions once waged wars in America.

The International Workers of the World (Wobblies) formed in 1905 in Chicago, launching a mass campaign of labor strikes, sabotage and even attempted to establish an autonomous commune in Baja California. By 1912 the Wobblies had banned those who advocate sabotage from belonging to the party. It didn’t stop the Palmer Raids in 1920 which rounded up and deported thousands of “radical illegal aliens”, or the Chilean government’s reign of terror against the IWW launched in the same year. The Wobblies never quite recovered from this period which would become known as the red scare.

The United Mine Workers, led in part by Mother Jones, rose to their height as the Wobblies hit their decline, rural company towns became hotbeds of coal wars ultimately culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 after generations of violence and massacres had been carried out against the workers. UMW miners faced off against the Logan County Coal Operators’ private army of two thousand men. After federal troops arrived, over nine hundred miners were arrested for conspiracy and treason against the state of West Virginia.

To paint these radical union struggles as a relic of the early 20th century would be a mistake as Unions once again came together to fight in the Battle of Seattle of 1999, disrupting the World Trade Organization. Yet this took on a different quality, union leadership by and large attempted to avoid the conflict, it was the autonomous actions of organizers disobeying union leadership to support unaligned activists at the front which ultimately led to the Longshoremen’s union threatening to strike and shut down every port in the city in solidarity with arrested activists. The mayor’s hand was forced, and the prisoners went free.

This is only a handful of militant examples of what unions can accomplish- have accomplished here in America, international examples not withstanding. Still, the temperament of union struggle was permanently altered by 1999, something changed, and unions have continued to decline, struggling to recapture their energy, sway, and potential from decades past. The reality is that the horizons are collapsing, possibility narrows towards claustrophobia, and we suffer all the more for it.

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Pimps of Labor

Once a union wins a contract it becomes institutionalized and the dynamic between unions and employers often shifts from antagonistic to co-operative as it becomes in the best interests of the boss’s and the union leaders to build a new ‘business as usual’. Not all Unions are built the same, depending on the industry and negotiating power, a union might be structured around any variety of “shop floors”. For our purposes we will focus on the prominent model of the union shop. Under this model, the employer is free to hire as they please, but each employee must join and pay dues to the union after hiring. This is also known as compulsory unionism.

Many unions take this further, following something of a ‘guild’ model where employees belong to the union first and foremost and maintain exclusive client contracts while hiring and training a labor pool. This is the model some of the most powerful blue collar unions operate under from electricians to plumbers to my own stagehand union, IATSE, the behind the scenes counter part to the actor’s SAGAFTRA. These unions maintain a monopoly on access to labor, both against employers who require the labor, and against members who need to seek work through the union.

“You don’t see job offerings unless you’re in the union. This kind of gatekeeping - one could call it- prevents a lot of younger/entry level folks from entering the industry. This ultimately limits the potential talent and overall visibility of the industry... it’s become antithetical to the fundamental values of the industry.” - Max, RA union organizer and actor

I speak from the heart and from worldly experience in my critiques of unions as a member of a union myself. When I was growing up I supported my mother during teacher’s strikes in labor negotiations, and have many friends who belong to unions. Rest assured I’m far from anti-union, rather I wonder how much more they could become if limitations- internal and external were shed.

The man who recruited me into the local chapter of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) once referred to our own union as “pimps of labor”. I was taken aback at the comparison at the time, but his meaning has begun to seep in after a year of belonging to the union.

It’s in the language itself, of “belonging”. It could be said the union takes ownership over the individual. Does “seizing the means of production” necessarily entail seizing the producers themselves? Linguistically it seems to, employees are “captured” by the union, itemized into a “labor pool” identical and uniform to others, distributing labor as it sees fit. But one doesn’t belong to a union by way of possession, not necessarily. Rather one finds belonging in a union between the shared interests and roles of various members, in a sense of community and identity greater than oneself. One ceases to be an individual and becomes another- belonging to a collective.

I enjoy working for IATSE, the better wages alone make it worthwhile, but there are significant drawbacks that cannot be ignored. Foremost among them was how difficult it was to gain entry to the union, not due to any vetting process or quality control, but simply because the steward lost my paperwork. It took months to join and it was only possible once I had someone reliable on the inside making calls on my behalf just to make sure my paperwork was filed correctly. The hurdles continue once you enter the labor force as a new recruit because jobs are (supposedly) rationed based on seniority. Those who have been with the union the longest are supposed to receive calls first in descending tiered order with the newest hires at the bottom. This makes enough sense on paper, but the only way to rise in the tiers is to work over a thousand hours in a year, which becomes nearly impossible when most available jobs never reach you. If this wasn’t complicated enough, senior employees routinely complain that they’ve been skipped over for better jobs in favor of training fresh recruits. I inquired about this to a senior member and he explained that no one actually knows how jobs are distributed. He said it had been raised at various meetings and there was a broad sense of dissatisfaction but nothing was being done to change it. The same had been said about overarching complaints about disorganization in the hiring process (which I personally experienced), as well as all variety of other bureaucratic nightmares which show no signs of resolution.

This is not merely to moan about the minutia of union life, but to point out room for improvement. What can be credited as the cause of this sorry state of affairs? The red scare was a century ago, yet the majority of Unions today are either hapless and ineffectual thorns demanding a contract from an unbothered employer or are relegated to a disorderly managerial class akin to an HR department or even neo-guilds selling labor as a product. Cornell Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, George Brooks places the blame squarely at the feet of the union shop in his illuminating and wildly unfounded 2017 essay, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of Compulsory Unionism“.

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Working Class Compulsions

The “Right to Work” movement has nothing to do with the international human rights law of the same name. Rather it advocates for laws allowing employees to work under the benefits of a union contract without being a member of the union or paying dues. This has been the primary advocacy of the Right To Work Committee, an activist and lobbying group which works to pass laws banning union shops at the state and federal level.

Right to Work advocates tend to uphold personal freedoms and view compulsory unionism as tyrannical. In 2019 Kathy Uradnik, a professor of St. Cloud State University sued the state of Minnesota for holding a contract of exclusive representation with the Inter Faculty Organization (IFO) union which she argued gave undue benefit to union faculty over non-union faculty, which she felt overrode the first amendment’s freedom of association clause.

“My disagreements with the IFO are wide in scope and fundamental in nature. I categorically reject the IFO’s definition of “shared governance” because it’s not shared with me. I disagree with all of the contractual provisions that the IFO and my employer have negotiated against my interests. I disagree with its professional priorities for faculty members and its treatment of non-union faculty members. I oppose its political positions and its candidate endorsements. I’m not even a member of the IFO—but Minnesota doesn’t care. State law inextricably binds me to the union; my 20 years of objections do not matter.” - Kathy Uradnik, “Making the Case Against Forced Union Representation“

Under Section Nine of the National Labor Relations Act, Unions gained an exclusive monopoly on employee representation so long as they are voted in by a majority of a labor body. Professor Kathy Uradnik, and the Right To Work Committee argue this violates individual rights to bargain for their own interests. While most of Uradnik’s complaints such as disadvantages in job opportunities would be remedied by simply joining the union, the issue of personal liberty is one worth contending with, even if the union members I personally spoke to were unimpressed.

“Unions aren’t organized around individuals, they’re organized around shops. The shop works as the smallest unit of social and economic organization. If people wanna join a union shop but not the union, they can apply elsewhere.” - Kathrynn, Starbucks Union Member

The Right To Work Committee views unions and especially compulsory unionism as radical, tyrannical and even violent towards employers and employees alike. As a Union organizer himself, Professor George Brooks makes a different argument altogether, believing that the union shop is damaging to unions themselves.

Brooks poignantly points out many of the pitfalls of modern established unions I’ve already laid out from my own experiences, from laziness and disorder in the union rank and file to the voiced complaints of workers met with dull nods and a steady trek of more of the same. Discontent, Brooks argues, can be ignored so long as dues are guaranteed by the union shop and their exclusive bargaining power remains mandated by law. When the union shop becomes the status quo, unions become disconnected, out of touch and unable to respond to the needs of their membership, essentially no longer performing the functions of the union to the best of it’s ability.

“Union officers and staff had concluded that retention of the union shop was very much in their institutional and personal interests. The regular flow of income, the relief from the burden of persuading employees to join the union and keeping them persuaded were irresistible attractions. It is hard to see how union leaders could be persuaded to follow any other view (although there are exceptions). Life was simpler with the union shop. Troublemakers had much more difficulty making trouble, the burden of signing up employees was gone, and it was much easier to increase the amount of dues and per capita tax. Discontent, especially in multiplant units, could usually be ignored.”, Brooks, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of Compulsory Unionism“, [pg 5]

A free market research non-profit, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy builds similar arguments. The solution to an ailing labor movement, they say, is to do away with compulsory unionism and emerge into a new century free from the restrictions of the past. “they could be part of the next evolution in labor: individual, worker-centered, collaborative and nonpolitical.” A utopian world where employers and employees are free to engage with the union as they wish. What could go wrong?

Brooks and the Mackinac Center both rest their arguments on the belief that compulsory unionism is outdated, a relic of a bygone era upholding antagonistic labor relations which are no longer relevant in todays world where Employers have supposedly come to recognize the benefits of having unions manage the labor force on their behalf. “This change occurred partly because the employer decided that the antagonism of the earlier period was dysfunctional, and partly because most union leadership turned out to be equally eager to “get along.”“, argues Brooks, who even asserts that unions “have also done very well in right-to-work states”.

While Brook’s critiques land true, the conclusions he jumps to are propped on a fictitious and ephemeral fog which in no way resembles the reality we presently find ourselves in.

Far from an age of peace in labor relations, employers spend more money than ever ($400 million a year according to the Economic Policy Institute) on consultants to help them avoid negotiating with unions. According to a study published by Professor Brook’s own Cornell University International Labor Relations School in 1994, union busting is the standard in every industry across the United States where the penalties for violating the National Labor Relations Act “are so meager that they serve no deterrent effect”. Since this study was published no material change has taken place to fundamentally alter the situation.

To then claim that unions have done fine in right to work states is asinine and unfounded.

Here is a map of every state with Right to Work laws on the books, courtesy of the National Right to Work Committee. Compare this with a map of rates of unionization based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a clear trend emerges. Right to Work states have a fraction of the membership of states which allow compulsory unionism.

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics also provides evidence of a correlation that right to work states also have lower wages compared to states which allow compulsory unionism. The same remains true across the board for worker protections and other benefits. According to Oxfam, an equal rights non-profit.

While there are exceptions on all counts, there is still an abundance of evidence pointing to a clear correlation, even with low rates of membership, unions are able to exhibit a heavy influence and raise the standards for workers across the board. Consequentially, Right to Work laws invert this pattern by negatively impacting not only unions, but everyone below a certain standard of living. For all of the arguments of right to work advocates, none could provide reliable evidence that unions in these right to work states are better organized or more responsive to the needs of their membership than unions in compulsory states. Brooks’ and the Mackinac Center’s assertions that competition between unions and employers creates better working conditions and union service then falls flat on its face.

The other correlation is an obvious one, most of the states which allow for union shops are democrat strongholds, and democratic states tend to have higher wages and stronger worker protections. All of this is true, these factors are not disparate, but both contribute to this outcome. Unions take a strong hand in politics, endorsing political candidates and contributing to campaigns in order to shape public policy in their favor. According to Pew Research, Democratic candidates are overall seen as better for unions and the unions use this to their advantage to organize to implement their agendas.

These seemingly separate correlations are not distinct at all, but are the mechanisms of an ecosystem that Unions use to affect change which benefits all workers, not just their own.

From The Ground Up

“They want unions to become attuned by becoming a market service and competing for workers on the shop floor. It’s a neoliberal perspective through and through and assumes market mechanisms and competition between the union and employer creates a better ‘product’.” - Kathrynn, Starbucks Union member.

These are real lives and real livelihoods that can’t be merely reduced to abstract maps and statistics.

So I interviewed a handful of union members across various industries, states ages, and roles for this article. Max helped lead his RA strikes against the University of Oregon and Kathrynn in an Oregon member of a Starbucks Union who recently completed a strike in a bid to bring management to the bargaining table (unsuccessfully). My final interview was with a longtime friend named Sidney who is currently working to unionize her workplace in the food industry. She asked me not to include the name of the business for fear of pre-emptive retaliation from corporate management.

Sidney posed one of the most interesting case studies as a rising albeit secret leader in her own pocket of the labor movement. At first she wasn’t sure where she fell on the issue of compulsory unionism, acknowledging that the practice might feel like a breech of individual liberties to some. She was unsure whether she would even be able to implement a union shop at all since some of the states the business operates in are right to work states. Ultimately she dismissed right to work arguments, and concluded that when able to she would encourage adopting the practice even if she had to convince workers to join of their own accord at this stage of development.

“Our rights are bigger than ourselves and contributing to the union means contributing to our neighbors and building a better future for the working class... All employees will be receiving the benefits of higher pay, better sick leave policies, safer working conditions, guaranteed hours, better healthcare, and a negotiating voice in the workplace. These things come at a cost and putting the financial burden on a small group rather than sharing it between everyone that benefits from it is unfair to the union and those that would opt in. Mandatory involvement would lead to more people becoming educated about their rights and responsibilities as well as awareness of the working class’ struggle and an increase in class consciousness.” - Sidney, Clandestine Labor Organizer

It seems that compulsory unionism is a necessary and often beneficial practice elevating the quality of life for everyone who lives in states which allow it. So what then is the true cause of the disrepair of established unions, of the trend of de-mobilization as union membership only begins to regain numbers as wealth disparities continue to rise? Perhaps the issue is not in the protocol but in those shrinking horizons collapsing and fracturing the possibilities of the future.

Ida Castro, a teacher with the Rutgers Labor Education Center and at the time Secretary Treasurer of the New Jersey Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin-American Advancements penned her own critique of Professor Brook’s arguments pointing to what she sees as the true cause of the decline of American Unions.

“The labor movement of the United States, unique among the labor movements throughout the world, has primarily concentrated on bread-and butter issues. This is why the union leadership has lost touch with members. The use of union shops may facilitate the continuation of this attitude, but it is far from being the cause. If unions did not see their whole function as providing satisfactory economic packages, they would not have permitted the convenience of union shops and dues check-offs to alienate them from their membership. They would have clearly understood that this would be counterproductive. If unions had continued to see themselves as part of a workers’ movement, interested in influencing the economic, social and political conditions of this nation, they would have been forced to continue building and developing that movement, something that cannot be accomplished without direct contact, involvement, and education of the membership.” Ida Castro, “The Strengths and Weaknesses of Compulsory Unionism“ [pg 16].

Which returns us to the ever legendary militant examples of union struggles that seem so distant now, the Wobblies, the Coal Wars, even the reluctant leadership of the longshoremen during the Battle of Seattle in 1999. Unions have the capability to reshape and define labor relations and politics as we know it. But America is unique in its procedural red tape, in the totality of the crackdowns on unions which did step into militancy to achieve their ends. Perhaps then most are satisfied with mere “bread and butter”, because they’re scared of what comes with demanding more than the crumbs of the Epstein class.

