Over we ask longtime protest organizer vice chair of the Oregon Democrats black caucus gregory. And his nasa launches its historic perseverance rover to mars to look for signs of life is at the end of us a gemini and rocking the secrets of the universe after chinese attempts to make history on the red planet we ask alan stern who is leading the 1st ever mission to explore pluto about how high the stakes are when it comes to space all this more coming up in this lockdown edition of going underground but 1st lets go to portland to Gregory Mchale hes the vice chair of the Oregon Democrats black caucus gregory what on earth is going on in portland were seeing images all over the internet of tear gas of warfare not seen even in even in countries where are the u. N. Is imposed sanctions on. Yet its really appalling to see in the streets of berlin its right downtown in the heart of our city every night appears to look. A war zone we have troops in camouflage police deploying tear gas and flash bangs and its absolute chaos down town portland and its hard to see in a city that i love so much now you know the jaguar the boss of the department of Homeland Security says youre all violent and i casts on the streets of poland apparently they are using george w. Bushs 2002 Homeland Security act 200 to not change under president obama that allows the federal security Security Forces to attack what they presumably see as violent advocates yeah i mean im not a violent man i care if they have never committed violence at a protest much of what they say is violent an arche is actually graffiti. I know that many people are appalled to see that graffiti but i think that images such as george floyd getting the life choked out of him or even the flash bangs and rylan that weve seen at these protests as much more appalling than any graffiti that may occur at a protest and i also think it is a very small amount of individuals who may do that graffiti and it does not make sense in a country those opposed to be a free country that they would be deploying indiscriminate weapons against entire nonviolent crowds just because of the actions of some small amount of individuals while the nato nations are supposed to i dont know media in countries that washington may see as enemies the pictures of had to be on the internet mainly theyre not headlining the news what have you witnessed and what have you heard from the street level actions of Police Involved in because weve been seeing what seem to be u. S. Federal forces attacking protesters on the ground amidst clouds of tear gas i think what youre seeing is accurate but i think that part of the story that is missed is that this happened because its 50 days of protests. Before the federal officers came in and before it was federal officers to point here gas it was our own local Police Departments that were deploying tear gas and beating protesters and so its just continued weve seen terror for years with mayors in america as well as. The president himself not over what to do about pro protest but rather who gets to beat out protesters who gets to detain them who gets to throw them in a unmarked bands who gets to deploy tear gas and so at some point the person deplane the tear gas might change the tenor on the ground in the end. Of the protests i dont think its going to end until we see justice for people like Brianna Taylor and george floyd in that many others that have been killed by police in portland well president jiang has previously been on the record as saying of course the black eyes Mother Movement began under obama not his presidency and hes saying that there would be no portland he would be burned it would be burned to the ground if it wasnt for those federal forces anything personally that said touch your mother demonstrations. Yeah i mean the effects of this tear gas i think are any credibly scary we were there in full protective gear trying to help people out of the gas you dont actually see it coming it just is in the air its not like a cloud that you can run from there was no warning your skin begins to burn and then eventually your eyes you can completely not see cant breathe and it completely immobilizes you so its not even a effective way for crowds to be dispersed but rather it makes you have to stop you cant see you cant run away with it which then exposes you to hits from baton send a rest in excedrin and i also think that there are long term effects as well as the short term effects of the tear gas that we dont yet know all of the details about you know for people around the world watching they probably dont know all portland is i suppose there have been never reports that its one of their happiest most sought after places to live in the world to tell me just a little bit about poland because i understand even that story isnt true because it mosques or race that race has passed yeah absolutely parlin is a beautiful pristine city and there are a lot about it that i like and i think that we can see that many of our Community Members deeply care about our city and thats why weve been out protesting but portland and the state of oregon have a racist past or again it was not a slave state upon its inception but not because it did not. For any moral reasons but rather because it did the oregonian did not want black People Living in the state whether they were slave or not and because of that blacks were excluded from the state of oregon for a very long time theyre still deeds to peoples houses that say that they cannot be sold to people that are black that is obviously not enforceable because of the interpretations of the constitute. Now but those deeds exist theres a lot of races history here not just of exclusion but then also the lack of infrastructure as black communities have flooded in there and because of that and then we see gentrification in disparate