Kitbag Conversations - Episode 24: Collin Mayfield

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

This week we are joined with Colin Mayfield (@collin_mayfield), a freelance journalist and documentary photographer in the American South. He has spent time across the globe focusing on geo-political and humanitarian flashpoints. Throughout the episode, we talk about: - How he got into journalist work - His time in Ukraine and Transnistria  - His work with Rose Warfare in Atlanta Georgia - And what he has planned next  You can follow his work on Instagram and on his website https://www.collinmayfieldphotography.com/

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Croaton Report. This week, we are joined by a much requested guest. We are joined with Colin Mayfield, a freelance journalist, documentary photographer who spent time in Africa, Middle East, Europe, time in Ukraine, reports in South of the American Southern states, and a lot more that he has up in store. So, hey, man, how are you doing today? I really appreciate you coming on. I'm doing great. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, absolutely. It was a, you've definitely been one of few people who have requested multiple times. So I was like, yeah, might as well just reach out and shoot the shit for an hour. Hell yeah. Yeah, but right at the bat, man, I know you've been around the community for about

a little while now, but I know you were in school before. Did you always want to be a journalist? Just kind of, I guess, just jump right into this? No, it's been a messy road. Originally, I studied anthropology in college, and I wanted to do that. I was fascinated with archaeology, and I still do love ancient history, but I was working in an archaeology museum in San Diego, and I just would spend hours upon hours categorizing pottery sherds. And occasionally, I'd come across some cool Native American artifact, and we'd repatriate that to the tribe, but for the most part, it was just such dull work. And I took a gap year, worked a summer job in Northern California, and then after that, did some backpacking. The coronavirus happens,

George Floyd was murdered, and shortly after his death, I fell into journalism and photography. Mm-hmm. Real quick, man, how does someone from Alabama end up in San Diego? Oh, I've lived in California twice. I went to high school, I went to San Diego, and was there for about a year, came back to the South, and then I went back to California, but this time, Hopland, up in Mendocino County, it's funny, being from Alabama, the most rural place I've ever lived is California. Mm-hmm. But San Diego, my father was living there. Hopland, my cousin, was managing a farm and asked if I needed a job, and I thought, be a nice gap year. Just do some nice manual labor, get out and just stretch your legs for a

little bit. Really, just honestly, just turn your brain off and just kind of crepe coast. Yeah, it was a fascinating time. I'll have to write something about it at some point. Mm-hmm. Yeah, nice little novella or just, I don't know if you ever read Warren Stoddard's stuff, but just a collection of short stories that he's just thrown together. Yeah, I know Warren. I've got a good place on the banks of the Euphrates right next to me on my shelf right now. Really? At this? Yeah, when I was talking to him, yeah, when I was talking to him a few weeks ago, he just briefly outlined his, the plot to his western novel, and I went, this is one of the most interesting and unique plots I've heard in a while.

That one I haven't read. I've only read his semi-memoir about Rojava. Have you, uh, have you spent time in Rojava or Rojava, whatever it's? I have not. I've, uh, I've done Lebanon, uh, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, UAE, Egypt, Mubia, but that's, that's the extent of that. And I've been to Turkey several times. But, uh, not Rojava? You've attained or anything? Uh, I've been attained a few. I got, I got attained, uh, briefly when I crossed into the West Bank because of my Lebanese stamps. Right. It was funny. They, uh, they were asking questions about Hezbollah and I'm like, yeah,

I'm, I'm a 20 year old from Alabama. I don't know any, any Hezbollah. You're like, yeah, I'm pretty dialed into a Russian door from Dagestan. Yeah. What do you want to know? I'm just, uh, just, just back. Yeah, I'm just tourist, man. Come on. I would love to go though. Northeast Syria is definitely one I plan on doing within the next few years though. I'm going to do Turkey one last time before I can't go back. Yeah. Place is definitely, uh, rapidly changing when it comes to, in terms of everything. So the heyday of, oh yeah, exactly. I think the heyday of just a freelance journalist or anyone wanting to pop up in Turkey for a few weeks is kind of that windows closing

because of the way the country's going. Yeah. Honestly, I really like Cyprus. Cyprus is definitely one of those unreported topics that everyone just heard about and that they just kind of forget. That's what I'm thinking about. I've got a, I got a fascination with autonomous zones and de facto states and I'd like to visit some of those. So, uh, another, uh, semi-recognized country would be fun. So maybe, maybe North Cyprus is going to be coming up soon. I don't know. What is there? Something like 40,000 Turkish soldiers in the Turkish occupied zone? I'm not sure on how many. Yeah, there's something. There's an extreme amount and they count that it's like a deployment like the Brits do with Northern Ireland, but yeah. So George Floyd protest, kick

off, you get interested in journalism. Did you just kind of wing it or did you read a few books? Like, I don't know. Black flags right in the anger. I had always kind of kept up with the news. That's just something my parents ingrained into me and, uh, so I mean, I always kept up with it and I had always, you know, thought of myself as a decent writer, but this time I decided I'd actually get my feet wet in it. One thing I hadn't really done was photography prior to that. I mean, it was just shitty iPhone photography and then I got a used DSLR from a family member and I was learning to shoot in manual at these BLM protests. So, uh, some of the early photos were quite shite, but they've gotten better. And did you move around the country at all?

