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Jan. 23, 2026 - Gishgallop Girl
24:06
Update-A-Sode 1-23-2026

General Strike Day but I'm out working. Regardless, here is an update on things. ThomasAnderson@GishgallopGirl.com  Bluesky and Mastodon: @GishgallopGirl

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Time Text
I Took More Time Off Work 00:05:11
Hello everybody, welcome to another update episode, you know, where I just riff and I don't really have anything prepared.
So it is January 23rd 2026 as I record this and I'll be releasing this when I'm done.
But yeah, first off, state of the pud.
I am still working on the next episode.
It's been rough going.
I've still got about 20 minutes or so.
I think it's more like 18 minutes or so of Candace's material to sift through in that one.
You know, when I've got the time to do the work, it's great.
It's great.
I love it.
And, you know, some of you may be saying, well, you've got the time right now, asshole.
Why are you recording this and not doing that?
Well, first off, thank you, I guess.
But yeah, I just, I am sitting right now in my vehicle.
I'm charging up.
I'm at one of our nice, plentiful charging stations here.
And I'm charging up the rental car that I'm in.
Let me step back a bit.
So I kept this off the radio.
I didn't really tell anybody.
I kind of kept it in-house to my family.
But yeah, on November 30th, my car, I was in a parking lot and we had just had a snow the day before, two days before.
Anyway, I was sitting in my car.
I was trying to get some shit moved around and like on my schedule, on my work schedule, and a plow, a front end loader, you know, big construction equipment.
You may think of them as bulldozers.
Anyway, it had a plow attachment on the front of it.
So it was effectively a plow at that point.
Anyway, it backed up to my driver's side, like just crunched me right in.
And it was low speed.
I was blaring my horn.
I was doing everything I could to try to get the driver's attention.
He was kind of whipping the plow around the parking lot.
And he had like headphones or ear protection or something on.
Anyway, I was laying on my horn and he did not hear me.
He felt it when he backed up into my car.
I got out.
We exchanged information.
I wound up talking to his boss and then to his boss above him.
And anyway, I got their insurance company.
I got my insurance company on it.
And it took, let's see, that happened on November 30th.
It took until January 15th for me to be able to get my car into the collision shop because the business's insurance company fought me every step of the way.
It wasn't until I had a credible attorney's name that I called them up and I said, look, this guy is very interested in suing the ever-loving shit out of you.
Either I see action on this within the next two days or I tell him to go ahead.
I had gotten the attorney to an agreement of, what is it, when accident attorneys.
Anyway, he was going to take money off the final settlement.
He wasn't going to charge me a thing.
There is a word for that.
I do not remember it right now.
I've used it a lot in the past.
I don't remember it right now.
Anyway, so yeah, it took a lot of tough talk and back and forth with everybody, but I finally got my vehicle in.
It was drivable in that entire time, but I had to go to a collision center to get them to assess it.
I had to, you know, drive it actually more carefully because it showed up a little more over the course of time, but the driver's side wheel started shaking as I was driving, even at like low speeds, and I was really concerned about that.
So I really, like, I took more time off of work than I would have liked because I had to be sure that my car was, you know, safe enough for me to do my fucking job.
Well, anyway, I get it over and it they I demanded that I get an EV.
I'm not going from an EV to a fucking gas car for, you know, two fucking weeks.
No, fuck that shit.
I'm used to driving EVs.
I like driving EVs.
My wife has a gas car, which in the EV community is unfortunately known as an ICE car, an internal combustion engine car, otherwise an ICE car.
Crowd Resistance in Jacksonville 00:14:45
And I'm not going to say my wife is driving an ICE vehicle.
That's not fucking happening.
In the meantime, of course, everyone is, I'm sure, well aware.
If you're in this sort of the pod universe, you're well aware of the massive crackdown from immigration and customs enforcement, also known as ICE.
The massive ICE crackdown that has been happening in our fair cities.
You know, rest in power, Renee Macklin Good.
She, of course, was shot just a few weeks ago as I record this.
And, you know, we I didn't know her or her family.
This is a metro area with like 4 million people.
I didn't know them, but it turns out I do know a couple of people that did.
And they had nothing but nice things to say about her.
And it's not a don't speak ill of the dead situation.
She was a genuinely good person.
And I trust their opinion on it.
But yeah, it has been heartening, extremely heartening to witness the many various people that show up to these, that show up to blow their whistles and honk their horns, not in support of ICE.
The ICE guys, when they are spotted, people show up and follow them.
I witnessed an ICE action at, we have a library in the Ridgedale area in Minnetonka, which is a suburb of Minneapolis.
Anyway, there is a library/slash courthouse in the Ridgedale section and that has some low-level electric chargers.
Well, I plugged in my, I driven into there, plugged in my car some time ago, and I saw a huge crowd in the parking lot.
And I pulled in, I plugged in my vehicle, and I grabbed my sandwich.
I was planning on sitting there and eating lunch.
That didn't happen.
