Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
The Colorado Springs Raid: When Federal Operations Go Too Far
A massive nightclub raid in Colorado Springs has resulted in 105 people still separated from their families with minimal charges filed, raising serious questions about law enforcement tactics and due process. We examine the concerning case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who remains wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite court orders, and discuss active-duty military members caught in the nightclub raid.
• Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador 50 days after being wrongfully taken from his family
• Trump publicly admitted he could return Kilmar but refuses to do so
• 300 officers from 10 agencies raided a Colorado Springs nightclub with only 2 people charged with unrelated offenses
• 105 people remain unaccounted for with families afraid to ask about their whereabouts
• 17 active-duty military personnel were at the raid, some working as armed security
• The raid targeted one of Colorado Springs' most diverse communities, creating fear and mistrust
• May Day's origins in American labor history deserve more recognition as worker protections continue to erode
Join us for our May Day march supporting local unions at the post office and Penrose Library as we fight to preserve community resources and worker protections.
https://bsky.app/profile/leftfaceco.bsky.social
https://www.facebook.com/epccpv
www.EPCCPV.org or info@epccpv.org
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the Pike Peak Region podcast, where we cover veterans issues and political topics, and we have a great episode for you today. I'm joined with Adam Gillard, hey.
Speaker 2:Dick, how you doing. I love how we start off with just like a real tough alliteration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:Just to like get that tongue rolling yeah yeah, yeah, and we also.
Speaker 1:It's not like we're prepped or rehearsed or anything, so it's. It's like jumping in the deep end of the pool, you know, ice plunge kind of style. Yeah, and off the couch yeah yep, and I'm your.
Speaker 1:I'm adam's co-host, dick wilkinson, and uh, thanks for listening. We're gonna kick it off with kilmar count, as we did for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, kilmar Abrego Garcia is still in El Salvador. He's at 50 days since he was deported and of course, there are that's 50 days since all those people were deported, but he is the person who was not supposed to be deported to.
Speaker 2:El Salvador. Well, 50 days since he was snatched from his family, okay, 47 since he was deported, Since he left the country Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is kind of interesting that it took three days for him to be gone. And then you look at the incident that is going to be the meat of our show here today and we still don't have a lot of answers on it.
Speaker 1:It's been more than three days.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I'm talking about the ice raid down at the nightclub in Colorado Springs the most interesting local story.
Speaker 1:we'll probably cover all year. I hope it is because it's a doozy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, making national news isn't the highlight, shouldn't be the highlight, you?
Speaker 1:want it to be. No, or for this stuff no definitely not, and this is twice Late. Last year we had the guy who went to Vegas and blew up the Cybertruck was from here, right, so that was a big story too.
Speaker 1:So being known for violence is not a key. That's not what I experienced living here, but we'll get to that story. Yeah, so Kilmar's still gone. And the story. You got to love Donald Trump and the way he runs his administration. Right, because the lawyers that he has they go represent the DOJ and go and talk about this case in court they say we can't get him back. The president of El Salvador is the person that has to send him back. X, y and Z would have to happen and it's just not up to us. And they still are holding that argument throughout all the court movement that's going on.
Speaker 2:The same administration that bullies every other country into signing mineral deals can't bully another country into giving them. No. Yeah, we can't get them back.
Speaker 1:Go on administration. Mr president, sat down with abc not his most friendly network he he's quite happy to.
Speaker 2:He did get into a literally like slap fight with the interview guy, was this the one where he like tried to keep talking about the ms-13 tattoos?
Speaker 1:yes and he's like no, say yes yeah, say yes and we'll move on yeah exactly what the hell is that? And he was like, I picked you because I had never heard your name and you know, I figured this would be a great opportunity for you. So this is it. This is the big time, yeah.
