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Jan. 28, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
26:15
How Can We FIGHT BACK Against Corporate Government CENSORSHIP Collusion? | JustInformed Talk
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Hi, welcome to another episode of Just Informed Talk with We're joined by a very special guest.
He's a longtime friend of the show.
He's a businessman.
He's a patriot.
But he's also working as the director of fundraising at a new nonprofit organization called American Workers United.
I'd like to take this moment to introduce a good friend, Alex Phillips.
Welcome to the show, Alex.
Hey Craig, good to be here.
So Alex, you know, I wanted to have you on the show because I wanted to discuss this new venture that you've taken on with America's American Workers United.
It's a nonprofit organization that specializes in working with individuals who have been censored and marginalized by our corrupt government, if you will.
And I just want to start there.
Tell us about American Workers United, how you got started with them, and what the organization actually does.
Well, so last year I did a lot of work with the truckers rallies, and we spoke with a lot of people and listened to what they were dealing with.
And so we decided to form an organization, a nonprofit organization, that was really focused on the working class because, you know, when it comes right down to it, you know, the plumbers and the folks that do, you know, the work every day that keeps this country going are probably the most important people, but yet the most marginalized.
You know, the working class.
They're the football that people bounce around between, you know, political campaigns as to, you know, who's going to help them the most, but they end up helping them the least.
So, you know, we're doing this program right now where we're kind of focusing on a specific aspect of where American workers in general were marginalized, and that comes with the censorship online.
You know, the Twitter files that Elon Musk has released over the past, you know, several months It really opened up everybody's eyes.
Last year, this time, people were talking about it.
They were talking about it for four or five years, actually, before then.
And it was always written off as conspiracy theorists.
Yet, here we are seeing in black and white the emails coming from the FBI and the CIA and the CDC and the White House and very powerful congressional members telling these companies to censor people for saying things that they don't agree with.
And, you know, that's a big problem.
And it's really a problem from a perspective of civil rights.
So, you know, civil rights are something that people, you know, don't realize they're being violated, but they are.
You know, the First Amendment is what is talked about all the time.
But in the case of the Twitter files, we're seeing a lot of examples of Fifth Amendment rights being violated.
And that's not just the amendment that you call when you don't want to It's the due process amendment.
It has to do with the fact that, you know, if you're accused of something, there's a due process the government must go through to prove it before it becomes, you know, a thing.
Like, you know, you broke the law.
We think you broke the law, so we have to go through due process.
And, you know, that's one of our rights that's there to keep us from living in a fascist, you know, dictatorial society that we seem to be moving closer and closer into.
Yeah, so I agree 100%.
It's crazy when you look at the Twitter files and what they've uncovered.
Obviously, these are things that myself and many others have been telling the public at large are happening behind the scenes, but to see the proof is a whole other level of just...
You know, reality, if you will.
Religion, assembly, press, petition, etc.
Fifth Amendment, where it talks about legal proceedings, the right to a fair trial, legal representation.
All of that seems to have been undermined by these organizations.
So without the entity, an entity like the federal government on our side, which it's not anymore, we need these more independent funds to basically mobilize the resources and go after these big companies that are lobbying government we need these more independent funds to basically mobilize the resources and go after these big companies that are lobbying government officials to
So for your involvement, what would you say the number one priority is for this organization, the American Workers Union right here, shown behind you?
What do you think that they're going to be able to bring to the table that any other organization might not otherwise?
We are working with folks like yourself who have experienced this issue.
And, you know, a lot of companies, you know, like your company, you know, when you got censored in the past, you went through a process and you spent money and you kind of got nowhere.
And it's unfortunate because you didn't have the Twitter files that we have today.
And, but, you know, there's people like James Woods, for example, and, you know, the first day he discovered this situation, the Twitter files, you know, day one, Tucker's got him on the horn and doing an interview, and he says, I'm going to sue.
Well, he's got lots of money, but there's no difference between his violation of rights versus my violation or your violation or even somebody who's not really a journalist's violation.
If I was just posting stuff, I felt like I was going to research information about a topic and post it on my social media and share it on Facebook and share it on Twitter or share it wherever, and then I was being shut down.
They were shutting down my voice because I was against basically having to be forced to do these things.
I was against, you know, I didn't feel it was right, and so I was expressing myself.
And so his violation or her violation is no different as a small, you know, individual, working class stiff, you know, just trying to make a living than James Woods, who's got plenty of money.
And so we would like to try to raise...
As much money as possible, but we're thinking that people are going to need at least $20,000 to $50,000 just to get to a point in their case to get past what's called the motion to dismiss.