I just found like a localized area and just kind of hunkered down all over the South. I did a couple, I did Louisville a couple of times, both for the Black Power militia, the not fucking around coalition. It was an ironic name because all they did was fuck around. Um, so I saw the NFAC a few times. I saw them in Louisville. I saw a riot in Louisville, uh, you know, for Breonna Taylor. I saw the NFAC again in Lafayette, Louisiana. Uh, I was in Atlanta after Richard Brooks was killed, saw the Wendy's where he was shot that was burned down, uh, right in Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. That was my first ever riot. Did you handle that one? Just kind of go in there just ready to take whatever happened or kind of play across this super exciting.

And I was unlucky enough for my DSLR to break right at the beginning, but I was like, I'm already here. So gotta keep shooting. So there's mediocre iPhone photos. You still got some photography though. And I've seen the pictures you've, you've done a lot more recently and they're definitely, you can see an improvement. Oh yeah. 100%. Oh man. So how did you, I guess a big question, how did you end up in Ukraine? Just see it was all kicking off and head that way and thought you just jump along and see what was going to happen or? Yeah, I had been considering going. I'd kept up with the conflict for the past year or so seriously. Like for past year or two, I've seriously been keeping up with

with what's happening in Donbass, you know, following Aidan Esslin. And I mean, I remember when Crimea was annexed, but I was only about 15 when that happened. But Alex Lurie, another photojournalist, I met him at a riot in Louisville and he's a, he's helped me out a good bit, but he, he tipped off and suggested that maybe I go to Ukraine. And I was originally only planning on being gone a couple of weeks, but then the invasion happened and I stayed for about four months. I remember when I was talking to Chase, I don't remember if it was on the podcast or when I saw him a few weeks ago, but out of nowhere, he just goes, yeah, man, Finn and Colin achieve lord status to the absolute greatest by staying in the city when it was told to evacuate.

He was like, yeah, they did a really good job. And I was like, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. It was a hot topic for a little bit. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And I do remember that when the war started, it was like early March, I want to say earlier mid-March and I was talking to Daphne and she was like, Oh, by the way, I'm with Colin. I was like, what? All right. There's a lot of moving pieces over there. Yeah, it was a really, really important work. I'm glad to be able to say that I was, I was able to just, you know, document a small part of it. Yeah, that was a, I mean, looking back a few months, it's been six plus months now,

but just like the living situations and because you're the first person I've talked to on the podcast, who was actually in the city when it happened, what was the living situation like? What was the overall situation looking like? It ebbed and flowed a good bit. Yeah, it ebbed and flowed a good bit. So I, when I was there at the very beginning, within the first week, we still had pretty consistent power, water, food, everything was fine. We were staying in the, it was Spinnin' Eye, we were staying in the Kharkiv Palace Hotel and the quality of life was not suffering too much aside from alarms telling us to go down into the basement because of Shelling. I mean, the Shelling shake the hotel,

it was incredibly difficult to get any sleep. When I came back to Kharkiv the second time, I noticed the quality of life was much, much different. That time I was staying in the city center. It was Daphne and I and we were in this volunteer's house. It wasn't a house, it was an office in the city center and like the windows were all taped up and the Russian artillery cut the water line. So we went without showers for about a week, having to sparingly brush our teeth with bottles of water. So it was, it was not fun. Electricity is sometimes an issue. But it just, it ebbed and flowed a lot and then I stayed as late as May and towards the end,

once the Russians were pushed pretty far back from the city, aside from the occasional boom of artillery in the distance, like if you were in Kharkiv city center, you might not even notice a lot of it. I mean, you could just be eating at restaurants and aside from all the soldiers, everything seems pretty normal. I guess it speaks to the resiliency of a lot of the Ukrainian people. But obviously in those northern neighborhoods like Salt of Kharkiv, they were just getting hit really, really bad. Did you ever try to get up to Sumi when the Russians were evacuating or I guess retrograding? I never, I never got up towards Sumi. Yeah, that was definitely one of those contested zones that were pretty hot. So yeah, going back to what you said about

the different vibe and showing the resiliency of the Ukrainians, it was all pretty awesome to see that a shell would go off in a city block and everyone clean it up real quick and just, instead of leaving it on the ground, like a traditional war film or something, they would just clean it up really quick. Yeah, it was incredibly fast. I mean, they would re re-asphalt the streets within no time because, you know, Aleppo was a constant comparison that people made and they just, they didn't want Kharkiv to look like that. They wanted to get as clean as possible. We're also looking at Mary Opel every single day on the TV and they're like, yeah, it's not happening here. Yeah. Yeah, it's Mary Opel. I don't, I guess it's a better question. Did you run into any,

say, Russian journalists taking a look at what was going on or I know you were with Daphne and she's Dutch, but like maybe a German or a Polish Dutch? Towards the end of my time in Kharkiv in May, I met some Belarusian journalists, but they were dissident and they were very well received by the Ukrainian people. I mean, just because, I mean, they can't go home because they're dissidents. They're received very well at the very beginning of the war. Like, within the first few days, I briefly met some Russian journalists, but I don't know what became of them. Yeah, I haven't seen much because I'm sure you're on a lot of the same telegram channels I am and it's more state propaganda and military propaganda and a lot of, I mean,

