Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome to ikidefen here a podcast being recorded
Speaker 1: something like nineteen hours into bargaining with managements, thus at
Speaker 1: the peak of maximal derangements, and also about an hour
Speaker 1: after former President Donald John Trump was convicted of thirty
Speaker 1: four felon accounts of falsifying business records for his election.
Speaker 2: Time payoff of Stormy Daniels. We can only hope that
Speaker 2: this will bring voting race to the long suffering felons
Speaker 2: of Florida, And realizing that kind of sounds like a joke,
Speaker 2: it's actually not. It is in fact, really messed up
Speaker 2: that you can just disenfranchise an entire class of people
Speaker 2: and maybe the law hurting someone famous will do something good. Now,
Speaker 2: that's all the time we have to talk about Trump
Speaker 2: right now. If you want, if you want to hear
Speaker 2: more about that, you can go to literally everyone who's
Speaker 2: ever done any media related thing. Ever, however, we now
Speaker 2: have to talk about the other candidate in the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four election, Joe Biden, which means, this is all
Speaker 2: the fun you're getting for this episode. It is now
Speaker 2: time for you to suffer and with me to talk
Speaker 2: about suffering, and specifically the suffering of my well, I
Speaker 2: was gonna say, my people, like one of my people's
Speaker 2: question work, I don't know. Identity is complicated. Sometimes you're
Speaker 2: more than one thing at a time. Is Karin Green,
Speaker 2: who's part of a Southern transfem collective launching a very
Speaker 2: long list of projects that you will be hearing you
Speaker 2: out very shortly. She also used to be a work
Speaker 2: on policy for the Equality Federation and for the Transientered
Speaker 2: Law Center. Yeah, Karinn, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, happy to be here, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm excited to get the opportunity to kind of talk
Speaker 3: about maybe what is behind some of the press releases
Speaker 3: and the HRC list of accomplishments that gets hosted on
Speaker 3: me all the time when I complain about lack of
Speaker 3: action on trans policy.
Speaker 2: You know, I really should have looked this up the forehead.
Speaker 2: But I once one of my friends dragged me in
Speaker 2: college to a queer movie screening that I went to
Speaker 2: because I hadn't eaten all day and they had food,
Speaker 2: but ended up being this this really great little kind
Speaker 2: of I think it's like an Indian movie thing that's
Speaker 2: about this group of queers robbing stealing a blood diamond
Speaker 2: from the from the HRC great movie ten out of ten.
Speaker 2: I wish I remember what it was called.
Speaker 3: In the movement at the time, we all joked that
Speaker 3: HRC stood for peculiar ron of Glinton rather than because
Speaker 3: of how the tank they were.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So, as as the listener may may have guests,
Speaker 2: we need to talk about Joe Biden's quite frankly, really
Speaker 2: terrible record on trans writes. And to do that, we
Speaker 2: need to talk a little bit about where the power
Speaker 2: of the president comes from. Because, you know, the sort
Speaker 2: of traditional liberal wonk theories of the president tend to
Speaker 2: either focus on like this discursive effects of what the
Speaker 2: president says, or like the president's ability to like negotiate
Speaker 2: with Congress to get bills passed. But this largely is
Speaker 2: not where the president's power comes from. The president's power
Speaker 2: comes from I guess three things, two of which are
Speaker 2: very similar. One is, you know, I mean just literally
Speaker 2: the command of the military, right the president sense since
Speaker 2: Barack Obama, although Bush was doing similar things, has claimed
Speaker 2: the legal authority to kill any man, woman, or child
Speaker 2: the moment they leave us or regardless of his citizenship status.
Speaker 2: This is, this is the legal foundation of the drone
Speaker 2: program and it is still in place to this day.
Speaker 2: You know, the second one, I'm talking a lot about
Speaker 2: Obama here because Obama weirdly established a lot of these
Speaker 2: kind of legal frameworks. But you know, the second one
Speaker 2: has to do with their ability to control the nation's
Speaker 2: intelligence services. You know, I mean, one of the things
Speaker 2: that Obama did was like personally coordinate the mess like
Speaker 2: multi agency crackdown on occupy. And then the third thing,
Speaker 2: and this is where really most of the power is
Speaker 2: is through the unbelievably massive federal bureaucracy. So like I
Speaker 2: do kind of get assessed to this and anytime you
Speaker 2: hear the words the Department of that is the thing
Speaker 2: the president has the ability to do shit with. That
Speaker 2: is that is a very simplified version of it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're dealing with an officeho's power is
Speaker 2: largely bureaucratic. It means that if you want to figure
Speaker 2: out what they're actually doing, you have to dig really
Speaker 2: deep into the depths of the American bureaucracy. So okay,
Speaker 2: let's let's let's do that. And yeah, first I want
Speaker 2: to ask you about PPACA one five five seven, which
Speaker 2: is a part of the the Affordable Care Act. Otherwise
Speaker 2: is it still better known as Obamacare? Do the kidsacre?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: They reclaimed it. I think the lips took it back
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 2: I've been having this realization that people don't remember Obama
Speaker 2: era stuff. Is why I'm saying. Oh, like I said,
Speaker 2: I started saying Ferguson to people and they had no
Speaker 2: idea what I was talking about. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh no, we ventored the k we ventured the disaster era.
Speaker 2: So yeah, can you can you talk about what that
Speaker 2: is and what what what it sort of says about
Speaker 2: what the Biden administration isn't isn't doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely so, as you mentioned, it's part of the Affordable
Speaker 3: Care Act, and so Section fifteen fifty seven is the
Speaker 3: regulatory implementation of the non discrimination.
Speaker 4: Parts of the Affordable Care Act.
Speaker 3: Back in the day when we were fighting to prevent
Speaker 3: Trump from rolling back some fifteen fifty seven protections, we
Speaker 3: actually are comf people came up with a much sexier
Speaker 3: name than Section fifteen fifty seven, but it never took
Speaker 3: off with any of the policy people. So I don't
Speaker 3: even remember what I'm supposed to be calling it. I
Speaker 3: never hear people say section fifteen fifty seven. What they're
Speaker 3: referencing is basically the non discrimination part of the Affordable
Speaker 3: Care Act. And so the Affordable Care Act, as people
Speaker 3: have probably noticed by now, touches practically all of the
Speaker 3: US healthcare system and has extended, especially through Medicaid expansion,
Speaker 3: federal dollars into healthcare even more than they had been
Speaker 3: previously with the supplants for insurance through Medicaid expansion and
Speaker 3: those kinds of things, And so there's actually a lot
Speaker 3: of control that the Department of Health or Health in
Speaker 3: Human Services and associated other parts of bureaucracy like Center
Speaker 3: for Medicaid, Medicare Services, those kinds of things have over implementation.
Speaker 3: And so one of the ways of this works is
Speaker 3: when legislators write a law, they don't go into all
Speaker 3: the details. They just pass a law, right, And so
Speaker 3: most times, especially at the federal level, after a law
Speaker 3: has passed, the relevant agencies that are going to be
Speaker 3: dealing with that part of the law work on and
Speaker 3: issue rules or regulations. You might hear them called either thing,
Speaker 3: but they mean the same thing, right. So it's basically
Speaker 3: the additional agency policies and procedures that they issue through
Speaker 3: the formal process governed by the Administrative Procedures Act. Very exciting.