Speaker 2:So do a better job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but he said there well, of course I could get him back. I'm the president of the United States. I sent him there. What? Yes, he said that he's like, but I'm not going to because he's a criminal. Tell me he's not a bad guy. Prove to me that he's not a bad guy, and then maybe I'll get him back. But as far as I'm concerned, he's a bad guy. No, it's the other way around. Yeah, you have to prove that he is a bad guy because you arrested him and for comments like that to not even cause a ripple in his followers.
Speaker 2:That's what's really terrifying.
Speaker 1:Nothing to it, yeah.
Speaker 2:They gloss over those things and say like oh why are you guys? You scream Nazi every time he speaks. Yeah, because we're listening to his words. Yeah, like we hear the words coming out of his mouth. And the.
Speaker 1:Supreme Court said do this. And he said nah. And now he said I can do it, but I't want to, but I don't want to yeah.
Speaker 1:And so then I felt I heard and this I mean as little sense as it makes. It makes sense, because money makes everything. You know, stupid stuff makes sense sometimes. And so the president of el salvador is getting paid to house these prisoners, so he has no interest in disrupting the head count in his prison. Yeah, even for one person. Right? He's like I don't care who you send, we're going to put them in these holes and then that's it. You pay us to keep them in the hole. Yeah, so he's got no incentive to do anything about this, you know. And so that's why he said like I can't send him back, you would have to tell me to send him back. And of course, donald, donald trump, says, you know, about two weeks later on to the day, well, I could get him back, but I'm just not going to right, I believe that that tattoo is real, I believe that he is a real gang member.
Speaker 2:All right you know, remind me to show you this after we get done. But I have somebody that sent me he's a former Intel person, does like imaging, you know, targeting things like that. But he sent me his analysis and it's on his sub stack on these prisons being built in El Salvador. Okay, and how, like he thinks they're mass graves. Ah, okay, like he already thinks that like things are happening and they're building in the infrastructure for these things. Yeah, he already thinks that things are happening and they're building in the infrastructure for these things, and he has experience doing it for other locations around the world, so he's got some credentials for it. But, yeah, there's definitely some shady things, because when Trump said, oh, you're going to need to build five more of these prisons, yes, it's scary.
Speaker 1:Well, that part definitely happened. And then, you know, in that same vein and under still under the Kilmar topic here this week, the administration said they're starting to work out deals where they're going to send prison people from America, deport Excuse me, they're going to deport people from America to Rwanda and to Libya, that they're going to build use prisons, their build prisons there and that they're going to send people to those places. And you know, the political analysis on that was like those are just places that sound scary and there's nothing about it, like it's. It's almost completely unrealistic that you know he granted this. This person may do whatever he wants to do. Logistically there's no reason. There doesn't make sense to send anybody that far away, those. That's not where any of these people come from generally. So you're going to be deporting people out to these places. He's like the. The analyst that I was listening to said he didn't think it would really happen.
Speaker 2:And then it's just a weird bloviation of the administration trying to say oh, you think el salvador is bad, wait till we send you to rwanda, you know so, like when I hear that and you kind of couple that in with trying to end, you know, birthright citizenship, I would also an issue that came up this week right, exactly, um, I would think that they would start targeting our black communities like I could see that.
Speaker 2:I could see them saying you know the whole dog whistle for the white supremacy, you know, said go back where you came from, put a footprint in Africa. I can tell why that jumps off the page. Why would?
Speaker 1:we send people to Africa. Oh wait, the South will rise again.
Speaker 2:That's it, that's what I heard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can hear the stars and bars rolling out, here come them old Duke boys again.
Speaker 2:Which I mean when you look at how much our prison system is going to be funding our labor market, they might not be shipping everybody off. So, there'll be some job opportunities in the prison system too, job opportunities.