a lot of Transnistrian groups. Really? Yes. So what's going on there? Because, I mean, for the listeners, that's one of those areas that everyone forgets that they still have the Soviet flag on their flag and the Russians occupied it almost immediately after the Soviet Union fell and it's been that thorn in both Moldova's and Ukraine's side for the last 30 plus years and that they had those border clashes with Ukraine. I mean, you seem pretty dialed in on what's going on if you could educate us. I was, well, I visited. I wanted to see life amongst Russian-backed separatists, so I decided to go to Transnistria. I knew that trying to get into the DPR or LPR in the Donbass region, I knew that was pretty much impossible. That was not

going to be something feasible for me to do because I'd have to go to Poland or somewhere in Europe and somehow get a flight to Russia and get accreditation in Russia. Whereas here, I just, I left Odessa, I crossed into Moldova, went to Kishinau and I had applied for accreditation in Transnistria, but I never got it. So I just entered their little statelet on a tourist visa so for the people that don't know, Russia has a bunch of these, these proxy states throughout the region. There's two in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There's the DPR and LPR in Ukraine, which are the most famous ones. And then there's Transnistria in Moldova. There's Nagorno-Karabakh too, but that's a much more complicated situation. It's a lot more nuanced than the other ones I

mentioned, but as for Transnistria, it's the eastern bank of the Nister River. It's this little strip of land about 20 kilometers wide at the widest. It's a pint-sized Chile. And in 1992, when the Soviet Union, after the Soviet Union broke up, they had declared independence as the Pridnestrovian-Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. And well, that was in 1991. And then in 1992, they just dropped the Soviet socialist part, but they kept all the communist symbolism. So they've fly the flag of the former Ukrainian SSR, like that semi-autonomous zone. It wasn't the entirety of Ukraine, but it was Transnistria plus the bit around Odessa. And so it looks like just the USSR banner, but it has a green stripe running through the center. But yeah, I went there ever

since 1992. There have been, quote, unquote, Russian peacekeepers in the area. How many is not too sure? So there's this group called the Operational Group of Russian Forces that operates in there. And there's about 1,500 soldiers in that. But that doesn't mean there's that many people in Transnistria. I mean, there's more likely about 300 to 500 and they just rotate out. But then they have their own army and militia forces as well. But I went there, I was only there for three days. It's really interesting because it looks, it's a Soviet time warp. It's so eerie. And it's like, it really is, it's a time capsule. You're stepping back in time. There's hammers and sickles everywhere. But despite its Marxist appearance, it's actually a corporate monopoly.

There's this one company called Sheriff that owns everything, like the gas stations, tobacco companies. They have a Mercedes-Benz dealership. They have a football club Sheriff, which beat Real Madrid a couple years ago. They own the entire country. So the Transnistrians and Joe, every country's got a supermarket, but their supermarket has a country. But my third day in Transnistria, I went out to photograph Sheriff properties and a police van pulled up beside me. They wanted to check my papers. They saw a guy that doesn't speak Russian walking around with a camera. They checked my papers, took photos of my passport. They told me I was good to go. I start walking away and I know as the driver was still on his phone,

and they were trailing me. So I started just rapid fire deleting things on my phone. And then pulls up right beside me, door slams open to the cops that had just talked to me and told me it was fine to leave. Grab me, put me in the van. And they said that we were going to an interpreter. That's all they would tell me. And then they took me to this building where they handed me off to some soldiers in that Russian camo. And they marched me inside my arms behind my back. And the first thing I saw was the seal of the MGV, which is like their state security apparatus. And I was like, oh, shit, I might be screwed. But yeah, they put me in a little holding cell for about seven, seven hours or so. Interrogated me multiple times through Google Translate.

They strip searched me, photographed all my tattoos. And after about seven hours, the main agent who interrogated me gave me my phone and camera back and explained that I was getting deported. How'd that go? It was an awkward half hour car ride. And I'm sitting in the back with the agent that interrogated me the entire time. Keep checking my phone to see the map to make sure that we're actually going to the old David border and not some prison. And he's just like, don't worry, don't worry. We get to the border. And he's like, take your bags, you may never reinterpret in the strobe. You go now, I cross the border on foot. The Russian peacekeepers are just eyeing me down because I'm the only person without a car. Eventually, I made it to nearest

gas station and was able to hitchhike back to Kishinaw. That's pretty intense, man. That was it was insane. I mean, I think I just didn't drive you straight to the Ukrainian border and went, oh, look, a combatant. Yeah. No, it's actually they were nice enough to let me after my on my way getting deported, they actually stopped at my hostel, let me run inside, grab my duffel bag. I was pleasantly surprised by that. Interesting. Yeah, I would not have expected that. No, I wouldn't expect that at all. And I had my computer in my duffel bag, and I'd lied to them and told them I didn't have a computer. So they never found out about that. But yeah, Transnistria was very, very intense.

Yeah, there was that. Oh, go right in. They would let me smoke cigarettes out the bars of my cell. I'm just chiefing on each one. I think it might be my last smoke. And the cherry on top is they were sheriff brand cigarettes. Hmm. Not even a filterless lucky strike. No. Yeah, those are those are goat. But yeah, yeah. Those that's damn do this an interesting story. I haven't even heard that one yet. The you think that's going into the country that was almost exactly how it was going to turn out that little breakaway zone. Yeah, I mean, I have a family friend who is in the Moldovan army. And he told me beforehand, he was like, don't go to Transnistria. The MGB is going to be watching