Speaker 3: I know this is going to be like just bombshell episode.
Speaker 2: Terrible stuff is coming. Don't worry, you got a whold lot.
Speaker 2: It's going to get really bad.
Speaker 3: I'm giving you the foundation to make sure you can
Speaker 3: get maximally angry along with me. And so they create
Speaker 3: the rest of the implementation of the laws at that Congress, right.
Speaker 3: And so in this particular case, for section fifteen to
Speaker 3: fifty seven, it deals specifically with non discrimination, So it
Speaker 3: deals with race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, any equality can
Speaker 3: you can you would typically find in federal non discrimination
Speaker 3: laws actually in fifteen fifty seven. And so it's obviously
Speaker 3: been kind of going back and forth as a political
Speaker 3: football between the Obama administration and then the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: and then I don't even know if I'm going to
Speaker 3: give Biden credit for treating it as a football. And
Speaker 3: so there's this regulatory process that has been going forward
Speaker 3: and been rolled back and going forward and been rolled back.
Speaker 3: And then simultaneously there are several I don't know the
Speaker 3: current number, but several court cases over fifteen to fifty
Speaker 3: seven from various era as like I think there's still
Speaker 3: at least one case ongoing from the Obama era fifteen
Speaker 3: fifty seven rag, there's some ongoing from the Trump rag.
Speaker 3: And then obviously folks might have seen in the news
Speaker 3: that states like mine Louisiana that have a governor and
Speaker 3: attorney general super focused on raising their own profile have
Speaker 3: already filed suit against the recently issued Biden era Section
Speaker 3: fifteen fifty seven regulation, And so there is a lot
Speaker 3: of fighting around trans people specifically.
Speaker 4: Go figure.
Speaker 3: It has been We've been hot right now for the
Speaker 3: last four years or so. It's not been a super
Speaker 3: exciting time, and it has actually impacted, if you know
Speaker 3: how to read the policy tea leaves, it has actually
Speaker 3: impacted what we have gotten out of the Biden administration
Speaker 3: in terms of actual trans policy. And I've been doing
Speaker 3: trans policy for a very long time, start at the
Speaker 3: state level in Louisiana. You can't get paid to do
Speaker 3: a queer policy in Louisiana. So I moved out to
Speaker 3: Oakland to work for ternsit Or Law Center for a while,
Speaker 3: and that was actually where I created the joint Protect
Speaker 3: Trans Health campaign. It was actually the first ever coordinated
Speaker 3: collaboration between the National Center for TANSU Quality and Transgeneral
Speaker 3: Law Center, they had never formerly worked together on something before.
Speaker 3: But for trans policy folks Section fifty and most of
Speaker 3: the country, frankly, obviously, healthcare is like the thing right.
Speaker 3: It's always been really terrible in this country, no matter what,
Speaker 3: and so taking care of people's which should be a
Speaker 3: right to access healthcare has been really really important. I
Speaker 3: kind of considered it since twenty seventeen the most important
Speaker 3: trans policy issue to work on. And so this is
Speaker 3: definitely kind of to the sense that you are a
Speaker 3: nerd like me and you have, you know, headline regulatory
Speaker 3: actions that you're looking out for and hoping to influence
Speaker 3: and doing things around. This is kind of the premiere
Speaker 3: regulatory action in my opinion, in the trans policy space,
Speaker 3: trying to what it should ideally do is safeguard and
Speaker 3: guarantee trans people's access to healthcare, including gender affirming care.
Speaker 3: It does not if you actually read the five hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty eight page final Rule, but if you just
Speaker 3: read like the press releases and the quotes that the
Speaker 3: head of Human Rights Campaign give, you might have a
Speaker 3: different understanding currently, and that's what I'm hoping we can
Speaker 3: kind of get into today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and unfortunately before we get into that, we have
Speaker 2: to do one of the other things that is required
Speaker 2: of trans people, which is promoting capitalism if you want
Speaker 2: to have a job. So here are some ads. God,
Speaker 2: we're going to end up with like some kept paid
Speaker 2: ad from Aluisi at our rep or something.
Speaker 3: Oh, they don't even need they have a superjara that
Speaker 3: they've been flex and muscle on.
Speaker 4: They don't need to.
Speaker 5: They're fine, And.
Speaker 2: We are back with some cheaing. So yeah, let's talk
Speaker 2: about what has been happening and what was actually in
Speaker 2: the rules that no one who's not a bureaucrat or
Speaker 2: a policy activist has actually read.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think a little more background will will
Speaker 3: help you get just as angry as I need you
Speaker 3: to be, which is you know, So the administration is large.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of people that work in the
Speaker 3: executive branch, and a lot of them have, especially with
Speaker 3: this administration, where a lot of folks actually did come
Speaker 3: kind of directly from the Obama administration. They have relationships
Speaker 3: with issue advocacy organizations. So most of the nationals, the
Speaker 3: queer national organizations, advoccine nonprofits have relationships with executive branch folks,
Speaker 3: and so when an executive branch agency like HHS is
Speaker 3: working on a regulation that involves queer trans people the
Speaker 3: way it worked in the Obama administration, there was actually
Speaker 3: very close collaboration between for example, the National Center Foratureer
Speaker 3: Quality and the administration in the writing issuance of the
Speaker 3: first Obama era fifteen to fifty seven productive regulation. And
Speaker 3: so before the election and then during transition, the Biden
Speaker 3: administration was obviously in contact back and forth with all
Speaker 3: kinds of issue of se groups, not just the queer movement,
Speaker 3: but everybody, and they made commitments to the queer movement
Speaker 3: that you know, it would be a fairly smooth transition
Speaker 3: to working with them like we had worked with the
Speaker 3: Obama administration. If you think back a little while, that
Speaker 3: was before the kind of current fascist humanization campaign had
Speaker 3: really kicked off. And so these commitments were made kind
Speaker 3: of in the Overton window from before the last four
Speaker 3: years of hell or three years of how however you
Speaker 3: want to time it. When they decided to come after
Speaker 3: trans people so hard.
