WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 119 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:03.080 Al Zone Media. 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:05.800 Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:09.480 you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:12.559 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.400 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.880 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:20.840 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:22.639 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:24.360 you can make your own decisions. 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.640 Welcome to Dick It Up and Here, a podcast about 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.200 things falling apart and putting it back together again. I'm 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:36.559 Mia Wong, I'm with Garrison and it is my singular 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.640 honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, doctor Julia Serrano. 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:44.240 She is the author of many books, excluded Making Feminist 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.360 and queer movements more Inclusive, Sex Stop, How Society Sexualizes us, 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.280 and how we can fight back Outspoken, a Decade of 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:55.480 transgender activism and Transfeminism, and most famously Whipping Girl, a 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.440 new edition of which is coming out in March. Doctor Serrano, 0:00:58.480 --> 0:00:59.240 welcome to the show. 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:01.920 Hi, thanks for having me. 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:07.839 Yeah, I'm really really I'm really happy you can join us. So, okay, 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:13.200 Whipping Girl, I think is really one of quietly the 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.360 most influential books of the twenty first century, to the 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.160 extent that in kind of classic trans woman fashion, I 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:22.200 don't think. I don't think people realize that the ideas 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.720 that it introduced have an origin. So for people who 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:27.800 haven't read the book, and you should, this book is great. 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.320 I guarantee you have seen its influence. If you've ever 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:34.840 heard someone like who's not trans referred to as sis, like, 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:39.240 that's that's from this book. The concept of misgendering is 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:43.520 also from this book. The word trans misogyny like also 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:48.040 from this book. And this I think gets at something 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:53.000 from the twenty fifteen second edition preface that you wrote, 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.320 which is something I've been wondering about, is what is 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:59.560 it like to sort of experience writing a book and 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:01.840 have it just ripple across society like this. 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:03.960 Yeah, it's uh. 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.240 I was very much hoping and you know, as I 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:09.200 was writing it, I was hoping that I thought that 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:12.560 it would resonate with a lot of trans female and 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.520 trans feminine people and I hope trans communities more generally, 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:19.360 and the book this is something that a lot of 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:21.640 times people who pick up the book now, in like 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:25.240 the twenty twenties don't necessarily realize is that nobody was 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:30.359 reading anything about trans people outside of feminists and LGBTQ 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:35.120 plus communities, and so I was basically just speaking to 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.079 those groups, and I thought it would resonate with some people. 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:41.240 But yeah, definitely, it kind of went out into the 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.639 world and did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.359 necessarily expecting. And I'm very glad that the book has 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:51.880 kind of touched a lot of people's lives and changed, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:52.760 you know. 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:55.560 Kind of societal. 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.840 Understanding and quote unquote discourses about trans people. 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:02.200 So yeah, it it must be kind of bizarre, like 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.639 being twenty years ago writing about you know, caniche term 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.400 like cis and now the richest man in the world 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.160 thinks it's like the most evil word. 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.600 Yeah, it's quite bizarre, and I do want to definitely 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:20.200 kind of clear this up, but I kind of make 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.960 this clear in the preface. So I didn't invet like 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.320 sis versus trans like a that's like a prefix that 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:29.639 has existed a long time. Yeah, and uh, I've since 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.359 seen other people like point out, oh, this person was 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.120 using it in nineteen ninety something, or some German writer 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.640 like coined cis vestism or something like back a million 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:44.960 years ago. So what I will say is that when 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:46.920 I when I put out the book, I was inspired 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:47.680 by Emi. 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.640 Koyama, who was and is an awesome. 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:54.160 Activist intersex activists, who who's written a lot of really 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:59.040 influential trans related essays over the years. And it was 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.200 from her blog that was the first time I saw 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.280 SIS and trans and the idea of SIS sexism. 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:07.080 And at the time, it was while I was. 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.920 Writing the book, and it really I was like, oh 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.000 my god, this is kind of the overall idea. I 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.480 was talking about all these different facets of basically double 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:19.440 standards between trans and non trans people, and so I 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:21.440 kind of grabbed on to it, and I was really 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.800 worried about it actually because nobody, almost nobody was using 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.320 those terms. It was very niche at the time, and 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.680 so the book popularized that language. And so now it 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.839 is kind of funny every once in a while seeing 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:40.480 yes overreactions by SIS people to the idea of SIS 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:44.200 being a slur or whatever. So yeah, and so yeah, 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.320 so that's definitely something that is kind of is the 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:49.839 one thing I one thing I did coin in the 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.360 book that has kind of also taken a life on 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:53.800 its own is trans misogyny. 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.120 So that is something that kind of originated with. 0:04:57.760 --> 0:04:59.960 This book and particularly a chap book that I wrote 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:02.600 in two thousand and five that some of. 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:04.640 Those essays became chapters of the book. 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:06.960 And yeah, and so there are other ideas that kind 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.160 of are out there, Like I think it was one 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.320 of the first I think it was the first book 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:14.839 to talk about like the idea of sis privilege. Misgendering 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.480 as an idea was out there, but I kind of 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.960 dove into it a little bit deeper. So yeah, so 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:22.800 there are definitely things I was doing at the time 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:27.200 that I didn't know whether they'd be to abstract or 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:28.200 how they'd be taken up. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.240 And so, yes, it's been very interesting. 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.320 Yeah, I wanted to talk about misgendering a bit because 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:36.839 I think it's become this word that just means not 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:41.240 saying someone's pronouns correctly. And I think that's at the 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:46.480 very best, like an incredibly reductionist and of simplified version 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.320 of the analysis that you were presenting. So I guess 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.680 I have two questions here. One, can you briefly sort 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:53.960 of talk about what you were trying to get at 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.400 when you sort of did your analysis of the process 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.440 of gendering, And two, what do you think about the 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.120 way that it's kind of become flattened into this I 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:08.200 don't know, kind of weirdly narrow thing in modern discourse. 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:14.080 Sure, and a lot of the misgendering definitely dovetails with 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.320 the idea of passing, and a lot of my kind 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.680 of diving into it in a particular way came from 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.520 critiques that I had and other trans people had as well, 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.279 but I kind of, you know, put them together in 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.760 a particularly in the Dismantling I think it's dismantling sexual 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.440 Privileged chapter where I kind of go through all these 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.960 steps that lead to miss gendering, because I think people 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.960 talk about trans people passing and also the people will 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.919 talk about other marginalized groups passing is whatever dominant majority group. 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:49.560 The term obviously had long been used with regards to 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.800 people of color passing as white and in kind of 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:57.480 white racist you know, us and other societies. So it's 0:06:57.520 --> 0:06:59.880 an old term, and a big problem with it is 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:02.440 that it makes it sound like we're doing something active, 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:06.640 that trans people are actively trying to deceive other people. 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:10.160 With huge scare quotes around the word deceive. 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:14.480 And I really wanted to highlight to people that actually 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:20.280 all of us very unconsciously and very compulsively gender every 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.120 single person we meet, or at least that's how we're 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:26.080 socialized to be. And you know, you can work towards 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:30.960 getting you know, overcoming that, but I wanted to really 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.480 highlight the fact that we see people, we automatically gender them, 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:39.680 and that puts people who do not quite who your 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.640 presumptions are wrong about. It puts us in difficult situations. 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.880 It's a double bind where do you reveal what you 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.800 supposedly really are or do you just allow people to 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.200 read you that way? And it works out very differently, 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.480 for instance, between trans and say CIS gay people, because 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.760 when CIS gay people talk about passing as straight. Their 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:05.360 passing is something that they know that they are not, 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:08.640 Whereas for a lot of trans people, people read me 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.680 as a woman and I understand myself to be a woman. 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.440 There's it's a very different dynamic because it's not like 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:19.440 I'm not hiding anything, but people are presuming what I'm 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:22.160 really passing as is I'm passing a CIS gender and 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:27.040 people are assuming I'm sis gender when the trans is 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.200 the thing that I might need to or feel like 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:32.920 I need to clear up, or other people might put 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:37.960 pressure on me to either tell them that I'm trans 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:42.080 or be accused of deceiving them. So that's a little 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.199 bit of kind of how I was approaching it when 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.120 I started working on that idea and really stressing the 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:51.920 idea of you can't understand miss gendering unless you understand 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.240 that we make assumptions all the time, we gender people 0:08:55.559 --> 0:09:00.000 very actively, and you know, so trans people are often 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:04.120 just reacting to that and dealing with that double bind. 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.000 Yeah, and this is something that I think is interestingly 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:13.960 discussed in the book about like kind of this this 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:16.760 issue with some with some of the sort of prevailing 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:19.960 gender theories, which thought of which to think about sort 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:24.800 of like femininity and gender is pure performance. But you know, 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:26.760 and this is I think, like the argument that you 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.920 were making that I think is really interesting is that 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.080 something that I think is is very obvious to trans 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:35.959 people is that so much of gender is how people 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.040 perceive you and how you know and stuff that like 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.200 you don't have any control over. It's how people sort 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:45.440 of gender you. It's how people like construct a gender 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.440 around you in ways that you don't really have control over. 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:53.360 M yeah, and that was a big thing. So in 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.719 kind of I was writing the book in the mid 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:02.160 two thousands, and so the nineteen ninety is when Judith 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.840 Butler publishes Gender Trouble, which Butler never said all genders 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.000 performance are all genders drag, Yeah, but that is, but 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.040 that those are like slogans or sound bites that other 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.079 people took from their book, right, and they were very 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:20.439 popular at the time. There's also there's a famous sociological 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:25.000 article about doing gender, and so people were very focused 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:31.120 on the way in which we create gender by doing 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:35.200 it particular ways, and a lot of the slogans within 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.320 trans communities were sort of like, oh, well, you know, 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.800 I just have to do my gender differently, like more transgressively, 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:45.840 and that will like tear down all of gender. And 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:48.320 I felt that there was you know, that is an 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:52.600 aspect of things. And most of us, whether trans or cists, 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.440 most of us have had the experience of maybe trying 0:10:57.600 --> 0:10:59.800 to perform our genders in a particular way in order 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:03.600 to like, you know, not you know, in order in 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.240 order to get by in the world, in order to 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:08.520 not be harassed by other people. 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:13.240 So we've all had that experience. So while that's true, there's. 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:17.080 The other partner of that dance, and that's perception, and 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:21.439 we're all perceiving people very actively, and we're like projecting 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.240 our ideas and meanings onto them. And I felt like 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:26.440 that was being under discussed at the time, and that 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:31.160 was not only a huge part of Whipping Girl, but 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:34.600 that's become a part of a lot of my other books, 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.319 like including my most recent book, sext Up, How Society 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.079 Sexualizes us and how we can fight back. One way 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.680 that I would describe that book is it's talking about 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.520 sex and sexuality not from what people do, but from 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:53.520 how we perceive and interpret sex and sexuality, because there 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:58.199 are a lot of unconscious ideas, often really horrible ideas, 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.640 really hierarchical ideas that are kind of built into the 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.040 way we view the world. And interrogating that and so yeah, 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.160 that was a very big part of both of The 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.240 Been Girl and then my writings since then. 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:13.319 Yeah, I think I think that is something where things 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:15.880 have gotten better in terms of in terms of how 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.040 we think about gender, which I don't know, like things 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:23.760 aren't perfect, but it definitely it definitely improved things. 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.680 A lot agreed We're going. 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:28.560 To take an ad break, and when we come back, 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:44.240 we're talking trans misogyny. We're back. Yeah. So the other 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.000 thing I wanted to sort of talk about was I think, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.520 in like exactly the opposite process that happened to misgendering, 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:57.120 trans misogyny has become a lot more expansive than your 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:02.080 original sort of kind of narrow conception of it. And 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:04.079 I think this has been changing a lot, especially in 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:07.480 the last about half decade or so. So I was 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.280 wondering what you think about the way that this concept 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.040 has kind of taken on a life of its own 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:15.280 in recent years and what it's been doing since. 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:16.600 Yeah. 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.400 So I feel like trans misogyny that there are a 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:25.480 lot of different dialogues and discourses about it coming, like 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:29.600 people coming from different perspectives with it, and some people 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:33.560 feeling like the world is doing things that I never 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.000 suggested it was doing. It's kind of hard to know 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.280 like where to actually come in on this, But for me, 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.960 when I was first writing about it, I was first 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:47.520 just noticing that a lot of the quote unquote transphobia 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:49.400 that I was facing when people know as a trans 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.840 woman was actually a lot of it was just misogyny, 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.960 and a lot of it targeted like kind of my 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:03.199 femininity rather than my transness, and so I wanted to 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.520 write about that, and kind of the way that I 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:11.040 framed it in the book was, which I think is 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.079 a really useful kind of model for thinking about it, 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:16.560 is that there most of the types of sexism that 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:20.240 feminists have described over the many years fall into two 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.560 sort of camps, one of them being oppositional sexism, which 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.640 is the idea that men and women are kind of 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:32.680 perfectly opposite, mutually exclusive sexes that have different interests and 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.440 attributes and desires, and so a lot of transphobia and 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.640 homophobia are kind of like built into this idea that 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.800 men and women are completely distinct. And then the other 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.880 one is traditional sexism, which is the idea that femalists 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:51.480 and femininity are less legitimate than malness and masculinity. And 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:56.400 a lot of cis feminists have kind of viewed all 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.080 of that as just sexism, right, But when you break 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.560 it down like that, it makes it clear that the 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:03.920 double bind that a lot of feminists have talked about 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.760 is actually kind of these two different forms of sexism. 