Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Hi. Everyone, this is Sharene
Speaker 1: and you're listening to it can happen here? It could.
Speaker 1: I always mess up the name of this podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's really embarrassing because I work on it. It could
Speaker 1: happen here. Um, not the same words to me in
Speaker 1: my head though. Anyway. We're joined today by guess that
Speaker 1: I previously had on the podcast that I co host,
Speaker 1: Ethnically Ambiguous, and she has a podcast coming out that
Speaker 1: is super important and I'm excited to talk about what
Speaker 1: it's a as itself. Joining me today are Garrison and
Speaker 1: Chris and our guest nasse Hi. Hello, Hello, welcome, thank you,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. So you're you have a new
Speaker 1: podcast called Partition. Explain what that's about? Yes, So Partition
Speaker 1: tells the story of the separation of India and the
Speaker 1: formation of Pakistan that took place in on Monday, well,
Speaker 1: Sunday Monday, because I happened at midnight, celebrated its seventy
Speaker 1: anniversary this year. Um. So it's quite a large event
Speaker 1: that most people don't really know about. I myself didn't
Speaker 1: really know the specif I first went back to Pakistan
Speaker 1: where I was born and Cratchy um. But basically Britain
Speaker 1: was like, hey, we're out of money, we can't control
Speaker 1: India anymore, We're gonna leave. And in that process they
Speaker 1: were going to trans for the power UH to India
Speaker 1: and they were gonna they were going to have independence.
Speaker 1: And then all these other politicians kind of came in
Speaker 1: the picture and wanted their own personal agendas and UH
Speaker 1: Pakistan um dominion while India would be the Hindu Sikh dominion.
Speaker 1: And basically within this process it was such a rushed
Speaker 1: job that fourteen million people were uprooted, wanted two million
Speaker 1: people died, you know. Um. The boundary line actually a
Speaker 1: few days after independence happened, so no one knew like
Speaker 1: what where they were in what country. Um. So it
Speaker 1: was just like a lot of confusion, a lot of violence,
Speaker 1: a lot of just a lot of mess that happened,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the survivors are quite old now.
Speaker 1: My grandfather's a survivor. He's four He was fourteen when
Speaker 1: it happened, so he's eighty nine now. And so the
Speaker 1: only way we can really get these stories or through
Speaker 1: oral histories. And I never really learned about it in school.
Speaker 1: And because i'm parents again, like I said, I didn't
Speaker 1: really know about it for a long time. So if
Speaker 1: I don't know about it, um, and this is like
Speaker 1: my history and my family, UM, I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: many other people who don't know about it. Well. I
Speaker 1: definitely was very uninformed before you came onto the other podcast.
Speaker 1: Ethnically ambiguous because it sounds like I'm plugging it, but
Speaker 1: I'm not. Um, but also go listen to it. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. But but no, I do think it's
Speaker 1: really important because it's absurd the huge like kept out
Speaker 1: of what we were taught in history class, if you
Speaker 1: can even call it that. Um. But but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to know about this huge thing
Speaker 1: that happened in our recent history that created these two. Um,
Speaker 1: can you tell us what the process was making this
Speaker 1: podcast for you and like what research you did, and
Speaker 1: we like just the steps leading up to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I originally wanted to make this UM story into
Speaker 1: a limited narrative series, but I didn't really know how
Speaker 1: that would happen UM and I Agent or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But it was just a project I wanted to work on.
Speaker 1: But it's such a vast event. I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like where I would even start. Um. And
Speaker 1: then a couple of months later, I saw um that
Speaker 1: our Heart Radio was creating a program called Next Up.
Speaker 1: And that's when the idea for the podcast came along,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, podcasts are a really
Speaker 1: good way for people to digest information. UM. It's a
Speaker 1: lot more accessible, I think than other forms of media.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cost any money, uh that in a number
Speaker 1: of ways. You can listen to it a number of ways. UM.
Speaker 1: So I thought that might be a good place to start,
Speaker 1: and I ended up getting accepted into the program. And
Speaker 1: it's it's still like a lot of work, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot of just a lot of draining work, um
Speaker 1: because you have all these like horrible facts written in
Speaker 1: like one Google dog that you're saying to people because
Speaker 1: I outlined them, and then I write a script because
Speaker 1: it's mostly a lot of my narration with it. But
Speaker 1: the first thing I did is, Um, I talked to family.
Speaker 1: I talked to my grandpa. I talked to my great
Speaker 1: aunt who was actually born the day of independence. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Sunday Monday, but just in case the day is
Speaker 1: not fifteen. So this year it happened to be a
Speaker 1: Sunday in a Monday, and you know, so I asked
Speaker 1: her what stories people told her? I asked my mom.
Speaker 1: We went to an exhibit in Pakistan that's kind of
Speaker 1: what spurred everything for partition for me, and we talked
Speaker 1: about there. I had like my dad do some voice
Speaker 1: over for my grandpa because the our connection wasn't the best.
Speaker 1: He's in Pakistan. We recorded it via WhatsApp on a
Speaker 1: pad track recorder and it's it was like it's very
Speaker 1: loud over there. There's you know. Instantly, it was just
Speaker 1: like a it was a situation. Um. But I just
Speaker 1: started reading books and then I started talking to a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and I ended up talking to an
Speaker 1: author named Nisida Jerry, whose book I referenced quite a
Speaker 1: bit in the second episode, which drops twenty two. And
Speaker 1: you know, the first thing he told me was you
Speaker 1: can't cover everything. So once you understand that that's going
Speaker 1: to be the case, and it's going to be a
Speaker 1: lot easier, and it's true, like you can't cover everything.
Speaker 1: And I kind of struggle narrative I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: because so many of the stories out there are very biased.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of you know, like the great men
Speaker 1: in history stories which I don't care about, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to tell the facts. But I quickly discovered
Speaker 1: that's really hard. My history, this is my story. This
Speaker 1: is something that impacts my family for um future to
Speaker 1: generations and my identity without a doubt. So I was like,
Speaker 1: let me kind of do it with the lens of disguise. UM.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to tell the stories that people don't
Speaker 1: really hear about. So I didn't want to talk about
Speaker 1: like meetings that happened in libraries and whatever between like
Speaker 1: all these politicians. I literally don't care about that. But
Speaker 1: out um, the way women were treated. It is thought
Speaker 1: that seventy to a hundred thousand women were raped, abducted, murdered.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: artists and creatives who had kind of like a reckoning
Speaker 1: with and then use their work to teach people about it.
Speaker 1: So an artist who reframes the narrative with her pieces
Speaker 1: and talks about the actual people it affected. A filmmaker,
Speaker 1: oral historians, uh, survivors, um that I wanted to tell.
Speaker 1: I didn't want it to be um something you would
Speaker 1: get like on the History Channel, which is totally fine,
Speaker 1: that's great, there's an audience for that. But that just
Speaker 1: isn't something that I wanted to do. You're not doing
Speaker 1: a whole bunch. No. I did watch an episode of
Speaker 1: Doctor Who that talks about partition, and I think there
Speaker 1: were like aliens or something in there. There is something
Speaker 1: thrown in there about some sci fi stuff though they
Speaker 1: did just see how Doctor Who handles partition. I mean
Speaker 1: it was actually done really well. It was written by Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was written by South Asian person and so that
Speaker 1: was like the first uh thing that I saw in
Speaker 1: my research that really case, like the emotion and and
Speaker 1: the things that people went through. And I didn't see
Speaker 1: any British people besides like the people that originally came
Speaker 1: on the mission or whatever. So that was nice. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like there there was a sci fi element.
Speaker 1: I can't what that side. It was actually something that
Speaker 1: um that people told me about. When I mentioned partition,
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, there's this episode of Doctor Who. So
Speaker 1: I've only seen that one episode, but I think it
Speaker 1: in the in my research. It was the first thing
Speaker 1: where I was like, this actually tells a perspective from
Speaker 1: the people of South Asia. Let's get to know it
Speaker 1: was written by a South Asian person. At first, I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not even going to touch that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: up next Stephen Moffatt writes about apartheiz, so I'm curious
Speaker 1: not including like including some things but not other things.
Speaker 1: What what like how did you decide what to include
Speaker 1: and what not to include? Yeah, so no way you
Speaker 1: can say, like the actual history is maybe the least
Speaker 1: important part I think of the podcast. Like I talked
Speaker 1: about like events like there's something called direct Action Day
Speaker 1: that happened about a year before the boundary line was announced.
Speaker 1: Uh Mohammad A Legiona, the future founder of Pakistan, kind
Speaker 1: of called on Muslims to be to to kind of
Speaker 1: uh have demonstrations, but it was kind of unclear what
Speaker 1: exactly that meant. And massive looting carnage took place and
Speaker 1: how that was like a big catalyst for a partition.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to like get into like this
Speaker 1: treaty and this event and like this meeting and whatever,
Speaker 1: because that information is out there if people want to know.
Speaker 1: I mentioned, that's not really the aspects UM that I
Speaker 1: took particular interest in. I wanted to talk about women
Speaker 1: and survivors and just you know, I felt I found
Speaker 1: it to be very common people who are my age
Speaker 1: and I just turned UM, I guess millennials you could say, um,
Speaker 1: their parents and only don't talk to them about it.
Speaker 1: So it's been really interesting to talk to people who
Speaker 1: are my age, who are older than me, who are
Speaker 1: younger than me, have very similar experiences and how they
Speaker 1: found out about this information. M. So those are the
Speaker 1: kind of things I wanted to focus on because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of our stories uh from minority communities UM
Speaker 1: that are out there in like mainstream media, are rarely
Speaker 1: told from our perspectives, and so I wanted I wanted
Speaker 1: this story to come from me and from other people
Speaker 1: who UM have just different experiences with partition, whether they
Speaker 1: lived through it, whether they're an oral historian, but they
Speaker 1: write a fictional novel about it to cope with their trauma,
Speaker 1: which I interviewed a woman who did do that. She
Speaker 1: was four years old when it happened, and she disassociated
Speaker 1: herself a lot with partition until she wrote about until
Speaker 1: she wrote about it in this fictionalized novel. UM, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about what forms of media were
Speaker 1: also out there, which is why I watched that Doctor
Speaker 1: Who episode. I also watched Gandhi three hours of my
Speaker 1: life I'm never going to get back. Um terrible, so
Speaker 1: not great? Um, you know, I love Richard Adinborough like
Speaker 1: Dresser Park is great, but this wasn't it. Um, So
Speaker 1: I wanted to I wanted to point people in that
Speaker 1: direction where if you actually wanted to dig deeper into
Speaker 1: this information, like here's where you should go, Like don't
Speaker 1: d um, like don't watch I mean I love the Crown,
Speaker 1: but I mean like let's be real, like you know,
Speaker 1: like if they mentioned I think India. Once in the
Speaker 1: pilot episode, um where and it took place about three
Speaker 1: months after partition happened. Up it's getting married to Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth and um what's his name? Once in Churchill is
Speaker 1: walking and he sees Lord mount Batten who was tasked
Speaker 1: with the separation of India, who was also Prince Philip's uncle,
Speaker 1: and Chill goes, oh, that's the man who gave India away,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's not really what happened, but okay,
Speaker 1: and that's the only thing that they say. Um. But
Speaker 1: I do love period dramas and I do love Corgis,
Speaker 1: which is one of the main reasons I watched The Crown. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, wait, sorry, one back is the guy who
Speaker 1: got whacked for the I r A in the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: yes Jesus, yes, yeah, I actually didn't know that until
Speaker 1: I was the Crown so uh, you know, um, because
Speaker 1: again that was into him and his history. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I ended up seeing it in the crowd. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I just I really wanted to focus on South
Speaker 1: Asians and like our story and working through how drama
Speaker 1: is and kind of reclaiming our narrative with um just
Speaker 1: kind of the truth. And you know, something that popped
Speaker 1: up when I was creating kind of getting deeper into
Speaker 1: the podcast was Miss Marvel. I knew it was going
Speaker 1: to follow him most great, but I didn't know that
Speaker 1: they would talk about partition and how that was like
Speaker 1: a major plot point and so people are starting to
Speaker 1: learn about the history because of that show, which is amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: So if I can kind of add on to that
Speaker 1: and expand um people's education. Something else I also wanted
Speaker 1: to do was I want people to have empathy and
Speaker 1: sympathy for immigrants and refugees, especially once that don't look
Speaker 1: like them, um, because we come in all colors and sizes,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think their response to Ukraine, Ukrainian
Speaker 1: refugees and the UK was great, but I don't really
Speaker 1: think that same courtesy was extended to refugees from Syria.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really important because I'm an immigrant.
Speaker 1: It took quite a long time for me to become
Speaker 1: a citizen so um, and it's very hard and it's
Speaker 1: something that people don't know about, and so I just
Speaker 1: kind of want I want people to care about things
Speaker 1: that don't directly affect them, which I think is very
Speaker 1: much like an American rooted thing. So I really I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think my podcast is going to change that,
Speaker 1: but if I can, but if people can look outside themselves,
Speaker 1: um with this, I think that would be really great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was wondering what do you actually think about the
Speaker 1: way that I smartvil like, did they talked about partition?
Speaker 1: Because I saw a lot of I don't know, I
Speaker 1: saw a lot of conflicting sort of a yeah. So
Speaker 1: I liked it, UM, but I'm also I think worriedy
Speaker 1: and you see something that has affected you in your
Speaker 1: family or has oppressed you, you expect this art form
Speaker 1: to talk about every single thing. You know, UM writ
Speaker 1: and that we bear as creative artists of color that
Speaker 1: if we don't talk about every single thing that's the
Speaker 1: Presidi community, then it's not worth our time. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the mantra that we have UM. And for me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, this show is six episodes, Like you know,
Speaker 1: you need to understand that that is not something that
Speaker 1: they can encapsulate in there while talking about all these
Speaker 1: other things. So I think it does a really good
Speaker 1: job capturing emotion. UM. I feel a lot of times
Speaker 1: you get the partition story from people, UM who are
Speaker 1: currently in India. So it was nice to see people
Speaker 1: from Pakistan, UM like, and they're from Grati just like
Speaker 1: I am. And I found it, you know, like every
Speaker 1: episode just made me just crying more I'm also very
Speaker 1: sensitive and so I would just um, you know, there
Speaker 1: was there was a particular scene where Gamala is talking
Speaker 1: to her her nanni which means grandmother, and her grandmother
Speaker 1: is like, my passport says Pakistan, but my roots are
Speaker 1: in India. And I really felt that because I was
Speaker 1: my parents were born in Pakistan, but all other generations
Speaker 1: were born in India, and that is a place. Because
Speaker 1: of how tense the borders are between these countries, I
Speaker 1: will not get to visit for the foreseeable future. If
Speaker 1: you are born in Pakistan, you are not allowed to
Speaker 1: go to India. You're not allowed to go to Pakistan.
Speaker 1: And it's just crazy because I'm like, well that's where
Speaker 1: I came from in a sense, you know. Um, so
Speaker 1: for me, just because like I said, I am a
Speaker 1: sensitive person. Like the emotion, you know, the people going
Speaker 1: on trains that you know, that is something that I
Speaker 1: talked about a lot in my podcast. A lot of
Speaker 1: people experienced or read about. Um, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were hoping to get on trains and when they tried,
Speaker 1: those trains came, We're filled with bodies and not people
Speaker 1: who are alive. And so I think it did a
Speaker 1: good job capturing the emotion. But it's like you, there's
Speaker 1: just no way you can capture the complexity of that
Speaker 1: event with that. Even with my podcast it's ten episodes,
Speaker 1: and like NISSID, you just can't cover everything, so you
Speaker 1: have to pick and choose what you want. And also
Speaker 1: like it's as an artist like for me, for me specifically,
Speaker 1: it's like I want to give you like the crumbs
Speaker 1: of something and then I want look into it more, right,
Speaker 1: Like I shouldn't have to force feed you information. I
Speaker 1: should keep you intrigued enough for you don't want to
Speaker 1: look at this information on your own, you know. So
Speaker 1: like that's how I how I see it. But I
Speaker 1: am in a little bit of a different position because
Speaker 1: M and TV, like I programmed several film festivals and
Speaker 1: things like that, so I'm almost also looking through that
Speaker 1: with that kind of I um, but like I can
Speaker 1: understand people are like, oh, I wish they talked about this.
Speaker 1: I wish they talked about this, but you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just like old six episodes. They have to do
Speaker 1: all this exposition, they have to do this, that's just impossible.
Speaker 1: But people aren't thinking that way. But I think it
Speaker 1: really captured the emotion and the trauma of that event
Speaker 1: and how how um sad did it? Um because it
Speaker 1: is sad to be like I'll never get to see
Speaker 1: where my great grandparents lived or my grandparents because they
Speaker 1: were children, you know, at least until they decide that's
Speaker 1: not the case anymore. Um. But yeah, I can understand
Speaker 1: people's but I think for me personally, I thought it
Speaker 1: did a really good job. And actually, uh, the woman
Speaker 1: who created the exhibit that I saw in Pakistan that
Speaker 1: really spearheaded this whole thing for me actually directed episodes
Speaker 1: four and five of Miss Marvel, so, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: That was another thing I guess I sort of wanted
Speaker 1: to ask about was like, what was the process of
Speaker 1: doing this? Like emotionally, I know I did a I
Speaker 1: wound up doing somewhat similar things for a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes about two and like talking to my family about
Speaker 1: what it was like in China was just like and
Speaker 1: like just doing the sort of our coup of reefers,
Speaker 1: which just like brutal, and yeah, I want to know
Speaker 1: like what that was like for you and what that
Speaker 1: was like for like your family having to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it was really draining because you're just reading
Speaker 1: so many awful things, like I read a number of
Speaker 1: different books, and you know, talking to all these people,
Speaker 1: and I think, for my grandfather, I think, like I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. He's not a very emotional person physically there
Speaker 1: with him when he was talking to me, and I
Speaker 1: think it's like something that's for sure, like in the
Speaker 1: past for him. And he was fortunate in the way
Speaker 1: that he came from an area that did have violence,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't to the extent that you of other
Speaker 1: people's accounts um and but talking to survivors was really hard.
Speaker 1: I actually went to San Francisco to talk to someone
Speaker 1: specifically because they're very hard of hearing, and so doing
Speaker 1: it virtually would have been very impossible and hard because
Speaker 1: he was saying all these things and then he would
Speaker 1: tear up, and it's like, where do you just listen
Speaker 1: to this person? And then where do you comfort them?
Speaker 1: Is really hard because I don't want to interrupt, but
Speaker 1: I don't want them to be like I don't care
Speaker 1: about what you're saying, like it's a um And that
Speaker 1: person spoke to me for two and a half hours,
Speaker 1: and I had yet to really listen to his audio
Speaker 1: I've just like listened to bits and pieces just for
Speaker 1: like clarity purposes. Um. So that's gonna be rough when
Speaker 1: that happens, and it's going to come up soon. Um.
Speaker 1: It was just really draining, and it's just like like highlighting.
Speaker 1: It's like you know when you're reading. I've read all
Speaker 1: these books and you're highlighting things, but it's like you're
Speaker 1: going to highlight the whole book because it's just there's
Speaker 1: just so many crazy things. And Yeah, it's just really sad.
Speaker 1: It's really dreaming. Like I had mentioned writing this, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, here's just like twenty minutes of terror and
Speaker 1: like any page Google doc that you have to say. Um.
Speaker 1: And that also brings up another point where even though
Speaker 1: this podcast is sad and it's not particularly pertain ways,
Speaker 1: I did want to be myself and so I try
Speaker 1: to add a little bit of lovity in there. Um.
Speaker 1: Like there was an artist who um that I mentioned
Speaker 1: Her work name is Parthica Jodrey. She had these really
Speaker 1: beautiful installations uh of like female body parts, but they
Speaker 1: ended up getting ruined in transportation and so she digitized
Speaker 1: them and is and made n f T s and
Speaker 1: so me trying to explain what an n f T
Speaker 1: is is just the most ridiculous thing in the world.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I'm not going to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But it's like lovity in there that we're talking about
Speaker 1: n f t s in this podcast, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it was. It's still like a really
Speaker 1: draining process because I say this a lot, and people
Speaker 1: I've interviewed say this, that partition isn't something that's in
Speaker 1: the past. It's been breathing and you know, prothecas it
Speaker 1: in a really distinct way where she's like it lives
Speaker 1: in families and it really does. So like every day
Speaker 1: I feel like I just kind of it's hard for
Speaker 1: me not to get bogged down with all this and
Speaker 1: I am a sensitive person, so well I tend to
Speaker 1: hold things and carry things with me. Um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been a really rough process, but I think what kind
Speaker 1: of makes it a little easier is like, well, these
Speaker 1: people's stories are getting out there. Um, people are going
Speaker 1: to learn about it now, and maybe that inspires them
Speaker 1: to learn about other events that they didn't learn in school.
Speaker 1: Like all of my education was done in Texas and
Speaker 1: that can be another podcast within itself because our education
Speaker 1: is something to say the least. Uh oh, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the way I try to look at it, like
Speaker 1: it's really rough. And then I also, um, I love
Speaker 1: reading and everything, so I'm just like, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to read this like thirsty rom com to get me
Speaker 1: away from like the horrible nous of the work I'm
Speaker 1: doing it day. Definitely a little bit of balance too.
Speaker 1: I do think to hear you say that you're I'm
Speaker 1: very sensitive as well and how you hold stuff in.
Speaker 1: I do think as people of color are families, especially
Speaker 1: like immigrant families, that people that have been through trauma.
Speaker 1: That's that's why, that's why about this, because this intergenerational
Speaker 1: trauma is something that they've kept and barely talked about,
Speaker 1: if at all. Um, So I'm really glad that like
Speaker 1: you went to San Francisco and that person was able
Speaker 1: to like release all of this and that they were
Speaker 1: holding probably for their whole life. So so yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: I I think, um, there are many reasons why your
Speaker 1: podcast is important, but I think even the chance that
Speaker 1: someone can like that not trauma sounds a little bit
Speaker 1: more dramatic than I wanted to, But like the feelings
Speaker 1: behind with that means and their family history or even
Speaker 1: if you're not South Asian, it's important to note again
Speaker 1: something that doesn't affect you. Yeah, the whole world really Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like understanding your history and like where you come
Speaker 1: it is Chinese. And she texted me she was just like,
Speaker 1: now I kind of want to look into like my history,
Speaker 1: and I'm like that's great, Like that's what I you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted if I wanted any kind of like actionable
Speaker 1: thing to happen, it's like that exact thing history looking
Speaker 1: into other people's histories. Totally wow. Um, I for we
Speaker 1: confirmed you as a guess that you're good at talking,
Speaker 1: and this confirmed that. Thank you so much. You were
Speaker 1: babbled a lot, so I was like, opinion, the perfect
Speaker 1: podcast guest like this period. Um, But I really I
Speaker 1: appreciate the both effort and like emotional energy that goes
Speaker 1: into making a show like this because I can kind
Speaker 1: of relate when I talk about the Middle East stuff,
Speaker 1: like it's really really hard. So I appreciate your time
Speaker 1: and to learn more about the partition and what that means. Um,
Speaker 1: can you tell the audience where they can find you?
Speaker 1: And the podcast obviously is where you can find it.
Speaker 1: But let's I'm going to hand it over to you.
Speaker 1: Here you go, okay. Um. So Partition podcast on augustive teen.
Speaker 1: You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, um
Speaker 1: sucially the I Heart Radio app. Um. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Instagram and Twitter, Instagram at Nahazie's Twitter at
Speaker 1: Nahazie's thirteen. And you can find Partition on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Didition podcast on Instagram. Nice um on EA, you mentioned
Speaker 1: a upcoming project you want to do that's also about
Speaker 1: like a similar topic. Yeah, what that is? Yes, something
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to do. And this is another
Speaker 1: thing that we're kind of talking about of like people
Speaker 1: not talking about like everything, like encompassing everything in like
Speaker 1: one uh story. So um, something very it happened in
Speaker 1: when East Pakislan became Bangladesh. Um and a lot of
Speaker 1: my mom's families from there, My grandma UM and a
Speaker 1: lot of her family currently live there. And it's again
Speaker 1: very similar to Partition, a lot of violence. UM. And
Speaker 1: that story, to me, UM deserves its own time and respect.
Speaker 1: And I remember when I first talked about partition, They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna talk about this, and I'm like, I want
Speaker 1: to mention it. But it is too just kind of
Speaker 1: throw into what I'm doing because it deserves way more
Speaker 1: than that. So that is another story that I want
Speaker 1: to tell. And it actually celebrated it's fiftie anniversary last year. UM.
Speaker 1: And from my understanding, it's all memorials in either India
Speaker 1: or Pakistan that commemorates, not commemorates, but showcases like how
Speaker 1: partition was. Like we don't you know, there isn't like
Speaker 1: a like here all the people who died, or here's
Speaker 1: this or here's like the statue of a bird or
Speaker 1: that that you know that people. There's no like communal
Speaker 1: place of grief. And it is my understand that Bangladesh
Speaker 1: really does have these things. I believe there's a Liberation
Speaker 1: museum and statues and there is a Partition museum, but
Speaker 1: it is not a government sanction thing. It's privately owned.
Speaker 1: And again it with it being in India, UM, there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of barriers, like it's not a place
Speaker 1: I can visit um and so UM that is something
Speaker 1: I'm actually trying to go to Bangladesh UM this year
Speaker 1: and it's been a little bit difficult, I think, trying
Speaker 1: to obtain her visa. But I hope she gets to
Speaker 1: go soon, and I hope I get to go with her.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, that's other stories that I want to
Speaker 1: tell because I feel like it is starting to kind
Speaker 1: of people are starting to understand that. But I feel
Speaker 1: like one is just not there at all. Um it's
Speaker 1: I think, something that people seem to just forget about,
Speaker 1: and it's just crazy to think. I'm like, it's that's
Speaker 1: not that long from like seventy five years, like fifty years.
Speaker 1: That's not a long time. Um. So it's just like
Speaker 1: really insane when you think about it that way, and um,
Speaker 1: especially when you think of how ancient these and just
Speaker 1: how new these places are. UM. So yeah, that's something
Speaker 1: I would definitely love to tell. Um. I would love
Speaker 1: for my next project to be on that, um but
Speaker 1: that decision is not up to me. So hopefully, um
Speaker 1: hopefully it'll work out. Yeah, I really hope so too. UM.
Speaker 1: I do really appreciate, I'm sure everyone else does, to
Speaker 1: the fact that you're talking about things that are just
Speaker 1: glossed over or not even mentioned. Usually I hate that,
Speaker 1: like it's usually our job to educate people. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, you're doing a fantastic job and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see the other projects you do. But obviously
Speaker 1: listen to Partition everybody first. UM, yeah, that's the show. Hello,
Speaker 1: this is it could happen here. And today it's me
Speaker 1: James and I'm joined by and Diego and we are
Speaker 1: talking about San Diego's lying there and how he likes
Speaker 1: to punch down on poor people even though he promised
Speaker 1: he wouldn't. So joining me today, I'm gonna ask you
Speaker 1: guys to want to introduce yourselves. It can spend a
Speaker 1: little bit about a background you have in the area
Speaker 1: and then we'll get into it because there's a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. So, Mandy, would you like to go first?
Speaker 1: H I'm Mandy. I am I'm a homeless advocate and
Speaker 1: mostly do um on the groundwork mutually and then I
Speaker 1: advocate for them as much as I can almost city municipalities. Um,
Speaker 1: and just organize that way great, And Colleen, you can
Speaker 1: go next to us. Okay, Yeah, my name is Colin Cusack.
Speaker 1: I'm a criminal defense attorney and I uh represent uh
Speaker 1: perhaps my fifty homeless person's pro bono right now who
Speaker 1: are sighted with the crimes of survival such as encroachment
Speaker 1: and over So I can challenge and have them to
Speaker 1: quote unconstitutional McConnell. I'm an advocate for people who are
Speaker 1: living unsheltered or homeless, and I've been working on this
Speaker 1: for about thirteen years. First part working within this system
Speaker 1: as a philanthropist, advocate, volunteers, former vice chair of the
Speaker 1: Regional Task Force on the Homeless and founding was a
Speaker 1: founding member of a local philanthropy group called Funders Togethered
Speaker 1: and Homelessness San Diego. I have participated on quite a
Speaker 1: few initiatives Blitz Week where we housed about a hundred
Speaker 1: people in three days, Cities initiative where we worked on
Speaker 1: any veteran and chronic homelessness created the regions first by
Speaker 1: nameless for veterans. Worked on a lot of CEOC continuum
Speaker 1: of care initiatives such as how we score projects to
Speaker 1: get homelessness funding. H long communicated with our endless elected Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's an mayor who's made so many promises over the
Speaker 1: years and so many claims on homelessness. People just doubt
Speaker 1: almost everything he says about homelessness at this point. Rightfully so,
Speaker 1: and uh probably most I on the ground advocacy now
Speaker 1: where I do a lot of in Camas support work
Speaker 1: with of course unsheltered people, filmed the police around in
Speaker 1: camera sweeps and enforcement of of laws at target and
Speaker 1: continue that till this day. Nice Yeah, containing a lot
Speaker 1: of work on the street. And then LEVI last been
Speaker 1: at least ed Hi you guys, I'm levionly with homeful Solutions, UM.