Speaker 1:They're hiring at all times.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just saw posters for field workers for $15 an hour or whatever the cost was. You guys aren't going to get it. Man, this harvest season, or even the planting season, is going to be rough, because a lot of stuff should already be in the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:It's going to be rough this harvest season. One more issue in the economy, right yeah, Trump said earlier today One more piece of inflation, yeah he said you know, instead of people having $30, maybe they'll only have two, and those two will cost a little bit more. Yeah, and so, like he's back to manual labor, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, like, like, that's, that's our option there. Yes, that is. Yeah, it is Um, the you know, the other, I guess, piece of that is uh, as we said in a previous episode, if you make everything terrible and then you improve it just a little bit, you're the guy that saved the world, right? And so this sounds like a you know a piece of that puzzle of like. Like you say, let's, let's raise inflation, let's cause these problems, let's, let's force people into financial situations that they can't tolerate, and then give them just that little bit of breathing room right on time, if you will. Right, there's a right time to do that, Probably right around the midterms.
Speaker 2:You give it to them and say hey, make sure those people below you don't get anything, Otherwise your stuff goes away too so so so, like you keep feeding that too, you keep feeding that division and that you know, just class warfare, but somehow it's like the middle-class fighting itself.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that is it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you can't you know, can't afford to stay in the hotel that you work at. You can't afford to buy items at the store that you work in. You know those kinds of things. Right, it's like it's an unfortunate paradigm that exists in almost every place you go to in America. You know the people that work there may not be able to afford the things that you're buying there.
Speaker 2:You know from the sounds of it, this administration's ready to tear that whole piece of the economy down, and you're just going to have to figure out what you do for food and rent, because rent's also unsustainable.
Speaker 1:This is coming down from the man who doesn't understand what groceries are.
Speaker 2:You've never done a day of shopping.
Speaker 1:So if you want to understand why he doesn't get it, you know, it's like who cares if? Eggs are $12?. Isn't that how much they owe A dollar an egg?
Speaker 2:That sounds totally reasonable to me Gallon of milk $40, $45. That sounds about right. How much milk do you even drink, you?
Speaker 1:know right, That'll be the answer.
Speaker 2:Start drinking this expensive raw milk and then you won't want very much milk. It'll make you sick as hell. His answer is going to be just start drinking Coke. It's like way cheaper. Yeah, coke is way cheaper than milk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's got what plants crave.
Speaker 2:You know sprinting towards that.
Speaker 1:Wow, all right. Well, sad news Kilmer still out for 50 days now, no real progress. Well, actually I'd call it backwards progress, because Trump just flat out said he's not, he's not gonna follow the rule of law here.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so, and you know, that kind of is what leads me to, you know, into this next thing. You're talking about the colorado springs, yeah, and the orders that people are following now. Um, we, we saw, uh, so so first let's just talk about the Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what happened?
Speaker 2:I was going to say yeah so 300 officers, 10 agencies raided a nightclub with 200 people over the weekend. 114 people were held. Two people have gotten charges so far from local police for outstanding warrants, so it wasn't even stemming from that event. Yeah, they found recreational cocaine there. It was pink, so I think they're using that to tie it to. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the pink cocaine is actually just a different party drug altogether. That's a hallucinogen called and people are starting to write it. I knew this would happen when I started hearing people say this. They call it 2C, the number two and the letter C, and that's the chemical class that it's in and it's kind of similar to ecstasy.
Speaker 2:It's a hallucinogen like ecstasy, it's a party drug. Yeah, it's a party drug. Yeah, it's a designer drug Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 2c, and then they're 2C, whatever all the other letters are, but pink cocaine is the street name for it. Because you sniff it, you go for all you users out there Breaking news, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they found recreational amounts of that. Yeah, there's been no, you know, communication really at all from the federal level. Sure Coming down.
Speaker 1:And what you're saying there. I want to clarify, because you said recreational cocaine. I'm like all cocaine is recreational, I'm pretty sure, but you meant amounts. Amounts meaning like personal use.
Speaker 2:People had little bags on them right, you know, it wasn't tony montana's coke, coke layer where it was just stacks of yeah, bricks, yeah, and there wasn't even a guy because it was a nightclub type environment. It wasn't a drug house right, but but there wasn't even somebody caught slinging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you know, I got you, you know getting that, because that would go through the da, or something like trunk with a bunch of kilos in it or something in the parking lot. Yeah, yeah, so no like distribute distribution charges uh, there was a prostitution there.
