RE-BROADCAST JULY 17, 2026

The following program is pre-recorded. Pacifica Radio in San Francisco. This is Flashpoints. I'm Dennis Bernstein with Miguel Governor Malina. Today on the show, a Great Palace tracking Trump as the criminal and chief gets ready to cripple and fling wrench into the upcoming midterm elections. What will be going on there? Also, Culture Clash founder and award-winning playwright Richard Montoya, keeping track of ice in L.A. and keeping the people, helping to keep the people safe. He'll be with myself and Miguel Gabila Malina, and we have a lot to talk about in terms of ice and the way in which people are rising up to resist. All this and more coming up straight ahead. Stay tuned.

And you're listening to FlashPoint on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Burns team. This is your daily investigative news magazine. We come to you every weekday from 5 to 6 over the Pacifica Radio Network. And these days, every so often we get a visit from our good friend, Greg Pallist. We, for many years, have been tracking his work in terms of defending your elections, trying to make them free and fair. Greg Pallisd, it looks like the president is determined to throw up... throw off, undermine the upcoming midterm elections. He gave an interesting speech last night. How are you tracking this? What do we need to know? Can he screw up the float? Will he seize? Can he go and seize certain election results in certain cities, like for instance, Atlanta, where he says his 2020 election was a was stolen oh my god yes well first of all he owns the voting cops that is the justice department now the injustice department this is no joke so he's turning on the full force of the federal government to either pass what he calls the save act the america a voter integrity where they call it act uh which is basically jim crow 3.0 it you can't you couldn't figure out anything worse for our voting system other than returning poll taxes and literacy tests. You know, where black people have to recite the Constitution and white people have to add two plus two. So we've been here before. So we've got to remember that in this, in the pendulum of history. But it's pretty grim right now. And I could, he went on for 40 minutes. I would need an hour and 40 minutes to undo every lie. But let's start with a few here. I have a read more at Gregpals.com where I have a story called I laughed when Trump. So when he announced that the Chinese had hacked into hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files, he got, you know, names, addresses, party preferences. Guess what, Dennis? I've done the same because those documents are public. The reason they're public, Mr. Trump, is that we still have a democracy. And political candidates need to know the names of the voters and where they live so they can contact them with their pitches or whatever. That's what you do in a democracy. This is not hidden documents. Your personal vote is hidden, but the fact that you voted, the fact that you're registered, that's a public document. And there is zero, zero, zero information that the Chinese did anything with this whatsoever. They just downloaded the stuff as I have. They go to the Illinois site. It says download list. That's the hat. And then...

You know, one, the other thing he's doing is tells us recklessly that there are literally, and this is quote, hundreds of thousands of non-citizens voting. Now, this canard, he's been pulling this game for years. The Heritage Foundation, which wrote Project 2025, makes the claim that there's six million non-citizens voting. So I asked Heritage. Listen, you have six million. Since these people are registered to vote and you know their names, because you said that there's six million, give me six names. I'm not looking for a million. I'm not looking for six million. I'm looking for six names. They couldn't give me one. They couldn't give me one convicted non-citizen voter. But here's the danger. It's not just, and this is where I have a problem with, like the New York Times and Washington Post, NPR analysis. It's not that Trump is lying. It's not that Trump is making up, you know, he's in the world of his non-fat. The problem is when this becomes law. So what he is ordering is for his Department of Homeland Security, which should make you all feel insecure. His Department of Homeland Security is going to give lists of non-citizens voters to designated states. In other words, swing states. Now, this has been done once before. And back in 2012, the state of Florida, demanded that Obama turn over the deportation list from the Department of Homeland Security. As a result, Florida removed 172,000 voters from the voter rolls as, quote, suspected non-citizen. I don't know what a suspected non-citizen is. In the end, out of 172,000 voters, only one voter. was charged with this crime. He was an Austrian Republican, by the way. But thousands of guys named Luis Garcia lost their vote. Because if you depart a Luis Garcia, and there's a Luis Garcia on the Florida voter rolls, that Garcia lost his vote. Literally, 172,000. Now, several thousand. took a day and went to federal court to get their vote back, but they each had to do that individually to say, I'm a citizen. And you know the color of the people that had to spend the day in court to get their vote back, and most people won't. So then we have the Russian influence campaign, but that was for Trump, not against him, if you remember. And then he cites, and I love this one, he cites Venezuelan influence on our voting machines. Well, here's the problem with that the 2020 election was thrown because of Venezuelan software, you know, and Maduro or someone decided to press a button, and that's how he lost with their Venezuelan voting machines. The thing is that smartmatic, which is the Venezuelan founded company, their only voting machines in all of the United States is in Los Angeles.