Speaker 1: I have lived experience and being homeless. UM. I also
Speaker 1: worked with a group about the kids called Lived Experience
Speaker 1: Advisors here in San Diego. UM we try to hold
Speaker 1: him accountable UM. And uh we're also able to advocate
Speaker 1: for uh a lot of what these people need in
Speaker 1: the recovery process, just beyond like, UM, housing, which is
Speaker 1: the main thing you know that uh, the real estate crisis. UM.
Speaker 1: And then I also work as a housing navigator downtown. UM.
Speaker 1: So I work with a case load of about two clients, UM,
Speaker 1: about sixty or seventy of them. I would say, have
Speaker 1: UM s M I s UM really in like uh
Speaker 1: kind of one of the main areas of town that UM,
Speaker 1: you know, we have a lot of these people living outdoors.
Speaker 1: So UM, I'm at kind of the front lines of
Speaker 1: it every day when it comes to people needed to
Speaker 1: get a show one that they cry to um, you
Speaker 1: know when when they think that it's a you know,
Speaker 1: when they don't understand that it's the system that's broken.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm the one that they get yelled at,
Speaker 1: but that gets yelled at, but you know, they think
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not doing an off, you know, and be
Speaker 1: able to see all sides of it and see the
Speaker 1: promises that get made. And I literally have clients come
Speaker 1: in and say, oh, hey, look everything's gonna be fine
Speaker 1: because the mayor just said this week he's opening a
Speaker 1: new shelter. And I'm like, all right, let's do the math.
Speaker 1: That's a right, And there's eight thousand homes people in
Speaker 1: the county, so you know, and so um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have to kind of break down that. It's a good responsibility,
Speaker 1: I guess, to to break down the system to my
Speaker 1: clients so that they can understand how broken as uh,
Speaker 1: you know, me being able to teach some patients to
Speaker 1: get them through the process too. So yeah that's me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good, thank you. And so yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: get into because it consistently, I think, like every time,
Speaker 1: like I like to ride my bike around a lot,
Speaker 1: I'm always riding around town. Often are running to people
Speaker 1: who are in distress, right, especially when we ride past
Speaker 1: the hospital, will do something we can get into and
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, just just call up what you
Speaker 1: sort of out with a shelter like and then they'll
Speaker 1: have this horrible moment of realization where they're like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: like there's nowhere for this person to go. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Todd Gloria. Right, Todd Gloria's
Speaker 1: are there. He's a Democrat, he ran on a very
Speaker 1: progressed uh and what he's done has been extremely reactionary.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to start just by reading some Todd tweets.
Speaker 1: Todds a poster um, perhaps not not as much of
Speaker 1: a poster as Rachel Richel laying his I guess Sian's manager.
Speaker 1: I think she has the soul of a poster and
Speaker 1: will attack people working like Michael to help people, which
Speaker 1: is distressing to see. But I wanted to I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk, so I've got a few tweets here. June. Yes,
Speaker 1: I will be the first to enforce the law against
Speaker 1: those sheltered around sheltered who break any law, but I
Speaker 1: will not use our code to harass and criminalize sick
Speaker 1: and poor people. That's the number one organ bean. What
Speaker 1: if we chose to take the resources we used to
Speaker 1: criminalize the homeless and redirect them to building housing instead.
Speaker 1: What if Todd um Janu in his tag Michael in
Speaker 1: this one. Maybe right, But the sad fact is that
Speaker 1: this before the p I t C. That's the point
Speaker 1: in time count of un housed people. It happens all
Speaker 1: the time. It's unfair to the unsheltered and too STPD.
Speaker 1: My goal is to end chronic homelessness. The only way
Speaker 1: to do this is with permanent supportive housing, not criminalization. Right,
Speaker 1: But that's not what you did, Californians of all political views. No,
Speaker 1: a homelessness crisis is a serious problem. More housing and services,
Speaker 1: not criminalization. It's past time to tackle this problem. I
Speaker 1: could keep going with these things, but I will get
Speaker 1: the pictures. So Todge talked a lot about how we
Speaker 1: don't need to criminalize poverty, how we don't need to
Speaker 1: criminalize living on the street. Uh, and then has proceeded
Speaker 1: to criminalize living on the street. Right, and so maybe
Speaker 1: we can just start with these happened pretty much consistently.
Speaker 1: I think since Todd took office and UH, people might
Speaker 1: be familiar with a little bit, like they may have
Speaker 1: seen some of the bikes being thrown away that that
Speaker 1: was like Michael had a video of that which which
Speaker 1: had how many Oh gosh, yeah, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: people have seen that. But perhaps one if you would
Speaker 1: like to describe like exactly like how a sweep goes
Speaker 1: down right, Like like there's there's a process of posting
Speaker 1: sometimes a process of posting notices. But this is because
Speaker 1: people are encroaching, Like what's the sort of justification for it?
Speaker 1: And then what does that look like for people on
Speaker 1: the ground every fourteenth of this year, but Glorious started
Speaker 1: his sweep enforcement. Um. It was unspoken during COVID, Uh,
Speaker 1: they were just killing people with COVID and instead of
Speaker 1: my police, although the police were doing so this this
Speaker 1: what the police do at the sweeps as they use
Speaker 1: a series of unconstitutional ordinances city ordinances only existing in
Speaker 1: the city of San Diego. UM. And these unconstitutional ordinances
Speaker 1: taken together eagle for um, anybody to exist in public space,
Speaker 1: so me, our mothers, our children, anybody in public space
Speaker 1: can be ticketed for these violations because they're so overbroad.
Speaker 1: For example, standing on a sidewalk, just being there on
Speaker 1: a sidewalk, UM will be enough to get you a
Speaker 1: citation issued if you can't prove you have a house
Speaker 1: to live in. UM. These laws, like I said, they're
Speaker 1: written over broad. They apply to everyone. Use their discretion
Speaker 1: to only use them against or persons. The Vehicle Habitation
Speaker 1: Ordinance UM lists a series of items that if they're
Speaker 1: found in your car, police could use those to arrest you.
Speaker 1: And those items it's like food, water, trash. So everybody
Speaker 1: with food, water, or trash. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: all three, just one of them. UM could be the
Speaker 1: objected to arrested, have their comfort, have their taken to shelter,
Speaker 1: having their children taken to CPS, and all because UM,
Speaker 1: the city wants to come after poor people with with ordinances. UM.
Speaker 1: So here's the fund. These ordinances can be charged either
Speaker 1: as misdemeanors or infractions. Mayor Glory announced a progressive ordinance
Speaker 1: scheme which means on day one, say Monday of the week,
Speaker 1: the individal jewel. On day two, the individual is issued
Speaker 1: a infraction citation. That infraction citation gives them a day
Speaker 1: to appear months down the road UM to contest the case.
Speaker 1: But the very next day, they can be issued a misdemeanor.
Speaker 1: That misdemeanor station also has a date months down the
Speaker 1: road the resolution and then UM gave four. They can
Speaker 1: be arrested and taken into custody UM all without ever
Speaker 1: having a day and UM the citations, if there are
Speaker 1: issued to people in Midway or downtown San Diego, direct
Speaker 1: them to appear in Claremont Mesa. It's about twelve miles away.
Speaker 1: These are individuals that have mobility issues. They can't get
Speaker 1: to and from court can't They can't really get to
Speaker 1: and from the end of the street very well without
Speaker 1: police starting to take away their property. Court won't allow
Speaker 1: them to bring their property in with them. The buses
Speaker 1: won't allow them to bring their property on the buses.
Speaker 1: So they have to make a choice. Do they all
Speaker 1: the remaining property that they have in the world to
Speaker 1: go to court to defend against the charge that they're
Speaker 1: really don't have the The police can cite either as
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor infraction, but when they sit as an edule
Speaker 1: doesn't get UM an appointed attorney and UM nor jury
Speaker 1: trial and so UM the punishment the issuance of the
Speaker 1: citation becomes the punishment process, we're just to get to
Speaker 1: court and take care of your responsibilities becomes a chore,
Speaker 1: even if later it's dismissed. We found out through public
Speaker 1: records requests that of the misdemeanors that are being cited
Speaker 1: are so people aren't getting their attempt, their their opportunity
Speaker 1: to defend themselves in court. They're all being dismissed. Um.
Speaker 1: So if the city was was serious about believing that
Speaker 1: these individuals were committing criminal offenses, and they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: dismissing them after of them after they were were issued.
Speaker 1: So colleens talking about the the the laws or the
Speaker 1: codes that are used to used during enforcement sweeps of
Speaker 1: people out here on the streets. So the police go
Speaker 1: out and you codes and municipal codes, two right people
Speaker 1: tickets and eventually take them to jail. That's just one
Speaker 1: kind of sweep. That's the enforcement sweeps. There's also sweeps
Speaker 1: or abatement sweeps. We call them homeless and CABA sweeps
Speaker 1: or homeless community sweeps where per settlement with past lawsuits,
Speaker 1: the city has to post three hour seventy two notices
Speaker 1: in areas. Then police and Environmental Services and clean up
Speaker 1: cruise and they'll throw away all your belongings if you're
Speaker 1: not there, So that's another kind of sweep. So there's
Speaker 1: actually two kinds of sweeps. There's these clean up sweeps
Speaker 1: where they throw away your belongings, and then there's the
Speaker 1: enforcement sweeps where they just go out with sometimes oh gosh, Colleen,
Speaker 1: we've probably seen as many as fifteen maybe fifteen plus
Speaker 1: police go out to ticket people in a particular homeless community.
Speaker 1: So and just to the ringer with all these citations
Speaker 1: that Colleen went through. Yeah, and then preps leave. Are
Speaker 1: you familiar with the system, right? I think maybe the
Speaker 1: the idea here is that the police are supposed to
Speaker 1: offer them shelter, right, if they asked a shelter, they're
Speaker 1: supposed to offer it to them. Can you just exp
Speaker 1: shelter could be extremely difficult or impossible for people to access. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And then I'll tell you kind of some of the
Speaker 1: consequences that UM people face even or as a result
Speaker 1: of this. But um so basically like let me paint
Speaker 1: the picture for you. So, UM, our location is a
Speaker 1: have any housing here on site? Um? And uh so
Speaker 1: the clients will typically there's a line out the gate
Speaker 1: when we get here at eight o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: At eight o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock, all
Speaker 1: I do is shelter refer that's everybody that's coming in
Speaker 1: the door that wants to get a shelter bed for
Speaker 1: that night that night. Right, we're doing this at eight
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. And UM. Oftentimes I will get
Speaker 1: one or two. Some days I don't get anyone into
Speaker 1: shelter um clock. All of those beds are full. And
Speaker 1: that's what they report back to me, is the service provider,
Speaker 1: right is is at nine o'clock in the morning, there's
Speaker 1: no more shelter beds. Um. And uh. On top of
Speaker 1: that very thing to him mentioned too is like you know,
Speaker 1: the police are supposed to offer them shelter, but um
Speaker 1: we have like some kind of like conglomerates as far
Speaker 1: as organizations go in the shelter space. UM. So if
Speaker 1: a client is for some reason not allowed to go back, UM,
Speaker 1: that's one pretty much forever um and be it could
Speaker 1: be something like behavior like they got anxiety and yelled
Speaker 1: at somebody, right, or it could be uh, someone who
Speaker 1: can't complete their A d l S as they call it, UM,
Speaker 1: or like an incontinence issue. Um, So there's times yes
Speaker 1: it is sanitary and medically necessary for you to use
Speaker 1: this little bottle or whatever. But then the shelter will
Speaker 1: then kick them out and not let them return for
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So by nine o'clock, the shelter
Speaker 1: beds are full. Um. In the beginning when playing, they
Speaker 1: were doing their sweeps real early. Um. Now they're doing
Speaker 1: their sweeps um after the time that I'm being told
Speaker 1: as a service provider that the shelters are already full.
Speaker 1: And um. And on top of that, our shelter her system,
Speaker 1: you're there during the day, right, So some of these
Speaker 1: people that they're taking their stuff and throwing it away
Speaker 1: are actually in shelter. You know, they just had to
Speaker 1: take their belongings with them back to the streets where
Speaker 1: everyone can see them every day. And and um. Recently,
Speaker 1: I had a client who we had spent like a
Speaker 1: month and a half trying to get him in the
Speaker 1: shelter every single day and it wasn't going through. Finally
Speaker 1: we got him in the shelter, and um a ticket
Speaker 1: for encroachment that you know, was not paid and he
Speaker 1: didn't go to court. So even though he was in
Speaker 1: shelter in the middle of the day, the police officers
Speaker 1: stopped him. They arrested him for his warrant. He was
Speaker 1: in there all weekend and he lost a shelter. Then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's and perhaps you and Mandy could explain then,
Speaker 1: like some of the things, because yeah, under the guys,
Speaker 1: if I guess a clean up or a bait call it,
Speaker 1: like often that actively stripping people of the things that
Speaker 1: they need to access shelter, to access housing, to transport
Speaker 1: themselves around, right, And just what if you want to
Speaker 1: take on like what this means. M Well, they'll you know,
Speaker 1: they do it under the guys that we're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: we're cleaning up the area. UM. But they will drag
Speaker 1: entire tent people's belongings and put them in the compactor.
Speaker 1: They won't go through them. They never look. Oftentimes there's
Speaker 1: medication and their ideas, paperwork, things that you know, people
Speaker 1: have to have to survive. UM. You know, people can't
Speaker 1: get have identification. It's really difficult for them to get identification.
Speaker 1: UM living on the streets. You know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: process and that process UM sets outreach workers back. So
Speaker 1: you know you've got an outreach worker who may have
Speaker 1: got them an i D and you know they've taken
Speaker 1: their UM. It's called the espadat when they're entered into
Speaker 1: the how sing system and they're waiting a housing match
Speaker 1: and then their i D and everything gets thrown away.
Speaker 1: So then the outreach worker has to take time to
Speaker 1: go back their i D when they could be helping
Speaker 1: you know, someone else get set up to maybe get
Speaker 1: into housing. UM. You know they don't, they don't look
Speaker 1: through the things. This causes UM so much trauma for
Speaker 1: these folks. I've seen so a lot of times with
Speaker 1: sweeps UM. Sometimes I say, they'll allow people to gather
Speaker 1: their things and move them and then they'll sweep the area.
Speaker 1: I've seen times when they have had things, they moved
Speaker 1: their things and then the police surround their things while
Speaker 1: people are standing there and they place their things in
Speaker 1: front of them while they are begging for their things,
Speaker 1: and they them and they will put them in the
Speaker 1: track compact or in front of them and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: the only way that you can view that is it's
Speaker 1: just punishment, like you're not you know, you're out here,
Speaker 1: you're poor, we don't have many options for you. But
Speaker 1: We're going to do this to deter you because we
Speaker 1: just don't want to see you here. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: remember I was talking to someone downtown a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago and stop to give some folks some water,
Speaker 1: and like, this is the ship I chose to bring
Speaker 1: with me, Like I didn't. You know, it's not like
Speaker 1: I could take everything, And these are the things that
Speaker 1: I wanted to keep because they were special to me.
Speaker 1: And yet now now they're being trashed. Indeed, I think
Speaker 1: a person was thrown in it's right, yeah, like inside
Speaker 1: their tent and just fucking unbelievable. And so, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: established these sweeps are cruel. We've established that there's not
Speaker 1: really anywhere for people to go, and that they don't
Speaker 1: they don't provide a lasting solution to homelessness. They just
Speaker 1: they just move people around and make it harder for them.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that we do in
Speaker 1: San Diego is that we we have this thing quote
Speaker 1: a point in time count right, and I think the
Speaker 1: students at the sweeps were increased in certain areas around
Speaker 1: the point in time counts. Is what if you want
Speaker 1: to explain what that count like is and does? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Point in Time count really only captures, like
Speaker 1: one night out of the year, people experiencing homelessness. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a couple of ostables. Um that process this
Speaker 1: year was particularly really cold that night. Um there were
Speaker 1: some tech glitches that should have been worked out way
Speaker 1: more in advance. UM. But UM, that really only pictures
Speaker 1: like takes capture of one night. The data I like
Speaker 1: to often refer to because it just feels more realistic
Speaker 1: to me is um our t fh Um states that
Speaker 1: in any given year, there's thirty thousand people seeking assistance
Speaker 1: for homelessness. So are point in time count you know,
Speaker 1: shows one night. Um, there is data being collected all
Speaker 1: year round. So at the point in time count, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of volunteers, UM go out very early
Speaker 1: in the morning. UM, they have them count the population
Speaker 1: to some interviews with them real quick. Um. The interviews
Speaker 1: are very personal. UM. You know it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily something somebody wants to wake up and answer at
Speaker 1: five am. But we found some people that were you know, UM,
Speaker 1: but that's that's the point in time count and a
Speaker 1: nutshell Okay, And then like, what's I know that downtown
Speaker 1: I think the downtown partnership collects our own data, right,
Speaker 1: because the data we have is very unreliable, what's the
Speaker 1: best guess at people like maybe in the city sheltered
Speaker 1: at at this time, over fifteen hundred unsheltered homelessness, meaning
Speaker 1: that they're not in a shelter or you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of program, okay, in just and that's just in
Speaker 1: downtown San Diego, not the whole county, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So downtown San Diego, for people not familiar, is a
Speaker 1: pretty small part of a very large county, right and
Speaker 1: with I think San Diego has the highest ratio of
Speaker 1: average income to property prices anywhere in the country now costly,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly unaffordable. And so this has led unfortunately but
Speaker 1: probably pretty predictably to a number of deaths on our streets,
Speaker 1: right and for four last week, for in a seven
Speaker 1: day period this August is it's hot. It's it's hot
Speaker 1: for San Diego right now. And despite this, we've seen
Speaker 1: this just like incredibly callous response from the city. I
Speaker 1: guess we've seen Todd for instance, to Gloria, who's on
Speaker 1: there giving a speech in front of a shelter where
Speaker 1: somebody's remains were taken away a few hours before and
Speaker 1: not mentioning that someone had just passed away in that place.
Speaker 1: I want to talk gap between rhetoric and reality, because
Speaker 1: if you were only learning about this from the city
Speaker 1: and towards Twitter account, you'd think that it was fined
Speaker 1: right because he's posting about these new shelter pits. But
Speaker 1: perhaps you can explain how best that's a it's a
Speaker 1: distraction from a problem is getting worse. I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: there's the reality that they want the public to ski,
Speaker 1: and then there's the reality that's happening. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that they're failing so badly um at getting people
Speaker 1: into services because um, many of the services just don't
Speaker 1: fit people. UM. So they want to paint this picture
Speaker 1: that all the unsheltered people that are out in their tents,
Speaker 1: living on the street, or living in their view goals
Speaker 1: are service resistant. Um. And I hear that all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, we asked them, they don't want to It's
Speaker 1: not that people don't want services. Many of these people
Speaker 1: have tried some of the service centers in San Diego
Speaker 1: and the barriers are extremely high. Um. You know, the
Speaker 1: check in time and check out time can be difficult
Speaker 1: for people. UM, they'll separate families so UM. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the they'll tell you, oh, you can go in
Speaker 1: together if your husband and wife or if your partners,
Speaker 1: and then you get to the shelters and they say,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you can't be together because okay, so you
Speaker 1: have to go to a men's shelter and you have
Speaker 1: to go to a women shelter. UM. They'll also do
Speaker 1: that with uh. Say a mother has a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old son and she needs to go into a shelter,
Speaker 1: and there's not a family shelter, UM, she cannot take
Speaker 1: her a women shelter with her. He has to go
Speaker 1: into a men's shelter. UM. So you know, then you know,
Speaker 1: people with their pets, they're only source of like love
Speaker 1: and acceptance. You know, a lot of places won't take pets.
Speaker 1: A lot of places they're using substances. So we've got
Speaker 1: all these boundaries that are keeping people on the streets,
Speaker 1: and no one's talking about that, and no one's talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that some of not all of them,
Speaker 1: but some of the service providers are profiting off of
Speaker 1: these poor people because they represent state and federal dollars. UM.
Speaker 1: So you've got shelters that are run horribly, and you know,
Speaker 1: the more people that come in, they just want to
Speaker 1: cycle them through because that gives them money. CEO and
Speaker 1: all of their family members that are you know, working
Speaker 1: for the nonprofit UM and and these people because they're unsheltered,
Speaker 1: they don't feel they have a voice, they don't feel
Speaker 1: they can speak up because of retaliation. So they're just
Speaker 1: constantly and then you've got the city who's saying, look
Speaker 1: at all these fantastic things we're doing UM, which is
Speaker 1: couldn't be farther from the truth UM, And then they
Speaker 1: constantly use the narrator that folks are service resistant UM.
Speaker 1: Services that are out there are too few and too difficult,
Speaker 1: and just they're not meaning people where they're at and
Speaker 1: they're just setting people up to fail every time. Another
Speaker 1: thing I want to get into with the shelter specifically,
Speaker 1: is these congregate shelters, right, and what in the in
Speaker 1: the context of an ongoing pandemic that maybe is transitioning
Speaker 1: into another pandemic, can you explain what what's a congregated shelter? Right?
Speaker 1: It's along word, but what does it mean? And how
Speaker 1: are those dangerous especially for medically compromised older people living
Speaker 1: on the street. Both of our shelter system here in
Speaker 1: San Diego. In the city of San Diego is congregate
Speaker 1: shelter h meaning people are just placed in big room
Speaker 1: or in some cases big circus type tents. We have
Speaker 1: a few of those where people are sleeping in cotton
Speaker 1: three ft apart. So you can imagine how horrible that
Speaker 1: is for the spread of disease. That's why we've had
Speaker 1: some very large outbreaks of COVID in our in our
Speaker 1: shelter system, and and they're frequently closed to new intakes.
Speaker 1: I think it's really let folks know that, Like you said,
Speaker 1: if you live, if you look at mayor glorious Twitter
Speaker 1: or social media feed, you think they're doing everything they
Speaker 1: can and there's all these resources, But on any given day,
Speaker 1: there may be a few dozen shelter beds, literally thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of people that are sleeping on our streets
Speaker 1: at night. And the only reason there's a few dozen
Speaker 1: shelter beds is because they've kicked some people out that
Speaker 1: day for a breaking some minor rules. Most people who
Speaker 1: leave shelter street, so shelter is not a very good
Speaker 1: pathway to anything roughly one in seven people who leaves
Speaker 1: a City of San Diego shelter go to a permanent
Speaker 1: housing solution. That's that's a very very In fact, under
Speaker 1: Mayor Gloria, I've seen some of the lowest success rates
Speaker 1: of our system than I've ever seen in my thirteen
Speaker 1: years of working on this. Our our system has actually
Speaker 1: is actually working worse. For Todd, Gloria took over, so
Speaker 1: he has done very very little, and most of what
Speaker 1: he's done has been mostly performative, adding some shelter beds
Speaker 1: here and there, uh very little on the house. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's left tens of millions of dollars on the table
Speaker 1: that he hasn't applied for. He did not utilize a
Speaker 1: California funding stream called Project Room Key that would have
Speaker 1: allowed him to rent hotel rooms most and dime on
Speaker 1: our taxpayer dime to get people off the street. He
Speaker 1: actually refused to do that. He has refused to open
Speaker 1: safe camp areas where people could go and camp and
Speaker 1: get off of the sidewalk. Many of us and and
Speaker 1: others in the community have pushed for real solutions and
Speaker 1: for him to utilize these funding sources, and he's absolutely
Speaker 1: refused to do it. Meanwhile, like we stated earlier, he
Speaker 1: has the plus garbage trucks and everybody else to go
Speaker 1: out there and make people's lives miserable. So he's just
Speaker 1: been an absolute failure on this issue. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, he's been the one who's given the most
Speaker 1: two solutions for this. It is absolutely incredible what a
Speaker 1: disaster he has been for, not only for the unsheltered community,
Speaker 1: but for San Diego. I've begun I've that he is
Speaker 1: San Diego's worst enemy, and and I just can't believe
Speaker 1: as somebody who supported him, supported him in his election
Speaker 1: urge people to vote for him. Oh who do winked?
Speaker 1: I was. I just can't believe that this guy has
Speaker 1: been so horrible for our city and and and every
Speaker 1: indication is that he's going to continue being He's gonna
Speaker 1: continue running the vide into the ground. People die on
Speaker 1: our streets at record numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: But but didn't when he came out of the gate,
Speaker 1: didn't Gloria how many people he was gonna house under
Speaker 1: his term, and didn't me low ball at the lower
Speaker 1: the number than than in previous years. Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: was some kind of a yeah, they or a federal
Speaker 1: government goal that he set, and he actually set a
Speaker 1: goal of housing people that was less than we had
Speaker 1: done in the previous year. So his his big stretch
Speaker 1: was to actually house fewer people. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't even know if he's even getting there. I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy, this, this guy is unbelievable. The kind of
Speaker 1: nonsense that he is pulling on the citizens of our city.
Speaker 1: It is unbelievable. Has invested so much in pr and
Speaker 1: he's got these folks who who are just good at
Speaker 1: spinning this this nonsense to make it sound good. And
Speaker 1: because he gets a lot of media big obviously a
Speaker 1: big pulpit to disput this nonsense from he's he's able
Speaker 1: to get a lot of people to believe it. Now
Speaker 1: on homelessness, anybody who has a decent set of eyes,
Speaker 1: it's basically calling bullshit. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: a whole lot of people anymore who think we're we're
Speaker 1: doing very well on this issue. And so I think
Speaker 1: he's gonna have a harder and harder time convincing people
Speaker 1: that he's worthy of worthy of reelection of a higher
Speaker 1: office at some point, which is all he seems to
Speaker 1: care about yeah more so, so he's personally to blame.
Speaker 1: He has personal involvement of getting rid of ten thousand
Speaker 1: s r O single rental units that that if we
Speaker 1: had minus our eight thousand homeless people, we would not
Speaker 1: have homelessness of units that he was required to replace
Speaker 1: and never replace them. That's his fault. UM, I call
Speaker 1: him a monster. I I was gonna criminalize, but he
Speaker 1: was a Republican. We expected it of him, and he
Speaker 1: didn't tell the promise less he was gonna end criminalization
Speaker 1: to get our vote. UM. One of the reasons that
Speaker 1: are probably the only the main reason that that Glory
Speaker 1: didn't put funding into Project Group key Um was because
Speaker 1: the city is in this unique position of owning and
Speaker 1: operating the nonprofit that runs the convention center. So when
Speaker 1: COVID hit, they were looking at nonprofit going belly up
Speaker 1: events in there and having to lay off all their staff.
Speaker 1: So instead of putting people in hotels where they'd be safe,
Speaker 1: they put them in a convention center where they'd be
Speaker 1: exposed to COVID and would die. But the city funded
Speaker 1: convin nonprofit would be funded. So UM Dutch and A
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty two million dollars is what Todd Gloria
Speaker 1: got the city to to pay out on a settlement
Speaker 1: on Ash Street as his boom dogg all if he
Speaker 1: cost us that, he convinced city council to invest all
Speaker 1: this money to slide donor money too, slight city money
Speaker 1: to his donors for the listeners who aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: great scene. So, James, if you were going to go
Speaker 1: buy a house right now, uh, you would think it
Speaker 1: is important a property inspection? Correct? Yes? Ye? Would you
Speaker 1: think it would be important to google or seek out
Speaker 1: documents that may inform you of asbestos prior to your purchase? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do want to know that. Yeah. So these are
Speaker 1: two of the opportunities that they missed when they entered
Speaker 1: this deal with UH, with the one on one Ash Street. Um,
Speaker 1: so they basically had a middleman SISTERA come in and
Speaker 1: purchased the property and then least to own it back
Speaker 1: to the At no time was an inspection done. The
Speaker 1: asbestos wash people were aware of it, um, but there
Speaker 1: was no studies done on what the impact was going
Speaker 1: to be in all that. So now we've got ourselves
Speaker 1: sunk into this deal that is taxpayers two hundred and
Speaker 1: two million dollars, right, So I punched some of the maths, okay,
Speaker 1: And if you assume uh, one year's rent as twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars, right, two and two million divided by
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is more than eight thousand people that this
Speaker 1: taxpayer money, you know. And it's always it's just and
Speaker 1: it's in a cycle, and it's it's not only the
Speaker 1: cycle there. But we don't have enough police, so they're
Speaker 1: bringing in more police when we don't have the housing.