you. It's not going to end well. And I just brushed it off. And he was right. It's like three days later, I got snatched and deported. And then about a week and a half after I got deported, the Ministry of State Security headquarters that I was held in got attacked by a couple guys with RPGs. So they're just allowing RPGs at it in Terraspol and the Transnistrians and the Russians are alleging Ukraine did it. And then the U.S. Oh, is that when they is that when they closed the border and everyone thought that the Russians were going to start invading to meet up with their guys in Kyrsten and whatnot for the that was it Odessa offensive? Yes, but like this is this is

back in April that that happened. Yeah, this is back in April that that bombing happened. But and then Ukraine is alleging they did it themselves. And then there were a few other bombings after that. Like there was a power station, like a there was a radio station that was bombed. And then the Kubasna ammunition depot, which is estimated to be like the largest ammo depot in Europe that got attacked. But interestingly, at these four or five bombings that happened across the little state lit, nobody was killed miraculously. So yeah, I wonder why. Yeah, I know. It's like, you don't have to be a smart guy to go. I feel like this is staged. Yeah, Ministry of State Security was attacked on Orthodox Easter Monday when nobody was present

or when very few people were present. It's a very offensive move. Yeah, but it was it was kind of funny, though, in the video, I could see that the the room I was held in, like my cell was damaged, it kind of got blown out. I thought that was that was kind of funny. Damn. And so I know you've moved around. So you left Ukraine to go back to the south. And then did you meet up with Rose warfare and started talking about what's going on in like Atlanta, Georgia? Yes, I did. That's something I'd already been following quite a while. But Rose warfare said he was coming to town and he was looking for some people to help film a documentary project that at that time he was working on. And I volunteered said I'd

already been keeping up with it and wanted to go anyway. So I went up with him a couple times and saw the people in the Atlanta forest. So basically, the city of Atlanta wants to they want to tear down large parts of the South River forest to construct a state of the art police training center. This is being done by the Atlanta Police Foundation. And then the other part of the forest is going to be turned down from torn down for a movie studio. It's a black hall studios. But the police training compound is going to be an entire mock city where they're going to practice crowd control and SWAT techniques. So the stop cop city movement has popped up around that and they're squatting in the trees building tree houses, there's allegations of tree

spiking. There were a couple of Molotovs thrown at the police this one time. But truth be told, the throws were not that impressive and they didn't land anywhere near the police. Construction vehicles damage, sabotage, arson, all that kind of thing. And then another thing they've been doing is doxing the financial institutions. They're funding the project. So I don't remember which bank it was that was donating to the Atlanta Police Foundation. But what they started doing is they take business cards with super glue on them and then they'd stick them in that bank's ATMs. That's one thing that I heard about. These are local banks or national banks? Here's a national bank because I think it was Bank of America because there was also one attacked,

there's a Bank of America vandalized in, I want to say Philadelphia. And that made it, you know, a series of interstate felonies. So the feds have allegedly gotten involved. But like the Atlanta Bureau of the FBI will neither confirm or deny that they're looking into it. You think they would, I mean, if you think they would know who did it? Or do you think they were like kind of running a cold trail or too busy focused on January 6th questionnaires and whatnot? I really don't know. I mean, it seems like in the COVID era, it'd be a lot more, it'd be a lot easier to get away with that kind of thing. Which side note, as much as the MAGA crowd has their, they have their stances on masks, you'd

think that they would be intelligent enough to use them when rioting in the Capitol building. You think, right? I mean, if you have blue face paint, that's kind of cool. Look like a UNC State fan. No, it's like, society is saying wear a mask and these people are rioting in the Capitol building without masks. It's just one very smart move on their part. Not at all, man. It's, yeah. It's just so funny to think like, you know, everyone who showed up there was drunk. They drove drunk on the way there. They're like, yeah, I'll be fine. Yeah, that's not a problem. Chase was there. Chase Baker, filthy American.

He and I were, we went to downtown DC when Roe v. Wade was overturned thinking there was going to be a huge riot and everything. So we were going to document it. It was pretty low level. Nothing really happened. Yeah, I thought about going as well, but like nothing happened. And so didn't miss anything. Yeah, I went around there the first night, took a big lap, heard since it was like on a Friday night, I thought, well, everyone's going to be coming in from out of state and there's going to need to get hotels arrangements, logistics. So I went Saturday is probably going to be more intense. So I called up chase and he came up and nothing really happened. So he just gave me a battlefield tour of January six positions and he was like, I was in this tree

over here and this is where I took that cool photo and it was pretty fun. Yeah, it was pretty intense. But yeah, so how did that documentary go? Have you published it? His rose published it? He has not. I don't know very much about the progress of that. That was me contributing footage to him. It was his project. I hope to see it released, but I haven't heard from him. Yeah, it seems like he's falling off. I haven't seen him for several weeks. Nobody has really. But I mean, yeah, I'd love to get something out of it. I mean, I may still go back and I'm going to go back and write something about it about the because it is something I'm still keeping in touch with. And it's an interesting movement. I definitely