And he's saying he would have lost one Los Angeles, Donald Trump. And not that that would have made any damn difference. But so you have to understand when people talk about the Venezuelan software computing and voting equipment, that's only in the city and the county of Los Angeles, nowhere else in the country. And that's because of L.A. has this incredibly complex voting system and only Smartmatic had the software to accomplish that. But still, most people in. You know, and that brings us up something else, which is that he pulls out the old chestnuts of that our voting machines are hackable. And by the way, Dennis, I've heard this from a few people on the left, you know, which I've warned. If we on the left start talking about, you know, computer hacking and that the machines are vulnerable and tabulate is vulnerable, I always warn. I said the right wing. is going to pick this up and run with it. And they're going to make it their tail. And they're going to quote us. So knock it off because here's a fact that I think that no one I've asked knows the answer to. I asked you earlier so you know the answer. But the number of people who vote on paper ballots in the United States is 98%. 44 states outlaw, non-paper ballots by law. Only 2% of American voters in these holdout counties vote on these direct recording machines. So stop talking about D-Bolt and ESNS. They don't exist, and the machines don't exist to be hacked. The tabulators, who cares because you got paper ballots. And so you'll have tabulators, but you can always say, show me the ballots. And in fact, that's what Trump is trying to pull off here with his raid on Fulton County, which is Atlanta. We talked about this before. He was the big promoter of the film 2000 Mules, in which he claims that 2,000 black men were paid $10 each by Jewish billionaires to steal ballots and stuff them into ballot drop boxes. And they had the proof. except that they never gave us the proof. And in fact, a judge actually imprisoned the accusers, but not Trump, of course, imprisoned the accusers for contempt of court for failing, making these claims and failing to produce the lists. of these so-called illegal voters. So what Trump is doing now, he's taken the ballots from 2020, these six-year-old ballots, and he is having the Justice Department go through every single ballot to see if they were made in China or filled out by illegal voters. Well, the state of Georgia, which is very, very Republican, has gone through those physical ballots, 70,000 of them, has gone through those physical ballots. three times and they can't find a single illegal ballot not one the Georgia Bureau of Investigation which is a Republican cop organization ran all over the state of Georgia and found nothing but a lot of black people guilty of voting while black and that's all they ever found and but this is a problem because

If we impose these laws saying you have to remove so-called non-citizens, you have to disqualify so-called suspect ballots, that you have to, and then things like you have to show proof of citizenship to vote, which will cost 21 million votes, according to the Brennan Center, especially women, 69 million women, use their husband's last name, Dennis. How do you approve your citizen? If your passport has the wrong name, and two-thirds of black people don't have passports, half of Americans don't have passports, by the way, of any kind. So this is really serious stuff. This is really serious stuff. Absolutely. We're speaking with, speaking of serious, we're speaking with Greg Palace, Gregpalus.com. Greg, let me read to you a little bit from a piece that just came out on Associated Press, and then I want to ask you a follow-up question on that. This is coming just right off of AP today. President Donald Trump released a trove of documents during a prime time address to the nation that... allies had hyped as a smoking gun that would prove his long debunked allegations of mass voter fraud. Speaking from the White House on Thursday night, he described shocking revelations like Chinese meddling to undermine his failed candidacy in 2020 and a cover-up by the deep state he claimed. Americans were blatantly lied. to about the security of our election infrastructure. What about the Chinese? They certainly did collect all the documents that were coming out of the Trump administration. They're collecting all the data files that I get by hitting the download button on state voting offices. It's public documents. But the other thing is that the intelligence report that was released said China got voter, the public voter files. But it was a decision, actually, of the Politburo that they didn't want to mess with U.S. elections because they literally couldn't figure out who was worse for China, Biden or Trump. And after all, Biden put 100% tariffs on Chinese automobiles, and Trump did the opposite. He grabbed his ankles and dropped tariffs on China because they control the rare earth. So who turned out to, you know, it's, there's the intelligence community itself said China stayed out of it. And, you know, Russia didn't, but they didn't manipulate. They couldn't get into the voting machines because we don't have voting machines anymore. By the way, for those you say, well, I use the computer. And when I went to vote in Los Angeles, that's called a ballot marking device. All it does is print your ballot so that there's no stray marks and you don't get disqualified, which is a huge problem, especially in California, votes being disqualified for stray marks, etc.