And that's usually where a lot of stuff fails, is that, you know, if you don't have a $1,000 an hour lawyer working for you in some cases, sometimes these big corporations in the government especially, which has unlimited resources, We'll shut you down before you even get the chance to make your case.
And we want to make sure that doesn't happen for as many people as possible.
And, you know, we are working with other organizations like the Social Media Freedom Foundation, who has been a pioneer in this area.
Of social media freedom for longer than probably anyone.
And Jason Fick, who is a fellow that we're working with, who's the founder of that organization, has been working with us.
And he's basically blazing a trail right now on case law.
And he's probably the foremost expert right now.
And we feel that if we can get people the means To basically leverage the judicial branch of government, because the executive branch was the one that was supposed to protect us from these things.
That's the FBI, that's the CIA, that's the DHS, that's the CDC. Those are all part of the executive branch, okay, the White House.
And, you know, they're law enforcement, essentially.
And they're supposed to stop corporations from violating our civil rights.
And they have in the past.
But it's an unusual situation now where they're the ones that are actually enabling and leading the violation of civil rights.
So who do you go to?
You know, I was posting on my Twitter an image of the FBI's logo that says, you know, report Internet crimes to the IC3.org organization.
And I'm thinking to myself, well, who do you report it to when it's you guys doing the crime?
And so that's where you've got to have a case.
And I know that there's a lot of people out there.
You've got the Moms for Liberty who have been fighting against nonsense in their schools all across their country.
There's been workers that have been fighting their companies from firing them for not getting a vaccine.
And look, I'm not endorsing I'm not saying that anything that people were censored for was right or wrong.
What I'm saying is that people have a right to say things that are legal.
And if the government shuts you down, they have to go through a due process.
So if I start promoting, you know, snake oil on Twitter that cures cancer, and I start making claims like that, the process is the Federal Trade Commission Comes and visits me and they ask me for my case studies, my FDA trials, all these things that prove what I'm saying.
And then if I can't do it, then they give me an order to shut down.
And they say, we feel like you're in violation of, you know, whatever regulation they want to quote as a result of this.
And then I have my opportunity to go to trial.
Okay, if I decide to.
But they were just bypassing this whole process, not even accusing me of violating or anybody of violating any kind of laws or regulations and just saying, hey, you know, wink, wink, hint, hint, can you please shut down this list of people because we don't like what they're saying and we're the FBI. So you got to listen to us.
Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I can't tell you how, you know, close to home that hits for me, you know, given what's happened in my life with the censorship regime and the way they've shut us down.
We went to court very similar to what Jason Fick did, and we fought all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as far as trying to prove that the big tech corporations were working on behalf of the government to censor and shut down our viewpoint and our opinion.
But the difference between our case that went to the Ninth Circuit and the case right now still being worked on by Jason Thicke against, you know, the entities in which he's taking on is that our case was structured in a way that went after the private corporations.
And what they were able to do is basically throw their hands up in the air and point to the government and say, well, we...
There is no proof that we worked on behalf of the government.
Therefore, we're a private entity so we can censor what we want, when we want, how we want.
And Jason Fick seems to have taken a different approach to that.
And your organization obviously works closely with him and his case right now, which is, like you said, trying to establish case law that would basically hold the government accountable for It's censorship, it's encouragement of censorship, it's tacit agreement to enact this kind of workaround, which is wildly unconstitutional and illegal, and it's clearly a violation of First and Fifth Amendment rights among others, I'm sure.
So I appreciate what you're doing with this organization, which is why I wanted to have you on.
And what else are you guys doing with this organization coming up in the future to help individuals who are in the same position that I am now, where we spent a lot of money as a collective.
We had about 20 content creators who got together and pooled our money and crowdfunded a large portion of it to take this all the way to the Ninth Circuit.
And then we got basically shot down.
And, you know, I do, though, believe that Jason Thicke has a better, better, will have a better outcome because his case is being structured in a different way, which I've just pointed out, where he's going after the government.
And with the Twitter files, with the information, with the evidence that's coming out, you know, there is, I believe, a higher probability that that case will establish some sort of precedent for the rest of us.
What is your organization doing otherwise, though, to work for people who are being, you know, the little guy who's being just completely suppressed, people who aren't even like us, who have, you know, moderately large audiences?
What would you say to that?
Like, what are you guys doing for that?
The fundraiser we're doing right now is specifically to raise funds for a grant.
And we're going to start taking grant applications once we've reached our first $100,000 in donations.
And if you go to craig.americanworkers.com, AmericanWorkersUnited.com.
It's Craig, like your name, AmericanWorkersUnited.com.
You can basically read about what we're doing.
You can see the structure that we're going to follow.
We're going to have a panel, a advisory board of five American social media workers being on the panel, as well as our attorney, to make sure that we follow all the regulations and rules that we follow, basically do what we're going to say we're going to do.