Venmo

face pressed to the wall

your voice dies on your lips

and the silence is suffocating.

tongue tied till the bell tolls,

telling of the ends of things.

a long way off now, there's time to change off course

but the foot's in the stop gap's well trodden path.

the clock tallies every deed

dissolved in dissonant echolalia,

egress said and egress told

turning heel to save the unsung

uncle hanging by the bottle.

button of the train now face to face

two faced janus rumbling wall

awashed in thundering cacophony

Thank you for reading, while I normally post journalism (which will always be free), I’m starting to branch out into sharing more of my art and most of it will be paywalled in the future. If you liked this and want more, consider contributing or buying a subscription to secure access to my work and help it to continue.

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The three year covert infiltration started by pulling on a single thread. A thread which began here in the Pacific Northwest with a national socialist black metal music festival (NSBM). A little yank revealed social networks behind the organization of this NSBM festival. One option distinguished itself from the rest, an innocuous discord server, “something like ‘Northwest Nature’, and the only vetting system they had was to send a picture proving you have white skin, and a few basic questions. We immediately realized these people were more of a threat”, says Cedar Watch, a crew of people who had formed to infiltrate and dismantle the white supremacists from the inside. They traced the threads of this network across the Pacific Northwest, and all the way to Florida. After the NSBM festival imploded of its own accord, Cedar Watch pivoted, honing in on the network of numerous white separatist cells that would emerge from this innocuous discord server and become a clandestine reincarnation of the white separatist ‘Northwest Pioneer Association’.

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This article was originally published in the January 2026 issue of The Dissonant Times

Revealed for the first time in Cedar Watch’s three part ‘Dragged into Moonlight‘ articles, the group known as the Northwest Pioneer Association (NPA) or ‘Torchlight’ was a white separatist project following in the footsteps of Richard Girnt Butler‘s plan to recreate Oregon’s storied racist history as a sundown state and Ku Klux Klan Refuge. The group sought to go even further, abandoning the United States altogether as a ‘lost cause’, and encouraged white supremacists to move to the PNW to accomplish this goal. Cedar Watch alleges in their introduction that the NPA’s end goal or “final solution”, so to speak, was the establishment of a sovereign white supremacist state, and to carry out campaigns of ethnic cleansing against queer people and racial minorities.

Cedar Watch says they lurked in the Northwest Pioneer Association’s online chat rooms for years, for the purpose of “learning their specific lingo and cultural norms so we could pass in our encounters.” Meanwhile Cedar Watch read the books they referenced, researched their specific strain of white supremacist ‘thought’ and researched their heroes. All of this to, “build a consistent presence [in the chat rooms] and gain [their] trust via consistency.” By covertly monitoring their channels, weaponizing telegram exploits, and even sometimes carefully prompting people to reveal personal details, Cedar Watch silently amassed a wealth of sensitive information on key members and mapped the entire digital history of the group. Membership included Marine Veterans, blue collar workers, terminally online edgelords, and even an active duty sailor working in close proximity to nuclear warheads. The association was allegedly led by Edwin Maynard aka “Mungo”, an accountant who lives in Estero, Florida according to ‘Dragged into Moonlight Part II.’ He primarily ran the network remotely through online forums that connected various cells, all going by different names but espousing the same white separatist ideology. Still, Cedar Watch eventually reached the limits of online monitoring and needed to dive deeper. They needed to cross the digital threshold and meet the white separatists in person.

“They had a concept of operational security, a long term strategic plan that involved building deep and focusing on quality over quantity in terms of recruiting, and they discouraged anti social behavior.... It was later clear they had a solid grasp of guerilla organizational forms and encouraged their members to get decent paying jobs... In short they had their shit together and were steadily growing a Northwest Territorial Imperative White Separatist community increasing in seriousness and quality.” - Cedar Watch

Though the member of Cedar Watch that I interviewed didn’t go into much detail regarding face to face meetings for the sake of protecting the group’s operations and members, they did say that, while “meeting up in person, a lot of their operational safeguards tend to melt away.” still they stressed that, “In person infiltration is not to be taken lightly... Small details can give away a lot. You’re putting yourself and everyone you care about at much greater risk.” They outlined three primary methods of in person operations: going undercover, physical surveillance from a distance, and flipping established members, emphasizing that one should “never put a comrade where you could put a social media account.”

This member of Cedar Watch was willing to share an anecdote from a similar albeit separate infiltration project into a NSBM event. While they were undercover, “One of the Nazi black metal dudes I had been befriending taps me on the shoulder to introduce me to someone. As soon as I turn around it immediately clicks in my brain that the person standing before me is a yet unidentified member of a NSBM band.” The Nazi immediately picked up on the infiltrator’s excitement and, thinking fast, they played it off as ‘fangirling’ over the band, an act that was helped by leveraging their genuine interest in NSBM bands and the occult. They were able to get their name by striking up a conversation, and pretended to take a phone call so they could slip a picture of his face. After that, they were “essentially able to break him”, pressuring him to cancel his shows, quit the band and leave the lifestyle behind.

Cedar Watch estimates that the Northwest Pioneer Association had around forty active members at its peak, with a core group of twenty and possibly as many as eighty additional people who were interested and sympathetic. “There were multiple cells in the Northwest, one in Oregon, one in Washington, and fragmented ones in Montana and Idaho. Mungo would go and visit them, talk strategy with them, send people looking to move to the PNW where there were numbers needed. When he talked people listened.” Mungo even allegedly had plans to make a permanent move to the Pacific Northwest in order to run the association more closely. All of that would change when Cedar Watch shined a light on the group, revealing their information networks, telegram channels, and the personal information of dedicated members.

“Enemies tend to fight when cornered, if you give them a way out, a lot of people take it.” Once the doxes began, members of NPA chapters began ditching the project in droves, becoming indispensable to Cedar Watch’s operation. “Neo-Nazis trying to make amends can be very useful, they don’t have to pretend, they just have to tap into their old self.” At the end of each successive dox, the group would add their email and invite members looking for another path to message them to avoid being doxed. They were then required to hand over any information on other members and remain in contact with a support group for a significant amount of time. Simultaneously pulling people out of the group, expanding Cedar Watch intelligence, and building a network of informants without risking the safety of Cedar Watch members.

By the time ‘Dragged into Moonlight Part III‘ was published in August, the NPA had reduced its size and burned its public telegram channels. However, members still maintained contacts with various groups like PNW Youth, Active Clubs, Northwest Front, and the Proud Boys. “It seems the NPA went into a panic and fell apart almost immediately,” laughs Cedar Watch. When Part III was published, one NPA cell, the ‘Portland Northwest Separatist Network’ was still active, though drastically reduced. Now, Cedar Watch is confident that this too has collapsed to only three remaining active members who distance themselves from the failed NPA project. As far as Cedar Watch is aware, Maynard’s planned move to the Pacific Northwest never materialized as a result of the published leaks.

Now Cedar Watch is happy to announce that “All of the groups we specifically targeted no longer have a public online presence... and seem to have been operationally neutralized with the exception of those three Portland wingnuts [of the ‘Portland Northwest Separatist Network’ cell]”. This member of Cedar watch went on to say that they believe that publishing the information is a matter of harm reduction, and in doing so their goal of neutralizing the group’s capacities seems to have been accomplished. Besides those “Portland Wingnuts”, there is still but one other public holdout, a ‘Northwest Territorial Imperative’ Telegram channel which has become a silent lonely ruin of a movement nobody wanted.

By patiently following a single thread for years, Cedar Watch was able to document and eventually unravel a growing neo nazi white separatist threat here in the Pacific Northwest. While the ideology the Northwest Pioneer Association followed is in no way a new phenomenon, it is thanks to efforts like those recounted here that keep such elements at bay and ensure Oregon strays further from its white supremacist roots. This trend, is not a ‘naturally occurring bend of history- as the progressive myth of history implies- but a grueling and intense daily struggle. It’s thanks to the collective effort of people like these members of Cedar Watch who are dedicated to this cause that keep these elements from materializing. But there is still much more work to be done, and there are always more threads to follow.

Venmo

Written by: Azria Raventhorn // Edited by: Joy Santiago

Interview with a member of Cedar Watch, cedarwatch@proton.me

A breeze tickles the tree branches into a frenzy as golden sunlight dances through the leaves. Gravel crunches beneath each step and a herd of goats watches me warily, wisely steering clear of the stranger on their land. I return Brennan’s wave and a smile stretches across my face as their enormous dog bounds towards me, escorting me into the rural queer enclave of Rainbow Acres.

Brennan Scott, who is non-binary and uses they-them pronouns, and their partner, Alexzandria York own and operate Rainbow Acres. Together they’ve carved a steady niche as providers of farm direct food for their broader communities from Cottage Grove to Eugene, and many of the queer households in between.

“I really think of farms as first responders, and as community centers, and as anchors. I kind of think of being one piece of that puzzle... just trying to kind of create that community resiliency with our role being as part of the food system for people.”, says Brennan, who also goes by Lydia.

This is a reciprocal relationship. The winter ice storm that struck Oregon in 2024 stripped the fledgling farm of its power for over a year, and the cost fell upon the couple to restore their damaged utilities themselves. They were only able to raise the funds to get their farm back on track a year later with a surge of community support. Brennan says this experience taught them “Building community is the only way that we’re gonna be resilient.”

Brennan gives me a tour of the farm as we talk, past pastures of bleating goats and brooding chickens. Wild quail peck at the bugs in the rows of garden beds. Finn, a horse in training watches us curiously as Brennan’s dog, Blugoy follows in our steps, diligently performing his guarding duties. Blugoy gave a statement in my interview, it seemed very wise and insightful, but unfortunately I don’t speak dog.

My full interview with Brennan from Rainbow Acres is available for listeners here.

not all information contained in interviews is certifiably correct, interviews are included for entertainment and transparency, but are not in themselves an accurate reflection of factual information

"I'm all about trying to give alternatives to the predominant agricultural model which is riddled with problems." says Brennan. According to the US Department of Agriculture eighty-two percent of the food supply comes from family farms, the bulk of which comes from the top three percent, these being the largest of all family farms with the bulk share of production. These farms often employ unsustainable industrial agriculture practices which have been linked to catastrophic environmental destruction and pollution.

Research has found that large farms “tend toward concentration of production, driving out small producers and undermining rural communities”, and have even been linked to heart disease and even cancer in consumers as a result of pesticide abuse and overuse of antibiotics. A practice which has also bolstered some diseases to be resistant to treatment.

I grew up on a small family farm myself, and watched this trend in action. By the time I was eighteen, many the farms along my street that once grazed livestock and rotated their crops in more sustainable ways had been bought out and replaced with sprawling monoculture wine vineyards, driving the family farms away and exploiting cheap immigrant labor.

These monocultures not only destroy biodiversity but also erode the soil, steadily contributing to a decline in airable land and a trend known as desertification as once rich soil turns to sand in the wake of exploitative practices and unsustainable irrigation practices.

From natural disasters such as the ice storm to competing with large scale industrial farms, “There’s a lot of sacrifices.” says Brennan, “It’s easy to think about the challenges because they’re abundant, especially in the face of climate chaos. But there’s a lot of things that are wonderful too. I’m still doing it for some reason.” they chuckle.

In a global economy, a shortage anywhere affects prices everywhere. When thirty percent of the worlds fertilizer moves through the straight of Hormuz, and twenty percent of the worlds fuel, shortages can become catastrophic when the lanes close due to say, an unprovoked war with a global power such as Iran.

Industrial farms are especially dependent on these external sources of fuel and nitrogen fertilizer. And consumers have already experiencing a sharp increase in food prices, but the affects will be long lasting. Even if the straight re-opened tomorrow, the planting season has already passed and food production would not recover for at least a year.

The University of Michigan offers a solution to the destructive and ever so fragile nature of industrial farming: Buy local, buy organic, buy farm direct. But Brennan laments that most people are conditioned for the instant gratification of shopping at a grocery store, and admits they’re just as addicted to this way of life as everyone else. Its when disruptions occur that people explore the alternatives Rainbow Acres offers.

“We see these peak demand times during when crisis happens. Like during the pandemic there was a ton of demand, maybe a year ago when there was the whole egg crisis- ton of demand. It comes in these waves but it’s really centered around catastrophe still. People seem to still have quite a bit of disconnect form understanding that our small farms are gonna be what feed us. I mean they do feed us.” says Brennan.

In their ethos of offering these ‘alternatives’, they run a herd share model through their website which allows customers to essentially subscribe to their animal products in exchange for raw goats milk, cheese and meat once butchering season comes. Consuming raw goats milk does come with inherent risks and has been linked to numerous hospitalizations and even deaths, but a growing undercurrent pushes for the more ‘natural’ lifestyle of consuming farm direct raw milk instead. In order to mitigate these risks, Brennan explains they thoroughly wash the teats and their hands before every milking and store the milk in sterilized glass jars while regularly cleaning their equipment.

Oregon State University conducted a study on the affects of goat farm hygiene practices on the microorganisms in goat milk and found that these practices can play a significant role in mitigating- although not removing all the risks of raw milk consumption.

As for myself? Far be it for me to leave empty handed. As the interview concludes, Brennan shows me to their freezers where they hand me a chicken wrapped in a plastic sarcophagus. I can hardly tell it didn’t come from the shelf of a box grocery store. But an invisible border has been crossed, I’ve seen where the food comes from, met and spoken with the people who work the farm and care for the animals day in and day out. Transcending the alienation of the contextless bodies of store bought meat removed from the people and places and the life behind the body.

“For people who can support your small farms, please do. That’s not just a shameless plug for myself that like in community in general. Because we can’t do this if people don’t support us.... People rely on us when it’s a crisis, but when its not a crisis is when we need people to support us. A lot of us [small farms] are living almost in perpetual crisis.” says Brennan.

The crisis is in the return to an untenable normal. It’s easy to explore the alternatives when the default is disrupted, but what comes after? If a consistent relationship isn’t established, one day the alternatives may be lost, most won’t notice until the next crisis. And there will always be another crisis.

Building community resiliency through local farms like Rainbow Acres, or their sister farm, Branch Road may not only be an investment into your community, but an investment into your own resiliency to weather crises current and future.

venmo

I’ve been no contact with my mother for six years. It was not an easy decision, but it was made in the heat of anger without the tools or information to properly analyze our dynamic from the fog of it’s dysfunction. It’s a decision I’ve since come to regret.

It’s been six months since I attempted to reconnect with her. I was apprehensive at first, like a wounded animal skittish to the touch. I held my breath as I waited for a reply. Day after day and week after week, I sent more emails and still only silence met me where I was at. My siblings assured me she wanted to talk. I hoped with the benefit of some time apart we could break the cycle of our chronic retribution. My step-sister took the role of mediation, and a plan began to form to meet up, to actually talk face to face! to reach some semblance of understanding.