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:13.720 So if assis woman acts appropriately femininely so appropriate with 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:17.400 scare quotes. If a SIS woman acts femininely, she'll be 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:22.640 seen as appropriate, but she'll be dismissed because femininity is 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:25.920 dismissed in our culture. So that's the way that she'll 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:29.440 be delegitimized. Whereas if she acts in ways that are 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.960 coded as masculine, if she acts assertive or aggressive, then 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:37.800 people will malign her for being kind of a barrant 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:42.480 or deviant. Right, and so oppositional sexism helps keep traditional 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.880 sexism in place because you can say that maln is 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:49.520 and masculinity are superior, but that only works if you 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.920 can also make a clear distinction between you know, those 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:56.160 people and people are female and feminine. And so I 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.640 think this plays out differently. And I want to be 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:02.720 really clear about this because some people have interpreted trans 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:07.520 misogyny to mean that transmeild trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.200 which is something I've never said, and obviously the fact 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:17.000 that oppositional sexism is a form of sexism, and obviously 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.560 transmeild transmasculine people experience that. But also depending upon how 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.040 you're viewed by other people, I feel like the same 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:29.320 double pind that affects this woman affects transmeild trans masculine 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:32.160 people differently, where there's this tendency, like in a lot 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:39.560 of anti trans discourses to dismiss transmasculine, especially transmasculine youth 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.920 as being merely girls quote unquote who are like, you know, 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:49.040 misled or seduced by gender ideology, right, And there's a 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:53.560 lot of real anti feminine and anti misogynistic ideas in 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:57.680 there in addition to the fact that it misgenders. 0:16:57.640 --> 0:16:59.360 Transmeld transmasculine people. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:05.240 Then if trans mail trans masculine people, when when they 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:10.479 experience transphobia, there's often you know, like they're scene as 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:15.199 deviant for kind of breaking that role, but often the 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:21.240 maleness or their masculinity themselves are not, you know, denigrated 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:25.159 in the same way because being male, being masculine are 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.080 seen as good in our culture. It's just that if 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:31.080 you trans male, trans masculine, it's like, well, you're quote 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:33.119 unquote just a woman, so you can't do it. So 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.800 I think it plays out in this very you know, 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.560 complex way for a lot of trans mail trans masculine people, 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:45.200 I think for trans female and transfeminine people, because our 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:49.000 crossing of oppositional sexism also involves us kind of moving 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:53.679 towards the female, towards the feminine, that there's kind of 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:57.960 those two forces intersect in a way so that it's 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:01.320 like exacerbated. And some of the ways I talk about 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:03.639 this in Women Girl is that, well, we live in 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:06.800 a world where masculinity is seen as natural and femininity 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.600 is seen as artificial, and since trans people are also 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:12.440 seen as artificial compared to sis gender people, a lot 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:17.800 of times we're viewed as doubly artificial. Furthermore, the idea 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:22.280 that women are seen as sex objects whereas men aren't 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:27.520 seen as sex objects often are transitions or gender transgressions 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.679 towards a female towards a feminine are presumed to be 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.600 driven by sexual motives that can play out in all 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:36.560 sorts of ways. Whether this is the idea that we're 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:40.399 like hypersexual or promiscuous, or that we want to be 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:43.560 sexualized by other people, or you can see it a 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.600 lot with the kind of the transgender predator is often 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.520 coded as like a man who either has some kind 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.959 of fetish or perversion or is just literally deceiving people 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:00.199 to get into women's restrooms to do something horrific. So 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:01.960 those are some of the ways that it plays out. 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.760 I feel that sometimes people view it in a cut 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.679 or dried way that either they'll assume that trans misogyny 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.440 means that trans montal, trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.840 which again is not what that's about. Or sometimes people 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.080 will like try to make really clear distinctions. There's kind 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:27.880 of language like trans misogyny affected versus trans misogyny exempt. 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:30.240 Are the terms yeah. 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.359 TME and TMA, which are not terms I've used and 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.119 which or that I didn't coin them. 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:37.240 They're not in the book. 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.880 And I think that when I first saw that language, 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:44.679 and I've seen people use it in a way that 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.639 appreciates the fact that some people are non binary, so 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:49.439 it's a non identity based a way. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.040 Sometimes this can play out in a really cut or 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.960 dried sort of manner that. 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:01.880 You know, sometimes you know, whether it's intended this way 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:04.560 or not, it can make it seem that, like, you know, 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:09.240 just boiling down a really complex experience, people's complex experiences 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.879 with different types of sexism into some people are privileged 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.399 and some people are marginalized, which I think is a 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:21.560 more general problem that happens kind of throughout all social 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:23.880 justice movements, so yeah. 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:28.040 And trans people are not alien to having complex experiences 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:32.439 be boiled down to three and four letter acronyms, so. 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:34.159 Yeah. 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:34.760 I mean I. 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:40.000 Did this in Twitter form, so it was like a thread, 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.360 so like now people can't access threads unless you. 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:47.320 Have an account with Twitter. And it's from a couple 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:47.840 of years ago. 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:49.920 But one of the things that I talked about was 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.520 I wrote this essay about ten years ago about how 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:56.399 CIS and trans is kind of a useful Those are 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.400 useful terms, but sometimes people fall in between CIS and trans, 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.240 and sometimes they can be used in a way to 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.000 talk about different double standards, like CIS people are treated 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:08.679 one way, trans people are treated another. 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:10.680 But sometimes it can be used in. 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.560 Like a sort of reverse discourse way where it's like, 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:16.639 you know, SIS people of all the privilege, trans people 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.080 of none of the privilege, and it can be used 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:21.920 to kind of create this strict dichotomy that ends up 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:27.240 excluding and invisibilizing some people's experiences. And I feel the 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.159 same thing as happening with TMME and TMA. So I 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:33.880 don't think that those terms need to necessarily be like, 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.320 I don't think there's anything bad about those terms per 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.360 se in and of themselves, but I think sometimes they 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:44.639 can be used in ways. And part of why I 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.199 reference this the SYS and trans essay that I wrote 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:51.480 many years ago. It appears in my book Outspoken. I 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:56.399 forget the complete title right now, which is but the 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.399 reason why I bring that up is so sometimes what 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:05.800 happens is that when people learn about SIS sexism, SIS 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.080 people might be like, oh, I face the sexism right. 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:10.719 If I'm a woman and I don't shave my legs, 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.200 I'm facing se sexism. And so then trans people say, yeah, 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.199 but it kind of plays out differently for us, And 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:20.680 so sometimes in order to stop people from kind of 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:23.520 making those claims, which I think it is true that 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.320 you know, a woman not shaving their legs, or if 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:29.240 a man decides to put on a dress one day, 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:32.480 regardless of whether they're SIS or trans, they could experience 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:37.720 sis sexism or transphobia, but it plays out differently for 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:40.439 people who are actually members of that marginalized group. And then 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:43.440 so then the marginalized group makes a distinction even sharper, 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:48.679 and it just kind of becomes this uh, escalating situation 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.480 where the language and kind of battles over it become 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:56.040 even more intense in a recent piece, one of the 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:58.480 most recent pieces, if you go to like my medium 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:01.760 site where my essays as we are now is, it 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:07.200 talks about the trans mass versus trans discourse in terms 0:23:07.240 --> 0:23:10.639 of what I call the cultural feminist doom loop, where 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:15.280 the doom loop refers to kind of these ideas where 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.399 everyone like both sides are trying to talk about the 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.760 reason why their experiences are legitimate, and then that seems 0:23:22.800 --> 0:23:25.720 as though the other sides are not legitimate, and then 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:29.080 that kind of cascades in a way that ends up 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:32.160 not being very productive but takes up. 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:36.560 A lot of energy on places like Twitter. 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:40.040 Yeah, and I think I think that's something we've still 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:46.560 seen about one trillion times, variety of toxic ways. But 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:48.919 what isn't toxic is the new third edition of Whipping 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:51.040 Girl coming out in March with you can ask your 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:54.679 local bookstore or pre order now. And Yeah join us 0:23:54.720 --> 0:23:59.080 tomorrow for our discussion with doctor Serrano of the Anatomy. 0:23:58.600 --> 0:23:59.440 Of Moral Panics. 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:02.600 This has been a could happen here. Trans people are great, 0:24:17.080 --> 0:24:19.720 welcome to it could happen here. I'm your host, Mia Long. 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:22.160 I am happy to be here once again with Garrison 0:24:22.240 --> 0:24:25.400 Davis and doctor Julius Serrano, the author of, among many 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:27.720 other works, a new edition of Whipping Girl coming out 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:33.320 in March, so kind of pivoting a bit. One of 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:37.840 the really bleak aspects of being trans in a hostile 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:41.600 world is that we've we've effectively been forced to become 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:45.080 experts in the architects of our own extermination. And I 0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:47.160 think that's a lot of what kind of the new 0:24:47.960 --> 0:24:50.720 afterward to the upcoming twenty twenty four to thirty edition 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:53.400 of Whipping Girl is about. So, I guess I wanted 0:24:53.440 --> 0:24:57.160 to ask, what do you see as the biggest shifts 0:24:57.160 --> 0:25:01.440 in sort of the struggle for transliberation beat between the 0:25:01.560 --> 0:25:04.600 end of the sort of Mitchfest like fighting overrom Mitchfest 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:07.439 era that you wrote like Dream, which you sort of 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:11.200 wrote the second the forward, the preface of the second edition, 0:25:11.520 --> 0:25:14.400 and then the stuff that's happening now is the sort 0:25:14.400 --> 0:25:16.040 of third edition is coming out. 0:25:16.359 --> 0:25:22.280 Sure, I think a huge aspect of transactivism from my 0:25:22.400 --> 0:25:25.520 perspective of like first coming to trans communities in the nineties, 0:25:25.920 --> 0:25:31.720 a lot of nineties and Zero's era transactivism was overcoming 0:25:32.560 --> 0:25:36.919 basically people's ignorance, their lack of awareness about trans people 0:25:37.640 --> 0:25:41.160 and so and this is one of the things that 0:25:41.359 --> 0:25:43.159 you know, Whipping Girl, for example, there are a lot 0:25:43.240 --> 0:25:47.080 of bad ideas about trans people that had been circling, 0:25:47.359 --> 0:25:50.399 lating for a long time, especially with the culmination of 0:25:50.440 --> 0:25:55.399 Janis Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire the late nineteen seventies 0:25:55.480 --> 0:25:58.120 nineteen seventy nine, I think, and that influenced a lot 0:25:58.160 --> 0:26:01.960 of people that say, places like Mishfest that had trans 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:06.040 women exclusion policies. And I felt like during the nineties 0:26:06.040 --> 0:26:09.480 through the Zeros, we were constantly making gains that was 0:26:09.560 --> 0:26:12.560 largely due to people learning more about us and then 0:26:12.640 --> 0:26:17.320 recognizing basically shared goals, shared things in common. I think 0:26:17.359 --> 0:26:22.480 that trans people are marginalized because of you know, mainstream 0:26:22.480 --> 0:26:26.919 assumptions about sex, gender sexuality, and those assumptions also hurt 0:26:27.359 --> 0:26:31.639 LGBTQIA plus people more broadly, they hurt you know, in 0:26:31.640 --> 0:26:35.040 a sexist world, they hurt you know, cis women, you know, 0:26:35.080 --> 0:26:38.240 all women, all people who move through the world perceived 0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:39.280 as female feminine. 0:26:39.320 --> 0:26:41.760 So we all have this kind of shared thing that 0:26:41.800 --> 0:26:42.800 we're working. 0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:45.480 Towards, and I feel like that was where a lot 0:26:45.480 --> 0:26:48.240 of the progress was happening. And I think what really 0:26:48.359 --> 0:26:54.000 changed in the mid two thousand tens, especially two year 0:26:54.040 --> 0:26:58.240 twenty fifteen, which is literally the year after the so 0:26:58.320 --> 0:27:01.920 called tipping point time age declaring the transgender dipping point 0:27:02.800 --> 0:27:06.240 was when it was the beginning of what I would 0:27:06.240 --> 0:27:13.200 describe as organized anti transactivism, where it wasn't just that 0:27:13.280 --> 0:27:16.800 people didn't like us or they detested us, but it 0:27:16.920 --> 0:27:21.520 was where there was actual coordination between different groups. In 0:27:22.000 --> 0:27:25.960 the afterward, I describe there's the social conservatives and far 0:27:26.080 --> 0:27:31.680 right who have always been anti LGBTQ plus who took 0:27:32.760 --> 0:27:35.840 an even more intense focus on trans people. 0:27:37.359 --> 0:27:41.000 There were groups that at. 0:27:40.840 --> 0:27:43.119 The time that I wrote Whipping Girl, the term turf 0:27:43.200 --> 0:27:45.920 wasn't around, of the term gender critical wasn't around. Now 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:49.560 we would call them gender critical or trans exclusionary feminists. 0:27:50.080 --> 0:27:52.720 They've become kind of a part of that, and both 0:27:52.760 --> 0:27:54.640 those groups working together. 0:27:54.359 --> 0:27:55.879 In a lot of ways on policies. 0:27:56.640 --> 0:27:58.679 I think one of the things that the average person 0:27:59.520 --> 0:28:03.520 might not know, if you're not like really in kind 0:28:03.520 --> 0:28:06.920 of highly aware of trans communities and issues, is that 0:28:07.359 --> 0:28:11.560 probably behind the scenes, the anti transparent movement has probably 0:28:11.640 --> 0:28:15.400 made more of an impact than any other group, and 0:28:15.480 --> 0:28:19.399 they are very much like the anti vax parent movement, 0:28:20.080 --> 0:28:26.119 where it's a lot of people who are from their standpoint, 0:28:26.119 --> 0:28:28.680 they're just concerned about their children, they want what's best 0:28:28.720 --> 0:28:33.000 for their children, but they actively seek out and often 0:28:33.160 --> 0:28:38.440 get involved in you know, websites, social media forums and 0:28:38.480 --> 0:28:42.640 sometimes actual activist campaigns that buy into a lot of 0:28:42.680 --> 0:28:50.240 ideas that of children being indoctrinated into gender ideology or 0:28:50.280 --> 0:28:53.600 being infected by social contagion. And there's all this pseudoscience 0:28:54.000 --> 0:28:56.959 that rose out of that. So I would say that 0:28:56.960 --> 0:28:59.920 that was the main difference, that there's this organized campaign, 0:29:00.040 --> 0:29:01.920 and this campaign has just grown and grown and grown 0:29:02.360 --> 0:29:07.320 to the point now where it's just this astoundingly large 0:29:07.360 --> 0:29:12.200 moral panic that the types of things that like thirty 0:29:12.240 --> 0:29:15.200 percent of people in our country believe about trans people 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:16.560 is abhorrent. 0:29:16.880 --> 0:29:18.640 But that's kind of how it played out. 0:29:19.520 --> 0:29:22.960 Yeah, I mean, there's there's been a lot of a 0:29:22.960 --> 0:29:27.480 lot of very common, weird pseudoscience myths that sort of 0:29:27.600 --> 0:29:30.240 came out of that. I wanted to talk a little 0:29:30.240 --> 0:29:35.960 bit about quote unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria because that's 0:29:36.160 --> 0:29:37.680 been all over the place. Me There's like a New 0:29:37.720 --> 0:29:40.520 York Times article talking about it, like two weeks ago, 0:29:41.000 --> 0:29:44.600 and it's I don't know, really been a fiasco, especially 0:29:44.640 --> 0:29:50.800 given how unbelievably tenuous the stuff they sort of faked 0:29:51.320 --> 0:29:53.880 or not as say fake, like unbelievably tenuous to like 0:29:53.960 --> 0:29:56.760 quote unquote study they did that got retracted. 0:29:57.000 --> 0:30:02.280 Was Yeah, and this is something that I actually saw 0:30:02.400 --> 0:30:06.680 developing firsthand and then did research on in twenty nineteen. 0:30:07.800 --> 0:30:09.360 So let me frame this. 0:30:09.640 --> 0:30:12.720 I'll tell like my personal a short version of my 0:30:12.840 --> 0:30:14.160 oral history of this. 0:30:14.880 --> 0:30:16.080 So it was around. 0:30:16.040 --> 0:30:19.760 Twenty seventeen that I first heard the idea of children, 0:30:20.560 --> 0:30:24.840 you know, becoming trans because of social contagion. And it 0:30:24.960 --> 0:30:27.560 just seemed to come out of the blue. And it's like, what, 0:30:28.480 --> 0:30:32.280 you know, it's gender identity is not contagious. If it was, like, 0:30:32.720 --> 0:30:35.080 you know, trans people would have infected way more than 0:30:35.240 --> 0:30:39.760 like the less than one percent of us that actually exists. 0:30:39.920 --> 0:30:45.920 Not a very effective contagious go yees rising like no, 0:30:46.640 --> 0:30:49.680 like yes, yeah, exactly. 