Speaker 2: This was back in the kind of housey in days.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if people remember this right now,
Speaker 2: but like it used to be a thing where democratic
Speaker 2: like presidential candidates would attack each other for not being
Speaker 2: radical enough on trans healthcare. That was the thing that
Speaker 2: happened on the debate stage in like twenty nineteen. It
Speaker 2: feels like seven lifetimes ago.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And keep in mind that Biden, you know, every
Speaker 3: six months he tweets that he has our back or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then he's also called us the civil rights issue
Speaker 3: of our time. So you know, there are some opportunities
Speaker 3: to question that and see if he stacks up. And
Speaker 3: my personal and professional opinion, this is what I do,
Speaker 3: is that he absolutely doesn't right. And so one of
Speaker 3: the things that you would really really want out of
Speaker 3: a section fifteen to fifty seven regulation in a context
Speaker 3: where states have been passing trans healthcare bands, is that
Speaker 3: you would want a section fifteen fifty seven regulation that
Speaker 3: deals with preventing transcrimination healthcare. You would want that to
Speaker 3: strongly and efficiently preempt state bands against trans care as
Speaker 3: violating a federal rule against non discrimination. And because these
Speaker 3: things are you have to follow the Administrative Procedures Act
Speaker 3: when you're issuing regulations as a federal agency, and most
Speaker 3: states actually have the same a similar kind of process,
Speaker 3: and so you kind of have to The agencies have
Speaker 3: to show how they got to the final rule. So
Speaker 3: they issue a draft rule, invite comment. There's a comment
Speaker 3: period that you might have seen organizations asking you to
Speaker 3: submit comments for before, and then they're actually required to
Speaker 3: read and respond to all those comments. And so if
Speaker 3: you actually pull up the fifteen fifty seven final rule,
Speaker 3: it's actually one of it sounds like even wonkier than
Speaker 3: for example, looking at a bill, But because of the
Speaker 3: Administrative Procedures Act in the way they have to respond
Speaker 3: to comments, there's actually a lot more kind of conversational
Speaker 3: pro are not conversational, but you know, regular ask pros
Speaker 3: and not terrifying legal language in this stuff. That is
Speaker 3: them directly addressing comments people organizations have made and explaining
Speaker 3: their reason. And so one of the things that I
Speaker 3: think is most kind of emblematic of how we've been
Speaker 3: failed and thrown under the bus is because of this
Speaker 3: process where they have to kind of show you how
Speaker 3: the sausage is made. You can look up in this
Speaker 3: regulation and see that for some initial conduct, we were
Speaker 3: promised this would come out year one, and then we
Speaker 3: were promised it would come out year two and then
Speaker 3: year three, and then I have actually heard that they
Speaker 3: were trying to push it past the election, and we
Speaker 3: kind of forced their hand on it. So you can
Speaker 3: tell that they initially wrote the first draft in this
Speaker 3: regulation to kill healthcare bands, to federally preempt healthcare bands.
Speaker 3: There's actually I did a Twitter thread on this about
Speaker 3: how one sentence that was that existed in the draft
Speaker 3: version of the fifteen to fifty seven role that one
Speaker 3: sentence alone could take down. I think the one I
Speaker 3: used for an example was Arkansas's trans healthcare band or
Speaker 3: Missouri's actually potentially, because what that sentence did is it
Speaker 3: laid out very very clearly that a determination that trans
Speaker 3: healthcare is never helpful or useful and can never be
Speaker 3: provided does not meet the bar for considered medical reasoning, right,
Speaker 3: and so states just can't do it. And that's fantastic
Speaker 3: because that is functionally what these healthcare bands do, right,
Speaker 3: and many of them, I think the one I used
Speaker 3: as an example even actually have include in the non
Speaker 3: effective text kind of the whereas preamble section of their bands.
Speaker 3: They can't help themselves. They go into all this flowery
Speaker 3: language about how trans care is never good and it's
Speaker 3: always harmful in all this stuff right in garbage. And
Speaker 3: this sentence spoke directly to those trans healthcare bands, and
Speaker 3: it made a firm commitment to address them as a
Speaker 3: whole as they were happening right at the federal government
Speaker 3: to state level. And if you read the final rule,
Speaker 3: you will get to see them strike that sentence out
Speaker 3: and read their reasoning for striking that out. And so
Speaker 3: you actually had this language that was very clear and
Speaker 3: very strong, written very relatively early on in his term,
Speaker 3: when at the time there were only a handful of
Speaker 3: trans healthcare bands that had passed, right, and so it
Speaker 3: didn't And so now I'm just offering conjectures and form conjecture,
Speaker 3: conjecture informed by reading.
Speaker 4: Policy te leaves.
Speaker 3: But it is my suspicion that at that time, because
Speaker 3: there weren't that many trans healthcare bands to preempt, they
Speaker 3: were more than willing to maintain, you know, to fulfill
Speaker 3: their commitment to us and to issue the kind of
Speaker 3: regulation that we had talked about. But as time went
Speaker 3: on and the fascist humanization campaign started and ramped up,
Speaker 3: and healthcare bands rapidly spread throughout the country. I've been
Speaker 3: doing this for a decade and I've never seen anything
Speaker 3: like this in any area of policy before, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, if you're holding a card that nuke's health
Speaker 3: state healthcare bans, when you wrote it, that card was
Speaker 3: only going to nuke a few two or three trans
Speaker 3: healthcare bands, right, And if you're the federal government, you
Speaker 3: know you can expect to steamrolls and just a handful
Speaker 3: of states like that. But then later on, at this point,
Speaker 3: I forget the exact number, but it's something like twenty
Speaker 3: twenty to twenty three states have healthcare bans implemented.
Speaker 4: And now if.
Speaker 3: You're holding a card that nuke's healthcare bands, you don't
Speaker 3: really get to pick and choose which healthcare bands you're
Speaker 3: going to. Now you're going to you have to commit.
Speaker 3: It's a new goal of them if you play that card.
Speaker 3: And that just was not something that they seemed willing
Speaker 3: to do when it was going to make the waves
Speaker 3: that it would make with twenty to twenty three or
Speaker 3: whatever states being pretting empted and required to make sure
Speaker 3: that trans people have.
Speaker 4: Health care access.
Speaker 3: And keep in mind that during this period, not just
Speaker 3: did more states past these healthcare bands, but the kind
Speaker 3: of national discussion and focus on trans people deteriorated horrifically, right,
Speaker 3: And so not only were the stakes higher in terms
Speaker 3: of the kind of policy confidence in projecting your politics,
Speaker 3: but also there was just I assume those lanyards run
Speaker 3: horrible polls all the time, right, and saw that we
Speaker 3: were losing points in terms of how the public views
Speaker 3: transpeople because there's a lot of money being poured into this,
Speaker 3: and just made the horrible unethical and moral calculations that
Speaker 3: Democrats make, decided that trans people weren't worth it. And
Speaker 3: so you can see them cross that strike that part
Speaker 3: out of the final fifteen to fifty seven rule, and
Speaker 3: it no longer contains any language even approaching that that
Speaker 3: is written to address states as a whole, and it
Speaker 3: is mostly what is in there at this point is
Speaker 3: the same thing that they've been telling us to do
Speaker 3: for the last over a decade, which is individual trans
Speaker 3: people who just happen to encounter discrimination and healthcare you
Speaker 3: to submit an OCR complaint, an HHSOCR complaint. OCR stands
Speaker 3: for Office Civil Rights, So you would think an Office
Speaker 3: of Civil Rights could maybe be proactive. And notice that
Speaker 3: a state that has banned trans healthcare and some places
Speaker 3: even criminalized it might be ready for some enforcement, some
Speaker 3: broad enforcement. And yet they have maintained in this final
Speaker 3: rule that they expect individual trans people to file individual
Speaker 3: OCR complaints every time and that they will address each
Speaker 3: one on a case by case basis. They reiterate this
Speaker 3: at least a dozen times. It is one of the
Speaker 3: most offensive parts of all this, right because that's the
Speaker 3: only thing that aj just has ever told us about this, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Which is just nuts, Like that's not an actual systemic
Speaker 2: way of addressing this. Can you imagine if they had
Speaker 2: done this with like literally any other kind of civil
Speaker 2: rights issue, like you know, okay, we get we get
Speaker 2: we get a state banned on gay marriage, and the
Speaker 2: Department is like, yeah, you have to submit a complaint
Speaker 2: to us individually. Like that's absolutely nuts, or are you or.