Speaker 2:Um, when the reports first came out, it was always human trafficking. Yeah, like there's a huge difference between prostitution and human trafficking. Uh, you know, depending on again, no charges have been filed for this, they just said it. Yeah, but there's a big difference between you, know.
Speaker 1:Well, I get yeah penalty-wise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is what you're saying. No, from like the act. Like if you're just like a sex worker, yeah. Giving a handjob in the parking lot yeah, like that's one thing If you're being made to do that.
Speaker 1:And there's handlers involved Right.
Speaker 2:So like one, still no charge has been filed, but I'm not going to condemn sex workers.
Speaker 1:One is organized crime and one is a petty crime. Basically yeah.
Speaker 2:And me personally. I don't condemn the sex workers either, Gotcha.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I get you.
Speaker 2:No serious crimes. No federal level crimes have come out of this at all. Yeah, and I was shocked to learn that the lead DEA agent on this one. He did the same stuff up in Adams County and earlier in February nothing was filed and they stopped doing it after like 93 raids, zero charges, wow. And now that's crazy, our mayor.
Speaker 1:What do you even do, like what? Well, yeah, so talk about fraud, waste and abuse, like was there something else you should be working on so that people will go to actual prison instead of just like I don't know, scaring people with, or what are you doing, like I don't even know what you're doing at that?
Speaker 2:point, with that track record, he's still allowed to come down here by our police chiefs, our sheriff, city council mayor, like this was clearly an ICE raid disguised under DEA, local law enforcement. Yeah, yeah, I see the connection there. They had to have played along with this to allow that to happen, because, like that's why they're not getting any traction up in Adams County, like they're waiting for real evidence here. Here they're not.
Speaker 1:And now 105 people are still not with their families yeah, well and and uh, in adams county is up close to denver, right, and I don't know about the setup of the government or the situation there, but of course we all understand denver as a sanctuary city or, you know, region. Um, so I don't know if that that had anything to do with at the adams county involvement or lack thereof, right, but this area is basically the opposite of that from a political tone right, yeah, yeah, last year, like four migrant families showed up and asked for resources at a church, yeah, and the mayor made it a point to say, hey, we're not a sanctuary city.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was four people asking for help from, like a church. Got help, yeah, went away Like the, the, the nonprofit did what they were supposed to do, sure, and we made a political statement Sure, we're not a sanctuary city.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I hadn't even thought about it. As far as ice raid in disguise, um, and I mean I guess it wouldn't matter if it was DEA or ICE on the back of the jackets, right. As far as the federal enforcement piece, you know, I guess my take on it is there was some local complaints, I guess, as far as, like, what tipped it off to the activity was this it was an illegally operated place, meaning that it was never in a a license or zoned facility. So the neighbors, the people who either own businesses or had houses in those areas, were reporting it to the police, saying like, hey, every Saturday a hundred people show up here and start acting a fool and we don't feel safe or we think they're going to start breaking into other properties around here and doing, you know, just committing crime, and so that's, that was what the local story is. Is that? That's what tipped off the whole investigation was that this place was kind of being persistently moving from one place to another. But they knew it was the same group of people operating it. So you know, I I guess my take on it is like whether it was ICE or DEA or even local if it's a law enforcement raid with 300 officers.
Speaker 1:I agree with you there should be charges. There should be charges. There should be charges quickly. Um, it should be quite public and and just like when they do find big stacks of cocaine and they all stand around and take pictures, this should be the same thing of like look at how many charges came out of this thing. If we arrested 100 people, like 70 of them should get some kind of like real charge, even if it's just possession of a firearm or drugs that they weren't allowed to have. Like that's still a real thing. That gets you engaged with the legal system, right. So that's what we should expect as taxpayers for this type. Like months long organized search and effort to go arrest these people 10 months, you should put them in jail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 10 months. 10 months was the length of this investigation that they had here. Yeah, and so far, a week out, nothing, yeah, yeah, it's just crazy that the way that they go about these things and use the local police force just as a cover Bodies, yeah, bodies. Well, they use them as the door knockers. Yeah, and then let them kind of go in and do those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they put them through the funnel first, right.