0:30:49.760 --> 0:30:52.440 It's like, once you start looking at it, it seems 0:30:52.520 --> 0:30:54.960 kind of ridiculous. A lot of it was because well, 0:30:55.320 --> 0:30:57.680 you know, you know, my kid was hanging around a 0:30:57.800 --> 0:31:02.320 transpersoner started watching videos on YouTube, and now they're trans. 0:31:02.360 --> 0:31:04.600 It's like, yeah, well, maybe they. 0:31:04.440 --> 0:31:07.360 Were hanging out with that trans friend and watching the 0:31:07.440 --> 0:31:11.040 YouTube videos because they are trans and they just hadn't 0:31:11.040 --> 0:31:13.680 come out yet, or they're just they're still figuring. 0:31:13.320 --> 0:31:16.360 It out anyway. So in twenty eighteen. 0:31:16.120 --> 0:31:19.000 Is when the Lisa Littmann paper on rapid on set 0:31:19.040 --> 0:31:21.600 gender dysphoria came out, and I wrote this essay at 0:31:21.640 --> 0:31:23.760 the time talking about all the things wrong with it. 0:31:23.960 --> 0:31:26.440 And then in twenty nineteen, I'm like, where did these 0:31:26.480 --> 0:31:28.200 ideas come from? And I should say that rap it 0:31:28.280 --> 0:31:33.640 onset gender dysphoria is basically transgender social contagion wrapped up 0:31:34.080 --> 0:31:36.600 in a medical sounding diagnosis. 0:31:36.800 --> 0:31:38.720 Okay, so if you read. 0:31:38.800 --> 0:31:43.440 The initial descriptions of transgender social contagion and the description 0:31:43.480 --> 0:31:47.000 of rapid onset gender dysphoria, they're basically the same. It's 0:31:47.040 --> 0:31:50.360 that kids are infecting one another. But the idea of 0:31:50.440 --> 0:31:53.720 rap it on set gender dysphoria was meant to describe 0:31:54.280 --> 0:31:59.240 this quick infection of transness that supposedly was happening, and 0:31:59.640 --> 0:32:03.680 sowenty nineteen, I basically did a deep dive. I'm not 0:32:03.720 --> 0:32:06.000 an investigative reporter, but that's kind of what I did 0:32:06.480 --> 0:32:09.360 into like, where the origin of this was, And basically 0:32:09.720 --> 0:32:13.040 all of this kind of came down to the website 0:32:13.080 --> 0:32:16.320 Fourth Wave Now, which often worked in coordination with two 0:32:16.400 --> 0:32:19.880 other anti transparent websites. So Fourth Wave Now is an 0:32:19.880 --> 0:32:23.840 anti transparent website, arguably the very first one that came out, 0:32:24.480 --> 0:32:29.760 and a parent posted the idea that her child was 0:32:29.960 --> 0:32:34.320 like being infected by transgender social contagion, and it's almost 0:32:34.400 --> 0:32:38.040 definitely clear. Now I will leave a little caveat even 0:32:38.040 --> 0:32:41.000 though I think the evidence is pretty strong that that 0:32:41.200 --> 0:32:45.920 was Lisa Marciano, who's anti trans therapist, who's very very 0:32:45.960 --> 0:32:50.640 involved in anti transactivism right now, Okay, so and like 0:32:50.920 --> 0:32:55.040 all everything points to that being her, and she also 0:32:55.680 --> 0:32:59.520 seems to have in some capacity worked with Lisa Littman. 0:33:00.600 --> 0:33:03.240 So basically the first paper about rapet on sitt gender 0:33:03.240 --> 0:33:05.440 distory that came out was not Lisa Littman's, it was 0:33:05.440 --> 0:33:09.240 actually Lisa Marchiano's, which came out twenty seventeen. So it 0:33:09.320 --> 0:33:13.360 basically kind of grew from these anti transparent websites it 0:33:13.560 --> 0:33:17.120 really quickly within six months. Not only was Lisa Littman 0:33:17.240 --> 0:33:19.920 doing her survey, Lisa Littman being someone who has no 0:33:20.040 --> 0:33:23.880 experience in trans health ever before then just decides to 0:33:23.960 --> 0:33:26.719 go in and only survey parents from an ant from 0:33:26.800 --> 0:33:31.240 three anti transparent websites, and it gets taken very seriously 0:33:32.040 --> 0:33:36.520 just because the media fan the flames. A lot of 0:33:36.560 --> 0:33:40.160 these groups were very excited to have something that seemed 0:33:40.520 --> 0:33:43.680 to be a case study on their side. The paper 0:33:43.800 --> 0:33:46.520 was heavily critiqued when it came out. There are now 0:33:47.040 --> 0:33:50.040 and I described this in an all nine SI have 0:33:50.280 --> 0:33:53.320 it's free if you google my name, and all the 0:33:53.360 --> 0:33:56.400 evidence against social contagion it's in there. There are now 0:33:56.600 --> 0:33:59.800 ten papers that have tested the idea of rap it 0:33:59.840 --> 0:34:03.640 on at gender dysphoria and or social contagion and found 0:34:03.720 --> 0:34:07.360 evidence that contradicts the hypothesis. 0:34:08.040 --> 0:34:09.799 So it's still being. 0:34:09.760 --> 0:34:12.520 Talked about that Pamela Paul. It was an alped that 0:34:12.600 --> 0:34:15.719 looked like an article in the New York Times. It's 0:34:15.800 --> 0:34:17.759 not the first time Pamela Paul and or the New 0:34:17.840 --> 0:34:20.800 York Times has done this. They've seemed to have a 0:34:22.160 --> 0:34:25.719 particular acts to grind against trans people and putting out 0:34:26.400 --> 0:34:33.839 specious articles suggesting that gender firming care, especially for trans youth, 0:34:34.440 --> 0:34:39.080 is bad, when actually all the evidence points to the opposite. 0:34:39.680 --> 0:34:44.280 So yeah, that's a brief discussion of rapid ons at genders, 0:34:44.320 --> 0:34:47.879 for which I think is the most popular of these 0:34:48.040 --> 0:34:52.080 kind of pseudoscientific ideas, But there are definitely others that 0:34:52.160 --> 0:34:55.000 are like about like four or five others that I 0:34:55.040 --> 0:34:56.680 could get into, and I do get into in the 0:34:56.719 --> 0:34:59.120 Afterword and in some of my other writings. 0:34:59.560 --> 0:35:01.080 But yeah, and. 0:35:02.960 --> 0:35:08.400 You know, I don't use the word pseudoscientific lightly. Basically, 0:35:09.040 --> 0:35:13.799 there's like science, which is where different research groups try 0:35:13.840 --> 0:35:16.440 to answer a particular question and if they all get 0:35:16.760 --> 0:35:19.600 similar answers, then that becomes okay, well, that seems to 0:35:19.640 --> 0:35:22.279 be established. Now let's work from there and ask more 0:35:22.400 --> 0:35:26.560 questions and do more studies. Junk science is when you 0:35:26.719 --> 0:35:32.120 do kind of a crappy study that doesn't really interrogate 0:35:32.200 --> 0:35:37.040 all the possibilities, that either doesn't use controls or you know, 0:35:37.160 --> 0:35:40.200 only looks at you know, a bias sampling size or 0:35:40.920 --> 0:35:44.560 a bias sample or small sample sizes, and comes to 0:35:44.600 --> 0:35:45.279 a conclusion that. 0:35:45.320 --> 0:35:46.920 It wants to come to. That's junk science. 0:35:47.320 --> 0:35:50.799 And then pseudoscience is when multiple independent groups all find 0:35:50.880 --> 0:35:54.240 something different to what you're saying, but you keep touting 0:35:54.280 --> 0:35:57.560 the thing you're saying is science. And that's definitely where 0:35:57.600 --> 0:36:00.759 our gd is right now. Same thing with one of 0:36:00.840 --> 0:36:03.880 these ideas that I talked about way back early and 0:36:03.920 --> 0:36:06.800 Whipping Girl, and I've written other, you know, both academic 0:36:06.880 --> 0:36:11.120 papers and online essays about this concept of autoginophilia, which 0:36:11.160 --> 0:36:13.839 is this really old theory that just like it's kind 0:36:13.840 --> 0:36:16.640 of like this zombie. It doesn't matter how many groups 0:36:16.920 --> 0:36:22.200 find evidence to the contrary. It jibes with what basically 0:36:22.520 --> 0:36:29.600 certain you know, gender disaffirming practitioners, practitioners and researchers and 0:36:29.719 --> 0:36:33.120 anti transactivists. It jobs with what they want to say, 0:36:33.640 --> 0:36:36.600 so it just kind of continues to be out there. 0:36:37.280 --> 0:36:41.080 So yeah, yeah, I mean something that Garrison we were 0:36:41.120 --> 0:36:44.400 talking about before, this is the extent to which the 0:36:44.440 --> 0:36:46.840 extent to which the rapid Onset Gender is for you 0:36:46.880 --> 0:36:49.480 study is almost exactly the same study as the first 0:36:49.480 --> 0:36:52.280 anti vax study like it has it has almost exactly 0:36:52.320 --> 0:36:54.320 the same It's the same thing where you find a 0:36:54.360 --> 0:36:56.399 group of people who think their kid has autism because 0:36:56.440 --> 0:36:57.880 they were got vaccinated, or you find a group of 0:36:57.880 --> 0:37:02.000 people who think their kids are trans because social contagion 0:37:02.120 --> 0:37:04.600 or something, and then you asked them about it, and 0:37:04.640 --> 0:37:06.680 then you report the results of the study and it's like, well, 0:37:06.719 --> 0:37:08.680 now and you report the results of you asking the 0:37:08.719 --> 0:37:11.600 people the thing that they believe, and now it's a study, 0:37:11.680 --> 0:37:15.320 and it's it's I don't know, it drives me insane 0:37:15.719 --> 0:37:18.080 the extent to which he is literally exactly the same thing. 0:37:19.640 --> 0:37:20.880 Yeah, I mean that was something. 0:37:21.000 --> 0:37:24.160 So I didn't know this until h Bomber guy, who's 0:37:24.200 --> 0:37:28.560 Auber who does really good investigations and video essays, and 0:37:29.600 --> 0:37:31.640 I saw his autism and so this is something that 0:37:32.000 --> 0:37:34.080 you know. I remember, I'm old enough to remember the 0:37:34.120 --> 0:37:37.319 Wakefield paper being in the news, and then you've heard 0:37:37.400 --> 0:37:40.080 lots of people debunking it, and then it's officially retracted 0:37:40.640 --> 0:37:45.360 and basically all you know, the scientific field has settled 0:37:45.400 --> 0:37:48.200 that it's like vaccines do not cause autism. A lot 0:37:48.280 --> 0:37:51.680 of that is just like a coincidence of the time 0:37:51.760 --> 0:37:54.960 that you first start noticing that children maybe autistic is 0:37:55.160 --> 0:37:59.080 like right around the time after they've had vaccinations. But 0:37:59.239 --> 0:38:02.440 but yeah, it wasn't the h Balmber guy video that 0:38:02.560 --> 0:38:05.560 he talks about that the Wakefield study is a study 0:38:05.680 --> 0:38:09.120 of parents, not the children, a study of the parents, 0:38:09.520 --> 0:38:13.440 and the parents already had were already suspicious of the vaccines, 0:38:13.520 --> 0:38:16.120 and so they said Oh, well, it happened right after 0:38:16.560 --> 0:38:20.240 they had these vaccines, just like rapido ont sat genders 0:38:20.280 --> 0:38:22.719 for it happens. Oh, it happened right after. You know, 0:38:23.000 --> 0:38:26.600 one of my child's peer, their cheer peers came out 0:38:26.600 --> 0:38:27.080 as trans. 0:38:27.120 --> 0:38:29.319 It's like, yeah, maybe they're connected. Maybe that's why they're 0:38:29.360 --> 0:38:29.880 good friends. 0:38:30.360 --> 0:38:32.719 You know, most of my friends, you know, like when 0:38:32.800 --> 0:38:34.719 I go out and stuff like that, you know, a 0:38:34.880 --> 0:38:38.000 huge chunk of my friends, way higher than the average person, 0:38:38.120 --> 0:38:42.080 are trans people. And it's not because any of us 0:38:42.120 --> 0:38:44.120 infected each other. It's just that you have that thing 0:38:44.200 --> 0:38:47.800 in common. You also, really importantly, when you're part of 0:38:47.840 --> 0:38:51.879 a stigmatized group, being around other people who won't stigmatize 0:38:51.920 --> 0:38:54.360 you often because they're part of that same group, that 0:38:54.480 --> 0:38:57.120 can be really freeing and really supportive. 0:38:57.520 --> 0:39:00.799 So yeah, yeah, Sy, we need to take another AD break, 0:39:01.560 --> 0:39:05.279 but when we come back there will be more. I 0:39:05.320 --> 0:39:07.680 don't know. I'm really kind of blowing the AD pivots 0:39:07.680 --> 0:39:23.879 on this one. I'm very sorry, and we are back, 0:39:24.239 --> 0:39:27.960 so I guess speaking of moral panics. 0:39:27.960 --> 0:39:30.160 Speaking of social contagions. 0:39:32.600 --> 0:39:35.680 Yes, moral panics are always very socially contagious. 0:39:36.080 --> 0:39:40.440 Yeah, it's really truly, really truly, they have described their 0:39:40.480 --> 0:39:43.919 own ideology and they've projected it out to everyone else. 0:39:44.880 --> 0:39:48.520 H So, one of the things that you talk about 0:39:48.560 --> 0:39:51.040 both in the Afterword and in sext Up is about 0:39:51.160 --> 0:39:55.320 the relationship between stigma and contagion and how it's this powerful, 0:39:55.480 --> 0:39:59.360 incredibly powerful force for moobilizing moral panics. Can you explain 0:39:59.520 --> 0:40:00.760 sort of how that works? 0:40:01.760 --> 0:40:01.960 Sure? 0:40:02.080 --> 0:40:05.040 Yeah, so, And this was something that when I was 0:40:05.120 --> 0:40:07.960 first working on sex Up, it wasn't kind of my idea. 0:40:08.120 --> 0:40:10.400 I didn't think I was going to write about the 0:40:10.480 --> 0:40:13.600 concept of stigma that much, but it really ended up 0:40:13.640 --> 0:40:15.040 being very central the more kind. 0:40:14.960 --> 0:40:16.000 Of research I did into it. 0:40:16.440 --> 0:40:18.600 And so I think most of us are familiar with 0:40:18.680 --> 0:40:23.000 the idea of stigma in terms of like feeling embarrassment 0:40:23.239 --> 0:40:26.480 or being made to feel lesser than other people because 0:40:26.560 --> 0:40:30.279 of some aspect of your person, right, And there is 0:40:30.400 --> 0:40:34.280 that aspect of it that's often called like felt stigma. 0:40:35.080 --> 0:40:39.239 But then there's the way that other people view stigma, right, 0:40:39.760 --> 0:40:42.759 And so you know, people weren't necessarily stigmatized in that 0:40:42.840 --> 0:40:46.640 way themselves, they might view people who are stigmatized in 0:40:46.719 --> 0:40:53.279 particular ways. And one aspect of stigma that I learned 0:40:53.280 --> 0:40:58.520 a lot of this from psychologists. I think it's Paul Rosen, 0:40:58.760 --> 0:41:04.000 I know the last name is Rosin, and also Carol Nemerov, 0:41:04.400 --> 0:41:06.760 and they both worked together and they had other colleagues 0:41:06.760 --> 0:41:08.799 who worked on this. But a lot of this comes 0:41:08.840 --> 0:41:13.279 from this really unconscious idea of contagion that seems to 0:41:13.400 --> 0:41:16.440 be it's like pan cultural. It's just kind of a 0:41:16.480 --> 0:41:18.920 way that people tend to view the world kind of 0:41:19.040 --> 0:41:20.800 like a lot of people and a lot of cultures 0:41:21.200 --> 0:41:25.240 have essentialist views. Contagion is sort of along those lines. 0:41:25.520 --> 0:41:28.440 It's often described as a type of magical thinking. And 0:41:28.520 --> 0:41:32.680 the idea is if something in your mind has this contagion, 0:41:33.360 --> 0:41:35.880 if you get too close to it or you interact 0:41:35.960 --> 0:41:39.920 with it, it can like permanently corrupt or taint you. 0:41:41.239 --> 0:41:45.120 And so it has this kind of contagious like property 0:41:45.640 --> 0:41:48.759 in people's minds, and so people often view groups who 0:41:48.760 --> 0:41:54.480 are stigmatized, especially groups that are highly stigmatized, as essentially contagious, 0:41:55.080 --> 0:41:58.759 where that stigma that they have could rub off on you. 0:41:59.239 --> 0:42:00.759 If you get to close to them. 0:42:01.320 --> 0:42:04.520 And so this happens like when I was really young, 0:42:04.880 --> 0:42:07.000 the idea of like if you were friends with the 0:42:07.080 --> 0:42:10.000 trans person. A lot of times people or even someone 0:42:10.040 --> 0:42:12.719 who is gay back then people be like, oh, so 0:42:12.840 --> 0:42:15.200 what are you? You must be gay too, right, It's 0:42:15.200 --> 0:42:18.279 almost as if that stigma would then like kind of 0:42:18.440 --> 0:42:22.279 migrate to you. And that's a lot of why stigmatized 0:42:22.320 --> 0:42:27.320 groups face a lot of ostracization in society. And so 0:42:27.760 --> 0:42:30.759 so this idea of contagion has been around. I think 0:42:30.760 --> 0:42:33.960 groups who are lesser stigmatized one of the ways that 0:42:34.040 --> 0:42:36.640 that plays out is they're viewed as less contagious. So, 0:42:37.520 --> 0:42:39.279 you know, when I was really young, the idea of 0:42:39.440 --> 0:42:41.160 if you had a trans person in your life, people 0:42:41.160 --> 0:42:44.640 would really question you. Whereas by the time I came out, 0:42:44.920 --> 0:42:46.680 you could have a trans friend and that would be fine. 0:42:46.719 --> 0:42:50.239 It wouldn't necessarily be contagious, unless, of course, you were 0:42:50.320 --> 0:42:53.040 interested in them, and then that stigma would If you 0:42:53.080 --> 0:42:56.320 were like attracted to them, then there's that stigma. And 0:42:56.440 --> 0:42:58.960 I think that stigma plays a lot into kind of 0:42:59.080 --> 0:43:01.640 dynamics of and I write about this and sex stuff 0:43:01.680 --> 0:43:04.320 that the whole idea of like fetishes and chasers and 0:43:04.360 --> 0:43:07.720 all that. That's basically all the stigma that contagent stuff 0:43:08.040 --> 0:43:14.799 playing out in different ways anyway, So I also think 0:43:14.880 --> 0:43:17.200 that and I write about and sextup I think people 0:43:17.440 --> 0:43:22.640 view sex and stigma as really closely intertwined, such that 0:43:23.239 --> 0:43:27.319 I think people view the average person views heterosexual sex 0:43:27.360 --> 0:43:30.640 as a stigma contamination act, where the males the corrupting 0:43:30.760 --> 0:43:35.920 force and it's the woman who is corrupted by sex, 0:43:36.040 --> 0:43:39.120 which is why you know virgins are pure. But then 0:43:39.480 --> 0:43:42.399 once a woman has sex, she's like, you know, she's 0:43:42.520 --> 0:43:46.680 become contaminated or tainted, and she has a lot of sex, 0:43:46.719 --> 0:43:49.880 then people view her as like ruined, right, So that 0:43:50.000 --> 0:43:54.200 idea is bell in there, and I think this combination 0:43:54.880 --> 0:43:58.720 of viewing sex and stigma is kind of intertwined leads 0:43:58.840 --> 0:44:04.160 to this sexual predator, the sexual predator stereotype that we're 0:44:04.200 --> 0:44:07.160 seeing play out in really strong ways with trans people 0:44:07.239 --> 0:44:10.560 right now. But actually, if you look throughout history, like 0:44:10.640 --> 0:44:14.160 a lot of marginalized groups like deal in different ways 0:44:14.480 --> 0:44:15.960 with the sexual predator trope. 0:44:16.760 --> 0:44:17.040 And so. 0:44:18.760 --> 0:44:22.719 I think this really clearly plays out with the kind 0:44:22.760 --> 0:44:25.200 of what I call the groomer explosion that started in 0:44:25.280 --> 0:44:29.120 twenty twenty two, where you know, people were accusing trans 0:44:29.200 --> 0:44:31.640 people being groomors before then, but it really exploded in 0:44:31.680 --> 0:44:34.080 twenty twenty two. And if you listen to what people 0:44:34.080 --> 0:44:38.040 are saying that they're using the word groomer, which sounds 0:44:38.080 --> 0:44:40.640 like a sexual predator thing, Like there's a real thing 0:44:40.719 --> 0:44:45.839 of grooming children that sexual abusers do, but they're using 0:44:45.880 --> 0:44:48.200 it against trans people in a way that has nothing 0:44:48.239 --> 0:44:51.440 to do with that. But what they're talking about is corrupting, 0:44:51.800 --> 0:44:54.200 you know, so their children who are presumed to be 0:44:54.280 --> 0:44:59.120 sisgender and who often I think this is why a 0:44:59.200 --> 0:45:03.880 lot of these anti trans discourses continue to paint like 0:45:04.000 --> 0:45:07.719 trans children as being girls, right like, because then it 0:45:07.840 --> 0:45:10.480 kind of plays into these feelings of like, you know, 0:45:11.040 --> 0:45:15.600 transgender people are the adult men corrupting young girls. It 0:45:15.680 --> 0:45:19.520 plays into a lot of people's view like messed up, 0:45:19.920 --> 0:45:26.320 messed up heteronormative views of sex and fears of you know, 0:45:26.600 --> 0:45:30.040 sexual abuse, child abuse being a very real thing that 0:45:30.160 --> 0:45:35.279 people greatly misinterpret it so that the people who are 0:45:35.400 --> 0:45:41.040 the usual perpetrators, which are usually you know, by and large, 0:45:41.120 --> 0:45:46.040 straight men who are like adults who are close or 0:45:46.160 --> 0:45:49.800 sometimes even family members of the child in question. But 0:45:50.040 --> 0:45:53.200 like when they say grooming, they just mean corrupting or contaminating. 0:45:53.760 --> 0:45:56.840 And I think that both grooming and social contagion, I 0:45:56.920 --> 0:46:00.680 think both of these basically play off of this stigma 0:46:00.760 --> 0:46:04.760 contamination idea. Right, the kids are pure, but then transgenders 0:46:04.840 --> 0:46:07.880 like a type of coudies that if one kid becomes trans, 0:46:08.120 --> 0:46:10.799 then they spread it to the other kids. And so yeah, 0:46:10.960 --> 0:46:14.759 so I feel like it plays a really big role 0:46:15.280 --> 0:46:18.640 not only moral panics, which amosol. Moral panics are there's 0:46:18.680 --> 0:46:23.120 some kind of corrupting force that is often attacking otherwise 0:46:23.200 --> 0:46:28.080 pure and innocent children. Sometimes it's technology, right, and so 0:46:28.239 --> 0:46:30.600 people will be like, oh, we have to ban you know, 0:46:30.760 --> 0:46:34.280 social media apps, you know, because it's hurting the children. 0:46:34.520 --> 0:46:36.640 Or it could be transgender people who are the things 0:46:36.719 --> 0:46:39.800 we need to ban because they're corrupting the children. But 0:46:40.040 --> 0:46:43.360 I definitely think that both these ideas of stigma and 0:46:43.480 --> 0:46:47.479 contagion play a big role in the way in which 0:46:47.640 --> 0:46:50.680 moral panics, why they resonate with a lot of people, 0:46:51.120 --> 0:46:55.239 even though they don't make any rational sense if you 0:46:55.440 --> 0:46:57.279 just think about them kind of. 0:46:58.760 --> 0:47:02.120 From a very realistic, yeah, practical point of view. 0:47:02.640 --> 0:47:04.320 And we have to go to ads, but we'll be 0:47:04.440 --> 0:47:17.040 back in a second, and we're back. 0:47:18.040 --> 0:47:21.000 This is something that you mentioned briefly in the afterward, 0:47:21.480 --> 0:47:23.680 and that's something that we've reported on, is how a 0:47:23.800 --> 0:47:27.000 lot of this groomer thing that started in twenty twenty two, 0:47:27.440 --> 0:47:29.600 and a whole bunch of this kind of modern wave 0:47:29.680 --> 0:47:33.080 of transphobia is mirroring a lot of the anti gay 0:47:33.120 --> 0:47:36.239 stuff from like the eighties that was pushed forward by 0:47:36.239 --> 0:47:39.320 a lot of like evangelicals meant into just like mainstream 0:47:39.320 --> 0:47:42.560 conservatism and specifically how it functions as this. Yeah, this 0:47:42.600 --> 0:47:44.760 is sort of like moral panic and even social contagion. 0:47:45.000 --> 0:47:50.160 The way homosexuality was treated as this thing and this 0:47:50.560 --> 0:47:53.600 sort of social contingent aspect is so common now. I mean, 0:47:53.719 --> 0:47:57.719 even the way we've already alluded to Musk, even the 0:47:57.760 --> 0:48:01.800 way he mentions like the woke mind virus is exactly 0:48:01.880 --> 0:48:03.880 this thing and as it really is like moral panics 0:48:03.920 --> 0:48:06.560 and stuff. Right, this was kind of predated by the 0:48:06.600 --> 0:48:10.880 critical race theory debacle, which then got you know, turned 0:48:10.960 --> 0:48:15.759 into the groomer thing, and now exactly and now it's 0:48:15.800 --> 0:48:19.080 even changed again. And these moral panics can have like 0:48:19.239 --> 0:48:23.359 devastating results in terms of pushing forward legislation that outlasts 0:48:23.400 --> 0:48:26.759 the actual moral panic. But the actual things themselves are 0:48:26.840 --> 0:48:29.440 very short lived. They don't seem to have very much 0:48:29.560 --> 0:48:33.800 like staying power as as as like cultural moments, they 0:48:34.040 --> 0:48:36.160 move on so quickly, Like no one talks about critical 0:48:36.280 --> 0:48:38.600 race theory anymore. You don't even hear this sort of 0:48:38.640 --> 0:48:41.960 groomer rhetoric as often as you did two years ago, 0:48:42.080 --> 0:48:44.800 and it's being replaced by new versions. And yeah, like 0:48:44.880 --> 0:48:49.400 Mia said, the DEEI thing is the current current thing 0:48:49.480 --> 0:48:53.239 that is wrecking American society if you ask about maybe 0:48:53.320 --> 0:48:57.080 one third of population. But yeah, how do you feel 0:48:57.080 --> 0:49:00.640 about like the life cycle of these morals and how 0:49:00.680 --> 0:49:02.680 they relate to like the social contagion aspect. 0:49:03.480 --> 0:49:05.799 Yeah, yeah, no, And I agree with what you're also 0:49:05.880 --> 0:49:08.920 all the things you're citing that, Like, I think these 0:49:09.000 --> 0:49:11.960 are all different variations of kind of the same idea. 0:49:12.280 --> 0:49:15.279 And I do really appreciate the idea of the woke 0:49:15.440 --> 0:49:19.680 mind virus as being kind of like the perfect like 0:49:19.800 --> 0:49:23.680 the exemplar of this and that you know, people were, 0:49:23.920 --> 0:49:26.080 you know, people were complaining about, you know, stuff being 0:49:26.160 --> 0:49:29.440 woke for a while, and you know it is usually 0:49:29.600 --> 0:49:32.760 it's often coded as something that's woke is like anti racist, 0:49:32.960 --> 0:49:37.480 or you know, is something like it's very much associated, 0:49:38.120 --> 0:49:41.000 you know, infused with like when people complain about wocism, 0:49:41.480 --> 0:49:45.799 a lot of times they're like they're racist or there 0:49:46.880 --> 0:49:50.040 or at the very least. They have fears about kind 0:49:50.040 --> 0:49:54.680 of the corruption of pure whiteness being corrupted by increasing 0:49:55.480 --> 0:49:59.040 you know, people of color and and you know, like 0:49:59.440 --> 0:50:02.600 making game in society. Right, But the woke mind virus, 0:50:02.600 --> 0:50:04.880 because no one could really explain what woke is because 0:50:04.920 --> 0:50:07.200 then it keeps shifting and it refers to trans people 0:50:07.840 --> 0:50:11.319 or critical race theory, et cetera. Yeah, and the woke 0:50:11.440 --> 0:50:15.400 mind virus is like perfect because that's how they think. 0:50:16.440 --> 0:50:20.279 It all works, Like it's just this thing that infects people, 0:50:20.400 --> 0:50:21.360 specially children. 