Speaker 3: Of like states were banned insulin or something, you know, right,
Speaker 3: like any other facet of healthcare, Just nobody would take that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: everyone to expect, Yes, the federal government will come in
Speaker 3: to make sure that people in Louisiana can still access insulin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in staid, you have this just you know,
Speaker 2: I mean a complete abrogation of any like not just
Speaker 2: any responsibility, but I mean any attempt to actually not
Speaker 2: even like any attempt to do anything to stop any
Speaker 2: of these bands that are going to kill a like
Speaker 2: not insignificant number of people like me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And one of the things I'd like to quins
Speaker 3: is one of the benefits of you know, the photogram
Speaker 3: having to follow the Administrative Procedures Act is they have
Speaker 3: to talk about the previous rules in this space, and
Speaker 3: so you also get really, I was gonna say funny,
Speaker 3: but they're not funny. They're they're deeply depressing paragraphs about
Speaker 3: how their final rule is worse than Obama's final rule.
Speaker 3: Right they have and they have to explain it. And
Speaker 3: one of one of the things that I'll reference here
Speaker 3: is that Obama's final rule, I believe, involved directing the
Speaker 3: Office of All Rights to conduct a disparate impact analysis
Speaker 3: on you know, marginalized populations to determine if there were
Speaker 3: discriminatory outcomes in healthcare access kind of even as a
Speaker 3: closed system, so they can look in from the outside
Speaker 3: and be like, oh, okay, all the transmubl in the
Speaker 3: state can't access X, Y and z, so whether that
Speaker 3: whether there is a discriminatory you know, law or not
Speaker 3: there is a disparate impact on this population, and that
Speaker 3: means we need to take enforcement action. And you get
Speaker 3: to read the Biden HHS right about how they're not
Speaker 3: going to do that.
Speaker 2: Actually, no, no, don't, please please do please do not
Speaker 2: do any analysis to see how trans people are being oppressed.
Speaker 2: This would look really bad for us. Yeah, speaking speaking
Speaker 2: of looking bad for us, you know, you know what
Speaker 2: won't look bad. It's if you buy these products and
Speaker 2: services from this ad that hopefully isn't I don't know.
Speaker 2: I feel I feel like we're kind of running. We've
Speaker 2: run through the cycle of the terrible ads, so I
Speaker 2: feel like we're about we're on the precipice of there
Speaker 2: being another bunch of ads they put on the show
Speaker 2: without telling us that we can complain about. But for
Speaker 2: now these ones and we are back. Yeah. And I
Speaker 2: think this is something that I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: most people do not know this. I don't I think
Speaker 2: most people do not understand that not only use a
Speaker 2: Biden administration not being proactive, it's like they're actively rolling
Speaker 2: back protections, and they're actively rolling back things that the
Speaker 2: agency used to do under Obama, which was you know,
Speaker 2: in most other respects. I don't know. Again, I don't
Speaker 2: really like, can I expect the people who listened to
Speaker 2: the show to remember the Obama administration? Now, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was one of the people who came
Speaker 3: of aged off my parents' healthcare plan kind of exactly
Speaker 3: right before kind of primary PPACA productions kicked in, right,
Speaker 3: and so I had a several month period where they
Speaker 3: could still deny you health insurance using homeward being trained
Speaker 3: as a pre existing condition, as they don't God, and
Speaker 3: so that that actually did happen to me. I applied
Speaker 3: for health insurance and they sent me a letter that said,
Speaker 3: you have your trends, that's a pre existing condition. We're
Speaker 3: not going to health and so I so I actually
Speaker 3: did several months later, you know, those protections kicked in,
Speaker 3: and the Obama administration actually did do some kind of
Speaker 3: proactive work to make sure that those were spread around
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 4: Like it's not nowhere never has been as guys, good
Speaker 4: and throw as it should be.
Speaker 3: But it worked for me here because then when I
Speaker 3: implied again, I was not denied for being tranced.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, I think that's the kind of
Speaker 2: general thing I want to say about that too, is like,
Speaker 2: you know, there were things where like on these kinds
Speaker 2: of issues where the obomdministration was a lot better broadly
Speaker 2: if you look at the rest of their policy, it
Speaker 2: was like significantly further right in the Biden administration like Obama.
Speaker 2: Obama tried to tried to like put up grand bargain
Speaker 2: together to destroy Medicaid, Medicare, social Security, like he tried
Speaker 2: to do that. He was stopped by the Republicans. Right,
Speaker 2: It was like, I need to give people a sense
Speaker 2: of like how far right Obama was even compared to Biden,
Speaker 2: and yet the REGs are getting worse, which.
Speaker 3: Is on our issues, he was fairly fairly good, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And one thing that I think contributes to people not
Speaker 3: you know, I can't blame folks for not understanding this
Speaker 3: is happening because the queer advocacy orgs are not talking
Speaker 3: about things this way, right, And I think possibly one
Speaker 3: of the most illustrative things I can point out is
Speaker 3: when the first title nine in pr M drops. So
Speaker 3: in PRM stands for Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. So if
Speaker 3: I drop that again, it's a screw up on my part.
Speaker 3: I don't mean to use the dragon. But so that's
Speaker 3: why when they issue their first draft of a regulation
Speaker 3: and invite comment in a comment period follows.
Speaker 4: Right, So the the.
Speaker 3: Title nine in PRM that they release around trans students'
Speaker 3: access to sports programs and education. If you read it
Speaker 3: the language of the actual draft policy, not the press
Speaker 3: releases people put out about it, it is functionally states
Speaker 3: rights for athlete fans.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: It gives the states' rights to come up with a
Speaker 3: justification that involves fairness and safety, and then they will
Speaker 3: have deference to pursue or whatever, which is not just
Speaker 3: that some of the ways they've done fifty fifty seven
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and like to make it, make it explicitly clear.
Speaker 2: What they're saying is that if you, as a stake
Speaker 2: can come up with a good enough reason, you were
Speaker 2: allowed to discriminate against trans people and prevent them exactly
Speaker 2: doing sports, which is like, again, it is a vert
Speaker 2: discrimination based on gender, which you should not be able
Speaker 2: to do legally. However, the absolute cowardly shits at the
Speaker 2: Biden administration, We're like, no, you could actually do this,
Speaker 2: go ahead to have fun fascist humanization marks.