Speaker 1: And then the police that we do have are working
Speaker 1: overtime to pick up shopping carts and throw away tents,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, so the as street deal, there's
Speaker 1: plenty to go. It is uh like historically going to
Speaker 1: go down in San Diego's screw ups for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a giant monument to grift go ahead, but we
Speaker 1: don't have any police. Is also more gas lighting. We
Speaker 1: have started professing law thirty years ago to police officers
Speaker 1: would show up at the scene. Now at least six
Speaker 1: police officers show up every single time. We have an
Speaker 1: overblight of of police and we could afford to lay
Speaker 1: off two thirds yeah yeah, but instead we just built
Speaker 1: childcarec and fluid spinking back on that real quick about
Speaker 1: the police, um one, I think they also push the
Speaker 1: narrative that you know, there's this hot team, the homeless
Speaker 1: outreach team, that the police they never take water, they
Speaker 1: never really take anything. Um, And they search for unsheltered
Speaker 1: people and thence and they rarely get any traffic to
Speaker 1: these things. And people often wonder why, Um, we cannot
Speaker 1: expect unsheltered people to trust and accept help people that
Speaker 1: criminalize them, to arisee them, harass them and throw their
Speaker 1: things away. UM. So you know, adding more police to
Speaker 1: deal with homelessness, Um, it's just also a waste of money.
Speaker 1: It causes more trauma to the unsheltered people unnecessary. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about this duality between like what said and
Speaker 1: what what what exists on the street, right, And it's
Speaker 1: it's very apparent people on the internet left to be
Speaker 1: wrong about George or well. But the one time recently
Speaker 1: where I felt that like, oh well would be a
Speaker 1: useful things to deploy is the idea of a care court,
Speaker 1: like which is the thing that Todd has been very
Speaker 1: strong on to gavin nuisance. First right courts, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: don't care about people. So can someone explain what a
Speaker 1: care court is and why it's relevant in this setting.
Speaker 1: So framework of this is you have a bunch of
Speaker 1: um liberals in Gloria and Gavin Knistance ear saying we
Speaker 1: have to, uh, we have to end homelessness, and the
Speaker 1: politicians are saying, oh, well, we can't and home because
Speaker 1: they're all mentally ill drug users. Okay, So that's the
Speaker 1: first premise that we're working with, and they're not. Ten
Speaker 1: are used drugs in a mental illness and debilitating to
Speaker 1: an abilitating extent. And the homeless population. Um, this uh
Speaker 1: is parallels the rate of drug use in the house community.
Speaker 1: We don't take houses away from drug users who are
Speaker 1: housed and make them get sober before we return their
Speaker 1: houses to them. So requiring that they be sober bes
Speaker 1: how is asked backwards? Um, we have to get them
Speaker 1: into housing first. Now the care court is set up
Speaker 1: just to pass more money to their donors. That's all
Speaker 1: it's set up to do. It's not gonna ease anything.
Speaker 1: It's gonna set up a situation where a person is
Speaker 1: considered gravely disabled then they can be put into a conservatorship.
Speaker 1: And gravely disabled is defined as unable to provide shelter
Speaker 1: for oneself. So essentially everybody who is cooled, bably disabled
Speaker 1: and the rich who got them in this position can
Speaker 1: make all the decisions for them. I'm very passionate about
Speaker 1: this because it's it's cruel and it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: essentially the return of all the yea that was set
Speaker 1: set turned off. The whole reason that you know, Reagan
Speaker 1: got every get everybody released from the prisons because of
Speaker 1: the mental illness, but he never paid. There was never
Speaker 1: any payment into community mental health services. So um, now
Speaker 1: they want to return them to the institutionalization after never
Speaker 1: providing any street a sufficient street um services for them.
Speaker 1: And that's that's just cruel. Yeah. And so with the
Speaker 1: whole care court plan, there's like all in it. One
Speaker 1: is that it does not mention and that there is
Speaker 1: any housing uh stipulation at all, So it does not
Speaker 1: say that the conservator must provide them shelter. Um. The
Speaker 1: checking guidelines are once every thirty days, which is about
Speaker 1: time period that we have them checking with their case
Speaker 1: managers is at least once every thirty days. Um. And
Speaker 1: they also try to try to tell it like, um,
Speaker 1: well it's it could be temporary, right, like, once they
Speaker 1: get better, then they'll be off. The concert as to
Speaker 1: me is it's like, okay, you forced them into treatment,
Speaker 1: and then once they get kicked out of treatment, you say, okay,
Speaker 1: they're healed, and then you know they're back away from
Speaker 1: their services. And I've had clients who thought maybe a
Speaker 1: conservatorship is right for me, begging where they're like, I
Speaker 1: just can't do stuff right like you know. Um. And
Speaker 1: I had one client specifically asked me to be her conservator,
Speaker 1: and I care about her so much, UM and if
Speaker 1: I thought that her having a conservator would really benefit her.
Speaker 1: But as of right now, there's no difference in um,
Speaker 1: whether a conservator can get somebody shelter better than me
Speaker 1: as a service provider, or if they can get them
Speaker 1: into a treatment program better than a service provider. Now,
Speaker 1: Colleen was talking about how only ten of our homeless
Speaker 1: population has a drug in San Diego County as a whole,
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of Sandy against have a substance use issue. Right,
Speaker 1: my type percent was debilitating, a debilitating Uh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: good to clarify, Um, Instead pcent is way more than
Speaker 1: our homeless population. Those aren't the only ones with substance use.
Speaker 1: But if you're on medical right, if you're low income
Speaker 1: and low income in in San Diego as anyone making
Speaker 1: less than seventy six thousand dollars per year UM, which
Speaker 1: is a lot more people than they really if you
Speaker 1: are low income um untilicet bumping just because if you're
Speaker 1: low income. But I have some memes here. I want
Speaker 1: to point facts on the care Court. Care Court to
Speaker 1: address houselessness. Five million dollar budget, zero will go to
Speaker 1: housing and zero will go to mental health services. That's shocking.
Speaker 1: Zero to mental health services are housing. Care Court will
Speaker 1: weaponize its unchecked power and worse than historical violence against communities,
Speaker 1: and care Court claims to address mental health ability disabilities,
Speaker 1: but allows a judge to rub anyone they find unfit
Speaker 1: of autonomy over their health, home, and life. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I did remember my thoughts. So um, like the people
Speaker 1: on medical um there as far as it's like we
Speaker 1: already know fentin als and everything. Now, even if somebody
Speaker 1: thinks they're getting coke or or whatever they think it is,
Speaker 1: typically there is s fentl in it. So um, anyone
Speaker 1: who does wish to go through a detox um it's
Speaker 1: impossible to get them bets of aients who come in there,
Speaker 1: like please, I know, I know, I've got to get
Speaker 1: work this out of my life, and I'm gonna try.
Speaker 1: Can you get me into detox? Almost spend the whole day,
Speaker 1: you know? And and and there's one and like all
Speaker 1: these people are competing, but the detox facility. So if
Speaker 1: it was like we had the infrastructure set up, and
Speaker 1: we had this awesome mental health care, and we had
Speaker 1: these awesome like street medics and street therapy, and we
Speaker 1: had okay, and everyone in the Conservative ship is gonna
Speaker 1: be housed at this place, like maybe, but like this
Speaker 1: whole thing, it's just it's it's a lot of crap.
Speaker 1: So if I if we had, if we had all
Speaker 1: those things, if we had a good system that had
Speaker 1: good substance use treatment, good mental health care, and housing,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have all these folks on the street. Amen.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting that they're creating something to
Speaker 1: solve an issue that they don't have the infrastructure to solve.
Speaker 1: But I think it's important to note that h Care
Speaker 1: Court is a conservatorship, but we already have conservatorship law.
Speaker 1: Conservatives laws, they're very strict. It's a very high threshold
Speaker 1: to get somebody conserved currently for good reason. You're taking
Speaker 1: away somebody's civil You're taking away somebody's right to make
Speaker 1: their own decisions, is what a conservators But for some
Speaker 1: folks that are gravely disabled and impaired, it is the
Speaker 1: best thing to do. It's for you know, for very
Speaker 1: few people. But but that the city attorneys and the
Speaker 1: people in the hospital, uh, the workers, Uh, they don't
Speaker 1: want to go through it because it is very difficult
Speaker 1: and challenging, and oftentimes the judge, the judge will deny
Speaker 1: it because that's how important it is for people to
Speaker 1: have these civil rights. So sometimes even have to do
Speaker 1: it multiple times with somebody who probably you know, who
Speaker 1: may actually need it. And I speak from firsthand experience
Speaker 1: of helping people, you know, go through this process and
Speaker 1: try to you know, and conservatorship on somebody who just
Speaker 1: really really needs it care court would lower that threshold
Speaker 1: so much I I doubt it's legal. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: gonna get challenged in court. It it is such a
Speaker 1: dangerous leap against our civil liberties or civil rights, uh
Speaker 1: that I I just am gonna find it incredible if
Speaker 1: if judges allow this to move forward when it's challenged. Uh.
Speaker 1: But thing is that people need help, they need care,
Speaker 1: not court. And if we would provide the care, which
Speaker 1: are elected officials don't want to do. I think this
Speaker 1: is just a cop out on their part. I think
Speaker 1: is this is the elected officials saying, uh, we have failed,
Speaker 1: so we'll just pun it to the courts and let
Speaker 1: them take ownership and control of this, which in effect
Speaker 1: the courts are just kicking it to the county. Is
Speaker 1: our behavioral health provider who's gonna have to provide these
Speaker 1: services and be responsible for these folks. I think this
Speaker 1: is gonna be set a train wreck. But the one
Speaker 1: thing it is illuminating is that our behavioral health system
Speaker 1: is so broken, so dysfunctional, that they would even be
Speaker 1: trying to do this. I think it's basically a an
Speaker 1: indictment and but care court is not going to fix
Speaker 1: anything that's and I think it's setting people up for failure.
Speaker 1: I've talked to some families who are who are really
Speaker 1: now These are who have uh seriously mentally ill loved ones,
Speaker 1: whether it's spouses or children, um siblings. They see this
Speaker 1: as a silver bullet two get their loved ones. And
Speaker 1: maybe it works better for that segment of the population
Speaker 1: because they have somebody, they have a loved one as
Speaker 1: an advocate to make sure that the care is the
Speaker 1: care is the focus. But for for unsheltered folks, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be abused and used by this system. Uh maybe warehoused.
Speaker 1: Who knows, they're gonna end up worse off in my opinion,
Speaker 1: and so and against it as it's written, and certainly
Speaker 1: fear that the implementation and of it is going to
Speaker 1: be a travesty that I just can't imagine. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine this so called liberal state. Uh, we try to
Speaker 1: trample the rights of people like this, and oh boy,
Speaker 1: I tell you it's there's so much dangerous about this
Speaker 1: that I mean, we could we could have a whole
Speaker 1: of this and maybe and I'm sure there will be
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about this down the road. Yeah yeah, alright.
Speaker 1: So what I want to do is focus a little
Speaker 1: bit to finish up here on some solutions. So the
Speaker 1: things that a lot of you guys are doing right
Speaker 1: now to provide people with help, to provide people with
Speaker 1: the basic being a dignified existence, and like how the
Speaker 1: state could do better? Right like, what what housing first
Speaker 1: solutions look like? What solutions are informed by evidence rather
Speaker 1: just informed by sort of cruelty and the desire to
Speaker 1: brush the problem aside. Those I think you have to.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't expect people to get well on
Speaker 1: the street, so you've you've got to get them inside
Speaker 1: UM and congregate shelters. We've already talked about why those
Speaker 1: are so problematic on so many levels. UM. There is
Speaker 1: a model in San Diego that's being used by a
Speaker 1: nonprofit UM there right now. It's only for elderly UM individuals.
Speaker 1: It's called Housing for the Homeless, and they put UM
Speaker 1: unsheltered elderly folks in hotel rooms and it's had tremendous success.
Speaker 1: For some reason, it cannot get funding for UM county funding. UM.
Speaker 1: But getting these people off the street and out of
Speaker 1: survival mode is first and foremost. And then you've got
Speaker 1: them in a stable place so that services can find
Speaker 1: them when they need them. They can get the at
Speaker 1: mental health services UM. You know, we need to bolster
Speaker 1: our our rehab an addiction UM services. We also need
Speaker 1: more harm reduction UM. You know it can take you
Speaker 1: one through two detox at McAlister, which is the only
Speaker 1: UM detox center in San Diego south of Incimidi's and
Speaker 1: Detox is separate from UM. So we living. So you
Speaker 1: made detox and then it may be another one to
Speaker 1: three week wait, UM get into sober living, which is
Speaker 1: just enough time to get turned back out on the
Speaker 1: streets and relax again. UM. And after that, even there's
Speaker 1: no housing at the end of the tunnel, so you know,
Speaker 1: really the biggest thing that we're missing is housing, and
Speaker 1: then everything else trickles down from there. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: just building these relationships with people so that they can
Speaker 1: can trust that you're on their side and you're not
Speaker 1: going to lie to them, give them antie promises or
Speaker 1: or use them in some way to uh, to monetize
Speaker 1: them for is one of the biggest things that I've
Speaker 1: found of importance for me as an on the ground
Speaker 1: UM you know, outreach worker and doing mutual aid. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, most of the time, these people just don't
Speaker 1: have water, you know, they're they're thirsty, they're hungry, UM
Speaker 1: what poverty looks like. UM. So I think we've you know,
Speaker 1: we've got to get these people inside UM immediately, and
Speaker 1: then we start deploying the resources to them, um, to
Speaker 1: help them recover from the trauma or you know, whatever
Speaker 1: trauma led them to be in that situation. Um. I
Speaker 1: think people often forget that a lot of folks on
Speaker 1: the street. Um, you know, there's the foster to the
Speaker 1: streets pipeline, there's the jail to the streets pipeline. So
Speaker 1: you know, many people don't end up on the streets
Speaker 1: because they have family to help them. And a lot
Speaker 1: of these folks on the streets they don't have any
Speaker 1: family members. So um, you know, as a community, we
Speaker 1: need to set up and be their family. So that's great,
Speaker 1: and I think I think we we have to understand
Speaker 1: that the homeless service system, and I'm gonna talk about
Speaker 1: some of the good things that are it's important for
Speaker 1: people to know there's a ton of stuff happening both
Speaker 1: grassroots all the way up. But it's important to understand
Speaker 1: that the homeless service system can only do so much.
Speaker 1: As as Manny was talking about these pipelines that feed homelessness,
Speaker 1: people are becoming homelessness. I've never seen so many new
Speaker 1: people out here on the street. In my work, I'm
Speaker 1: on the street some part well a lot of the
Speaker 1: every day and I'm seeing more new people than I've
Speaker 1: ever seen in my last thirteen years. And there's all
Speaker 1: these feeder systems. It's it's child welfare, it's foster care,
Speaker 1: it's it's the education system. You know, you can name it.
Speaker 1: It's it's uh, the health care system. All these things
Speaker 1: are feeding homelessness. It's the it's the how we've commoditized housing.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, I can go on and on talking
Speaker 1: about feeding homelessness. It's safety nets, it's a lack of
Speaker 1: good mental health care and substance use care. So homeless
Speaker 1: services cannot control these things up above, these systems, these
Speaker 1: billion dollar systems that are feeds that are failing people
Speaker 1: and feeding homelessness. What system is And I like to say,
Speaker 1: they've got a lot of mission creep going on here
Speaker 1: because ideally they really should be focused on getting people
Speaker 1: into housing and out of homelessness, but they've become this
Speaker 1: this big system that's UH is really getting very costly,
Speaker 1: be inefficient and effective. But we know what solves homelessness.
Speaker 1: Housing and services solve homelessness, period and it works. We
Speaker 1: see when these new quality projects like Zephyr or Trinity
Speaker 1: place these uh they're not projects, they're housing. They're housing
Speaker 1: with services, so we call them projects, but they're just
Speaker 1: like any other apartment building really, except they have supportive
Speaker 1: services for folks and they work extremely well. They have
Speaker 1: a nine plus rate of keeping folks housed, even folks
Speaker 1: who have some who are disabled and have some significant issues.
Speaker 1: And it helps provide that self sufficiency by providing a
Speaker 1: deep rental subsidy and supportive services for folks who aren't
Speaker 1: take care of their own rent totally themselves. There is
Speaker 1: no free housing. Everybody who gets these these units pays
Speaker 1: thirty of their income, whether it's disability income, social Security retirement, whatever,
Speaker 1: they're paying some free housing. People are helping themselves and
Speaker 1: that's really important to say. And they're participating in services.
Speaker 1: But once you're in housing, your participation in services rates
Speaker 1: go up because people want to going better and stay
Speaker 1: in the housing. These things are being built, there're being
Speaker 1: built as we speak, but at a snail's pace. And
Speaker 1: that's the things that I fault are elected leadership for
Speaker 1: is they're nibbling around the edges. So Todd has Todd
Speaker 1: Gloria done some a few, but they're so small, and
Speaker 1: he blows them up to like he's solving something and
Speaker 1: he's not. Has the county done some good things, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've actually done more good things than I've ever seen
Speaker 1: them do, but it's still not anywork the piece that
Speaker 1: we need. They've opened up some mental health crisis centers
Speaker 1: that are actually walk in centers. They put together some
Speaker 1: mental health crisis teams that respond to a small percentage
Speaker 1: of cases of when you call. But it is helping
Speaker 1: all of these What really needs to be done is
Speaker 1: the things that we know work need to be taken
Speaker 1: to scale. But we have to also understand the challenges
Speaker 1: of that. We can't just fault the elected officials for
Speaker 1: some things they don't have control over. As we all know,
Speaker 1: there's it's hard time. It's a hard time hiring people.
Speaker 1: So we need a lot more staff that work with
Speaker 1: that are providing mental health services and substance use services.
Speaker 1: But we won't get there. And this is officials have
Speaker 1: have a lot of fault is they've really not put
Speaker 1: a priority in on this issue. And this is where
Speaker 1: there's the biggest disconnect. On one hand, you have Todd
Speaker 1: Gloria constantly saying how this is his number one issue.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, so that I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in in bicycle safety and safe roads and things like that.
Speaker 1: But he seems to put more importance on a bike
Speaker 1: lane than he does solving homelessness. And they're both important.
Speaker 1: But people dying on our streets because they're homeless, that's
Speaker 1: you know, he he needs to put. He needs to
Speaker 1: back up his his talk with action, just like you know.
Speaker 1: There they're expanding some bike lanes and I think, uh,
Speaker 1: I think they need to do it a lot smarter
Speaker 1: because some of them don't seem to be that safe
Speaker 1: to me. But that's a whole another show too I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be involved in. But they don't seem to be
Speaker 1: very strategic to me, and they be very they don't
Speaker 1: seem to care. They seem to be more interested in
Speaker 1: hoodwinking the public so they can get their next job.
Speaker 1: We need people who care mostly that care about people,
Speaker 1: but also care any efficiently and effectively. But some of
Speaker 1: the grassroots stuff, like I say, getting people into hotel
Speaker 1: rooms and then getting into housing is a good pathway.
Speaker 1: The county opened a small shelter. I think it's forty
Speaker 1: four beds or so. It's the first they open that's
Speaker 1: really more tailored towards people with substance use and mental
Speaker 1: health needs. It has a great uptake rate and and
Speaker 1: and the feedback from people on the street, which is good.
Speaker 1: So here we have something that the county did that
Speaker 1: was good. We need a lot more of them. They're
Speaker 1: opening another jumbo tent. So these things are very frustrating
Speaker 1: to folks like myself and Mandy Fellen, the different people
Speaker 1: that the people who are actually on the ground working
Speaker 1: that are trying to get people into We know what
Speaker 1: we know the things that people will go into, including
Speaker 1: substance use help. But whenever you try to get somebody
Speaker 1: in it and you're told there's a three week waiting list,
Speaker 1: you lose that person. They want to go. Now, you've
Speaker 1: got to be responsive to the person's motivation in that
Speaker 1: moment to get the help. And it's heartbreaking for people
Speaker 1: like Mandy and me who are out there on the
Speaker 1: street and people are crying out for this help. Bullshit
Speaker 1: when these folks, whether it's the police or the mayor,
Speaker 1: say that there's the people don't want help, it's really
Speaker 1: disgusting because when you're on the street like we are
Speaker 1: and people are pleading for this help and we can't
Speaker 1: help them because it's not available. And and we call bullshit.
Speaker 1: We call bullshit on on the rhetoric that comes out
Speaker 1: of these people's mouths. We know the people, we see
Speaker 1: their faces, those tears are real, that pleading for help
Speaker 1: is real, and help them if we do what's right.
Speaker 1: And so uh, we could talk all day about some
Speaker 1: of the good things too, that the grassroots people like
Speaker 1: Mandy are out there, um just on the ground doing
Speaker 1: We're yes, none of us here on this call except
Speaker 1: for Leave. I Leave works within the system, and thank
Speaker 1: goodness for him. And the last thing I want to say,
Speaker 1: and I I'm always remiss if I don't remind remember
Speaker 1: to say this, but I always want to send a
Speaker 1: shout out. It's not the fault on the hard working
Speaker 1: people on the street, whether you're paid or not. I
Speaker 1: just want to say thanks to all of the folks
Speaker 1: who take on this job, paid or not, to go
Speaker 1: out and help people firsthand to the best with this
Speaker 1: shitty system that they're given. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who take very little pay they do this because
Speaker 1: they care, or the volunteers who do it because they
Speaker 1: care to help people. And there's a lot of folks
Speaker 1: out and hard to help folks, and they are helping
Speaker 1: people one by one by one, and we need to
Speaker 1: support we need we have to have the support of
Speaker 1: the Todd Gloria's and the Nathan Fletchers of the world
Speaker 1: and the Gavin Newsomes to do the right thing and
Speaker 1: and to keep funding what works and to quit doing
Speaker 1: what doesn't. And so, UM, I think it's just important
Speaker 1: to round out by saying that, Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. Oh, if you are out helping people, see
Speaker 1: it all the time on your on your social media,
Speaker 1: where can people find you? Uh? And how can they
Speaker 1: support what you're doing if it's getting people tend to
Speaker 1: getting people water that kind of thing. Uh, tree start
Speaker 1: with let's just go down to this. We'll start with Mandy.
Speaker 1: I usually UM kind of bum off of Michael for
Speaker 1: funding UM because most of everything I do, UM, I
Speaker 1: pay for myself. UM. So he has he does a
Speaker 1: go fund me and then you know he'll be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta go fund me money, and you know, I
Speaker 1: meet him and he like loads up my car and
Speaker 1: off I go. UM. You know people can can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. UM Cooper to UM, I'm I'm very passionate.
Speaker 1: So UM. You know it's like because let you look
Speaker 1: at on my feed. UM. You know, I just I
Speaker 1: love these people and I want to see them because
Speaker 1: there I want to see them get the help. And
Speaker 1: one thing that Michael taught me in the very beginning
Speaker 1: of this, because you know I started this, um maybe
Speaker 1: about two or three years ago. One thing that Michael
Speaker 1: said to me that resonated with me because you know,
Speaker 1: he's you know, like I call them parades now, which
Speaker 1: are like liberal marches, um, you know, yelling at buildings
Speaker 1: when I want was in and you know, then going
Speaker 1: home and feeling good about what I did. UM. And
Speaker 1: he said, you know, Mandy, he said, social justice issue
Speaker 1: that everyone fights for, Black lives matter, immigration, UM, disability. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, all of these things come together, l G B,
Speaker 1: t q I A plus all of those people are
Speaker 1: overrepresented in the homeless population and so it shakes down
Speaker 1: to that and so I thought, you know, my mind
Speaker 1: was like blown and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not her marching for people most marginalized
Speaker 1: with them are living on the street. UM, and there's
Speaker 1: very little help for those people because unfortunately, whether what
Speaker 1: whatever marginalized group you come from, when you become that
Speaker 1: overtakes all of them. And there is a huge public
Speaker 1: hatred for unsheltered people. And it is my parson across
Speaker 1: the board. Um so we we all just need to
Speaker 1: realize that this is you know, this is a societal
Speaker 1: failure in a social um and I hope that you know,
Speaker 1: more people would will get up and and get go
Speaker 1: to the ground and start talking to your unsheltered neighbors.
Speaker 1: Try to build a relationship with them, reach out to
Speaker 1: their humanity. Um and and one person, if each of
Speaker 1: us just did it with one person, it would make
Speaker 1: such a difference. Even if you can't get them in
Speaker 1: housing or you don't have a lot of money, literally,
Speaker 1: just treating them like a human being means so much
Speaker 1: to these folks. Yeah, that's that's very important, Kelle. What
Speaker 1: would you like to say? Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: How can they help? That was just like how to
Speaker 1: find us? Right? I know, I thought it was great commits. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was really good. We should have a mandy.
Speaker 1: Um I I my name is Colleen Q. Sack c
Speaker 1: U S A c K. You can google me and
Speaker 1: find me. I'm in searchable on the attorney directory. My
Speaker 1: number six two and my email address is C another
Speaker 1: c U S A c K dot policy at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. UM, and I'm on Twitter at symbol chan,
Speaker 1: which stands for objection Great, thank you, all right, Michael. So, I,
Speaker 1: like Mandy, I've just funded my work myself. Also, except
Speaker 1: for about oh two ago, I was out on the
Speaker 1: street film in some sweeps, watching the police and the
Speaker 1: environmental service workers throw away people's tents and and I
Speaker 1: and I UM, and I said, well, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: get those people some new tents. Sir told me go ahead.
Speaker 1: We can throw them out faster than you can give
Speaker 1: them out. And I tweeted about that, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think it really you know, I struck a chord
Speaker 1: with people. So I've had people, but I've just had
Speaker 1: this real outpouring of of offerings to help lately. So
Speaker 1: for the first time ever, I set up a go
Speaker 1: fund Me and in the first day I just said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is just to help support encampments that
Speaker 1: are impacted by the sweeps or or whatever, or other
Speaker 1: grassroots people like Mandy who are out there. And I
Speaker 1: think I raised about three thousand dollars in the first day,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, that. It really was touching
Speaker 1: because you know, I didn't even hardly. I just put
Speaker 1: it out on Twitter, I think, and I haven't promoted
Speaker 1: it much since, but I think we're up to six
Speaker 1: or seven thousand dollars use that every day. I don't
Speaker 1: where are you the uh I'm retired, so I get
Speaker 1: to do this all day long. People like Mandy, they
Speaker 1: have a job. They're doing this as a second job
Speaker 1: that's unpaid. So um So what I do is is
Speaker 1: is is help UH is the buy stuff. I help
Speaker 1: other other organizations. I also promote that it uh go
Speaker 1: fund me of other people on my social media site.
Speaker 1: So I really would appreciate you following me. On Twitter
Speaker 1: it's at Homelessness Homelessness SD. On Facebook it's Homelessness News
Speaker 1: san Diego. On on Instagram it's the same, and on
Speaker 1: YouTube it's I think it's Homelessness New San Diego on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I just started a YouTube page, well, but I just
Speaker 1: started posting stuff on there. I have a lot of followers.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty active conversation, especially on Twitter. I get
Speaker 1: the bear's people lashing out at me, attacking me because
Speaker 1: they don't like me calling them out. Um, I get
Speaker 1: I I get haters on there too. I let them
Speaker 1: voice their opinion. Uh. I let the conversation flow. Um.
Speaker 1: But what I do is your what And I do
Speaker 1: warn you that, especially on Twitter, it's heart wrenching stuff.
Speaker 1: On the ground, I'm seeing people die. I'm seeing horrible stuff,
Speaker 1: and I'm sharing it with you because I think people
Speaker 1: deserve to know the truth. The elected officials like Mayor
Speaker 1: Todd Gloria, they don't want you to know the truth.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna bring it to you. I've worked to
Speaker 1: bring you the truth that's going on out here on
Speaker 1: the street. And it's ugly, it's it's it's but it's
Speaker 1: also I also see some amazing stuff. I also see
Speaker 1: some amazing, heartwarming stuff. People helping people. So it's everything
Speaker 1: holar coaster, right, folks. So you know, just be prepared
Speaker 1: and from there you can find my go fund me um.