0:50:22.080 --> 0:50:26.480 And the way in which there is a recent thing 0:50:26.600 --> 0:50:29.359 just today, I think it was Ackerman, the billionaire has 0:50:29.440 --> 0:50:32.800 been involved in a lot of this DII stuff, complaining 0:50:32.920 --> 0:50:37.600 about his child being infected in college with Marxism, and 0:50:38.640 --> 0:50:42.800 Elon Musk had similar issues with his trans daughter like 0:50:43.320 --> 0:50:46.320 becoming pro marx or anti capitalists, and so they just 0:50:46.960 --> 0:50:49.680 assume that, like, no, my child was pure, but now 0:50:49.719 --> 0:50:52.400 they're infected. It's like, well, maybe there are other ideas 0:50:52.480 --> 0:50:55.640 out there that are better than your idea. Yeah, and 0:50:56.719 --> 0:50:57.440 maybe that's. 0:50:57.280 --> 0:50:57.719 All it is. 0:50:58.520 --> 0:51:03.399 But yeah, so I think in all of these cases, yes, 0:51:03.719 --> 0:51:07.120 I think that there's this idea of a contagion or corruption. 0:51:07.800 --> 0:51:11.920 Often involving children, and it is. Yeah, a lot of 0:51:11.960 --> 0:51:15.120 the moral panic, a lot of the literature, like the 0:51:15.600 --> 0:51:19.560 social sciences literature, all moral panics. They often describe them 0:51:19.600 --> 0:51:22.640 as fleeting. You know, this one, the anti trans one, 0:51:22.719 --> 0:51:27.880 isn't fleeting enough right now from my perspective. But people 0:51:28.000 --> 0:51:30.800 will tend to kind of move on, like the Satanic 0:51:30.880 --> 0:51:34.000 panic of the eighties, you know, like that was a 0:51:34.080 --> 0:51:35.279 really big deal and then all of a sudden it 0:51:35.360 --> 0:51:37.600 was just gone and no one ever talked about it again. 0:51:38.280 --> 0:51:41.800 I think the difference here is that a lot of 0:51:41.880 --> 0:51:46.080 these moral panics are really tied together with what's happening 0:51:46.200 --> 0:51:52.000 in the country more generally, with anti democratic and authoritative, 0:51:52.880 --> 0:51:57.000 you know, views coming from you know, particularly the right 0:51:57.080 --> 0:51:59.880 wing of the country. You know, like one of the 0:52:00.080 --> 0:52:04.480 to major political parties is really pushing a lot of 0:52:05.840 --> 0:52:09.400 just generally across the board. You know, they're against feminism, 0:52:09.960 --> 0:52:13.879 they're you know, against people of color, against LGBTQ plus people, 0:52:14.719 --> 0:52:18.640 and I think it's all wrapped up into the same thing. 0:52:18.719 --> 0:52:23.000 I think that while individual parts of the moral panic 0:52:23.080 --> 0:52:25.560 may go away, they may talk about critical race theory 0:52:25.640 --> 0:52:28.279 for a bit and then shift to trans people being 0:52:28.320 --> 0:52:31.560 groomers then shift to DEI but I think a lot 0:52:31.640 --> 0:52:34.680 of this is they're all intertwined. And actually, I think 0:52:34.719 --> 0:52:38.239 that's like the last couple of paragraphs of the afterward, 0:52:38.560 --> 0:52:41.759 I talk about that as a potentially good thing, because 0:52:41.800 --> 0:52:44.520 even though it's been a horring time to be a 0:52:44.640 --> 0:52:48.879 trans person, with all the anti trans legislation and all 0:52:48.920 --> 0:52:52.880 the anti trans news stories, all the pushes back on 0:52:53.000 --> 0:52:56.840 gender firm and care, despite all that, I think the 0:52:56.880 --> 0:52:59.640 good thing is that I think there are clear sides here, 0:53:00.239 --> 0:53:03.440 and I think, well, this wasn't true early on in 0:53:03.560 --> 0:53:08.000 the anti trans backlash in the like late twenty tens. 0:53:08.920 --> 0:53:12.120 I think most people realize now that all these things 0:53:12.160 --> 0:53:16.600 are tied together from like kind of you know, the 0:53:16.719 --> 0:53:19.920 right wing perspective in this country is just against all 0:53:20.040 --> 0:53:24.800 these things. You know, they want a white, Christian, straight 0:53:25.800 --> 0:53:30.640 minority of people running everything about this country, and so 0:53:30.800 --> 0:53:33.799 I think the rest of us really need to recognize 0:53:33.800 --> 0:53:35.360 that and work together to defeat that. 0:53:36.680 --> 0:53:39.400 Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's a pretty 0:53:39.440 --> 0:53:41.960 good place to end on. Do Let's you have anything 0:53:41.960 --> 0:53:43.200 else that you wanted to make sure you get in. 0:53:44.520 --> 0:53:46.960 No, I mean I feel like we touched we covered 0:53:47.200 --> 0:53:50.240 a bunch of the book past, present, and hopefully future 0:53:50.320 --> 0:53:53.920 being better than the present right now. 0:53:54.040 --> 0:53:56.440 Hopefully hopefully hopefully. 0:53:56.560 --> 0:53:56.719 Yes. 0:53:58.560 --> 0:54:03.680 So okay, where can people find a the new additional 0:54:03.680 --> 0:54:06.320 Whipping Girl and be you and your work on the 0:54:06.400 --> 0:54:07.880 internet and or other places? 0:54:09.400 --> 0:54:11.880 Sure? Yeah, so the book should be available. 0:54:12.320 --> 0:54:14.920 So it's available for pre order right now, so you 0:54:15.040 --> 0:54:18.480 can do that through like, you know, online places. I 0:54:18.600 --> 0:54:22.040 often suggest people go to the Seal Press, my publisher, 0:54:22.360 --> 0:54:23.480 because they give lots. 0:54:23.320 --> 0:54:23.960 Of options there. 0:54:24.160 --> 0:54:27.120 But you can also go to your local independent bookstore 0:54:27.520 --> 0:54:29.239 and say, hey, I'd like the pre order this book 0:54:29.239 --> 0:54:31.239 and they will do that for you. So the book 0:54:31.280 --> 0:54:34.720 will be available everywhere and should be in stores starting 0:54:34.760 --> 0:54:39.440 in March. As for me, my website Juliuserando dot com, 0:54:39.960 --> 0:54:42.200 particularly if you go to the writings page there, I 0:54:42.320 --> 0:54:46.520 have like literally links to everything I've written online over 0:54:46.560 --> 0:54:49.480 the years, so it's kind of a clearinghouse of free 0:54:49.520 --> 0:54:52.359 writings of mine. There are also links to my books there, 0:54:52.920 --> 0:54:54.760 and then if you're looking for me on social media, 0:54:55.120 --> 0:54:59.040 I'm at Julius Serrano on most platforms that I'm at. 0:55:00.080 --> 0:55:03.280 I don't know how much stronger I can possibly recommend 0:55:03.520 --> 0:55:07.279 reading Whipping Girl. It had I don't know it had 0:55:07.280 --> 0:55:09.800 an enormous impact on me when I first read it, 0:55:10.640 --> 0:55:13.560 and yeah, it will it will. It will do good 0:55:13.600 --> 0:55:14.880 things for you if you read it too. 0:55:16.400 --> 0:55:20.279 Yeah, and it's all still incredibly relevant. Like I was 0:55:20.360 --> 0:55:23.840 breezing through like fifty pages just to refresh my memory 0:55:24.239 --> 0:55:26.000 this morning, and I'm like, oh wow, so many of 0:55:26.120 --> 0:55:30.560 the like intercommunity trans discourses that are constantly happening have 0:55:30.640 --> 0:55:33.279 already been addressed, like twenty years ago, so many of 0:55:33.560 --> 0:55:36.520 like I all the time I spend trying to write 0:55:36.520 --> 0:55:41.640 about like trans misogyny of like, oh I I forgot, 0:55:41.719 --> 0:55:43.600 this is already like all like written down, Like I 0:55:44.080 --> 0:55:46.880 spent so long writing about the Daily Wire movie and like, 0:55:46.960 --> 0:55:49.640 oh this is hardly all this work has already been done. 0:55:49.760 --> 0:55:50.720 I can just like stop. 0:55:52.719 --> 0:55:55.879 Oh man, Yeah, cannot cannot recommend enough. 0:55:57.160 --> 0:55:59.279 Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for coming on. 0:56:00.160 --> 0:56:03.000 Yeah, thank you all for the kind words. Yeah, thank 0:56:03.040 --> 0:56:06.080 you for having me, and uh it was great and 0:56:06.160 --> 0:56:07.279 thanks for all you do too. 0:56:08.719 --> 0:56:09.320 Oh, thank you. 0:56:23.600 --> 0:56:26.280 Welcome back to it could happen here, your favorite podcast 0:56:26.360 --> 0:56:29.239 for a daily dose of dystopia. I am once again 0:56:29.320 --> 0:56:32.080 you're a guest host, Molly Conger. Today I'm talking to 0:56:32.160 --> 0:56:33.880 a good friend of mine in one of the brilliant 0:56:33.920 --> 0:56:36.960 minds behind the melting of Charlottesville's Robert E. Lee statue, 0:56:37.680 --> 0:56:39.640 Doctor Julane Schmidt, is going to tell us a little 0:56:39.640 --> 0:56:41.760 bit about the history of the statue, from its planning 0:56:41.800 --> 0:56:45.520 and placement to its current state, melted into ingots in 0:56:45.560 --> 0:56:49.960 an undisclosed location. I'm joined today by doctor Julane Schmidt, 0:56:50.000 --> 0:56:52.480 a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, 0:56:52.600 --> 0:56:54.680 the director of the Memory Project at the University of 0:56:54.760 --> 0:56:58.319 Virginia's Karsh Institute of Democracy, and a steering committee member 0:56:58.320 --> 0:57:01.239 at the Swords in da Plowshare's project. As both a 0:57:01.280 --> 0:57:03.359 scholar and an activist, doctor Schmidt has been a leading 0:57:03.400 --> 0:57:06.440 voice in the Charlottesville community for racial justice and against 0:57:06.480 --> 0:57:09.359 the Confederate monuments that once stood here. The Swords into 0:57:09.400 --> 0:57:12.200 Plasher's project announced back in October that they had successfully 0:57:12.280 --> 0:57:15.400 dismantled and melted down the bronze statue of Robert E. 0:57:15.480 --> 0:57:17.880 Lee that once loomed over the Market Street Park and 0:57:17.920 --> 0:57:20.680 downtown Charlottesville. Thank you so much for joining me today 0:57:20.720 --> 0:57:22.840 to talk about the past, present, and future of that 0:57:22.960 --> 0:57:23.720 hunk of bronze. 0:57:25.320 --> 0:57:27.760 Thanks for having me Mollie, it's great to great to 0:57:27.800 --> 0:57:28.520 talk with you about this. 0:57:29.160 --> 0:57:31.720 I don't think i've called you Professor Schmidt since two 0:57:31.760 --> 0:57:33.400 thousand and eight, when I took one of your classes. 0:57:33.640 --> 0:57:36.320 It's been a while. It's been a while. Yeah, yeah. 0:57:36.400 --> 0:57:39.360 Now we just call each other comrades, you know, because 0:57:39.920 --> 0:57:42.160 we're out there on the streets and in city council 0:57:42.360 --> 0:57:44.040 and you know, doing the things. 0:57:45.080 --> 0:57:46.840 So before we get to the final fate of that 0:57:46.960 --> 0:57:49.680 melted bronze, I want to ground this in the history 0:57:49.720 --> 0:57:53.200 of that particular object. Right, This isn't just any Confederate monument. 0:57:53.280 --> 0:57:55.720 This is the statue that made Charlottesville household name, the 0:57:55.760 --> 0:57:58.400 statue that brought unite the right here, the statue that 0:57:58.760 --> 0:58:01.640 killed someone. It's a statue that had history in that 0:58:01.720 --> 0:58:04.360 park for a century before it came down, and before 0:58:04.360 --> 0:58:06.880 it was removed. You led some really incredible walking tours 0:58:06.920 --> 0:58:08.920 of the downtown parks to try to tell the story 0:58:08.960 --> 0:58:12.440 of the way those statues existed in those spaces for generations, 0:58:12.480 --> 0:58:14.440 why they were there, what they meant, what impact they 0:58:14.480 --> 0:58:16.960 had on the landscape and the people in the community. 0:58:17.680 --> 0:58:19.040 I think I went on about a dozen of those 0:58:19.040 --> 0:58:21.120 walking tours, and I learned something new every single time. 0:58:21.560 --> 0:58:24.120 So can you talk a little bit about the political 0:58:24.200 --> 0:58:27.240 atmosphere in nineteen twenty four when that statue first went up. 0:58:28.240 --> 0:58:30.640 Yeah, well it should, you know, just kind of to 0:58:30.760 --> 0:58:33.600 back up a little bit, like the history of Charlottesville, Virginia. 0:58:34.120 --> 0:58:37.840 At around the time of the Civil War, over half 0:58:37.920 --> 0:58:40.880 of the population of the local population was enslaved in 0:58:41.040 --> 0:58:45.240 Charlottesville and surrounding Albmarle County, and black people were actually 0:58:45.440 --> 0:58:49.160 the majority of the population of Charlottesville until about eighteen 0:58:49.360 --> 0:58:54.440 ninety and then it has been on this steady decline 0:58:54.760 --> 0:58:57.440 you know, since then. So to think about it, if 0:58:57.480 --> 0:59:00.480 you look at the history of reconstruction in charlott Pottsville, 0:59:01.480 --> 0:59:04.560 black people came out and registered to vote and got 0:59:04.600 --> 0:59:09.400 politically organized very quickly in the eighteen sixties already and 0:59:10.120 --> 0:59:14.880 were very influential in electing a black delegate from Charlottesville 0:59:14.960 --> 0:59:18.680 to go to the Constitutional Convention. This is when in 0:59:18.840 --> 0:59:22.200 order to rejoin the Union, all of the former Confederate 0:59:22.320 --> 0:59:25.160 states had to get their state constitutions up to snuff, 0:59:26.080 --> 0:59:30.840 and so Virginia, as did the other former Confederate states, 0:59:30.840 --> 0:59:35.880 you know, had a constitutional convention. In our delegate from 0:59:36.040 --> 0:59:38.080 Charlottesville was James T. S. 0:59:38.160 --> 0:59:38.480 Taylor. 0:59:38.520 --> 0:59:40.560 He was a black man from Charlottesville. He'd been in 0:59:40.600 --> 0:59:44.680 the United States Colored Troops, and he had a coalition 0:59:44.760 --> 0:59:49.600 had coalesced around him of some progressive whites or savvy whites, 0:59:49.720 --> 0:59:53.160 you know that through their lot with him and former 0:59:53.280 --> 0:59:56.960 enslaved people and went and you know, and represented us 0:59:57.040 --> 1:00:00.600 and put you know, Charlottesville in the mix for starting 1:00:00.680 --> 1:00:04.480 a new state constitution in Virginia, for finally getting public schools. 1:00:05.280 --> 1:00:07.840 You know, that's one thing that we can think, you know, 1:00:07.960 --> 1:00:11.240 all those reconstruction governments around the South, you know, forgetting 1:00:11.320 --> 1:00:13.680 us those public schools that we wouldn't have otherwise had 1:00:13.920 --> 1:00:15.000 that we didn't have before. 1:00:15.200 --> 1:00:15.360 You know. 1:00:16.040 --> 1:00:18.880 So I say all that backdrop that if you read 1:00:19.040 --> 1:00:22.840 the historical sources of the time during reconstruction and post 1:00:22.920 --> 1:00:28.800 reconstruction in Charlottesville, the white elites were quite upset with 1:00:28.960 --> 1:00:32.000 the state of affairs that had emerged after the Civil 1:00:32.040 --> 1:00:37.840 War in which formerly enslaved people were in leadership competitian 1:00:37.920 --> 1:00:42.320 political leadership, you know. And so when you look at 1:00:42.560 --> 1:00:47.240 the history of you know, then finally as as the 1:00:47.400 --> 1:00:51.600 new you know, there was a reconstruction era constitution that 1:00:52.320 --> 1:00:55.520 started all those wonderful things such as you know, public schools, 1:00:55.600 --> 1:00:58.600 you know, and voting rights for black men, you know. 1:00:59.320 --> 1:01:03.560 But then as the Neil Confederates or their Confederate sympathizers 1:01:03.560 --> 1:01:05.520 start to get the upper hand again at the end 1:01:05.560 --> 1:01:08.080 of reconstruction, and in Virginia that's you know, more or 1:01:08.160 --> 1:01:10.920 less in the in the eighteen eighties, you know, and 1:01:11.040 --> 1:01:14.360 then there's this steady imposition of Jim Crow, you know, 1:01:14.480 --> 1:01:17.320 that's going into you know, in Richmond they put in 1:01:17.440 --> 1:01:21.240 their giant General Lee statue in eighteen ninety, you know there, 1:01:21.840 --> 1:01:24.880 and then in nineteen oh two there's finally there was 1:01:24.920 --> 1:01:27.920 this final push that pushed black people out of political 1:01:27.960 --> 1:01:31.080 office in Virginia, and in nineteen oh two, a new 1:01:31.320 --> 1:01:35.040 Jim Crow state Constitution was put into effect in nineteen 1:01:35.080 --> 1:01:37.160 oh two. And so you have to when you think 1:01:37.200 --> 1:01:41.120 about all of these statues being installed, we have to 1:01:41.200 --> 1:01:45.200 see it as this it's really resentment politics, you know, 1:01:45.880 --> 1:01:49.000 that's come about. That is if you look at these 1:01:49.040 --> 1:01:54.320 speeches that are delivered at the installation ceremonies of these statues. 1:01:54.680 --> 1:01:57.160 And this is where I'm getting to our General Lee 1:01:57.240 --> 1:02:01.520 statue in Charlottesville specifically with this, you go back and 1:02:01.680 --> 1:02:04.840 look at those at the occasion for the day and 1:02:05.160 --> 1:02:10.640 these these installation ceremonies, they were a time for the 1:02:10.840 --> 1:02:15.240 neo Confederate organizations, the hosting organizations in our case, the 1:02:15.400 --> 1:02:18.600 United Daughters of the Confederacy, the United Confederate Veterans, and 1:02:18.600 --> 1:02:22.000 the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Okay, we're the hosts you 1:02:22.080 --> 1:02:23.840 know for this event. And this is a two or 1:02:23.920 --> 1:02:27.920 three day occasion. So there's like delegations coming in from 1:02:28.000 --> 1:02:30.520 all over the state, you know, and you know there's 1:02:30.560 --> 1:02:33.080 this build up you know, in the days ahead, you know, 1:02:33.240 --> 1:02:36.880 leading up to the installation. This was in May of 1:02:37.120 --> 1:02:39.400 nineteen twenty four, you know, so you see, oh, this 1:02:39.600 --> 1:02:42.480 delegation has arrived from Roanoak and now the governor is 1:02:42.560 --> 1:02:44.400 coming in and now this and now you know, and 1:02:44.480 --> 1:02:46.800 so you know, the town is just a twitter. You 1:02:46.880 --> 1:02:51.320 know that this that they are hosting the statewide reunion 1:02:52.160 --> 1:02:56.680 of the United Confederate Veterans. And there hardly are anymore 1:02:56.680 --> 1:02:58.960 at this time. They're you know, quite elderly at this point. 1:02:59.040 --> 1:03:02.200 So there, you know, there's why this you know, uh celebration, 1:03:02.320 --> 1:03:04.240 and this is also an annual meeting of the Sons 1:03:04.280 --> 1:03:07.480 of Confederate Veterans. And so the fact that little Charlottesville 1:03:07.680 --> 1:03:12.479 is hosting a statewide reunion, you know, of the state 1:03:12.520 --> 1:03:14.840 wide of all the chapters you know, of these neo 1:03:14.920 --> 1:03:17.920 Confederate veterans is a big deal. And then and then 1:03:18.520 --> 1:03:21.520 you know they're doing this, you know, and within this 1:03:21.800 --> 1:03:25.720 context is when the unveiling of this statue is occurring, 1:03:25.960 --> 1:03:29.680 you see. And so it's this, it's this whole build 1:03:29.760 --> 1:03:33.840 up of kind of lost cause nostalgia, which which is occurring. 1:03:34.280 --> 1:03:40.800 And in the speeches at the Lee statue unveiling ceremony, 1:03:41.360 --> 1:03:44.760 it's very instructive to listen to what is being said. 1:03:45.160 --> 1:03:45.360 You know. 1:03:46.560 --> 1:03:49.320 You have, of course, you know, kind of local dignitaries 1:03:49.360 --> 1:03:53.760 and statewide you know dignitaries are there. The the national 1:03:54.240 --> 1:03:57.720 Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is there. He 1:03:57.840 --> 1:04:00.400 gives a speech. He was also a clansman, you know. 1:04:01.240 --> 1:04:03.360 You know, so this says something there that you know, 1:04:03.480 --> 1:04:07.040 nineteen twenties Charlottesville, you know, elites were not averse to 1:04:07.160 --> 1:04:10.440 rubbing shoulders with a known klansman, you know, who had 1:04:10.480 --> 1:04:13.480 been invited to give a speech. You know, other invited 1:04:13.600 --> 1:04:18.000 guests one was a minister who was a graduate of 1:04:18.080 --> 1:04:20.840 the University of Virginia, and it was you know, just 1:04:20.960 --> 1:04:24.000 kind of revealing, you know what he said in his 1:04:24.840 --> 1:04:28.200 in his speech, you know, when he was talking about 1:04:28.320 --> 1:04:32.240 he said that that the days of reconstruction were worse 1:04:32.360 --> 1:04:32.840 than war. 1:04:33.720 --> 1:04:34.000 You know. 1:04:35.320 --> 1:04:40.000 You know, so this right exactly, Yeah, does beg the question, 1:04:40.600 --> 1:04:42.760 and that yeah, goes without saying, of course, that this 1:04:42.920 --> 1:04:45.720 is you know, almost exclusively a white audience and you know, 1:04:45.800 --> 1:04:48.200 the white school kids. School has been canceled for the day, 1:04:48.240 --> 1:04:51.920 the university as classes you know, canceled for the day, 1:04:51.960 --> 1:04:54.120 and you know, the businesses are closed. I mean, this 1:04:54.320 --> 1:04:57.640 is just you know, quite the community event that's going on. 1:04:57.800 --> 1:05:01.280 So yeah, so reconstruction was worse than or you know, 1:05:01.360 --> 1:05:04.640 we're celebrating today, you know, the you know, the spirit 1:05:04.720 --> 1:05:08.160 of lead, the regeneration, you know, of our values, and 1:05:08.160 --> 1:05:12.160 you know, there's just a lot of of conversation in 1:05:12.320 --> 1:05:16.080 these in these inaugurations, ceremonies, you know, for the unveiling 1:05:16.120 --> 1:05:21.000 of these statues that harken to rebirth and regeneration and 1:05:21.200 --> 1:05:24.280 and you know, and also you know kind of recalling 1:05:24.600 --> 1:05:26.520 you know, the days of old, you know, and the 1:05:26.640 --> 1:05:29.400 and the values. You know of our veterans, you know 1:05:29.480 --> 1:05:31.720 who are now you know of course in dwindling number, 1:05:31.840 --> 1:05:34.560 you know, these Confederate veterans who are there. And so 1:05:34.760 --> 1:05:38.000 this and as I said, there's been this whole build 1:05:38.080 --> 1:05:41.280 up you know, for days and days, you know, I mean, 1:05:41.320 --> 1:05:43.400 of course for the planning committee, this has been going 1:05:43.440 --> 1:05:45.880 on for weeks and months, you know, the fundraising and 1:05:46.040 --> 1:05:48.720 you know, reserving you know blocks you know at the 1:05:48.800 --> 1:05:51.000 hotels and you know, and all guest houses and all 1:05:51.040 --> 1:05:53.400 this kind of thing, you know, banquet halls, et cetera. 1:05:53.640 --> 1:05:59.120 You know. But it's it's also revealing that this installation 1:05:59.240 --> 1:06:03.800 ceremony for the statue, it is book ended with clan 1:06:03.920 --> 1:06:09.480 activity and uptick in clan activity before and after the 1:06:09.960 --> 1:06:15.520 installation ceremony. And why while we don't have well we 1:06:15.600 --> 1:06:18.040 do know, but you know one one clansman who you know, 1:06:18.440 --> 1:06:22.040 the the Commander Lee, no relation to the General Lee. 1:06:22.160 --> 1:06:25.880 But uh but the president and sons sons of the 1:06:25.920 --> 1:06:29.640 Confederate Veterans, you know. But but to just see all 1:06:29.720 --> 1:06:34.560 of this uptick in lost cause nostalgia and then these 1:06:34.800 --> 1:06:38.919 these acts of intimidation of you know, clan rallies, clan 1:06:39.080 --> 1:06:43.320 posters that were you know, put flyers around town, you know, uh, 1:06:43.440 --> 1:06:47.200 and this sort of thing. It just it they're the 1:06:47.440 --> 1:06:51.320 atmosphere of intimidation. You know that this must have been 1:06:51.640 --> 1:06:55.800 for black residents you know of the time. Uh, you know, 1:06:55.920 --> 1:06:58.520 it just it really gives you pause, you know, just 1:06:58.720 --> 1:07:03.400 just seeing how public space was commandeered, you know by 1:07:03.480 --> 1:07:06.880 these people, these Neil Confederates, you know, to kind of 1:07:08.120 --> 1:07:10.560 relive what they considered, you know, kind of the glory 1:07:10.680 --> 1:07:14.000 days you know, of the nation, you know, and the 1:07:14.120 --> 1:07:17.280 kind of values to which they want to return, you know, 1:07:17.440 --> 1:07:20.800 and this sort of thing. So yeah, so this is 1:07:21.000 --> 1:07:24.640 going on, you know in the nineteen twenties, as you know, 1:07:24.760 --> 1:07:28.000 Charlottesville is you know, locked into Jim Crow by then, 1:07:28.320 --> 1:07:31.880 you know, and we're twenty two years into that Jim 1:07:31.960 --> 1:07:35.520 Crow State Constitution. You know, this is the mail u 1:07:36.040 --> 1:07:38.120 you know, in which in which this is taking place. 1:07:38.160 --> 1:07:38.280 Now. 1:07:38.320 --> 1:07:42.240 Of course, Black people have their own institutions, you know 1:07:42.320 --> 1:07:46.760 that they've founded, namely churches, the Jefferson School, African American 1:07:47.120 --> 1:07:50.160 what's now the African American Heritage Center, but the Jefferson School, 1:07:50.240 --> 1:07:55.720 which was a school for black children, and the founding 1:07:55.760 --> 1:07:58.960 of the High School of a Black High School. So 1:07:59.120 --> 1:08:01.480 this was you know, the the black community had its 1:08:01.560 --> 1:08:06.800 own nodes of organizational strength, you know, and goings on 1:08:07.680 --> 1:08:10.760 that were happening even as you know, there were these 1:08:10.880 --> 1:08:15.120 pressures going on with the consolidation of Jim Crow. Should 1:08:15.120 --> 1:08:17.760 also mention that, you know, at this at around the 1:08:17.880 --> 1:08:22.560 same time in the spring of nineteen twenty four was 1:08:22.680 --> 1:08:27.760 the passage of the Virginia Racial Integrity Act. And this 1:08:28.240 --> 1:08:32.000 was the kind of the codification of the so called 1:08:32.080 --> 1:08:38.439 one Drop Rule, which designated anyone with a perceived ad 1:08:38.560 --> 1:08:45.120 mixture of African American or Native American ancestry to be 1:08:45.280 --> 1:08:48.560 designated as colored, you know, and kind of bifurcating the 1:08:48.640 --> 1:08:53.040 population of Virginia into two categories, white or colored. And 1:08:53.160 --> 1:08:55.960 so this is also occurring, you know, in nineteen twenty four. 1:08:56.000 --> 1:08:57.640 There's a very you know, there's very much of a 1:08:58.520 --> 1:09:03.080 legal you know, kind of strengthening, you know of in 1:09:03.240 --> 1:09:06.679 terms of the tools that are being used to separate 1:09:07.840 --> 1:09:11.439 the races quote unquote you know, and what we're seeing 1:09:11.520 --> 1:09:14.160 then in the parks, you know, in our public spaces 1:09:14.960 --> 1:09:19.800 were you know, kind of designating what we're well not 1:09:20.000 --> 1:09:21.840 public spaces, I mean, they were you know, kind of 1:09:21.880 --> 1:09:26.560 designated you know, almost shrine like you know as white spaces, 1:09:26.760 --> 1:09:31.040 you know, and that this is it's a kind of 1:09:31.160 --> 1:09:34.439 broadcasting of who's in charge, is what's going on? 1:09:35.520 --> 1:09:35.640 Right? 