So I grabbed my sandwich, and I walked out to where the commotion was, and I saw ICE agents getting a guy in a vehicle and fighting with the woman that was trying to get to him.
I would find out later she was his sister.
I think it was sister.
Anyway, one of the attorneys wasn't entirely, one of the attorneys that was present wasn't entirely on, didn't have all the information at the time because shit was just happening.
But I stood with the crowd and they were all blowing whistles and there were already vehicles lined up to follow them.
And they did.
And people rushed to get to their cars to follow these ICE vehicles and give them a proper harassing.
Well, I was talking with one of the one of the people as the crowd was dispersing.
And he had a jacket on and like his lawyer's office name stitched onto his jacket, older white fella.
And I asked him, I was like, so what happened here?
He said, well, this guy came down to pay his parking ticket.
And I guess they were tipped off ahead of time.
And they showed up.
They dragged him.
They waited till he came out of the courthouse and they got him.
But somebody had noticed the ice vehicles in the parking lot.
So they called their group and they'd had a signal chat.
They all showed up.
I was looking around at the crowd.
It was mostly older white folks.
Like we're talking like retirees.
This was the middle of the day on, you know, like a Wednesday or something.
And, oh my God, if you have not heard a Minnesota like grandma-aged lady go off on ICE agents, you have not lived.
I watched it.
I was impressed.
You know, people who I would not think would have these kind of like convictions were so fucking riled up and so fucking angry.
And anyway, I asked the guy, I was like, I saw them put one guy in the vehicle.
You know, like I just showed up.
I saw them put one guy in the vehicle.
How many did they get?
And he goes, one.
He goes, I counted the agents.
I said, I'm here as a legal observer.
I counted the agents.
There were 27 agents here to pick up one man.
I was like, are you fucking kidding?
He goes, no.
And he said, the worst part is, regardless of whether or not that guy gets released later, the agents get to split the bounty.
Like, all they have to do is rouse him and throw him in the vehicle.
He said, so one of the reasons why people are following is they want to see if he gets taken to a facility or if they try to just dump him off somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
So, you know, he was like, we're going to do our best.
His wife had already, she had said her goodbyes and she was in one of the vehicles that was following along, the fucking caravan following like an armored truck and a big red, I want to say it was a Dodge Durango looking thing that had ice, you know, like officially like emblazoned on the sides.
Yeah, they seeing that community action gave me hope.
Like they already have the guy's name.
They were doing what they could to get in contact with his family.
You know, it just, there was a lot of support there for this one guy who no one no one really knew in the crowd except for his relative that did not get arrested.
She managed to, the crowd managed to get her up.
She didn't get arrested.
She didn't get maced.
The ICE agents just like just was very rough with her little woman.
It's very rough with her, you know, knocked her to the ground.
Yeah, it was something else to see.
You know, it's always one of those things where like you see it on, you know, you see it on camera.
You see it in person.
You see how just unabashedly bullied these guys are.
And yeah, I understand the anger.
I understand the rage.
And we've heard, we haven't seen in our neighborhood where we live.
We live in North Minneapolis.
We haven't seen direct violence there, but we have heard the whistles, heard the car horns, a few blocks from where we stay, like, you know, coming home or leaving out.
My wife has been able to tell me when those events happen.
She texts me, and I tell people that I know stay in the area so they can let other people know.
You know, there is an active resistance here.
Today is an almost minus, minus, okay, minus.
For my Fahrenheit listeners, minus 30.
Minus 30 to minus 50 wind chills today.
And yeah, our people, our lovely Minnesotans are like, fuck it.
We got gear.
They're going to do a protest at 2 o'clock.
And there's an indoor rally happening about a half hour later at the end of the protest.
Yeah, man, businesses have been responding.
Some of the gas stations, we have speedway stations here.
ICE agents were stopping into those to use the bathroom and stuff.
They've been getting denied.
It's become very unpopular to serve them.
Yeah, I follow, if there's been one upside to this, it's that on Blue Sky.
I follow a lot more Minnesotans now that have gotten on Blue Sky, that have, you know, put themselves out there like, hey, I'm in this section.
This is going on.
So I use my Blue Sky to follow, of course, any political stuff that matters and also local accounts to Minneapolis, St. Paul, or just wider Minnesota even.
And I've seen a lot of activity.
People have been really standing up to this shit in ways that I don't want to say I wouldn't have expected, but in ways that are nice to see.
You know, you want to, especially since we moved here like four years ago, you know, you get to a place and honestly, the people here have been great.
I don't know why they, if you ask the average Minnesotan, like, do you think people here are friendly?
Think people are more friendly here or elsewhere.
The average person I've spoken with to just without a doubt goes, oh no, we're, we're, you know, we're, we're cold.
We're kind of rude.
We're, you know, they're very, they're very like down on themselves.
And it's wild because my family, me, wife, kids, we lived in the South, you know, most of our lives.
We moved around neighborhoods.
You know, you, you rent a house or an apartment for, you know, a year or whatever.
You get kind of tired of it.
You go to another one.
You know how it goes.
If you've lived that rental life.