Speaker 2:And that's what I was going to kind of say is like now that we have examples of you know just wrong people being deported yeah, just terrible. You know separations in families, things like that. We you know separations and families, things like that. We have these examples and now here in our local community we have 105 people still gone. Um hard to get off a list of names. You know, even the senator's offices are still trying to get listed names for these things.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's, that's the the. You know the 10 different agencies get involved and you get the whole finger pointing situation like oh, those people arrested him those people arrested him? Those people arrested him? Oh, I don't have any records for those people. Well, they're in their jail, so they're the ones that should answer that question. And I've worked on that. You know, I worked in the course and so I definitely understand how messy it can get when if you arrest a hundred people, because sometimes it's hard to track down one or two people, Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's all part of the game. Like you said before, you shave everybody's head. They all look the same.
Speaker 2:And like that's just the way. That's what they're hoping for right now. They're hoping to lose people and just disappear them. But folks that are, you know, on law enforcement, like like this is your, your red line here, man? Like you're unlawfully taking people off the streets, like I understand, and it's not so much you know, it's not the right on the nightclub, right, yeah, like, do those things. Those are good. Like, do those things. Yeah, but it's the follow-up and the lack of due process that we have lost faith in the system now. Yeah, like, if there's no due process and these people just disappear and go away, like that's not just you know, yeah, it's frightening. That's not criminals, you know. Possibly that's somebody's, you know, brother, sister, husband, father, like these are like your co-workers that's what I was thinking these are gonna that's the guy that's missing.
Speaker 1:You're missing his shift right now you're covering his shift because he's yeah nobody knows where he's at you know or you know why you're bitching in the drive-thru, because your food's taking too long.
Speaker 2:Because the day shift all got arrested.
Speaker 1:They were all partying at night, on Saturday night, they got off work and they all went to the party and then they all went to jail. That's no good. Well, we got to shift it over to the military piece of the story, because we've been talking about the kind of unjust aspect of how the whole thing went down and what's going to happen to everybody now, yeah, but since we're the Veterans Podcast, let's talk about our brothers in arms.
Speaker 1:Literally, there were some knuckleheads. I'll call them knuckleheads. I mean, oh yeah, I think that's a safe, that's not a derogatory term in this context. There were some knuckleheads there that were at this raid Active duty. Active duty, and the original number I heard was 12. And then over the last few days it's gone up to 17. And now the local news is starting to run stories like how does the army conduct criminal investigations? I saw that as a local news story yesterday. Oh, they got to. Local news is starting to run stories like how does the Army conduct criminal investigations? I saw that as a local news story yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh, they got to be excited about that, yeah there's definitely some.
Speaker 1:It's kind of cool as far as they're concerned to get some insight into this juicy story, right. So, 17 people there was quite a few of them were working there. Yeah, I think half of them, they said, were working that as armed security, as armed security guards, I'm going to, I wish I'm always looking for an out. I want to give a soldier an out. I want to ask him did you, maybe you thought you were doing this? Eh, you know. And they're like yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it. And if that could make sense, like I'm not saying we're going to lie about it, but I want to find a way for you to explain this Right?
Speaker 2:So you're saying your boss was licensed and bonded insured right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. Well, you know this nightclub. Have you ever seen it during the daytime? Have you ever seen any of those people outside of the nightclub. You know so, but anyways that is so one.