1:09:35.720 --> 1:09:37.960 I think you know today the sons of Confederate Veterans 1:09:38.720 --> 1:09:41.599 very much separate themselves from the clan, right, there were 1:09:41.640 --> 1:09:44.680 a heritage organization. We're not the clan, but you were 1:09:44.680 --> 1:09:46.880 talking about this sort of clan activity leading up to 1:09:47.000 --> 1:09:49.519 the unveiling of the statue, and its actually just looking 1:09:49.600 --> 1:09:52.599 back this morning at some of the archival newspapers from 1:09:52.680 --> 1:09:55.719 that week. And so when the day the statue was placed, 1:09:55.840 --> 1:09:57.560 you know, a few weeks before the unveiling, it was 1:09:57.600 --> 1:09:59.479 still covered, it was shrouded, you know, it's leading up 1:09:59.479 --> 1:10:01.599 to the big day. So that in the front page 1:10:01.600 --> 1:10:04.000 of the Daily Progress the day that the statue was 1:10:04.040 --> 1:10:06.960 put in the park, that little snippet appears in the 1:10:07.000 --> 1:10:11.200 newspaper right next to a headline about cross burning. These 1:10:11.240 --> 1:10:13.360 things are happening on at the same time, right, And 1:10:13.439 --> 1:10:16.280 there was a big clan march through town that week, 1:10:16.360 --> 1:10:18.719 and I think one of the it's easy to forget 1:10:18.800 --> 1:10:23.080 that these historical moments were experienced by people whose words 1:10:23.120 --> 1:10:25.360 that we still have, like people who were living in 1:10:25.439 --> 1:10:27.960 this moment. I think one of one moment in your 1:10:28.040 --> 1:10:29.840 historical tour that really has stuck with me all these 1:10:29.920 --> 1:10:33.479 years is an anecdote about John West, who is for 1:10:33.560 --> 1:10:36.000 the listener as a man who was born into slavery 1:10:36.120 --> 1:10:39.080 and this era was one of the largest black landowners 1:10:39.120 --> 1:10:41.960 in the area, was a successful businessman. And when the 1:10:42.040 --> 1:10:45.000 clan marched by that week, you know, they're wearing their hoods, 1:10:45.000 --> 1:10:46.759 you don't know who they are. It's you know, it's mysterious, 1:10:46.760 --> 1:10:49.960 it's intimidating. But he knew who every single clansman was 1:10:50.560 --> 1:10:53.320 because he was their barber, and he recognized their shoes. 1:10:53.400 --> 1:10:55.320 And that just feels so intimate to me, right that 1:10:55.400 --> 1:10:58.360 he's he's looking at the shoes of these men that 1:10:58.439 --> 1:10:59.920 he knows, and then tomorrow they're going to come in 1:11:00.080 --> 1:11:01.680 for a shaven a haircut and he has to say, 1:11:01.680 --> 1:11:02.960 you know, yes, sir, thank you, sir. 1:11:03.479 --> 1:11:05.920 That's right, that's right. And so if you can just imagine, like, 1:11:06.000 --> 1:11:08.560 you know, and here you know John West. You know, 1:11:08.920 --> 1:11:12.920 so here's one of the most you know, influential Black 1:11:13.040 --> 1:11:16.519 residents of Charlottesville at that time, and he has to 1:11:16.640 --> 1:11:19.000 live Yeah, in this you know that there's this this 1:11:19.200 --> 1:11:22.479 atmosphere of intimidation that you that, yeah, his clients are 1:11:22.520 --> 1:11:24.519 coming in, you know, they're coming in every ten days 1:11:24.640 --> 1:11:27.080 or fourteen days to get a get a trim, get 1:11:27.120 --> 1:11:29.120 a you know, touch up, you know here and there, 1:11:29.200 --> 1:11:34.280 and yeah, and and he knows that these you know 1:11:34.800 --> 1:11:37.800 that that these are you know, the folks who are 1:11:38.680 --> 1:11:42.760 kind of maintaining you know that this this public order, 1:11:43.160 --> 1:11:47.040 you know that is so uh you know that you know, 1:11:47.080 --> 1:11:49.080 you better not step out of line. And so just 1:11:49.600 --> 1:11:54.200 to have one's public space, you know, be demarcated, you know, 1:11:54.360 --> 1:11:59.680 in such a demonstrative way, you know, in a monumental 1:12:00.560 --> 1:12:05.920 you know literally yeah exactly is it really illustrates what's 1:12:06.000 --> 1:12:09.600 going on, you know, and even in you know, relationships 1:12:09.720 --> 1:12:12.160 like that, you know that are so like you know, 1:12:12.280 --> 1:12:16.200 intimate a barber and a client, you know, and knowing 1:12:16.520 --> 1:12:19.080 you know, what your clients are up to, you know, 1:12:19.400 --> 1:12:21.439 and how you better stay in line. 1:12:21.760 --> 1:12:21.920 You know. 1:12:22.280 --> 1:12:22.839 It's scary. 1:12:33.960 --> 1:12:36.879 That's what that statue was here right for almost a century, 1:12:37.000 --> 1:12:39.559 So skipping ahead that century right when the statue finally 1:12:39.640 --> 1:12:43.559 came down in twenty twenty one, so not too long ago, right, 1:12:43.960 --> 1:12:46.560 So the city solicited proposals for what was to be 1:12:46.640 --> 1:12:48.320 done with it. Right, A lot of cities put them 1:12:48.360 --> 1:12:52.360 into storage or moved them to battlefields or museums didn't 1:12:52.400 --> 1:12:53.720 want them. People say, well, why can't it go to 1:12:53.760 --> 1:12:55.599 a music museums didn't want it, right. 1:12:56.760 --> 1:13:01.240 Yeah, So because of my I get pulled in on 1:13:01.320 --> 1:13:07.240 a lot of different statue statue related consultations, let's put 1:13:07.280 --> 1:13:09.960 it that way. And I was on the George Rogers 1:13:10.040 --> 1:13:14.000 Clark Committee at the University of Virginia when the university 1:13:14.120 --> 1:13:16.240 was trying to decide what to do with a very 1:13:16.320 --> 1:13:19.720 hideous I called it the Genocide Trophy. It was a 1:13:19.840 --> 1:13:23.839 statue of the George Rogers Clark, the conqueror of the Northwest. 1:13:23.880 --> 1:13:27.000 It literally said that on the facade, you know. And 1:13:27.560 --> 1:13:30.920 so we were in consultation with native tribes. We were 1:13:31.120 --> 1:13:36.960 contacting the various tribal nations who suffered the onslaught of 1:13:37.080 --> 1:13:40.200 the so called Northwest Campaign. So these tribes that are 1:13:40.240 --> 1:13:44.000 in what is now Illinois and Ohio, et cetera, you know, 1:13:44.080 --> 1:13:46.600 and just asking them, you know, would you like to 1:13:46.840 --> 1:13:49.240 kind of weigh in, you know, on this, and you know, 1:13:49.439 --> 1:13:52.000 really sad, genocide is a real thing some folks who 1:13:52.000 --> 1:13:55.600 are just no longer there, you know, or you know 1:13:55.720 --> 1:13:58.720 were you know, became such a remnant, you know, as 1:13:58.760 --> 1:14:00.519 they were so decimated that you know, they kind of 1:14:00.560 --> 1:14:03.080 you know morphed into you know, other tribes others were 1:14:03.439 --> 1:14:06.680 you know, went on you know, later on to you know, 1:14:06.840 --> 1:14:10.360 to uh, Oklahoma or other places. You know, just dispersal, 1:14:10.720 --> 1:14:13.240 you know, really was you know. You know, so we're 1:14:13.479 --> 1:14:15.400 in this you know, kind of year long process trying 1:14:15.400 --> 1:14:18.519 to figure out what to do with UVa's own statue there, 1:14:18.640 --> 1:14:21.280 you know, also a gift of Paul Goodlow McIntyre, you know, 1:14:21.400 --> 1:14:23.800 the same donor who gave the least statue to the city, 1:14:24.960 --> 1:14:27.679 gave this s. George Rogers Clark statue to the university. 1:14:28.200 --> 1:14:33.240 And so in doing that committee work, we made appointments 1:14:34.040 --> 1:14:36.080 with all the big players, all the you know, and 1:14:36.120 --> 1:14:39.080 here we are, We're from the University of Virginia, you know, 1:14:39.160 --> 1:14:43.240 and we've got this you know, big big monument here, 1:14:44.120 --> 1:14:46.519 you know, the Smithsonian, the you know, and you know 1:14:46.600 --> 1:14:50.839 we talked to not about this one, but in another instance, 1:14:50.920 --> 1:14:54.760 talk to you know, the Civil War Museum's battlefields, you know, 1:14:54.840 --> 1:14:58.280 I mean, we contacted all the responsible you know, the 1:14:58.520 --> 1:15:02.439 folks who are going to curate this in a responsible way, 1:15:02.600 --> 1:15:05.599 you know, because you know that's it is a monumental 1:15:05.640 --> 1:15:08.040 work of art. You know, it has stood here for 1:15:08.120 --> 1:15:12.120 a century. It does have historical value of a sort, 1:15:12.479 --> 1:15:14.320 you know. And I mean and you know, and as 1:15:14.320 --> 1:15:17.240 someone who has you know, teaches history and research's history, 1:15:17.280 --> 1:15:21.639 that's my that's my inclination. My initial inclination is, oh, yeah, 1:15:21.720 --> 1:15:23.559 well we should preserve I mean, that's you know, kind 1:15:23.600 --> 1:15:26.760 of where I go to. But the problem is it's 1:15:26.800 --> 1:15:30.280 a very practical one. This is a material object that 1:15:30.400 --> 1:15:33.400 is taking up space, literal and figurative space in the world. 1:15:34.200 --> 1:15:35.960 It's six six thousand pounds. 1:15:36.400 --> 1:15:39.920 Yeah, yeah, the very materiality of it. It is taking 1:15:40.000 --> 1:15:43.479 up space, and you you have to figure out what 1:15:43.680 --> 1:15:47.559 space is it going to inhabit. This is a very 1:15:47.680 --> 1:15:51.559 practical question. If it's not in your park anymore, where's 1:15:51.600 --> 1:15:54.800 it going to be. We contacted all these museums, you know, 1:15:54.880 --> 1:15:57.720 and in several you know, different consultations I've been a 1:15:57.800 --> 1:15:59.880 part of where we've been trying to get rid of statues. 1:16:01.080 --> 1:16:06.519 Nobody wants them, nobody responsible wants them. And you know, 1:16:06.560 --> 1:16:08.720 and even if they did have an inclination to want 1:16:08.720 --> 1:16:11.040 to just the expense of it. You know, who wants 1:16:11.120 --> 1:16:15.519 to reinforce their floors to put a you know, century old, 1:16:15.800 --> 1:16:21.840 you know, artistically not exemplary, you know, monument in it, 1:16:22.040 --> 1:16:23.800 you know, and then care for I mean, museums have 1:16:23.960 --> 1:16:27.800 very limited budgets. They're nonprofit organizations. Why should they be 1:16:27.880 --> 1:16:33.000 expending all this energy? I love the My my colleague 1:16:33.200 --> 1:16:37.439 Aaron Thompson from John Jay College and Cuney, you know, 1:16:37.560 --> 1:16:40.080 she's an art crime professor, and she said, you know, 1:16:40.200 --> 1:16:43.599 she talked with somebody at the Smithsonian who said something 1:16:43.680 --> 1:16:48.479 to the effect that, you know, we're not America's attic 1:16:48.600 --> 1:16:52.360 for racist art. You know, that's that's not our role. 1:16:52.960 --> 1:16:55.080 It's like, you know, it kind of does throw back 1:16:55.120 --> 1:16:58.479 the responsibility to individual communities too. It's like, you know, 1:16:58.600 --> 1:17:00.320 you have a part to play in this. 1:17:00.520 --> 1:17:00.640 You know. 1:17:00.760 --> 1:17:02.880 And so anyway, yeah, so we tried to do the 1:17:02.960 --> 1:17:06.240 responsible thing. We contacted all the responsible actors out there. 1:17:06.479 --> 1:17:10.000 They don't want them, and so then the question becomes, Okay, 1:17:11.160 --> 1:17:13.599 the city also doesn't want it sitting on its back 1:17:13.720 --> 1:17:17.760 lot for forever in perpetuity. You know, they've got things going, 1:17:17.800 --> 1:17:19.560 you know, they've got equipment there, They've got things that 1:17:19.680 --> 1:17:21.080 you know, this shouldn't be sitting there. 1:17:21.840 --> 1:17:22.760 Where is it going to go? 1:17:23.000 --> 1:17:25.719 Again? This is the material object that exists in the world. 1:17:26.000 --> 1:17:28.519 It is a problem, you know, like what physical space 1:17:28.680 --> 1:17:31.599 is it going to occupy? We're just such brute practicality here, 1:17:31.600 --> 1:17:34.479 and I don't think people quite get what it means 1:17:34.720 --> 1:17:37.599 to deal with this. And the only people who want 1:17:37.600 --> 1:17:41.120 it are the very people who shouldn't have it, you know, 1:17:41.240 --> 1:17:44.920 who want to take this object that's caused us so 1:17:45.080 --> 1:17:48.760 much pain and to make a shrine out of it, 1:17:49.400 --> 1:17:54.040 you know, that would continue to attract bad actors, you know, 1:17:54.840 --> 1:17:57.120 and that it would you know. And I'm a religious 1:17:57.120 --> 1:17:59.600 studies scholar, so when I use I don't use the 1:17:59.600 --> 1:18:04.599 word ran lightly. I know what kinds of activities you know, uh, 1:18:04.720 --> 1:18:07.120 these engender you know, and the sorts of emotions that 1:18:07.240 --> 1:18:09.960 are you know evoked, you know, in the ceremonies around 1:18:10.200 --> 1:18:12.320 you know, objects that are that are held to be sacred. 1:18:12.439 --> 1:18:14.840 You know that that attract you know, kind of devotees, 1:18:14.960 --> 1:18:17.559 you know, and so you really have to think about 1:18:17.600 --> 1:18:21.120 what does it mean to be a responsible ethical actor? 1:18:22.000 --> 1:18:22.200 You know. 1:18:22.880 --> 1:18:25.599 It's like now we're we're in grown up world now, 1:18:25.680 --> 1:18:28.479 it's like, okay, exactly want you know, it's like there 1:18:28.560 --> 1:18:30.439 is a material object, where are we going to put it? 1:18:30.680 --> 1:18:32.360 It's like have an adjunct car, what do you do 1:18:32.479 --> 1:18:34.080 with it? You just let it sit in your driveway 1:18:34.120 --> 1:18:35.640 and make your neighbors mad at you. 1:18:36.040 --> 1:18:38.080 Right, And these Confederate statues are sort of the the 1:18:38.600 --> 1:18:40.800 the junk cars of the Lost Cause, right, because they're 1:18:40.840 --> 1:18:44.160 not rare, right, like, you know, especially right after Unite 1:18:44.160 --> 1:18:45.920 the Right, a bunch of cities, all of a sudden, 1:18:45.920 --> 1:18:48.160 we're like, we got to get rid of these things. 1:18:48.320 --> 1:18:51.360 And so suddenly the market is flooded with Confederate statues. 1:18:51.680 --> 1:18:52.639 Where are you going to put them? 1:18:53.080 --> 1:18:56.560 That's right at that and that is the question. And 1:18:57.360 --> 1:18:59.840 they are And I've used this this metaphor before, the 1:19:00.120 --> 1:19:05.520 the metaphor of toxic waste. You know, it's not responsible 1:19:05.880 --> 1:19:07.800 to say, oh, we want to get rid of our 1:19:08.680 --> 1:19:12.040 toxic trash here and then ship it down the road 1:19:12.080 --> 1:19:14.400 to the next town and say, okay, well we're done 1:19:14.439 --> 1:19:18.160 with that. That's not responsible to make that next town 1:19:18.320 --> 1:19:20.160 have to deal, you know, or maybe there maybe there 1:19:20.200 --> 1:19:23.479 were some people in that town that wanted it, you know, 1:19:23.640 --> 1:19:25.240 but that's not fair to the other people to have 1:19:25.320 --> 1:19:27.479 to breathe in that air and it brings that water 1:19:27.640 --> 1:19:31.280 that's that's poisoned by this. That's not that's not being responsible, 1:19:31.439 --> 1:19:33.920 you know what I mean. So it really is an 1:19:34.000 --> 1:19:42.120 ethical question, you know, what what space these toxic objects 1:19:42.160 --> 1:19:46.680 are going to inhabit. And so we were unable to 1:19:46.880 --> 1:19:51.479 find any responsible actors who would take this on. And 1:19:51.720 --> 1:19:55.439 so then it kind of it's like, well, I guess 1:19:55.479 --> 1:19:58.840 it's kind of on us. We have to you know, 1:19:59.160 --> 1:20:01.120 like the Smithsonian. It's like, we're not the attic for 1:20:01.240 --> 1:20:02.160 your racist trash. 1:20:02.360 --> 1:20:02.519 You know. 1:20:02.640 --> 1:20:04.880 It's like it's really it's it's on us. It's on 1:20:05.680 --> 1:20:09.920 communities to figure this out, you know. And if there isn't, uh, 1:20:10.160 --> 1:20:13.479 you know, some sort of organization that can responsibly curate this, 1:20:14.280 --> 1:20:16.479 you know, and care for it, then you know, we 1:20:16.600 --> 1:20:19.639 really need to think about it. And in the case 1:20:19.680 --> 1:20:23.720 of this Lee statue, of Charlottesville's Lee statue, you know, 1:20:23.760 --> 1:20:26.880 there are about I think there are about sixteen monuments 1:20:26.920 --> 1:20:29.759 of Lee, like kind of equestrian monuments of this sort, 1:20:29.880 --> 1:20:33.360 you know, in the country. I can say with confidence 1:20:33.439 --> 1:20:38.280 that all of the others are of better quality. In Charlottesville. 1:20:39.720 --> 1:20:43.080 That's it's such an important point, right because this is, 1:20:43.160 --> 1:20:46.040 you know, an important historical piece of art. And that's 1:20:46.160 --> 1:20:48.440 true of some of them. Some of them are legitimate 1:20:48.560 --> 1:20:50.080 pieces of but this one is not. 1:20:50.800 --> 1:20:50.840 No. 1:20:51.040 --> 1:20:53.000 I mean, it was like he was smuggling hams in 1:20:53.080 --> 1:20:53.679 his sleeves. 1:20:54.040 --> 1:20:57.320 Oh well yeah, so yeah, it's it's terrible. It's really 1:20:57.400 --> 1:21:00.600 a case The Lee statue from Charlottesville is really a 1:21:00.680 --> 1:21:03.680 case of too many chefs spoiled the soup. You know, 1:21:04.600 --> 1:21:11.920 they the guy, you know, they the original sculptor, Schradie, 1:21:12.640 --> 1:21:16.080 you know, was commissioned to do this, this this work, 1:21:16.520 --> 1:21:18.400 and he got behind on the commission because he was 1:21:18.439 --> 1:21:23.720 finishing another another work of his, which is generally regarded 1:21:23.800 --> 1:21:27.040 as his magnum opus, which is a monument to General Grant. 1:21:28.680 --> 1:21:32.000 I just love that. It's just sorry you got to 1:21:32.040 --> 1:21:33.920 wait and working on my best piece. 1:21:34.400 --> 1:21:36.479 Ready finished a beautiful statue of Grant. 1:21:36.520 --> 1:21:40.479 And then he died, And then he died. He died, 1:21:40.520 --> 1:21:43.240 and and supposedly it might be apocryphal. I kind of 1:21:43.360 --> 1:21:46.240 like this tale that supposedly when he's on his deathbed TRD, 1:21:46.280 --> 1:21:49.040 he's on his death bending and he's still thinking about 1:21:49.080 --> 1:21:52.640 that unfinished lead. Probably he's like, oh, mind the you know, 1:21:53.080 --> 1:21:54.519 mind the cloth, you know, keep. 1:21:54.400 --> 1:21:56.719 It damp, you know, keeps the plaster wet, right. 1:21:56.720 --> 1:21:59.280 Yes, keep the plaster. He'd made a maquette, he'd made 1:21:59.320 --> 1:22:02.880 a model, play model of the Lee statue for Charlottesville 1:22:02.960 --> 1:22:06.759 for that next commission, the unfinished commission. And he dies 1:22:07.600 --> 1:22:09.800 and so now it's like, well, you know, this is 1:22:09.880 --> 1:22:14.200 a problem, you know, for for the philanthropist and the 1:22:14.280 --> 1:22:17.000 community or the community leaders of Charlesville who wanted this 1:22:17.120 --> 1:22:20.320 Lee statue. So they find they find a ringer, you know, 1:22:21.240 --> 1:22:26.360 this young guy, you know, Leolntelly. Interesting, you know, Italian 1:22:26.920 --> 1:22:29.200 immigrant in the twenties, which is kind of interesting, you 1:22:29.200 --> 1:22:30.679 know when you think about, you know, all the hate 1:22:30.720 --> 1:22:31.360 that was being. 1:22:31.320 --> 1:22:33.800 Whipped before it towns were white, right, that was. 1:22:33.800 --> 1:22:36.000 Before Italians were white. But he was, yeah, kind of 1:22:36.200 --> 1:22:38.880 direct from Italy and from a sculpting background. So maybe 1:22:38.920 --> 1:22:41.799 they made a little exception for him, I don't know. Anyway, 1:22:41.880 --> 1:22:44.080 so this young guy, you know, Leo Lintell, he takes 1:22:44.160 --> 1:22:50.120 over and you know, he probably need a little more practice. 1:22:50.280 --> 1:22:50.640 I don't know. 1:22:50.840 --> 1:22:52.200 It just didn't turn out well. 1:22:52.280 --> 1:22:54.680 It went to the Lego tail on traveler like a 1:22:54.800 --> 1:22:55.519 chunky No. 1:22:56.000 --> 1:22:57.760 It's just yeah, there was. 1:22:57.880 --> 1:23:01.439 We had a sculptor from around here who himself works 1:23:01.479 --> 1:23:04.080 in bronze and dusk monumental work, and he kind of 1:23:04.160 --> 1:23:05.400 just kind of came and looked at it and he 1:23:05.560 --> 1:23:09.080 was just you know, just everything's out of proportion. The 1:23:09.200 --> 1:23:14.120 gauntlets on the glove are too thick, you know, the 1:23:14.320 --> 1:23:17.760 sword is too long, the tail is too fat, I 1:23:17.800 --> 1:23:22.240 mean in his head. Yeah, that Lee's head on top 1:23:22.320 --> 1:23:24.439 of his shoulders. It just looks like, you know, kind 1:23:24.479 --> 1:23:26.720 of like almost like Transformer toy or something. I mean, 1:23:26.760 --> 1:23:30.400 it's just really weird, you know, proportions. It's just it 1:23:30.640 --> 1:23:33.759 just really was not very well executed because apparently the maquette, 1:23:33.920 --> 1:23:37.080 the model that had been made, just was completely destroyed. 1:23:37.120 --> 1:23:40.040 The model, the original model by Schrady, was completely turned 1:23:40.080 --> 1:23:43.680 to dust, and so Lintelly, the successor sculptor, had to 1:23:43.800 --> 1:23:47.320 work from the drawings that that that remained, you know, 1:23:48.160 --> 1:23:50.760 and you know, it just didn't didn't really go very well. 1:23:51.000 --> 1:23:56.200 And here's the thing that even the Boosters at the time, 1:23:57.200 --> 1:23:59.320 that is, you know, the folks that were planning the 1:23:59.479 --> 1:24:01.400 in for the installation of the leaf statue in the 1:24:01.479 --> 1:24:06.840 nineteen twenties themselves did not think it was very well executed. 1:24:07.160 --> 1:24:11.960 We have diary entries from the Master of Ceremonies of 1:24:12.120 --> 1:24:16.280 the installation ceremony, RTW Duke's and he says, he writes 1:24:16.320 --> 1:24:19.519 in it's like day or two before the installation, he says, 1:24:20.000 --> 1:24:23.400 went on a walk, you know tonight, you know, went 1:24:23.479 --> 1:24:25.599 by the park, you know, saw the Lea statue. 1:24:25.680 --> 1:24:27.920 I do not like it me either. 1:24:28.320 --> 1:24:33.160 This is the guy who's please damn see this unveiling 1:24:33.280 --> 1:24:35.599 ceremony in you know, the next day or two. 1:24:36.120 --> 1:24:36.800 How embarrassing. 1:24:37.439 --> 1:24:40.599 Yeah, and there's op eds even, you know. Also they're 1:24:40.600 --> 1:24:44.360 saying like wow, you know, that just doesn't look good 1:24:44.439 --> 1:24:48.200 at all, you know. So and these are the these 1:24:48.240 --> 1:24:50.840 are the support these are the Neo Confederates, the one 1:24:50.920 --> 1:24:54.160 it there. And they've they've noticed that too many cooks 1:24:54.200 --> 1:24:58.200 spoiled the soup, you know. And then apparently the murmurs 1:24:58.880 --> 1:25:03.880 were sufficient that one of the speakers at the installation ceremony, 1:25:04.640 --> 1:25:07.320 I can harken back to that, you know, at the 1:25:07.400 --> 1:25:11.439 Lee installation ceremony, you know, I guess felt compelled to 1:25:11.560 --> 1:25:15.479 address the complaints that were apparently circulating. And he said, 1:25:16.320 --> 1:25:19.160 you know, I'm talking about the proportionality problem that I 1:25:19.280 --> 1:25:21.840 mentioned before, that just so many it's just very disjointed, 1:25:21.920 --> 1:25:24.280 you know, so many parts of the of the monument 1:25:24.320 --> 1:25:26.479 are out of proportion to other parts. And so this 1:25:26.600 --> 1:25:29.880 speaker at the installation ceremony said, you know, there are 1:25:29.960 --> 1:25:34.960 those who say that the pedestal you know, upon which 1:25:35.960 --> 1:25:40.000 the Lee statue is, you know, is set, is too small, 1:25:41.000 --> 1:25:45.160 But I say the world itself is too small a 1:25:45.280 --> 1:25:46.920 pedestal for general Lee. 1:25:49.560 --> 1:25:53.679 Just like oh yeah, good say it's it's yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:25:54.400 --> 1:25:56.200 I mean the whole thing, the plinth was too small, 1:25:56.479 --> 1:25:58.680 the statue was too large for that tiny park. It 1:25:58.840 --> 1:26:00.800 just it was never a good spot for him. 1:26:01.120 --> 1:26:03.280 It was never a good spot. So anyway, all that 1:26:03.479 --> 1:26:05.639 is to say, it's a very it's a very poor 1:26:05.800 --> 1:26:08.600 work of art, just just an aesthetic. 1:26:09.280 --> 1:26:09.519 I mean. 1:26:09.680 --> 1:26:11.960 And I'm not one that wants to remove, you know, 1:26:12.040 --> 1:26:14.400 kind of any moral considerations from aesthetic. There are some 1:26:14.439 --> 1:26:16.640 people philosophers who want to parse that out and this 1:26:16.720 --> 1:26:19.360 sort of thing. But even if you believe you could 1:26:19.400 --> 1:26:22.600 do that, which I do not, you know, it's just 1:26:22.800 --> 1:26:26.919 really a not It's like having a high school art project. 1:26:28.040 --> 1:26:30.639 A C I give it a c it's a high 1:26:30.640 --> 1:26:32.040 school art project. 1:26:31.760 --> 1:26:35.080 That it's not worth saving, right, No, Like even if 1:26:35.120 --> 1:26:37.320 it had not been this sort of lightning rod in 1:26:37.360 --> 1:26:39.760 our community, right that, even if this were a you know, 1:26:40.080 --> 1:26:42.880 a beautiful piece of art that was worth saving, I 1:26:42.920 --> 1:26:45.280 don't know, I don't know. There's there's two separate concerns, right, Like, 1:26:45.360 --> 1:26:48.720 it's not beautiful enough to put into a museum regardless, 1:26:49.479 --> 1:26:53.880 but then also preserving this object in any capacity just 1:26:55.560 --> 1:26:57.880 allows it to sort of continue to be this lightning rod, 1:26:58.000 --> 1:27:00.880 like you know, for it's sort of asking about, well, 1:27:00.920 --> 1:27:04.000 what's the problem with recontextualization. Why can't you just put 1:27:04.080 --> 1:27:06.560 it somewhere else? And I think that's sort of a 1:27:06.600 --> 1:27:09.679 broader conversation about these statues in general. But for our statue, 1:27:09.800 --> 1:27:12.400 for that Robert E. Lee statue, right that it had 1:27:12.479 --> 1:27:16.879 become sort of a pilgrimage site for vigilanti violence. 1:27:17.240 --> 1:27:20.080 Oh yeah, And I don't know that like just out 1:27:20.680 --> 1:27:24.639 for the listeners in radio land, just for folks out 1:27:24.680 --> 1:27:29.280 there listening that even after the twenty seventeen Unite the 1:27:29.360 --> 1:27:33.000 Right rally, this statue stood for another four years in 1:27:33.080 --> 1:27:37.799 our part while we had to wrestle through legal issues 1:27:37.960 --> 1:27:44.120 legislative and judicial entanglements that prevented Charlottesville from removing that 1:27:44.240 --> 1:27:47.639 statue even after the Unite the Right rally, and during 1:27:47.720 --> 1:27:51.439 that time, that four year interim. It's crazy to think 1:27:51.439 --> 1:27:54.800 about it, Huh. For ye that for four years after 1:27:54.920 --> 1:27:56.240 Unite the Riot, it was still there. 