And then we're going to take grant applications.
Now, $100,000 may fund two starter cases or one long case.
I'd like to see us raise millions of dollars because I envision that there are thousands of people across the country who are in this shape.
Not just journalists, but just regular people.
There's a lot of just regular people that decided to, they call them citizen journalists, but You know, they're not really in that business.
They just decided they want to talk about things and share information on social media.
And they're the ones that are going to be the most marginalized because they don't have the means.
They don't have the revenue stream.
They've got regular jobs.
They may be, you know, they may work at a school.
They may be a bus driver.
They may be a construction worker, cop, you know, healthcare workers.
They're all over the place, you know, and they're the ones that don't have the means.
Now, they are victims of this civil rights violation just as much as you or James Woods or anyone that had some means to do this in the past.
And so we're going to put them together with that, with funds.
We need the people, though, that we're crowdsourcing this.
We need people to make their $5 donations, their $10 donations.
As much as they feel they can afford, they can do recurring donations if they like, at this website, craig.americanworkersunited.com.
And we put some information on there.
We're trying to be very bipartisan about this because this is not a partisan issue.
For years, the Republicans talked about censorship and conservatives, censorship and conservatives.
Now, yes, conservatives were censored, but there's a lot of Democrats and progressives that were censored as well, and I've been talking to those.
And so, you know, I even, you know, talked to Mother Jones last week, and, you know, they're Far from conservative, right?
But they've complained about being censored on Facebook about things.
And, you know, there's going to need to be some regulations about this, I'm sure.
And Section 230 is probably going to have to be fixed a little bit.
And it's very vague.
You know, this Decency Act, you know, found its home back in the early days of, you know, broadcast radio and television, where, you know, they just didn't want You know, foul language and inappropriate language over the airs because, you know, anybody could pick it up and extend it to the television and the cable.
And then, you know, certain cable channels, you know, you subscribe to, you can hear that stuff because, you know, you're given that warning.
Subscription radio.
The internet, though, however, has been a little bit vague, and the words have meanings, but in its particular case, many of the words in the current act have very little meaning to actually what the intent was.
And so the idea is that if I provide a hosting platform, and I'm a hosting platform, not an editor or a publisher, and I provide a platform for people like yourself to host And publish your work, whatever it is you say, your journalism work, your DIY, anything like that.
I'm not responsible for what you're doing.
Now, if law enforcement brings it to my attention that you're in violation of a law, then I, as a hosting company, can bring it to your attention and say, it's been brought to our attention that you've got this situation.
But they still have to go through a due process.
Government has to go through this process, even in Section 230.
Now, the problem is, is so many have gone to court, and they get to court, and the judges, they go Section 230, and they just throw it out because they say that, you know, this company's not liable.
Or they have the right to censor based on their policies, even though they're not censoring based on policies.
Or, you know, there's a lot of vagary in there.
And so I think what Jason is going to end up at the end of the day is trying to help government fix those loopholes that exist.
And it'll be good because it'll establish what the rules are.
And, you know, the hosting companies will know what their role is.
And people that want to publish content online will know what their role is.
And I think that if a company decides they don't want people to, they don't want to host any political Type content.
They can make that statement up front, or they don't want to host anything to do with, you know, maintaining, you know, cats or, you know, how to train a dog.
And these people can make these decisions that they don't want to have that kind of content on their platform.
But YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, they never made these delineations.
Now, they did start adding things about hate speech, which is still a question that has to be defined.
It's a kind of a vague area.
But I think that people should be able to talk about certain issues that are legal otherwise.
I think that, you know, we've kind of lost our way.
And, you know, when I was talking to Mother Jones about some things, I said, you know, sometimes the best ideas come from hearing 10 of the worst ideas.
Knowing what a bad idea is, something that's totally wrong from somebody's mouth can really open up the possibility of, well, if that's all wrong, then this must be right.
And so I think hearing bad ideas is important.
I think free speech is always going to have to be as broad and as widely ranging as is humanly possible because you're only going to defeat bad ideas with more ideas that are better and you're not going to do it by silencing and shutting it down because that only leads to You know, the Streisand effect and other things that actually end up causing more damage than, you know, good in the long run.
So, I'm glad that your organization is working on this problem fixing it.
And I'm glad it's kind of being viewed by you and others as being a nonpartisan issue.
Because the way I look at it is, there's a uniparty that's run with, you know, whatever you want to call it, the deep state.
And, you know, there is something to be said that...
What we're facing right now is almost as important for our generation as it will be for the next 10 generations, because if we don't fix this now, it's only going to get worse.
And if it gets worse than it is today, there will not be an America like the one you and I were born into.