Speaker 1: But most of all, you can get educated on the issue,
Speaker 1: make up your own mind. Uh. The bullshit that's spewed
Speaker 1: out of city Hall. Uh, see it on the ground
Speaker 1: for yourself. Take people out with me. Uh. I do
Speaker 1: a lot of work with the media, but but just
Speaker 1: just just join the conversation. Conversation learn, donate if you
Speaker 1: want to learn where you can donate your time to
Speaker 1: other people. Yeah, message me, you can coust me. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're just real people out there doing, you know, doing
Speaker 1: And I worked within the system trying to I went
Speaker 1: to all these meetings. I spent a whole ton of
Speaker 1: money within the within the mainstream system, which I'll never
Speaker 1: do again because it's a black hole. So I mostly
Speaker 1: promote grassroots stuff and we're just out there doing it
Speaker 1: and and doing what we can, uh in a very
Speaker 1: difficult situation. But join the conversation and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: And thanks James. I just I appreciate all your support
Speaker 1: over the years, uh, both amplifying our messages, getting messages
Speaker 1: out on social media and just for everything that you
Speaker 1: do on social justice issues and and and safety issues. Um,
Speaker 1: so I can hold them accountable on the bike stuff. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: well do that's another episode. I will plug LEAVI on
Speaker 1: Levi's behalf because I leave. I had to jump off
Speaker 1: to sort out an emergency. But it's which on Twitter
Speaker 1: is at the Solution nine. You can find them there
Speaker 1: and leave. I can help folks if they are in
Speaker 1: San Diego access services and so yeah, that's being us today.
Speaker 1: Please do follow these people and be a good neighbor
Speaker 1: to the young housed community. Wherever you are, feel free
Speaker 1: to reach out to any of us if you need
Speaker 1: some help or advice on how to do that or
Speaker 1: want to come out here in San Diego. All right,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Everyone appreciate you taking some of
Speaker 1: your afternoons. Welcome to it could happen here podcast about
Speaker 1: how the world is falling apart and sometimes about how
Speaker 1: to put it together. Today mostly about the people who
Speaker 1: are accelerating the falling apart. Garrison's with me, Sharen's with me.
Speaker 1: We are talking today about the Merchant of Death, the
Speaker 1: Lord of War, Victor Boot. So she probably started off
Speaker 1: by we're talking about Victor Boot. Victor Boots always an
Speaker 1: interesting topic of conversation, but he's come up recently because
Speaker 1: he's one of the people who has been proposed to
Speaker 1: be exchanged for to US citizens held by Russia, one
Speaker 1: being Brittany Grinder and one being Paul Wheelan. So I'm
Speaker 1: guessing folks are pretty familiar with the Brittany Grinder situation.
Speaker 1: If if not, what's the what's the t LDR on
Speaker 1: that t l d R is. Brittany Grinder is a
Speaker 1: two time Olympic gold medalist. She's a basketball player and
Speaker 1: she often plays offseason basketball in Russia, which tells you
Speaker 1: a lot about in wages between men and women in
Speaker 1: professional sport. And unfortunately, when she was traveling to Russia,
Speaker 1: I guess she had a weed vape cartridge in her
Speaker 1: back and so she was arrested and accused of drug smuggling.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, which, yeah, like it's as you
Speaker 1: as as we go through this, it will become very
Speaker 1: clear that I don't think it's controversial to say that
Speaker 1: the Russian state engages in hostage taking, right for sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah don't. I don't think that's like a controversial statement
Speaker 1: that this lady is not drug smuggling. Yeah, I too
Speaker 1: would probably want to take drugs if I had to
Speaker 1: spend my off seasons in Russia. But like, it's so
Speaker 1: transparent what they're doing. It's like, don't even attempt to
Speaker 1: not it's just yeah, it's they're are being sneaky about it.
Speaker 1: They're very clearly being like, we're taking this person hostage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we will hold this person hostage until you give
Speaker 1: us the person that we want back, right, there and
Speaker 1: even so there was a um he was a marine
Speaker 1: held by Russia. So if there's Paul Wheeler as the
Speaker 1: other guy, right, Paul Wheeland was a Marine, he had
Speaker 1: a he didn't have a dishonorable discharge. He had what's called,
Speaker 1: i think, an other than honorable. He was doing a
Speaker 1: couple of things. He was embezzling shipped from the United
Speaker 1: States government, which is pretty based. Yeah, yeah, we should
Speaker 1: all be so lucky. And he was also writing bad checks.
Speaker 1: His checks were bouncing, so booted from the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: for that, and was doing some kind of private security
Speaker 1: work it seemed like. So he was arrested in Russia.
Speaker 1: Another former Marine towards Trevor Reid was arrested and his
Speaker 1: cases just well, it's not coming. But the guy was
Speaker 1: driving with his girlfriend at the time. They've been on
Speaker 1: a big night out there in a car. He got drunk,
Speaker 1: got belligerent, started getting fighty uh, and they pulled over
Speaker 1: and some of his mates were like, look, if you
Speaker 1: don't calm down so you keep fighting with us, they
Speaker 1: called the police. The police were like, right, we'll take
Speaker 1: you in, you sleep it off, deal with you in
Speaker 1: the morning to kick you out. And then at some
Speaker 1: point the next morning, the FSB turned up, which is
Speaker 1: like the inheritor of the legacy of the KG, like, oh, Trevor,
Speaker 1: why did you attack the cops last night? Why why
Speaker 1: did you do that? Why why would you assault the
Speaker 1: police the Russian police? And he was like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about, bro? And they were like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to jail. You're a spy. Yeah, the government Biden
Speaker 1: and the Biden swapped him out, and the two who
Speaker 1: are left, well, there are other people left, obviously, But
Speaker 1: when he stopped out for for the other guy, Trevor Read,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure who was traded for Trevor Read. It's
Speaker 1: the most like weird. I mean that nothing is too
Speaker 1: strange at this point, but like when you really countries
Speaker 1: like trading people, Yes, so strange to me. Yeah he was,
Speaker 1: he was. He was when who was in here on
Speaker 1: drug grafting charges? I guess? So they switch out Read, right,
Speaker 1: But Read and Weiland have become close in their captivity,
Speaker 1: and Read's been a big advocate for having Whelan released.
Speaker 1: Wiland's kind of yeah, you're taking the pit if you
Speaker 1: think Brittany grind is a drug traffiica. But Whillan does
Speaker 1: have like five different nationalities. I think he's he's got American,
Speaker 1: he's got Canadian, he might only have four. I think
Speaker 1: he's got British and Irish. So he's a former service
Speaker 1: member in the United States. And like, this guy was broke, right,
Speaker 1: he was. He was bouncing checks. As we're learning this episode.
Speaker 1: One of the things intelligence agencies tend to like is
Speaker 1: people who are bouncing checks. Those of those people are
Speaker 1: easy to recruit, right leg if you're if you're if
Speaker 1: you're trying to buy ship that you can't afford, you
Speaker 1: might be easier to recruit if you if they offer
Speaker 1: you money. Right So it's I'm not saying no idea whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I've got no unique insight into that, but I am
Speaker 1: saying that, like, his case is a little bit more interesting.
Speaker 1: So the United States has proposed trading Victor Boot for
Speaker 1: both Grinder and Wheelan that was kind of doing the
Speaker 1: m Aussian source confirmed it last weekend. So that's why
Speaker 1: we want to talk about Victor Boot today. It's spelled
Speaker 1: bo u t by the way, if anyone's looking up,
Speaker 1: if people are familiar with Victor at all, I believe
Speaker 1: from the Nicolas Cage film Lord of War. Have you
Speaker 1: seen that either of you know? I subjected Chris to it.
Speaker 1: Now Chris can't make the podcast, so that's good. Will
Speaker 1: be Nicolas cage free in this it's a pretty epic film.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. Cholas Cage play boot Yeah. Oh
Speaker 1: fuck yeah, yeah, Like I need to see that to
Speaker 1: see that. I wish, I wish I could share with
Speaker 1: you just the scene where like he just turns to
Speaker 1: the camp like there's there's fifty million guns in the world.
Speaker 1: That's one for every twelve people on My only question
Speaker 1: is how do we arem the other eleven? But at
Speaker 1: some point he like just puffs on a fat cigar
Speaker 1: in the middle of that. You have an accent. No,
Speaker 1: he doesn't do a Russian. It's appointing. Allegedly, that's a
Speaker 1: real quote from from Victor boot. By the way, you
Speaker 1: can find a clip, we can slice it in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can find a clip. I got one. I got
Speaker 1: one lined up on my computer. I will send it
Speaker 1: to our our fair editors. There are over five hundred
Speaker 1: fifty million firearms and worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for
Speaker 1: avery twelve people on the planet. The only question is
Speaker 1: how do we wren in the other eleven. It's great,
Speaker 1: it's classic Nicholas Cage. He can't do anything wrong. It's
Speaker 1: so true. Ghost ghostwriter never happened. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Nope, it's been a race from my memory.
Speaker 1: So aside from Nicolas Cage's accent, betrayal of the film
Speaker 1: is in and that accurate. Notably, he didn't actually grow
Speaker 1: up in Brighton Beach, Old Victor. He grew up in
Speaker 1: Duschan bay In. That's uh. It was in the tagic
Speaker 1: province of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's introgugoush And we know, well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stories about this guy. It's very hard to confirm which
Speaker 1: of them is true. There are He's clearly told as
Speaker 1: many background stories as he's met new groups of people,
Speaker 1: when he's moved around, as his mom is on the scene.
Speaker 1: So we do know that his mother is still alive.
Speaker 1: I think she's eighty five. She will occasionally pop up
Speaker 1: in the Russian press and ask Joe Biden to let
Speaker 1: her poor innocent son go, which is very amusing. It
Speaker 1: was a car mechanic, so he's not like a child
Speaker 1: of privilege particularly, But at some point he seems to
Speaker 1: have joined the Soviet military, probably the Air Force, and
Speaker 1: he's trained at their military academy of languages. And guy's
Speaker 1: capacity for languages insane, Like he can go down the
Speaker 1: shops in like fifteen different languages. He can speak flule
Speaker 1: in half a dozen. He can, you know, order a
Speaker 1: sandwich in like twenty language. Yeah, I want that power, Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't we all? It seems to be like, um, these
Speaker 1: people who like thrive in like nonstate activities in crime
Speaker 1: and stuff like do seem to like having a capacity
Speaker 1: for language benefit in that world. And you hear about
Speaker 1: quite a lot later on when he's in prison in Thailand,
Speaker 1: he learned Sanskrit. Um. He doesn't bother to learn Thai.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want people to think they can understand what
Speaker 1: he's saying. But I'll learned sanscrit while I'm here, like
Speaker 1: I'm running out of options. So yeah, he's got this
Speaker 1: amazing capacity for language, which probably ends up with him
Speaker 1: being a spook. It's not like it's not for the KGB,
Speaker 1: but it seems that way. We know that he was
Speaker 1: bouncing around in Angola as part of the civil war there,
Speaker 1: so it's it's unlikely that he was a pay clerk
Speaker 1: or like the guy who changed the tires on the airplanes.
Speaker 1: And then to Angola, and and when the Soviet Union collapses,
Speaker 1: Victor is in Angola, right, or at least he gets
Speaker 1: to Angola pretty quickly. Not I think because it's the
Speaker 1: place he wanted to be, but because places that had
Speaker 1: the least regulations on civilian use of military aircraft. So
Speaker 1: this is where he goes from KGB duty speaks a
Speaker 1: lot of languages to beginning to be this international arms
Speaker 1: sort of god. And he does that by buying these
Speaker 1: Antonov planes. People might not be familiar with Antonov. It's
Speaker 1: just a giant plane. It's a huge cargo plane. Obviously
Speaker 1: a little bit outdated now, but you'll still see them.
Speaker 1: But it's like the Russian big hauler, right, carries a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to a lot of places. And by
Speaker 1: getting those and having absolutely zero morals, he launches his career.
Speaker 1: And like he's not just selling weapons, he's um American
Speaker 1: people don't get this, Like we have this British stereotype
Speaker 1: of like the wheeler dealer, as epitomized by like Delboy
Speaker 1: in a TV series called Only Fools and Horses. But
Speaker 1: he's like a market trader. He'll buy whatever he thinks
Speaker 1: he can scorch wherever he thinks he can sell expensive. Right,
Speaker 1: so he's moving like frozen chicken. At one point, he's
Speaker 1: moving flowers from South Africa, and like throughout his career
Speaker 1: is this massive international arms dealer. He'll just be like, oh, chicken, right,
Speaker 1: let's move that chicken over here. We can make a killing.
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't, I think like we should stress it.
Speaker 1: He's not like a guy who's obsessed with with the
Speaker 1: guns and weapons and killing people. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think he's a guy who has absolutely zero and it's
Speaker 1: just like, well, there's a high profit margin on guns,
Speaker 1: so that's where I'll move. But I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like there's there seems to be no moral angle to
Speaker 1: his his existence. Like very quickly after doing that, he's
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of Congo. He's setting into Liberia in the
Speaker 1: conflict there Sierra Leone, Rwanda after the genocide. He's there, right,
Speaker 1: but he's also like transporting French troops to Rwanda, will
Speaker 1: be doing contracts for the United States government, for the
Speaker 1: British government, for most of the Western governments participate in
Speaker 1: the Forever War, right, And it's very funny actually, like
Speaker 1: if you're in the phase when the for him, which
Speaker 1: is a bit later when he becomes like a wanted man.
Speaker 1: He keeps doing these different shell companies right to avoid
Speaker 1: things like sanction and the way that he the way
Speaker 1: that the United States Department of Justice publishes their list
Speaker 1: there will be every year, right, no one can do
Speaker 1: business with these companies. They're bad, they're connected to arms dealing.
Speaker 1: And then the United States Department of Defense will go
Speaker 1: down its list of people it does business with and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, ship, there's like six of them who
Speaker 1: we were like integrally relying on. And then and so
Speaker 1: it's fine because they change their name and then it's
Speaker 1: like they're it's like Tom and Jerry or whack a mole.
Speaker 1: You know. He keeps popping up with these new companies. Um,
Speaker 1: so he sort of really gets this massive boost around
Speaker 1: two thousand and with eleven. So nine eleven is a
Speaker 1: big win for him. It's well, that's the oppisode here,
Speaker 1: that's the sound by Yeah, so he's super tight with
Speaker 1: Ahmed shah Masud. People are but that we call the
Speaker 1: Northern Alliance, right, um, the the people in Afghanistan who
Speaker 1: the United States back to fight the Taliban. He'd been
Speaker 1: selling weapons to Massued for a while, and he seems
Speaker 1: to actually like with Massud, Like he talks about him,
Speaker 1: and we'll get onto how we know him talking about
Speaker 1: him a little bit, but he talks about him very fondly.
Speaker 1: He's he's a big Massud guy. And so he claims
Speaker 1: he doesn't trade with the Taliban, and he hoped for
Speaker 1: a long as time until crew his plane and crew
Speaker 1: are held by the Taliban at an airport in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: which like how did they get their Victor? And there's
Speaker 1: two really like how they escape. The one story is
Speaker 1: that like the Taliban require them to maintain this plane
Speaker 1: every so often because they want to be able to
Speaker 1: use the plane. Right, so these these Russian guys are
Speaker 1: these these contractors for Victor for doing the plane. And
Speaker 1: then they like in sort of like Michael Caine movie style,
Speaker 1: like cosh their guards over the head, jump start the
Speaker 1: plane and just pin it to the end of the runway,
Speaker 1: take off and fly to freedom. And that's the narrative
Speaker 1: popular until Victor boot was like nah, like I know
Speaker 1: all those people. I just called him, was like, do
Speaker 1: you want to do business with Victor boot or do
Speaker 1: you want to hold this plane hostage? Because it's one
Speaker 1: or the other and you're fund without me and seem yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a shame. I like. I like story. I like
Speaker 1: story to story too is objectively, in my opinion, a
Speaker 1: little bit more badass on his part, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, that's the power he has. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think when this this guy clicks his fingers, the
Speaker 1: world the world listens. Did until he was in prison
Speaker 1: learning sanscript. Yeah, if you're the pilot, there's There was
Speaker 1: an interview I found on YouTube with one of his
Speaker 1: pilots as well. He's like, yeah, man, you can't do
Speaker 1: that for very long. He's like, what study landing? Like,
Speaker 1: we're being shot at woman landing, We're being shot at woman.
Speaker 1: We get on the ground and just like eat everything
Speaker 1: out the back and then just take off again, and
Speaker 1: like we make a ton of money because no one
Speaker 1: else is prepared to do that, but probably isn't great
Speaker 1: for your long term well being. And so he's by
Speaker 1: the peak of his career in the early two thousand,
Speaker 1: he's got hundreds of employees. He's got sixty aircraft and
Speaker 1: he has moved his operation to Charger, which is a
Speaker 1: very sort of conservative emirate. It's a twist, alright's right,
Speaker 1: but it has what's called a free trade zone, so
Speaker 1: on on top of all his other ship, he's also
Speaker 1: not paying import export taxes and so he's based there,
Speaker 1: which seems to allow him to operate pretty much with that.
Speaker 1: He's moving a ton of small arms from Ukraine. So
Speaker 1: at the end of the Soviet Union, Crane makes a
Speaker 1: big thing of being like we're returning on nuclear weapons. Right,
Speaker 1: people will be familiar with this that they don't want
Speaker 1: their nukes are but they also amassed just an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of small arms, right, So that's like guns, bombs, grenades,
Speaker 1: things like that, right, machine guns. And because a bunch
Speaker 1: of the small arms are stored in Ukraine, that becomes
Speaker 1: like the nexus for the black market. And we think
Speaker 1: that if ethnically Ukrainian, and he certainly seems to have
Speaker 1: just been shoveling weapons out of Ukraine to conflicts in
Speaker 1: largely there's a civil war that you know about in
Speaker 1: Africa or one that you don't know about. Probably both
Speaker 1: sides were using his weapons like that, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a fair assumption to make. And by the late nineties
Speaker 1: early two thousands, he's selling everywhere and business to laund
Speaker 1: the money for other leagal activities and he was he
Speaker 1: was linked to the Kaddafi regime. He was also selling
Speaker 1: to rebels in Libya. Um, so it's a huge operation.
Speaker 1: He's the go to guy for weapons, right, and he
Speaker 1: sort of comes and they interpolo after him. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, there's a Belgian warrant for him, but
Speaker 1: Belgium as of having to drop their case because it's
Speaker 1: unclear where he lives, so they can't be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a resident here, he's a Belgian resident, because like
Speaker 1: now this this guy keeps moving around like it's not
Speaker 1: clear if you have jurisdiction. And Central African Republic also
Speaker 1: I think had a warrant out for him, but they
Speaker 1: haven't I guess, been successful in serving that warrant um
Speaker 1: in the In the Belgian when they dropped their case,
Speaker 1: they noted that it would be impossible and very time
Speaker 1: consuming to prosecute him, which is kind of funny given
Speaker 1: that he's doing a lot of crimes. But despite this,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, he does this incredible New
Speaker 1: York Times, like this thousands of words profile interview of
Speaker 1: the world's largest arm stealer. It's like a relic of
Speaker 1: another era of journalism. They send this writer to like
Speaker 1: look for Victor Boo, to try and find Victor Boo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, there was a different era that
Speaker 1: was completely different. Yeah, yeah, that is. Yeah, it's a shame.
Speaker 1: You look at I look. I looked at it, and
Speaker 1: I just couldn't help this. But they just let this
Speaker 1: person expense a shift out of flights. Wow, like this,
Speaker 1: this doesn't happen anymore. Such a shame. I would love
Speaker 1: to go to a Russian nightclub and drink carriage juice
Speaker 1: with armed stealers on the job. Yeah. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: that to the New York Times and yeah, in the
Speaker 1: PC drinks carriage Jews. He's vegetarian, he caught himself, a
Speaker 1: scapegoat and a family man. He's what a hero every
Speaker 1: day Joe trying to sell some kalashnikovs to people who
Speaker 1: are doing genocide and he is does this interview. How
Speaker 1: we know a lot about him? Yes? That and his Uh,
Speaker 1: this man loves a hand the home video, right, international
Speaker 1: crimes the best idea we ever had. Quirky little dude,
Speaker 1: but he's not doing crimes in his videos. He just
Speaker 1: looks like like ah I from the office, who is
Speaker 1: just like the most mundane dude and ill fitting suit.
Speaker 1: He just looks like a salary man who drives like
Speaker 1: a regular car and on the weekends like to like
Speaker 1: go to Buffalo Wild Wings and what sports events, like
Speaker 1: he or to slide with his like white ass body
Speaker 1: and pot belly at one point in one of these
Speaker 1: home videos, and like he just yeah, he just strikes
Speaker 1: you as the most boring family guy. Like he's not.
Speaker 1: He seems to be like more drugs one point. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating and bizarre and one of assuming he has children
Speaker 1: if he's a family man. I think he does have children,
Speaker 1: certainly has a wife. His wife is out there. His
Speaker 1: wife is pretty vocal about let me let my man
Speaker 1: go right right right, Yeah, so I'm pretty sure he
Speaker 1: does have children. Yeah, probably more than we know about,
Speaker 1: but maybe not. Maybe he's your wife guy. Well, I
Speaker 1: just think it's funny in these home vid like he's yeah,
Speaker 1: like no one else, no family, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be pretty yeah, that would be pretty pretty entertaining.
Speaker 1: So two thousand and three, where it's the the article
Speaker 1: clearly has these two like it's named after George Bernard
Speaker 1: Shaw play called Arms and the Man, and it's just
Speaker 1: like epic and meandering and very long. And he talks
Speaker 1: about in the article. He's like, look, they're using me
Speaker 1: as like this is a thing that like the reason
Speaker 1: there that it's very hard to prosecute Victor boot is
Speaker 1: because there are not that many laws against arms stealing.
Speaker 1: And the reason there are not that many laws against
Speaker 1: arm stealing heedral to how we do foreign policy, right,
Speaker 1: Like we are hosed without people like Victor Boo. And
Speaker 1: that's like the other side of this coin that yeah,
Speaker 1: we need a Nicolas Cage bad guy to pin this
Speaker 1: stuff on. And yeah, he pretty horrific things or sold
Speaker 1: weapons to people who did horrific things, but he what
Speaker 1: he's doing is not that like abnormal and it's not
Speaker 1: that always illegal. And as we'll see tr into like
Speaker 1: gross entrapment to arrest this guy, and he is right
Speaker 1: that like is he really the biggest arms deader in
Speaker 1: the world or is that like Dick Cheney or you know,
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin or that's raytheon, Like, is he really any
Speaker 1: more evil than like I live in San Diego, right
Speaker 1: or most of the companies I just mentioned have offices
Speaker 1: here a road past one of them today, you know,
Speaker 1: and those people also go on the waterside with their kids.
Speaker 1: He does have a kid. He has a daughter, one
Speaker 1: daughter or a child, I don't know, born in the Emirates,
Speaker 1: and they really are now. Yeah, he's a great dad.
Speaker 1: He's been in jail. Yeah, he has a wife to Allah.
Speaker 1: It's his wife, just she was. She's a fair bit
Speaker 1: younger than him. Um so as he's really lost weight
Speaker 1: in jail. And he's looking pretty good picture of him,
Speaker 1: but with a mustache and stuff. He's really he's having
Speaker 1: a glow up, I think in jail. Are you pretty
Speaker 1: thirsty for Victor? Here? Yeah? You look at that mustache.
Speaker 1: Tell me you could say no. And one of the
Speaker 1: things he says in this interview, which is interesting, is
Speaker 1: if I told you everything I know, I'd get the
Speaker 1: red hole right here, and then points to the middle
Speaker 1: of his forehead. I wonder when he meant by that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a poet, he has a way with words. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got some of these great one liners and which
Speaker 1: it's people have recently like reinterpreted that to be like
Speaker 1: does he know some ship about put it which is
Speaker 1: to exchange it? Or is he just saying that like
Speaker 1: like he might possibly have something like signed by someone
Speaker 1: who's today a senator, right, like engaging in business with
Speaker 1: one of his companies or something like that, because that's
Speaker 1: how this works. Yeah, I don't know. He's rich and powerful.
Speaker 1: People have probably done business with him, whether they knew
Speaker 1: it or not, and he's aware of this. So that
Speaker 1: article really bounces him up in the sort of world
Speaker 1: Bad Guys List, which is when Nick Cage steps in,
Speaker 1: makes a whole just there's a whole vibe about it
Speaker 1: that moves the person to Brighton beach Um because I
Speaker 1: guess American audiences don't know is yeah to Gikastan no less.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for a film the notorious Mr Boot
Speaker 1: that's the Home Videos Sundance Film Festival Award winner just
Speaker 1: depicting his dad bought adventures. I think I think it's
Speaker 1: worth a serious It was at Sundance. Yeah, it's classic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they keep working with me. I know
Speaker 1: all the time, and I will believe anything at this point,
Speaker 1: so crazy. I quourteen film yep screen the sun Dance
Speaker 1: Film Festival. Holy shit, yep, it's a classic. Um, it's
Speaker 1: got It's got some real scenes seriously like on Rotten Tomatoes. Yep.
Speaker 1: And if you watch actually you get it. There's like
Speaker 1: some pictures of him like dad dancing with his his
Speaker 1: partner at the time. It's just yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: I would recommend it. And there's picture to him around
Speaker 1: lots of weapons. Obviously you're about Boots yep, yep, tourist
Speaker 1: Mr Boots. Yeah, it's a kitty. It's yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: very busy. It's just a quirky little dude, Like what
Speaker 1: is what a little a little dude? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a picture of impertend I know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's not like he's just do you expect him to
Speaker 1: be like evil and I don't know, smoking in a
Speaker 1: dark room all the time. No, this is how they
Speaker 1: get away with it. Yeah. Yeah, Like you would see
Speaker 1: this guy right like you go to the lounge like
Speaker 1: my life, it lounges in like small airparts in like
Speaker 1: the Middle East Africa whenever trying to fly cheap. You
Speaker 1: would see the student the lounge, and you wouldn't be like, oh,
Speaker 1: there goes in international arms dealer. It'd be like if
Speaker 1: that man is in conductors or you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he's not, he's not the joker, and no, he
Speaker 1: is a joker that you can see him having some
Speaker 1: good old japes in this film. When Nicholas Cage plays him,
Speaker 1: he doesn't even have a mustache. I know that's disappointed
Speaker 1: because that is his trademark feature. Well okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: technically the character Nicholas Cage plays is a fictional illegal
Speaker 1: arms dealer based on the stories of Victor about another
Speaker 1: real life arms dealers and smugglers. They want to play
Speaker 1: both ways. Yeah, so I've just got to bitness trailer
Speaker 1: where it's just like eye contact with the camera, hip
Speaker 1: thrusting and it's wow. Okay, well, thank you for that description.
Speaker 1: That's all right, that's all right, guys cut the edge
Speaker 1: of journalism here. Yes, that's right, all right, So we
Speaker 1: should return to to the narrative and not my description
Speaker 1: of a Victor beat dancing. So, um, his arrest is
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating and again, like his arrest is one
Speaker 1: of those things where you're like, oh, this is terrible,
Speaker 1: and then you realize that again, we do this ship
Speaker 1: all the time, right, and so to understand his arrest,
Speaker 1: you've got to first understand this guy Andrew Smoollian uh former,
Speaker 1: he's British, he's born in Britain, but he's a South
Speaker 1: African Air Force officer. Then he goes into commercial flying,
Speaker 1: but at some point he's turned by their intent delivering
Speaker 1: shipments of stuff and then doing a little bit spying
Speaker 1: on the side. Spying on the side. Yeah, yeah, who's
Speaker 1: the longest hasn't found themselves doing a little Everyone has
Speaker 1: their side hustles, a side spying for the doing in
Speaker 1: the Aparthei era, but probably we're certainly in their military
Speaker 1: in the Aparthei era. Yikes. Yeah, smoothly is not not
Speaker 1: a man with morals, I don't think, as we'll find out.
Speaker 1: So Simolean has fallen on hard times by two thousand
Speaker 1: and is working in a hypodermic syringe factory in Tanzania.