Well, we moved around quite a bit, you know, in Jacksonville and the suburbs and shit.
And yeah, man, honestly, we have never felt more welcomed.
Like my kids have never felt more welcomed at jobs than they did here.
I personally have never felt more welcomed.
My wife, who doesn't interact with people nearly as much as the rest of us do, has been able to make friends with our neighbors.
You know, we, and people, these are, and they're not people that are entirely like us.
It's not just like foreigners.
It's just across the board.
We have felt so welcome.
Even among communities that are that are still very insular, like even among the Somalis.
One look at me, you know, I'm not a Somali.
I'm not even close, right?
And we've been just taken in by these people, you know, as just in the friendliest, kindest ways.
And, you know, that goes for people that are not from here originally and people that grew up here.
This is a safe space.
You know, I felt good enough when we moved here that we started this podcast.
I didn't feel good doing it in Florida.
I didn't feel safe to speak my mind.
Even in Jacksonville, which is, believe it or not, Jacksonville, Florida is on the high end of the progressive scale in Florida, which I understand is a low bar.
But Jacksonville actually is pretty high up on that in a lot of like surveys and studies and shit.
And people who are from there would be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Yeah, honestly, though, think about it.
Gay people are treated with tolerance at the very least.
You know, same with folks of other races and multiple genders and stuff.
Jacksonville is quite progressive.
Again, it's a low bar because it's Florida, but moving from there to here was like all the best things about that place were just expanded and magnified here for us.
So, you know, but to know people are like that, to know people are good here and giving and kind and tolerant at the very least of people that are different from them is one thing.
But to really like be in it and, you know, it just, it feels so much better.
And Margaret Killjoy, who has a podcast over on CoolZone called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is a really good show.
And Margaret's also been on several, you know, Behind the Bastards and It Could Happen Here episodes and stuff is in Minneapolis.
I have not crossed paths.
If I did, I would offer a handshake and a hug.
But Margaret did a really good thread on Blue Sky recently talking about embedding with the protesters and seeing how they are and everything.
And she wrote a really good, really, really good thread that's worth finding and just reading through if you want to get a sense of how things are going here.
I mean, one of the one of the one of the things I'm going to paraphrase because I'm going to misquote, but she said something to the effect of, you know, they made the class, ICE made the classic Nazi mistake of attacking a winter people in the winter.
Hopefully Back Soon 00:04:38
And they were not kidding.
you know people in minnesota know how to handle it and i have gotten uh over the last four years i have gotten um accustomed to the winter i've i've looked forward to it every year even some of the locals will think i'm crazy for saying that they go you know what are you what are you talking about man it's so cold i'm like yeah that's why i moved here do you not understand i lived in a swamp for 42 years this is why i'm here you know um But then at the same time,
they'll be like, oh, yeah, well, there is a lot of stuff to do.
It's like, yeah, of course.
There's a lot of shit going on.
Even with this ice bullshit, there would be a lot of things going on here.
In fact, we're planning on attending a couple of events that are coming up.
And I hope they're able to keep the events.
I hope they don't get called.
They're not in the cities.
They're out on the burbs.
So hopefully.
But yeah, I am out working today, even though a general strike was called.
And my heart is with the general strikers.
But I have bills to pay.
And my company is paying me a lot of money to be out right now.
So I could not stare down the barrel of that.
That said, I have contributed with money where I could afford to to a couple of the local aid groups and charities and stuff that are going on.
Just anonymous donations.
You know, I don't, even my regular name out in the world, I don't need people.
I don't need that kind of exposure.
I would just rather give money and let it do its thing.
Okay, well, next episode, I don't know.
I don't know.
Matthew's birthday, his 21st, is coming up.
So we're going to be celebrating that.
We've got some plans for that.
I will be working.
I will continue to work on the next official episode of this show when I can.
You know, right now, today is a heavy workday.
And, you know, even though I'm in a rental car, I'm still taking my time because the roads, right now I'm sitting in a parking lot with a bunch of packed snow, which is good.
But what, well, you may or may not realize if you do not live in an area that gets snow on a regular basis in the winter, is that the packed snow, especially right now at minus 18 where I'm at, the packed snow can become hard and icy in random spots.
So you have to take your time getting places.
You have to factor in snow time into your travel plans.
You know, if this was a normal day, I'd, hell, I probably wouldn't even be charging right now, but it is and I am.
So, okay, people, I'm going to cut this off.
And hopefully, I'll be back on my way soon, but I will post this up.
And we do look forward to doing another episode soon.
As always, if you want to reach out to me or you want to follow me on Blue Sky, I'm at Gish Gallup Girl on the social meads.
Not on Facebook.
We've covered that before.
I might try to get a threads account.
I don't know.
I don't really feel like it.
I like Blue Sky.
I like Mastodon.
But you can also reach out via email, ThomasAnderson at gishgallopgirl.com.
That's it.
Hopefully we will be back with the next official episode soon because this shot in the dark shit just, I learned stuff, but man, does it really, it really fucks with me.
Okay, everybody, that's it for now.
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