Speaker 1:there's going to be some drug tests in their future, all of them oh yeah, all the units too, that they're a part of Right, and that already happened. And there's, I guarantee you, because you know, monday morning, Tuesday, by Tuesday morning, they had 100% going on in those units Right, 100% urinalysis. And here's how that goes down Dudes, guys and gals that know they're going to pop hot. Sometimes they just disappear Because I don't know what they think they're going to do, but it's just like running from the cops in a car, right? You think if I get away from them I'll figure it out after that right, I'll just hide for seven days and pee clean when I get home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Nah, I've just known too many people that pop hot, disappear, go awol. They track them down and then you know it. All it's all. It's come to roost by the time. They track them down and get them back to the unit and then all the results are there and then it's just time to out process. You know it's time to get there's the ucmj happens fast and so there's going to be some units losing additional members, promise you, promise you because there was other drug activity going on.
Speaker 2:There was a murder solved in Germany. They drug tested a whole floor in the dorms because there was a lot of cocaine going on. And yeah, just person after person just rolled on each other. Yeah, got back to this one murder. That happened the year before Somebody was getting jumped into a gang and like, yeah, I remember that I remember that story oh do you?
Speaker 1:oh, I remember they jumped into the gang thing in germany yeah, I was. I was active duty when that happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah so I was there too, yeah, and actually talked to the kid that was going to leavenworth for it. Oh yeah, um, because I was trying to get his uh vaccines done and he's like I'm not doing that who the hell are you that?
Speaker 1:And?
Speaker 2:so I went to his boss and he's like, yeah, he's not doing that. And then he told me the story. I was like oh, yeah, yeah he's not.
Speaker 1:He's going to be in jail.
Speaker 2:He's like you know he'll take care of it in processing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, the problem here, I guess, is what is this a um indicator of? Is it morale? Is it discipline? Is it unit readiness, is it poor pay? I think it's the pay, honestly, I mean, I'm not trying to say soldiers know what they're signing up for, but when you're broke and your paycheck to paycheck every single time and your bank is basically overdraft at all times, and somebody, somebody says, hey, you can make $300 for you know, working four hours at this place, you're like hell, yeah, I'll do that, just don't ask too many questions, man, we're going to pay you cash and that's that. You're a big dude, done and done. You're a bruiser. Right, they're talking to these. You know infantry dudes that are all just jacked out of their minds.
Speaker 1:And so you know you pay them a couple hundred bucks, they're going to do what Damn near anything, right?
Speaker 1:You know, so you know that's. That's the situation and I mean the the question I guess it comes down to. And here's the other thing Whenever somebody gets stationed back near their hometown this is, I think that's where a lot of this stuff comes from is like whoever you were doing knucklehead stuff with back before you joined the military, they're still around. If you go back to your hometown and that person's like hey, I know this cool nightclub, but your military, if you were just out at some other base in a different place in the United States or in the world, you might not ever end up in one of those places because you don't know the local people in a way where they're going to trust you and say, hey, you want to get in on something.
Speaker 2:I've actually been turned away, like in Barcelona, me and some friends were going into a club and they're like, yeah, no, you guys are way too American?
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. So that's more likely to happen. You're not going to wander into the crack spot if you're not from there. But if you're from somewhere, it's real easy to wander into the crack spot right.
Speaker 1:And I feel like that's a part of what happened here too is I know for sure that there are a lot of people at Carson that are originally from Colorado. I mean, I'm not mad at them, those people aren't out to do crime, I'm just saying it. When that happens, your likelihood of a crossover between the military and the local criminal element there's. That's where some of that comes from. And again back to the whole analysis thing. You see, your buddies that you know you used to smoke weed with back in grade, and then they find you, you know, two years after you're in the army but you're stationed back, you know, at Fort Gordon, georgia, and they're like hey, come smoke with us. And you do.