Then she moved to Albania. I was still emailing her trying to set up a meeting and she was on the other side of the planet. It was just a visit to test the waters. To see if it would be a suitable place to flee the United States. To flee the writing on the walls, ever louder. The boiling point of turmoil as the temperature ratchets up and you’re just a crab in the pot watching the looming suffocating cataclysm on the horizon. She would be back soon.

She had jumped at the chance to escape. I can hardly blame her. Then what was supposed to be a few weeks turned into a month, then three. And word trickled back through the grapevine that she’d run out of money. She’s stranded in Albania now, and still my emails went unanswered.

There would be no healing. I’d foolishly allowed myself to find some kind of hope, to believe the resuscitation of our relationship was not only attainable, but something worth pursuing. Hindsight is blinding by way of nostalgia, in the way that time licks at the wounds of every violation, coalescing into a scab that almost feels like love.

Mother Knows Best

Well you know the rest

Respect is a two way street,

us? We never meet

So let me walk a mile in your shoes

the dance of the ragtag fag

set to an ever evolving chant

of ‘I love you’.

Mother Knows Best, by Azria Raventhorn

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American Refugee

“I’d say you made the right call.” I’m pacing around my room bouncing between getting ready to get out the door and playing with my cat chirping at me from her perch, phone squeezed against my shoulder. “Who knows how bad things will get.” I check my outfit in the mirror.

“I’m glad to hear you say that. You seem like someone with your ear to the ground. It’s good to- I don’t know. Not feel like I’m running away for nothing.” Her voice shakes with the weight of indecision with the gnawing voice of survivors guilt and wondering if she’s condemned every other queer person she knows to a horrible fate by removing herself, by prioritizing her own safety by fleeing to Spain. As if by being here she could do anything to avert what’s coming for every one of us one way or another.

“There’s no point in fighting a battle you know you can’t win. Besides,” I pause and throw my bag over my shoulder, “The fight is everywhere you are.”

Lately it seems like everyone is leaving- everyone who can anyway. Which is not most of us. Most of us are poor, wandering between found families in perpetual instability and unemployment clawing just to stay afloat in a sea foaming at the mouth to devour us.

Sometimes they call these Americans flocking to other lands ‘expats’.

I disdain that word. An ex-patriot is what you call someone when ‘immigrant’ has been sullied, derided into a pejorative and slandered beyond recognition. It only exists to distinguish oneself from the ‘othered’, to launder the associations of desperation, of race, of hope.

Hope is what drives people to flee their homes for something better, if not for them, then for their children. Hope as in opportunity. Hope as in safety. Hope as in a fresh start somewhere the grass is always greener.

The expats are not devoid of hope, they merely gesture at it, as if it were something to be ashamed of. This force which drives people over borders, risking life and limb to abandon everything they once knew just for a chance at a new life. To an expat it’s a factor, in the way that moving to a new state for a job offer is an act of hope. They are no huddled masses, not tired, nor poor. They see not opportunity but exploitation, maybe a land where their currency is worth more, where they can work their remote American jobs and pay cheaper rent in a complex where the last family was evicted without warning, cast to the street to make the room presentable for the foreigner and for the foreigner’s money.

This is not a portrait of my mother’s disposition. She learned that herself when she wandered with a group of expats in Albania. She wasn’t with them for long, I heard they drove her up a wall, in much the same way a kid who pays their way through college working three jobs grits their teeth and scowls at the ones who get through on daddy’s money. She was an elementary special needs teacher, her husband worked in a factory. There is no remote work for them luxuriously paying their way through foreign lands.

So let’s call our subjects what they are- refugees. Refugees fleeing the future, running ahead of the rising tide. Before the desperation really sets in. But make no mistake, they cling to the same hope that subverts mountains and nation states. The hope of finding somewhere away from it all.

“Albania? Why Albania?”

I shrug, I’d asked the same thing when I first heard. “Something about the immigration policy, you can live there for a year without filling out any paperwork.”

“Yeah because nobody wants to go to Albania.” My friend laughs, “Y’know I met some Albanians. If you wanna buy drugs you talk to an Albanian. That country is practically run by gangs.”

Albania- a country with gun violence worse than the United States. Where familiy blood feuds reign constant. Where politicians pistol whip people on the fly and businesses handle disputes with assassins rather than lawsuits. Like most of the Balkans, it’s not exactly the destination spot for people escaping political violence and corruption.

But she tried all the same. Our life rafts are made of the same means with which we fashion our livelihoods, and ours have always been forged of ramshackle roughshod slapped together with duct tape to a barely serviceable state of just good enough.

Yet even in the last place anyone thought to look, the influence of the Trump family reared its head. Lurking in the long shadows of dollar bills and cast lead.

Where to Run

Petrol bombs explode across my screen and Albanian government buildings as fireworks dance with riot police, assembled in lines and columns to defend the status quo.

Albanian politics are almost as much of a joke as America’s, and you would be forgiven for missing out on the running gag. In September of last year, Prime Minister Edi Rami made Albania the first country to appoint an AI to the position of a government minister, and to use AI to facilitate negotiations with the European Union. This is in no way relevant to what is happening now, but it is fucking hilarious. And a sinister signal of what was- and is yet still to come.

This is not why Albanians have shut down the capital in revolt in the hundreds of thousands, it is not why they are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Rami and firebombed his home, and it is not why corruption proceedings have begun against Deputy Prime Minister Balluku, and it’s not why all of Jared Kushner’s Albanian Assets have been frozen as part of this investigation.

Oh yeah, Jared Kushner is in this story. Epstein associate, President Trump’s son in law, mastermind behind his 2016 electoral victory and current head of Iranian peace negotiations in spite of holding no position in government, Jared Kushner. Turns out he and Ivanka Trump have an eye for Albania as much as my mom does. They’ve quietly swept up miles of private, environmentally protected Albanian coastline to build a private luxury resort in a deal which the Deputy Prime Minister orchestrated by re-writing the nation’s laws in their favor (allegedly).

And so in their haphazard flight across continents, my mom mistakenly ended up landing in the middle of the Trump Dynasty’s next capital venture experiment. All the world is their industrialized farm and we are but livestock on long leashes. Is the family’s influence so ubiquitous, so universal that even on the other side of the planet there is no refuge from their control?

As molotov’s shatter on the bullworks of Albania’s capital, one wonders if there’s even a point in leaving, only to dance the same rhythm to the song of unrest playing out in the wake of everything the Trump family touches.

The real question folded into this equation is whether or not it’s worth it to go all in, to test the limits of our leashes, to hope for another world, another life, another choice, to build what we dare to hope for. Or to reside within the cold comfort of calculated stability.

Perhaps this is the true embarrassment of the expat; to undergo the mortifying ordeal of letting themselves be let down by the manifestation of their own hopes and dreams. And so they take refuge in ambiguity, hedging their bets so they can never really be let down because they never dared all that much to begin with.

But these American refugees, like others before them carry hope in their chests, they risk everything for the chance at a fraction of what others take for granted. For hope that smells like the first drops of rain. For hope that can only be tempered by disappointment. Like uprooting oneself to live as a stranger in a strange land. Like fighting back when the cards are stacked against you and the house always wins. Until, just once- the house comes tumbling down.

Like trying in vain to rekindle the burnt bridge of our relationship in the midst of turmoil at home and abroad because it’s not too late until we let it be.

And for all my pontificating about the woes of Albania’s political circus, they’ve run laps around America’s supposedly robust legal system. They launched an investigation and froze Kushner’s assets and the people demand Rami’s resignation at the end of a firebomb. And now the project has been suspended over environmental concerns from the EU. For all it’s reputation of corruption and instability, Albania has one upped American ‘justice’ in this at least. So just maybe there is hope to be found there after all.

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had been but a few hours.

We were pretty raw,

eyes darting left

As I drank in the verdict.

and just

groped each other while we waited.

With swagger of a well armed man

he began his target practice.

I stood inside his 44 Magnum strap

thick and heavy, consumed with lust.

I was smoke from a double action competent arsonist

from a nothing shot scratch handwriting

taken in the rituals of screaming like maniacs.

I happily became a later convert.

Saint Shoebill holds the feminine idol in her arms. She is stern and righteous, ready to away the urge to objectify and control. The horse shamefully shows himself the door.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this reprieve from my more serious work. I always intended this to be a mixed media project, and I’m excited to take you along for this journey as we branch into unexpected places.

Remember Greg Bovino? I mean how could we forget? Would anyone be surprised to learn he’s been palling around with Europe's most hateful? One of the first to be ousted from the Trump administration back in January following overwhelming pressure in the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Bovino made himself an easy fall man by, posing for photo-shoots in Nazi-like regalia and hieling on his way to attack and detain anyone who doesn't hail from the peaks of the Caucasus themselves.

Well he’s back, and he’s doing the rounds in a desperate attempt to cling to relevancy, so what’s he been up to in the last few months on hiatus? He made notable waves on social media after he threatened to visit Dalaney Hall’a anti-ice protests in support of detained hunger strikers so he could “handle it himself“. Of course, Democratic Governor, Mickie Sherill had that handled all on her own, She labeling the protestors “outside agitators” and ordering state police to put down the protests to ensure the immigration facility could return to normal operations illegally deporting legal residents and even some US citizens. #girlboss.

But this isn’t why we’re here today. In the breakneck news cycle, certain stories escape notice. Turns out Bovino’s been a busy man, and he’s been doing much more than posturing on social media following his removal from the limelight.

I first became acquainted with his recent escapades when Telegram posts featuring an interview with Bovino began circulating in neo-nazi channels. These posts trace back to a “new right” pan-European news and advocacy organization by the name of the Voxeuropa Herald.

Who is the Voxeuropa Herald? Identitarianism Across the Pond

They're a bit cagey about who actually works for the Herald, and it's easy to see why. Their most prominent boots on the ground "journalist" is a bookish looking german man by the name of Matisse Royer, who is also affiliated with compact magazin, pictured here throwing up the "ok" symbol alongside members of of Germany's far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. This symbol has unfortunately been hijacked by white supremacists to identify one another.

I’ve also included a picture of neo-nazi’s from the Vlaanderen Active Club doing the same sign for comparison.

The dogwhistles are right in the name, which they put a lot of significance on. Mostly, they want you to focus on the ‘herald’ portion, likening themselves in their imagery to a medieval knight and messenger- coat of arms and all. Meanwhile, ‘vox europa’ taken literally means ‘voice of europe’.

But there’s only a thin veneer over the organization’s true lineage. American’s may be familiar with their local cousins, “Identity Evropa“, a neo nazi group with a heavy presence at the infamous 2016 Unite the Right Charlottesville protest, and the progenitors of such slogans as “Jews (or you) will not replace us.” Before the group disbanded in 2020, it had rebranded as the American Identity Movement.

But the group’s ideology, identitarianism originates as a european flavor of overtly white supremacist xenophobia. Pushing pan-european nationalism and anti-immigration ideals because they believe the white race is being replaced by foreign invaders. This is commonly known as replacement theory, and their solution is mass deportations under the guise of “remigration“.

The Herald doesn’t make much effort to cover their affiliation for this neo-nazi ideology, sporting the slogan, “European realities call for European responses”. One of their most highlighted interviews is with Martin Sellner, who they call “the most famous identitarian activist” of all, and the man who founded Europe’s Generation Identity movement in 2012, which Identity Evropa was modeled after.

Lest you think this is fringe or no longer relevant to American politics with the American Identity Movement disbanded and Greg Bovino ousted from power, the Trump Administration still maintains the novel “Office of Remigration“ under the state department, which brazenly pushes the far right European movement in both policy and rhetoric.

Which brings us back to Greg Bovino’s sidequests in his unemployment era. Both he and Voxeuropa’s Matisse Royer attended a May Remigration Summit in Porto, Portugal where Bovino was a keynote speaker and took the time to sit down for a one on one interview with the identitarian rag.

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Trouble in Agartha

To describe Bovino as bitter would be an understatement.

Though his statements at the summit and to Voxeuropa, he paints himself as fighting a war on two fronts. On one side he battles deviant ‘antifa criminals’ and ‘illegal aliens’, on the other he combats the “weak-kneed bureaucrats within DHS”.

The interview is rife with misinformation and devoid of factuality or reflection, and perhaps this is most insightful into the mindset of Bovino and his (former) affiliates who he never misses an opportunity to undermine while simultaneously praising himself, comparing himself to World War II General Patton for instance.

Here he criticizes prioritizing criminal aliens or ‘the worst of the worst’, instead of unleashing blanket mass deportations across the population.

“I have not criticized Homan or Mullin. I simply told the truth and care about America, and if they or others believe it as criticism, then perhaps they need to look at their stance and not mine. Worst of the worst (also known as targeting) is all Homan, Scott and now Mullin know. I can’t blame them directly for failing to garner the knowledge, skills, and abilities to one, understand the problem, and two, to solve it.” - Greg Bovino

It’s a played out portrait at this point, he is the perpetual victim of those more stupid than him. He is the only one with real solutions, and the only one able to implement them- if only they weren’t so concerned about public opinion, about the will of the people. Then he could really let loose, like a rabid dog cursing his masters for keeping him on a leash.

But even he concedes defeat in Minneapolis, although he assumes no blame and takes no accountability. Ultimately he confirms in his own roundabout way that Ken Klippenstein’s reports of mounting public pressure fracturing ICE from the inside were correct. While he maintains that antifa are the true fascists, he admits Antifa’s “collusion with ‘pro fascist’ media was apparently effective in alarming weak-kneed bureaucrats within DHS as well as the typical cast of politicians”.

Meanwhile Bovino attempts to position himself as a ‘voice of reason’ pushing ‘common sense’ mass deportations as a ‘sustainable’ solution to be replicated across Europe in order to preserve a nebulous european identity.

“The struggle in Europe and United States is very close. Same thing happening by illegal aliens and immigrants who don’t hold your values. AfD in Germany has got it right in my opinion. They eschew political correctness in favor of German culture and identity.” - Greg Bovino

There’s only one person in the Trump Administration he refuses to touch, and that’s Trump himself.

Trump has alienated much of the American far right. While “MAGA” minds still support him, many supporters who rallied around issues such as the Epstein Files, immigration, Israel and ‘America First’ ideologies have been sorely disappointed on all fronts, often complaining that Trump has abandoned his campaign promises or worse. They see him as weak on immigration and as a puppet for Israel.

In my article, “The Art of the Deal“ I covered how far right figures from Alex Jones to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes have all broken with Trump over these issues and more, becoming fierce critics of the administration to the point that administration officials have banished them from the ‘conservative’ camp altogether, even as they continue to speak for a growing number of dissidents within the far right, primarily among those who believe Trump has not gone far enough.

Bovino’s refusal to criticize Trump is somewhat surprising since other former officials have not minced words. Former director of the counterterrorism center, Joe Kent for instance resigned during the disastrous war with Iran and took to X to claim the administration had started the war because of “direct pressure from Israel”. These statements are rumored to have triggered an investigation into him by the FBI.

In comparison, Bovino seems keen to stay on Trump’s good side.