So it's neatly printed. You look it over, these are votes. Yeah. And then you personally stick that paper in a scanner. You can't pack it. You can't. Okay. And I've never seen the evidence of this hacking since we got rid of what's called the DRE machines, the push and prey machines. They're all gone. And so they can't do it even if they wanted to. But it's very, very. You know, obviously he's flooding the field of all this junk with thousands of pages of stuff, but everything I've read, whatever he's claimed about, the documents have proven the opposite. In fact, the head of the Intelligence Committee said that they already had reports in the House. They already had reports about from the intelligence community, which says there was no hacking in 2020. There wasn't in 2024. What there is is massive racial vote suppression. This is very important to understand if you're listening carefully. A week before Trump gave his speech, he fired every member, Democratic and Republican, from the Elections Assistance Commission. So there are no commissioners, and that shut down the commission. And the problem with that, NPR says, oh, they kind of watch the voting machines. That's not their main job. Their main job is to collect all the detailed data. on voting in every jurisdiction in the United States. I use that material to prove that vote suppression elected Donald Trump in 2000 and 2016 and 2024. That's where my data comes from. When I talk about using hard data as a statistician, I get it from the EAC, and now I'm scared to death. We're going to lose all the data. I have no doubt that they're going to trash it all. We're trying to suck down as much data as possible. So they're eliminating the evidence of their crime while they accuse every while they cry that they are the victims of a crime. Well, if you're victims of a crime, why are you deep-sixing all the data? Wouldn't that be the first thing you would turn to? Dangerous. Yeah. Again, I speak with Great Palace to we're talking about what Trump is doing, what he's trying to do. Well, I mean... Greg, this really could turn quite ugly. Yeah. Do you suspect that Trump is willing to show up with the troops, with the forces he need, with his special forces to seize voting machines? This could go to some pretty terrible places. Yes. If he declares that there is some type of foreign interference, national emergency, he has to shut things down. He's got to seize control of voting stations and you're going to have, you know, a thousand guard troops or ICE Gestapo, whatever they've got, surrounding a voting station in a Hispanic neighborhood in Phoenix, which is going to be a battleground, Arizona's battleground state. You're going to scare the hell out of people and scare them away. Not because they're non-citizens, but do you want to walk your kids and your family?

through a gauntlet of firearms and probably a bunch of white supremacists screaming at you um it you know uh we had 36 polling stations in 2024 uh closed in Atlanta because of bomb threats and now the bomb threats are effectively coming from our old federal government yeah i'm very worried in fact yesterday i'm proud to announce that we're adding the great uh human rights attorney civil rights attorney Gregory Yates to our legal team. who is a specialist at dealing with this violence. He gave the eulogy at the George Floyd funeral. This is the first time the Palace Investigative Fund has actually had to prepare for violence. This is deeply, he's creating this atmosphere where people who are voting, if they have brown skin, if they have black skin, or if they're young voters or whatever, they have a beard that makes them look like they're Muslim or something. you're creating terror and you're scaring people away and that's exactly what they want to do so i just hope people have you know voting is is now a blood sport you're just going to have to walk through the fire except most people today mail in their ballots be very careful when you mail in your ballot especially to get one from china need nuts we're looking for lex of bamboo in the in the ballot paper It's like, you know, it'd be funny if it weren't tragic. But yes, they were... He's already... He's already... They're always expecting whatever the, you know, parties in power in terms of president, the other party. gains seats in the House and sometimes in the Senate. This was initially looking out to looking at the possibility of being a slant slide, a democratic slant slide. But it does appear that Trump has been able to intimidate, undermine and really screw up the process already so that it, you know, the Dems might take the the house but it's going to be very close yeah yeah go on please Well, the big problem, as I point out, of all these things, the number one problem is the big purge. Now, I expect from my, from 2024, we had about three and a half million people wrongly removed from the voter rolls. Remember, I did this report for the ACLU and Black Voters Matter, high, you know, this huge team of statistical experts. You know, it wasn't just Greg Palace just.