I'm going to keep following it. One of these days, I'll publish something about it. But I've got some more more pressing stuff that I need to get out like my like my recent time in Puerto Rico was doing Puerto Rico. I so I just got back from Puerto Rico yesterday. And I was I was there for about a week. So it was twofold. I went to the island of Culebro, which is this touristy, beautiful island. It's a gorgeous Caribbean sea. But the US Navy up until the 70s was using the island for target practice and just bombing it. This started under Theodore Roosevelt back with just naval artillery, and then it progressed to aerial bombings throughout Vietnam. But there are a couple of in four Shermans just

abandoned on the on the beach that the US Navy was using for target practice. And huge parts of the island can't be developed because of all the unexplored ordnance that's still there. So there's lots of parts of the jungle that you just can't you can't go in. So that was one thing I was doing there. And then I'd also had gone to write about the increased standard of living for Puerto Ricans with more and more Americans moving down there. So property values have gone up. You know, it's a lot of people are having to leave the island to find more affordable rent. The island is rapidly gentrifying. And while I was there, I also went to the Luma Energy protests. So there was this, there's back in 2021 or 2020, the Puerto Rican energy distributor

went bankrupt. And this private company Luma Energy purchased it. And since Luma purchased it, a lot of people have had their had their energy bills go up. It's pretty significantly so like the average American pays like 3.5% of their income on electricity. And the average Puerto Rican pays about 8% of their income on electricity. So prices have risen a lot. And there have also been blackouts and power outages across the island over the past year. Luma is alleging that their properties have been sabotaged. There was a fire at a Luma power station that the FBI is looking into that might be sabotage. But one of the government buildings in the old city of San Juan, La Fortaleza, on a pretty regular basis, people will pack into the streets and protest.

But it's right by these airbnbs. And since the city is not listening to them, the strategy is annoy the hell out of tourists. So until about midnight or so, they will blare music with speakers, make so much noise, bang pans. The protest I was at three or four days ago got pretty heated. This guy backed up to the police barricade. And by this point, SWAT was out. He started doing burnouts to distort the view of the police. And people started shining at them with lasers, throwing water bottles at SWAT. And then they responded with OC spray and tear gas. So they deployed tear gas to clear the streets. Puerto Rico is another one of those under discussed topics. Because ever since the hurricanes over the last few years, that island is really,

well, their economy is not really doing so well. So everyone's just resorting to say like traveling and buying or whatever they can get their hands on when it comes to money. And then, like you said, people are moving to the US. So the only people who are essentially staying in Puerto Rico are the ones who can't afford to leave. And so if the island opens up with, hey, there's a lot of open, what used to be say section eight housing, we're going to turn it to an air bnb. And so people come from the US and show up. And like you said, like I'm pretty dialed into what's going on in Puerto Rico myself. And just seeing that the crime rates have skyrocketed, especially in those tourist zones of just the locals going, I'm going to get money some way or

another. Like you guys are coming here, you can do whatever you want. I'm going to do whatever I want to you. And then there's that, not just on the local level, but you are politically speaking, there's that divide of we want to be independent. And then the other corner is we want to be a state and the other corner is going, no, we need to stay like what we are, because if we're a state, we're not going to get the benefits, we're going to be worse off. And so there's this three way war going on politically between, you know, the Reaganite older generation, the more liberal younger generation. And unfortunately, there haven't really been any good referendums to show exactly what percent of the population wants. What I mean, there haven't

referendums that have been held are, do you want the status quo or do you want statehood independence, increased autonomy, free association, none of those things are presented as options. So there are three main political parties in Puerto Rico. There's the pro-statehood party, the Commonwealth party, and then the Puerto Rican independence party. And a lot of the people at the Luma protest were of the independence mindset, not everyone, but a lot of them. A lot of them were pretty far left. There were Leninists there. There was a lot of support for Guevara. And it wasn't just younger people. It was old guard communists that were there. But Puerto Rico was really, really nice. I enjoyed it. And it's definitely an issue that

needs more attention. So I'm happy I was able to cover that. I'm glad to hear that you went down there and talked about it. Because like I said, it's under discussed. And usually when it comes to Puerto Rican topics and the American news, they're like, well, that's not America. So I really don't care. So it's quite sad how undercovered it is. I mean, I wasn't going to go. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. My girlfriend and I just kind of decided to go. She wanted to go down. And one of our first day there, we were at a cafe. And I don't remember what Hispanic news channel was on, but it's talking about the Luma protest at five. We're like, oh, hell yeah. Yeah, I say I'll be back in four hours. Yeah, it's like, you're definitely

going to make this half vacation, half reporting trip. Speaking of, are you financing your trips by yourself or are you paid by someone to go say, hey, I'll drop you off in Ukraine for a little bit, write a couple cool stories, come back and pay? I wish I have a photo agency that I work for. Yeah, I have a photo agency that I work for that has been fine. I'll do articles for local papers occasionally. But an issue I have with them is a lot of times they just they don't want certain pitches. I've got a few other magazines that I write for. But it's all freelance. It's all freelance. And I also have a second job as well. So it's self financed. I'll do fundraisers occasionally, print sales, that kind of thing.

What do you mean there's no, like, bite or interest in some of the articles? I mean, I don't know how much of it's just my paper is super mediocre. But some of the local papers I've tried pitching stuff to don't want certain stories. They'd rather just snag stories from the Associated Press. Yeah, just repays them. Pretty much. But I mean, you just keep seeing the same things over and over again. And I've seen pretty much no Puerto Rico coverage really outside of Latino media. Have you read the book Black Swan? I have not. So I'm reading it, rereading it right now. And it's about the author was a student in Lebanon when the Civil War kicked off. And he just talked about how back in the day it used to be black and white.