And that's why I think it's important to support organizations like this.
I asked you guys when you were watching me before to support our cases.
We took it all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court and did the best we could to hold these corporations accountable.
But now I would ask you guys to give a shot to these individuals, these people who I think are actually trying to fight.
You know, Alex and Jason Fick, I appreciate your effort.
Because I understand the importance of it, and I understand how integral it will be to establishing a precedent that can be used by us all to have an established set of parameters that we can all agree upon where it's not being arbitrarily run against one person and then lifted it from another, and corporations are, you know, sidetracking and sidestepping the Constitution whenever they want based on, you know, their...
Army of lawyers.
We have to be able to fight them in the courts, which is where they have a dominant advantage because of their endless capital and resources and litigation teams, etc.
So I appreciate your efforts in the endeavor to try to make that a reality.
And I think everybody should go check out the link that's going to be in the description of this video.
That'll be what we mentioned before, craig.americanworkersunited.com.
Was it org, I think?
I'll leave a link to that below.
And you guys can go read through the literature, study the cases, study what Jason Fick's doing, study what this organization's doing, and then make a decision based on your informed, you know, perspective as to whether you want to support it.
But I would recommend that you give them a shot because if we don't support it now, We're going to be fighting a much worse tyranny in the future, and that's the way I would put it.
So, Alex, I want to say thank you for coming on the show.
It's been a pleasure, as always, to have you on.
You're always bringing these things to the forefront that I think are so important, especially when it comes to freedom in our country that's constitutionally guaranteed.
So, if you have anything else you want to share with the audience, please do, Alex.
But we're going to go ahead and wrap it up after that.
Yeah, so I want to come back on your show some other time, but we've got a conference that we're working on with Jason Fick in May.
It's going to be in Palm Springs, California.
So we're going to be in a very blue state.
But it's going to be called the Internet Equality Summit.
And it's going to be kind of an interesting event.
We're going to have Dennis Prager is going to be there.
We're going to have him do some debates on our first night.
It's our VIP event and reception.
But then we're going to be talking about policy throughout the day on Friday.
This is May 11th through the 13th.
And it's not going to be talking about voter integrity or vaccines.
We're going to talk about Section 230.
That really is the foundation for the telecommunications regulations that we need to get fixed in our country so that we can use the Internet like it's supposed to.
We're going to have some debates.
There probably will be some people there that aren't from the left.
We're going to have people there from the right.
It's going to be a very bipartisan event.
We're going to have stories for people that have had censorship impact their lives and how it affected them.
We're going to try to bring some people from industry because it's not just about us.
It's also about these companies that are going to be providing hosting services, platforms and whatnot.
They're going to be affected by this.
And then we're going to kind of close out the last day with a music festival called the Counter-Canceled Music Festival.
And we're going to have music of all kinds all day long outside.
And the weather's going to be really nice in Palm Springs that time of the year in May.
So I'll come back on the show.
We'll talk about it later.
But, you know, just, you know, I encourage everybody to go to craig.americanworkersunited.com, you know, read what's on the site and, you know, Do what you can to help and share it with all of your friends.
The only way that we can fix this problem because the internet is such a powerful tool and it's probably the most powerful invention that man has ever come up with.
More powerful than the nuclear bombs and the hypersonic missiles and stealth jets and powerful laser beams.
More powerful because it gives Each individual, the ability to talk to the entire world and share thoughts.
And sometimes the best idea can come from the most marginalized person you know.
You know, it's an amazing thing.
And I think that that power that comes to the internet, the power that we give it as individuals, has been co-opted by corporations.
And our government in a way that is not right.
And we've got to fix it now before it may not be fixable in the future.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Go to craig.americanworkersunited.com and check it out.
Let me know what you guys think down in the comments below about this stuff.
Hopefully, I'll be able to come out there and hang out with you, Alex, in May and do some shows from there and try to get that message out far wide.
We'll get you back on the show to talk about the event when we get a little closer to it so the audience knows about that too in case they're interested in coming and joining us there.
I can tell you right now that it has been a pleasure to have you on the show.
It is important what you are doing.
I always appreciate the work that you bring to the forefront.
And this cause, I think, is just one of the most important causes because, like you said, our freedoms don't end.
Essentially, what you said was our freedoms don't really end at the Internet, and the Internet is wildly important to the future.
We need to fight for our freedom there as well.
And thank you, Alex, for coming on the show.
We're going to have you on soon again for everybody who's interested.
Don't worry.
We're going to bring Alex back on and we'll talk about the upcoming event that they have going.
We get a little closer to that.
So I'm really excited for it.
But with that being said, I want to say thank you, Alex, for joining us.
And we'll talk to you guys on the next one.
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