you know, making a guess here. We had the experts go through the list. We found that that they were 66% inaccurate, the purge list. When I say inaccurate, they're removing American citizens from the voter rolls. And overwhelmingly, you know their color, you know where they live. And this is what I'm very concerned about. So I'm asking everyone you know, please get out the word to check your registration two months before the election. And if your name is missing, please, re-register. That's the simplest solution. They're going after, you know, that we're bringing back the old interstate cross-check, this name matching game, so-called deportees that have supposedly swum back to vote in Georgia. This is all, it's dangerous stuff, Dennis. That's what I'm worried about. And you're listening to Flashpoint on Pacifica Radio. Well, Greg, we appreciate the good information. I'm really... wondering where this is going to go. Trump does seem desperate. And I don't know, it does seem there's a direct relationship to the kinds of revelations that come out of the whole sex rape scandal that clearly revolves around Trump. And he's deeply engaged. Don't you think he'll do whatever he can? Well, we had a whole war. That's the driving force. Right? This is the driving force. War. Yeah. We had a war to get rid of Epstein. Then when the war went bad, they're now going into, you know, alien voters. If you see someone in a spaceship... going to vote with a stack of ballots. They're going, and one thing you said about kicking in the doors, I think at the Fulton County raid was practiced for election day this November to have the feds move in and seize ballot boxes and drop boxes in the middle of the election day or the week before out of the drop boxes that they're going to just seize the ballots. And that means Kash Patel is going to tell you who won the elections. Right. Amazing. It's amazing what's happening. All right. Thank you, Gregpalus. Gregpalus.com. We appreciate the incredibly important information and urge you to be careful and keep us posted. I will. And my best to Richard Montoy, though I don't even know why you're having him on because Trump said we haven't had one single illegal alien. crossed the border since he's been president again. Yeah. Not one. So I don't know why. How does he get that? Where's the statistic? How do you get that statistic? I always wonder about it. Well, I obviously, JD Vance or another side of JD Vance. Anyway, before I get into bad jokes, this is serious stuff. And thank you for getting me the opportunity to remind people that this is serious stuff. Okay, thanks. Dennis. All right. Thank you. Take care, Greg. And what we're going to do now is we're going to take a nice long musical break. We're going to see if we can get Miguel Gavila Malina on the air with us. And at about 5.30, we're going to be joined by Richard Montoya Culture Clash. He has a lot to say about all of this. But right now, let's hear some music.

and you're listening to FlashPoint on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Verenstein. This is your daily investigative news magazine. We're always delighted to welcome back to these airwaves, Richard Montoya, a culture clash, a good friend of this show, a good friend of our senior producer Miguel Gavila Molina. And we're all watching the world go by, Richard. These have become very dangerous times, and Miguel and I really wanted to sort of get... your latest take on the resistance and how you're dealing with what is clearly emerging violence. Trump's trying to create, in my opinion, this force that he's trying to fund. This is going to be his death squads. Welcome to Flashpoint, Richard.

You know, we're watching in horror and anger and shock and what must be focused, you know, responses to a nationalized death squad being normalized by his, you know, fascist administration. It's really the policy. Stephen Miller has drained his wet dream of eradicating the country of brown people. I just don't understand why the Dodger baseball team has to go to the Oval Office to, you know, shake hands with this president. Thank goodness. One of the Dodgers, at least two Dodgers are boycotting that stupid ceremony. Kiki Hernandez of Puerto Ricanio and Alasaw Broussaw. One of the pitchers, a Mexican pitcher, are not going and joining the rest of the team. And why should they? Why should they go normalize, you know, a raving xenophobe? I'm at the moment traveling through Southern Arizona with my seven-year-old daughter, Luna, and I just have to say that, you know, I've got my passport. driver's license that's already but um i just feel as a brown man that that this thing is methodically and and steadily building and they're just ramping up they're just they've got billions of dollars to back this up and how many Hispanic lawmakers voted for this crap and and people are dying people are dying uh because of the democratic blunder. People are dying because of Stephen Miller. People are dying because of Donald Trump. So it's, you know, I keep a wary eye on the road and my review mirror. Well, truth is, any one of us can get a knock on our one and end up in the same fate as one of these two innocent. hardworking gentlemen that lost their lives in Houston and me. And I'm with the rest of the world. I'm in shock Dennis and Miguel. And I'm, I just, I don't give orders, but I feel like I'm awaiting orders as a soldier. I, you know, I want to know what is going to be our responses to this. Because they say that, take it to the ballot box. And, you know, this is why it's important to vote. After Latino elected voted for this stuff, you know, this is why we're so fed up with the DEC. The old-style politics is not working for us at all. And so while Kamala Harris debates the coconut dance and, you know, and how the dams lost a golden opportunity, at least it might have been a little better, I don't know. This death march, this culture of death that the Trump administration is meticulously modulating and pushing. It wouldn't be here if the deaths were able to have a clear vision and a message. But I just, I have no faith in the DMT. So we're going to have to take matters in our hands and see what.