And then as time progresses and cultures change, that everything gets more gray and uncertain and undecisive. And so he's, at one point, really early on, it might be in the prologue, he's talking about how it's like, hey, you know, journalists have a real bad time because essentially all the journalists have to work on the same page. If they're writing from sale, a conservative standpoint, they have to follow the conservative narrative. And if they don't, they don't get hired. And then if you have like the freelance guys have the hardest job in the journalist world because they're like, yeah, I'll just talk about it. But then someone hire goes, can you tweak this to make it seem like it's more of a socialist movement than a independent say independence

movement? And so yeah, I'm reading that right now. And I thought it was interesting that you bring that up because it's it's always been that way. I'll have to take a look into that book. That sounds quite interesting. But yeah, I have, I have noticed that a lot of times a lot of events are just just so much biased reporting I've seen that like when I started getting into this. So a lot of the things I've covered have been in Atlanta. And AJC is one of the bigger papers in Atlanta. And their reporting has just been horribly one sided. They like to cherry pick and leave backs out. So for example, do a Trump stop the steel protest and the AJC article, they didn't express how far right this protest actually was. They just referred to them all as Trump supporters when there

were proud boys present. Like they posted a picture of Enrique Tario, the problem reader, and they just labeled it as a Trump supporter. They let's call that what let's call it Charlottesville light. Yeah. And then they included, they included talking about the right wing militias that were there, but they didn't mention any of the armed left wing groups and armed anti fascists. It was the same thing would jump on the opportunity to say like, Hey, you know, they're there, you know, just spew the same conservative like, Oh, well, the anti forgot showed up their arms. So, you know, of course, the right did. And so I think they would jump on that. AJC did not mention that. Same thing when I covered clashes at Stone Mountain between neo Confederates

and people that were against the Confederate monuments were armed anti fascists. There there were some explicitly socialist militia groups there like the Coalition of Armed Labor and AJC only chose to talk about the three percenters and the right wing militia groups. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's damn. Talking about the, you know, pro confederate stat say statues is a huge topic and it's the civil war has been over in the US for 150 years. And you were just in Eastern Europe where those Soviet iconography is still present to this day. Do you think there's a timeline when it comes for society just to go like, Yeah, we got to get rid of this. Like that's not who we are

anymore because it seems like it took the US 100 plus years to get there. But then Eastern Europe was under that Soviet sphere for what 50 plus 75 years. And then they're just not going, Oh, yeah, Russians are assholes. We got to get rid of this Lenin statue. What's your take on that one? I don't know if there really is a time period per se. I think it just, I think a lot of it depends on like what the statues themselves are. So sometimes, sometimes it's like, Yeah, you should definitely take down that statue of Nathan Bedford forest. But Auburn University, when I went there, there was a, there was a marker on university property that they tore down in the middle of the night.

And it wasn't a confederate statue or anything. It was literally just a historic marker that said, on this site, Confederate troops were mustered here in 1861 or whatever. So I don't, I don't know if there is a set timeline that these kinds of things have to be taken down. I think it just, whether or not they're going to be taken down just depends on like community to community. Well, the difference usually plays a huge, is a huge contributor to, you know, sanitation and whatnot. I mean, there's, in my hometown, there's a, I mean, I'm from Lee County. Yeah, I'm from Lee County. I live in Lee County. But like in the town I'm from, which is not too far away, town called Opalica,

they had a portrait of Robert E. Lee hanging up in the courthouse that they very quietly took down in 2020. Because I remember, I remember seeing it there at the beginning of the year, when I had to go for like a tag or something. And after George Floyd's death, I tried going in on some BS pretense just to see if I could get a photo of it, but they'd taken it down. Staying one step ahead. I don't know if you saw the article just, I saw it on Yahoo while I was at work, but it turns out that there was a huge KKK above, yeah, above the archway into West Point. And I was like, no one knows. What the hell was that put there in the first place? You're like, nobody noticed. I think they went back to say like, well, well, the KKK

financially funded this, you know, this school, but you're going, get it cool. Well, Lee was also a West Point graduate and nobody cared because he joined the Army of the South. I can sort of understand, I can sort of understand why in the late 1800s, early 1900s, they would put up a painting of Lee at West Point, since he did graduate from there. And despite how terrible a government the Confederacy was, I mean, it was still a major part of US history. So I can see why they would have put that up 100 years ago, but just a brass placard that devoted to the Ku Klux Klan. It's insane that they put that up at West Point. I read that headline. I went, is this, is this for real? This is

already yesterday. Yeah, I think it was yesterday. Yeah, it just caught me off guard. And since we're on the topic, I thought I'd bring it up because it's like, what? You thought that the last two years would have convinced you otherwise. Yeah, that's what those Stone Mountain clashes were actually over. There's a tacky Confederate Mount Rushmore carved on the side of Stone Mountain and people were saying they wanted to sandblast it. So there was a, in response to the George Floyd protest, there was a Defend Stone Mountain protest organized by this neo-Confederate group. And then, of course, there was a bunch of anti-racist and BLM and left-wing opposition

that drowned out the neo-Confederates. That was one of the, one of the early things that I covered. Interesting. Speaking about iconography and how the years of yesterday, how a statue really embodied an entire movement, today in Ukraine, we have St. Javelin. So that's like memes who worked their way, which, you know, they could be seen as more important to the youth than a statue because you're like, I mean, I don't have to travel to see a statue, but I could go on Twitter and see what Christian's talking about. I don't know. I've seen more discussion of St. Javelin from Westerners than Ukrainians, to be quite honest with you. It is. Yeah, it's, it was really big at