1:27:56.439 --> 1:27:58.840 Like this statue made everyone else realize they needed to 1:27:58.840 --> 1:28:01.479 get rid of theirs. But because of state law and 1:28:01.520 --> 1:28:03.880 these lawsuits, we were still stuck with ours. 1:28:04.280 --> 1:28:06.640 Charlottesville was still stuck with it. And there were and 1:28:06.960 --> 1:28:12.120 these you know, different groups, some of the same constituencies 1:28:12.200 --> 1:28:15.600 that had attended Unite the Right continued to come and 1:28:15.720 --> 1:28:20.400 make their pilgrimages to the Lee statue and to antagonize 1:28:20.439 --> 1:28:24.800 community members by putting up their propaganda near the statues 1:28:25.680 --> 1:28:29.280 and even uh you know, going to the fourth you know, 1:28:29.360 --> 1:28:31.559 the the crash site on Fourth Street where a neo 1:28:31.680 --> 1:28:35.080 Nazi drove his car you know, into a crowd of 1:28:35.280 --> 1:28:39.880 of Charlottesville counter protesters and killed community member Heather Hire. 1:28:40.800 --> 1:28:44.240 These these uh fascists you know, who would make their 1:28:44.280 --> 1:28:48.400 pilgrimage to Charlottesville, would make sure and still do upon occasion, 1:28:48.960 --> 1:28:51.599 uh go to Fourth Street and put up their propaganda there. 1:28:51.680 --> 1:28:55.040 As well as if to kind of further antagonize the 1:28:55.120 --> 1:28:59.000 community out of sight of our trauma, you know, And 1:28:59.160 --> 1:29:02.800 so it was very clear that this statue would just 1:29:02.880 --> 1:29:04.760 wherever it would be, it would continue to be a 1:29:04.840 --> 1:29:07.720 beacon for these people. And so really it was just 1:29:07.840 --> 1:29:12.280 kind of a question of responsibility. Knowing this, knowing that 1:29:12.400 --> 1:29:18.960 no responsible historical or artistic institution has the capacity or 1:29:19.080 --> 1:29:21.479 desire to take it in, what does one do with it? 1:29:21.880 --> 1:29:25.040 And that it's not an exemplary piece of art. There 1:29:25.080 --> 1:29:28.559 are fifteen other monuments that are of better quality of lee. 1:29:28.640 --> 1:29:31.400 We're not going to forget him, you know, if this 1:29:31.560 --> 1:29:35.479 particular specimen goes missing, and the way we see it, 1:29:36.000 --> 1:29:38.400 we're doing the art world a favor because as I've said, 1:29:38.439 --> 1:29:41.760 it was really you know, not a very good, well 1:29:41.840 --> 1:29:45.440 executed piece of art. So, you know, with in considering 1:29:45.560 --> 1:29:49.960 all of that, you know, in seeing in prior removals, 1:29:51.280 --> 1:29:55.799 for instance, the Johnny reb the Courthouse Confederate soldier statue 1:29:55.920 --> 1:29:57.800 was removed, and there was kind of no plan in 1:29:57.920 --> 1:30:00.840 place about where it would go, and so it ended up, 1:30:01.120 --> 1:30:05.000 you know, getting sent to a battlefield that is maintained 1:30:05.040 --> 1:30:10.080 by a group of Confederate leading folks that seemed to 1:30:10.200 --> 1:30:13.280 favor kind of lost cause interpretations of the war. So 1:30:13.360 --> 1:30:17.280 we'd seen that happen already the year before in twenty twenty, 1:30:17.720 --> 1:30:20.320 that when there isn't a plan, it's one thing to 1:30:20.400 --> 1:30:22.080 remove it, but then where does it go? Again, this 1:30:22.160 --> 1:30:25.439 is a physical object that exists in space, in physical space, 1:30:25.880 --> 1:30:27.600 where is this material object going to go? If you 1:30:27.600 --> 1:30:32.360 don't have a plan, then bad things can happen. 1:30:32.520 --> 1:30:35.400 The least resistance the past, the least resistance is just 1:30:35.800 --> 1:30:38.160 if someone says I will pay to move this, and 1:30:38.240 --> 1:30:40.120 the city is paying to store it, then that's an 1:30:40.120 --> 1:30:41.559 easy answer and you can't let that. 1:30:41.600 --> 1:30:44.680 Many take it, right, And so that that went. So 1:30:45.240 --> 1:30:49.519 when the County Aldmarle County removed the Johnny reb statue, 1:30:49.600 --> 1:30:52.960 the Confederate soldier statue from in front of the courthouse, 1:30:53.720 --> 1:30:57.479 and I think that was September of twenty twenty, and 1:30:57.640 --> 1:31:00.240 we saw how quickly that got sent to this battle 1:31:00.280 --> 1:31:02.680 field that is, you know, maintained by these you know, 1:31:02.800 --> 1:31:07.960 kind of lost cause type folks. That's when Andrea Douglas 1:31:08.080 --> 1:31:10.320 and I and Andrea Douglas is the director of the 1:31:10.479 --> 1:31:15.800 Jefferson School African American Heritage Center here in Charlottesville. We said, 1:31:16.960 --> 1:31:19.280 you know, we still do not have the legal authority 1:31:19.439 --> 1:31:27.080 to remove Charlottesville's Lee statue, but we anticipated that that perhaps, 1:31:27.320 --> 1:31:29.240 you know, in the in the coming year, we might 1:31:29.400 --> 1:31:33.120 I said, we need to start making plans now about 1:31:33.200 --> 1:31:36.880 what can have, what where the statue should go after 1:31:37.000 --> 1:31:42.000 its removal, because otherwise, the same thing that happened to 1:31:42.080 --> 1:31:44.800 this Johnny reb to this Confederate Soldier statue just kind 1:31:44.840 --> 1:31:47.040 of getting sent down the road, you know, to whatever 1:31:47.360 --> 1:31:50.719 entity organization that wants it, the same thing's going to happen. 1:31:50.760 --> 1:31:53.960 And we need to have a plan in place in 1:31:54.160 --> 1:31:57.160 order to kind of capture that so that so that 1:31:57.360 --> 1:32:00.679 it doesn't just kind of continue to circulate to do harm. 1:32:01.120 --> 1:32:03.680 So that was our motivation. So we kind of, you know, 1:32:03.800 --> 1:32:07.400 in September of twenty twenty, that's when we really you know, 1:32:07.479 --> 1:32:10.240 put the pedal to the metal on starting the planning 1:32:10.840 --> 1:32:13.200 of this, you know, and we and mind you, we 1:32:13.320 --> 1:32:15.280 did not even get permission until I think it was 1:32:15.600 --> 1:32:18.360 April the first of twenty twenty one, when finally the 1:32:18.479 --> 1:32:21.560 Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of the City of 1:32:21.680 --> 1:32:26.040 Charlottesville in our efforts to remove the lea statue. 1:32:26.360 --> 1:32:26.479 You know. 1:32:26.600 --> 1:32:29.280 So this was you know, six seven months before we 1:32:29.400 --> 1:32:31.439 even knew if we if we could do this, but 1:32:31.520 --> 1:32:34.759 we said, let's start making plans. And so we started 1:32:34.800 --> 1:32:41.240 having these kinds of conversations you know, with battlefields, with museums, 1:32:41.680 --> 1:32:45.880 with foundries, you know, just you know, just learning, you know, 1:32:46.000 --> 1:32:47.840 kind of the nuts and bolts, you know, what are 1:32:47.920 --> 1:32:52.320 the possibilities here? And it turns out it's very complicated. 1:33:05.880 --> 1:33:07.760 Right, So, I know there'd been sort of jokes around 1:33:07.760 --> 1:33:09.160 that it was going back over some of the public 1:33:09.240 --> 1:33:11.360 discourse over the years that we've been sort of joking 1:33:11.439 --> 1:33:13.200 as a community for years like why don't we just 1:33:13.360 --> 1:33:15.160 melt it? Why don't we just melt it? 1:33:15.439 --> 1:33:15.679 Yeah? 1:33:15.800 --> 1:33:20.760 But when did that become a real idea? Like when 1:33:20.800 --> 1:33:22.559 did it? When did that sort of coalesce into something 1:33:22.600 --> 1:33:23.439 that felt possible? 1:33:24.360 --> 1:33:26.960 I think, you know, in September twenty twenty, I think 1:33:27.040 --> 1:33:29.760 when the Johnny reb statue was removed and it went on, 1:33:30.000 --> 1:33:33.400 you know to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefield Foundation, you know, 1:33:33.439 --> 1:33:36.880 and they have this horrible plaque that they're putting up 1:33:36.920 --> 1:33:40.880 that talks about how these men died for Virginia, you know, 1:33:40.960 --> 1:33:43.160 and It's like they died for thirty eight percent of 1:33:43.280 --> 1:33:45.720 Virginian's were enslaved at that time, So how are you 1:33:45.800 --> 1:33:48.519 saying that they died for Virginia. Also, this is from 1:33:48.560 --> 1:33:51.160 Alba Marle County. The majority of people here were enslaved. 1:33:51.200 --> 1:33:54.439 So did how did the people supposedly represented by this 1:33:54.520 --> 1:33:57.160 statue die for Virginia fight for Virginia? 1:33:57.200 --> 1:33:57.600 You know what I mean? 1:33:57.680 --> 1:34:00.439 So we just like that was so disturbing, you know, 1:34:00.560 --> 1:34:03.639 in September of twenty twenty, when that happened, that's that's 1:34:03.720 --> 1:34:07.680 really when I just really started working in Earnest, you know, 1:34:08.160 --> 1:34:09.200 calling foundries. 1:34:09.360 --> 1:34:10.639 So the idea was always melting. 1:34:11.600 --> 1:34:14.360 I mean, it wasn't until then because see this is funny. 1:34:14.560 --> 1:34:18.320 When this whole controversy started in twenty sixteen, when Ziona 1:34:18.360 --> 1:34:22.200 Bryant brought up her petition, you know, to consider removing 1:34:22.360 --> 1:34:26.040 these statues. The position of the activist then was just 1:34:26.400 --> 1:34:29.120 move the statue. Go back and look right at the 1:34:29.320 --> 1:34:32.640 signs and at the T shirts and it says hashtag 1:34:33.040 --> 1:34:36.720 move the statue. We just wanted it move. Just take 1:34:36.800 --> 1:34:39.240 it from the Central Park and put it out in 1:34:39.360 --> 1:34:42.719 McIntyre Park where there's more space. Don't have it downtown. 1:34:42.800 --> 1:34:45.240 I mean that was kind of like that was the edgy, 1:34:48.479 --> 1:34:50.800 you know, and then they should have taken the opportunity 1:34:50.840 --> 1:34:51.280 back then. 1:34:51.560 --> 1:34:55.400 See right, exactly that was the opening bid, and you 1:34:55.600 --> 1:34:56.280 should have took it. 1:34:56.479 --> 1:34:56.640 You know. 1:34:57.200 --> 1:34:59.759 Just these that offers not on the table anymore. 1:35:00.200 --> 1:35:01.479 Yeah, exactly that that. 1:35:01.960 --> 1:35:04.679 That would have been good. It would be in Martin 1:35:04.760 --> 1:35:08.519 mctre part on the outskirts of town. So and so, 1:35:08.760 --> 1:35:11.960 you know, when the when you know, the city appointed 1:35:12.000 --> 1:35:14.639 this Blue Ribbon Commission on Race Memorials in Public Spaces 1:35:14.720 --> 1:35:16.960 to have a series of public meetings to hear from 1:35:17.560 --> 1:35:20.400 community members what they wanted to have happened with the statues. 1:35:20.439 --> 1:35:23.320 Should they be removed, should you know, what should happen? 1:35:23.760 --> 1:35:25.760 And you know, and this Blue Ribbon Commission, you know, 1:35:25.840 --> 1:35:29.240 hands their final report to city council, you know, and 1:35:29.360 --> 1:35:32.920 then city council takes a vote, you know, Charlottesville City 1:35:32.960 --> 1:35:38.679 Council in February of twenty seventeen, and surprising many people, 1:35:38.960 --> 1:35:40.439 not some of us who were in the know, but 1:35:41.120 --> 1:35:44.040 one of the council members said, yes, I would like 1:35:44.200 --> 1:35:48.519 to propose a resolution to remove the lead, not just 1:35:48.640 --> 1:35:52.080 move it, not just recontextualize it, because that's you know, 1:35:52.120 --> 1:35:54.080 if you go back and read that report, it's actually 1:35:54.200 --> 1:35:57.160 fairly there's a couple of different suggests like well you 1:35:57.240 --> 1:36:00.560 could move it, or you could just do this, and 1:36:00.920 --> 1:36:04.360 you know, and city council woman, you know, Christian Zaka, said, 1:36:05.040 --> 1:36:07.640 I would you know, make a motion to have it 1:36:07.760 --> 1:36:11.720 removed completely, you know. So it's like, whoa, Okay, we're 1:36:11.800 --> 1:36:13.960 you know, we're making steps, you know. So it was 1:36:14.120 --> 1:36:16.120 it was about, you know, it was getting from move 1:36:16.600 --> 1:36:20.400 from move the statue to remove the statue, as in 1:36:21.280 --> 1:36:24.880 take it away, you know, And then it really wasn't 1:36:24.960 --> 1:36:28.680 until after all the strife, you know. I mean, I 1:36:28.920 --> 1:36:31.200 think there were some people all along who's you know, 1:36:31.280 --> 1:36:32.920 would say tongue and she go, oh, we should just 1:36:32.960 --> 1:36:35.080 melt it down, you know, or you know, she'd you know, 1:36:35.439 --> 1:36:37.439 but but the thought it was just so you know, 1:36:37.520 --> 1:36:40.519 talk about there's much talk of overton windows these days. 1:36:40.360 --> 1:36:43.200 You know, but they're just they're just. 1:36:44.840 --> 1:36:46.560 When that was being said, it was always in a 1:36:46.680 --> 1:36:49.080 kind of jocular manner like oh, of course that could 1:36:49.200 --> 1:36:51.600 never be but or we should melt it down. It 1:36:51.680 --> 1:36:56.320 was this kind of offhand right, It wasn't serious because 1:36:56.439 --> 1:36:59.880 how could that ever be, right, I mean that right, 1:37:00.120 --> 1:37:02.599 Really that was behind. But what it takes is somebody 1:37:02.760 --> 1:37:06.120 taking that seriously and like going through the practical steps 1:37:06.160 --> 1:37:07.960 of what would that look like? And so that's what 1:37:08.040 --> 1:37:11.000 I started doing in September twenty twenty. It's like, I 1:37:11.120 --> 1:37:13.599 keep hearing people say that they want it melted down. 1:37:13.720 --> 1:37:14.560 What would that look like? 1:37:15.240 --> 1:37:16.880 What do you like physically do that? 1:37:17.360 --> 1:37:20.200 How would this happen? I'm a humanities person. This was 1:37:20.320 --> 1:37:24.480 breaking my brain learning about alloys and you know, compositions. 1:37:24.560 --> 1:37:26.960 Here it becomes an engineering problem. 1:37:27.640 --> 1:37:30.320 It really did. Yeah, and I did. I consulted with 1:37:30.840 --> 1:37:36.120 you know, metallurgist engineers, you know, folks at various foundries 1:37:36.520 --> 1:37:39.360 you know, to to you know, consulting and say, well, 1:37:39.400 --> 1:37:40.920 you have to do this, you have to you know, 1:37:41.040 --> 1:37:43.720 consider that. I mean so yeah, it was really in 1:37:43.840 --> 1:37:47.080 the fall of twenty twenty when you know, kind of 1:37:47.200 --> 1:37:51.440 in Earnest started having conversations, you know, with with foundrymen 1:37:52.200 --> 1:37:58.360 and with engineers, with folks that work in bronze casting, 1:37:58.880 --> 1:38:01.120 you know. But most of the time people didn't want 1:38:01.160 --> 1:38:05.200 to talk to us. Right when they found out, oh 1:38:05.280 --> 1:38:07.040 you want to do something with this with the staff, 1:38:07.080 --> 1:38:10.559 Oh no, they just you know, they were they didn't 1:38:10.560 --> 1:38:12.840 want to be involved in any controversy, or we would 1:38:12.880 --> 1:38:15.360 get someone who was on board with it, Yes, we're 1:38:15.400 --> 1:38:18.040 going to do it. And then for instance, you know, 1:38:18.280 --> 1:38:21.439 the company got sold and the new owners were like 1:38:21.560 --> 1:38:25.040 want nothing to do with it, you know, or they 1:38:25.080 --> 1:38:27.880 won't call us back anymore, or no, or you know, 1:38:28.200 --> 1:38:30.720 I mean just things just kept coming up. So it 1:38:30.840 --> 1:38:34.800 was hard to find anyone who would just engage in 1:38:34.920 --> 1:38:37.760 a serious way about the questions. And then even when 1:38:37.840 --> 1:38:41.360 you could, it was kind of like, you know, you'd 1:38:41.400 --> 1:38:43.479 get somebody for a little bit, and then it was like, 1:38:43.560 --> 1:38:46.040 you know, like the fisher, It's like the fish would 1:38:46.040 --> 1:38:47.600 swim away, you know, kind of I don't know it 1:38:47.720 --> 1:38:49.880 just you know, So it was it was a lot 1:38:49.960 --> 1:38:52.640 of different conversations with a lot of different people, you know, 1:38:53.280 --> 1:38:55.280 along the way to figure out like what are the 1:38:55.520 --> 1:38:57.920 you know, literal and figurative nuts and bolts of doing this. 1:38:58.120 --> 1:39:02.240 You know, I learned a lot, you know about standard 1:39:02.320 --> 1:39:05.720 width of trailers eight and a half feet did you 1:39:05.840 --> 1:39:06.000 know that? 1:39:06.520 --> 1:39:06.720 Yeah? 1:39:07.200 --> 1:39:12.880 Eight half feet yep, right right, you know, and you 1:39:12.960 --> 1:39:15.120 know fifty three feet long, and you know, and you know, 1:39:15.200 --> 1:39:17.679 kind of what kind of what's the hauling capacity, what's 1:39:17.720 --> 1:39:20.400 the payload? You know, how do you balance the load? 1:39:20.560 --> 1:39:23.120 You know, what is duneage? I mean you're just like 1:39:23.600 --> 1:39:26.240 all these things, you know that that just the very 1:39:27.160 --> 1:39:31.439 practical steps that one has to take to melt a statue. 1:39:32.400 --> 1:39:34.320 And so it seems like, you know, the conclusion that 1:39:34.360 --> 1:39:39.439 you reached was this object can't keep existing because the 1:39:39.560 --> 1:39:42.280 fact that it does exist will always be a problem. 1:39:42.720 --> 1:39:44.560 So that this is the decision was made that it 1:39:44.600 --> 1:39:46.760 needed to be destroyed. But what was sort of the 1:39:47.160 --> 1:39:51.400 process of thinking through what do we do with it now? 1:39:51.600 --> 1:39:51.720 Right? 1:39:51.800 --> 1:39:54.519 Like, what is this sort of the vision behind not 1:39:54.760 --> 1:39:57.120 just yeah, you know, taking the statue down and putting 1:39:57.200 --> 1:39:59.559 up a different piece of public art, but a different 1:39:59.560 --> 1:40:02.360 piece of p look art that is physically repurposed. Right 1:40:02.439 --> 1:40:06.040 that you've you've remediated this material, right right? 1:40:06.560 --> 1:40:10.880 Yeah, well we we prefer the word transformed, you know, 1:40:11.520 --> 1:40:14.560 to to destroyed or or I mean it is it is, 1:40:14.680 --> 1:40:17.160 you know, definitely, it is you know kind of morphing 1:40:17.280 --> 1:40:20.880 the material is taking the materials, you know, these raw 1:40:20.960 --> 1:40:27.920 materials and you know, transforming them into kind of usable 1:40:28.120 --> 1:40:31.320 you know, kind of ingots, brick sized, you know, pieces 1:40:31.520 --> 1:40:35.200 of bronze. So that they can be made into something new. 1:40:35.640 --> 1:40:39.439 It's not that we hate art. We want art, right. 1:40:39.640 --> 1:40:42.519 You know doctor Douglas's her background is in art, right. 1:40:42.880 --> 1:40:45.400 Yes, doctor Douglas is an art historian, exact. I mean, 1:40:45.600 --> 1:40:48.560 we are the two most unlikely people to be in 1:40:48.640 --> 1:40:50.799 charge of such a project. I mean, I'm a religious 1:40:50.800 --> 1:40:53.679 study scholar. It's like I've spent years of my life, 1:40:53.840 --> 1:40:58.960 you know, studying you know, how people, you know, make 1:40:59.080 --> 1:41:03.720 make sacred values, and specifically how they gather around material 1:41:03.840 --> 1:41:04.719 objects that they regard. 1:41:05.120 --> 1:41:07.160 I don't think that's unlikely at all, right, that this 1:41:07.439 --> 1:41:12.080 was an object of veneration for a very harmful cause. 1:41:12.160 --> 1:41:16.800 I mean I seventeen years, you know, researching a book 1:41:16.960 --> 1:41:22.439 about a very beloved four hundred year old effigy of 1:41:22.560 --> 1:41:25.360 the Virgin Mary in Cuba. You can see my book 1:41:25.680 --> 1:41:27.920 up here. Well, there's a Cuban fly. This right here 1:41:28.040 --> 1:41:28.840 is my book. 1:41:29.640 --> 1:41:30.479 I'm going over too far. 1:41:30.560 --> 1:41:31.880 Yeah, I see the Virgin Mary back there. 1:41:32.640 --> 1:41:35.240 Yeah. Anyway, so I yeah, so that's that's my book 1:41:35.600 --> 1:41:39.439 up here. Yeah, right here, this is my book, Kachita's Streets. 1:41:40.240 --> 1:41:43.320 I mean, if somebody, oh, and you know, and this 1:41:43.400 --> 1:41:46.680 has happened before. There have been folks, you know iconoclass. 1:41:46.720 --> 1:41:50.880 If somebody went and destroyed her image there in that 1:41:51.000 --> 1:41:55.920 shrine in Cuba, I would be obsensed. I would just 1:41:57.120 --> 1:41:59.280 I would be beside myself. I mean it'd be like 1:41:59.360 --> 1:42:04.160 somebody killed you know, a family member. I mean, be 1:42:04.320 --> 1:42:06.160 on the next plane to get you know, you have 1:42:06.240 --> 1:42:08.280 to console people. I mean a four hundred year old 1:42:08.280 --> 1:42:11.280 you know, it would just be terrible. You know, it 1:42:11.320 --> 1:42:13.960 doesn't have all the hate wrapped into it that these 1:42:14.200 --> 1:42:16.280 you know, statues do in this sort of thing. So 1:42:16.439 --> 1:42:18.720 what I'm saying is I understand that people have very 1:42:18.760 --> 1:42:22.080 tender feelings toward these material objects that they have had 1:42:22.160 --> 1:42:26.800 experiences around them that have bound them together. Religiare you 1:42:26.880 --> 1:42:30.559 know the binding that's the original you know root Latin 1:42:30.720 --> 1:42:33.000 root of religion. You know, it is to bind, you know. 1:42:33.120 --> 1:42:37.840 I get that. And so yeah, I'm not a reflexive iconoclast. 1:42:38.160 --> 1:42:42.080 You know, I'm a Catholic. I'm a you know, I'm 1:42:42.280 --> 1:42:47.639 also a you know, participate in these African inspired religious 1:42:47.680 --> 1:42:49.479 practices and stuff that you know that put a lot 1:42:49.520 --> 1:42:53.960 of you know, emphasis upon you know, sacred material objects. 1:42:53.960 --> 1:42:55.519 So I am kind of I mean, it is kind 1:42:55.520 --> 1:42:57.680 of weird that me I would be involved in this, 1:42:57.760 --> 1:43:02.080 and that, you know, and doctor Douglas, you know, but 1:43:02.240 --> 1:43:06.320 it's precisely because we know the power of these things, 1:43:06.439 --> 1:43:10.680 and the we're eyewitnesses to what happened here. You know 1:43:10.760 --> 1:43:12.519 that we know the power of it, and so how 1:43:12.560 --> 1:43:15.320 to be responsible for it, and so to take something 1:43:15.439 --> 1:43:18.400 like that that was so harmful and to be able 1:43:18.439 --> 1:43:22.280 to use its materials to transform them and to make 1:43:22.360 --> 1:43:26.960 something that's meaningful and beautiful and that expresses our community's 1:43:27.080 --> 1:43:30.280 values and that includes people rather than kind of sets 1:43:31.040 --> 1:43:34.280 people apart, you know, or kind of you know, symbolizing 1:43:34.400 --> 1:43:39.400 moments in our history where you know, over half the 1:43:39.479 --> 1:43:43.720 local population was completely debased, you know. To be able 1:43:43.800 --> 1:43:47.360 to take the material that that was part of that 1:43:47.640 --> 1:43:51.400 and transform it into something else, it's just it's just 1:43:51.439 --> 1:43:54.439 seemed like it just has so much potential, you know. 1:43:54.520 --> 1:43:56.240 And and and then the name of the project is 1:43:56.320 --> 1:43:59.840 Swords into Plowshares, which comes from a verse from the 1:44:00.040 --> 1:44:05.200 off at Isaiah that they shall turn their swords into plowshares, 1:44:05.240 --> 1:44:09.080 they shall turn their their spears into pruning hooks. So 1:44:09.360 --> 1:44:14.040 we'll take these implements of destruction and of violence, and 1:44:14.240 --> 1:44:21.320 we will transform them into instruments of of to cultivate 1:44:22.160 --> 1:44:27.160 you know, sustenance you know, uh, you know, you know, 1:44:27.840 --> 1:44:30.040 nutrients you know, for a community. I mean it just 1:44:30.120 --> 1:44:32.680 you know, to just to just really transform it, you know, 1:44:32.760 --> 1:44:36.240 from from something so ugly you know, into something beautiful, 1:44:36.760 --> 1:44:38.559 you know. And we just thought, you know, let's let's 1:44:38.640 --> 1:44:41.240 take the chance. Let's try and do this. Let's do 1:44:41.360 --> 1:44:43.800 something that's never been done before, because none of these 1:44:44.240 --> 1:44:46.920 statues have ever been like I don't think ever completely 1:44:47.200 --> 1:44:51.000 the Confederate ones anyway, have ever been completely destroyed, you know, 1:44:51.280 --> 1:44:53.559 like this. Most of them are just in storage somewhere. 1:44:54.600 --> 1:44:57.479 And we said, let's let's take this chance to transform. 1:44:57.600 --> 1:44:59.599 Let's be responsible first of all, and not send our 1:44:59.680 --> 1:45:02.840 talks waist down the road to another community, and let's 1:45:02.880 --> 1:45:06.240 try to do something transformative, you know, for our community. 1:45:06.360 --> 1:45:09.800 And maybe this can also move the needle, you know, 1:45:09.920 --> 1:45:14.360 in a national and international conversation about art and the 1:45:14.479 --> 1:45:19.479 reparative values you know, potential reparative values of art you know, 1:45:20.200 --> 1:45:24.680 and community building, you know, and so in our you know, 1:45:24.760 --> 1:45:28.080 we're the swords into Plowsher's project. We're hoping to put 1:45:28.160 --> 1:45:32.720 out a request for proposals, you know, to artists this 1:45:32.920 --> 1:45:37.000 year in twenty twenty four, which is the one hundredth 1:45:37.000 --> 1:45:40.919 anniversary of when the Least statue was installed. You know, ideally, 1:45:41.080 --> 1:45:43.600 you know, fingers crossed, if you know, it would be 1:45:43.680 --> 1:45:46.840 wonderful if we could have a completed statue in twenty 1:45:46.920 --> 1:45:49.120 twenty seven, which would be the ten year anniversary of 1:45:49.160 --> 1:45:51.920 the Unite the Right rally, you know, to to you know, 1:45:52.000 --> 1:45:55.280 to have something else to give back to our community. 1:45:55.479 --> 1:45:58.680 You know, that's a blasting value that, you know, and 1:45:59.080 --> 1:46:01.760 for us, it's important that we write our narrative. There 1:46:01.800 --> 1:46:06.120 were people who attacked us, you know, who tried to 1:46:06.240 --> 1:46:10.160 kind of imprint on us, you know, some sort of 1:46:10.280 --> 1:46:12.720 narrative about what we were about. And it also kind 1:46:12.760 --> 1:46:15.080 of you know, reverberated in a you know, national and 1:46:15.200 --> 1:46:20.800 international way. And we're really taking control of the narrative here. 1:46:20.880 --> 1:46:22.920 We're saying, you know, we we are going to say 1:46:23.040 --> 1:46:26.560 who we are and we're going to express that. You know, 1:46:27.040 --> 1:46:31.040 and we do value art, you know, we want it 1:46:31.080 --> 1:46:33.120 to be an art that reflects our values. 