Speaker 2:And that's. This is the whole thing with recruiting in general for all the, all the services is, you know, we recruit from the lower income areas and lower income areas usually have higher alcohol, drug use. You know, dependency issues, things like that, just or just other criminal activity going on there. Right, I mean it know dependency issues, things like that, just or just other criminal activity going on there. Yeah, right, I mean it's just poor communities, yeah, poor things like that. You know, um, and a lot of times when people get recruited out of that, you know they'll see that opportunity to escape and they'll grasp on and they'll take it, yeah, and then folks will still do some stupid stuff. Yeah, yeah, you know. You know the, the 17 people there that's out of, you know, know, 60,000 shoulders we have out there, or something like that, you know. So, like this isn't like a big indicator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not an indicator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now how many people get popped on this drug test that's coming? Yeah, that might be a big indicator. That'll be something, yeah. But yeah, I think it's kind of a standard operating procedure that there's going to be some kids doing this out there, making bad choices and doing things, the fact that they got rolled up. If they got rolled up and they test hot, yeah, start the discharge. But if they don't test hot and they're just there partying having a good time, make them clean some toilets and go call it a day.
Speaker 1:I don't know, man, we're not. This is something. Well, I'll give you the Army look at it here. And these I'm sure they were all Army people the when you're not, when you're in garrison is what we call it. So when you're not deployed and you're not in a training rotation, like getting ready to deploy, you're in garrison. In garrison is like the minefield for commanders because that's you know, soldiers are at rest. Right, a soldier at rest is bad you know like little hands, yeah, idle hands and money, and just you know bad opportunities.
Speaker 1:And then you know you go, you double down with that of your unit's not super busy, so they have a lot of time off. Because you know, if all the vehicles are in a row and all the grass is flat, you know like there's nothing to do. And so you know again, soldiers get into trouble. And so being in garrison and being in this um, non war fighter kind of position for you know months or years at a time that they just the problems creep in like mold, you know they just do. And so I feel bad for the commander that's inheriting a brigade. That's two, three years since they've had any real deployment or activity going on and they've just been in a nonstop training cycle for three years. You got some issues.
Speaker 2:I can't remember the last time that the fourth went out the door. I don't know. That has been a few years.
Speaker 1:So that just breeds. That's the playground for disciplinary issues.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. Bad times for those folks. Well, I do hope that some people go to jail, because otherwise the nightclub will just pop up again in you know a month in some other part of town.
Speaker 2:They'll go to Pueblo instead of Colorado Springs or whatever you know, and here's what kind of really frustrates me is that so much of our diversity is in that area of that nightclub.
Speaker 1:Probably like 70, 60, 70% of our city's diversity is right there. Okay, your physical location.
Speaker 2:You're saying, yeah, down like that southeast corner by the airport Gotcha. That's where our diversity lies, okay, and so they take these 300 officers, they come in there and just scare the hell out of that community, like people don't even want to come out and say that their friends are missing. Yeah, because they're raising their own hand for attention. Yeah, so, like, if you know, when Senator Hickenlooper says, hey, send me the names of everybody that's gone, nobody's giving it to the federal government.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nobody's raising their hand for that.
Speaker 1:Silence breeds more problems within the community. Right if you scare people to say when? They need help that just allows those problems to fester, right? Yeah, so, like the good, that law-abiding citizens will not do what they need to do to keep their own community safe because they feel like they're at risk of being arrested for no reason?
Speaker 2:yeah, so what? All they've done is scare that community and create like a facade of public safety for, like you know, good headlines right. For like the white folks up North, you know like hey we're doing public safety here, but all they did is they removed people from their families. You know, coworkers like these are the people that keep our economy going. Yeah. And you know, everybody has a job here and everybody's working. Uh, they were having fun and you gotta buy those drugs with some money.
Speaker 1:Right, drugs aren't free just because you join a gang. Yeah, if you join a gang you don't get. You know, it's just like I said earlier if you work at the gang, you don't make enough money to buy the drugs that the gang sells right, you know well, you think I can afford pink cocaine. What's wrong? With you I just sell the stuff, man yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like you know this, this facade of public safety is for the folks up north and it's just about public compliance. Sure, like they're just trying to get that community down there to comply, self--deport, get out. They're just attacking that community and, as we say on the show all the time.