first. He was up there with the Gosa Kiev and then he fell off and then I think Christian was just like, well, I need to keep the momentum going. So yeah, I mean, I know Ukrainians and they just don't seem to care. They're like, oh, this is more like a Western, you know, the figurehead than anything else. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's the power of memes, man. I don't know. It's meme your way into the war, but it's not kinetic. I don't know. That's one thing I'd like to do. It's a side project that one day I'm going to do. I want to do a history book in memes. That'd be really interesting to do. Like he just looked off every page of know your meme. Well, it would be, what it would be would be looking at historical events that have happened. So like,

for example, think about all the, I mean, there would be memes from all across the political spectrum. But look at all the, look at the memes that popped up about January 6th, or some of the dark, like Kenosha memes that popped up on the right. Or I remember some memes after Trump had Sulamani assassinated. So yeah, it'd just be interesting to have like a timeline of these historical events, but how the public reacted in meme. Oh yeah, exactly. Back in World War II, it was graffiti, but there was Kilroy. Yeah, it was just everyone just throw Kilroy up and you're like, the Americans were here. They're like, well, cool, we can see where the Americans for a line of advances. But then today, it's, yeah, it's very, very politically dark and just in

your face. And then you have goofy shit, like Yaqub is very popular right now for some reason. And oh, Yaqub is great. Oh, perhaps we have. Yaqub is great. I've actually been reading quite a bit on recently, I've been reading quite a bit on Black Hebrew Israelites, nation of Islam, New Abians. So that's something I've been reading about wanting to learn more about and I'm going straight to the source. I bought Elijah Muhammad's message to the Black man where he talks about the myth of Yaqub. So it's insane. Yeah, follow up with you on that one because Yaqub is more of like a passing fancy that I see every single day and still get a laugh out of. This is a shameless plug, but like woke beyond or beyond woke and problematic. At least once,

he's a meme page on Instagram and Twitter, at least once a week throws out like a Yaqub video and it's hilarious every time. Yeah, it cracks me up. But hey, so what's the future look like for you, man? I know you said you have a few things underplayed, but like what's short, midterm, long term, what's it look like? Immediately, I have some writing that I have to get done. I got to get some articles out talking about Kulebra and the Navy's plans on cleaning up the island. Also the Luma protests. I got some writing I got to do about that. I got to get that out. Wrapping up the forest defenders of Atlanta. And then for this fall, like winter or fall, I'll definitely be doing another trip. It's going to either be a de facto state or an

autonomous zone, but we're in the world yet. I'm not too sure. I've got a couple ideas. I don't have anything set in stone just yet. When it comes to Puerto Rico, I don't know if you've ever been to like a military base in the U.S. or anything, but sometimes the government likes to just destroy the landscape and do just a study. They're like, we destroyed this in 1950. It's not 2020. And the land is recovering rapidly. However, do you think they're going to do that in Puerto Rico? Because there's no way they're going to go digging into that island and start pulling out all those old munitions. That's just very dangerous. I really don't know what's going to

happen. That's something I got to research a lot more. I know that the EPA is wanting those islands to be cleaned up, but when Vieques and Kulebra or if they're ever going to be munition free, I mean, I doubt it. I think we're just going to have parts of island that can't be built on. There's no little exclusion zone, I would say. Do not cross. Pretty much. I mean, that's how it's just fenced off. Yeah, there's those areas outside of like military bases where they just launch artillery shells for their day-to-day training and they're like, don't ever go over there, because sometimes they don't explode. They just lob a big piece of metal. But looking at

a, I guess, potential spots in the world you would like to travel to is like, say, Northern Western Africa on the cards, maybe Eastern Africa with like the Tigray revolution. The Sarawi Arab Democratic Republic internationally, due to Morocco, is one I'd like to go to for Java, obviously. But before I go to Rojava, I want to go to Turkish Cyprus. I think Turkish Cyprus, that's a high possibility, but I don't know just yet. The Zapatista territories in Chiapas are an option, and there are other auto defenses down there, and there's another autonomous community in Oaxaca. So Central America is most likely going to be the case, because I mean, I am an American,

it is the most accessible, and I speak Spanish well enough to carry a decent conversation. So I think that's more than likely going to be the move, but I don't know just yet. Yeah, probably speaking long-term, do you see a journalism being like a full-on career, or you think you might get bored here soon and kind of peter off into something else? I couldn't get bored doing this. It's fascinating. I've been to Russian-backed separatist states, war in Eastern Europe, Black Power militants, Turgast and San Juan. It's too exciting. You're like, after this, how can I go back to sitting in traffic on a way to a cubicle?

It's important, and you have to keep it all in perspective, because I mean, like when I was in Ukraine at the end of the day, one thing I always had to keep in mind was, I am a glorified war tourist. I am a tourist who writes articles and takes photos, and I always had to be cognizant of the fact that I had a home to go home to. So I mean, while it is exciting, and I love seeing history happen, it's also these are important issues that the world needs to be paying attention to. This might be more of a personal question, but after going to Ukraine and going to all these countries, do you think you've matured and more developed as a person after all this?

I mean, I definitely feel like I have. I've always kind of been traveling. Like ever since I turned 18, I was going out of the country by myself and doing trips. Like I spent a couple months down in El Salvador last year. So it's always, travel has always been a part of my life, but just seeing meeting the refugees in Ukraine had a deep effect on me. So like while I was in Kharkiv, I lived in the metro for about a week, because I wanted to gain a perspective of what it's like for the people from the Saltovka neighborhood and how it is sheltering in the metro. And they were the kindest people to me. They always made sure I was fed. The youth spoke English, always wanted to hang out.