1:46:34.479 --> 1:46:34.599 Right. 1:46:34.640 --> 1:46:37.360 I think this is a recognition that art does have power. 1:46:37.439 --> 1:46:39.400 It had the power to harm, It had the power 1:46:39.479 --> 1:46:42.560 to to bring great harm to this community. But it 1:46:42.680 --> 1:46:44.920 was you know, that art was harming people just by 1:46:45.040 --> 1:46:47.120 existing in that space, even before you unite the right. 1:46:47.160 --> 1:46:50.600 And now those same materials have hopefully the power to 1:46:51.120 --> 1:46:54.920 bring some repair. Yeah, So it wasn't it wasn't just 1:46:55.040 --> 1:46:56.840 the practical you know, I think you were saying. It 1:46:56.880 --> 1:46:59.200 started out a sort of a practical question is what 1:46:59.320 --> 1:47:01.360 do you do with this large object? And so the 1:47:01.439 --> 1:47:05.639 practical answer is you reduce its size, you melt it down, 1:47:05.720 --> 1:47:08.200 You remove it, and you melt it down. But it's 1:47:08.240 --> 1:47:11.160 not just practical, right, there is there is incredible symbolic 1:47:11.320 --> 1:47:15.680 value in using that material, that metal, right. I think 1:47:15.720 --> 1:47:18.240 in some of the articles you all talked about as 1:47:18.320 --> 1:47:20.519 it was melting there were impurities in the metal. So 1:47:20.880 --> 1:47:24.040 as this statue is being melted down, the impurities are 1:47:24.080 --> 1:47:26.800 being extracted from it. It's being purified, and now it 1:47:26.880 --> 1:47:30.360 can be repurposed. That's really beautiful, Yeah it is. 1:47:30.479 --> 1:47:33.360 Yeah, the slag getting pulled off the top and just yeah, 1:47:33.560 --> 1:47:37.519 just it was incredible, you know, to see for sure. 1:47:38.360 --> 1:47:41.360 And so at this stage you guys are soliciting community input. 1:47:41.400 --> 1:47:43.400 I think there's a sort of a community survey out 1:47:43.400 --> 1:47:45.960 about sort of what parks people frequent, how they're using 1:47:46.000 --> 1:47:48.640 the parks, how they're engaging with the parks, and you 1:47:48.720 --> 1:47:50.640 said this year there'll be a request for proposals for 1:47:50.800 --> 1:47:55.240 artists to sort of put forth their vision for this bronze, right. 1:47:55.439 --> 1:47:58.120 And this is it's nice because this is all coinciding 1:47:58.280 --> 1:48:02.439 with the city if Charlotteville has for some time wanted 1:48:02.520 --> 1:48:06.320 to do a renovation of of its downtown park. So 1:48:06.400 --> 1:48:08.200 this and this has been a long time coming that 1:48:08.320 --> 1:48:10.360 there are you know, sedated, you know, all of this 1:48:10.680 --> 1:48:13.880 drama with the with the statues, but it's just really 1:48:14.200 --> 1:48:17.439 a nice opportunity to just kind of for the community 1:48:17.520 --> 1:48:19.760 to just kind of take stock. It's like, Okay, we're 1:48:20.439 --> 1:48:22.800 you know, we're whatever, you know, going on seven years 1:48:22.840 --> 1:48:25.720 out from Unite the Right. You know, we're eight years 1:48:25.760 --> 1:48:29.519 out from you know, Zionist initial petition. You know, you 1:48:29.560 --> 1:48:32.040 know this this statue has been you know taken away, 1:48:32.040 --> 1:48:34.400 it has been melted, and it just feels like a 1:48:34.960 --> 1:48:37.880 literal and figurative clearing of the land. You know, it 1:48:38.000 --> 1:48:40.600 just feels like, you know, people have asked, you know 1:48:40.720 --> 1:48:42.920 sometimes it's like oh, there's you know, all that empty 1:48:43.000 --> 1:48:44.720 space at the parks, and I was like, yeah, isn't 1:48:44.720 --> 1:48:47.560 it nice. It's just kind of like I mean to 1:48:48.160 --> 1:48:50.200 just kind of I think it's nice to just have 1:48:50.920 --> 1:48:52.920 just push the pause button for you know, in terms 1:48:52.960 --> 1:48:55.400 of things that are there for several years, and just 1:48:55.479 --> 1:48:59.160 kind of allow our our minds to open, you know, 1:48:59.400 --> 1:49:02.800 just like the the space itself and to just imagine 1:49:03.000 --> 1:49:05.880 what that space can look like. I think it's really 1:49:05.960 --> 1:49:08.840 instructive and I wish more communities could have the opportunity 1:49:08.880 --> 1:49:11.160 to do this. Actually, yes, but you know, for instance, 1:49:11.240 --> 1:49:14.920 taking that survey you know that that community members in 1:49:15.000 --> 1:49:18.200 Charlottesville are doing now about you know, yeah, how do 1:49:18.320 --> 1:49:21.519 you know? Where where do you what parks you go to, 1:49:22.520 --> 1:49:24.479 what activities do you engage in there? What do you 1:49:24.760 --> 1:49:26.240 like you know, what would you like to see more of? 1:49:26.320 --> 1:49:27.200 You know, this sort of thing. 1:49:27.240 --> 1:49:30.240 It's it's great to you know, to consider this. You 1:49:30.280 --> 1:49:33.680 know that this is something that has been you know, 1:49:34.040 --> 1:49:38.360 America's uh uh you know, the United States is uh, 1:49:38.520 --> 1:49:41.200 you know, public parks has you know, been something that 1:49:41.840 --> 1:49:44.439 you know, since the nineteenth century. Is something that's that's 1:49:44.479 --> 1:49:47.160 been a real gem, you know in some of our 1:49:47.240 --> 1:49:49.839 our public spaces, you know, in some of our cities, 1:49:49.880 --> 1:49:51.519 and you know, and this is something to you know, 1:49:51.640 --> 1:49:54.200 to celebrate, and it's it's nice to be able to 1:49:54.280 --> 1:49:57.559 kind of take stock to really, you know, think about 1:49:57.640 --> 1:50:02.519 how public spaces can express our professed values, you know. 1:50:03.280 --> 1:50:06.080 Instead of sort of reacting to hate, like taking a 1:50:06.160 --> 1:50:09.880 moment to envision not our reaction to or you know, 1:50:10.240 --> 1:50:12.200 what we don't want, but think about what we do 1:50:12.479 --> 1:50:15.320 want in that space exactly what would what would serve 1:50:15.360 --> 1:50:17.880 our community? And I think that's sort of where the 1:50:17.920 --> 1:50:20.919 project is now, right, just sort of envisioning a positive 1:50:20.960 --> 1:50:23.599 future rather than trying to remediate a negative past. 1:50:24.320 --> 1:50:27.040 And it's so nice because I felt like we were fighting, fighting, 1:50:27.120 --> 1:50:29.479 fighting for so many years. You know, we're in court, 1:50:29.760 --> 1:50:33.000 or we're protesting, or we're going to lobby at the 1:50:33.080 --> 1:50:35.600 General Assembly or now we're going to city council. I 1:50:35.640 --> 1:50:38.320 mean there was just you know all, you know, so fraught, 1:50:38.800 --> 1:50:41.080 and so now it's just so free to like, oh, 1:50:41.479 --> 1:50:43.640 to be able to imagine, you know, and to be 1:50:43.720 --> 1:50:48.479 thinking forward, yeah, and constructively creatively. That's a great feeling. 1:50:49.479 --> 1:50:51.559 So how can people sort of keep up with sorts 1:50:51.600 --> 1:50:53.960 into plow Shares, stay up to date on the project 1:50:54.000 --> 1:50:56.880 and its progress, and more importantly, how can they support 1:50:56.960 --> 1:50:57.960 sorts into plow Shares. 1:50:58.600 --> 1:51:02.840 Yeah, so you can visit Sipseville dot com. That's s 1:51:03.040 --> 1:51:08.400 I P C v I L l E dot com. 1:51:08.640 --> 1:51:11.760 So sip Cville that's Swords into Plowshires Ceville. And we 1:51:11.880 --> 1:51:15.680 have occasional updates there with news stories about what we're 1:51:15.760 --> 1:51:20.080 doing and upcoming meetings which will be happening at the 1:51:20.160 --> 1:51:23.880 Jefferson School, uh, where we'll be you know, kind of 1:51:23.920 --> 1:51:28.880 presenting results of of you know, surveys that we've done, 1:51:29.080 --> 1:51:34.519 you know, and uh and also visiting speakers who will 1:51:34.520 --> 1:51:37.320 be coming to talk about, you know, what what does 1:51:37.479 --> 1:51:39.960 art mean in public spaces? You know, So we'll be 1:51:40.000 --> 1:51:43.200 able to kind of you know, talk with uh, you know, 1:51:43.280 --> 1:51:45.200 some experts that have come in, you know, to advise 1:51:45.400 --> 1:51:48.280 us on you know, how to think about about what 1:51:48.400 --> 1:51:52.400 we want in our in our in our parks going forward. 1:51:54.640 --> 1:51:56.960 And can people make donations to s I P on 1:51:57.040 --> 1:51:59.559 the website, Yes, on the website, there is a portal 1:51:59.640 --> 1:52:01.720 right there on Sipseyville dot com. 1:52:02.240 --> 1:52:04.679 Definitely welcome that as well. 1:52:05.240 --> 1:52:07.679 And those donations go towards for the the ultimate creation 1:52:07.800 --> 1:52:12.720 of this piece of art. Correct, right, It is not 1:52:12.880 --> 1:52:14.000 cheap to work with that much. 1:52:13.920 --> 1:52:14.439 More it is not. 1:52:14.680 --> 1:52:17.080 Yeah, so we're we're you know, putting together you know, 1:52:17.520 --> 1:52:19.960 fun to pay the artists, you know, for the commissioning 1:52:20.000 --> 1:52:20.479 the artists. 1:52:20.479 --> 1:52:20.600 You know. 1:52:20.680 --> 1:52:24.519 We're also applying for you know, grants from foundations and 1:52:24.600 --> 1:52:26.000 this sort of thing too. But of course there are 1:52:26.040 --> 1:52:30.200 other expenses associated with uh, you know, processing materials and 1:52:30.400 --> 1:52:31.720 yeah and all that. 1:52:32.000 --> 1:52:35.519 So yeah, so that is s I P C V 1:52:36.120 --> 1:52:39.680 I L L E dot com slash donate to make 1:52:39.720 --> 1:52:45.280 sure that that artist gets paid. Absolutely well, Juliane, thank 1:52:45.320 --> 1:52:48.880 you so much for joining us today and looking forward 1:52:48.920 --> 1:52:51.240 to seeing our our new beautiful piece of art, hopefully 1:52:51.280 --> 1:52:52.200 by twenty twenty seven. 1:52:52.840 --> 1:52:56.160 Yeah, yeah, it's great. Well, thank you for your interest, Mollie, 1:52:56.200 --> 1:52:59.880 and thank you to all the listeners and supporters out there. 1:53:00.120 --> 1:53:02.880 Means a lot to us that you know, your interest 1:53:02.960 --> 1:53:05.320 in us and your support appreciate it. 1:53:05.560 --> 1:53:09.120 I think we all love those photos of Lee's melting face. 1:53:10.520 --> 1:53:13.920 It is icon I gotta say, it's iconic, you know. 1:53:14.120 --> 1:53:18.719 I yeah, we'll always have that, have that memory. 1:53:20.479 --> 1:53:21.200 Thank you so much. 1:53:21.560 --> 1:53:38.559 All right, A welcome back to It could Happen Here 1:53:38.800 --> 1:53:42.439 a podcast where the host Robert Evans, one of the 1:53:42.520 --> 1:53:47.559 hosts has recently recovered from a terrible, terrible sickness by 1:53:47.800 --> 1:53:52.799 by engaging in some fascinating experiments with thera flu, largely 1:53:52.960 --> 1:53:55.800 using a friend's diabetic needles, just shooting it straight into 1:53:55.800 --> 1:53:59.519 the veins My co host today, Garrison Davis, have you 1:53:59.600 --> 1:54:02.200 ever ever shot flew medication into your veins? 1:54:02.240 --> 1:54:05.759 Garrison, No, I've only shot one thing into my veins. 1:54:06.600 --> 1:54:10.800 Well, speaking of shooting, today's episode of It Could Happen 1:54:10.880 --> 1:54:13.280 Here is about a shooting. And before you are like, 1:54:13.479 --> 1:54:14.920 oh man, I don't really have it in me to 1:54:15.000 --> 1:54:17.599 listen to a horrible story about people dying today, don't worry. 1:54:17.840 --> 1:54:19.840 Nobody gets shot in this story. 1:54:20.040 --> 1:54:24.840 Thank God, miraculously no one gets shot, Like against. 1:54:24.640 --> 1:54:28.320 All odds, it's stunning that nobody got shot. This is 1:54:28.400 --> 1:54:32.760 the tale of a police officer fucking up, not worse 1:54:33.200 --> 1:54:35.360 than any cop has ever fucked up, because again he 1:54:35.440 --> 1:54:37.720 didn't kill anybody, but fucking up in a way that's 1:54:37.800 --> 1:54:40.800 like more baffling and incompetent than I think I've ever 1:54:40.880 --> 1:54:44.600 seen before. It's probably the most embarrassing and certainly the 1:54:44.640 --> 1:54:49.800 most embarrassing, and not even really malevolent, just like outrageously incompetent, 1:54:49.960 --> 1:54:52.320 but I'm gonna let you take over from here, Garrison. 1:54:53.040 --> 1:54:54.680 So, yeah, we are going to be talking about in 1:54:54.840 --> 1:55:01.280 acorn involved shooting today, happened, that happened in Florida. 1:55:01.600 --> 1:55:04.960 Finally we know what the A and A cab stands for. 1:55:05.400 --> 1:55:05.880 That's right. 1:55:08.880 --> 1:55:11.400 So we're gonna we're gonna play some clips here, but 1:55:11.440 --> 1:55:12.880 I think it's important to set the scene so you 1:55:12.960 --> 1:55:16.960 kind of understand what you're hearing. So this cop walks 1:55:17.040 --> 1:55:19.800 up to his patrol car, there is a suspect locked 1:55:19.800 --> 1:55:20.280 in the back. 1:55:20.960 --> 1:55:24.280 Sunny day, Houston suburbs, big houses, wide streets. 1:55:24.480 --> 1:55:27.400 Yeah, now something happens as the cop is about to 1:55:27.440 --> 1:55:30.840 open up the door. He then dives onto the ground, 1:55:31.000 --> 1:55:35.440 does two like action roles, double barrel rolls, and then 1:55:35.840 --> 1:55:39.120 starts shooting at the car and starts yelling to another 1:55:39.160 --> 1:55:41.400 officer who's in the area. And I think we'll just 1:55:41.840 --> 1:55:43.040 we'll just play the rest here. 1:55:43.600 --> 1:55:43.840 Yeah. 1:55:44.040 --> 1:55:46.200 The first clips about thirty seconds long, and then I 1:55:46.320 --> 1:55:48.000 just have a few shorter clips kind of that have 1:55:48.120 --> 1:55:51.000 kind of stitched together that just just to get a 1:55:51.080 --> 1:55:54.200 sense of like what he's saying and what he's communicating 1:55:54.840 --> 1:55:56.960 after he opens fire on this patrol vehicle. 1:55:57.200 --> 1:56:04.240 So here is here? Is that audio far Jeff Jukes, 1:56:04.320 --> 1:56:07.320 Burt Chuck's burd. 1:56:08.920 --> 1:56:09.200 You know. 1:56:15.440 --> 1:56:17.000 Oh, I'm that, I'm here. 1:56:21.520 --> 1:56:25.320 What I've done? He has the car? 1:56:25.800 --> 1:56:27.360 Now you shot the car. 1:56:28.280 --> 1:56:32.680 Oh, I'm I'm good. I'm feel weird, but I'm good. 1:56:34.520 --> 1:56:45.400 I might have hit my best. Okay, it might hit 1:56:45.480 --> 1:56:45.760 my best. 1:56:45.840 --> 1:56:46.160 I don't know. 1:56:50.120 --> 1:56:50.440 I'm not. 1:56:52.040 --> 1:56:53.240 Okay, I don't know. 1:56:53.720 --> 1:56:54.640 I I like it. 1:56:57.680 --> 1:57:08.640 Jess me, I got you remote to me, Jesse, come back, mark. 1:57:08.480 --> 1:57:10.760 You right back, dude, my head. 1:57:16.440 --> 1:57:18.000 Let's get further back, further back to the back. 1:57:18.600 --> 1:57:18.960 All right. 1:57:19.120 --> 1:57:22.000 So that was a lot of gunfire. Again, it is 1:57:22.720 --> 1:57:27.000 shocking that no one died because it's not immediately evident 1:57:27.240 --> 1:57:29.160 if you just watched the video. But there is somebody 1:57:29.160 --> 1:57:31.480 who's trapped in the back of that car, and there's 1:57:31.840 --> 1:57:33.960 multiple officers shooting at the car. 1:57:34.480 --> 1:57:36.720 And here's the thing, the guy. The distance the guy 1:57:36.840 --> 1:57:39.280 is shooting from. God from when I watched the video 1:57:39.360 --> 1:57:42.240 last I would estimate maybe about twenty yards, probably even 1:57:42.280 --> 1:57:45.120 shorter than that, maybe sure, maybe more like fifteen. It's 1:57:45.400 --> 1:57:48.760 medium to maybe medium long range for a handgun. For 1:57:48.800 --> 1:57:50.360 a full size handgun like that, I'd say it's about 1:57:50.360 --> 1:57:54.240 medium range. So a competent shooter should be able to 1:57:54.400 --> 1:57:57.520 hit a target about the size of a human torso 1:57:57.960 --> 1:58:01.200 at that distance with most of the but he is 1:58:01.320 --> 1:58:03.600 not that. When I say competent, that is somebody who 1:58:03.720 --> 1:58:06.840 is bracing themselves and who has two hands on the gun. 1:58:07.400 --> 1:58:09.840 He is shooting like a character in an action movie. 1:58:09.880 --> 1:58:12.560 And I cannot imagine. So a lot of those rounds 1:58:12.640 --> 1:58:14.480 did not even hit the truck. I imagine they went 1:58:14.560 --> 1:58:18.080 flying into a neighborhood where we can hear children playing yes, Yes. 1:58:18.680 --> 1:58:19.680 So the. 1:58:21.640 --> 1:58:24.200 Officer who encountered this acorn, which we will get to 1:58:24.280 --> 1:58:27.760 in a sec was named Deputy Jesse Hernandez. He been 1:58:27.800 --> 1:58:32.440 a cop for almost two years, and we'll learn more 1:58:32.480 --> 1:58:36.040 about his background as we as we continue on with 1:58:36.120 --> 1:58:39.640 this little story. The second officer, well not officer, but 1:58:40.000 --> 1:58:43.920 a sergeant of this Sheriff's department named Beth Roberts, and 1:58:44.120 --> 1:58:45.840 she's been a cop since two thousand and eight, so 1:58:46.080 --> 1:58:48.160 she has a little bit more experience under her belt. 1:58:48.400 --> 1:58:51.960 So let's kind of explain what happened here. So there 1:58:52.040 --> 1:58:54.600 was a series of calls that happened earlier in the 1:58:54.680 --> 1:58:57.080 day about a vehicle who was kind of driving erratically 1:58:57.440 --> 1:59:00.360 around a nearby neighborhood honking its horn kind of just 1:59:00.520 --> 1:59:02.480 like making a lot of sounds at like three am. 1:59:03.040 --> 1:59:04.840 The suspect was described as a black mail in his 1:59:04.920 --> 1:59:07.880 late twenties. And then a few hours later, a separate 1:59:07.960 --> 1:59:11.320 call was made by someone talking about how her boyfriend 1:59:11.720 --> 1:59:14.520 has been refusing to return her vehicle and has been 1:59:14.560 --> 1:59:18.040 sending her threatening text messages. So this caused police to 1:59:18.640 --> 1:59:22.080 go to this girlfriend's house. She showed some of these 1:59:22.120 --> 1:59:26.280 threatening text messages and they were talking with this woman 1:59:26.640 --> 1:59:30.960 when her boyfriend approached the scene. So the suspect approached 1:59:31.000 --> 1:59:33.840 the police in front of his girlfriend's house. Deputy Hernandez 1:59:33.960 --> 1:59:36.840 himself did a pat down to search for weapons and 1:59:37.040 --> 1:59:40.360 observed a more thorough search once the suspect was handcuffed. 1:59:40.720 --> 1:59:42.800 The missing car was located a few miles away, and 1:59:42.880 --> 1:59:44.560 Hernandez was on his way back to the car to 1:59:44.640 --> 1:59:47.640 do a tertiary search of the suspect, who is currently 1:59:47.680 --> 1:59:50.800 locked in the backseat with handcuffs. And then as Deputy 1:59:50.840 --> 1:59:55.000 Hernandez passed the passenger side door in acorn fell onto 1:59:55.080 --> 1:59:58.320 the roof of his car, which is barely barely audible 1:59:59.080 --> 2:00:02.200 in it. The bodycam video that we have access to. 2:00:02.720 --> 2:00:05.400 So you would not notice it were you not listening 2:00:05.480 --> 2:00:05.720 for it. 2:00:06.000 --> 2:00:07.440 No, no, So. 2:00:07.640 --> 2:00:11.480 Three days later, Deputy Hernandez was interviewed by two investigators 2:00:11.840 --> 2:00:14.320 as a part of the Office of Professional Standards investigation 2:00:14.480 --> 2:00:20.280 into this incident of discharge gunfire and this this interview 2:00:20.320 --> 2:00:22.800 in this report is probably one of the most telling 2:00:22.960 --> 2:00:26.240 things about how police psychology operates. 2:00:26.880 --> 2:00:27.960 And wow, okay, so. 2:00:30.880 --> 2:00:34.800 I'm gonna read through a few quotes here from Deputy Hernandez. 2:00:35.200 --> 2:00:37.200 He talks about how, quote, I'm about to reach for 2:00:37.240 --> 2:00:40.360 the door handle and simultaneously I hear to at the 2:00:40.440 --> 2:00:43.400 time what I believe would be a suppressed weapon off 2:00:43.440 --> 2:00:46.680 to the side. I definitely heard this noise about the 2:00:46.800 --> 2:00:49.320 same time I felt an impact on my right side, 2:00:49.400 --> 2:00:52.480 like an upper torso area. I feel the impact. My 2:00:52.600 --> 2:00:54.680 legs just give out. I don't know where I'm hit. 2:00:54.960 --> 2:01:00.120 I think I'm hit. I'm struck. I roll back. I 2:01:00.240 --> 2:01:03.160 rolled to the briving like he's the hard boiled detective 2:01:03.240 --> 2:01:03.800 and a novel. 2:01:04.600 --> 2:01:06.040 I rolled to the back of the car. Now I'm 2:01:06.040 --> 2:01:08.360 stuck in the street, and I knew where the fire, 2:01:08.840 --> 2:01:11.920 where the shots came from, I or I believed where 2:01:11.920 --> 2:01:14.200 they came from. It was right there as I'm reaching 2:01:14.240 --> 2:01:16.640 for that door handle. So I'm laying behind the car. 2:01:16.720 --> 2:01:19.360 I'm yelling shots fire, shots fired, shots fired. I returned 2:01:19.400 --> 2:01:21.400 fire once I could get cover behind another vehicle that 2:01:21.480 --> 2:01:24.840 was parked in the driveway there. So when asked to 2:01:24.960 --> 2:01:28.440 describe what he felt, because he's not just claiming that 2:01:28.640 --> 2:01:31.360 he heard a sound, he's claiming he felt like he 2:01:31.440 --> 2:01:31.840 got hit. 2:01:32.280 --> 2:01:34.440 Yeah, he felt an impact. He felt an impact and 2:01:34.560 --> 2:01:37.000 his legs went out from underneath him. Yes, which again 2:01:37.240 --> 2:01:40.080 in the video, he clearly does a double barrel roll. 2:01:40.280 --> 2:01:43.720 He doesn't. That is not I have seen people get 2:01:43.840 --> 2:01:48.200 hit and drop. They did not do double barrel rolls 2:01:49.280 --> 2:01:50.360 like a little action stow. 2:01:50.440 --> 2:01:53.400 Yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, he says, quote, it felt like 2:01:53.600 --> 2:01:56.480 an impact to my upper torso around here, and he 2:01:56.560 --> 2:01:58.920 motions up to his right shoulder on the right side. 2:01:59.160 --> 2:02:02.600 It was like a sound impact, like almost that quick. 2:02:02.680 --> 2:02:05.360 I guess I just loved hit the phrase it was 2:02:05.520 --> 2:02:07.040 like a sound impact. 2:02:07.360 --> 2:02:09.880 Yeah, I think he's saying. I think what he's saying 2:02:10.000 --> 2:02:12.960 from reading it is that like we're missing some of 2:02:13.040 --> 2:02:14.640 the body language that he was going to It was 2:02:14.720 --> 2:02:17.040 like sound and then like moving his hands to get 2:02:17.120 --> 2:02:20.040 sound impact, hearing the sound, and then he got impact. 2:02:20.280 --> 2:02:22.120 I think he was actually trying to which is not 2:02:22.240 --> 2:02:25.440 like them, which is actually not in person. Probably very awkward, 2:02:25.520 --> 2:02:28.440 but yeah, it does. It comes across weird and so 2:02:29.800 --> 2:02:32.640 more more funny than sound impact. For again, any corn 2:02:32.720 --> 2:02:35.960 that's falling on a roof, we have quote, my legs 2:02:36.040 --> 2:02:38.640 weren't working the way I wanted them to be working. 2:02:39.480 --> 2:02:41.640 I think I yelled at one point to Sergeant Roberts. 2:02:41.840 --> 2:02:43.120 I think I might have been hitting. 2:02:42.920 --> 2:02:45.560 The leg or something along those lines, because I was 2:02:45.560 --> 2:02:47.560 struggling to get cover. I think at one point I 2:02:47.640 --> 2:02:51.680 reached up to touch my head. I think I still 2:02:51.760 --> 2:02:54.160 had the sound in my head. I wasn't sure if 2:02:54.200 --> 2:02:56.960 I had been hidden the head. I was getting a 2:02:57.080 --> 2:03:01.680 funny tingling around all sides of my body, and I 2:03:01.760 --> 2:03:04.240 think some of that money just been adrenaline. Putting together 2:03:04.320 --> 2:03:06.720 the fact that what I just heard and the impact 2:03:06.760 --> 2:03:08.960 that I felt. I've never been shot before, so I 2:03:09.000 --> 2:03:15.880 don't know what that's like or you know, unquote great 2:03:17.920 --> 2:03:21.560 oh man, So he is. He's unsure if you would 2:03:21.560 --> 2:03:22.880 be able to notice if he got shot in the 2:03:22.920 --> 2:03:26.280 head or not, which is kind of interesting. I mean, 2:03:26.520 --> 2:03:29.120 I'm sure he could get grazed, but like, come on, buddy, yeah. 2:03:29.480 --> 2:03:31.360 Yeah, I mean it's one thing. It is true that 2:03:31.480 --> 2:03:35.080 like you can be hit like an armor and not 2:03:35.200 --> 2:03:37.560 be sure if you've gotten a hit because it didn't penetrate. 2:03:38.160 --> 2:03:42.640 But you would also not mistake a corn shrapnel hitting 2:03:42.680 --> 2:03:45.960 you reasonably for a bullet Like That's simply not a 2:03:46.040 --> 2:03:48.280 mistake a reasonable person is going to make. 2:03:49.440 --> 2:03:54.240 So the investigator asked him, like if there was any 2:03:54.320 --> 2:03:57.840 other sense that there could have been gunfire, like if 2:03:57.880 --> 2:03:59.760 you saw any like shattered glass coming from the car, 2:04:00.320 --> 2:04:03.200 and Hernandez said no. When asked why he decided to 2:04:03.200 --> 2:04:05.960 stop firing, Hernandez said that he stopped firing once he 2:04:05.960 --> 2:04:08.880 emptied his clip, moved to cover behind it nearby Tesla 2:04:09.320 --> 2:04:12.680 end quote, didn't observe any rounds coming back at me. 2:04:13.520 --> 2:04:16.040 Just just great, because why there's the. 2:04:18.560 --> 2:04:20.320 Hernandez claim that he was never able to see the 2:04:20.360 --> 2:04:21.920 suspect while in the patrol car. 2:04:22.400 --> 2:04:24.480 And Hernandez remained behind. 2:04:24.280 --> 2:04:27.000 Cover till other deputies arrived and was rushed to a hospital, 2:04:27.320 --> 2:04:30.000 where only then he was informed that he did not, 2:04:30.200 --> 2:04:31.240 in fact to get shot. 2:04:31.640 --> 2:04:33.839 It's amazing he made it all the way to a hospital. 2:04:34.720 --> 2:04:38.000 So you had a lot of chances. You had a 2:04:38.040 --> 2:04:39.880 lot of chances to not fuck that up. 2:04:39.960 --> 2:04:40.120 Man. 2:04:40.600 --> 2:04:42.280 As soon as the other cops arrive on the seat, 2:04:42.320 --> 2:04:44.640 he's like, I don't know, I just I just feel 2:04:44.720 --> 2:04:45.320 so weird. 2:04:47.360 --> 2:04:50.960 Yeah, buddy, you you had an adrenaline drop because you panicked, 2:04:51.200 --> 2:04:52.680 Like that is why you feel weird. 2:04:53.000 --> 2:04:58.000 Like a lot always this like mirrors the police fentanel things, 2:04:58.360 --> 2:05:02.040 how they can like talk the themselves into feeling into 2:05:02.120 --> 2:05:03.080 like feeling symptoms. 