You know, see what the folks in the Bay Area say. What are our brothers and sisters in the chief of Seattle saying? What's going to be our response here is my question? You're listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. That is the founder of Culture Clash, Richard Montoya. We're talking about really well an emerging situation where the Trump administration is creating a structure in law enforcement that, in the context of ICE is now killing people, two people apparently assassinated in the last week. And there's a lot of concern about this. Bringing in to this discussion, your good friend, Richard Montoya, Miguel Gavilan Molina, you have been traveling with Miguel in various ways for a long time. Gavilan, say hello to your brother. Orolle, compadre, good to hear your voice. Thanks for joining us and give Luna a big high five for me. That said, compas, you know, behind everything, you know, I've been traveling going in and out of different brown communities, northern California, central. And I keep, you know, people keep asking me, you know, is this an intent to remove all of us? Well, I've come to terms. The plan that this government has, this white nationalist supremacist, fascist government, is ethnic cleansing. You know, they're taking the playbook from the Israelis and what they're doing in Palestine. It hasn't got to that point yet. But I'm really concerned that, you know, at some point they're going to roll in the tanks. At some point, you know, helicopter gunships are going to come. And this country needs to awaken. This particular government right now, the presidency, is a corporate enterprise. Rand, literally, if you see how the presidents in the Oval Office operate, it's a crime family, you know, and the White House has become their ATM, which is like we're watching this happen. The Supreme Court, I hold them responsible. They gave the sexual predator convicted felon acting as president. They gave him immunity. That's why he does whatever, whatever he wants. Nothing's going to happen to him. You know, we saw what happened roughly, what, three weeks ago, four weeks ago when Congress passed, you know, well, we're going to roll him in and, you know, with war powers and so forth. Well, what happened? You know, he still bombs away. He's still, you know, trying to destroy the Middle East and Iran. So that said.

Compere, I know that when the situation first blew up way back in February, March, and, you know, we saw troops coming out. We saw him mobilize the National Guard. You know, we saw, you know, them supporting supposedly to protect, you know, ICE federal agents. But at some point, you know, I believe that the National Guard also answers to the governor. you know, which would be, you know, Gavin Newsom, he's the governor, is, you know, I wonder there's going to be a possibility where the governor's going to say, wait a second, I'm going to mobilize the National Guard to stop. this newly put together 200,000 force of paramilitary, you know, secret, you know, police death squads, you know, military death squads to stop them from coming in and at voting sites to coming into ballot box drop off, you know, places, sites. Do you think that might happen? And, you know, because when you start looking at the National Guards in California and you start looking at the population, The National Guard reflects the makeup of California. You know, I would say that 40%, maybe 35, 40%, are brown National Guardsmen. You know, and the population, the largest concentration of brown masses population in the country and undocumented folks is California, and particularly Southern California. Can you see something happen to where the governor might take an action and say, wait a second, I'm going to protect the citizens of California? What do you think? You know, I know the criticisms of Governor Newsomwell, and since the Sapatista movement that you got me turned on to me a decade ago, where we came away from Chiapas understanding the pitfalls of neoliberalism and what that meant. And this is what I mean with my frustration with the DNC and neoliberal, that we just are doing lip service. But Gavin Newsom is a smart enough guy, I think, that he might figure out a way to... pit the state's rights against the federalization of this voting, which is completely illegal of Trump to do. This speech last night was an incoherent jumble, but it was just enough diversion that now today, that's what we're talking about, the stupid speech last night. So we're not talking about, we're not talking about ICE this morning. We're not talking about the death. We're talking about, you know, breaking apart. Trump's incoherence last night. The Chinese did it and, you know, a million immigrants and some, you know, voter registration people in Detroit, you know, did it. And that's just enough to get, you know, a large swath of Anglo America. Well, they're coming for us. You know, they're coming for us. The president's right. But with Gavin Newsom, I've got to believe that