Speaker 3: And so if you remember back to that time, all
Speaker 3: of the the national queer organizations put out these glowing
Speaker 3: press release. So I'm on the policy side, right, I'm
Speaker 3: not on the comp side. I readanalyzed the policy, I
Speaker 3: tell them what it means, and then it's most it's
Speaker 3: unfortunately out of my hands at that point, right, and
Speaker 3: the national queer organizations have been messaging basically all of
Speaker 3: these things as great wins moving things forward.
Speaker 4: Biden truly the first.
Speaker 3: Trans president, We love him, stuff like that, right, And
Speaker 3: so they did that for that title nine in PRM.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 3: Several days later, Representative Zoe Zephyr, a trans represented state
Speaker 3: representative from Montana, organized the out trans state trans and
Speaker 3: non binary state legislators from around the country to release
Speaker 3: an open letter which you know, condemned the title nine
Speaker 3: n PRM for being dog shit. And so that's that's
Speaker 3: I think maybe the one and only kind of crack
Speaker 3: in the in the facade that has gotten through over
Speaker 3: the past couple of years is when you know, this
Speaker 3: thing came out after the policy people said this is
Speaker 3: how did this happen?
Speaker 4: What the hell?
Speaker 3: And then the comms came out and they were great, glowing,
Speaker 3: you know, he love trans people, and then you know
Speaker 3: the state trans elected is actually said no, this this
Speaker 3: fucking socks actually, right, Yeah, but that has not really
Speaker 3: happened for anything else because they're you know, most of
Speaker 3: the people who do what I do, they're you know,
Speaker 3: specialized in each and there aren't many jobs for it.
Speaker 3: And you could, I could speak at length about how
Speaker 3: you don't get to speak your mind if you want
Speaker 3: to continue to stay with kind of movement employment in
Speaker 3: this sector. And so in terms of publicly being able
Speaker 3: to speak about how we're being thrown under the bus currently,
Speaker 3: there are not many folks with the expertise who are
Speaker 3: free to do that.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember, like I'm not a policy person,
Speaker 2: right like I have I have you know, part I,
Speaker 2: part this is an analytical thing, right Like I bailed
Speaker 2: out of going to law school because I had to
Speaker 2: read that. I had to read the Clean Air Act,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I will literally die if I
Speaker 2: have to do this for a living. But you know,
Speaker 2: I remember when when the sort of Title nine stuff
Speaker 2: came out, and when I remember trying to talk about it,
Speaker 2: I remember like the pushback that I got for being like, wait,
Speaker 2: this sucks. It was enormous. It was this like incredible
Speaker 2: sort of broad front PR campaign from just so many
Speaker 2: different and not even just you know, it had filtered
Speaker 2: down to the point where like it wasn't just like
Speaker 2: these rigs. It was like just like like the random
Speaker 2: people on Twitter who's supposed to follow policy stuff were
Speaker 2: falling in line. It was like everyone was coming in
Speaker 2: and it was just this like absolutely terrifying, like kind
Speaker 2: of closing.
Speaker 4: Those don't actually read policy. That's the thing. Policy reporters
Speaker 4: don't write.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so many such cases, and.
Speaker 3: So most people who report on policy or or kind
Speaker 3: of our follow policy do tend to kind of stick
Speaker 3: in the realm of those press releases and initial initial
Speaker 3: articles based on press releases. And so if there is
Speaker 3: not kind of sincerity and truthfulness on the part of
Speaker 3: the orgs that are the trusted, you know, speakers in
Speaker 3: this space, then this stuff gets successfully laundered. And I
Speaker 3: think it's intentional. I think that it, on one hand,
Speaker 3: is an intentional move to prevent and stemy actual grassroots
Speaker 3: organizing around sincere and real and pressing trans needs. Because
Speaker 3: if you're trying to get a lot of people fired
Speaker 3: up about trans healthcare is like on fire, and half
Speaker 3: the like half the trans kids in the country don't
Speaker 3: have we have to like, this is act up shit time.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But if everybody that you know is on your email list,
Speaker 3: if most of them have seen HRC and NCT and
Speaker 3: all these places put out these glowing press releases, people
Speaker 3: are like, you're crazy. If things are fine, Jo's moving
Speaker 3: things forward, We're good. And then also I think they
Speaker 3: have kind of backed themselves into a corner in terms
Speaker 3: of how a lot of Libs have had backed themselves
Speaker 3: into a corner at this point. Right, they know that
Speaker 3: Trump is worse on policy, even if Biden has done
Speaker 3: barely anything, Trump is obviously worse for trans people. And
Speaker 3: so they're allowing electoral weirdness to control actual kind of
Speaker 3: policy comms in a way that I find really really frustrating,
Speaker 3: and I think is not doing trans people, especially in
Speaker 3: the South. It's not treating them with the respect that
Speaker 3: they deserve from the organizations that claim to represent them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a thing that Okay, this is
Speaker 2: going to sound like a weird sidebar, but I promise
Speaker 2: if you follow this train of logical deay, this is
Speaker 2: something you actually this is a debate. You get a
Speaker 2: lot more clearly in Latin American social movements, where because
Speaker 2: because their social movements are significantly stronger from the social
Speaker 2: movements in the US, right, they are their own sort
Speaker 2: of coherent like political basis.
Speaker 4: You get this question a labor movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, like you know that this
Speaker 2: is the thing about the labor movement. Like you know,
Speaker 2: if if you look at for example, Bolivia, which has
Speaker 2: very very strong social movements or like has traditionally had
Speaker 2: very strong labor movements and a lot of social movements
Speaker 2: in the last twenty thirty years, right, I mean, like
Speaker 2: their labor movement throws dynamite at bosses, right, like you know,
Speaker 2: so like they have they have a very strong movement.
Speaker 2: And but one of the questions of these movements, and
Speaker 2: this is something that has just torn apart the m
Speaker 2: as they're they're sort of like supposedly movement political party,
Speaker 2: is this question of to what extent should you should
Speaker 2: you integrate your social movement with the state. And you know,
Speaker 2: and then this is a long this is a long
Speaker 2: running debate in budg of social movements. Various movements have
Speaker 2: picked different directions. Some of them have become very unfolded
Speaker 2: in the States, some of them have resisted it. And
Speaker 2: there are you know there there are benefits and problems
Speaker 2: with both. But one of the big issues with trying
Speaker 2: to sort of incorporate yourself into the state is that
Speaker 2: the state isn't just a kind of neutral body. It
Speaker 2: will you know, it's it's not just that you're working
Speaker 2: with the state. The state is also working with you,
Speaker 2: and it will attempt to and in its political parties,
Speaker 2: will attempt to seize control of your organization and turn
Speaker 2: your organization into just a sort of into you know,
Speaker 2: into basically a pr outlet for whatever thing it's doing.
Speaker 2: And this becomes a real problem when you're you know,
Speaker 2: your your party is trying to screw you. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean this came to ahead in twenty twelve where there
Speaker 2: was a huge fight in Bolivia over a plan by
Speaker 2: the MS to build a highway through a bunch of
Speaker 2: indigenous land. And this this basically split the base of
Speaker 2: the party right because the MAS had been sort of
Speaker 2: an indigenous socialist movement, and it got split between the
Speaker 2: people who supported building this growth of the people who didn't.