“I do not believe Trump has abandoned his campaign promise. I think his “advisors” aren’t providing him the ground truth.” Says Bovino in his interview with Voxeuropa, “If I had it to do over again, I’d have briefed Trump myself on occasion rather than rely on that inner circle who may have had interests in other places. Trump is the best President I’ve ever worked for, and I believe he will come back to that campaign promise soon.”

Between his inflammatory posturing on social media and his media appearances bridging the European Far Right, Bovino seems to be positioning himself for the long term. As an outsider he can more directly criticize what he sees as the flaws of the Trump administration, building bridges and allies in order to continue pushing his total deportation agenda across continents, and perhaps even to stage a return to good grace and power somewhere down the line once the ‘moderates’ no longer hold the keys to power.

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Content Warning: Discussion of the Epstein Files and their contents, trafficking, sexual abuse against minors, eugenics, colonization, slavery and racial violence.

The Epstein files paint a picture of a ‘predator class’ through the incomplete and heavily redacted lens of one pedophile sex trafficker. A man surrounded by financiers and royals and tech oligarchs and politicians wining and dining in backroom business deals between snapshots of horrific acts perpetrated against women and children coordinated over gmail. While not everyone mentioned in the Epstein Files is guilty of a crime, many of those who have not been implicated still lent cover and legitimacy to those who did, ushering Epstein through the halls of finance, academia, politics, and “justice”. So insulated were the perpetrators that they didn’t feel the need to hide these actions, they weren’t afraid of the consequences- they knew there wouldn’t be any. It was a gamble that even in the disclosure of the files has continued to pay off as Trump’s Department of Justice flies in the face of legal and ethical codes in order to muddy the waters and continue to cover for this protected class.

Donations genuinely help keep gas in the tank in more ways than one as I scour the world to bring you quality stories every week.

Venmo

Deny. Defend. Delay.

The ‘Three D’s‘ of the insurance industry, the tactics used to rake in as much money as possible while doing everything in their power to avoid providing any kind of service. As a businessman bordering on con man, President Trump understands these tactics all too well.

Numerous files implicating the President of the United States in Epstein’s crimes have disappeared from the DOJ website. These somehow managed to see the public eye in spite of months of the FBI allegedly working around the clock to destroy evidence and redact the files according to internal whistleblowers. The files underwent two waves of redactions, first by the FBI in March of 2025, and later by the DOJ according to rep Ro Khanna. This abnormal process lead to numerous flagrant violations of the bipartisan Epstein Transparency Act. As the DOJ failed to provide ample reasoning for the redactions of perpetrators and collaborators, failed to redact the names of victims, and failed to meet basic deadlines. Only for the now former Attorney General Pam Bondi to declare the case closed with 3 million documents still unreleased. A sentiment echoed by her successor, Todd Blanche. This isn’t just a matter of weaponized incompetence- it’s a matter of quantity. There’s simply too much to be swept under the rug.

But there’s more than one way to perform a coverup in the information age.

The Truth is Dead and We Have Killed It

Memetic Warfare is a modern tactic of weaponizing information through internet platforms using memes. The mention of such an idea often elicits snickers and disbelief, but Memetic Warfare is widely credited with having won Donald Trump the 2016 election, as ‘anons’ from 4Chan worked en-masse to push propaganda and “redpill” people through coordinated meme propagation. Perhaps their most influential product was the generation of Q-Anon, a conspiracy cult that believed many things, including that President Trump was waging a war on satan worshipping pedophiles within the deep state. Curiously, the files provided evidence of a link between Epstein and 4Chan’s founder, Christopher Poole, aka ‘moot’. The two were introduced by Bill Gates’ advisor, Boris Nikolic. In one of the emails connecting Moot to Epstein, Nikolic linked a Washington Post article covering 4Chan’s hive mind mentality. Nikolic wrote, “This is why I find moot interesting. The potential for manipulation is huge.” The same month Moot and Epstein met, the 4Chan server /pol/ was launched which would go on to be the breeding ground for Q-Anon.

In death Epstein has propelled the theories of Q-anon to epic heights as proponents claim to have been vindicated by these disclosures. Conspiracy theories have become the meth of the masses as they take on a new life between the black bars of federal redactions and contradictory statements from the Trump administration.

In order to get some clarity I spoke with a contact who formerly worked in the National Security Agency about some of the documents included in the files, including allegations from FBI informants. My contact explained that informants are notoriously unreliable and often have ulterior motivations for making unsubstantiated allegations- such as money or personal vendettas. One allegation she analyzed claimed that Epstein worked as a spy for the Mossad, along with his lawyer Alan Dershowitz and President Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner. My contact pointed out that the informant confidently makes provably false assertions about international relations without providing evidence. Perhaps most telling is the informant’s characterization of Chabad as, “basically state sanctioned Judaism used by Putin to keep tabs on Russo-Jewish oligarchs.” There is no evidence to support this, and raises concerns about the informant possessing antisemitic biases that influence their other allegations. This FBI document alone does not prove that Epstein or others worked for the Mossad.

Another informant made allegations in the files that the ambassador to Mexico, Earl Wayne had been secretly convicted of rape after partying with Epstein and that agents of the American embassy had been weaponized to protect the ambassador. The informant claims that the judge in the case took a “huge payoff” so that the founder of Seal Team Six, Richard Marcinko would take his place in prison instead. These allegations are easily disprovable as Marcinko died in 2021 without a record of such allegations nor of any time spent in a Mexican prison.

Perhaps most baffling is the inclusion of heavily redacted email correspondence about a virtual meeting with a man named Epstein residing in Colorado dated to 2021- almost three full years after Epstein’s death. This spawned further speculation that the man was alive and well, however clues such as the inclusion of the office of DOJ’s Fraud Division allowed fact checkers to verify that these emails are in relation to a criminal fraud case against a different Epstein altogether with no relation to Jefferey Epstein. Including such misinformation among such a sensitive trove of serious allegations is at best gross incompetence and at worst craven maliciousness on the part of the Department of Justice.

The questions around Epstein’s death have spiraled out of control, one month internet sleuths are utterly convinced that he’s living in hiding in Israel playing Fortnite, the next he’s started a tiktok calling himself “Palm Beach Pete“ out of Florida. A man who has gained a spot in the limelight for his resemblance to the notorious sex trafficker. Palm beach Pete performs a balancing act of maintaining the mystery of his identity for relevance and notoriety. Declaring his distinction from Epstein while living in his mansion, flying the same jet, and slipping in “mistakes” like having a similar stutter and failing lie detectors (which are notoriously unreliable).

In our viewership and speculation we become participants in a game designed not for justice but for the commodification of one of the most notorious scandals in US history.

Conspiracy theories provide convenient answers to reasonable questions raised by the mountain of (mis)information. Wouldn’t it be so much better if Epstein were still alive? Then, at least, it wouldn’t be too late. There would still be a chance for justice. For revenge.

But what did Q-Anon and the assortment of conspiracies actually accomplish aside from being close enough? Instead of hiding the truth, it’s been fractured and spread about, smeared with falsehoods, and otherwise redacted so one can only ever catch glimpses while millions of pieces remain buried. But who benefits from the dissolution of consensus reality? Have these theories brought the victims any closer to justice? Did they help to track down any of the perpetrators? Or did they create stigma for survivors who actually lived through this? What have these speculations accomplished other than to put the reigns of power in the hands of one of some of the people most incriminated by these very files?

Fact and Fiction

It’s not hard to see why these files evoke a festering breeding ground of conspiracy theories. The ranks of the elites closed around Epstein when his first public accuser, a trans latina named Eva Cordero came forward in 2007. She was met with vicious attacks and humiliation from the New York Post. Still, her bravery led to a string of accusations and Epstein’s first case for sex abuse in 2008 under the direction of Florida State Attorney Barry Krischer. According to the Palm Beach Post, transcripts not released until 2024 show prosecutors botched their own case against Epstein, telling the girls that they were the criminals during questioning. Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter sent his evidence of dozens of other sexual abuse allegations taking place in Epstein’s mansion directly to federal prosecutors. In spite of the mountain of evidence, Epstein received a sweetheart deal brokered by then attorney Alexander Acosta who went on to serve as the Secretary of Labor under President Bush Jr. and President Trump. Epstein faced only eighteen months in prison, of which he served thirteen and received a non-prosecution agreement shielding unnamed co-conspirators and was granted work release privileges. Once free, the former Israeli prime minister and minister of defense, Ehud Barack came to Epstein’s aid, helping him to rehabilitate his image and re-integrate into the world of the elites.

The files revealed further details in this story. In 2009 Epstein’s butler, Alfredo Rodriguez copied what has become known as “Epstein’s little black book” from his mansion in palm springs. He attempted to sell the information for $50,000, but was caught in an FBI Sting by an agent posing as a lawyer for Epstein’s victims. Video shows Rodriguez explaining the world of Epstein’s trafficking ring, he describes a steady stream of girls as young as twelve, some with braces from all over the world attending the mansion for “massages”- at least twice a day. Rodriguez served a full sentence of eighteen months in prison for ‘obstruction of justice’. Justice which was curiously never applied in light of these revelations.

The Web

Indeed, Epstein’s network was extensive, he was the financial lawyer for one of the richest families in history- the Rothchild’s. He brokered international deals with Russia on behalf of Ehud Barack and Israeli interests in the toppling of Assad in the Syrian Civil War. His close relationship with Barack and ties to the IDF has been construed as evidence that Epstein ran a honeypot for Mossad.

I’ve tried to keep my opinion out of this and stick to the facts because there is just so much, and my opinion will only muddy the water. But in my estimation the evidence does not point to him working for Barack or the Mossad as the whistleblower alleged. In my opinion Barack treated him as an equal and as a friend, not an employee. In all likelihood Epstein was selling information to anyone who suited his interests, as is typical of intelligence assets.

Epstein maintained consistent relationships with Trump insiders such as Steve Bannon, and Tom Barrack who is currently serving as Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria. In one email exchange he asked Barrack to “make him smile” with pictures of Barrack and an unknown child. In another exchange Epstein organized a meeting between Tom Barrack, the late Russian ambassador to the Uniter Nations, Vitaly Churkin, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak- raising suspicions of Epstein’s potential role in the russiagate scandal of Trump’s first term.

Epstein leveraged his relationship with the former Norwegian prime minister and human rights fraudster, Thornbjorn Jagland in order to gain access to the Kremlin. Jagland has been confirmed to have been compromised by the KGB through the release of the Epstein Files.

In the book “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York”, historian and journalist Andrew Lownie claimed with receipts that Epstein had passed information on Prince Andrew to the Kremlin, to the Mossad, the Saudis and even Muammar Ghaddafi. He also alleged that Epstein had slept with Melania a year before Michelle Wolff and Hunter Biden have claimed that Melania was then introduced to Donald Trump through Epstein’s circle, and released emails showed communications between Melania and Maxwell as well as Epstein.

Melania Trump has publicly denied having any ties to Epstein or knowledge of his crimes.

All of this interspersed with images of parties with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, dinners with Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and the former Prince Andrew posing for a picture next to his prey. He held sway with Democrats and Republicans alike, receiving invitations to private events among congressional candidates from both sides of the aisle. Pictures of Far Right media titan Steve Bannon laughing arm in arm with democratic socialist Noam Chomsky demonstrate how Epstein openly bridged the gaps between seemingly disparate figures as a known sex offender. The cabal is in plain sight, and they’ve been laughing in our faces all the way to Deutsche Bank.

The files were meant to shine truth on these horrors, but after over six million files have been released, perhaps society is further from the truth than ever before. If the violations of the Epstein Transparency Act are deliberate attempts to muddy the waters, as reps Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie have alleged, then the conspiracy theorists are the unwitting foot soldiers insulating the predators still in power by destroying the lines between fact and fiction. The only story that can be trusted must come from the thousands of victims who have been telling these stories for over a decade to no avail.

But there is also evil to be found in the banality of it all, the business deals that decided the fates of nations, the display of “the same old depravity” in button up shirts and blue jeans as they laugh to each other with a wink and a nod.

If the files prove anything, it’s that this isn’t a conspiracy. It’s policy.

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The Files are Only the Beginning.

The beginning of an unraveling. What little is currently known pales in comparison to what can be found under redactions and in a million scraps buried inside of paper shredders. When we explore the rabbit holes around Epstein’s dealings we quickly find ourselves ignoring the pedophile in the room. We start to notice that the room is full of mold. That there are bodies hidden in the crumbling walls. That even if we knew every detail of the files there still wouldn’t be justice. If there’s anything to be gleaned- anything to be learned at all. It’s that this is normal. For the rich and powerful this is how the world works. It’s how things have always worked....

Epstein the Eugenicist

In 2010 and email between Epstein and Former Stanford Professor, Nathan Wolf discussed conducting studies on “viral evolution” to develop female viagra, engineering weight loss and studying pandemics. Three years later he asked Epstein to help fund a study linking sexual behavior with microbial diversity using his own students as subjects. This would later evolve into discussions of engineering a viral Sexually Transmitted Infection to increase female libido. Files also revealed that AI tech mogul Joscha Bach openly discussed allowing climate change to handle overpopulation and the efficacy of executing the “elderly and infirm”. Meanwhile Chomsky was discussing Epstein’s theories of eugenics with him in casual debates over email. A 2019 investigation by the New York Times revealed that Epstein had been discussing using his New Mexico Ranch as a testing ground to seed the human genome with his DNA since 2000. Elon Musk, a Hitler Hieling affiliate who begged for invites to Epstein’s parties subscribes to similar philosophies and has fourteen known children with various women using artificial insemination to spread his genes as far as possible. In certain circles of the obscenely wealthy, eugenics appears to be far from fringe.

This had devastating consequences for the victims of Epstein’s ring. One extremely disturbing file details the experience of a child victim through her journal entries. She was forced to carry babies for Epstein and Maxwell with the help of what appears to have been a rotating cast of doctors and midwives who kept their mouths shut. “As long as I am wearing what you want. There is no respect for me as a human. I am nothing but your property and incubator!” [pg 7]. Her entries reveal that she was moved to New Mexico to the Zorro Ranch as Ghislaine and Epstein controlled every aspect of her life. The girl expressed bewilderment, “Superior gene pool? Why me? Why my hair color and eye color? This feels very nazi like...” [pg 12]. The girl was forced to carry several babies for the traffickers, it’s not presently known what came of the babies or who else suffered similar experiments.

This victim who only goes anonymously as Jane Doe is one of four separate women who has accused Leon Black of sexual assault. Black is the former CEO of Apollo Global Management- he resigned in 2021 following an internal investigation’s findings that he had paid $158 million to Epstein who was the sole director of the Black family foundation. The assault case against Black is still ongoing.

This Normal is Anything but New

A jury has already found President Trump liable for sexual assault, awarding E Jean Carroll Five Million Dollars in 2023. Many of the allegations against the President that have been withheld and erased from the Epstein files were already public knowledge. Including the 2016 lawsuit of a Jane Doe that Trump had raped her four times when she was 13, and that Epstein had done so twice. Her lawsuit was substantiated by a witness, Tiffany Doe who claimed to have worked for Epstein. Who would’ve thought the man who is on tape bragging about sneaking into his own beauty pageant changing rooms and “grabbing girls by the pussy” could be a sexual predator who surrounds himself with other predators and their enablers. If this nation ever cared about survivors, these allegations alone would have been enough to topple this network and Trump’s campaign.