Speaker 1: And that's just the fact that I found without context,
Speaker 1: and I haven't felt any need to research further. And
Speaker 1: at that point, slowly it's contacted by generals, right um
Speaker 1: Revolutionary enforces Columbia. Fuck right left wing Marxist guerrilla group
Speaker 1: that have been fighting in the Jungles for I think
Speaker 1: they're one of the world's longest insurgencies for decades. And
Speaker 1: these fuck generals are like, hey, Smooleian, come and meet
Speaker 1: us in a tiki bar in curis out and we
Speaker 1: will have a chat. Smoleyan right, he wants to get
Speaker 1: out the syringe factory, so he's got about it. He
Speaker 1: hops on the plane and they meet in a tiki bar, right,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a good place to do at armsteel
Speaker 1: and very I mean movies are right about that. Stop
Speaker 1: going down in yep, that's a that's the one thing
Speaker 1: that was in fact Cinematic University Victor Boot. So um,
Speaker 1: they're in the tiki bar right now. It should be
Speaker 1: noted that these two farn generals, shockingly are not really
Speaker 1: fun generals. They are d e A assets. In fact,
Speaker 1: they have been This isn't the Colombian Armed Forces, but
Speaker 1: they've decided to pivot to a career in selling cocaine,
Speaker 1: and in that career pivot they've unfortunately come into contact
Speaker 1: with the d A, which is generally not good. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: they're just trying to sell cocaine and do the other thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just vibing and killing indigenous people. Probably. They have
Speaker 1: a pretty rough record in the Colombian military. It's fair
Speaker 1: to say so. D A C. C. M Is like, yet,
Speaker 1: those are our people, and gives them a ton of
Speaker 1: money citizenship families, I believe, and turns them right. Asked
Speaker 1: him to pretend to be fun generals, which they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you can you spell the word you're saying, what
Speaker 1: is the fun? Yeah? F A r C matas Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you? Yeah, like sorry, f A R C. Fuck.
Speaker 1: I might have got the act I am. I am
Speaker 1: someone that does not know what that is. So honest
Speaker 1: about that. Sorry, you know, there's no reason to unless
Speaker 1: you're a global conflict understand the slash doc. They're very
Speaker 1: nice people, some of them actually, Um they've started micro
Speaker 1: brewery now, Um, yeah, they have a micro brewery. Anything
Speaker 1: you say that, fucking I will send you a store brewery.
Speaker 1: Unlike Scarred by Robert, he just tells me all these
Speaker 1: crazy things that are not true. And I believe I'm
Speaker 1: not like Robert. I'm a man of the truth. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I would drop it in the chat like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely have started a micro brewery. These are such
Speaker 1: a weird little dudes. I'm saying, Okay, actually the person
Speaker 1: who runs a micro brewery is a woman. Uh good,
Speaker 1: good for her feminism. We love girl bus funk. We're
Speaker 1: very committed to dender quart with you. They had women
Speaker 1: there in their in their military. Yeah, we'll do an
Speaker 1: episode of Robert and I want to go to the
Speaker 1: micro brewery. It's one of my why not sure, We've
Speaker 1: we've got this far. No one's caught us out. So anyway, Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the US government had just done exactly the same thing
Speaker 1: to Monzer al Kassa, who's a Syrian arms dealer. They've
Speaker 1: done the same we're too farck, generals, we would like
Speaker 1: to buy these weapons, And in the discussion the quo
Speaker 1: fuck generals are like, we would like to buy these
Speaker 1: weapons to kill Yankees. We want to kill Americans. It
Speaker 1: would be great to have this gun with a sniper
Speaker 1: scope so we could see if they're American before we
Speaker 1: shoot them. Just like this is where this is where
Speaker 1: we get to like the entrapment, right, and this really
Speaker 1: is like yeah, whatever, bro, like you want guns. I
Speaker 1: know a guy and they're like to kill the Americans.
Speaker 1: So and he's like, yeah, dude, whatever you need. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's getting weird um. But then Smoothly and so he
Speaker 1: is go, okay, so my guy's Victor boot v I
Speaker 1: K T O R B O U T Oh my god,
Speaker 1: which that is? That is a poor move and Smoothy's part.
Speaker 1: So Smoody drops him in organize a meeting, right the
Speaker 1: two generals quote unquote generals and Victor in a hotel
Speaker 1: in Bangkok, and that is where the Victor boots story
Speaker 1: sort of ends, at least the free Victor. So they
Speaker 1: go through the deal and again he's being like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe he conducted his whole life like this because
Speaker 1: his his degree of concern with security is minimal. That
Speaker 1: he'll be like, you guys are getting like five thousand
Speaker 1: a k also some surface to wear missiles and like
Speaker 1: writing it on the hotel notepad. Amazing. Yeah, Like normally
Speaker 1: this isn't the Like the d A rolled a yakuza
Speaker 1: arms recently and they had to explain he was talking
Speaker 1: about cake and ice cream. He meant like surface to
Speaker 1: wear missiles the same for me. Actually, yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to head down to the cake shop. That guy
Speaker 1: funked up by sending a selfie of him weapon to
Speaker 1: the Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's a good picture.
Speaker 1: I'll send you that picture because he does look like
Speaker 1: an international supervillain. He has blue aviators. I think, like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, some people know they're playing the part,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, you gotta lean in,
Speaker 1: and he leans in. But so about is in this
Speaker 1: in this room, but he's negotiating with his two Colombian
Speaker 1: friends and income the Taype police right the way the
Speaker 1: d A say it. They're like he put his hands
Speaker 1: in the bag and we all pointed our guns at him,
Speaker 1: or like Victor, no, it's over, and and like they
Speaker 1: thought he was going to pull a gun on them.
Speaker 1: But like in the video, he kind of just like
Speaker 1: then I think he says the game is up. He
Speaker 1: has some like Bond villain like a line of course.
Speaker 1: Is he the poet? What did I say? Yeah that's true. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why they're letting him out for his contribution to
Speaker 1: our I do what if there's ever like he was
Speaker 1: a poet Sharide just like hey, yes quote acclaimed podcast.
Speaker 1: This is red shot to describe a gunshot on his groomstad.
Speaker 1: He was a poet, nothing else, poet and no other gigs.
Speaker 1: I was aware what slide duty ast. And so they
Speaker 1: arrest him, right, they hold him in fights the extradition,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm just a businessman. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. I just wanted to say cake and
Speaker 1: ice cream or whatever. And eventually they bring him back
Speaker 1: to the United States. They try him in this federal
Speaker 1: jurisdiction in New York where they try and nearly every
Speaker 1: rorism case like this, right, Like the recent oh nine
Speaker 1: A case was in the same jurisdiction, so like that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, they always do it in New York.
Speaker 1: I think that his trial was like September or October.
Speaker 1: The you know, you're trying someone like seven years after
Speaker 1: nine eleven, six years after nine eleven in New York,
Speaker 1: around the anniversary of what happened eleven, right, so people
Speaker 1: are pretty and then you're like, in this dude sold
Speaker 1: weapons to the town. He moved gold out of Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for al Qaeda, and he's pretty screwed. Cancel culture strikes again.
Speaker 1: The work mob came for Victor and his wife says
Speaker 1: outside the court, which I thought was interested. They're trying
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage, not my husband. Oh, Ship, that's actually a
Speaker 1: really interesting statement in terms of like media perceptions of people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they do not go after this guy until and then
Speaker 1: Victor and then what's it called the Nicolas Cage movie
Speaker 1: Lord of War? Yeah, and then you can't separate. I
Speaker 1: don't think the like, look, he's a piece of shit,
Speaker 1: but like he did make a movie about himself, though
Speaker 1: he didn't. I scot that they already sent seven years
Speaker 1: after he gone down, Okay, I didn't look at the
Speaker 1: date that. Yeah, no, I was like, that's why, completely
Speaker 1: different until just this second, my mistake, the Sundance film
Speaker 1: seven years later Victor boot It would have been amazing
Speaker 1: if yeah, get that up with our listeners, Ship, we
Speaker 1: could go it up to the nineties. I reckon m
Speaker 1: H and that because the thumbs up, So I think
Speaker 1: they probably did write. Like in organizations like the d A,
Speaker 1: in these big federal law enforcement agencies, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who want top jobs, and I think
Speaker 1: one of the ways to advance is getting one of
Speaker 1: the right. I have very little federal law enforcement understanding,
Speaker 1: but it strikes me that they kind of they had
Speaker 1: the d A agent in charge of his arrest on
Speaker 1: ABC I think, or in sixty minutes or something, the
Speaker 1: guy talks about himself and point on there. It's a
Speaker 1: bit weird. It's clearly like a career defining a thing, right,
Speaker 1: And I really don't think it would have been if
Speaker 1: like no one made a film about Monterel Castle, right,
Speaker 1: he was selling all the weapons to you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't trap him in the same way actually, but it's
Speaker 1: it's not such a big thing. So Boot goes to jail.
Speaker 1: He's been in jail about twelve years now, and now
Speaker 1: the Biden administration seems to or at least know that
Speaker 1: he's like worth offering, and they offered him in trade
Speaker 1: for Snowden apparently, uh yeah, and Russia didn't take that. Um.
Speaker 1: I just think it's probably that they seem more value
Speaker 1: with Snowden. But the yeah, they they seem to have
Speaker 1: offered him again in the in this grinder wheeling trade.
Speaker 1: It's still unclear if Russia will accept him or not.
Speaker 1: Like we said before, it's a very weird practice to
Speaker 1: be like like Pokemon cards, yeah, or like literally like
Speaker 1: the NBA, like the thing that yeah, pretty greater works
Speaker 1: for It's like you're literally creating like a fantasy team
Speaker 1: or whatever, the ship of of prisoners and or people
Speaker 1: that you want the hostages. Yeah, it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: like Russia kind of just like I don't know if
Speaker 1: they sort of want to be like, look how much
Speaker 1: we owned you, Like we made you trade the world's
Speaker 1: most notorious arms dealer for a basketball player, Like if
Speaker 1: they kind of I don't know the ridiculousness of what
Speaker 1: they've done to somehow win for them, or if Russia
Speaker 1: wants him back because he has some kind of intel
Speaker 1: that they're afraid of. I'm not sure if that's the case.
Speaker 1: He lived in Moscow for a while, I didn't know
Speaker 1: how close he was to the Russian state. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he knows some stuff. It's almost does not much of
Speaker 1: a state in the world that he doesn't have something on, right,
Speaker 1: So it's possible, and I guess he's kind of served
Speaker 1: his purpose, which was just like you know, we can
Speaker 1: find you anywhere, we can come after you anywhere, Um,
Speaker 1: we can arrestue And I don't want to be like
Speaker 1: like pro armed dealer on the podcast, but like on
Speaker 1: the podcast, James flee different. But Mike James is gonna
Speaker 1: say that we're not technically pro arms stealing. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is not not a prom stealing podcast technically. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: would be a good place for an ad pivot, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: But do you know who is pro stealing? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: based on I don't know how long we have left though,
Speaker 1: and may not makes sense here, but we can leave
Speaker 1: the joke in to prove that we're funny, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: we sometimes think about it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're considerate
Speaker 1: and funny yea, yeah, and kind and I'm not pro
Speaker 1: arm stealer and most apportently yeah. Yeah. So Victor is
Speaker 1: in prison. He's been imprisoned for about twelve years. He's
Speaker 1: got he got twenty five years. The judge, you've not
Speaker 1: proved he was going to do any crimes other than
Speaker 1: the ones you kind of talked him into, like a
Speaker 1: fair Yeah. Yeah, it woke judge because again, when they're
Speaker 1: meeting him, they're like, we want to kill America. The
Speaker 1: scopes are hig enough magnification so we can see their American.
Speaker 1: There's some specific dialogue about the sniper scopes too, like
Speaker 1: to ensure and they they're trying to get surface to
Speaker 1: our missiles as well, right, and surface to our missiles
Speaker 1: one of the harder things to acquire in the international
Speaker 1: arms market. And so he's gonna supply those. And they
Speaker 1: claim they're going to shootwn American airliners and do a terrorism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll definitely get them mad. Yeah they're gonna Well, but
Speaker 1: he only says that because the two d a plants.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. I don't think the dude would have
Speaker 1: bat nihlid either way. I mean typical fed behavior, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they walked in there in the cool flannel shirts and
Speaker 1: he did, Hey, who is a crime? Let me escalate
Speaker 1: the level of crime. So he's in prison, they've offered
Speaker 1: to trade him. It remains to be seeing, Like, don't
Speaker 1: know how relevant he will be if he comes out.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, Like the area I'm most familiar with the
Speaker 1: books firearms transactions is in Myanmar, right, Robert, Now, I've
Speaker 1: spent some time writing about that, and the price of
Speaker 1: weapons going small arms going to rebels in Mihama is
Speaker 1: insane right now, like it, And so maybe taking him
Speaker 1: out has changed that market a bit. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you'd think someone would have stepped in to fill that
Speaker 1: gap in the time that he'd been out of the game.
Speaker 1: You'd think, especially after the giant clusterfucker of leaving Afghanistan
Speaker 1: by the but we'd have done a lot more weapons
Speaker 1: onto the market. So what you're saying is there's yeah,
Speaker 1: get your resume ready, listeners. Yeah, you know, learn those languages.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying to the other applicants. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: learned soundscript. But on your resume, no one will call
Speaker 1: you on it. It will be fine. It's okay to
Speaker 1: lie about Sanskrit unless you're I guess going to theological college.
Speaker 1: And but yeah, he's learned Sanskrit, he's learned a bunch
Speaker 1: of other languages. In prison. He's probably writing poems in there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's probably dropping a book, is what he'll do, or
Speaker 1: come out. I'll drop a book, Honestly, I'm not I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised by that. If that was true. I
Speaker 1: would read a book written by one of the world's
Speaker 1: most famous international arms dealers. Add poets And that's right,
Speaker 1: add poets. Hey, based on what the quotes are that
Speaker 1: he's given so far, I'm sure he has really good writing.
Speaker 1: So who knows. We don't know. How much money he has.
Speaker 1: No one seems it's done a good job of hiding it.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the state of his businesses. It
Speaker 1: seems like he has just kind of pieced out, hang
Speaker 1: out in jail and maybe now we'll be going back
Speaker 1: to Russia to live in his ducher and just right
Speaker 1: sides all day we can dream. It feels like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if they offered him for Snowden already and now they're
Speaker 1: offering him again, either the only like quote unquote good
Speaker 1: Russian hostage, like worth worthy Russian hostage, or they in
Speaker 1: my head, I feel like they're trying to make a
Speaker 1: big statement like Brittney Grinder is so important to us
Speaker 1: this man. Does that make sense? Yeah it does? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope. I mean, look what's happening to her is disgusting, right,
Speaker 1: and every day he spent abhorrent and so like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you hope that that they I think, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he's there's no real I don't know. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: serve the interests of the state to keep him in prison, right,
Speaker 1: Like the big win was getting him there, and that
Speaker 1: I think showed people doing what he does that like
Speaker 1: the US will come after you and and so like that.
Speaker 1: It really I think twelve years is a long enough time,
Speaker 1: you know, leg So I don't know, I don't understand
Speaker 1: the motivations of world leaders. But hopefully we get some
Speaker 1: up this I don't know. Hopefully Britty grinded doesn't have
Speaker 1: to don't get in what I'm sure it's a pretty
Speaker 1: terrible Russian prison for having a vape pen, because that
Speaker 1: is bollocks. And I just want to say before we
Speaker 1: finish up here that we are indebted to our friend Matt,
Speaker 1: who is at I think enjoy It on Twitter or
Speaker 1: Raccoon Liberation Front Black Flag Enjoyers Matt's Handel. Matt actually
Speaker 1: came on to help us do an interview with this.
Speaker 1: Matt has worked in a lot of these places, not
Speaker 1: as an arms dealer, I should add, but doing some
Speaker 1: like civilis and even thinks that he ran into Victor
Speaker 1: boot in a bar in Somali land once. And because
Speaker 1: if we discussed you would not know that the student
Speaker 1: was an arms dealer. Unfortunately Matt's audio was unrecoverable, and
Speaker 1: and as debt for his help, and you should follow
Speaker 1: him on Twitter if you want to anything else, WEECHI
Speaker 1: plug Sharene Garrison now I think I think that does
Speaker 1: it for us today. So just google Victor boot up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here weekend? Oh hi, this is this is it could
Speaker 1: happen here. It's this. This isn't my episode, this is
Speaker 1: actually christ Um. But I guess I guess we're starting. Uh, Chris,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? You know I'm running on
Speaker 1: very little sleep and a lot of bubble tea. And
Speaker 1: by bububble tea, I mean canned bubble tea. This is
Speaker 1: the good ship really in terms of it being bubble
Speaker 1: tea is kind of okay, in terms of it being
Speaker 1: like a thing that has more sugar than like any
Speaker 1: human should ever consume and functions as an energy drink
Speaker 1: while tasting good, It's good ship. That's why I lived.
Speaker 1: That's why I lived that Bang life, Baby. We would
Speaker 1: not we would not get any of my scripted episodes
Speaker 1: done without Bang. Yeah. I drink rip it. It really is.
Speaker 1: So speaking of colonialism, actually I don't have a colonialism
Speaker 1: tie into this, all right, But what I do have
Speaker 1: is a bunch of people attacking a children's hospital. Ah So,
Speaker 1: on August, police and Boston were called to investigate a
Speaker 1: bomb threat against as parents waited outside an agect terror
Speaker 1: for their children's who are still trapped in the building.
Speaker 1: Police bomb squad swapped the building for hours. This time
Speaker 1: there was no bomb. Next time we might not be
Speaker 1: so lucky. Welcome to the next Day, trans People. So okay,
Speaker 1: how how did we get to right wingers calling in
Speaker 1: bomb threats to a children's hospital? A thing that I
Speaker 1: feel like I need to make a carve out at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this episode to talk about how absolutely
Speaker 1: absurd it is that people are sending death threats to
Speaker 1: eight children's hospital's. Children's hospital, they take, they do health
Speaker 1: care for children, like So the answer to why this
Speaker 1: is happening is basically the right's new media strategy drive
Speaker 1: it all once again is Chaya Raychick, who is better
Speaker 1: known as Lives of TikTok and the Enemy of the
Speaker 1: Pod recurring character on the POT. She's she's kind of displaced.
Speaker 1: She's kind of displaced, done that much lately, And it's
Speaker 1: like the recurring pod like person her and her and Matt,
Speaker 1: don't worry, He's bigger, easy the walls, walls will appear
Speaker 1: and the Washington Post editorial page that one always God,
Speaker 1: you know, I I could I could write I could
Speaker 1: write like all of my episodes about the Washington Post
Speaker 1: editorial page, so I don't do it and instead talk
Speaker 1: about this fucking Twitter account whereas and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: last scene sticking rabid mobs of reaction areas on teachers, schools,
Speaker 1: drag queens and random children on the internet for the
Speaker 1: crime of being queer or supporting queer kids in anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not the last time we're gonna talk about her, unless
Speaker 1: like miraculously he's destroyed in the next like three days.
Speaker 1: But well, we're gonna do here sort of take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into how and media strategy works and how
Speaker 1: sort of like the broadert right wing media sphere uses
Speaker 1: in Launder's rachex talking point pudo pseudo intellectual babble stuff
Speaker 1: to sell to wider audience, and the strategy like functionally
Speaker 1: is not It's like it's literally the same thing Alex
Speaker 1: Jones does. It's like, okay, so you you missread a headline, right,
Speaker 1: or someone puts a video in front of you that
Speaker 1: you haven't won, do you lie about what it says?
Speaker 1: And then you and you like invents basically some incredibly
Speaker 1: dramatic story about what it says and then you get
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people the writing media sphere to
Speaker 1: back you up for it. And then when inevitably someone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're wrong. You claim your being censored. Yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't mischaracterize anything. I just post people's own videos
Speaker 1: that that they that they themselves posts and then also
Speaker 1: then also just call them a pedophile for a saying
Speaker 1: that they were pronoun pants. Um yeah, anyway, yeah, um
Speaker 1: so so on. On August eleventh, lives a TikTok posted
Speaker 1: a tweet that said, quote Boston Children's Hospital at Boston
Speaker 1: Children's is now offering quote gender refirming his directomies for
Speaker 1: young girls. And so there there's there's a video attached. Right,
Speaker 1: does not say anything about this. Right, the video is
Speaker 1: literally just an explanation of what it has directed me is.
Speaker 1: And you know, but but this this like goes viral
Speaker 1: like literally three hours later. Matt Walsh, a man who
Speaker 1: once said on video and I think my kids consent
Speaker 1: all the time, I tweeted quote he said that that's
Speaker 1: on video that I am not selectively editing this. He
Speaker 1: just said that, so yeah, he he tweeted up. Nice
Speaker 1: effort to fight back against the drugging and mutilation of children.
Speaker 1: There should be rallies outside of the hospitals that butcher children.
Speaker 1: There should be marches on Washington with hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people. I will try to get this ball rolling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's been increasingly trying to do like this moral
Speaker 1: like superiority war and be like, of course we should
Speaker 1: hate I'm not a morally compromised degenerate and that that's
Speaker 1: kind of that style of talking points that he's trying
Speaker 1: to mainstream. He's a popular guest on Fox News. He
Speaker 1: made the he made the infamous anti trans documentary What
Speaker 1: Is a Woman? Earlier this year. Talk about at some point,
Speaker 1: but he's he's, he's he's trying to present himself as
Speaker 1: like an authority figure in the war against trans people.
Speaker 1: He's his work has been boosted by J. K. Rolling.
Speaker 1: He describes himself as a theocratic fascist kind of jokingly
Speaker 1: just completely accurate. There's no sub such a difference between
Speaker 1: what he believes in, like what the fucking people believe
Speaker 1: so like no or the like. He's wanting to organize
Speaker 1: rallies outside of like trans health clinics to like destroy
Speaker 1: trans research. What does huh? Yeah, never happened in human
Speaker 1: history anyway, continue, I also want to mention this. Okay,
Speaker 1: so as bad as was a woman is, he made
Speaker 1: it even He's actually created something even worse than this,
Speaker 1: which is like maybe history's most dogshit children's book, Johnnie
Speaker 1: the Walrus, like just unbelievably transphobic piece of ship thing
Speaker 1: that he made. Like I don't think a single child
Speaker 1: has ever read willingly. The Daily Wires kind of pushed
Speaker 1: like a children's media creation has been kind of wacky,
Speaker 1: it's awful, like it's it's I don't know these people,
Speaker 1: like they just they're all hacks. But the problem is
Speaker 1: if you want to make a children's book thing, like
Speaker 1: you actually have to make something, but you have to
Speaker 1: make something that like a child will really just like
Speaker 1: you don't you don't need to. You have to sell
Speaker 1: it to parents. Yeah that's not actual kid, it's about parents.
Speaker 1: Like the actual children will be extremely unhappy about this,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, okay, yeah you can, you can.
Speaker 1: You can. You can sell the pictures of a walrus
Speaker 1: to like forty year old mothers who are scared that
Speaker 1: their kid is wearing dresses or you know whatever. So
Speaker 1: all right, so Matt Walsh, the Kid's consents Man, is
Speaker 1: on go. By August fifteen, Matt Walsh is on a
Speaker 1: show which is called The Matt Walsh Show, which is
Speaker 1: the thing people great type. All of these people the
Speaker 1: name of their show is just their name, and it's like,
Speaker 1: that's why this, that's why this show is called the
Speaker 1: Robert Evans Show why in which Robert Evans occasionally appears on.
Speaker 1: It's true. So Tim Pool, he made the Tim cast.
Speaker 1: He showed some real initiative there. Look, this, this is
Speaker 1: this is the kind of innovation that only the only,
Speaker 1: the right and only entrepreneurship can bring us. They changed
Speaker 1: by three words. I mean, I still remember like a
Speaker 1: decade ago when Matt Walsh was like a niche but
Speaker 1: growing figure and like the evangelical influencer community, it's like
Speaker 1: a younger evangelical kid kind of interest in what Matt
Speaker 1: Walsh was doing because he was like kind of like
Speaker 1: a hipstern trying like doing like more like modern spins
Speaker 1: on some on some more kind of classic evangel evangelical topics.
Speaker 1: And then as I was getting evangelical Christianity, Walsh was
Speaker 1: like was getting way more radical in kind of in
Speaker 1: line with like you know, the lead up to trump
Speaker 1: Um and then he just went fully off the deep end.
Speaker 1: And even even as like in my meeting stages of
Speaker 1: being Christian were like, oh, this Walsh guy is like
Speaker 1: kind of nuts. He's like he is like going in
Speaker 1: some weird directions. He used to be kind of more
Speaker 1: like a moderate evangelical, still very conservative, but like he
Speaker 1: used to kind of be the cool kid on the
Speaker 1: block and through spear and then we're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: he's like he's doing some weird ship. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: that weird ship. So like okay, So he goes on
Speaker 1: his show and he starts screaming about how Cuban purity
Speaker 1: blockers are chemical trend castration, yes, which is like this
Speaker 1: is objectively not true. Like people like Matt rich I
Speaker 1: will argue that, like it's the same drug and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can use fertilizer to make a car bomb. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that gardening his terrorism. Yes, as as you
Speaker 1: if as long as you were taking it make you
Speaker 1: not able to reproduce as you're taking it, then when
Speaker 1: you stop taking it you can can reproduce again. Also,
Speaker 1: it's kind of concerning how much they're they're worried about
Speaker 1: twelve year olds not being able to reproduce. Uh, correct,
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh, I violate. Let me go back
Speaker 1: and read this exact quote. Don't. I don't want this
Speaker 1: to be taken. I don't. I don't want him to
Speaker 1: argue that I'm quoting him. I violate my kids consent
Speaker 1: all the time, Matt. No, he claims that forcing his
Speaker 1: kids to clean their room. But will that is some
Speaker 1: interesting word choices, you know, Okay, And obviously for like
Speaker 1: the pauty puberty blocker thing. We've talked with this in
Speaker 1: the show before. They're trying to frame this as like
Speaker 1: if you take if your kid gets on puberty permanently sterile,
Speaker 1: which just isn't true. That that's just false, like that
Speaker 1: that that is, that is not that's not how these
Speaker 1: drugs work. Um They're also claimed that these drugs are
Speaker 1: are like fatal. They're like, look with people who took
Speaker 1: this drug, this mat this massive percentage of them and
Speaker 1: um as they were on it. And this is because
Speaker 1: the drugs also used to treat terminal illnesses, so the
Speaker 1: it's like like a specifically heart condition or like I
Speaker 1: think I think it's I think it's some some the
Speaker 1: heart condition thing. Um, so people like old people who
Speaker 1: are on the drug will because of their because of
Speaker 1: their like condition that drug is treating them for. So
Speaker 1: they try to use that false statistic to then make
Speaker 1: lead like kids are dying on this puberty blocker, which
Speaker 1: is again is not true. It's it's all blatantly false things.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into more of the bullshit they get
Speaker 1: into a second. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: time he's doing it that they've they really really started
Speaker 1: leaning into this. One is screwing about like hospitals mutilating
Speaker 1: children because you know, this is it's an incredibly sort
Speaker 1: of lurid image and it's like, okay, so she's just
Speaker 1: like literally what he's describing it is just a hysterectomy, right,
Speaker 1: which is like a thing that it's just a regular
Speaker 1: that also, and I kind of emphasize this enough, no
Speaker 1: one under eighteen is getting a hysterectomy, not really, I
Speaker 1: mean there is. Again, I think a few a few
Speaker 1: places have specific conditions for people who are over the
Speaker 1: age of medical state that they're in, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: Oregan's medically consent for most things. Is a sixteen years old. Um,
Speaker 1: there's certain conditions for like seventeen year olds usually to
Speaker 1: start the process if they want that down the line
Speaker 1: can get consulted. Like the Yeah, the thing of Boston
Speaker 1: Joe's Hospital they're they're all screaming about, is there's a
Speaker 1: thing that says seventeen on a document talking about this,
Speaker 1: and what they mean is that you can start consultations
Speaker 1: when you're seventeen. But in Boston, like this hospital has
Speaker 1: never they've never done this that happens to surgery on
Speaker 1: like fifteen year olds that that just like just that happens. Um,
Speaker 1: there's possibly been like uh like like literally a couple
Speaker 1: like literally like through like one to three extremely rare
Speaker 1: incidents that patients, doctors, therapists, medical professionals have have done
Speaker 1: things to to help treat very severe gender dysphoria. But
Speaker 1: that is only extremely few instances because all of these
Speaker 1: surgeries and all these treatments are so medically gate like
Speaker 1: gate caps. Like I've been trying to get top surgery
Speaker 1: at their an adult and they've been doing this process
Speaker 1: and its like it takes years like it is so
Speaker 1: it's so challenging. Yeah, like there there is an entire
Speaker 1: system of gender bureaucrats whose like entire job is you
Speaker 1: have to like like you have to convince these people
Speaker 1: that your gender is real and it yeah, the gender
Speaker 1: allowed to do things, year allowed to sign off on
Speaker 1: things happening to your body. Yeah, like okay, you know, okay.