police scene that occurs in portland just as many cities in america well what do you think you are a democrat of what nancy pelosi said that trump was turning it into a banal or a republic i mean i mean that and itself is a strange phrase to use arguably because it is redolent of us empire in your hemisphere with you who are you with the. Trump is suggesting that your period they try that you live in a Banana Republic thats what this is these pictures show that all these federal forces in poland mean. Well i think its important to know that this is just a small part of portland the entire city is not under siege but i do fear about what this could look like in other cities i do fear about what impact it can have on the election or even our ability to have an election as you know the city is definitely largely democrat and if ringback cities are turned into war zones in the heart of their cities across the country come november it makes it a lot harder to especially at a time in which many places do not have mail in voting and so i do wary about the impacts but i do think that it is also still important to know d that this is not having a huge every day fact on every single persons life in portland but i do think that if elected officials both locally and at the National Level such as nancy pelosi dont do more to protect cities from this sort of animation that we could be in a situation that might not necessarily be a banana Banana Republic but does look a lot like fascism well. They dont trump says the mail in Voting System means that you might not even have elections in november you did you did imply that handing lee and the trump stuff there in some state level responsibility there needs to be taken because 10 wheelers means he has some kind of hero he was hit by gas himself and there is he to blame partly as well because you say the state Security Forces were there before the federal troops and and they too were not policing a demonstration as they should. I think ted will is fully to blame because there are a lot of steps that could have been taken to prevent this sort of federal invasion as i said there were 50 some odd days of protests prior to dharma chimes invasion in those protests had nothing to do with donald trump but had to do with our local police and those protests where tear gas in and be in and arrested just the same as the federal officers had been doing so what i would have said is that if ted wheeler would have stood with his people from the beginning if he would have been al in the streets with his own people from the beginning we would have not been in this situation had he not been trying to demonize protesters himself using the same rhetoric that we had talked about earlier about there being a mile an hour kiss and outside agitators and trying to quell protests himself we would not be in this situation and if he had just simply listened to the demands of the community and how we wanted to reform in the fire and in reallocate funds from violent policing into our community at a time during a pandemic where our Community Needs those files if he had done all of those things we would have seen 50 something days of protest and thus the federal officers would have not come in so yes he did stand they get tear gassed one single day his own Police Department threatened to use tear gas and against those same protesters once he had left that night and had also used tear gas and continue to use tear gas against protesters in conjunction with Donald Trumps federal officers well u. N. Permanent Security Council members china Russia Britain france then are raising this at the u. N. Security council and your top law officer in your country bill maher he said your fellow activists are using tasers pellet guns all manner of ammunition against Law Enforcement thats thats the view of your top law officer in your country. I go with hesitate to think that he truly believes that and if he does he is having bad information. Ask him to maybe attend these protests and see how peaceful they are we see things like people cooking their 247 and feeding in our houses community we see people just standing there are signs and chanting in so incredibly nonviolent protest that has been cracked down on i think so that images of chaos can be seen in that bureau can then be used for damage charms reelection bid to say that this is the rylan democrats and this is what is coming if you vote for joe biden. But this is trumps america right now in the violence in the chaos that were seeing is being ensued by his federal police force as well as local Police Forces well yes finally joe biden the contender democrat contender in november presumed contender hasnt even been to poland why should anyone in portland expect things to be different if joe biden is the president given well on racial issues hes known of course for opposing the segregation of schools in his background and his past. I think joe biden definitely has a lot of work to do when it comes to ration it but the thing is i believe that he is willing to put in that where can i dont know i think weve seen 4 years of donald trump in a way he is willing to do and i believe that his presidency is an existential crisis but again if the federal troops leave it doesnt matter if joe biden were to send them back or if donald trump which is send them back we will still see protests in cities across america because. Of these protests the death of george floyd as well as the reminder of all the deaths that have occurred in portland or in play in cities across the country and those usually were happening at state and local levels and they happened during obamas presidency that and during times presidency so theres something very broken with our policing system and regardless of who the president is we have a lot of work as a nation to reconcile that right mcalary