Speaker 1:Headlines are the story, sometimes right, like headlines is the point, and it sounds like that could be an indicator with the agent that is leading these raids and not charging anybody. He's like well, headline, all right, I got the headline, brother, it's done. Plan the next one. You know yeah, oh, plan the next one, you know, yeah, oh well, so what was our, what was our last topic for today, adam, we, oh May day. Today is May day, so we were going to talk about what is May day, just a little bit. And it's it's roots in some labor, you know movement that maybe Americans aren't so aware of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean yeah, just in general, like I never really paid attention to May day, just being in the military, it's just not something, that it's not one of our holidays, that we get off, because we do the Memorial Day at the end of May and then Labor Day in September. But for May Day, it started in Illinois. I believe it was where some cops busted up a union in I can't remember the city's name right now. I'll have to do a follow on on that. Yeah, but, but you know, the cops busted up the union and and, uh, now this day is celebrated around the world and kind of ignored here, which is kind of funny that, like you know, our ruling class said yeah, we're not going to celebrate where we actually literally oppressed you fairly recently. Right, we'll give you Labor Day at the end of summer, we'll wrap up summer with that, right, right, yeah, so we get our picnic then.
Speaker 2:But these real events that happen and then the rest of the world recognizes and celebrates it, but we kind of ignore it. But today we'll be having some protests and so when this comes out the protests would already have happened. But we're going to have a march where we get to go to the post office and the Penrose Library down there, because they're both local institutions here that have unions that are fighting to keep our resources here and keep libraries open. So we're going to be having this protest, hopefully get some folks here. We've had those international journalists in town. You said somebody from the Netherlands was here. Yeah, from the Netherlands. Julian Thomas are their names. I can't remember what news organization they were with either.
Speaker 1:It's in Dutch, so I just can't pronounce it.
Speaker 2:But they'll be giving us the link and I'll make sure I forward it out to everybody for everybody to catch it. But yeah, it should be a great event and actually draw awareness to what unions do for us as a society. You know, when we sit here and scream about, you know, letting oligarchs into our system, it's because it started with the union-busting laws that started after the New Deal. Yeah, you know, taft-hartley, andartley and things like that, the Davis-Bacon, those types of laws that keep busting the unions and just handing paychecks to the wealthy class. The unions are what's going to pull us out of this stuff.
Speaker 1:As we talked about this earlier, I've experienced that overseas May Day is more of a stuff. So, and you know, as we talked about this earlier, I I've experienced that that overseas Mayday is more of a holiday. It's actually observed as a day off and and maybe has more activities associated with it than it ever has in America. Um, and I realized, as you were talking just now, that there's there's part of there's a reason for that Almost all the countries where that is common, there's's not a two-party system for elections.
Speaker 1:Right, the political system has multiple parties and there's always one that's identified as the labor party. Right, even if it's called something else, there's one that's just that's kind of like conservative or liberal. Right, there's always one called the labor party. Right, um, and no matter what country you're in, if they have a multi-party system, there'll be a labor party. That's where that comes from. It's because there's a whole political group that says, hey, we've got to champion this holiday so that we keep our relevance and remind people that this is what we do politically within the community. So that's why it's more popular.
Speaker 2:I would love if we had a labor party here. I think I could definitely jive with a lot more of that Sure, sure.
Speaker 1:We are, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm a libertarian, so I don't want that, don't want any more parties. No, I don't want I want a lot more parties, but not a labor party you like that.
Speaker 1:Liberty for all except those damn workers, right.
Speaker 2:Get back in the factory Trying to get equality. Get back in the factory Trying to get equality.
Speaker 1:Remember that's sarcasm for all the folks that can't read, you know text messages lose sarcasm right, that was sarcasm. Well, thanks everybody for listening. Please join us again next week as we talk about more veterans issues here in Colorado.
Speaker 2:Thanks everyone.