Speaker 1: The product of all of this bullshit is, like, you know,
Speaker 1: all the surgery back they're coming for your kids ship succession,
Speaker 1: just like absolute obsession with making sure that people with
Speaker 1: eaters is can like you can force them to have
Speaker 1: kids later down the line. The product of this is
Speaker 1: Matt starts yelling about how this needs to be stopped,
Speaker 1: and then, like COYLEI suggests maybe we should start with
Speaker 1: Boston Children's Hospital. Um, like that same day, Boston children
Speaker 1: Hospital is delis with death threats. Now the media matters
Speaker 1: goes after him, and Matt Walsh makes a bunch of
Speaker 1: tweets about how he's been context and that death threats
Speaker 1: aren't his fault. But like, you know, okay, the context
Speaker 1: is him yelling, well, somebody rid us at this battles
Speaker 1: some children's hospital over and over again. So I think
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh doth protest too much. And you know, even
Speaker 1: as this sort of like the threats mount right, like
Speaker 1: this fake story all over the conservative like ecosystem, like wildfire,
Speaker 1: like bright Burt has an article up about it, like
Speaker 1: on day one, like within a few hours is of
Speaker 1: like right check making this like fake tweet. Um. Within
Speaker 1: within a week, it's on Gateway, Daily Callers, on the Blaze,
Speaker 1: on Daily Wires, on Fox News. It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's hit the entire ecosystem. Um. The problem, Okay, let
Speaker 1: try a right check. Like very quickly realized this is
Speaker 1: going viral. She just keep tweeting about it, keeps treading
Speaker 1: about it, keeps treating about it. But she has this problem,
Speaker 1: which is that everything she's saying is incredibly easily demonstrable lie.
Speaker 1: And so she keeps having to like trying to yell
Speaker 1: at like fact checkers and like regular people who are
Speaker 1: going like this is just bullshit. And like like the
Speaker 1: hospital itself has to issue a statement being like, hey,
Speaker 1: we don't actually have to change their website to make
Speaker 1: it clear that seventeen year olds don't actually get the
Speaker 1: surgeries you can just get. The company has like they've
Speaker 1: never like, well, you know, and this is this is
Speaker 1: kind of a problem. For the propaganda wing, because like,
Speaker 1: try a right check is like a fucking hack. I
Speaker 1: gonna convince anyone who like isn't already convinced that like,
Speaker 1: transpeople are evil. Like you know, at this point, I
Speaker 1: think in earlier in two, I think she may have
Speaker 1: been able to crap propaganda which convinces people. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's gone so much further. Her radius is gonna is
Speaker 1: gonna is gonna severely grow in terms of people who
Speaker 1: are like you know, if someone's fine with trans people,
Speaker 1: I don't think they're gonna look at her page and
Speaker 1: suddenly be like, oh, these trans people seem like they're bad. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: she she she doesn't have She doesn't have like that.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have the sort of like advertising ability to
Speaker 1: do this. But do you know who does have the
Speaker 1: advertising ability to sell you things? Is it our lovely,
Speaker 1: our lovely and very very fans friendly sponsors, every single
Speaker 1: one of them, Chevron. Uh, what what other sponsors do
Speaker 1: we have? I have no idea watch that's right, highway
Speaker 1: patrol blue ape. Well we can't. We can't say that
Speaker 1: of a fatherly archetypal deity. That's right, all of these people,
Speaker 1: uh will love and accept you for being trends and
Speaker 1: then offer you a job at a defense contractor. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you alright, so we're we're we're we're back. Uh we
Speaker 1: revealed the problem try a right check is that she's
Speaker 1: a hack and she can't convince anyone wh doesn't connects.
Speaker 1: And this is where a bunch of people who are
Speaker 1: not actually any smarter than try a right check, but
Speaker 1: like can write more fancy swinging the gear. Um, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna walk through some of the arguments they're using
Speaker 1: so you can like even the quote unquote more research
Speaker 1: it is once you actually look at the stuff they're sighting,
Speaker 1: and these like very official looking threads. So, for example,
Speaker 1: on August seventeenth, Wesley Yang he was a hack pundit who,
Speaker 1: admittedly I must applaud him for doing more in his
Speaker 1: lifetime to combat the stereotype the eight than any other
Speaker 1: person ever born. Has um did a di did a
Speaker 1: threat attempting to defend lives of TikTok's like you know
Speaker 1: the thing about Boston Children's Hospital giving out his directomes
Speaker 1: and Okay, so it starts with him going all right,
Speaker 1: all right, so we're going gonna work for this right,
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, gender surgery. That means it means they
Speaker 1: gave like three people missectomies, right, and then under what
Speaker 1: condition apparently apparently eight they may actually have given like
Speaker 1: three people who were like seventeen missectomies, which is again
Speaker 1: not his director, this is a different thing. Okay. And
Speaker 1: and then and then he goes, well, okay, so hospital,
Speaker 1: there's hospital doc showing it they that they do do
Speaker 1: genitals or he admits that they don't. It's never happens,
Speaker 1: says they could do it, but they never had document.
Speaker 1: But I've misread and don't understand the feed a consultation
Speaker 1: and getting it a surgery clown and the who destroyed
Speaker 1: his entire brain for money in like two thousand and fifteen.
Speaker 1: I would be interested in seeing, you know, if if
Speaker 1: they're arguing that seventeen year olds cannot medically consent to surgeries,
Speaker 1: are on what seventeen year olds can consent to another
Speaker 1: another situation. There's there's two angles for that, right. There
Speaker 1: is the uh, there is what what percentage of these
Speaker 1: people like fucking Tucker Carlson have gone on a show
Speaker 1: and defended child marriage? And then there's the second question,
Speaker 1: which is okay. So if these people aren't okay, so
Speaker 1: if jenior Old is too young to quote unquote mutilate
Speaker 1: their bodies, why are you allowing people? Why are you
Speaker 1: allowing these people to be in the lead up the
Speaker 1: joining the army a place where you will in fact
Speaker 1: get actually mutilated. Also ignore the concept of circumcision. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's you okay, Yeah, it's great, So so okay, so
Speaker 1: and and is the last thing he does. He starts
Speaker 1: ranting about other clinics who have done sectomies, so like like,
Speaker 1: let's let's take this piece. So first of all, again,
Speaker 1: no trans dude under eighteen is getting like at this hospital.
Speaker 1: It has never happened, it will never happen. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence that suggests that trans women have been able
Speaker 1: to get bottom surgeries like elsewhere when they were when
Speaker 1: they were like at like age seventeen. But but if
Speaker 1: you if you chase down the citation, the evidence for
Speaker 1: this is purely anecdotal. So there's no actual like evidence
Speaker 1: that like this happened. It's just they found They found
Speaker 1: several studies, all of which are siding with each other.
Speaker 1: And at the beginning, one starts with I heard some
Speaker 1: stories about this. This is going great on the sectomy fronts,
Speaker 1: like like okay, so like the like some there are
Speaker 1: some trans men who have gotten sectovies, like when they
Speaker 1: were technically a minor, right, but like okay, I again,
Speaker 1: depending on the age of medical consent in this day,
Speaker 1: depending on what other there's another treatment options were available
Speaker 1: after years of therapy and consultations. And also we should
Speaker 1: mention this like with actually sis sis girls get missectomies
Speaker 1: like all the time. This is like this, this is
Speaker 1: a regular procedure that like get we should explain what
Speaker 1: messectomies and its directs me off for people in just
Speaker 1: in case they're not familiar. I think, Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: so his directomy basically is the okay, what what was
Speaker 1: the simple sway to explaining like surgical removing of the uterus,
Speaker 1: right yeah, well yeah, yeah, it's it's it's mostly so
Speaker 1: it's this is a rouble of the uterus. There are
Speaker 1: like some versions of it where you get your overras
Speaker 1: taken out to um. Yeah yeah. Missectomy is like you're
Speaker 1: getting your breast removed or sometimes it's like size reduction stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fairly common procedure. This happens like
Speaker 1: all the time. And okay, if if you look at
Speaker 1: what's happening here, right, So there's no evidence that the
Speaker 1: kids are getting his directivies. So what what Resley Yang
Speaker 1: and like who is redirect focus on gender affirming mussectomies?
Speaker 1: Because again they don't have any evidence first things happening,
Speaker 1: and then because they don't have any evidence, uh, they
Speaker 1: have to start using conspiracy logic and going like, well
Speaker 1: this other thing happens, and other people also did a
Speaker 1: completely other unrelated and this is evidence that this hospital
Speaker 1: has secretly been giving these things out even though you
Speaker 1: just said like three treats before, they've never done one
Speaker 1: and they've never actually done his director. It's incredible stuff, right,
Speaker 1: Like this guy, I need to point this out, like
Speaker 1: what Wesley Yang, Like there was a period of you
Speaker 1: get an understanding of like people people who weren't around
Speaker 1: at the dosen't tends to understand like how bad the
Speaker 1: intellectual scene was. Like there was a time where this
Speaker 1: guy was like the like the rising Asian American intellectual
Speaker 1: like star who was like supposed to be like this
Speaker 1: is this sort of like like great revolutionary like thinker
Speaker 1: of the new twenty one century, and here he is
Speaker 1: doing this bullshit because absolute goddamn clown. I hate him. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so moving on to other stuff, Like but the thing
Speaker 1: is like this doesn't matter, like the fact that everything
Speaker 1: they're saying is a lie and his bullshit like doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to trans is like they need this sort of
Speaker 1: like visceral emotional pull of the sort of like their
Speaker 1: mutilating children ship. And then the other thing they need
Speaker 1: is like threads that make it look like what they're
Speaker 1: saying is true. And this is enough to get a
Speaker 1: huge part of the sort of conservative base on board,
Speaker 1: and you know, it starts to move right. The story
Speaker 1: spreads to to the Donald, which is like the re
Speaker 1: hosting of the old ar slast to Donald sub bredit
Speaker 1: that was banned for being like an absolute accessible of abuse.
Speaker 1: And they start organizing campaigns to harass people who work
Speaker 1: at this hospital, and this just gets worse. People like
Speaker 1: Steve Diese like start targeting specific doctors and calling them
Speaker 1: demonic and screaming about like Butcher's and so okay, So
Speaker 1: by the eighteenth we're on like day six or day
Speaker 1: seven of people like doing this, five of people setting
Speaker 1: death rests to a children's hospital and finally a platform
Speaker 1: does something. Uh so Facebook bands lives TikTok for one
Speaker 1: day and then it worked, you know, Okay, but they
Speaker 1: use that time to reflect, right and to think about
Speaker 1: what they do. Yeah. Yeah, and there there change was
Speaker 1: we need to post more about this, and so you know,
Speaker 1: we should be like, like the social media companies are
Speaker 1: never actually gonna talk because louser TikTok, especially with Twitter.
Speaker 1: TikTok is good for Twitter in the same way that
Speaker 1: Trump was, like, you know, like its presence. It brings
Speaker 1: traffic generation, they generate conflict, which is the entire purpose
Speaker 1: of the Twitter algorithm. They drive like advertising revenue. They
Speaker 1: got a lot of engagement. There's no reason to ban them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like and with Twitter especially like they like with
Speaker 1: Trump gone right, they had to they had to ban
Speaker 1: Trump for political reasons because you know, tried to overthrow
Speaker 1: the government. But like you know what Trump gone, Like Twitter,
Speaker 1: Twitter is like just a declining like social media as
Speaker 1: sure is. And you know, so I I watched I
Speaker 1: watched Donald trump pizza Hut commercial yesterday, and I forgot
Speaker 1: how funny Donald Trump was. Like he's as long as
Speaker 1: he's plagued the character of Donald Trump. He's actually really
Speaker 1: funny that I that I remembered all the fashions and
Speaker 1: parts and then else anyway, Yeah yeah, but like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, okay, So like they the way the sort
Speaker 1: of thing works, right is that they get all these
Speaker 1: users and engagement from the right, starting like a campaign
Speaker 1: against the children's hospital. Then they get engaged with from
Speaker 1: the left going after them. They make money no matter
Speaker 1: who wins, and like you know, sometimes they'll band like
Speaker 1: Trump right because you know, or the dow temper of
Speaker 1: right wing people, because that that gives you like good
Speaker 1: liberal media attention. And then you know, and that that
Speaker 1: that that that gives time for a cycle to sort
Speaker 1: of build up for the conservatives to all talk about
Speaker 1: how they're being censored, and then when they returned to
Speaker 1: the platform, they do their whole eye was censored arc
Speaker 1: like we've seen there's Jordan's fifteen times. So with the
Speaker 1: loser ticktow on, they August they start targeting another children's
Speaker 1: hospital and this this is time. It was a Children's
Speaker 1: National Hospital in Washington, d C. Which is like DCS
Speaker 1: by far largest and most important children's hospital and they
Speaker 1: bring they bring their website down, like the same stuff
Speaker 1: is happening, and Twitter finally locks Lives of TikTok off
Speaker 1: of their account for a week. Um partially what's happening
Speaker 1: here was like there's pressure by friends, guess Alejandra klar Baio,
Speaker 1: who's been doing like a lot of great work like
Speaker 1: documenting and like documenting what lives tum be doing and
Speaker 1: like sparring with them and try a right check like
Speaker 1: keeps miss gendering her because China is a fucking enormous
Speaker 1: piece of ships who should be flushed down the ship
Speaker 1: belongs unfortunately, Like well, okay, so so some of the
Speaker 1: some of the like dozens of tweets that that I
Speaker 1: lives talk made about children's hospitals and take it down.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are still up and you know,
Speaker 1: probably was gonna right still band off Twitter, But like,
Speaker 1: you know what's gonna happen is there's gonna be like
Speaker 1: a wave of like good glberal media press, and then
Speaker 1: there's going to be the next wave of the conservative
Speaker 1: outrage over censorship and cancel culture stuff, and then she'll
Speaker 1: be back in a subject post a right chick said
Speaker 1: quote Now more than ever, I need your support. Consider
Speaker 1: becoming a paid subscriber so I can continue this important
Speaker 1: work when I get banned permanently. It's only a matter
Speaker 1: of time. All need your help to keep the light
Speaker 1: song so I can continue telling the truth. They can't
Speaker 1: cancel me if you don't let them, because there it
Speaker 1: is begins. Yeah, I mean, like I kind of says enough,
Speaker 1: like this has all always been a grift, Like this
Speaker 1: is like her fourth attempt. She's been trying her fourth attempt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like she's been trying to become a vital Twitter personality
Speaker 1: for years. She gets found the one. She finally found
Speaker 1: something that worked, and that's uh baiting conservatives into being
Speaker 1: mad at her, yeah, giving them like some kind of
Speaker 1: excuse for being mad at trans people, right, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a self self validation thing. Yeah, specific specific
Speaker 1: and specific targets too, and like yeah, I mentioned this,
Speaker 1: like okay, like right check like is an actual human
Speaker 1: piece of ship. Like her ideology is bad, but like
Speaker 1: it is the stuff that she's doing is mostly about money,
Speaker 1: and this is true of like the entire ecosystem, right,
Speaker 1: like all of the conservative outlets is why, like Matt
Speaker 1: Walsh and is like like all of these people spent
Speaker 1: all of their time staring at metrics and looking at
Speaker 1: their fucking viewer data looking at the anti trans. The
Speaker 1: anti trans documentary is paywalled behind plus the hit new
Speaker 1: Like it's like it's funny because like all of these
Speaker 1: people like ran constantly and there's there's there's like increasingly
Speaker 1: anti semitic versions of it about how like the TRANSACTISI,
Speaker 1: the trans lobby or like funded by billionaires, Like every
Speaker 1: single of these people paid by fucking sorryes presumably well
Speaker 1: all all supposedly we're all getting paid by by George Sorrows.
Speaker 1: In reality, it's it's the rights all getting paid by
Speaker 1: what my black other guy's name, the fucking Fox guy. Teal, No,
Speaker 1: they are, they're now getting paid but the guy guy,
Speaker 1: uh no, the yeah, they're they're they're also all getting
Speaker 1: paid by just like the rabid base of like yeah,
Speaker 1: dealerships just think they're working class because they have a
Speaker 1: four enet and like, yeah, it sucks so true. They're
Speaker 1: about nine hundred thousand subscribers to this daily were Daily
Speaker 1: Wire plus the hit new streaming service. That's correctly, that's
Speaker 1: why it's a hit. Then they give me such a
Speaker 1: catchy name. But yeah, that's a ship ton of money
Speaker 1: for someone, right, pumping out hate getting Gina Curiso to
Speaker 1: make crappy films. That's right. Yeah, that an amazing career. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she went from and Pooled to Star Wars to Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 1: just gonna have her own Star Wars show on the prairie.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Fucking countr bidy like that, that's the god. Like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the Hunter Biden trailer. Yeah, there's this trailer for a
Speaker 1: film that I forget Who's I forget, who's Who's um
Speaker 1: making this one? Um? But it's it's a film about
Speaker 1: all of Hunter Biden scandals and Gina, Gina is in
Speaker 1: it and Tyler. It looks like if this was directed
Speaker 1: by a smart person, this could be an amazing comedy
Speaker 1: like this, like the way the everything about it is
Speaker 1: so innately comedic, yet they're playing it as a political scandal.
Speaker 1: But no, it's just And if it was, if it
Speaker 1: was directed by somebody with any competency, they would have
Speaker 1: recognized it's a comedy film and it would be hilarious
Speaker 1: to watch. But instead it's going to be boring because look,
Speaker 1: conservatives are getting good at comedy left is worried. The
Speaker 1: left is getting very scared like the other the moments
Speaker 1: I knew that Glenn Greenwald had like like he wasn't
Speaker 1: just purely grifting, had like actually falling down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole was what he spent like fucking like two years
Speaker 1: pretending that literally anyone on earth gave a shit about Hunter.
Speaker 1: Biden's also here here. Yeah, he's been simping for for
Speaker 1: limps of TikTok. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all
Speaker 1: all leading up to his uh, incredibly hardball interview with
Speaker 1: Alex Jones. Great, great, incredible journalism. Just god, I love
Speaker 1: it here, so it all sucks and the other like
Speaker 1: the other big problem here, Right, It's like okay, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, like all these people are just doing
Speaker 1: this to make money. But the problem is that and
Speaker 1: I kind of emphasize this enough, it is easier to
Speaker 1: get the material brom and it needs to get gender
Speaker 1: affirming surgery. And this is a real fucking issue because
Speaker 1: it turns out when you convince a bunch of people
Speaker 1: that children's hospitals and mutilating children, what happens? Oh wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, I don't even need to go back to
Speaker 1: the anti abortion terrorism, the people bring down abortion clinics
Speaker 1: and murdering healthcare workers. I could just talk about the
Speaker 1: reaction to uh. Like almost immediately after the lockdown started,
Speaker 1: a guy tried to buy a bond to blow up
Speaker 1: a children's hospital and was killed in the shootout with
Speaker 1: the FBI. He was killed like a week maybe like
Speaker 1: a week and a half before. Another guy tried to
Speaker 1: derail a train to Rammay Navy medical ship. M hm.
Speaker 1: There was also the Staddy lady, the lady who tried
Speaker 1: to shake all the knives on board the hospital ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's just like okay, like if they're allowed to
Speaker 1: keep doing this ship, like, people are going to die.
Speaker 1: And this isn't to say like they can't be beat,
Speaker 1: especially I r L with first of these people in
Speaker 1: total are actually pretty small because like the number of
Speaker 1: people who actually rapidly care about this stuff is like
Speaker 1: a vanishing lea small minority of the US. And you know,
Speaker 1: and and I r L. That works for us because
Speaker 1: these people suck. Everyone hates them. Communities will come out
Speaker 1: to like to try to communities will come out to
Speaker 1: confront and defeat them. But this is you know that
Speaker 1: this is the this is the ecosystem, the media ecosystem
Speaker 1: of the modern right. It works like spreading conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and citing mobs and then claiming they're being the censor
Speaker 1: when everyone tries to stop them, like in two to
Speaker 1: three weeks, when they found another one of these things.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it will be like fucking like transgender
Speaker 1: clowns are working make a wish foundation or something like
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about another instance, another instance like
Speaker 1: this in tomorrow's episode. Um, it's great, it's it's good.
Speaker 1: It's not good at all. That is bad. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you do want to be mad about force historict
Speaker 1: uh that immigration services force historicts means on people in
Speaker 1: their custody, it's a good thing to be mad about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a good time on that we have
Speaker 1: here on this earth. Yeahs. Warning for some pretty intense
Speaker 1: transphobia and miss gender ing. Eighty year old Julie Jaman
Speaker 1: was permanently banned from her local y m c A
Speaker 1: after demanding that a transgender worker leave the women's locker room.
Speaker 1: Jaman said that she was trying to protect little girls
Speaker 1: from a biological man and a women's swimsuit who was
Speaker 1: watching them undressed? So this week a few dozen people
Speaker 1: joined Jaman to protest the y m c A. Some
Speaker 1: of the protesters, including her, were assaulted by lunatics men
Speaker 1: dressed as women. Okay, first of all, that granny rocks.
Speaker 1: But when pressed Poor Towns in Washington police said that
Speaker 1: Mr Mrs Jayman had an emotional response to a strange
Speaker 1: male being in the bathroom and how helping a young
Speaker 1: girl take off her bathing suit. Well, I should hope
Speaker 1: the response to that would be emotional. Yeah, because this,
Speaker 1: you know, you can just picture this kind of situation
Speaker 1: where they're grooming little kids, uh, completely inappropriately, and you're
Speaker 1: you're you're doing the thing that a lot of people
Speaker 1: want you to do and that a lot of people
Speaker 1: watching would But I hope everybody is aware that this,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, is pretty wonderful profit for big
Speaker 1: pharma and medical systems. It's and what's happening to children
Speaker 1: becomes even more disastrous. And you were protecting the kids.
Speaker 1: You were protecting the kids. I mean, they should have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to do that. The Young Men's Christians Association
Speaker 1: UH should be doing that themselves if they were playing
Speaker 1: any role in this whatsoever. It's pretty frightening. This is
Speaker 1: it could happen. He Yer. I'm Garrison, and today we're
Speaker 1: talking about a recent flare up of anti trans hate
Speaker 1: and the anti trans protests and campaigning that's engulfed a
Speaker 1: small town in northern Washington in what conservatives describe as
Speaker 1: the culture war front. The past month, for right media
Speaker 1: personalities and anti trans so called feminists have partnered together
Speaker 1: to create an international nexus point for the increasing attacks
Speaker 1: on trans and queer people, resulting in a wave of harassment,
Speaker 1: death threats, and rallies, including an upcoming anti trans rally
Speaker 1: in association with the Proud Boys and Three per Centers
Speaker 1: slated for Saturday, September three. Port Townsend is a small
Speaker 1: city of just around ten thousand people located on the
Speaker 1: Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, just north of Seattle. The
Speaker 1: city has a geographic footprint of just under ten square miles.
Speaker 1: Over the course of the past month, the quaint beachside
Speaker 1: city has become the focus of a disinformation campaign against
Speaker 1: trans people and transgender inclusivity. But unless you frequent right
Speaker 1: wing news outlets, you probably haven't heard anything about this story,
Speaker 1: let alone are aware of the massive amount of harassment
Speaker 1: and death threats being targeted at trans people and their allies.
Speaker 1: Anti trans and far right activists have already descended on
Speaker 1: this small city from all around the country and plan
Speaker 1: to do so again on September three, with Proud Boys
Speaker 1: and three per Centers promising to show up. So what
Speaker 1: actually happened that escalated things to this point? On July
Speaker 1: and eighty year old woman named Julie Jammin was in
Speaker 1: a pool locker room and began verbally harassing a trans
Speaker 1: woman who was on the job as an employer of
Speaker 1: the Olympic Peninsula y m c A. Julie Gemmen asked
Speaker 1: invasive questions about her genitals and later accused her of
Speaker 1: engaging in inappropriate conduct while continuously mis gendering this employee.
Speaker 1: Both the employee and y m c A officials, and
Speaker 1: like everyone else present in the locker room, have disputed
Speaker 1: Julie's highly publicized version of events, which we'll get into
Speaker 1: in a bit, but first we're going to hear from
Speaker 1: the original target of the harassment. A few days ago,
Speaker 1: I was able to talk with Clementine, young trans woman
Speaker 1: about what happened to her near the end of July
Speaker 1: while working at the y m c A. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty normal day that week. We were doing uh
Speaker 1: swimming with the kids. UH and man the other childcare
Speaker 1: workers you know, use the locker rooms kind of as expected,
Speaker 1: and I was using the woman's locker room just because
Speaker 1: you know, that works for me, um, and that lines
Speaker 1: up with how I feel. We went through all that
Speaker 1: no problems. We got the kids, the kids got changed
Speaker 1: and their stalls, and then once we were out in
Speaker 1: the pool, one of the kids needed to use the
Speaker 1: locker room bathroom, so I took that kid and another
Speaker 1: kid into the locker room in accordance with the wise
Speaker 1: rule of three system. To clarify, at the y m
Speaker 1: c A, there is a quote rule of three where
Speaker 1: staff always accompany children in a group of three, so
Speaker 1: that a staff person is never alone with a child
Speaker 1: and children are never alone with each other. As Clementine
Speaker 1: was standing with a kid outside the restroom stall, waiting
Speaker 1: on the other kid who was using the bathroom, Julie
Speaker 1: Germmond was showering nearby in a curtained off stall across
Speaker 1: the locker room. I was waiting outside of the bathroom
Speaker 1: stall with the kid being the buddy making small talk.
Speaker 1: When Julie Jaman initiated the dialogue by asking if I
Speaker 1: was a member of the lgbt Q plus community. I responded, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm trans And she asked me if I had a penis,
Speaker 1: and it kind of caught me off guard. Um, and
Speaker 1: I and I told her that, you know, that's none
Speaker 1: of your business. Um, Julie asserted that I needed to
Speaker 1: leave and that I can't be there. And then in
Speaker 1: response to her assertion, I just shook my head. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: I couldn't really leave or I'd be leaving the kids unattended.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was backed into a corner the kid.
Speaker 1: At some point, UM, the kid using the bathroom exited
Speaker 1: the stall and had her swimming. Her bathing suit like
Speaker 1: wasn't fully pulled up, and she asked me for help,
Speaker 1: and so I assisted her by pulling it up by
Speaker 1: its straps. And you know, there were other patrons present
Speaker 1: in the locker room at this time. And at some
Speaker 1: point around the girl coming out and meeting her straps
Speaker 1: pulled up, Julie was back in her shower stall. And
Speaker 1: then around this time two more kids entered the locker room.
Speaker 1: It might be good to mention I have prescribed glasses. Um,
Speaker 1: I wasn't wearing my glasses and I couldn't see anything,
Speaker 1: which is kind of terrifying because you know, it was
Speaker 1: like a shot in the dark, like I just heard
Speaker 1: a voice and I had to search around before I
Speaker 1: figured out who was talking to me. But anyways, uh,
Speaker 1: the kids. Two more kids came into the locker room
Speaker 1: and they overheard Julie shouting at me and asked me
Speaker 1: what was going on, and like they had this concerned
Speaker 1: look on their face, and I just kind of told
Speaker 1: them to leave because I didn't want them to get involved.
Speaker 1: The kids went to the pool manager, Rowan, and asked
Speaker 1: for help with the escalating situation. They went straight to
Speaker 1: her and asked her to come help and told her
Speaker 1: that someone was yelling at me. And moments later, Rowan entered,
Speaker 1: and as she walked by, I got her attention and
Speaker 1: I told her, you know, there's an older lady yelling
Speaker 1: at me to leave right now. Uh, And I pointed
Speaker 1: at the shower stall that Julie was using. Roan kind
Speaker 1: of like posted up and Rowan stood in between me,
Speaker 1: the kids, and Julie and waited for her to come out.
Speaker 1: And then Julie you know, poked her head back out
Speaker 1: and said get out, you're a man. Um and Rowan
Speaker 1: you know, intervened when she sort of like popped back
Speaker 1: out and said, no, actually you need to leave because
Speaker 1: right now you're discriminating and kind of being a bigot.