Speaker 2: And so like even Morales has riot police stormed the
Speaker 2: offices of one of the of one of the indigenous federations,
Speaker 2: and like replaces them, like replaces their leadership with guys
Speaker 2: who are loyal to him, who will push this thing through, right.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean the reason I'm talking about
Speaker 2: this is the kind of social movement stuff I studied
Speaker 2: in college, right, And it's like, and now in the US,
Speaker 2: we are like kind of starting to get to the
Speaker 2: point where we have real social moments, right, and we've
Speaker 2: seen sort of like blm, you know, we we sort
Speaker 2: of have something that is a curve movement and we're
Speaker 2: running into exactly the same thing where yeah, like if
Speaker 2: you you know, this is the thing you can talk
Speaker 2: about moretifically in the US. But it's like, yeah, like
Speaker 2: these orgs are on are are in the middle of
Speaker 2: this sort of state capture process, right, And this has
Speaker 2: having really really dogshit effects on queer people because when
Speaker 2: when these organizations are you know, become becomes sort of
Speaker 2: media arms or becomes sort of political arms of these
Speaker 2: party apparatuses, they're not representing you, They're representing the party.
Speaker 3: And I think that one one of the easiest places
Speaker 3: to kind of see the dynamic that you and I
Speaker 3: are talking about in current US politics is in the
Speaker 3: discourse around palace and any liberation. Right, Yeah, if you
Speaker 3: try to talk with anybody about palastinity liberation, you get
Speaker 3: beset upon on all sides by people saying, well, do
Speaker 3: you want Trump to win? You think Trump's can be better?
Speaker 3: This like electoral project takes precedence over you know, politics
Speaker 3: guided by core values so quickly and so overwhelmingly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, and it's it's accelerated to a point.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something I remember in during the
Speaker 2: Trump years, we would we would joke about this about
Speaker 2: sort of the spinelessness of liberalism. Like it used to
Speaker 2: be a joke that like if the Democratic president did
Speaker 2: a genocide, people would go, oh, well, you still have
Speaker 2: to support them because the other guy's Trump. And now
Speaker 2: it's literally happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, so I actually started working at Nationals.
Speaker 3: I took the drop at Transfer Law Center right after
Speaker 3: Trump took office, and so my, you know, it was
Speaker 3: very easy for me to especially as someone who you know,
Speaker 3: had never worked at large avaccine nonprofits before, because go figure,
Speaker 3: there's no money in doing transwork in the South that
Speaker 3: was scrappy and under resource as fuck. I got to
Speaker 3: delude myself, I think, because you know, Trump is such
Speaker 3: a uniquely dangerous force that a lot of people alongside
Speaker 3: me and the movement were had the same shared the
Speaker 3: values with me, because I could see them being equally
Speaker 3: strident and vocal on kind of all the bad things
Speaker 3: that were happening. And then you know, it's almost it's
Speaker 3: a tire joke at this point, but you know, Biden
Speaker 3: took over and the kids were still in cages, and
Speaker 3: everybody else shut up, and I looked around and I'm like, wait, I'm.
Speaker 4: Still I still okay, Yeah, the hell where'd y'all go?
Speaker 2: Like I want to yell about that for a second,
Speaker 2: because like so I kind of like this, this was
Speaker 2: like my sort of well, I mean, I guess my
Speaker 2: technical origin story. There's a slight longer thing this, but
Speaker 2: like my me being a person that any would listen
Speaker 2: to was a product of being involved in Occupy Ice
Speaker 2: and like, you know, going out and finding like you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, the sort of horror of that, like you
Speaker 2: can fucking hear people yelling from the inside of these
Speaker 2: buildings that they're being fucking held in and now you know,
Speaker 2: Biden like, well, we'll do a longer thing about this
Speaker 2: at some point, But like Biden. Is you know that
Speaker 2: that fucking bill that they were trying to pass, like
Speaker 2: absolutely unbelievably fascist one saying that the president has the
Speaker 2: right to close the border. She's trying to just fucking
Speaker 2: do it anyways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and they're still doing cons hits about it
Speaker 3: making them they think it makes them look good.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's like it's they're they're they're doing just
Speaker 2: pure evil. Like again, like literally, without like James and
Speaker 2: his friends, there would be pile like there still are
Speaker 2: corpses floating up in the fucking rivers on the border,
Speaker 2: but there would be fucking like there would be stacked
Speaker 2: like mounds of corpses of people who fucking starved or died.
Speaker 2: Like if literally James and his friends weren't down there
Speaker 2: on the border right now, that and and you know,
Speaker 2: and yeah, like it's it's the thing you're talking about.
Speaker 2: It's like I remember all these people in the streets
Speaker 2: for this. I was like I was there, I was
Speaker 2: fucking helping to organize this stuff, and then like you
Speaker 2: watch them walk away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 3: And I want to make clearer that you know, you're
Speaker 3: talking about kind of the pressure that a party in
Speaker 3: power can can apply and the way in which these
Speaker 3: organizations can be captured, especially just due to how nonprofit
Speaker 3: funding is a whole clusterfuck and how it works.
Speaker 5: Here in the US.
Speaker 3: But I so, I actually a White House staffer called
Speaker 3: my executive director within an hour of my boss forwarding
Speaker 3: the White House an analysis of mine that I'd written
Speaker 3: for a state without reading it herself at all. And
Speaker 3: in this analysis I included a dismal assessment of the
Speaker 3: likelihood that the federal government would use its power to
Speaker 3: prevent implementation that solve this was this was a healthcare band,
Speaker 3: that a novel healthcare band that the state wanted to
Speaker 3: quick turn around one. And so my boss direct boss
Speaker 3: forwarded it to the White House, who had asked for
Speaker 3: analysis on it without reading it at all. And within
Speaker 3: an hour of my boss forwarding it to the White
Speaker 3: House House, the White House had called our executive director
Speaker 3: to complain about me, and I got written up for it.
Speaker 3: That is the fastest turnaround on anything trans that anybody
Speaker 3: has gotten out of this White House. And it was
Speaker 3: it was getting me me disciplined for in a in
Speaker 3: an analysis that was not for them not being super
Speaker 3: impressed with their with their trans policy. And I and
Speaker 3: I have heard, I have you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: colleagues in the movement, folks I trust completely on trans policy.
Speaker 3: And I know for a fact that I am not
Speaker 3: the only person that has had a situation like that occur.
Speaker 3: And so there they are applying pressure and even in
Speaker 3: the most direct ways to you know, the advocacy organizations.