But even if the alleged pedophile in chief dropped dead tomorrow, the deep seated corruption and horror would not be abated. This was happening long before Trump. The colonization of the United States was no different from the stories contained in the files. The colonization of Palestine is no different. Nor of South America, Australia, Congo or the rest of the African continent for that matter.

Cristoforo Columbo sailed across the ocean blue in 1492, landing in what we now call the Bahamas. He established a colony on the island of present day Haiti, and proceeded to kidnap and traffic the indigenous people, many of them children into sex slavery and manual labor. He was later arrested and condemned by his contemporaries for his extreme cruelty, even as a transatlantic slave trade was established to replicate his actions across continents on an industrial scale. So many bodies were dumped into the Atlantic ocean it permanently altered the migration patterns of oceanic sharks. European nations raced to extract resources and wealth and people from every corner of the world. What was the ‘triangular trade‘ if not the largest trafficking ring in history? There have been hundreds of movies depicting the slavery of American cotton plantations, but there has never been one depicting the plantations where the real money was made. The human plantations. The ones were they bred people like cattle.

The Files are the beginning of a reckoning. A reckoning with the way things have always been. A reckoning with the fact that a system built on racism, misogyny and child sex slavery can never be reformed- only abolished by any means necessary. We have to reckon with the possibility that the truth is not dead; that we have only just begun to discover it. While not everyone implicated in the files is guilty of participating in the trafficking ring, the truth is they didn’t need to be. Many knew more than enough.

Those implicated in the Epstein network have one thing in common regardless of their race, sex, nationality, religion or politics: they are rich. Epstein carved the world into their bank accounts and they were happy to look the other way or even participate until one day he became too much of a liability. The Americas- and the United States of America are the product of five hundred years of Jefferey Epsteins. Institutionalized, legalized, protected, and now... redacted.

Venmo

A police SUV circled the block, surveying the enraged crowd gathered in the courtyard of Eugene’s Federal Building. Passing cars honk, blaring their support as they drive by on the town’s busiest arteries. A nurse in Minneapolis was murdered by ICE a week before this. A lesbian mother before him. The crowd simmered with rage and a federal window shattered.

“THIS IS THE EUGENE POLICE DEPARTMENT, YOU ARE ENGAGED IN AN ACTIVE RIOT. YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE FROM THE AREA IMMEDIATELY.” A woman’s voice called out over the LRAD.

It wasn’t long before tear gas was launched into the crowd. Among those arrested that night was a grassroots documentarian and filmmaker by the name of Tim Lewis.

In a press briefing on May 15th Lewis explained that he was arrested for attempting to direct traffic away from protestors fleeing teargas. Jetty Etty, who attempted to help him direct traffic explains that they had tried to ask police to direct traffic away from the fog of tear gas and crowd fleeing the protest, but she says that police were unresponsive. They were quick to dispatch five vehicles to apprehend Lewis when he took matters into his own hands to direct traffic with cones the police allege were stolen. Pleading his innocence, Lewis demanded his discovery and the footage he uncovered would rock the image of the Eugene Police Department, making national headlines.

The officer in question by the name of Stiller, quickly resigned in disgrace amidst this media firestorm. Stiller’s own bodycam footage records his conversation with another officer where they laugh about domestic violence and make racist and other offensive remarks in regards to an ICE protest on January 30th at Eugene’s Federal Courthouse.

Eugene Police Chief Skinner said the video showed behavior that was “disrespectful and completely inconsistent with the values of the Eugene Police Department.” in his own press release. A Eugene Police Commission held a meeting to address the issue where Skinner made additional assertions, “Officer Stiller’s video stands alone as its own gross misrepresentation of EPD. Although a gross representation of that individual.” He acknowledged that the department had reviewed similar footage from the same night depicting officers using what he called, “dark humor”.

Eugene’s Independent Police Auditor, Craig Renetzky was assigned to investigate the incident when the video was leaked. Before he could initiate a formal complaint and investigation, Stiller had already resigned. The auditor does not have the ability to pursue anyone outside of the department.

The other person in the call has been identified as Garrett Frier, Stiller’s former co-worker at the West Valley City Police Department in Utah.

In a full press release available on my substack, activists paint Officer Stiller as a mere scapegoat for a larger pattern of behavior in the Eugene- and all police departments across the country.

“This is baseline behavior. These are conversations that happen so frequently, that are so common that he was just casually taking part in this horrific conversation… folks have heard stuff like this said to their face, and it really is interesting to me that people are shocked by hearing a police officer say this. That they’re shocked to hear a police officer in Eugene saying this because we’re a liberal city, correct? We’re progressive, we’re ‘blue’. Unfortunately the system here is just like the rest of the country. And it is not broken, it is working exactly the way it’s designed to. This is just a small snippet of a glimpse into that dark, disgusting culture.” - Spokesperson Blair Hickok

Hickok, Jetty Etty, and Tim Lewis gathered with other members of the community to say that Stiller’s resignation is far from accountability. They complain that the police get to decide what ‘accountability’ looks like. “Why don’t we [as a community] get to be involved in the decision making process?” asks Lewis’ spokesperson, Blair Hickok. Who is unsatisfied that Stiller gets to resign and still receive his pension. They say they have little trust in the oversight committee as well because they see it as a conflict of interest for a member of the committee to also hold a job as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice.

At their press release they demanded that Chief Skinner be fired for his poor leadership and for allowing this culture to exist within the department.

They demanded the independent oversight committee be rebuilt to be actually independent instead of overseen by people who “work for the police”.

And they demanded that funds be diverted from the police department to refund Eugene’s premier community outreach program, Cahoots. The Cahoots project once led the nation as a model of outreach to those living on the streets and people in crisis, but was defunded last year and forced to severely reduce the services it provides to the Eugene Springfield area.

They also announced they are compiling evidence to allege that Eugene Police Department is violating sanctuary laws by working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The January 30th anti ICE protest which opened this chapter has become a pivotal moment for Eugene, as the smashed window led to a fence being erected around the property and windows to be boarded. Early in the morning of May 5th, the FBI raided the home of 18 year old Soren Emery Polzin in relation to the window.

Venmo

Trystan Reese is the embodiment of everything your homophobic uncle rants about over thanksgiving dinner. The pregnant gay man who devoted his life to queer rights and activism, who began building his family before gay marriage was even legalized.

Queer Fertility

Reese has dedicated a large portion of his career to bringing awareness to trans reproductive health care. An issue that’s poorly understood and often ignored in the conversation of trans health when the community is still fighting tooth and nail to defend decades of consistent research showing that trans healthcare is life saving and medically necessary.

“We know very little about the long term HRT impacts on fertility.” Laments Reese. Louise Weard’s Castration Movie brings this issue front and center by telling the story of a trans woman struggling with becoming infertile do to her Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), helping to bring awareness to this critically under recognized issue. Trans people have already begun telling stories grappling with this issue just now peaking through the cracks.

“We haven’t yet figured out how to tell a person early in transition, you may not think you want kids now, but most people in your situation five or ten years later find that they do and it’s too late.” Says Reese, and it isn’t just an issue of informed practice since the information simply isn’t there. Reese explains how studies that are being done only focus on a handful of people and never provide conclusive evidence for why some trans people become infertile and others don’t. Factors like dieting, stress, and genetic dispositions create too many variables in too small a portion of the population. Between a lack of sample sizes, lack of interest, and lack of funding, the subject is only beginning to see any focus thanks to the work of people like Reese and transfertility.co.

In 1979 the standards of care for transgender people placed strict limits on what characteristics individuals could exhibit in order to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a diagnosis which was required to receive gender affirming care. This led to trans people performing an idea of gender dysphoria based on the expectations of cis doctors in order to receive the care they needed. The affects this has had on the scientific understanding of identity and gender dysphoria are still being felt today, leading to misconceptions that Reese had to break through.

“It’s actually a myth that being pregnant will make dysphoria worse. The best study we have on this is a study that asked this question of trans and non-binary people who’d been through a pregnancy experience as a trans person... Only about a third said that being pregnant was hard for them in terms of dysphoria. A third of people experienced no change. And then the remaining third actually said that the dysphoria got better or even went away during their pregnancy... they said yeah. I’ve always felt ambivalent about my body, and now look what it can do! and it becomes kind of this radical reimagining of what does it mean to be trans?” - Trystan Reese

He added that, “Sixty to seventy percent of trans adults wish that they had preserved their fertility before they transitioned but less than five percent do. It’s expensive, for people assigned female at birth it’s invasive. Insurance doesn’t cover it.” This is where Reese has targeted his activism as of late, by helping to “pass laws that requires insurers to cover fertility preservation for transgender people”, these laws don’t only affect gender affirming operations either, but cancer treatment as well as other fertility endangering operations. He’s already helped implement these laws in several states so “if you’re going to undergo any procedure that affects fertility, insurance will cover the cost of preserving fertility.” The Movement Advancement Project or M.A.P. hosts an interactive map demonstrating these fertility laws, currently the vast majority of states that address the issue of insuring fertility operations explicitly exclude trans people from accessing this coverage.

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Queer Life

This issue is obviously a personal one. When Reese initially went on HRT, he was told he would never have children. But Reese says he already knew a lot of other trans men who had given birth. He discovered that after a few months off HRT, he would be able to have a child again. Because Reese already knew other Trans men who had lived this experience, he already had that model and so he says he didn’t experience dysphoria from his pregnancy, with the caveat that he doesn’t experience dysphoria much to begin with. To him, it was just this “cool kind of weird thing my body can do”. So Reese “decided to tell his trans pregnancy story publicly so other trans folks to have another possibility model,” so they can experience the same shattering of boundaries that he did.

“Non-trans interviewers ask me what it’s like to be a pregnant man and I’m like how should I know? That’s all I’ve ever been!” laughs Reese, “We could spend a lot of our lives wishing our bodies were more like cis people or we could really embrace this unique special thing that makes us different and gives us possibility that other cis people don’t have.”

But this wasn’t their first child. Reese and his partner, Biff had already become parents overnight by fostering two toddlers. A method which Reese doesn’t personally recommend if you value stability. The couple had to quickly adapt to queer fatherhood in a world before gay marriage had been legalized. So Reese says they decided to be illegally married in Canada to give their new kids a stable home and the care they needed and deserved.

“As a trans person I fought very hard to be seen in that way where we share a lot of our duties equitably and I have always been the primary breadwinner.” says Reese, who says that due to being queer, he had to cultivate a sense of masculinity and fatherhood rather than inheriting it as a result of how he was born. “I worked very hard to build my own business and be able to take care of a family. That doesn’t feel like a trap for me it feels like an honor for me.” he emphasizes. After a few years, he and Biff decided to have a third child on their own, feeling more prepared after helping to raise their adopted children.

“...it’s not just that straight/cis culture should accept queer culture, no offense but y’all have a lot to learn from us... We have more of a liberatory approach... you can choose what works for you and what you want your role to be based on what brings you joy and what your skills are, not based on what gender you happen to have been assigned at birth.” - Trystan Reese

Queer Liberty

Reese had built a career in queer activism long before he became famous for being the man who gave birth. He began as a fellow with the LGBTQ Task Force, the oldest queer non profit in the country where he traveled to communities across the nation where he “worked arm in arm with trans people all over the country helping them build the power they needed to win at the ballot box.” Reese worked to defeat anti queer legislation from California’s proposition 8 and an anti trans law in Kalamazoo, Michigan to name but a few of the bills he fought. But Reese was only getting started.

“I left to go be the development director of immigration equality so I was working with queer folks who were fleeing persecution in their countries of origin. To make sure they had a safe place to land in the US, to get them out of detention centers if they were put into detention centers, to help them set up asylum status in the US to help them put down roots to live their lives as freely and as openly and as safely as possible.” - Trystan Reese

Trans asylum seekers have reported experiencing cruelty and even deaths in ICE detention since 2015 when the agency first began tracking the population. A decision which was reversed in 2025 as ICE ramped up illegal attacks on immigrants with trans immigrants and asylum seekers being especially at risk during Trump’s second term. A new visa rule puts these trans immigrants at risk of being accused of fraud for having altered birth markers on their documents.

Now Reese has built and runs his own company, Collaborate Consulting, to advocate for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace as a keynote speaker and training facilitator. He’s also published research on the mental health of trans patients receiving Assisted Reproductive Technology in Fertility Counseling: Clinical Guide, available from Cambridge University Press. As well as peer reviewed research into early childhood educators and trans identities. He’s also devoted much of his work to the continued issue of trans fertility, working with FertilityIQ and working to pass laws to support Trans Fertility treatment.

The front of trans fertility is uniquely situated between the realms of reproductive health care and trans care, both of which are under attack with abortion bans and laws targeting children and adults transitioning socially and medically. Yet Reese says most of this legislation hasn’t affected trans fertility itself since fertility care is already privatized and insurance already didn’t cover treatment for lgbtq+ people. Through this work and his work in consulting, Reese has found allyship in a time when corporations and legislators seem to be abandoning the queer community.

“It’s easy to imagine everyone’s bailing on us and that’s true in some ways, some people are. But in a lot of other ways people are showing up more quietly behind the scenes doing that kind of work. People are still going to keep building families. People build families in the middle of wars, they just do. Life finds a way.” - Trystan Reese

Some of this work has gone toward expanding Oregon’s status as a sanctuary state, a safe haven for trans and queer people as well as immigrants as some states and the federal government become increasingly hostile. “Oregon is doubling down. We’re putting things in the state constitution both for immigrant rights, reproductive choice and abortion access and trans health. Those are the three core things we’re trying to protect here in Oregon.” says Reese, who is far from alone in this work. He points to Basic Rights Oregon as a state wide organization that has been “slogging away for decades”. Oregon’s sanctuary status has been far from enough to protect immigrant communities across the state from ICE’s months long ‘operation black rose‘ in Portland, proving there’s still more work to be done if sanctuary’s are going to live up to the name and protect immigrants and trans people.

"I've seen the pendulum shift. Any time we've achieved any gains they've been taken away, so we've had to evolve and we've had to shift.”, says Reese. This work only lives with the enforcement and participation of people carrying it forward. “Every place that people are going for sanctuary exists because there are hard fought leaders, community members, grassroots organizing that have happened that have created that bastion of support.”, as Reese encourages people to join these fights that are far from over.