stay safe thank you so much for being on the program. Thank you i appreciate it thanks for having me after the break the man who is leading one of the for this exploration is in Human History tells us just how high the stakes are when it comes to a lot being the secrets of the universe all this and all coming on part 2 of going underground. We go to work. Straight home. The end of a love story will tensions in the u. S. German relationship determine the fate of nato if elected will joe biden be americas version of the soviet ruler plenty of fresh. Thinking this. Doesnt come down to foreigners continues to perseverence of humanity launching the next generation of robotic explorers to the red planet. Welcome back well in the past few days while we dont look down on the people have been going to outer space joining me now from boulder in colorado is alan stood and whos been working on a project to the farthest reaches of space allan thanks so much for joining us just tell us 1st about the launch on thursday and what the mission is. Yeah nasa launched its latest mars rover in the one twit perfectly and the spacecraft has already made contact with the earth and seems to be in good health and is on the on course landings in february and this is really different because this rover is going to cache samples around surface of mars for another mission to come pick up in return to the earth later in the twentys and how long is it ok for all of. Well its probably going to be most of the decade because the return mission hasnt yet been started so theyll get that underway i think now that this is their launch and whats it like as a scientist working these things out on such make timespans i mean i know you work with Jeff Bezos Blue Origin here he was testifying in congress there are you you work with so many Different Private Companies but youre working on time scale the 10 year is 20 is longer. Yes some of the missions stay for a long time they take a long time to get funded and then we have to design and build them and then fly them across these enormous distances the solar system so its all about delayed gratification and of course the usual questions of nassers mean i asked since if inception is it worth it whats the point maybe you better remind some of our audience about the side effects of what seems like as a tearing expeditions to far off places well to the contrary of course the development of space and Space Exploration as probably changed our world countless ways me take your i phone. Your smartphone whatever it might be that Space Technology take that g. D. S. That you use for a location for mapping for her knowing where you are now Space Technology and then look at the entire tech economy which is fueled by the inspiration of children who want to grow up and be engineers scientists largely because. They get hooked on tech through seeing Space Missions that inspire you see arguably one could say that it was a pride of the United States the Space Program by nasa do you think people are less inclined towards it because of all the private funds seeping in there its less about the United States and more about these private companies and people ever more suspicious of private companies being involved in space than the us as a nation well i think the introduction of private space flight has been a tremendous boon for innovation in for driving costs down and that lets us get more done in most of these private companies are after all currently in the United States were just beginning to see a european wave of private space flight launch companies eccentric and i cant wait to see that flower but i mean are there dangers in that there were some reports that when the Space Shuttle tragically blew up it was because of private outroar saying of space flight i mean on this mission that youre working on presumably it all government funding theres no private elements to it. Well the new Horizons Mission is a nasa mission its fairly funded by nasa which is a arm of our federal government and why do you think that congress is mean reluctant to sign off on money that trump wanted to go i think i understand jumper made a request for 25200000. 00 for nasa the house not liking any is monday in political. Parties and issues on the hill that tell you scientists dont really concern yourself with but maybe understand theyre going to impact your missions yeah well actually in our country Space Exploration is is supported by both major parties and theyre arguing about the last 10 percent of nasa budget not the basic night percent and in fact both president ial candidates have come out and endorsed continued human exploration continue Robotic Exploration studies of the earth are so important that we do from space and i think the level of disagreement is down at that its tails id like to see a higher budget but well have to see how that turns out and just your mind is also i guess why its important to actually go to these places rather than use radio telescopes arrays of telescopes here on earth or even space telescopes yeah well its simple he telescopes even the very largest ones really cant produce the kind of detail that we need in order to understand these worlds and its only by going there and bringing the cameras up close that we can understand yalit gee if we can see until theyre atmospheres and we can search for signs of underwater underground oceans and evidence for astrobiology for life that may have arisen elsewhere in the city such as saying yes i do is has led him events it has paid dividends before this guy is going to the place rather than using telescopes. Absolutely and you know probably the biggest did it is the inspiration that it gives its. Really human beings are best only human beings explore only human beings create new knowledge and i think Space Exploration is probably the best example of tha