Even with the California, you know, political machine that they would, that they would stand up to Trump. What we stand to lose? What's going to happen with this, you know, a police force, you know, at the voting poll is that spelt disaster, you know. So it's going to get pushed in the courts. There's going to be a battle. And we're just learning about the detention centers in Colorado that are run by for-profit groups in Florida. And tuberculosis is breaking out. And people are dying also and getting gravely ill at these detention centers. So, you know, the World Cup is fine. And we're cheering and crying for our teams on the World Cup. And a lot of the players that we love, like Mepsy and some of the biggest stars have embraced Benjamin Netanyahu and they've embraced Trump. You know, they parade children on the pitch. And, you know, this country is killing immigrant men who are here legally in front of their three-year-old children, you know. So, you know, we can get all weepy about the World Cup, but there's something, something deathly, definitely wrong that's going on. You know, there's a man standing over there. You know, one thing that we did with Culture Clash last week, we had a performance, a free performance in the public square, several thousand people with some amazing bands, Chicano Batman, Frontman, EITNS, and others. And so several thousand people gathered, and we knew that a lot of people would be coming to the show from the Pico Union area, heavily Salvadoran area. from Echo Park area. All the Latino quarters would be coming to see culture clash at grand performances last weekend. And we started the show without traditionally saying to the audience that the show is starting now. We started slowly. And we had Donia Flora, the cotton candy, you know, vendor, a street vendor lady who was... raises her children and grandchildren on the meager sales that she makes selling cotton candy and other things in the city's park. And before you know it, she's on the stage with her cotton candy, told her and two ICE agents approach. And just to watch the audience react, Begéil and Dennis, not really knowing. A Buddha. Wait, uh-oh. Ice is that our... ICE is that, you know, our culture class shows, because our actors look just like ISIS agents. And they began to arrest Donia Flora, but something happens with this immigrant grandmother. She begins to fight back, and she takes her cotton candy pole, and it turns into a superpower staff.

And she removes the cotton candy with the sharp holder, the edges of the cotton candy holders. And she begins to ritualistically stab the ice agents. And we've got blood squirt bottle in place. And we're squirting blood all over the stage. And the crowd is exercising and just going crazy, cheering. Don't you float on? Because we all feel that pent up a need to just like that, to react. And eventually they got that, oh, this is the culture class guys are up to this. But it's very hard right now to want to get a laugh or think about humor or levity. Because there's really nothing funny about the situation. But what we did was allow the person who's usually the victim to write up and to strike back. And she victimized her two ice agents. And she got a wild applaud. And then cue the cobia music, the party started. But that's our sort of fantasy liberation. But if we could execute, you know, a tasteful death by cotton candy holder, we would do that. But the audience really got it. And then those ICE officers kept surfacing throughout the event. arrest a poet and soon they arrest the lead singer and soon you know and we thought a few years ago this is paranoia but it's not it's a daily occurrence in this country and so you know we're we strike back with our little our little measures to whatever we can guys but you would have you would have loved the collective response of an audience you know ready to ready to respond and share on the immigrants of Los Angeles, the immigrants of the East Bay, the immigrants who suit, the immigrants who made. I mean, they're just, and this ice force, this death force, they're so damn unprofessional. They don't even know the first thing about policing, the escalation, proper identification, candy safe, they're just, you know, oh, he might have had drugs. You know, his car lursed for it. His carlars for it after he was shot in the head four times. That's what the carlars scored. So they're lying. They're killing. And we've got to figure out ways to keep striking back.

That's the voice of Richard Montoya Culture Clash. I'm Dennis Bernstein with Miguel Gabila Malina. You're listening to all of this on Flash Points on Pacifica Radio. We're hoping you could stay with us for a few more minutes, Richard. We're going to take a few calls at 1-800-958-908-18-9-58-958. 9-008. If you have a follow-up, if you want to ask Richard Montoya, what's going on. Richard, I want to ask you, and I know Miguel has another question as well, but it really does seem like a time to really have prepared courses that prepare the kids for what could happen. what there maybe should be some kind of discussion group at the school that include both the teachers and the students and the parents. It seems like this could get a lot worse than it already is. Well, Dennis, we're going to need that and that's going to be a very basic. minimal needs that we're able to have discussions with the school administrators, with their principal in Los Angeles, the workforce, the teachers, largely, you know, very Latino, Asian American, and African American workforce. And, you know, people are concerned. We thought that a few years ago that's about the worst that it could get. But he's been slowly building. We've been focused on other things. Like World Cubs got him a little bit distracted. But make no mistake. I mean, at the school year starts, we've been told by Stephen Miller that they've only just begun, you know. And so this escalation is going to continue. And there's just going to be. unfortunately, a lot more confrontations, like the ones we've just seen in Houston and at Maine. And I like what I see in Maine. I see a largely Anglo population reacting with anger, big anger, and they're jamming up the offices of these senators and these politicians. They're demanding. And the same way in Minneapolis rose up, but the same way Seattle rises up, the same way the East Bay and Bay Area, you know, rises up. This is a sort of third-year allies and coalitions that we need.