Speaker 1: So it's actually that you need it's actually you that
Speaker 1: needs to leave right now. And Julie told Rowan she
Speaker 1: was confused about gender. And then Julie pointed at me
Speaker 1: and said, he has a fucking penis. He has no
Speaker 1: business being around little girls. He has a penis, and
Speaker 1: he could rape someone. And after that, Rowan uh sort
Speaker 1: of ushered me and the girls out of the locker
Speaker 1: room and uh told me to go to her office,
Speaker 1: and then the other staff members found me and helped me.
Speaker 1: UM and Rowan stood outside the lobby side of the
Speaker 1: office when I was in there, and UM, I guess like, yeah,
Speaker 1: after the police have been called, Julie came out and
Speaker 1: engaged with her, uh, and they were yelling. But I
Speaker 1: kind oft hear what was going on, and I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of the end of it. I know that
Speaker 1: Julie left after that, and I just kind of checked
Speaker 1: out for an hour two. It shocked me. I haven't
Speaker 1: had someone do that to me before. I've never been
Speaker 1: talked to in a bathroom or locker room before, especially
Speaker 1: in that way. The y m c A pool manager
Speaker 1: told Julie Gemmen that she needed to leave and suspended
Speaker 1: her membership for violating the Wise Code of Conduct, which
Speaker 1: prohibits quote discrimination, hatred, derogatory or unwelcome comments, intimidation, conduct
Speaker 1: or actions based on an individual's sex, race, ethnicity, age, religion, disability,
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status unquote, as
Speaker 1: well as having no tolerance for disrespectful words or gestures
Speaker 1: towards y m c A staff or others. Part of
Speaker 1: an official statement released by the Olympic Peninsula y m
Speaker 1: c A, published as the incident in question was growing
Speaker 1: into a much broader anti transspectacle, clarified that Julie has
Speaker 1: had quote several incidents where she has repeatedly violated the
Speaker 1: Wise Code of Conduct, specifically using disrespectful words or gestures
Speaker 1: towards y m c A staff or others, and abusive,
Speaker 1: harassing and or obscene language or gestures towards y m
Speaker 1: c A staff or others. The Aquatics manager then informed
Speaker 1: the patron that she was permanently suspended from Mountain View
Speaker 1: Pool and all Olympic Peninsula y m c A facilities unquote.
Speaker 1: After Julie was banned from the pool on Monday August one,
Speaker 1: she started showing up outside the facility with anti trains
Speaker 1: signs and led a small group of people into a
Speaker 1: city council meeting, resulting in an hour of public comment
Speaker 1: logged about the incident. Here is some of the statement
Speaker 1: Julie read in the city council meeting, which also gives
Speaker 1: a look at her version of events at this time.
Speaker 1: Personal podium, state your name and where you live for
Speaker 1: the record, Peninsula, and I'm here because I had an
Speaker 1: experience that you need to know. I have sent it
Speaker 1: to you all in detail. In an effort by the
Speaker 1: city and the y m c A to apply the
Speaker 1: neocultural gender rules at Mountain Viewpool dressing shower room facilities,
Speaker 1: women and children are being put at risk. My experience
Speaker 1: while showering after my swim was hearing a man's voice
Speaker 1: in the women's dressing area and seeing a man in
Speaker 1: a women's swims watching little girls pull down their bathing
Speaker 1: suits in order to use the toilets in the dressing room.
Speaker 1: I reacted by telling him to leave, and the consequence
Speaker 1: is that I have been banned from the pool. There
Speaker 1: is no signage informing women the shower room is now
Speaker 1: all gender and what that means. Nor have parents been
Speaker 1: informed of what they can expect with these news policies.
Speaker 1: The why has not provided any dressing shower room options
Speaker 1: for women who do not want to be exposed to
Speaker 1: men who identify as women. The y m c A,
Speaker 1: the city, the police and sheriff's, the parents, the professionals
Speaker 1: who assist victims of royalism, peeping tom's, pedophilia, and assault
Speaker 1: need to come together to figure out how to make
Speaker 1: the new policies work for all pool patrons, not just
Speaker 1: one group. How to keep children who are less able
Speaker 1: to discriminate safe. It is ironic that women who discriminate
Speaker 1: when a situation threatens their safety or their children a
Speaker 1: message from our ancestors are now accused of discrimination, as
Speaker 1: if they have made someone else a victim. We need
Speaker 1: to do much more intelligent and wise about applying the
Speaker 1: rules and developing policies that are respectful and inclusive. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, so just a few notes about
Speaker 1: that trans inclusivity at the Y is not some new policy.
Speaker 1: For years, it's been literally Washington State law that people
Speaker 1: have the right to access the locker rooms, changing rooms,
Speaker 1: and bathrooms that align with their gender identity. This has
Speaker 1: been the case since the law states, quote, entities shall
Speaker 1: allow individuals to use the gender segreted facilities such as westrooms,
Speaker 1: locker rooms, dressing rooms, and homeless or emergency shelters that
Speaker 1: are consistent with that individual's gender expression or gender identity unquote.
Speaker 1: And regarding Julie's account of the incident, there have been
Speaker 1: no complaints from children or parents who are using the pool,
Speaker 1: and multiple accounts conflict with Julie's telling of the story,
Speaker 1: as the employee never did help anyone undress, nor was
Speaker 1: watching anyone change. Throughout this city council meeting, there were
Speaker 1: several public comments in support of trans rights that pushed
Speaker 1: back on Julie's outrageous claims and called out the overall
Speaker 1: trend of miss gendering and the groomer style transphobia. At
Speaker 1: the end of the meeting, city officials themselves took a
Speaker 1: stand against the transphobic rhetoric that was present throughout the
Speaker 1: hour of public comments. Oddly enough, for this show, one
Speaker 1: of the people I interviewed for this episode serves as
Speaker 1: a Port Townsend City councilwoman. Right. Um, my name's Lebby Winstrom. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm an elected city councilor for the City of Port Townsend,
Speaker 1: and I'm speaking today on as myself rather than as
Speaker 1: a representative of the city or a representative of the
Speaker 1: city council as a whole. When did you first kind
Speaker 1: of hear about this thing that's now ballooned into this
Speaker 1: larger issue with people coming in from out of state
Speaker 1: to do protests and all this kind of stuff. I
Speaker 1: think I first heard about it on Sunday night, which
Speaker 1: would have been I guess the thirty one July, and
Speaker 1: I heard about it from the y m c A
Speaker 1: Aquatics director Rowan mackins Um, and it was more in
Speaker 1: the tone of kind of a heads up that this
Speaker 1: was a thing that was going on. And then I
Speaker 1: heard a lot more about it the next day, which
Speaker 1: was Monday, the first of August um, when uh Julia
Speaker 1: Jaman showed up at the pool with a whole group
Speaker 1: of people doing a protest that they were picketing at
Speaker 1: the pool, and she also submitted a public comment to
Speaker 1: the City council meeting that night. And at that point
Speaker 1: I realized that a group of people, including Julie, was
Speaker 1: probably going to plan on attending the City council meeting.
Speaker 1: UM and reached out to some friends and acquaintances in
Speaker 1: the UM trans and Allies community, UM Olympic Pride, UM,
Speaker 1: the Social Justice Group and at the Unitarian Church here
Speaker 1: in town and various other people who had been kind
Speaker 1: of resourced and say, hey, this is going on, you
Speaker 1: need to be aware of it. And in fact, that
Speaker 1: night there was over an hour of public comment. There
Speaker 1: wasn't anything on these council agenda. There wasn't anything we
Speaker 1: were discussing. It wasn't really a matter. It wasn't really
Speaker 1: i think, even on the city's radar. But people show
Speaker 1: up the City council meeting and normally when there's a
Speaker 1: public comment about an item that's not on the agenda,
Speaker 1: they cut off public comment half an hour, but for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, let it run that night, so it was
Speaker 1: well over an hour of public comment. And some of
Speaker 1: the things said, we're pretty shocking, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: to the to the tune of that you know all
Speaker 1: transgender people were pedophiles or that you know, this was
Speaker 1: a rape happening, and some some stamons it was just
Speaker 1: not true. And then based on what I heard that night,
Speaker 1: I was really concerned and felt that this was both
Speaker 1: you know, this was ballooning out of proportion, which now
Speaker 1: seems kind of funny given how much more belit's out
Speaker 1: of proportion. It's gotten. There's not really any action here
Speaker 1: for the city or for the pool. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things that Julia Jaman has retained legal counsel
Speaker 1: and sent a demand letter to the city, but her
Speaker 1: demands were like, well, you should fire people. Well they
Speaker 1: don't work for the city. There why I'm a employee.
Speaker 1: Um well you should change your policy. While the policy
Speaker 1: is literally state law and you know a bunch of things,
Speaker 1: so it's just you can't do this. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: not really clear why this is all focusing on the
Speaker 1: city because the city doesn't really have there's not really
Speaker 1: any action that the city could take here. On top
Speaker 1: of the dozens of people Julie lead in giving public testimony,
Speaker 1: which largely consisted of transphobia, miss gender ing, and baseless
Speaker 1: accusations that trans people are pedophilic inherently, but that same day,
Speaker 1: August one, she also led a protest to outside of
Speaker 1: the y m c A. To learn more about this,
Speaker 1: I talked with Cass and Raven, who are both part
Speaker 1: of a local affinity group. The first protest was August feet,
Speaker 1: and they announced that they'd be back the same time
Speaker 1: on the second, third, and fourth. So the second drew
Speaker 1: a much larger counter protest um, and then a lot
Speaker 1: of the same people who were there on the second
Speaker 1: came back the third and fourth, but there was nobody
Speaker 1: to counter protest against because the protesters gave up in
Speaker 1: Lenthallum after one day when they saw the kind of
Speaker 1: backlash they were facing, and most people, I think, thought
Speaker 1: that was the end of it, But people who do
Speaker 1: this kind of thing more often realized that this was
Speaker 1: more likely the vibe of the beginning stages of something bigger.
Speaker 1: A lot of red flags went off when we found
Speaker 1: out they were protesting at a city council meeting planning
Speaker 1: to come back the following week. Oh, that's right, that
Speaker 1: was The Other thing was the council meeting on the first,
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of public comment logged. It
Speaker 1: seemed to us like this was going to escalate further,
Speaker 1: but other people um tended to feel that it was
Speaker 1: going to be a quick, you know, one and done
Speaker 1: type thing, with how fast the news cycle picks up
Speaker 1: a new issue. And I think it was probably about
Speaker 1: a week later on the council meeting on the eighth,
Speaker 1: because by that point we knew about the planned turf
Speaker 1: action on the fifteen. That's when it started to click
Speaker 1: for a lot of people that this was going to
Speaker 1: become a bigger thing. But I don't think anybody, including us,
Speaker 1: thought it was going to become an ongoing issue. When
Speaker 1: I searched Court Townsend on Twitter and saw trending hashtags
Speaker 1: on a wall of anti transferator, a lot of red
Speaker 1: flags went off. Since the city council public comments, the
Speaker 1: y m c A had started receiving threatening phone calls,
Speaker 1: and Jamen had been returning to facility nearly daily with
Speaker 1: some friends to protest, approaching everybody coming in and out
Speaker 1: of the pool and talking about how men are allowed
Speaker 1: in the locker room and airing signs that miss gendered
Speaker 1: the employee. Julie's group had said they were going to
Speaker 1: be picketing every day at the pool that week. Um
Speaker 1: that they showed up and there were about a hundred
Speaker 1: counter counterprochesters isn't even really the right word, um people
Speaker 1: that were there. Was sort of like a little pride
Speaker 1: parade there, and um, Olympic Pride had a kind of
Speaker 1: a booth table set up and we're handing out Pride
Speaker 1: flags and the Social Justice group from the q o
Speaker 1: F had a um, you know, standing on the side
Speaker 1: of love banner, and there were kids blowing bubbles and
Speaker 1: and it was just it was much more of it.
Speaker 1: Just kind of a lot of people here. As these
Speaker 1: initial picket style protests were happening in front of the Y,
Speaker 1: the head of the Jefferson County Transgender Support Group called
Speaker 1: some friends and assembled this sort of counter protest to
Speaker 1: voice their support for the trans employee and the y
Speaker 1: m c A, which resulted in this gay as trans
Speaker 1: rights party massively overshadowing Julie Gemmen and her friends little protest.
Speaker 1: As she was getting outnumbered in person, Julie took to
Speaker 1: alternative tactics by getting in touch with media outlets that
Speaker 1: will give her a soapbox, resulting in a new wave
Speaker 1: of harassment targeted at the Y. There were about a
Speaker 1: hundred people and it was I think it was Julian
Speaker 1: one or two other people, and people had some conversations
Speaker 1: with Julie and it sort of seemed like that was
Speaker 1: going to be the end of it. And the next
Speaker 1: day the pool was closed and about fifty Trance Right
Speaker 1: supporters showed up and nobody showed up to pick it,
Speaker 1: and the pool was closed because pool employees were receiving
Speaker 1: death threats and just so much harassment. They basically couldn't
Speaker 1: use their phones because the phone lines were jammed and
Speaker 1: voicemails were filling up in fifteen minutes, things like that,
Speaker 1: um so, and then the pool ended up staying closed,
Speaker 1: I think, from the third which was a Wednesday, all
Speaker 1: the way through out week in the and the following week,
Speaker 1: and it was just kind of a safety issue of
Speaker 1: not wanting to have children present for day camps and
Speaker 1: patrons there if they were going to be harassed. Right after,
Speaker 1: I think probably on Monday, the first um of August,
Speaker 1: Julie reached out too. There's a local sort of far
Speaker 1: right blog site called the Port Townsend Free Press that
Speaker 1: isn't really a newspaper a news source at all. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of this this one guy, Jim James Guarantino's blog,
Speaker 1: and she reached out to that and he did an article.
Speaker 1: That first Port Townsend Free Press quote unquote article came
Speaker 1: out to August two and served as a mouthpiece for
Speaker 1: Julie's inflammatory version of events, coupled with some conservative transphobia.
Speaker 1: More reputable news outlets and local press didn't really cover
Speaker 1: the story until it had already turned into a vital
Speaker 1: topic on the right, which means there was over a
Speaker 1: week where the only documented right of the incident was
Speaker 1: the Port Townsend Free Press blog post. Two days after
Speaker 1: that piece was published, Andy Knows the Post Millennial posted
Speaker 1: an article largely pulling directly from the Port Townsend Free
Speaker 1: Press right up, and that was just the start. The
Speaker 1: next day, August five, Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire did
Speaker 1: an article about Julie Gammond and the danger of men
Speaker 1: watching little girls undressed in the locker room. Later that night,
Speaker 1: the story was on Laura Ingram's Fox News show, citing
Speaker 1: reporting from the Post Millennial, which of course cited their
Speaker 1: reporting from the Port Townsend Free Press. And across the
Speaker 1: country in Washington State, we found perhaps the most maddening
Speaker 1: story of the week, an eight year old grandmother was
Speaker 1: banned there from her y m c A after demanding
Speaker 1: that a biological male leave the woman's locker room where
Speaker 1: little girls were undressing. They then went to play clips
Speaker 1: of Julie's public comment at the city council meeting, amplifying
Speaker 1: Julie's ever changing, altered version of events. Now on the
Speaker 1: national stage, I think the mainstream actual you know, real
Speaker 1: local newspapers didn't pick it up until the seventh or
Speaker 1: the tenth, respectively, for the Peninsula Daily News and The Leader,
Speaker 1: and that gap when they amplified it out to the
Speaker 1: larger right wing press that's got picked up by bright Bary,
Speaker 1: got picked up by the Daily Mail. They kept quoting
Speaker 1: that original portens of Free Press article, which was very
Speaker 1: inaccurate about in terms of what it described as having happened,
Speaker 1: and I mean it was both outright wrong and it
Speaker 1: also left a bunch of things out, like that the
Speaker 1: transgender person was a y m c A employee, for instance,
Speaker 1: or that they were in the locker room because they
Speaker 1: were supervising children. Um and uh, I think we're really
Speaker 1: hit a crescendo on Thursday, the ninth sheet now earlier whatever,
Speaker 1: not Thursday's past week, but the previous Thursday. Um, it
Speaker 1: was on Tucker Carlson. And that's where I really saw
Speaker 1: the email volume explode for plate people from outside the area,
Speaker 1: where it was like, you know, you're getting thirty emails
Speaker 1: in five minutes, and they're from you know, they're from Texas,
Speaker 1: there from Tennessee, they're from New Jersey, they're from Australia,
Speaker 1: they're from the UK, etcetera. That when it got picked
Speaker 1: up by Fox News, the reach really got broad. The
Speaker 1: first time the story was covered on Tucker Carlson. Tonight
Speaker 1: took place on August eleven, in an episode guest hosted
Speaker 1: by Brian Clemide by m c A. Has changed a
Speaker 1: lot over the years. Now women and young girls at
Speaker 1: the Y finding themselves in locker rooms and showers with
Speaker 1: men who identify as women, but they still have all
Speaker 1: their genitalia with them. And if you're complaining to the
Speaker 1: y m c A about the genitalia and what they're
Speaker 1: dressed like, you might get yourself banned. It's what exactly
Speaker 1: happened to an eight year old woman in Washington State.
Speaker 1: Here to explain but not actually make excuses for but
Speaker 1: explain is our West Coast correspondent, Seattle based radio host
Speaker 1: Jason Rance. Jason set the scene. Yeah, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: here's the scene. Democrats used to stand up for women,
Speaker 1: but now they can't even define one. And as a result,
Speaker 1: you have eight year old Julie Jamon who said she
Speaker 1: was banned from a pool and locker room facility that
Speaker 1: was managed by the Olympic Peninsula y m c A
Speaker 1: on Port Towns in Washington. Now. She said she was
Speaker 1: headed into the locker room to shower and she saw
Speaker 1: something pretty alarming. She explained what happened at this council meeting.
Speaker 1: Then a clip from the public comments plays and I
Speaker 1: will not subject you to that again, but here is
Speaker 1: a little bit more of that clip. So a number
Speaker 1: of residents showed up to support her at this council meeting,
Speaker 1: but the mayor, his name is David Faber, he was
Speaker 1: not pleased, accusing them of transphobia. Townsend is a welcoming
Speaker 1: community and hate and discrimination has no place in this community.
Speaker 1: I listen to you quietly. I'd like you to listen
Speaker 1: to me quietly. Now, given the rise in harassment and bigotry,
Speaker 1: the trans persons are experienced recently. It's essential that we
Speaker 1: all speak up. The CIS gendered people like me speak
Speaker 1: up in support of our trans community. Now, Jamon says
Speaker 1: the staff accused her of being discriminatory. The YMC put
Speaker 1: out a statement basically saying we're not going to tolerate
Speaker 1: the bias, discrimination or hatred. And of course, in Washington State,
Speaker 1: the law allows anyone to use locker room change, remember
Speaker 1: bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. So they're basically saying,
Speaker 1: we're doing what we have to do, except, of course,
Speaker 1: protect women who don't want to see this. Unbelievable. That
Speaker 1: guy should be ashamed of himself behind the mask in
Speaker 1: the media after Methodist, did you see it alluding to
Speaker 1: this scale or did you think this is just like
Speaker 1: a one and done traumatic incidents? Absolutely not. Um I
Speaker 1: I really just thought, you know, oh my my days came.
Speaker 1: I finally have the bad bathroom experience. And I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people do have that bad experience. Um nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody is ready for it to be, you know, to
Speaker 1: have this much attention called just such a small thing.
Speaker 1: Um No, because I wasn't eaving for it to be
Speaker 1: like this, Because yeah, it's escalated to the point where
Speaker 1: you're like on international news for these like right wing
Speaker 1: grifters who are trying to basically get trans people killed. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're I don't know, it's really it's really upsetting
Speaker 1: to have my face and and name, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of be pushed out like that. And it it's crazy
Speaker 1: how that feeling, that the sinking feeling when I saw
Speaker 1: my my name and face I don't even think it
Speaker 1: was my face at the time, when I saw my
Speaker 1: name appear on that local PP Free Press article, and
Speaker 1: you know, at the time it was that still a
Speaker 1: pretty big impact. And then to have that just keep
Speaker 1: happening and it got it gets like kind of depressingly numbing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just have it keep intensifying. I mean, yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: on hormones for almost a year now and I've avoided
Speaker 1: that for kind of reasons like this that it sucks
Speaker 1: because I just feel like, I feel like this is
Speaker 1: a very common experience with trans people who are like
Speaker 1: starting out, like you just can't really go anywhere because
Speaker 1: you look too weird to go in the vince room
Speaker 1: and you're not quite like you don't feel comfortable the
Speaker 1: woman's room because of stuff like this, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not in binary that, if it's a whole
Speaker 1: other issue of like where the fund do I go,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's there's not a lot of options sometimes,
Speaker 1: but then to have something that's already very stressful we
Speaker 1: turned into like a fucking like Daily Wired New York
Speaker 1: Post Info warship is like like what like like it's
Speaker 1: we like Tucker Carlson, like all of it. It's really
Speaker 1: it's disappointing that there's this idea that I, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm actively trying to violate people's space, and and
Speaker 1: it's really frustrating because of how uncomfortable I feel putting
Speaker 1: myself in that position, being in that room. Um, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to have something like this happened, and
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I don't abuse that space because
Speaker 1: I'm not some guy trying to prey on people. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to use the bathroom and get changed
Speaker 1: and and like do you try to talk about like oh,
Speaker 1: you know, walking in penis, hanging out and and all
Speaker 1: of these things. But I don't change in the public space.
Speaker 1: I go into a changing room, and you know, I
Speaker 1: I understand, you know, that confusion, and I try to
Speaker 1: subtract myself from the space as much as possible and
Speaker 1: make it, you know, more comfortable. When when I'm in
Speaker 1: a position like that where I'm trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of entertain a kid who's not happy to be
Speaker 1: a bathroom buddy. And and I'm kind of putting that
Speaker 1: position where I have to talk um, it's super vulnerable
Speaker 1: and and I just remember feeling small and and I
Speaker 1: just shrunk when she talked to me like that, And
Speaker 1: I don't even the space just got so small. Piggy
Speaker 1: backing off the groomer and growing anti trans attacks we've
Speaker 1: seen this year. A large swath of right wing influencers
Speaker 1: and media personalities jumped on this story to drive outrage
Speaker 1: and push their rhetoric. Here is a brief clip from Newsmax.
Speaker 1: They're more than willing to just ignore possible pedophilia happening
Speaker 1: at the y m c A in the locker room. Well,
Speaker 1: it's from my point of view, it seems more like
Speaker 1: some sort of hypnotism. I know the word woke has
Speaker 1: been put to it, but I have to tell you
Speaker 1: that all public agencies I'm connected to UH as a
Speaker 1: citizen in a very small town. They are all operating
Speaker 1: with this gender identity, and you've got to wonder what
Speaker 1: is happening and those most private places that people, particularly
Speaker 1: women need to have. We've we've had you on We've
Speaker 1: had you on the show a couple of times now,
Speaker 1: and you seem very level headed, Yes, very very level headed. Indeed.
Speaker 1: Um By now the story has been headlined and obviously
Speaker 1: very miscare seized and transphobic fashion, but still headlined by
Speaker 1: The Post, Millennial, The Daily Wire, Fox News, Daily Mail,
Speaker 1: Bright Bart News, Max Info, Wars, New York Post, The Federalist,
Speaker 1: and the quote unquote feminist news site Redux. As false
Speaker 1: retellings about what happened in the Olympic Peninsula y m
Speaker 1: c A went viral on the right. Threatening emails and
Speaker 1: phone calls started pouring into the y m c A,
Speaker 1: prompting them to shut down the entire facility for over
Speaker 1: a week, leaving many local families without childcare services. Intense
Speaker 1: harassment and death threats were sent to city officials who
Speaker 1: voiced support of trans rights, and also to the pool manager.
Speaker 1: In my conversation with Libby Winstrom from last week, she
Speaker 1: detailed some of the threats and the impact the harassment
Speaker 1: has had on the community. A lot more of the
Speaker 1: ire is now kind of directed at the city and
Speaker 1: the mayor and just at the pool director, unless at employees. UM.
Speaker 1: The transgender employee who was you know, attacked in the
Speaker 1: locker room by Julie Dremond is actually no longer. Why
Speaker 1: UM and other people have left is another undisclosed location,
Speaker 1: just out of concern of trying to get the kids
Speaker 1: as far away from this whole process as possible. And
Speaker 1: and so that took a little bit of time in
Speaker 1: juggling to set up, and they were so short staff
Speaker 1: they were actually calling for volunteers in order to try
Speaker 1: to keep the childcare open this week just because UM
Speaker 1: they were already somewhat short staffed and with people leaving,
Speaker 1: it had just been even harder. UM. The y has
Speaker 1: been open I think all week this week. I think
Speaker 1: it was open Monday, Tuesday, today's Wednesday. UM. So it
Speaker 1: has been able to reopen. They've they've changed the around.
Speaker 1: It's now not open Saturdays again, UM and shuffled and
Speaker 1: I think some staff are working seven days a week
Speaker 1: in order to try to keep it open. UM. People
Speaker 1: are still getting threats. UM still getting I got a
Speaker 1: terrible email last night. I haven't been getting death threats.
Speaker 1: I've been getting things like, UM, you know you're a disgusting,
Speaker 1: fat pig bitch, why don't you go back to the buffet? Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, things like that. It hasn't for me
Speaker 1: been death threats. UM. The pool director was receiving photographs
Speaker 1: of her children saying there next and UM, some pretty
Speaker 1: explicit threatening messages like I'm coming for you, I know
Speaker 1: where you are. UM. And Mayor Favor has been getting
Speaker 1: similar things. He got one where somebody was threatening to
Speaker 1: come to his home and rape his wife. UM. So
Speaker 1: these have been pretty horrifying messages. For the most part,
Speaker 1: most of the email has voicemails have been coming from
Speaker 1: out of the area. You know, they're not they're not local. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's a little hard to gauge whether these are
Speaker 1: serious threats. But at some of you you feel like
Speaker 1: you have to take it somewhat seriously. UM. And that
Speaker 1: I think has been pretty disruptive, both for the y
Speaker 1: employees and for the city. As Julie's retelling of the
Speaker 1: story was going viral across the right wing and turf media,
Speaker 1: resulting in the pool having to temporarily shut down. So
Speaker 1: called press conference was scheduled outside of another city council
Speaker 1: meeting for August by Julie and her allies. There's a
Speaker 1: local UM she builds yourself. There's a sort of radical
Speaker 1: feminist UM named Ami Susa who has a uh so
Speaker 1: anti trans blog site, and Um, she has really taken
Speaker 1: this and run with it. So I've plugged in, but
Speaker 1: not well, she's really taken this and run with it
Speaker 1: and has I think has been really this kind of
Speaker 1: driving force between behind a lot of this amplification onto
Speaker 1: far right media. UM and Amy Susa held a what
Speaker 1: she built as a press conference on the August fifteenth,
Speaker 1: the night of the most recent Um City council meeting,
Speaker 1: and showed up with a group of I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably twenty five or thirty supporters, and there were estimates
Speaker 1: are between three and fifty and four hundred UM trans
Speaker 1: rights folks from town. I mean that there were local
Speaker 1: who had just showed up and most of them were
Speaker 1: waiting in line to go into the council meeting and
Speaker 1: you know, flying flags and raising gland at banners and stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: But there was some heated shouting and one person got
Speaker 1: arrested for shoving. There weren't any charges filed. I did
Speaker 1: confirm that with um UH, the Sheriff's office, um that
Speaker 1: with the courts, that that not no charges got filed
Speaker 1: out of that, which is contrary to those stories they've
Speaker 1: been putting out that like there were some charges filed,
Speaker 1: that's not true. I believe there were about three hundred
Speaker 1: people that came out to confront less than twenty UM
Speaker 1: people coming to try and bring Hayten to our community.
Speaker 1: And it feels like that really inspired a lot of
Speaker 1: the different networks to get connected. UM. Our personal little
Speaker 1: networks are incredibly white. Most of us are are trends
Speaker 1: of some reguard UM and we were reached out to
Speaker 1: by a local bipop community that we've we've had some
Speaker 1: crossover with, but not a lot. But since this happened,
Speaker 1: UM just the interconnectivity with with that group has just exploded.