Speaker 4: So it is happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the thing I wanted to close
Speaker 2: up was talking about a bit about like the consequences
Speaker 2: of this, because what happens when this this is you know,
Speaker 2: this is part of going back to me talking about Bolivia,
Speaker 2: like this is part of how even Moralees got overthrown
Speaker 2: in the coup, was that because the social movements, like
Speaker 2: most of the like a lot of these social movements
Speaker 2: have been sort of weakened to the point where they
Speaker 2: know they no longer had you know, that they'd become
Speaker 2: policy organs at the state and not actual like fighting
Speaker 2: movements that could like effectively resist, you know, that that
Speaker 2: could do a thing like for example, like you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at the the the the original coup
Speaker 2: against Hugo Chavez, right, like, the social movements were so
Speaker 2: strong that even though the army literally did a coup,
Speaker 2: they got fucking ran out by like several million uh
Speaker 2: Venezuelans taking to the streets and just like overturning the coup, right,
Speaker 2: and that I mean that happens later like in like
Speaker 2: that there was you know, there there was there was
Speaker 2: a second round of barricades that went up that got
Speaker 2: basically no press attention in twenty twenty. You know, then
Speaker 2: there's a whole comp I'll talk about that one day.
Speaker 2: And how hilariously after getting bailed out, even Morallies pulled
Speaker 2: his people off the barricades because they didn't actually want
Speaker 2: to oversow the government. They just wanted an election, like well,
Speaker 2: people off to keep the government intact long enough. He's
Speaker 2: done this in many This is the second time he's
Speaker 2: done this, by the way, has happened in the water
Speaker 2: in the water wars uh in two and six. But uh,
Speaker 2: you know, but but like in the initial period of
Speaker 2: the coup, part of the reason this this was able
Speaker 2: to happen again was because the capacity of these groups
Speaker 2: to like overturn something like this had been so new,
Speaker 2: or that they were able to sort of be defeated
Speaker 2: in the streets and you know we are we are
Speaker 2: watching our own version of this where, Yeah, like I
Speaker 2: wanted to sort of talk to you about what's been happening,
Speaker 2: the fucking hell escape that's been happening in Louisiana, as
Speaker 2: you know, partially because of the sort of Republican's fascist turn,
Speaker 2: but also because the resistance to them has been neutered
Speaker 2: by the fact that they're you know, they have to
Speaker 2: like defend this Biden policy shit.
Speaker 3: Right, And yeah, So one important point to make about
Speaker 3: the federal the need for federal protections is that you know,
Speaker 3: I live in Louisiana. Federal protections are all I'm ever
Speaker 3: gonna have, yeah, right, And so if the federal protections
Speaker 3: aren't there, and if there's not a federal government willing
Speaker 3: to enforce them, I'm I'm in big trouble. Like I
Speaker 3: would bet every single dollar I have, which is not many,
Speaker 3: that my Medicaid will will not cover my hormones by
Speaker 3: the end of the year. Right, And so what I think,
Speaker 3: and I've highlighted kind of before when it was very
Speaker 3: clear that Jeff Landry was going to become governor after
Speaker 3: John Bell and actually did drug policy for John Bell
Speaker 3: for a while, and a lot of trans people were
Speaker 3: kind of quietly in his administration. I think that my
Speaker 3: friend Tucker, aside from Rachel Levine, was probably the highest
Speaker 3: ranked state executive branch transperson in history as deputy Press
Speaker 3: secretary for a while. I'm yeah, I'm not to but yeah,
Speaker 3: trans people busted ask to get John Bell elected. And
Speaker 3: so we had held off a lot of this stuff
Speaker 3: for a long time, not just through having a nominally
Speaker 3: democratic governor, but through the organizing in the South that
Speaker 3: that happens on no resources whatsoever is some of the
Speaker 3: most broad based and inspiring kind of coalitional organizing that
Speaker 3: I've ever seen, and I've done work all around the country,
Speaker 3: and the way that people are able to organize kind
Speaker 3: of cross issue here is phenomenal. But we are all
Speaker 3: Jerry manderd to shit. We get no money, attention resources
Speaker 3: from national groups off in the media, and especially here
Speaker 3: in Louisiana and in much of the South, like we
Speaker 3: are not an attractive place for impact litigation because we're
Speaker 3: in the Fifth Circuit and all our state courts are shit,
Speaker 3: and so we really kind of are on our own
Speaker 3: here in a all of a sudden Republican super majority
Speaker 3: legislature with an activist fascist governor and ag so, Jeff
Speaker 3: Jeff Blandery is very much in the model of the
Speaker 3: disantis or an abbot in terms of what he is
Speaker 3: hoping to do in Louisiana and what he's hoping to
Speaker 3: get out of it in terms of his own personal
Speaker 3: profile and ambitions. And there's so much we could talk
Speaker 3: about in terms of what's going on here, but I
Speaker 3: want to highlight specifically a s B two seventy six,
Speaker 3: which is the bill you may have seen headlines about.
Speaker 3: It's the bill that adds mith pristone and muspristall to
Speaker 3: the State Schedule for Controlled Substances Act.
Speaker 2: And can you can you explain what that what that
Speaker 2: actually means for people who.
Speaker 3: Do Yeah, so, myth and MISO are used for a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of healthcare in terms of, for example,
Speaker 3: miscarriage management inducing labor in a hospital, but that they
Speaker 3: can also be used for self managed medication abortion. And
Speaker 3: so this has not been done anywhere else in the
Speaker 3: in the country where the leading the charge here. No
Speaker 3: other state has ever added drugs like this to their
Speaker 3: controlled Substances long And so what that means is that
Speaker 3: those drugs are now going to be going through the
Speaker 3: Prescription Monitoring Program the PMP, which has a lot more
Speaker 3: controls and surveillance than non controlled substances. Right, So the
Speaker 3: Board of Medicine, the Board Pharmacy, and I'm trying, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do a survey now to figure out which
Speaker 3: state agents specifically have like automatic inherent access to that
Speaker 3: PMP database. But it makes it a lot more traceable
Speaker 3: and trackable, which is which is really scary for anybody
Speaker 3: trying to access reproductive and abortion healthcare in a place
Speaker 3: like Louisiana. And then the other thing it does is
Speaker 3: it raises the stakes phenomenally for the people doing the
Speaker 3: kind of and I'm going to speak, I'm going to
Speaker 3: try to speak very carefully, or the people doing the
Speaker 3: kind of direct practical support work to work with underserved
Speaker 3: populations to make sure that they can access healthcare services
Speaker 3: that they need.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: And it is just a it is a fact of
Speaker 3: life that you know, just like in the harm production movement,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people on the ground busting
Speaker 3: ass to get people what they need. And you know,
Speaker 3: for a lot of times for abortion funds, it's organizing
Speaker 3: money and transportation and hotels to get people out of state.
Speaker 3: Right since the Florida abortion van, we can't send people
Speaker 3: there anymore. We have to send people to Illinois, which
Speaker 3: is more expensive further way. And it's those people who
Speaker 3: are at risk, the people doing the work like the
Speaker 3: backbone of the on the ground grassroots practical support mutual
Speaker 3: aid work that are risking. I think it's you know,
Speaker 3: five to ten years per pill if they are you know,
Speaker 3: providing them to someone else. It's terrifying, and there's no
Speaker 3: we don't know what we're going to do about it yet.