are you with us? Oh yes, absolutely. I just wanted to add to that, Richard, because I know that you devoted your life, you know, to doing art and really expressing it, you know, in the theater on the stage. But you come from a long tradition, you know, starting with, you know, your father, the legendary giant in literature and art, Jose Montoya, and when he helped found the Royal Chicano Air Force. You know, and using art to resist, you know, to resist, using art as a, you know, as a form of revolution, bringing out what was hidden, bringing out what was apparent but never seen. And, you know, using means of different forms from silk screening to poster, to books, to murals, I can go on and on and on with that. But you've kept that tradition. Are you seeing in your travels, because I know you're always on the move, you know, young people taking up that mantle, taking up art, and using it as a means of resistance, using art as a means of revolution, changing what has been. You know, we're going through a massive change right now. The white colonial Euro, you know, descendants of pilgrims and Puritans, you know, have finally taken over. you know, Capitol Hill. The Confederacy, you know, after 160 some out years, finally achieve its gold. And we have a convicted felon, you know, who's leading the charge. And now our votes are going to be challenged. But we know, Richard, that without the Latino vote, you're not going to win state or national, you know, offices, you know, post-positions titles. How do you see we as la Rasa, you know, because there are groups that consider us, you know, well, the Hispanics voted for Trump in the last election. I think he was maybe 6 to 12 percent that did, you know, and I call those people self-aiding Latinos. I don't call them Hispanics, Latinos. But at this point, you know, he's even lost. the current presidency has even lost the support of those Latinos. Are you seeing changes, and are you seeing art leading the front in this fight against hatred, violence, and racism? Well, on one hand Miguel, I am, and we talk about that, you and I, and our call to action last week, the culture class show, It's intended for Chicano's, of course. But we're also dialing in, you know, a message, a call to action for, you know, every skater, every punk rocker, every graffiti artist, every MC, every DJ, every, you know, arts activists to dial up.

and raise the temperature on their expression, that's a little bit different than a lot of the celebrating I'm seeing currently at Hispanic functions and gala, like you say, the self-hating Latinos are just the ones who think that, you know, ICE isn't directed at them. So, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fundraising and celebrating going on right now. And there's also... also an attitude that says, you know, we need really happy folkloric stuff right now because we've got to take a break from all this madness. And our instinct is just like the opposite. It's the moment to turn it up and to say, you know, if you could take a break from the Hispanic gala's for just one moment, we really need to address some situations, including the ballot boxes. Because right now the Democrats have You know, no confidence that any of these young people that are fed up with the situation in Gaza, they're fed up with Netanyang, they're fed up with the Israeli settler situation, funded in carrying American arms, you know. Even a guy like Ro Khanna, relatively moderate guys from Silicon Valley and Democrat is saying, if you're not mentioning genocide, then you're complicit in the problem. And I think that's partly the case. In our own Latino world, the crisis that we're going to right now with examining and re-looking at the male patriarchy. We've got a few issues right at our own doorstep, you know. That is the patriarchy. That is what Dolores has gone through. That is, you know, the accountability. of ourselves has been. And so there's a lot going on, man. There's a lot going on. And I find that in Latino Hollywood and my friends in the business, there's a lot of business as usual right now, except when one of these situations is going to, it's not a matter of this. It's when ICE is just going to arrest. And they've been arresting and killing the wrong people the whole time, but they're going to, you know, this is not going away. This is going to get worse before there's, you know, any real solutions. If I might, gentlemen, I would love to shout out a young man that we recently sent on his way, a longtime actor with El Tiazza Campitino.