They were great to talk to. There was this one girl, Tanya, who spoke English, and she was an amazing help. Her family always made sure I was fed. And the longer I was living in the metro, I was there for a little over a week. But the longer I was there, the more I realized, I just I'd never fully be able to understand what they're going through. Because even though I was just sleeping underground in that train, I mean, I still have a home in Alabama to go back to, but like Tanya, she was living in Saltovka and her birthday was February 24th, and she got invaded. And she'd been living in the metro for months. I mean, you can look at this way, she'll never forget it.

But not not a good thing. But yeah. Yes, I don't know. Maybe it's a humorous light moments, but it was a very sombering experience, and it put a lot of things into perspective. I can believe that, man, when it comes to say like civilians and refugees and whatnot, the refugees coming out of the Middle East and Africa, where a huge topic posed, say, Arab Spring 11 years ago now, and that they all cross into the Mediterranean and harrowing conditions of, you know, from what could be like a piece of wood to float into Sicily, or an inflatable boat with 55 people in it. That is another thing I would love to do. I would love to cover the migrants in the Mediterranean

at some point. That's that's what I could refer to recommend a place. I did a when I was in the military, I went to Sicily and noticed that a lot of the old American neighborhoods that say the American families of the military would live in the Italian government, essentially, I don't know if they bought them or the Americans gave it to them, where they said, like, hey, dump all the immigrants here. So there were like little shanty towns, essentially of, okay, my migrants dumped up. And so it was outside of Katania, Sicily, by the Navy base. And so they're just like, yeah, that's where all the refugees were. And it was there in Sicily. And then in Greece, Athens is the big one. They all just kind of show up there and

try to figure it out. But yeah, those two locations are hot spots. Yeah, I would really like to I'd like to do that at some point. That'd be yeah, that's definitely something I definitely want to cover. I'll look into Sicily, for sure. Yeah, it's not super expensive either. So as long as you could just get there and hang out the Italians are very nice, the locals are very nice, the migrants are very nice. And of course, the Americans are right there. So I mean, everything's pretty, what do you call that controlled environment? It's not that bad. Yeah. But talking about, I don't know, let me try to put these two words here.

When it comes to, say, independence movements and how, say, hunters of Europe say, Ukraine deserves to be free. And someone like France spearheads and says, hey, you know what, Russia, you can't take Donbass. The people, they don't want to be Russian, they want to be Ukrainian, let's leave them alone. And then they have Corsica go into revolution saying they want independence and France is shut the hell up. Like what's your take on that one? Because it's one of those catch 22s where they're trying to play the right and it's of course, politics, but they're saying the right thing at the right time to get reelected or something. I mean, there's definitely a lot of that. There's

hypocrisy all over the world. I mean, you'll see politicians condemn colonialism, but then they'll have, we'll have our territories that you forget about. Yes. I don't know. Because I remember that Jake Hanrahan and all those guys from popular front went down to Corsica. Yeah. Nobody was talking about that. He made a really good documentary. I talked to Sam Black about it. Yeah, it was a good documentary. Yeah, I liked it. And it was one of those areas where I'm pretty sure the government of France is saying, you know, La Zyphère hands off, but then they have a whole island here that's essentially the American port or the French Puerto Rico going leave us alone in France.

So it's a very similar situation. Absolutely. It's just, especially in Europe, there's all these little breakaway zones where they can go, no, I just want to be independent like Flanders. I don't think like a lot of people in Flanders want to break away and do their own thing. Yeah. Or Scotland or say, Leningrad might want to break away from the Russians, but they can't because knowing how the Russians are, they'll just, you know, commit some chill things. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. But I mean, I think that about does it for me unless you have anything crazy you want to talk about? Not particularly. I mean, I think we pretty much covered everything.

Who knows, depending on the weather, I may be doing some hurricanes here because I'm not too far from the Gulf. Where would you go down to like Louisiana or something or Florida? Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, just Gulf Coast. You gotcha. I've done two hurricanes before Sally and Ida. So I'll be doing that as well. I plan on going out with Cajun Navy at some point. It's a civilian volunteer group of guys with flat bottom boats that go out after hurricanes to bring people aid if their home has been cut off, like if the roads are flooded around that. So they'll bring them supplies, evacuate people, they'll do search and rescue. So I hope to go out with them at some point. But we'll see how hurricane season is this year. It seems to be getting pretty intense. I

know out in Asia, their largest typhoon, I think in recent memories, about to rock Japan. So just in weather in general, it's all getting more intense. But yeah, for sure. Yes. Stay safe for those hurricanes, man. I guess last question. Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to Puerto Rico, do you want to head down there during a hurricane and document what's going on? Because like you said earlier, nobody really talks about that outside of Latin media. I think an American outlet would be really beneficial. A lot of things are just a whether or not I think I can afford it and monetize it, whether or not I can realistically make it happen. But if I find myself in a situation where I'm able to go cover a hurricane in Puerto Rico, I would definitely, definitely do that.

Sounds good, man. Yeah, keep doing good things. You're out there absolutely killing it. Yep, absolutely. But all right, Colin, I really appreciate you coming on. And if you don't mind, I'm just going to like hang this up and then shoot this with you afterwards. But yeah, I really appreciate it. No, for sure. All right. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thank you.