Speaker 1: After the press conference, protest footage of the event went viral,
Speaker 1: spawning another new wave of right wing media outrage. Clips
Speaker 1: from the quote unquote feminist re Dux magazine Twitter account
Speaker 1: show Julie trying to give a speech while being drowned
Speaker 1: out by chance in support of trans people, and at
Speaker 1: one point someone running behind Julie to rip down a
Speaker 1: Suffragette flag put up by one of the turfs. And
Speaker 1: a side note, in some much less viral footage, we
Speaker 1: can see turfs trying to rip Pride flags out of
Speaker 1: the hands of people who are counter protesting. So conservative
Speaker 1: coverage of the protest painted a pearl clutching picture of
Speaker 1: scary trans people assaulting women. A few days after the
Speaker 1: press conference, Julie Jaman herself made an appearance on Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson tonight. Julie Jaman is one of them. She's eighty
Speaker 1: years old. She's now been banned from stepping inside a
Speaker 1: y m c A y because she dared to object
Speaker 1: when a male employee was assigned to watch little girls
Speaker 1: remove their bathing suits in the back room in a
Speaker 1: women's locker room. So this week a few dozen people
Speaker 1: joined Jaman to protest the y m c A. Some
Speaker 1: of the protesters, including her, were assaulted by lunatics men
Speaker 1: dressed as women. Here's some of the footage from that.
Speaker 1: On Monday, you may have read some version of my
Speaker 1: personal experience a naked old lady in the women's shower
Speaker 1: room and what I saw that day the police. You
Speaker 1: can see women screaming at her. Julie Jaman is the woman,
Speaker 1: the brave woman. Just on the video she joins us sight. Julie,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. We're grateful that you are joining us.
Speaker 1: Why at this stage in your life are you taking
Speaker 1: it upon yourself to speak up against this in the
Speaker 1: face of what we just saw. I was in the
Speaker 1: shower and I saw that man in that women's suit,
Speaker 1: and I saw him watching little girls. You can't not
Speaker 1: act when you see that going on. You must do something,
Speaker 1: So I and and bless you for doing that. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Your your moral sense is just is clear.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what your background is, but you
Speaker 1: have a very clear sense of right and wrong, and
Speaker 1: I wish more people had it. So you tried to
Speaker 1: explain that in the video we just played, and rather
Speaker 1: than listen to you, people screamed at you and then
Speaker 1: appeared to come at you. Have you noticed there's no
Speaker 1: conversation about this. There was. It was a mob of
Speaker 1: hundreds of people that came streaming into this permitted gathering,
Speaker 1: and they kettled us. I think that's what you'd call it.
Speaker 1: They pushed shoved, They knocked women to the ground. These
Speaker 1: are the men in the supporters of men that apparently
Speaker 1: the y m c A and the city want to
Speaker 1: allow into the women's dressing and shower area. I object.
Speaker 1: And you, at the age of eighty, were banned by
Speaker 1: the y m c A. It's hard to even believe
Speaker 1: this is real because you were taking a shower and
Speaker 1: there was a man in there and they banned you,
Speaker 1: not him. What could tell us if that's true? A
Speaker 1: and B. What y m c A. Is this? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's correct. I told that guy to get out of
Speaker 1: the shower, and then a staff member came around the
Speaker 1: corner and I said to her, get him out of here,
Speaker 1: and she said, that's discrimination. You're out of here for life.
Speaker 1: And I'm calling the cops. Can you tell us what? Why?
Speaker 1: M c Where did this happen. This happens in Port Townsend,
Speaker 1: that's on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. It's just
Speaker 1: it's I hope they are punished for the way that
Speaker 1: they treated you, and I appreciate your bravery and forthrightness.
Speaker 1: I do too. We did try and get the police
Speaker 1: to come help us. They were standing across the streets
Speaker 1: and they were told by a directive to stand down.
Speaker 1: They did not come to help us. I hope they
Speaker 1: wrought Juli Jaman, thank you for all you've done. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Good to see you tonight. Throughout all the
Speaker 1: media spectacle, I feel like the actual original victim of
Speaker 1: this harassment has kind of been forgotten, despite them being
Speaker 1: the current face of the transgender menace. In my conversation
Speaker 1: with Clementine, we talked about what it's like to be
Speaker 1: turned into this sort of outrage symbol, Like I've I
Speaker 1: watched the three hours of public testimony UM a few
Speaker 1: nights ago, which was I was, I was on so
Speaker 1: much caffeine. UM, it's the only way is that the
Speaker 1: meeting that happened right after the incident or the Monday
Speaker 1: meeting from both. I did both in one day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Yeah. And one of the more shocking things
Speaker 1: was just how how how miss one how mischaracterized the
Speaker 1: incident was and to just like how much blatant miss
Speaker 1: gendering there was, and like talking about you not as
Speaker 1: like an actual person, but as almost this like evil
Speaker 1: archetype in people's minds, Like it's so dehumanizing in a
Speaker 1: really bad way um let alone all of like the
Speaker 1: like miss gendering stuff like it's it was. It was
Speaker 1: wild watching this person after person completely mindlessly create this
Speaker 1: villain in their own heads um and then just attached
Speaker 1: it onto an actual human being who's like, you, like,
Speaker 1: your privacy has actually been violated. Like you're like like
Speaker 1: you're like like private information, your pictures, names is going
Speaker 1: all over these like like neo fascist news sites, and
Speaker 1: like if something you know, people are framing this is
Speaker 1: like you know, safety and privacy, Like if you want
Speaker 1: to look at what's actually going on, it's so different.
Speaker 1: And there's such a disconnect between watching all of that
Speaker 1: public testimony and looking at all of you know, the
Speaker 1: the right wing press of this incident, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's very depressive framing. It's really clear and disappointing
Speaker 1: when you're the subject of it because I know what
Speaker 1: happened in that space, and you know, there were people
Speaker 1: to witness what happened, and we worked to get our
Speaker 1: reports out quickly, but it just didn't you know, it
Speaker 1: didn't matter because of how dedicated this woman was to
Speaker 1: getting her side or whatever. I mean. In reality, it
Speaker 1: just feels like she was dedicated to hurting. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know what her motivation was, but it's the blatantly
Speaker 1: false side of the story that really hurts because accusations
Speaker 1: that I was standing there watching I think they go
Speaker 1: anywhere from like two to five kids. It's their number. Um.
Speaker 1: I was watching the Tucker Carlson and I think I
Speaker 1: saw that number five watching five kids undress, um, when
Speaker 1: that's just not what happened. I was standing there with
Speaker 1: one kid who was fully clothed, chatting while we waited
Speaker 1: for another kid to come out of the bathroom. And
Speaker 1: it's just wrong. It's misinformation, and it's not about you know,
Speaker 1: it's not even a about um pushing an agenda. It's
Speaker 1: it's about people's livelihood. And it's really damaging to have
Speaker 1: my privacy violated like that, you know, Um, straight up,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. It almost feels like you're just
Speaker 1: like this sacrificial archetype that. Yeah, it's like they're not
Speaker 1: even but they're not even like interested in you as
Speaker 1: a person. Really, they're interested in you on this this
Speaker 1: this this this like idea, and to project you onto
Speaker 1: this whole other idea, which is so fucked up because
Speaker 1: you're an actual person, Like yeah, well, and and you
Speaker 1: can see in the comments and stuff on some of
Speaker 1: these that it's pretty you know, I won't try to
Speaker 1: dig into like the ugly, the ugly and the bad
Speaker 1: of Twitter, but like I've seen people say that I'm
Speaker 1: like a fully bearded man, or like I'll be paralleled
Speaker 1: as a lumberjack, and it's like I mean, and not
Speaker 1: that you know, your appearances matter, It's it's about how
Speaker 1: you feel. But it's kind of, you know, interesting to
Speaker 1: see how I'm I'm painted in such a weird and
Speaker 1: twisted light. Despite going viral in the right wing and
Speaker 1: turf news sphere, local sentiment in the port towns in
Speaker 1: the area has been widely in supportive trans rights and
Speaker 1: not very pleased that their town has been upended for
Speaker 1: over a month due to one woman's personal prejudice and discomfort.
Speaker 1: I've lived for twenty four and a half years, and
Speaker 1: in talking to people over the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: I would say nearly universally, the local sentiment is why
Speaker 1: is this such a big deal? Like this basically somebody
Speaker 1: got startled in a locker room, made kind of a
Speaker 1: jerk of herself, and is now trying to blow this
Speaker 1: into some kind of international incident, and you know, here's
Speaker 1: this little tiny town at the edge of the continent,
Speaker 1: and we're like, why, why, why is this the most
Speaker 1: important thing? You know? Why did you know dozens of
Speaker 1: families not have child care for ten days? Why did
Speaker 1: you know the y m c A employees have to
Speaker 1: not get paid? Why? Why did you know? The the
Speaker 1: impact of this has been so outsized relative to the
Speaker 1: actually what actually happened. The person who started the initial
Speaker 1: incident with the trans employee. It's it's kind of funny
Speaker 1: in a way that yes, she's gotten out her message
Speaker 1: to the whole community, but it's spread as a result
Speaker 1: of the organizing against her and against the group of
Speaker 1: people that she's bringing into the area. And it's gotten
Speaker 1: to a point where just random community members that we
Speaker 1: don't have any direct connection to our recognizing her and
Speaker 1: knowing why she's a known person, and are just kicking
Speaker 1: her out of their businesses on site. It's like the
Speaker 1: the backlash against that incident is really spreading really well,
Speaker 1: and we're getting this really good organic network building throughout
Speaker 1: the community. Earlier in August, before the big press conference thing,
Speaker 1: various BIPOC and queer collectives and affinity groups started networking,
Speaker 1: and a solidarity meeting was set up to figure out
Speaker 1: how to take care of each other as the far
Speaker 1: right's spotlight on the town grows. Myself and one another
Speaker 1: person went and maybe a couple of others who I
Speaker 1: didn't know, but the two of us were the main
Speaker 1: ones who are more directly involved with the queer community
Speaker 1: side of responding to what was going on, and it
Speaker 1: was really great, like they just like, we want to
Speaker 1: support you, We want to, you know, help take care
Speaker 1: of you. What can we do? And then for the
Speaker 1: action on the fifteenth, when we were talking about you know,
Speaker 1: like here's here's the kind of response that we're wanting
Speaker 1: from the whole community, but here's some of these background needs.
Speaker 1: Because none of them were experienced enough with protesting to
Speaker 1: feel comfortable going out on the front lines and doing stuff,
Speaker 1: they went about a quarter mile away and set up
Speaker 1: a community picnic. And I don't think people took nearly
Speaker 1: enough advantage of it because the planning happened so last minute,
Speaker 1: but they did a great job of setting up in
Speaker 1: solidarity and in solidarity and in support and we're really
Speaker 1: looking forward to working with them more. We spent the
Speaker 1: last few years running small group basic medical classes UM
Speaker 1: and UH workshops and really making innections like within our
Speaker 1: community and having this come about and having everyone come
Speaker 1: out to one place and see each other and going, oh,
Speaker 1: we know you and I know you UM and from
Speaker 1: different communities coming together. We've really been able to enable
Speaker 1: those folks to come together to start building more of
Speaker 1: a unified front. I want to reiterate that with all
Speaker 1: the media spectacle, it's important to not lose sight of
Speaker 1: the original target of all of this hate and transphobia.
Speaker 1: The physical and mental effect of such a massive wave
Speaker 1: of bigoted harassment and boxing can take a substantial toll.
Speaker 1: I had to stop going into work at a certain
Speaker 1: point because I couldn't do it. I woke up in
Speaker 1: the morning and I looked in the mirror and and
Speaker 1: I just broke down because it was too much to
Speaker 1: keep going into keep trying to bring that bright energy
Speaker 1: uh uh to work UM and a lot of doubt. UH.
Speaker 1: That's what I've been experiencing is a lot of you
Speaker 1: see so many people trying to divulge your character in
Speaker 1: a negative way, and it's you know, it's toxic, and
Speaker 1: it can kind of seep through and make your life toxic.
Speaker 1: And that's why I just had to stop looking because
Speaker 1: it hurt too much and it's putting me in this limbo.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I've gotten a break for a month.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've just been tired and like rust,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm purgatory. You know, has there been
Speaker 1: any kind of like support on the community level that
Speaker 1: has been helpful? Yeah? Yeah, Um, I've been I've been
Speaker 1: definitely grateful and um blessed to have the community response
Speaker 1: be really astounding and supportive. Yeah. I've been given the
Speaker 1: opportunity to be so much more connected with my local
Speaker 1: queer community as well as my local community period. Um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of supportive voices. Uh that made
Speaker 1: it a little bit easier to ignore the darker side
Speaker 1: of this um and elephant in the room. Uh. The
Speaker 1: go fund me. I don't know how I would feel
Speaker 1: if there wasn't, you know, something rigid and like a
Speaker 1: rock to lean on, like to go fund me, to
Speaker 1: be able to have something hopeful to look forward to
Speaker 1: and think that I can you know, be me and
Speaker 1: that I can afford being me. Uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: how I would navigate the storm without something like that
Speaker 1: in the distance. It's been overwhelming and I've just been
Speaker 1: waiting for it to end, and it looks like it's
Speaker 1: finally slowing down. But um, the support makes it easier.
Speaker 1: And the support is a kind of attention that really
Speaker 1: helps right now, because it's strikingly easy to feel bad, ah,
Speaker 1: to feel just associated when when your life is kind
Speaker 1: of thrust into a different lens and what felt like
Speaker 1: a day, what kind of was just a day or
Speaker 1: a week. This month has felt like longer than my
Speaker 1: entire summer break. The situation in Port Townsend is not
Speaker 1: over yet. In a bit, we'll talk about the upcoming
Speaker 1: anti trans rally on September three. And there is this
Speaker 1: kind of absurd irony that's not uncommon when digging into
Speaker 1: these types of issues, at the types of talking points
Speaker 1: common among reactionaries, and all the complaints around violations of
Speaker 1: privacy just end up actually being enacted by the people
Speaker 1: who push these moral panics and so things that just
Speaker 1: continue to kind of escalate and escalate my understanding, And
Speaker 1: I wasn't there for this. Is that yesterday which was
Speaker 1: Amy Susan, I'm not sure if Julie Jaman was there,
Speaker 1: not because of course juli Jaman has been banned from
Speaker 1: the pool. UM showed up at the pool with a
Speaker 1: film crew and was trying to push their way into
Speaker 1: the locker room when patrons were there using the locker room,
Speaker 1: trying to film inside the locker room and got asked
Speaker 1: to leave. UM. So it's it's still continuing to escalate.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've been noticing a lot,
Speaker 1: and it's something that for those of us who are
Speaker 1: more involved, this is kind of a you don't say moment,
Speaker 1: and it's the people who are coming in and making
Speaker 1: accusations and making attacks against the community are very much
Speaker 1: doing the exact thing that they're making accusations of. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was an issue the other day of the people
Speaker 1: who planned and hosted the protest at the council meeting
Speaker 1: going into the y with a camera crew and demanding
Speaker 1: to film the locker rooms while people were using them. UM.
Speaker 1: There's lots of accusations that have been thrown that we
Speaker 1: bust in people from Portland, and in reality, the main
Speaker 1: aggressors who were there on the fift in their group
Speaker 1: did come from Vancouver area. Or we're flown in from
Speaker 1: Texas or we're flown in from Texas. Yeah, Like, this
Speaker 1: was three hundred people who live within twenty minutes of
Speaker 1: Court towns and showed up because they care, and they
Speaker 1: had to fly people from as far as Pennsylvania to
Speaker 1: post an hour long press conference with twenty people. And
Speaker 1: so we're seeing that a lot recurring. The person organizing
Speaker 1: this upcoming action is also lives in Vancouver area and
Speaker 1: is inviting people from all over to come up and
Speaker 1: start fights here and try to get video of confrontations going.
Speaker 1: And everybody up here wants to just be left alone
Speaker 1: and live in peace, but they also want to show up,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of getting an opportunity to show up
Speaker 1: in the most low effort way. It's it's in your
Speaker 1: own town, you might as well show up. I remember
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago there was this headline from a
Speaker 1: federalist think piece that when a bit viral for being
Speaker 1: a big yike's almost mirroring the fascist framing of blood libel.
Speaker 1: If you replace quote the transgenders with quote the Jews,
Speaker 1: you'll see what I mean. The headline reads, quote the
Speaker 1: transgender movement is not just intolerant, it's barbaric and violent
Speaker 1: and it's coming for your children unquote, almost exclusively. Its
Speaker 1: sources are Twitter accounts like libs of TikTok and a
Speaker 1: few random turfs. And this is what we mean when
Speaker 1: we talk about how things that seem like they should
Speaker 1: just be insignificant Twitter bullshit actually do affect the world
Speaker 1: off of social media. This is how entire conversations on
Speaker 1: the validity of people's existence get formed and directed. Now,
Speaker 1: the last section of the Federalist story is about the
Speaker 1: Boston Children's Hospital, and if you listened to yesterday's episode
Speaker 1: of It could happen here, you can guess the kind
Speaker 1: of disinformation the article pedals, and many readers, many of
Speaker 1: whom are not on Twitter, will take whatever it says
Speaker 1: at face value. Same thing for Libs of TikTok stuff
Speaker 1: being boosted on Fox News. The majority of the Federalist
Speaker 1: think piece, though, is about Port Townsend and everything stemming
Speaker 1: out of the y m c A incident, and the
Speaker 1: whole article is as terrifying and fascistic as its headline.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing the Federalist article headline and just being like, Oh,
Speaker 1: here's another another piece doing the same thing, and I
Speaker 1: didn't realize it was about like this specific incident until
Speaker 1: much later and now. Yeah, it's the kind of it
Speaker 1: kind of does play into the idea that like, we
Speaker 1: know these things happen, you just don't expect them to
Speaker 1: happen like right where you are, until it's until it's
Speaker 1: until it's going on. Yeah, I've spent years screaming at
Speaker 1: a wall telling people that this is coming, and AH
Speaker 1: really hope that all of my preparation had been for
Speaker 1: nothing and it's happening in my hometown now and getting
Speaker 1: national media attention everything from you know, Ben Shapiro to
Speaker 1: Info Wars to interviews on Tucker Facting the Trump presidency,
Speaker 1: we were pretty much just gun nerds and UH had
Speaker 1: started a small little UH gun club and we're inviting
Speaker 1: our friends and our our local queer community up to
Speaker 1: to learn about that. And it went really quickly from
Speaker 1: that to people having more of an interest in the
Speaker 1: medical suffering teaching specifically UH stopped the Bleed and UH
Speaker 1: so after the Trump presidency was over, UM a lot
Speaker 1: of people dropped off and just the majority of the
Speaker 1: people that stuck around happened to be trans UM. But
Speaker 1: we continued offering these classes. We were hosting ones out
Speaker 1: here about the escalation, about stop the bleed, We're hosting
Speaker 1: the os on stuff. UM. I think with UM they're
Speaker 1: being such limited options for direct actions in the area,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were kind of naturally tending towards
Speaker 1: how can we better support our friends who live in
Speaker 1: areas that are doing direct actions, And we started getting
Speaker 1: a lot more interest in those kinds of support roles
Speaker 1: than medical training to de escalation, even things like emergency
Speaker 1: preparedness and food security. UM yeah UM. But because of that,
Speaker 1: we've just spent the last few years running these just
Speaker 1: a small group like wonderful people UM basically workshops on
Speaker 1: all these different subjects and built somewhat of a connection
Speaker 1: with the community, a bit of respect. So when this happened,
Speaker 1: we actually had that to draw on and we could
Speaker 1: really help enable people to organize themselves and create some
Speaker 1: form of unity. So it's not small groups of people
Speaker 1: coming in without a plan, but a large group of
Speaker 1: people showing up all at once. UM that we're not
Speaker 1: directly involved in any sort of lead a ship of
Speaker 1: it's just naturally organically happened, UM. But have really spent
Speaker 1: the last few years just feeling like Kok screaming at
Speaker 1: a wall. Um until this happened in our small town
Speaker 1: and completely unexpectedly, and now we're actually somewhat useful. Before
Speaker 1: we close out, we do need to talk about the
Speaker 1: upcoming anti trans rally planned for the afternoon of Saturday,
Speaker 1: September three at Pope Marine Park. Organizers are explicitly tied
Speaker 1: to the Proud Boys, and this rally is one of
Speaker 1: the most clear examples of how Turf's self described feminists
Speaker 1: or people just looking out for biological women's rights are
Speaker 1: perfectly willing to ally with fascists if it means hurting
Speaker 1: trans and queer people. The rally is billed as quote
Speaker 1: a rally for decency, stand up against men in woman's
Speaker 1: public pool locker rooms, and tell the city of Port
Speaker 1: Townsend to let Julie swim unquote Yeah. The guy who
Speaker 1: runs Common Sense Court Conservatives, a man named Robert Um.
Speaker 1: I always mess up his name m Zurfling. I think
Speaker 1: it is zurfing z r f I and g Um
Speaker 1: who's associated in some way with the Proud Boys and
Speaker 1: his associated with Roger Stone. He runs this blog called
Speaker 1: Common Sense Conservative. He is organizing something that's being billed
Speaker 1: as quote rally for decency unquote UM to be here
Speaker 1: in Port Townsend on the Labor Day weekend Saturday, which
Speaker 1: is the third and UM, it's unclear whether this is
Speaker 1: going to be a large event or a small one.
Speaker 1: They have not as of yesterday, pulled a permit for
Speaker 1: that UM, and there's some questions about, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're planning a large event, what what's that unfold? Like, Uh,
Speaker 1: Poor Johnson is a tourist community and at this time
Speaker 1: of year, we've got a lot of people in town
Speaker 1: over Labor Day weekend. UM, so a large Proud Boy
Speaker 1: rallies is kind of you know, it doesn't feel very comfortable.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the first kind of big instant where
Speaker 1: you've had these types of like you know, more kind
Speaker 1: of experienced activists on like the anti trans side or
Speaker 1: on you know, affiliate with Proud Boys or whatever kind
Speaker 1: of come in and try to make this problem inside
Speaker 1: the town. We've had little bits and pieces of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: the Proud Boys or something kind of connected had a
Speaker 1: kind of truck drive through parade rally in sort of
Speaker 1: just prior to the election. UM that kind of drove
Speaker 1: through town and you know, with a bunch of big trucks,
Speaker 1: and I think some people were open carrying, and it
Speaker 1: was it was mostly a bunch of noise. UM. But
Speaker 1: it hasn't This is a very liberal community, UM, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't really hit us. This is also just for context.
Speaker 1: This is a town of ten thousand people and and
Speaker 1: it's the biggest town for you know, fifty miles in
Speaker 1: any direction. So it's not you know, it isn't like
Speaker 1: ten thousand people that's a suburb. This this is the
Speaker 1: big town. This is the county seat. UM. So it's
Speaker 1: We've been kind of insulated from a lot of things.
Speaker 1: You know, we had, you know, we definitely had some
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protests. We definitely had you know, we
Speaker 1: had a big women's march in sen but we haven't
Speaker 1: seen that kind of explosive clashing protests that you know,
Speaker 1: Seattle or Portland have. The far right is planning to
Speaker 1: mobilize people from around the Pacific Northwest, pulling from folks
Speaker 1: in Oregon and Idaho, and are expecting anywhere between fifty
Speaker 1: to a hundred people to show up on the anti
Speaker 1: trans side, especially people from Proud Boy and three percenter
Speaker 1: affiliated networks. One of the leaders of the Washington State
Speaker 1: three PC of militia, Eric Road, has stated that he
Speaker 1: will be present and is encouraging his fall blowers to
Speaker 1: join him, saying on telegram, quote, I don't care if
Speaker 1: five of you show up or fifty of you show up.
Speaker 1: I will always march against men staring at girls as
Speaker 1: young as eleven pulling off their swim trunks. It would
Speaker 1: be pretty cool if people could cancel their plans and
Speaker 1: show up to stand against child molesters. God said, if
Speaker 1: you even look back, I'll turn you into a pillar
Speaker 1: of salt. I wouldn't have looked back, but I never
Speaker 1: failed to answer the call to something so simple as
Speaker 1: don't stare at little girls when they take off their
Speaker 1: clothes unquote. He then goes on to do some unhinged
Speaker 1: rambling about federal observation and his commitment to God and country,
Speaker 1: but he ends that post by saying, quote, when I
Speaker 1: get threatened by Antifa, all matched Antifa unquote, which I
Speaker 1: don't even know what that means. The grammar on that
Speaker 1: is very confusing. Another telegram post from a three percenter
Speaker 1: account reads quote calling all patriots, all proud boys, all
Speaker 1: three percenters, all lone wolves, We roll out to Port
Speaker 1: Townsend on September three. Hope to see you there. We
Speaker 1: got proud boys and three pers rolling in from all
Speaker 1: over unquote. The three percenter crew is also planning a
Speaker 1: pre and post rally barbecue party on Friday and Saturday
Speaker 1: night at Wildby Island, which sounds like an awful time.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a horrible party. Our major concerns going
Speaker 1: forward is if protesters keep coming out here, UM, that
Speaker 1: the right wing will get more footage that they can
Speaker 1: spin UM, bringing more attentions on this, bringing more harm
Speaker 1: to the trans community across the country. UM. That the
Speaker 1: right wing will attack someone locally around here. UM. Or
Speaker 1: that all of the spun footage will inspire someone from
Speaker 1: outside of the area or someone just sitting in the
Speaker 1: woods who will come and pause serious harm to a
Speaker 1: large group of our our local trans community. UM. And
Speaker 1: our intent is to be there to have some sort
Speaker 1: of response via medical or otherwise. Trying to think of
Speaker 1: how to say this UM. I've lived here on and
Speaker 1: off most of my life and had started UM working
Speaker 1: towards transitioning, but due to the national political situation, specifically
Speaker 1: when the former president temporarily got rid of trans protections
Speaker 1: and medical canceled all that changed my medical records back
Speaker 1: and have been presenting as a cis white dude since then,
Speaker 1: specifically because of the amount of privilege that gives me
Speaker 1: and having a trans partner who is working on their
Speaker 1: transition in this town while this is happening is hitting
Speaker 1: home to a level that I was completely unprepared for.
Speaker 1: And the emotional impact that all of this has been
Speaker 1: having on me, and the fact that it's not just
Speaker 1: here but that this is getting national attention is something
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to wrap my head around. And I'm
Speaker 1: just really thankful for all of the networks that we've
Speaker 1: built and all of the community, the local community, the
Speaker 1: broader Washington community, all the people who have just shown
Speaker 1: so much support for us, and it makes me feel
Speaker 1: like there is there is a future where we can
Speaker 1: just be left in peace. And that is the story
Speaker 1: of what's been happening in Port Townsend over the course
Speaker 1: of the past month and what could happen in the
Speaker 1: next few days. I'm going to close this episode with
Speaker 1: Clementine discussing the details of her go fund me. The
Speaker 1: go fund me is sort of a general transition fund
Speaker 1: for me. I originally made it specifically for two surgeries.
Speaker 1: I low balled the amount greatly because I felt like
Speaker 1: if I asked for too much, I wouldn't get anything.
Speaker 1: And I still got nothing for a long time. At
Speaker 1: some point when the articles were coming out, one of
Speaker 1: the nationals used one of the national articles used my
Speaker 1: go fund me as a source um to find out
Speaker 1: more about me. But that got my go fund me
Speaker 1: out there um and a lot of different people started
Speaker 1: picking up on it and spreading it. I actually didn't
Speaker 1: do much at all to to help that. I it
Speaker 1: was never something on my mind. The go fund me.
Speaker 1: It just happened and I looked at it one day
Speaker 1: and I thought, that's strange. I have more donations than
Speaker 1: the last time I checked, and it was pretty empowering
Speaker 1: to see that, or or more hopeful um. But now now,
Speaker 1: so I talked about the go fund me was originally
Speaker 1: for two specific surgeries, and I lobald the amount UM.
Speaker 1: I later revised. Actually, it took me a couple of
Speaker 1: times in a lot of consideration because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to feel like I was cheating the people that were
Speaker 1: being gracious to me, which I'm not trying to be.
Speaker 1: But yeah, uh, finding out that things cost more than
Speaker 1: I thought. But you know, it's way better than it
Speaker 1: was before. And to find it, I mean, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it's the first thing that comes up when you
Speaker 1: look up my name now, which is better than Fox
Speaker 1: News is video or or a daily Wire article or whatever.
Speaker 1: The big thing that would pop up otherwise is but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called Clementine's Transition fund fund go fund me. You
Speaker 1: can find the transition go fund me at go fund
Speaker 1: me dot com slash s r s for Clem and
Speaker 1: that link will be in the description, or you can
Speaker 1: just search Clementine's Transition Fund on your search engine of choice.
Speaker 1: See you on the other side. Hey, we'll be back
Speaker 1: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 1: heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool Zone meda dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,