Speaker 3: It's going to call last night kind of like what
Speaker 3: are we going to do about this? We don't know
Speaker 3: because it's scary. And then jumping back to kind of
Speaker 3: the problem with how not problem nonprofit and advocacy funding
Speaker 3: works in this country. There are a lot of restrictions
Speaker 3: that come that are you know that organizations who are
Speaker 3: funded that way have to live with, Like especially I'll
Speaker 3: speak to the harm reduction world. For example, you'll get
Speaker 3: a grant at your syringe exchange and they're like, here's
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars, but you can't spend any of it
Speaker 3: on needles, and you're like, that's my biggest expense. That's
Speaker 3: what I was good as you know, And so it's
Speaker 3: the same kind of thing. The more that this kind
Speaker 3: of work gets criminalized and pushed to the edge, the
Speaker 3: fewer resourced organizations are able to work on it, have
Speaker 3: the money that we're going it but be just there
Speaker 3: legal teams. The chilling effects of this stuff are massive,
Speaker 3: and so it just falls more and more on the
Speaker 3: backs of kind of the grassroots folks who have always
Speaker 3: been making this happen for community to the extent that
Speaker 3: they can under the harshest of circumstances. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's people like that who are who are going to
Speaker 3: have to make some really tough decisions going forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, like the it's never there's never
Speaker 2: been a good or safe time to do stuff like this.
Speaker 2: But you know, as as it gets increasingly dangerous, and
Speaker 2: as you know, you get the sort of downstream effects
Speaker 2: of both the sort of legal like but both the
Speaker 2: sort of legal danger and the sort of like constricting
Speaker 2: of movement space by by the sort of question of
Speaker 2: these engios, things just get more and more dangerous in
Speaker 2: a time where the people who need to be dangerous
Speaker 2: is us, because otherwise we are going to die.
Speaker 3: Yeah, scary time, but yeah, you know, we keep us
Speaker 3: fucking safe and yeah, always have and always will. And
Speaker 3: it's going to be rough what we're heading into. But
Speaker 3: you know, I again, the organizing in the South is
Speaker 3: I've never seen anything that's made me so proud to
Speaker 3: be an organizer and an actor as the work that
Speaker 3: I see in the South. And so if there's anybody
Speaker 3: who can lead the way on how to respond to
Speaker 3: these things and how to take care of each other,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: It's it's our people. It's these people who've been doing
Speaker 4: it forever.
Speaker 2: So yeah, And I think on that note, if people
Speaker 2: want to find you and the people you've been working
Speaker 2: with in the orgs that you're sort of working with,
Speaker 2: nowhere where can they find that? On the Internet, where
Speaker 2: I guess other places too. Are there other things that
Speaker 2: are not the Internet at.
Speaker 3: This point, I'm not, I really don't. Yeah, So you
Speaker 3: can find me on Twitter. I'm Gay Narcan on Twitter.
Speaker 5: That's that's me.
Speaker 3: And then if you are interested in supporting kind of
Speaker 3: the work that my collective is doing, the probably the
Speaker 3: best place to go for that right now is our
Speaker 3: first launched project called trans Income Project it's trans Income
Speaker 3: Project dot org and what that is is an organization
Speaker 3: that is solely dedicated to doing direct cash transfers to
Speaker 3: transsext words in Louisiana. We just had some of our
Speaker 3: first listening sessions with folks and yeah, this is gonna
Speaker 3: be so kick ass, So yeah, go go there for
Speaker 3: that direct project. And then I would also encourage folks
Speaker 3: to take a look at Louisiana Transadvocates. I used to
Speaker 3: be president there and it's the state transavacy organization. We're actually
Speaker 3: the state in the South that it has had the
Speaker 3: longest consistent trans presence at the Capitol through Louisiana Transadvocates.
Speaker 3: And we have no fucking money, so feel free to
Speaker 3: so maybe toss something over there too.
Speaker 2: If you get tired. Yeah, I will say this, given
Speaker 2: how fucking zero dollars every transperson has, like this is
Speaker 2: one are the places where your individual dollar will go
Speaker 2: the furthest because you're like your your ten dollars is
Speaker 2: like a three hundred percent increase on like a total
Speaker 2: funding of these works. All right, Well, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming on and talking.
Speaker 4: About this, and thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess by final, final, final message to listeners,
Speaker 2: go fuck him up. You could do it too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that I agreed completely. Quote LN.
Speaker 6: Hi everyone, it's me James, and I just wanted to
Speaker 6: read you this today. We're going to put it in
Speaker 6: our episode this week because it's a cause that's important
Speaker 6: to us, and so we thought it would be something
Speaker 6: that might be important to you too as well. On
Speaker 6: the tenth of June twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier, an
Speaker 6: enrolled member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa of Lakota
Speaker 6: and Ojibwei ancestry and the longest serving political prisoner in
Speaker 6: the United States, will be appearing before the US Parole
Speaker 6: Commission for the first time since two thousand and nine.
Speaker 6: He faces staunch opposition from the FBI and other law
Speaker 6: enforcement agencies due to having allegedly killed two FBI agents
Speaker 6: in a firefight on the twenty sixth of June nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy five, after the agents appeared on reservation land to
Speaker 6: execute a pretextural warrant. The initial firefight occurred during the
Speaker 6: quote reign of terror on Pine Ridge in the wake
Speaker 6: of the occupation of Wounded Knee, a time of extreme
Speaker 6: violence when federal law enforcement installed a puppet tribal chair
Speaker 6: and was arming vigilantes who targeted Indigenous traditionalists. Every since
Speaker 6: leading up to these events, as well as subsequent investigation
Speaker 6: and mister Peltier's extradition, trial, conviction, and sentencing, were characterized
Speaker 6: by gross misconduct on the part of law enforcement, the prosecution,
Speaker 6: and the courts. Mister Peltier's co defendants were separately tried
Speaker 6: and acquitted on grounds of self defense. Mister Peltier was railroaded,
Speaker 6: and his case is tainted by discrimination at every level,
Speaker 6: ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to the torture
Speaker 6: and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the
Speaker 6: refusal of the judge to dismiss and vowedly racist Dura,
Speaker 6: to the apologetic gymnastics of the courts affirming his convictions
Speaker 6: in the face of meritorious legal challenges, had admitted evidence
Speaker 6: of outrageous government misdeeds. Mister Peltier has been in prison
Speaker 6: for more than forty eight years, and he's almost eighty
Speaker 6: years old. He suffers from chronic and potentially lethal conditions
Speaker 6: for which he receives insufficient and substandard medical care. If
Speaker 6: you want to take action to hashtag free Leonard Peltier,
Speaker 6: you can call the US Parole Commission at two zero
Speaker 6: two three four six seven zero zero zero, and if
Speaker 6: you'd like to find more information on how to support,
Speaker 6: you can go to this r L it's h T
Speaker 6: T P colon slash slash n d N C O
Speaker 6: dot c C slash free Leonard Peltier.
Speaker 4: That's f ir.
Speaker 6: E E L E O n A r D P
Speaker 6: E L t I E R, or you can follow
Speaker 6: n d N Collective on social media for more ways
Speaker 6: to support him. More information on Leonard Peltier, listen to
Speaker 6: Margaret's podcast on the Lakota Nation, a read in the
Speaker 6: Spirit of the Crazy Horse by Peter Mathewson.
Speaker 7: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 7: coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 7: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 7: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.