Each of us are called to do our work in a certain way and there’s so much work to do. Do the work you feel called to do if it’s make art, if it’s have a potluck, if it’s go and start a trans commune, if it’s pee on the steps of the capital, if it’s put on a suit and a tie and talk to a legislator, if it’s join a school board meeting, like there is transphobia everywhere and we literally need people operating on all fronts.” - Trystan Reese

“Spiritually, there’s a lot of purgatory in this forest. Lot of spirits that haven’t made a decision yet... it’s not for the faint of heart.” - Tish, Thousand Acres resident since 2019

Cold seeps into the rushing water of the Sandy River Delta where it stirs and mixes with the greater Columbia River. The cottonwood trees begin to yellow and turn, a picturesque canopy draped over labyrinthine trenches carving earthwork obstacles alongside eclectic sculptures, elaborately established dispersed campsites and makeshift barricades. Each of these projects bears testament to the people who call this land home and their battle to stop a sweep organized in part by the office of the governor of Oregon herself, Tina Kotek. A sweep that now looms over the heads of every occupant of this decades old community.

This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of The Dissonant Times.

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Previous coverage compiled interviews with residents of the encampment and their stories, as well as various sources documenting the initial June sweep of the Thousand Acres Encampment, local government entities, and the details of contracts with various companies. This included Springfield, Oregon based Northwest Hazmat which bear maced a protestor unprovoked on video- an act which lead to a pause on the sweep and the re-examination of contracts. Kotek’s office and the Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL) announced they would “be halting and reevaluating the project for now, citing “the safety and security of our staff, contractors, and the public, including those currently in the area.” According to the Portland Mercury, Kotek’s “State Resiliency Officer”, Jonna Papaefthimiou has been tasked with, “work[ing] closely with the agency (DSL) to bring together the necessary NGO, local, and state partners that can help accomplish a successful outcome.”. Residents argue that the NGO groups in question, which is really just the Salvation Army, is insufficient, referencing resources which are unavailable do to demand and barriers to entry.

In the mean time, the residents of the Thousand Acres Encampment penned a Cooperative Stewardship Proposal which offers a peaceful path forward. This proposal would allow the residents of the encampment to remain on the land while remedying environmental concerns raised by various parties. The Proposal pushes for a self governed village, modeled after Hazelnut Grove, Dignity Village, and Right 2 Dream Too (R2D2), three other long lasting self organized houseless communities that have grown into permitted and supported endeavors within Portland. The goal of the residents is to build their community into a similar project within the fourteen hundred acre park at the confluence of the Sandy and Columbia rivers.

On September Fourth, advocates and residents of the thousand acres encampment were finally able to present the Cooperative Stewardship Proposal to Jonna Papaefthimiou (Kotek’s resilience officer), as well as a DSL representative and Sara Manning, who represented Rapid Response Bio Clean, the Portland based company that has stepped into the space left by Northwest Hazmat. Shortly thereafter, the Department of State Lands released an update on it’s website regarding the Sandy River Delta Restoration. They summarize the events of the first sweep from the State’s perspective and explain that since the ill fated sweep they have, “Listened and Learned”, and have “engaged with partners, advocates, and service providers to understand what went wrong”, and that they want to “resume restoration work with a renewed focus on safety, dignity and environmental stewardship.” An advocate who was present for the meeting paints a different picture.

“Thousand Acres folks did an amazing job presenting the Cooperative Stewardship Proposal and the reasons it would be a deeply inhumane act for the state to move forward with the sweep, especially since the DSL has continued to lie about connecting people with alternative housing. Overall, Jonna’s response was pretty infuriating. We kept asking ‘why now’, after people have lived here for decades. Jonna wouldn’t give a straight answer..., but she did admit that Kotek’s plans to expand housing resources aren’t actually providing any solutions for where Thousand Acres folks are supposed to go within the timeline of the sweep, while in the same breath saying DSL and Kotek aren’t willing to budge on that timeline.” - Bantam, Thousand Acres Advocate

No specific timeline was given when pressed, nor when Dissonant Times reached out to Rapid Response for comment, a request which has gone unacknowledged at time of writing. But, Bantam says that they expect the sweep to be underway again in the next month or two.

The resident’s argument didn’t only make moral appeals either, the text of their proposal estimates that the cost of implementing a permanent solution in building a village in the Thousand Acres Dog Park would be less than $15,000 per unit on the high end. Comparatively the cost of the initial sweep based on contracts obtained by KATU news shows that NW enforcement was contracted for up to $200,000 and Northwest Hazmat for up to $139,000. The cost of the first sweep is sunk now, as the pause and termination of contracts lead to decent payouts for both contractors. The details of the new contract with Rapid Response have not come to light as of yet.

For it’s part, Rapid Response, not to be confused with the police divisions of the same name, positions itself as a morally enlightened alternative to Northwest Hazmat. Bantam says that, “[Rapid Response] presents itself as the best case scenario for sweeps that are ‘inevitably’ going to happen.” Part of this image is upheld by Rapid Response claiming that they actually hire impoverished and sometimes formerly unhoused people to do the work of clearing urban camps. According to the Willamette Weekly, former Portland Mayor, Ted Wheeler once cited a statistic that nearly “75% of Rapid Response staff “have similar lived experience to those at the campsites.”“ Despite these assertions of moral authority and of approaching those on the streets with a sympathetic touch, the company is in fact embroiled in controversies regarding it’s documented mistreatment of the people they interact with, including violations and poor training, improperly disposing of peoples personal property on numerous occasions including when a lawyer used apple air tags to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the company was violating state and local law to improperly discard of people’s property.

Perhaps most damning of all, in 2022 Rapid Response Bio Clean lost a wrongful death lawsuit after the theft and disposal of an unhoused woman’s medication led directly to her death only a week later. A default judgement issue was ordered after the company failed to attend the court date. The president of Rapid Response, Lance Hamel failed to pay any of the ordered amount to the woman’s family. In 2024 Hamel and Rapid Response pushed for a redo on the case, first arguing that they had not been notified. When the contrary was proven, they amended their statement to claim that they had simply ‘forgot’. This is according to court documents and testimony procured by Portland Street Roots.

In the wake of the seemingly fruitless meeting with Tina Kotek’s state resiliency officer and representatives of other parties in the conflict, the community at Thousand Acres was left figuring out what steps to take next alongside advocates who have helped them along this journey.

“A lot of people were angry and frustrated with the lack of response that we got.... There’s this sense that the state is underestimating us, and that’s an advantage in a way. There’s a lot of beauty and power and strength in being a group that has a lot of care for each other. People are intent on not having the community split up and continuing to care for each other- no matter what.” - Bantam

They went on to talk about what that work and care has looked like, describing steps that have been taken to overcome inherent divides between those living in the camp and those who aren’t, getting to know each of the residents in the camp through regular meetings and build days that have been held since the onset of the paused June sweep. Looking ahead to what’s to come, Bantam described other routes that may begin to take shape- whether it be raising money to buy land elsewhere or building a “digital action toolkit where supporters can make calls and apply pressure to Kotek’s office and DSL,” they added that, “There will be opportunities for people to be showing up in person more, and laying out a process for how people can contact us and support us and get involved.” They concluded, “when the state is after every aspect of your being, people get creative.”

The Digital Action Toolkit in question was released shortly after the interview, and can be found here: bit.ly/defend1000acres

2026 Edit: Thousand Acres was swept in October of 2025, but residents remain in the park weathering the sweep in the way they always have: by reestablishing themselves in a different part of the acres. They have organized support via fundraisers and punk benefit shows to replace belongings and provide care for their pets. Thousand Acres survives on.

Readers can go to @thousandacresdefense on venmo and can follow the Instagram account with the same name to stay up to date and find resources as the encampment’s struggle continues to unfold.

Written by: Azria Raventhorn // Edited by Joy Santiago

Interview with an advocate by the name of Bantam

There is a growing grift at the heart of our society. From the white house all the way down to your own neighbors, no one is safe… and everyone is compromised.

Welcome to the overwhelmingly cynical world of online gambling markets. Where war profiteering used to be locked behind the halls of congress and lobbies and the military industrial complex, now every day soldiers and citizens can cash out thanks to platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket changing the game and putting the power of profit in your pocket.

Everyone Can Be An Insider

“Prediction markets allow you to construct completely novel high specificity viewpoints in the market. This combination of markets is the highest signal information we’ve ever seen a market have.” Said a Crypto gambler and market speculator who goes by Tulip King in his interview appearance with Threadguy. The name ‘Tulip King’ refers to the Dutch Tulip Craze. Tulip King is a niche micro-celebrity who sings the praises of the markets and debates his opinions on X (formerly known as Twitter). To translate his quote into plainspeak, what Tulip King is saying is that where markets were previously restricted to shares in specific companies, Polymarket has shifted this to the likelihood of certain events, certain outcomes, certain “high specificity viewpoints”, blurring the lines between investment and gambling.

What this looks like in practice is the monetization of everything from politics to the weather. In the words of Kalshi CEO and co-founder, Tarek Monsour the end result is to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference of opinion.” This is not exactly literal, but the way share prices function. Tulip King explains that buying and selling shares in a market is really an expression of people’s opinions and confidence in certain markets.

But when everything is monetizable, then there’s a financial incentive for everything to be influenceable. Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong demonstrated this when Polymarket launched a market on the likelihood of him saying certain words during a speech he was delivering. Armstrong waited until the very end to open his phone and read off every word people were placing stakes on.

“The prediction market actually facilitates the bounty for making the event happen. Take the prediction market for Brian Armstrong saying these words, right? It’s not telling you the chance he’ll will say these words, it’s telling you if he says these words; what’s that worth? So if you’re the guy writing his script, you might sneak something in there or cut something. If you’re him you might say it. The prediction market is an economic engine that creates incentive- it has an impact on the event. They actually balance back and forth.” - Tulip King.

Forbes explains that these markets move at the speed of information, which is instantaneous in the digital age. Rumors and events spread on social media and influence perceptions, influence opinions. True or not, the markets price and manifest these rumors into reality through a financial alchemical performance.

“It [polymarket], has essentially created a bounty for making things happen. It extends to political markets... If I have a .5% chance of becoming the mayor and I buy a 5000 dollar position in that, my payout is a million dollars. I can buy twenty 5000 dollar positions and then I can hire twenty people and say you now own the shares in the market, and if we can get me elected you get a million dollars. So I bootstrapped my campaign using a hundred thousand dollars with potentially 20 million dollars worth of payout. And I could probably make some progress politically with twenty real killers on my team. The market is financing the value of making something unexpected happen.” Tulip King adds.

This is colloquially known as insider trading. And it’s already played out in blood.

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Betting on Bombs

Markets have been launched on the outcomes of battles in the Ukraine War. On November 15th 2025, as Russian forces approached the city if Myrnohrad investors placed stakes on the outcome of the battle from the comfort of their homes. As night fell those who placed stakes on a Russian win suddenly one big due not to any actual outcome, but because an employee of the Institute of the Study of War (ISW) manipulated the war map Polymarket depends on to determine the outcome of the battle. This created the mirage of a Russian victory and resulted in the employee being fired from the DC based thinktank.

This is just “part of the game though”. Tulip King brushes aside these consequences as a factor in the cost benefit analysis of any action using the example of a basketball game where a market has been created on whether an audience member will disrupt the game. Someone could bet on a yes outcome, attend the game, disrupt it, cash out. And the lifetime ban and fine for disrupting the game just becomes a cost of doing business.

One Israeli air force pilot was arrested as part of his cost of doing business. According to Haaretz the pilot repeatedly placed bets on the timing of his bombing campaigns against Iran. He texted his wife on whatsapp saying, “Good morning to your genius man who just turned a thousand dollars into 46 thousand dollars.” He isn’t alone, according to him, the entire air force is betting on these markets. Despite what one may hope, his arrest doesn’t come as a consequence of gambling on bombs, but of potentially leaking information by way of his bets.

Afterall, why would someone be arrested for doing what is essentially completely normal?

Where war profiteering once looked like private security contracts, and equipment manufactures wheeling and dealing with the pentagon, or insider trading on oil futures with information only accessible in the room where it happens, now this system has been democratized. The soldiers at the bottom can cash out as much as those writing the laws and the contracts. Surely this has some benefit, soldiers might fight that much harder, perform that much better if they have a direct stake in the outcome that could guarantee a payout for their families and themselves far beyond the standard pay soldiers are typically afforded. Could this be the democratization of the workplace of war?

Obviously not. Because Polymarket doesn’t differentiate between the bets of soldiers and those sitting on their couches at home. When an American F15 jet was shot down in Iran, users didn’t hesitate to create a market gambling on the ultimate fate of the pilot (which is still disputed). This market was labeled “disgusting“ by bronze star marine veteran Rep. Seth Moultan, (D Mass). and subsequently taken down by the Polymarket platform.

This is far from the first time this has happened as Polymarket similarly took down a market on the likelihood of nuclear war at the outbreak of the war with Iran following public backlash and possibly concerns that the company may not be able to pay the winners should the event come to pass. One can imagine the people who engaged in this market saying ‘If I’m going down I might as well get paid.’ Of course- what the money would be good for anymore doesn’t seem to factor into the equation. This is the ultimate end state of this ‘financialization of everything’. Say what you will, but at least they’re consistent. It doesn’t seem to matter if the bombs fall on others or themselves. The singular urge remains to keep getting paid, even when the ones placing the bets are also standing in the line of fire.

The Trump Pump and Dump

This trend has stretched to the very top where geopolitics can be traded for an edge on the information competition.

I went into this article expecting to find confirmation that congress and America’s political elites are a nest of insider trading. However the research I discovered actually contradicted my assumptions. While certain members of congress have historically made select suspicious bets, according to Andrew Eggers, a political scientist with University of Chicago Center for Effective Government the data does not support this conclusion. On average, congress members perform the same or worse than other investors.

So the current trend is even more grotesque in comparison.

In the hours before bombs fell in an unprovoked AI powered attack by joint US-Israeli forces, which I covered here, six suspicious bets were placed on the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wagering that he would die that very day. Only hours later Israel killed the supreme leader and these six insiders walked away with $1.2 million. Polymarket users grew incensed and accused the market of being rigged by insiders.

It’s worth pointing out that this market isn’t labeled as ‘disgusting’ by lawmakers in the way that the one on the life of the downed F15 pilot was. Or those which are placed on the timing of bombs falling on Gaza or Iran.

These sorts of insider trading allegations have been par for the course with the Trump administration. Last year he elicited allegations of manipulating the stock market after tweeting “Now is a great time to buy!” before announcing the reversal of major tariff policies hours later.

The war with Iran has become a cycle of shifting goals and false announcements that have left many scrambling to keep up with a “will they or wont they” approach to war. This is so far the climax of Trump’s erratic foreign policy approach which left analysts scratching their heads during his first term. The Cambridge Review of International Affairs published an article analyzing Trumps ‘Unpredictability Doctrine’ in detail in 2021.

But Occam’s Razor states the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. This ‘doctrine’, may be little more than an attempt to ascribe a method to the madness. And it misses a key part of the puzzle, and the most glaringly obvious one.

After the unprovoked February 28th strikes on Iran lead to the closure of the Straight of Hormuz and attacks on energy facilities in the region, oil prices skyrockets to all time highs not seen since the 70’s.

In response, on Saturday March 21st Trump threatened to commit war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure and energy grids if the straight was not opened. It would not be the last time he made such threats.

