Vehicles as Weapons
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Using a vehicle as an instrument of terror is nothing new. Over the last decade, extremists proclaiming affiliation with ISIS and other terrorist groups have used trucks and cars to murder pedestrians in London, Barcelona, Nice, Berlin, New York...the list goes on. Recently, however, the United States has seen a new and frightening development with vehicular assaults. These attacks are not random. The targets are protesters using highways and streets to exercise their First Amendment rights, to demand justice, and to call for the reform of policing and other systemically racist institutions. Some of the attacks have been carried out by people affiliated with right-wing hate groups, some by people with no known affiliation, and still others have involved the police themselves. In this episode, Sarah talks with Ari Weil, a University of Chicago Ph.D. student researching vehicular attacks, about this terrifying trend. We also hear from Robert Foster, who was at a protest in Austin, Texas, where a confrontation between a marcher and a driver turned fatal.
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SHOW NOTES:
Follow Ari on Twitter @AriWeil
Read more about Ari Weil's research into right-wing vehicular attacks. (NBC News)
Ari Weil's interview with Vox.com about the "far right ecosystem online" that's encouraging vehicular attacks and congratulating the people who carry them out.
Vehicular Attacks Rise as Extremists Target Protestors. (NPR)
Police officers in SUVs rammed protestors and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio initially defended the cops. (New York Times)
The states that introduced bills in 2017 to protect drivers who run over protestors. (CNN)
This episode was produced by Sarah Goodyear and edited by Ali Lemer. Our music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Our logo is by Dani Finkel of Crucial D Design.
Find us on Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek, Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1.
Questions, comments or suggestions? Email us: thewaroncars@gmail.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We have some breaking news, a man charged with intentionally driving his car into a group of protesters. |
| 0:05.3 | A white SUV that nearly ran over protesters. |
| 0:08.3 | The police car being driven into protesters. |
| 0:10.5 | They read his engine and actually ran his truck into some of those protesters. Redbed his engine and actually ran his truck into some of those protesters. |
| 0:15.0 | Demonstrators were marching as part of police reform protests. |
| 0:18.4 | There have been at least 66 car attacks targeting protesters. It's in some cities across the country, |
| 0:24.0 | including in New York, San Diego, |
| 0:26.0 | Indiana, Charlottesville, |
| 0:28.0 | Bakersfield, Boston, Newport Beach, Denver. Goodyear and this is the war on cars. |
| 0:47.0 | Using a vehicle as an instrument of terror is nothing new. Over the last decade, ISIS extremists and other terrorist groups have used trucks and cars to murder pedestrians in London, |
| 0:55.4 | Barcelona, Nice, Berlin, New York, the list goes on. |
| 1:01.1 | In the United States, however, we have a different disturbing trend in vehicular assaults. |
| 1:06.2 | These attacks are not random. |
| 1:08.2 | The targets are protesters. |
| 1:10.7 | People using the streets and roads of the United States to express their opinions, to demand justice, and to call for the reform of systemically racist institutions. |
| 1:21.0 | We saw it at the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2015. We saw it in |
| 1:26.4 | Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th, 2017 when Heather Hire was run down by a white supremacist while protesting the Unite the Right rally. |
| 1:36.0 | And now in the weeks and months following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop, |
| 1:41.0 | we have seen dozens of these attacks in cities across the nation. |
| 1:46.4 | Some are clearly motivated by white supremacist ideology. |
| 1:50.8 | Others apparently stem more from impatience |
| 1:53.5 | over inconvenience caused by blocked streets |
... |
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