It spoke with his diatro, with his art. I had several bands in the central coast area of San Juan Babista, Watsonville, Aromas, Abda, Santa Cruz. This is a great breeding ground for activist art. We sometimes forget about that our focus of the Bay Area in L.A., but those areas are chuck full of great artists like Dagen-Band-Bendez. in Gilroy. You know, there's a lot of history there of activism, farmworking. And so I just wanted to shout out Seth Millwood, a great young artist that we lost. We finally were able to gather and celebrate his life and send him off in high style. And it was a gathering in a Robbins, California, at his mom's house, full of activism. And sometimes we go to funerals and memorials. Sad. also get re-energized and we kind of refocus our mission. All right. Listen, we're holding you up a long time. Richard Montoya, we know you're there with your daughter. We appreciate you took the time out. You're there. You're in Arizona, somewhere, somewhere in Arizona. There's more to talk about. And we'll be talking to you. We'll be bothering you. We'll be keeping this dialogue going because there are going to be a lot of challenges ahead. And who knows where it's going. Thank you. Thank you. Be safe. Thank you. Thank you, guys. And you will welcome. Dennis Bernstein here with Miguel Gavilan, Molina. Of course, Richard Montoya, Gavilan. has an incredible amount of work in terms of what they do, what culture clash is, is helping to organize the structure to create visions that help us understand what our struggle is, how to best deal with the struggles, and how to bring people together. You've known Richard a long time, haven't you? I think... Yeah, probably for like 60 years. Yeah, I first met him when he was 12 and I was 19. And that was decades ago. We'll leave it at that. But one of the things, Dennis, he is always, along with the other members of Culture, Claude Herbert Sequencia and Ricardo Salinas, they've always been on the cutting edge. And at one point, they were on the way to the, you know, top of Hollywood. Their first television contract is, I believe, just when Fox... Fox television came into being. And they were one of their first acts that came on Fox. And they were on there for a half a year, you know, covering, I think, two-thirds of the country on Fox Channel. And it was, you know, hilarious. But then they ran into a little...

creative writing conflicts. And they finally took a stand. They said, wait a second. You know, you've given us all these writers and mostly were non-Latinos to write their, you know, their jokes to write their, you know, theater skits and so forth on Fox. And they were told by the principle of those writing sessions that they couldn't use the word Aslan. and to stop using the term Chicano. And at that point, Culture Clash took a stand. They basically said what? And they walked away. They walked away from the contract. They walked away from Fox. They walked away from that whole scene where, you know, they were on the way to the top. And that really cemented who they are. You know, they weren't in it for the fame and the money. They were in it to, you know, advance the cultural, you know, different aspects of la Rasa. That's the brown masses, indigenous masses in this country and throughout the atmosphere. So with that, Dennis, it really, and they've never backed down. Sometimes, you know, they've had lows and ups and downs, but always devoted to truth. truth telling and doing art and theater that really addresses the truth and it opens up another separate reality which is where we exist so this what's happening now is not new to us The militarization coming after us. It came after us during the 1950s. It came at us during the 1930s. So it's nothing new. But what's happening here is they're using the masses of Brown to exercise, to build up their secret, you know, paramilitary, you know, death squads. And we can't, you know, people need to wake up. This is not just an un- you know, immigrant or undocumented issue. It's all of us. Because whether you're brown or not, whether you're a citizen or not, everyone is a target, you know, if we don't stop the batons and bring down the Confederate flag. That is the voice of Miguel Gavilon Malina speaking for flashpoints here on KBFA Pacifica Radio, the People's Radio Network. We are out of time. Stay tuned.

And that does it for another episode of FlashPoints. Our executive producer is Dennis Bernstein. Senior producers, Miguel Gavalon, Malina, and Kevin Pina. Technical producer, Rod Akil. Our theme music written and produced by Charlie Lang. For questions and comments, email Dennis Bernstein at Dennis at kpFA.org. Thank you for listening. Why should the black man in America concern himself since we've been away from the African continent for 400 years, three or 400 years? Why should we concern ourselves? What impact does what happened to them have upon us? Number one, I'm gentlemen destiny. For news, information, and analysis about Africa and the African diaspora, tune in weekly on Mondays at 7 p.m. to Africa Today with your host, Walter Turner. Africa Today is your source for being up to date on Africa and African. Mondays at 7 p.m. Africa Today on your Pacifica Radio station, KPFA 94.1 FM.

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