To quote the above clip from Ms. Now, merely fifteen minutes before Trump announced a five day ceasefire on the morning of Monday the 23rd of March, a series of massive wealth transfers took place. Just before the opening bell a few individuals sold massive amounts of oil futures and bought massive amounts of stock index futures. The oil cash outs netted over $500 million dollars for these select insiders.

Democratic Representative from New York, Ritchie Torres said it “may be the largest case of Insider Trading in history” in a letter to commission chairs demanding a probe into the incident. Torres is one of the lone voices in congress addressing this issue, having introduced legislation to address the growing trend following previous suspicious bets with a $400,000 polymarket payout on the kidnapping of Former Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro. This legislation was dead on arrival.

A US soldier involved in the operation has since been arrested for placing this bet. Trump shrugged over this development saying, “The whole world’s unfortunately become a casino.” The arrest of the soldier marks the first time the Department of Justice has prosecuted anyone for these insider bets. Between the Israeli Soldier and the US soldier’s arrests, it seems only those without political power risk facing any consequences.

The White House as since warned staff against placing bets on the Iran war in an internal email, as this would violate various ethics regulations barring staff from engaging in such activities. However this hasn’t halted anything.

While the bombs fall, Trump’s circle continues to cash out.

In my previous coverage of the Iran War I said that Trump’s false declarations of ceasefires and pre-emptive victory likely constitute pump and dump schemes. At the very least, those closest to him are treating it as such. On the eve of Tuesday April 7th after Trump threatened to commit genocide to get Iran to come to the negotiating table, another 950 million dollars was bet on oil prices falling directly before Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire.

Once again after 2 weeks of negotiations have taken place investors shorted oil $800 million only minutes before the Straight of Hormuz was announced to be re-opened on the 18th of April. Once again the insider(s) walked away before the Straight was immediately closed again the same day in lieu of the American counter-blockade’s presence.

This pattern constitutes evidence that Trump’s ‘Unpredictability Doctrine’ is not a negotiation strategy, but a market manipulation to funnel money into the pockets of a select few, built on the bombing of innocents.

A Return to Form

To quote Tulip King once more, all of this is simply another instance of polymarket “creating a bounty for making things happen.” Once it’s considered fair game to bet on bombs, to buy futures on the lives of people and ourselves is there any more room for pointing fingers? Where do we draw the line?

“This is how stocks started. The original equity structure was people financing voyages and expeditions. That financial venture only existed for the duration of the voyage. You would put money down to fund the voyage and you would get a share of whatever spoils they came back with.... You’re actually going back to the days of the original voyages and east india trading company.” Tulip King glows as he says this as if comparing himself to a mercantile capitalist makes him feel warm and fuzzy.

Polymarket is a stark reminder of the way things have been since capitalism began financing voyages to pillage far off lands. Always beating the same drum of “buy in or get left out”. Someone has always been the one getting pillaged. Now Polymarket has priced everything- and everyone into pillage- or be pillaged. This is the techno-colonial reiteration of what the game has always been.

There’s a grift at the heart of our society. Every day it only seems to widen, growing more blatant, more rampant, and it may be time to finally do something about it. Because thanks to polymarket, your neighbors, family and friends can become insiders on the secrets of the market. This is nothing less than the democratization of war profiteering.

“I’ve never seen people load up a bulldozer so fast and disappear. From dead set on destroying this place and cleaning it up and hauling it off to- invisible, they turned to smoke you might say, they disappeared so fast.” Says ‘Hippie’, who has lived with the ‘Thousand Acres’ encampment for more than six years. Matted locks wrap around his head like snakes and an eclectic array of carvings and crystals hangs around his neck.

This article was originally published in the July 2025 issue of the Dissonant Times as part of the Death by A Thousand Tiny Cuts column.

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Hippie is one of a half dozen residents of the encampment I’ve spoken to about their ongoing struggle to remain on the land they’ve occupied for years. Trenches dug into the soil and makeshift barricades dot the encampment: remnants from their stand against Springfield, Oregon-based Northwest Hazmat and NW Enforcement, a Portland based private security group. Contracts were obtained via open records requests with the state of Oregon courtesy of KATU news, revealing that NW Hazmat was contracted for up to $139,000 and NW Enforcement contracted for up to $200,000. The Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL) hired both to conduct a ‘clean up’ of the forest on June 2nd, and facilitate the ‘willing’ removal of the residents. Residents would be forced to leave or be trespassed beginning June 9th. This timeline was derailed after DSL postponed the cleanup indefinitely on June 8th after a private contractor allegedly maced a protestor unprovoked. Video of the altercation can be viewed here.

Over the years the Thousand Acres encampment has been visited several times by Kevin Dahlgren, an “independent journalist” who was hired as a consultant by the city of Gresham as a “homeless specialist” in a botched $18,000 contract with their police force in 2023. He has since been indicted twice in the same year, first with nineteen charges and again for six more, for a total of twenty five separate charges relating to theft, identity theft, and misconduct towards people on the streets and the city of Gresham totaling thousands of dollars in damages. Dahlgren toured the Thousand Acres encampment several times with city and state officials to encourage the sweeps going as far back as 2021 when he visited the encampment with Mayor Lauer of Troutdale, Mayor Stovall of Gresham, and former Mayor Cooper of Fairview.

None of these mayors have jurisdiction over the Sandy River Delta. According to the City of Troutdale, the presence of the Thousand Acres encampment is a “concern and frustration,” but they lament, “there is very little the city can do... and [they] have no jurisdiction over it.” Instead they say the woodlands are divided between the Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL) and the US Forest Service (USFS).

“Kevin Dahlgren is a propaganda King,” according to Hippie. Another resident named Danny added, “To me he’s a thief, he’s a crook. He claims he’s a social worker but he comes and takes your stuff and throws it away.” Danny claims to be the longest running resident of the Acres for over thirty years, which has earned him the mock title of ‘mayor’ of Thousand Acres. Since the encampment doesn’t keep written records it’s impossible to confirm the complete timeline of the Acres community except through their own oral history. Residents of the Acres claim the encampment has been going for around forty years, longer than anyone claims to have been a part of it. Over that time Danny says he’s seen the community at acres change a lot, “Thirty years I’ve met thousands of people. People that needed help, had nowhere to go. People just keep coming back to say thanks and helping us out.” Those I interviewed referred to those like Danny and Hippie- those who stay- as “the family”.

Danny explains how the group has survived all this time, “Every time they’d do a sweep we’d move over to another part of the park, wait thirty days, and move again.” But this time rather than fleeing to another area of the park, residents say they’re prepared to stand their ground. A hip hop artist who goes by the stage name Mention1 said he finds the Acres ‘sacred’, “We fight for what we believe in. Acres is our home, and they’ve accepted me as well, so yeah, I will continue to fight for acres.” This sentiment was echoed among everyone I spoke to, most emphatically from a woman who goes by Trish who said she spent the week of the sweep building a patio on her “property” to prove her commitment to fighting for the Acres. The “land pirate”, Clinton Bell Philips, who says he’s running for president in 2028 with his tongue in his cheek and a wink in his eye said, “I’m gonna stay here as long as I can.... What’s happening here at Acres has never happened before*, it’s special because it worked. Anarchy worked. We govern ourselves.”

I asked what the self governance of Thousand Acres looked like, and Hippie responded, “We don’t really have a government, we call him [Danny] “mayor,” but if we have a problem, we make it known and it gets solved.”

After video of one of the contractors macing an unviolent protestor was shared around social media, a spokesperson for DSL wrote to KATU news regarding the incident, “We respect and support the right of individuals to express their views through protest. What’s depicted in the video does not reflect our values or the expectations we set for contractors working on our behalf. We are actively investigating this incident and will seek an immediate remedy with the contractor.” Contractors on site that day were not authorized to use force to remove people. Several days later according to the Portland Mercury DSL would write that “they will be halting and reevaluating the project for now, citing “the safety and security of our staff, contractors, and the public, including those currently in the area.” KATU reports this move was directed from the office of Oregon Governor Tina Kotek herself. The pause has been criticized for increasing the cost of the project by Troutdale City manager, Ray Young, who says he’s been pushing for the camp to be cleared for six years.

Governor Tina Kotek is emphasizing a ‘humane’ sweep, her office’s statement to KATU news says in part that she has “assigned her State Resiliency Officer to work closely with the agency to bring together the necessary NGO, local, and state partners that can help accomplish a successful outcome. Onsite work will begin again with those resources in place.” Partners which were previously involved in this process include Portland Police Bureau’s HOPE team (Homeless Outreach and Programs Engagement), as well as the Salvation Army in order to provide the occupants of the encampment with resources within the “proper channels”.

Many of the occupants I spoke to described being distrustful of the HOPE team. The outreach the Salvation Army has done is also seen as inadequate by the people in the camp. An article from the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) wrote in regards to these efforts, “Outreach has consisted of referrals to shelters, such as Bybee Lakes, but all the beds are full. Many residents have dogs which make it even more difficult to access shelter.” Included in the article from WRAP is a cooperative stewardship proposal developed alongside residents of the Thousand Acres encampment, which claims to offer a different path forward. One which claims to address “cleanup needs and combines cost-effective, modular housing with robust community governance,” claiming to create a, “system of environmental and community stewardship.”

In June of 2024 the Federal Supreme Court sided with Grants Pass, Oregon in the case of Grants Pass v Johnson, deciding that the constitution does not protect against sweeping, ticketing, and arresting unhoused people without offering adequate shelter beds. An interactive map of the ongoing criminalization of homelessness in the wake of the Grants Pass Decisions can be viewed here, courtesy of the ACLU.

On July 24th of 2025 President Trump signed an executive order to reverse federal and state judicial precedent, giving cities and states the power to force people living on the streets into treatment centers without their consent. The order, first reported on by USA Today, is titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets”. This Executive order could have major ramifications for unhoused people across the country, a crisis which has worsened every year. According to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development report from 2024, there are an estimated 771,480 people living on the streets. This number is likely an under-representation, as explained by School House Connection. What this executive order could mean for these hundreds of thousands of people, including every person I spoke to at Thousand Acres is currently unclear.

At Thousand Acres, uncertainty juxtaposes diverging paths; the peaceful cooperative stewardship model proposed by activists and residents; or continuing the pattern of sweeps and the destruction of people’s personal belongings that characterizes the state’s kneejerk approach to dealing with people without homes-- albeit with dubious promises of a “humane” solution which never seems to meaningfully materialize, or actively makes things worse.

Come back for part two where the encampment faced off with new opponents and the Governor of Oregon as the second sweep crept closer.

If readers would like to get involved, the Acres is fundraising through @thousandacresdefense on venmo and can follow the Instagram account with the same name to stay up to date as the encampment’s struggle continues to unfold.

*Note that Philip’s statement that Acres has never happened before is hyperbolic. There are many cases of self governing encampments, squats, and other “occupations” throughout even just modern history.

Written by: Azria Raventhorn // Edited by: Joy Santiago

Interviews with: Clinton Bell Philips, Hippie, Danny, Mention1, and several others who’s quotes could not be included.

The police held us for hours zip tied in vans while they laughed and snacked on donuts. Being arrested will make you realize that every stereotype about cops is true. They seemed to relish in a mask and persona they wore with pride. Still I was treated better than my compatriots, I only waited one hour, many others were not so lucky. As a trans person they put me with the men. I preferred this, most of the other trans people arrested that day were held in solitary. I sat in a small holding cell with a dozen men arrested at my side. We played games and joked and told stories to pass the time, twenty questions and even an improvised version of Dungeons and Dragons with ro-sham-bo instead of dice. We laughed into delirium through the day, trying to guess at what time it was based on the shade of light outside. The night was harder though, the lights were bright and unforgiving. The trains nearby blared every hour or so. The bench was no softer than the tile floor. I asked a guard for a blanket and he told me, “We don’t do that here”. I used my jail issued foam slippers as a pillow. Late in the night the door slammed open and the guards dumped a homeless man in our cell. I heard them remark that they didn’t know there were other people in our cell.

We still had it easier than the women, they were kept in a glass cell called “the fish bowl”, they had a television and a clock at least, these were little comfort when the television had to be kept on constantly, only maximum volume cop shows and fox news. They weren’t allowed to laugh or play games in the fish bowl, any kind of comradery was punished there.

There were over fifty of us altogether, a mass arrest for blocking the largest highway in the region. We stood on the road for all of forty minutes chanting for a Free Palestine, for an end of tax dollars funding genocide, for the Palestinian resistance. It was an orderly protest, there was no damage, no injuries. I held a sign that said “Genocide Joe”. Our actions that day backed the highway up for miles, it took several hours to return to the regular flow of traffic. But the genocide went uninterrupted.

Two years later and the genocide has expanded into Lebanon and America is carpet bombing Tehran in an AI powered joint operation with Israel. Less than halfway through the second Trump presidency, social services have been gutted, the job market has evaporated while President Trump makes off with billions and has sicced a masked police force on the population while claiming “absolute immunity”. Meanwhile the cost of living continues to skyrocket with gas prices soaring amidst the predictably disastrous war in Iran, all while the president and much of the ruling class has enabled or participated in the largest global pedophile trafficking ring to date. And there is no accountability in sight.

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With grievances racking up daily and a faltering economy, many people are asking why they’re bothering paying their taxes to a system that only serves the interests of a corrupt predator class hellbent on turning suffering into profit the world over.

Most of the time this sentiment is shared in passing whispers, in bluff and bluster, after all “only two things are assured in life: death and taxes.” But the IRS is not all powerful or all knowing. Tax resistance, also known as tax revolt has seen many forms and strategies over the years, and it’s coming back in vogue as people seek to put their money where their mouth is.

Tax resistance is employed as a protest against the government and has been undertaken as a tactic for many reasons in many times and in many ways, violent or non-violent to varying degrees of “success”. Success also looks different depending on the cause. The tactic has even been employed to overthrow governments, namely the British.

Their occupations are historically notorious for the levying of extreme taxes as a form of punishment for occupied people. The Salt taxes for instance made it illegal for Indians to harvest their own salt as they had for centuries in order to force the salt to be imported.

Gandhi led an illegal non-violent direct action campaign known as the salt march to protest these laws, resulting in the arrests of over 60,000 Indian demonstrators. But Gandhi’s protest was juxtaposed against a more militant and violent movement for Indian Revolution. Ultimately Gandhi won out.

Tax resistance has its own American tradition as well, and one far less peaceful. After the British imposed taxes on tea and Americans responded with the Boston Tea Party. Tons of tea was destroyed and tax collectors were tarred and feathered en masse.

This was not a lone occurrence, but the climax of a years long grassroots movement of everyday people refusing to pay taxes to the crown and attacking tax collectors. This movement lead directly to the American Rebellion and War of Independence.

Today tax resistance in the US takes the form of individuals refusing to pay the federal taxes they owe or even file at all. I once spoke to an advocate for this tactic who said that when doing tax resistance, one should send their 1099 tax form with a letter declaring their intent not to pay and why. This isa conscientious objector approach akin with the tactics of those who avoid the military draft. Tax avoidance is a crime however, and this letter would be seen as a declaration of intent to commit said crime. Indeed the IRS does have the right to garnish wages, seize assets, and charge, prosecute and imprison people who do this. Taking interest and fees into account, this strategy ends up with more money going to the federal government, not less.

Others choose the billionaire’s tactic of tax avoidance, that is to exploit legal loopholes to pay as little in taxes as possible, or to commit tax fraud by underreporting income and over-reporting expenses. The tax resistors I spoke to expressed distaste for these approaches, “We aren’t criminals.” They emphasized that they believe in paying taxes, they saw it as a civic duty, but didn’t like that those taxes funded death. In my opinion, and clearly in the opinion of the law there is no real distinction to be made there other than motive. In my case, my motives for standing on the highway were excluded from my trial. They were a non factor in whether or not I was guilty.

My own arrest was also tax resistance in a way, while I can’t speak for other people involved, abstaining from my taxes wasn’t a part of my protest. Taxes are inevitable, after all. The IRS all powerful. However the day was selected for it’s relevance as tax day. It was an economic blockade to halt the flow of tax dollars, economic power, and weapons to Israel. And thousands across the world participated in it. Collective action, not isolated.

These historical success stories of tax resistance had something that modern tax resisters don’t, that being community. Gandhi didn’t walk to the sea alone, and one guy didn’t throw a crate of tea into the Boston harbor and call it a party. These actions were successful because they were collective. Even as people begin to undertake these much tamer tactics today they do so as an atomized trend- as financial martyrs in legal trenches.

Now I’m certainly not one to break the law, and would never encourage such activities. But as it stands, taking illegal avenues is a fruitless act of self-flaggelation until a collective movement with real momentum forms (and this will happen if people organize for it). In the meantime there is still valuable and legal action that individuals can take to interrupt the finances of the machinations of death in ways that are just as impactful as blocking a highway or sending an angry letter to the IRS, without landing anyone in a prison cell.

It’s as simple as refiling a W-4 with an employer so federal taxes aren’t automatically taken out of paychecks. When taxes are automatically deducted the IRS is taking more than what they’re owed, this is essentially a free loan from every paycheck. Since most people’s W-4’s are filed with this selection, the federal government is able to accrue billions throughout the year, and they only have to pay back a small amount come tax season, refunding money that was never theirs to begin with. By removing this provision the government loses a free source of monthly income until it comes knocking on April 15th.

It’s free, it’s legal, and it hurts where it counts most- the wallet, all without becoming a martyr on the altar of Al Capone.

Written by: Azria Raventhorn

Everyone Saw This Coming

It was the predictable outcome. America’s rivalry with Iran has been boiling on a backburner since the cold war. Netanyahu has been claiming that Iran was weeks away from developing nuclear weapons since before I was even born (2002). When Trump ran the first time around he promised to pull out of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. It was one of the first things he followed through on once he’d taken power.

In a recent ramble Trump confirmed rumors that the US had backed protests in Iran over the winter, and attempted to smuggle weapons to Iranian dissidents through the Kurds even as Iranian negotiators sat across the table with US diplomats attempting to lower the sanctions that had hobbled their economy. Sanctions which followed last years debacle in which Israel launched strikes against Iran and America air struck Iranian diplomats during negotiations.

No one who was paying attention was surprised to see the Israeli-American joint strikes that decapitated the Iranian government 40 days ago. Perhaps no one was less surprised than the Iranian armed forces which did not hesitate to launch a decisive retaliation against Israel and US military bases and assets across the region which were overwhelmed with a barrage of cheap drones precipitating the real attacks when Iran revealed hypersonic missiles that ran laps around Israel’s iron dome. Iran projected its power and snatched control of the straight of Hormuz, bringing the global economy to a screeching halt.

It quickly became clear that Washington had overplayed their hand. Decapitation doesn’t kill a hydra. They had no plan, no actionable objectives, America’s allies stood them up on the world stage and Israel became pre-occupied with annexing southern Lebanon.

The extent of America’s humiliation is still hotly debated with evidence that the US targeted numerous civilian sites such as the Minab School Bombing that I previously covered here. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth is now being impeached on the basis of war crimes, and is accused of obscuring the extent of American casualties during the war. Numerous incidents from the USS Gerald R Ford somehow being rendered inoperable from a “laundry fire” to the destruction of American military bases to competing narratives around a downed American Pilot have cast serious doubt on the trustworthiness of any information handed down from CENTCOM. As if this wasn’t enough, Trump repeatedly declared pre-emptive victory timed to the flows of the stock exchanges in suspected pump and dump schemes that I will tackle in an upcoming article in more depth.

Make no mistake, America’s reputation had already been permanently damaged. Trump was and still is utterly isolated domestically and on the world stage .

There Has Never Been a Better Deal

On Sunday Trump was filmed rambling about an imminent defeat of Iran to a crowd of toddlers eating candy while the Easter bunny awkwardly looked on.

Unhinged doesn’t begin to address Trumps Tuesday morning Truth Social post in which he threatened to commit genocide by “Wiping an entire civilization from the face of the earth” unless Iran made a deal within 24 hours. This is not the posture of someone who has control over the situation, but a desperate tantrum being thrown just to get people to come to the table.

Tehran called his bluff with a ten point peace plan which Trump accepted as the basis of a two week ceasefire and negotiation period.

Trump declared victory, claiming the US had “met and exceeded all military objectives”, mainstream media bizarrely spun this as though Iran accepted the deal. Again, it was their deal. But since America has won the war several times already and apparently destroyed the air defenses of a country which immediately knocked several American aircraft out of the sky, Iran must have caved on something, right?

Iran is in a better position going into this ceasefire then they were before the war began. Their points are now the accepted status quo, legitimized by Trumps agreement to negotiate on their basis. Their points stipulate the acceptance of Iran’s nuclear program, the lifting of all sanctions against the country, and codifies control over the straight of Hormuz which was neutral ground before the war, and the ability to levy passage fines, as well as the withdrawal of US forces from Asia Minor.

Trump has lost in every conceivable way. In true ‘art of the deal’ fashion, he has declared victory anyway.

So What Now?

On the first day of the ceasefire it already appears it won’t hold. Israel broke with the US declared itself exempt and intensified its genocidal attacks on civilians in Lebanon. Further lending credence to the perception that Trump is not in control. Early this morning the IRGC claimed to have shot down an American Hermes 900 drone encroaching on their airspace.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters has stated it considers “The United States a partner in any aggression or transgression committed by the “isreali” entity against Iran and its interests.” One senior Iranian official said, “The Ceasefire covers the region, and “Israel” is known for breaking its promises; only fire will deter it.” The straight of Hormuz has already been closed again, if it ever opened.

The war is not over. And the emperor is stark raving naked and mad. Trump has been abandoned by the far right and American lawmakers increasingly call for his impeachment and immediate removal from office, if only so someone more competent can wage the war more effectively.

Still, the peace deal marks a decisive shift. America is not setting the terms anymore. And even agreeing to these talks validated the Iranian extortion of the straight of Hormuz. It’s no longer debatable that the straight is under their control. This is unambiguously illegal under international law, yet who is left to play that card? America and Israel lost their credibility in the bombed bodies of children in Gaza.

More and more it appears that the US is unable to project its interests and investments across the region for itself and it’s allies. Who is still an ally of the US? And what are America’s interests anymore? Trump has cast doubt on all of these in the supposed achievement of his undefined objectives that seem somehow to ignore every previous reasoning for aggression against Iran.

Iran has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Forty days into the five day war it has humiliated the United States and disrupted the dominance of the petrodollar by forcing ships to pay passage fees in Chinese Yuan. The petrodollar is the soft chewy center of America’s global hegemony, enforced at the end of a barrel of a gun. To date every nation which has attempted to transfer off of the dollar in matters of oil has been promptly toppled by US forces. That is- until now.

Deal or no deal, the end of the monopoly of the petrodollar and the monopoly on global violence would be the true signal of the decline of US power, and Iran seems intent on handing the US both in a handbasket.

Written by: Azria Raventhorn

From police brutality and wrongful arrests to potential war crimes, the integration of AI into the mechanisms of crime and punishment has quickly taken an impressive toll in the dawn of automated governance.

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A grandmother in Tennessee named Angela Lipps spent close to six months in jail, losing her home, her car, and her dog. The cause? Thousands of miles away in Fargo, North Dakota Facial Recognition software applied to surveillance footage pinged Lipps as a match to a woman who had used a fake military ID to steal thousands of dollars from multiple bank accounts.

The only problem was that Lipps had never set foot in North Dakota.

But Fargo Police Chief Zibolski argued to Valley News that “This case was not solely based on just that one piece,” and there were many people involved in this wrongful arrest. Zibolski did not elaborate on any other evidence other than a shared resemblance between Lipps and the perpetrator, but insists that all evidence is corroborated by investigators as a matter of policy. This was not an automatic process, in order to secure an interstate extradition, state prosecutors had to convince a sitting judge there was probable cause- apparently based primarily on the whims of an artificial function. It’s unclear why the established checks and balances failed in this case, and why they continue to do so. But Zibolski states the Fargo police department is conducting an internal investigation. So far no changes have been made, and Lipps claims to have never received an apology for the six months she wrongfully spent in jail awaiting trial.

Facial Recognition is only one application of “intelligent” algorithms in police work. Flock Safety sits among the most notorious AI surveillance tools. These automatic license plate readers have appeared in communities across the United States and feed into a national database of information of every vehicle detected by the company which is accessible to law enforcement agencies across the country.

In April of 2024 Brandon Upchurch pulled over for the flashing lights of a police cruiser. Held at gunpoint, bodycam footage shows that he asked why he was being pulled over and refused to turn off his engine or step out of the vehicle, all demands which are constitutionally protected. Toledo police ordered Upchurch to get on the ground and threatened to release their police dog on him. As he got to his knees they released the dog and mauled him.

Police claimed that Upchruch’s vehicle had stolen plates on it, and Upchurch insisted they weren’t stolen.

Later as Toledo Police stand around the scene, one of them is heard remarking, “So that’s not the plate…. That’s not the stolen plate.”

“Did it just mishit?”

“I think it mishit.”

The ‘mishit’ they referred to was on the part of a Flock automatic license plate reader. Rather than admit wrongdoing, they hospitalized Upchurch before taking him to county jail where he was booked and charged with obstructing official business and resisting arrest. Charges which were later dropped.

According to records obtained by Business Insider, Flock misreads and the blind faith police place in the AI system has led to a dozen cases of innocent people facing jail time to maulings and other brutalities similar to what happened to Upchurch.

“Surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.” said Caitlin Kalinowski in a resignation tweet from her executive position at Open AI following the companies’ partnership with the Pentagon.

Caitlin Kalinowski’s warning rings hollow. Judicial oversight didn’t protect Angela Lipps, and human execution didn’t protect Brandon Upchurch. AI surveillance has injected a new form of unregulated data collection into law enforcement that seems to be assumed to be true and accurate at face value.

Police and federal officials in the US have operated under qualified immunity for decades now, shielding individuals from being held directly liable for abuses conducted using their offices. This has granted police carte blanche to enforce the law as they see fit with minimal consequences. If the legal system already held that people in power are protected from external accountability, then who is held accountable for the mistakes of Artificial Intelligence?

Pete Hegseth’s Department of War and the Israeli Defense Forces have already exploited the nebulous question of AI accountability to deadly affect.

Israel was the first to demonstrate the capabilities of AI targeting systems while conducting it’s genocide in Gaza. Massive swathes of user data from Whatsapp, Microsoft, Open AI, Google and Amazon where allegedly fed into Israel’s targeting AI known as Lavender.

“I would invest twenty seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.” Recalled one IDF Lavender user to The Guardian.

The results were catastrophic, with reports of war crimes and “double-tap” strikes against civilian targets. A double-tap refers to the illegal practice of striking a target, before striking again. This war crime has seen increased offenses in recent years between Israel’s strikes in Gaza, and the US striking boats in the Caribbean.

The US since integrated several different AI models into the Pentagon under the direction of Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.

These models include Anthropic’s Claude, although this has recently shifted with President Trump moving to designate the company a “supply chain risk”- blacklisting it from the Pentagon following Anthropic’s decision to raise standards for AI safety measures. Elon Musk’s Grok has also been integrated, this model is embroiled in controversies ranging from referring to itself as “MechaHitler” to proliferating AI Generated child sexual abuse materials on X. Additionally, Open AI stated they had “reached an agreement with the Pentagon for deploying advanced AI systems in classified environments” on march 2nd of 2026.

In spite of the decision to blacklist Anthropic’s Claude, within hours the Pentagon used the Claude model to launch major attacks across Iran in the early days of the unprovoked war according to the Wall Street Journal.

In this context, the US struck the all girls school of Shajareh Rayyebeh in Minab, Iran. According to the Middle East Eye, when parents, teachers and first responders went into the rubble to search for their mutilated children, a second “double-tap” strike befell them, pushing the death toll past 170.

President Trump first claimed that Iran had mistakenly bombed their own school. Then rumors circulated that it had been shrapnel from attacks on the nearby military base. Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt claimed in a statement to Reuters regarding the matter that, “The Iranian Regime targets civilians and children, not the United States of America.”

Investigations have since proven the war crime was carried out using American Tomahawk missiles. While no findings have been formally announced, the International Business Times reports that multiple officials briefed on the probe confirmed it was an error caused by obsolete military intelligence labeling the school a military target. It’s worth noting that even under this false information, a double strike could still be classified as a war crime.

An Al Jazeera investigation found the school to have been noticeably distinct from all military targets for over a decade. It remains unclear whether AI was utilized in this strike.

Despite their differences, these cases hold a consistent throughline proving that accountability is obsolete. Police have had qualified immunity since 1986 and federal officials since 1982 according to Cornell Law. No one was ever going to face consequences for the wrongful arrest of Angela Lipps, or the brutality perpetuated against Brandon Upchurch. But none of that is new. No one faced consequences for the murder of Breonna Taylor either, and Trumps Department of Justice just moved to dismiss all remaining charges against the officers.

Examples could continue ad infinitum only to prove that the legacy of the US justice system domestically and abroad proves that contrary to how we wish things were, “just following orders” actually does hold up in court. Following illegal orders is acceptable. This track record doesn’t improve with rank, as those who give illegal orders rarely, if ever, face consequences. Sure someone might be fired, or receive a strongly worded letter, but that’ll be the extent of it.

Double tap strikes are nothing new either. If this country were in the habit of being held accountable for war crimes, then Obama would be in the Hague, not recieving standing ovations.

Why would this be different for Hegseth’s crimes in the Caribbean and Iran? It won’t matter if Claude had any responsibility for the Minab School Bombing, no one is ever going to jail- whether Claude is involved or not.

“AI made me do it” is the new “just following orders”. The advent of automated governance pushes the immunity of those in power beyond the pale. This isn’t a flaw of AI, but one of it’s draws. Incompetence and cruelty can now be blamed on a computer par convenience. And it’s impossible to hold a computer accountable. So when AI is responsible, no one is.

By: Azria Raventhorn

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