2:05:03.360 --> 2:05:06.560 Yes, but all right, So. 2:05:08.040 --> 2:05:10.600 Hernandoz hadn't been a cop for very long. He had 2:05:10.680 --> 2:05:13.120 He had no prior law enforcement experience before joining this 2:05:13.440 --> 2:05:16.960 Florida Sheriff's department, but he did attend to West Point 2:05:17.320 --> 2:05:20.480 and served as a Special Forces Infantry officers in the 2:05:20.640 --> 2:05:24.760 Army for ten years. So one could maybe assume that 2:05:24.920 --> 2:05:28.240 the deputy's outrageous behavior was the result of some kind 2:05:28.280 --> 2:05:29.600 of PTSD. 2:05:29.240 --> 2:05:32.360 From serving as Special Forces. But maybe maybe I could 2:05:32.400 --> 2:05:34.480 kind of explain some of what's going on here. I 2:05:34.640 --> 2:05:37.920 had multiple people when I posted this on Twitter, be like, oh, 2:05:38.000 --> 2:05:40.840 this is maybe people with like PTSD shouldn't be. 2:05:40.880 --> 2:05:43.960 Cops, And I had to be like no, no, no, Well, 2:05:44.520 --> 2:05:47.240 see the funny thing about that is that he never 2:05:47.360 --> 2:05:48.839 actually served in combat. 2:05:49.240 --> 2:05:52.400 No, this guy flew a fucking desk, yeah, which like 2:05:52.640 --> 2:05:54.680 you need that in a war. But like this, this 2:05:54.920 --> 2:05:57.840 man did not have any combat trauma that caused him 2:05:57.880 --> 2:05:58.800 to react this way. 2:05:59.240 --> 2:06:03.320 You know, like I I've had I've had PTSD. You know, 2:06:03.440 --> 2:06:06.360 I've certainly gotten like I can get really jumpy with 2:06:06.720 --> 2:06:07.520 certain sounds. 2:06:08.120 --> 2:06:11.160 Yeah, that is not that six months Carriod where fireworks 2:06:11.240 --> 2:06:12.440 made us all very unhappy. 2:06:12.560 --> 2:06:15.840 Yeah, or like keys dropping was the big one for 2:06:15.920 --> 2:06:18.360 me because it sounded like a tear guest canister rolling 2:06:18.400 --> 2:06:19.400 on his bottles. 2:06:19.600 --> 2:06:21.520 But you know when in the many times that I 2:06:21.560 --> 2:06:23.640 had bottles fall near me and set me off, or 2:06:23.680 --> 2:06:25.880 that fireworks went off near me and set me off, 2:06:26.480 --> 2:06:28.600 I was often carrying a gun and what I never 2:06:28.760 --> 2:06:32.080 did was empty it vaguely in the direction of a car. 2:06:33.840 --> 2:06:35.360 So he never saw combat. 2:06:35.520 --> 2:06:38.879 He did claim that he was aware of what suppressed 2:06:38.920 --> 2:06:41.400 gunfire sounded like, and he affirmed that the noise he 2:06:41.480 --> 2:06:44.160 herd reminded him of suppressed gunfire. 2:06:45.920 --> 2:06:48.040 I'm sorry, bro, what the fuck? 2:06:48.880 --> 2:06:51.040 Under questioning Herd, Eda said that he did not perceive 2:06:51.120 --> 2:06:54.640 any other sounds, visuals, or physical indicators. Of gunfire besides 2:06:54.680 --> 2:06:58.480 the initial tapping sound and his upper torso feeling. In 2:06:58.600 --> 2:07:00.680 the interview, he was asked why he decided to fall 2:07:00.720 --> 2:07:02.880 onto the pavement, and he said, I'm not sure if 2:07:02.880 --> 2:07:06.160 it was adrenaline or just what, but the numbness of 2:07:06.200 --> 2:07:07.960 my legs and realizing, Okay, I'm going to be on 2:07:08.000 --> 2:07:10.520 the ground, but also realizing the windows are right there, 2:07:10.560 --> 2:07:13.000 you know, I'm I need to be on the ground anyway, 2:07:13.040 --> 2:07:15.680 so I'm not exposed. So yeah, and that that just 2:07:15.760 --> 2:07:17.760 kind of led to my legs just kind of gave 2:07:17.840 --> 2:07:22.040 out on me. Fascinating. He then was asked to explain 2:07:22.160 --> 2:07:25.480 the two action roles he performed on the road, and 2:07:25.880 --> 2:07:27.040 her dad replied. 2:07:27.080 --> 2:07:31.320 Uh rnx. At the same time, what was I supposed 2:07:31.320 --> 2:07:32.640 to do? Pretty much? 2:07:32.720 --> 2:07:37.760 He said, uh the rolling kind of reaction to what 2:07:38.040 --> 2:07:41.600 was going on and realizing like, my legs are not 2:07:41.800 --> 2:07:44.040 working the way I need them to work right now, 2:07:44.560 --> 2:07:47.360 but I can roll over to the next vehicle. So 2:07:47.760 --> 2:07:49.520 that's kind of where I was trying to get to 2:07:49.920 --> 2:07:55.880 unquote sure, okay, okay, bro. So after his little action roles, 2:07:55.960 --> 2:07:58.320 this is where he started yelling shots fired and he 2:07:58.360 --> 2:08:00.600 emptied his clip into the car. And told the sergeant 2:08:00.640 --> 2:08:03.160 that shots were coming from this vehicle, and she began 2:08:03.240 --> 2:08:05.640 firing in the vehicle as well. At what point Hernandez 2:08:05.640 --> 2:08:07.320 tried to move off to the side because he was 2:08:07.400 --> 2:08:10.480 concerned about being shot by the other cop. He says, 2:08:11.040 --> 2:08:13.040 when I was done engaging the vehicle, I was trying 2:08:13.080 --> 2:08:14.920 to get off to the side over there because I 2:08:15.000 --> 2:08:18.600 was worried about possibly having possibly me being in her 2:08:18.680 --> 2:08:19.280 line of fire. 2:08:19.400 --> 2:08:23.240 Now sure, this is this is the first reasonable threat 2:08:23.360 --> 2:08:26.000 that he has expressed. I would also be concerned about 2:08:26.640 --> 2:08:28.200 them shooting me in that instance. 2:08:28.320 --> 2:08:32.720 Yes, So, after Hernandez's initial explanation of events, the investigator 2:08:32.760 --> 2:08:36.200 showed him video stills of an acorn coming into frame 2:08:36.520 --> 2:08:40.720 and bouncing off the roof of his car. I'm just 2:08:40.800 --> 2:08:43.240 going to read directly from the from the report, quote, 2:08:43.720 --> 2:08:51.520 Deputy Hernandez asked acorn. Investigator Hogan answered acorn, I'm quote amazing, amazing, 2:08:52.880 --> 2:08:54.080 an amazing sentence. 2:08:56.480 --> 2:08:56.840 This is. 2:08:58.560 --> 2:09:00.920 This is so perfectly how you would like script it 2:09:01.040 --> 2:09:04.320 in a really good police procedural comedy, Like if you 2:09:04.440 --> 2:09:07.680 had some A game writers on the team, and it's 2:09:07.920 --> 2:09:10.280 it's gonna take some really good you'd need like the 2:09:10.400 --> 2:09:13.720 wire quality actors to pull those lines off. Bunk and 2:09:14.200 --> 2:09:15.800 Bunk could have pulled them off right, Like. 2:09:16.360 --> 2:09:18.160 There's two more lines I want I want to get 2:09:18.200 --> 2:09:20.040 to before before we take an out of break here. 2:09:20.600 --> 2:09:22.520 When asked if the sound he heard could have been 2:09:22.520 --> 2:09:26.080 an acorn instead of suppressed gunfire, the deputy answered, quote, 2:09:26.640 --> 2:09:29.320 I'm not gonna say no, because I mean, that's but 2:09:29.520 --> 2:09:33.400 what ten second pause and speaking. What I heard three 2:09:33.520 --> 2:09:37.240 second pause and speaking sounded almost like twelve second pause 2:09:37.280 --> 2:09:39.600 and speaking in credit. But I heard sounded what I 2:09:39.720 --> 2:09:42.760 think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof 2:09:42.800 --> 2:09:45.200 of the car. But there's obviously an acorn hitting the 2:09:45.280 --> 2:09:45.640 roof of a. 2:09:45.640 --> 2:09:50.680 Car unquote amazing. Uh. 2:09:50.920 --> 2:09:53.000 The investigator then had to ask her, ed, does if 2:09:53.040 --> 2:09:56.520 he was in general familiar with the sound of acorns, 2:09:57.720 --> 2:09:59.960 which must be so embarrassed? 2:10:00.480 --> 2:10:03.680 That is that is that is a low point in 2:10:03.840 --> 2:10:08.280 your career, that is Hernetta said that he was. 2:10:08.840 --> 2:10:10.560 He was then asked if the sound could have been 2:10:10.600 --> 2:10:13.400 what led him to believe the car theft suspect shot him, 2:10:13.600 --> 2:10:18.160 to which the deputy answered, it could be seven second 2:10:18.200 --> 2:10:21.040 pause and speaking, but I don't think so, but it. 2:10:21.120 --> 2:10:22.440 Could be uncorked. 2:10:22.960 --> 2:10:27.520 Great so then Hernandez's lawyer said that they could maybe 2:10:28.000 --> 2:10:30.640 watch the video again and see if see if the 2:10:30.720 --> 2:10:34.280 acorn striking matches the time that he says that he 2:10:34.400 --> 2:10:37.360 heard the sound, And then they deliberated for a little bit, 2:10:37.800 --> 2:10:40.880 and ultimately Hernandez refused to watch the video a s 2:10:40.960 --> 2:10:43.680 second time once he was told it was an acorn's 2:10:45.000 --> 2:10:47.480 I mean, yeah, come on, what's there to do? 2:10:48.040 --> 2:10:51.280 Understandable? No, that's that's that's going to really do some 2:10:51.400 --> 2:10:53.040 damage to your self esteem right there. 2:10:53.680 --> 2:10:56.120 Less than a month later, just a few days before 2:10:56.240 --> 2:10:59.200 a second interview was scheduled, he quit the job. 2:11:01.160 --> 2:11:03.480 So you know what first decision he's made them, I 2:11:03.560 --> 2:11:06.160 mean yeah, like, what what else can you do? At 2:11:06.200 --> 2:11:09.160 this point? This story starts with a bad cop, but 2:11:09.280 --> 2:11:10.240 it ends with a good one. 2:11:10.560 --> 2:11:13.560 Like imagine returning to work and everyone's gonna call you 2:11:13.680 --> 2:11:16.760 like the acorn guy, like you can't, you can't. 2:11:17.000 --> 2:11:19.400 It's just an anytime there's like a there's like a 2:11:19.440 --> 2:11:23.240 fucking acorn tree anywhere near you get like you okay, man, okay, 2:11:23.280 --> 2:11:23.960 do you need to take him? 2:11:24.320 --> 2:11:25.280 Take it? 2:11:26.160 --> 2:11:26.960 Did you call this hit. 2:11:29.840 --> 2:11:30.000 There? 2:11:30.200 --> 2:11:32.920 Watch Out? Watch Out one hundred, one hundred times a 2:11:33.000 --> 2:11:35.120 day guys would be getting on his radio being like 2:11:35.200 --> 2:11:38.040 I just saw an acorn. Dispatch. 2:11:38.120 --> 2:11:42.120 You can get on a possible acorn, uh negative negative, 2:11:42.200 --> 2:11:43.040 that is a pine cone. 2:11:43.920 --> 2:11:46.920 No need for assistance, just some gunfire. We're good, We're good, 2:11:47.040 --> 2:11:50.600 not an acorn repete. We're safe. See is safe? No 2:11:50.720 --> 2:11:51.480 acords insight. 2:11:53.720 --> 2:11:57.040 All right, let's let's take an out of break and 2:11:57.440 --> 2:12:01.680 we will return to hear about Sergeant Robber recollection of events. 2:12:13.080 --> 2:12:17.240 Welcome back to Acorn Cop streaming now on the Discovery Channel. 2:12:17.760 --> 2:12:22.200 Two cops, one acorn. No survive, Actually no, thankfully everyone survived. 2:12:22.680 --> 2:12:25.000 This would be much less funny. 2:12:25.080 --> 2:12:27.240 We would not be laughing about this now. There is 2:12:27.320 --> 2:12:30.160 some permanent psychological damage done to the guy who was 2:12:30.160 --> 2:12:33.480 shot at but not shot and that is unjust and sad, 2:12:33.880 --> 2:12:37.360 yet not enough that we are not willing folks. You 2:12:37.480 --> 2:12:39.760 have a right to laugh at something like this, you know, 2:12:39.960 --> 2:12:42.160 even if there are some consequences to it. That's just 2:12:42.280 --> 2:12:43.840 keeping yourself sane in this world. 2:12:44.320 --> 2:12:47.080 So, Sergeant Roberts was a member of the shaf's department 2:12:47.120 --> 2:12:50.280 for fifteen years. She has a bachelor's degree in criminology 2:12:50.400 --> 2:12:51.959 from the Florida State University. 2:12:52.480 --> 2:12:53.480 So that's cool. 2:12:53.800 --> 2:12:58.080 She's been teaching at the Criminal Justice Standards and Training 2:12:58.080 --> 2:13:02.000 Commission for ten years. So I think one thing that 2:13:02.520 --> 2:13:04.200 led to some of them thinking it could have been 2:13:04.240 --> 2:13:08.160 suppressed gunfire is that in the threatening messages that the 2:13:08.240 --> 2:13:12.160 suspect had shown to or had sent to his girlfriend, 2:13:12.760 --> 2:13:15.360 included was a close up picture of this dark kind 2:13:15.400 --> 2:13:18.640 of gray cylinder pressed up against the center of the 2:13:18.760 --> 2:13:21.360 dash in his car. Less than two inches of the 2:13:21.400 --> 2:13:24.400 cylinder were visible. No parts of a firearm could be seen. 2:13:24.920 --> 2:13:29.120 But they believed that this was a suppressor, and the 2:13:29.240 --> 2:13:32.000 victim said that he owned a suppressor. So I think 2:13:32.080 --> 2:13:35.000 that that is one thing that happened in the interview 2:13:35.120 --> 2:13:39.040 kind of or in the like exchange leading up to 2:13:39.240 --> 2:13:42.200 this incident. But no one got any confirmation that he 2:13:42.280 --> 2:13:44.640 had a gun on him. Again, he was searched two times. 2:13:44.680 --> 2:13:47.280 There was no gun found on him. It is possible 2:13:47.320 --> 2:13:50.040 to like hide a gun on you, It is much 2:13:50.160 --> 2:13:53.680 more difficult to hide a gun with a suppressor like that. 2:13:53.840 --> 2:13:55.800 Is that is a pretty a pretty big object. 2:13:55.920 --> 2:13:59.160 They are larger like it. Basically doubles are more than 2:13:59.200 --> 2:14:01.760 doubles the link of the firearm, and it also does 2:14:01.840 --> 2:14:05.080 so in such a way that makes it difficult to 2:14:05.320 --> 2:14:07.120 carry in a concealed fashion. 2:14:08.080 --> 2:14:11.080 So when Sergeant Roberts was collecting an affidavit about the 2:14:11.120 --> 2:14:14.280 stolen car, she said that she heard quote some type 2:14:14.320 --> 2:14:20.240 of noise and shortly thereafter Jesse, who's Hernandez screaming? Shots fired? 2:14:20.440 --> 2:14:20.720 Quote. 2:14:21.160 --> 2:14:23.320 It was loud enough that it got my attention and 2:14:23.360 --> 2:14:24.880 made me think we're about to have a fight with 2:14:25.000 --> 2:14:28.360 a prisoner or the suspect. Either he's escaped somehow and 2:14:28.640 --> 2:14:30.560 Jesse's in a tussle with him. I can't tell you 2:14:30.600 --> 2:14:32.720 exactly what it was, but it made me look and 2:14:32.840 --> 2:14:37.000 then immediately heard Deputy Hernandez screaming. Shots fired. 2:14:37.600 --> 2:14:40.200 So Sergeant Roberts ran out into the street. Quote. 2:14:40.480 --> 2:14:42.520 I saw that Hernandez was down. He had his gun 2:14:42.600 --> 2:14:44.520 point to the back of his patrol car. I was 2:14:44.600 --> 2:14:46.920 drawing my pistol and my magazine that was in my 2:14:47.040 --> 2:14:50.400 meg pouch. Somehow flew out again. Amazing police work. 2:14:50.400 --> 2:14:55.160 These guys, incredible stuff. That's someone who never practiced. 2:14:55.320 --> 2:14:59.960 Yeah, at which point I thought there was a malfunk. 2:15:01.560 --> 2:15:03.480 I thought that I dropped the magazine. Somehow I hit 2:15:03.560 --> 2:15:05.520 the meg release on my firearm and that that was 2:15:05.560 --> 2:15:07.520 the magazine that fell out. Turns out it wasn't. It 2:15:07.600 --> 2:15:09.520 was the one from my meg pouch. Uh huh, at 2:15:09.560 --> 2:15:14.200 which point I think I fired. So you just have 2:15:14.400 --> 2:15:17.080 magazines flying you freak out and start pulling your trigger. 2:15:17.200 --> 2:15:21.080 Yeah, I will say that last part extremely common experience. 2:15:21.200 --> 2:15:24.000 Police officers are not well trained, and most of them 2:15:24.840 --> 2:15:26.960 in terms of combat stuff, and most of them do 2:15:27.160 --> 2:15:30.920 not shoot regularly. When the FBI's done studies of like 2:15:31.200 --> 2:15:34.600 people who kill police officers, and they nearly always train 2:15:35.520 --> 2:15:38.120 way more often than the police officers they kill trained. 2:15:38.160 --> 2:15:40.640 It's very Most cops are not putting one hundred and 2:15:40.680 --> 2:15:44.000 fifty rounds a month downrange, and like, I fire three 2:15:44.080 --> 2:15:47.160 hundred rounds a month in training, and I'm not particularly good. 2:15:47.480 --> 2:15:50.320 That's what I consider like minimum level of competence. And 2:15:50.400 --> 2:15:53.240 so it is extremely common in police shootings for the 2:15:53.280 --> 2:15:55.760 officer to say I don't know how many I fired, 2:15:55.920 --> 2:15:58.480 or I fired two shots and they fired seventeen. That 2:15:58.560 --> 2:16:01.320 happens fun Oftentimes, even more than that, people will reload 2:16:01.400 --> 2:16:04.040 and not realize that they reloaded and emptied the second 2:16:04.120 --> 2:16:08.200 magazine because in an actual violent situation, and it is 2:16:08.280 --> 2:16:10.680 for that lady, I will say that she just knows 2:16:10.760 --> 2:16:13.880 that her partner is emptying his firearm. Yeah, so for her, 2:16:14.120 --> 2:16:18.320 she's this is less unreasonable, right, It is more complicated 2:16:18.360 --> 2:16:21.480 for Sergeant Roberts. But I think it also points to 2:16:21.600 --> 2:16:26.240 some of the inherent problems with policing. Oh good god. 2:16:26.440 --> 2:16:29.080 Yes, and the way police are trained, Like the how 2:16:29.200 --> 2:16:31.520 quickly it was for her to start firing at a 2:16:31.600 --> 2:16:34.200 suspect who's locked inside of a patrol car, who she 2:16:34.360 --> 2:16:36.120 knows has been searched multiple times, and. 2:16:36.160 --> 2:16:37.960 Who she has not seen shooting. 2:16:38.240 --> 2:16:40.800 Yeah, she she has not seen any gunfire, she's not 2:16:40.879 --> 2:16:43.400 seen any evidence of that, she's heard one man screaming. 2:16:44.080 --> 2:16:46.800 And how quickly they decide to use lethal force is 2:16:47.400 --> 2:16:48.400 I think very notable. 2:16:48.959 --> 2:16:49.240 Quote. 2:16:49.480 --> 2:16:51.600 I fired at the vehicle because I saw Deputy Hernandez 2:16:51.680 --> 2:16:53.240 down on the ground and he tells me that shots 2:16:53.280 --> 2:16:55.400 are fired and he's hit, and it scared the hell 2:16:55.440 --> 2:16:57.959 out of me. I thought I was watching him be killed, 2:16:59.160 --> 2:17:01.560 which is Yeah, it's to like how they are trained 2:17:01.600 --> 2:17:05.680 to constantly be in fear for their lives, their fellow officers' lives. Quote, 2:17:05.959 --> 2:17:07.720 it was the patrol car that was where the threat 2:17:07.840 --> 2:17:10.560 was coming from. I'm thinking we've we missed the gun 2:17:10.600 --> 2:17:12.840 in the pack down. Somehow he shot Jesse from the 2:17:12.920 --> 2:17:15.640 car and Jesse's down shots are being fired. I couldn't 2:17:15.640 --> 2:17:17.520 tell you exactly where they were coming from, but I 2:17:17.640 --> 2:17:19.439 fired because of my concern. 2:17:19.440 --> 2:17:22.400 On grit and you get. This is a thing that 2:17:22.680 --> 2:17:24.800 does not get represented in fiction. People don't like to 2:17:24.840 --> 2:17:27.400 talk about it. This happens with soldiers too. I have 2:17:27.440 --> 2:17:30.040 a friend who was shot in the leg by a 2:17:30.160 --> 2:17:32.600 fifty cow by one of our fifty cows one of 2:17:32.720 --> 2:17:36.600 his guy's guns, because they were told anyone from this 2:17:36.760 --> 2:17:39.680 building over that you see on the thermal scope is 2:17:39.720 --> 2:17:42.040 an enemy. They saw him on the thermal scope and 2:17:42.080 --> 2:17:44.160 they lit him up. It was just a series of 2:17:44.240 --> 2:17:47.959 bad calls being made and nobody checking to confirm. Because 2:17:47.959 --> 2:17:51.520 you're in an actual chaotic, dangerous situation, checking to confirm 2:17:51.640 --> 2:17:55.039 is there actually a threat in that area? They're just shooting, 2:17:55.120 --> 2:17:57.880 you know. It's people panic all the time. It's one 2:17:57.920 --> 2:18:01.160 of the problems with sending people with gun into neighborhoods 2:18:01.440 --> 2:18:03.040 like this is part of why the way we do 2:18:03.120 --> 2:18:05.600 policing is such a bad idea, because there's no way 2:18:05.680 --> 2:18:07.720 to train out all of this. You can train out 2:18:07.720 --> 2:18:11.760 acorn guy, maybe maybe, but they didn't. But you cannot 2:18:11.840 --> 2:18:15.160 train out people panicking and doing things with guns that 2:18:15.280 --> 2:18:16.360 can never be taken back. 2:18:16.560 --> 2:18:20.640 Well. And one other aspect is like Hernandez starts firing 2:18:20.720 --> 2:18:23.280 his gun very shortly after he's yelling shots fired. Like 2:18:23.520 --> 2:18:25.959 getting that linear cause of events can be tricky because 2:18:25.959 --> 2:18:28.160 like you are hearing gunfire at the same time you 2:18:28.240 --> 2:18:30.520 were hearing him yell shots fired because he is shooting. 2:18:31.080 --> 2:18:34.320 And Roberts said that she wasn't sure if she or 2:18:34.360 --> 2:18:36.680 Hernandez even shot first, Like all of your memory in 2:18:36.720 --> 2:18:39.440 these instances can get really kind of blurry, like like 2:18:39.520 --> 2:18:42.040 all of these like high stress scenarios, it actually can 2:18:42.120 --> 2:18:46.240 be hard to remember the exact manner of oh, yes, easily, yes, 2:18:46.959 --> 2:18:49.320 she said quote I'm seeing him on the ground yelling 2:18:49.400 --> 2:18:50.039 shots fired. 2:18:50.200 --> 2:18:50.960 I'm hit. I'm hit. 2:18:51.280 --> 2:18:53.640 I thought I thought I saw a deputy get murdered. 2:18:54.040 --> 2:18:56.440 I was close enough to see his facial expression that 2:18:56.640 --> 2:19:00.440 was fear, anxiety, it was it was horrible. I'm seeing 2:19:00.520 --> 2:19:03.640 him kind of trip fall, stumble something behind the vehicle. 2:19:03.800 --> 2:19:05.800 At some point he's able to kind of post up, 2:19:06.040 --> 2:19:08.800 but he was stumbling, crawling on the ground. I don't 2:19:08.840 --> 2:19:10.880 know how to explain it. He wasn't standing up straight, 2:19:11.080 --> 2:19:13.720 he was not in a tactical position. He was off 2:19:13.760 --> 2:19:16.120 as momentum, he was off balance, he was standing behind 2:19:16.160 --> 2:19:17.760 that car. It did not look like he was in 2:19:17.840 --> 2:19:18.760 control of himself. 2:19:20.000 --> 2:19:24.280 Yeah, no, yeah, that's like what she is saying. I'm 2:19:24.320 --> 2:19:26.160 not going to say this is like a good response, 2:19:26.240 --> 2:19:28.080 But it makes sense to me that she reacted the 2:19:28.120 --> 2:19:30.600 way she'd most people would write, which is why most 2:19:30.640 --> 2:19:33.760 people should not be given firearms and legal immunity to 2:19:33.800 --> 2:19:36.600 do whatever with them, right, But most people would have 2:19:36.680 --> 2:19:40.960 reacted in a why broadly similar manner without training, you know, 2:19:41.120 --> 2:19:42.520 without training and experience. 2:19:42.720 --> 2:19:45.800 Now, there's one way that she describes his kind of 2:19:45.959 --> 2:19:50.680 like weird stumbling on the ground quote. The auditory tone 2:19:50.800 --> 2:19:53.960 in his voice was terror. The best way to describe 2:19:53.959 --> 2:19:56.280 it was like watching a baby to raft trying to 2:19:56.360 --> 2:19:58.160 walk for the first time, trying to. 2:19:58.160 --> 2:20:01.320 Get the out of the road. That is that is 2:20:01.400 --> 2:20:04.080 going to echo in his mind until the day he dies. 2:20:06.640 --> 2:20:15.000 So maybe dressed stumbling learning to walk for the first time. 2:20:15.560 --> 2:20:19.320 Do you know what else is learning to walk? I 2:20:19.360 --> 2:20:19.640 don't know. 2:20:19.760 --> 2:20:24.240 That doesn't really now, do you know what else could 2:20:24.280 --> 2:20:27.000 perceive acorns as a threat to business. 2:20:27.959 --> 2:20:30.640 Oh yeah, we I mean, the one thing all of 2:20:30.680 --> 2:20:33.879 our sponsors agree on is that acorns and all trees 2:20:34.000 --> 2:20:37.000 should be eliminated in the interest of better profit margins. 2:20:37.080 --> 2:20:51.280 So dangerous kill the natural world, live free. I want 2:20:51.320 --> 2:20:53.080 to know one other thing as I'm talking about, like 2:20:54.360 --> 2:20:57.600 why they I'm not surprised they reacted this way, and 2:20:57.640 --> 2:20:59.600 what it says to me about like how I think. 2:20:59.720 --> 2:21:04.280 Like I think that a group of moderately competent civilians 2:21:04.320 --> 2:21:08.560 with concealed firearms would have responded better than both officers 2:21:08.600 --> 2:21:11.280 in this situation. Large not for the reason that they're 2:21:11.360 --> 2:21:15.520 more smarter or better trained, because they probably aren't, but 2:21:15.680 --> 2:21:18.720 because they go through the world carrying a gun knowing 2:21:18.840 --> 2:21:21.040 that if anything they do with that gun, they're legally 2:21:21.080 --> 2:21:24.840 accountable for every shot fired they're accountable for, which is 2:21:24.879 --> 2:21:28.000 a different mind state than what police are trained to do, 2:21:28.040 --> 2:21:31.560 which is the instant you feel endangered, you should draw 2:21:31.760 --> 2:21:35.360 and be prepared to shoot or shoot immediately, because nothing 2:21:35.440 --> 2:21:37.880 matters more than you getting home, and you have qualified 2:21:37.879 --> 2:21:39.360 immunity on your side, right. 2:21:39.879 --> 2:21:42.840 Yeah, which allows you to interpret a very quiet tapping 2:21:42.959 --> 2:21:48.560 sound as a lethal threat to your life. Now, Sergeant 2:21:48.600 --> 2:21:51.880 Roberts said, that she did observe Hernandez move himself into 2:21:52.000 --> 2:21:54.879 kind of a kneeling shooting stance on his left knee 2:21:54.920 --> 2:21:58.400 with his right foot planted in front, but still quote, 2:21:58.440 --> 2:22:00.320 it seemed like his motor functions were not off running 2:22:00.320 --> 2:22:02.360 properly from what I saw. He told me again, shots 2:22:02.400 --> 2:22:03.959 her fire. He's completely out in the open. No one 2:22:04.000 --> 2:22:05.520 would think that's a good place to take a knee 2:22:05.600 --> 2:22:09.240 to tactically fire. So he was still trying to respond 2:22:09.280 --> 2:22:12.680 in some way, but still very very baby draft coated. 2:22:12.720 --> 2:22:15.480 It seems yeah, yeah, I mean, that seems like a 2:22:15.600 --> 2:22:16.720 constant thing for this fella. 2:22:17.320 --> 2:22:17.360 So. 2:22:18.000 --> 2:22:21.040 Roberts also admitted that she did not ever see the suspect. 2:22:21.160 --> 2:22:23.800 She could not see inside the patrol car and she 2:22:23.879 --> 2:22:27.280 couldn't hear anything coming from that area. Quote, if there 2:22:27.360 --> 2:22:29.440 would have been something going on in that vehicle, I 2:22:29.920 --> 2:22:31.960 don't know if I necessarily would have heard it. Was 2:22:32.000 --> 2:22:34.200 I hearing or seeing the windows be blasted out. No, 2:22:34.520 --> 2:22:36.640 I couldn't see the right side of the vehicle. But 2:22:36.760 --> 2:22:39.000 based on the circumstances, I'm thinking that somehow he shot 2:22:39.080 --> 2:22:41.120 Jesse from the back and it had struck him some 2:22:41.320 --> 2:22:44.360 way somehow. I don't know if the individual's gotten out 2:22:44.360 --> 2:22:45.920 of the car and it's on the other side, you know, 2:22:46.080 --> 2:22:48.400 like he's escaped somehow. I couldn't see if the door 2:22:48.520 --> 2:22:50.560 was wide open. I don't know if he's gotten out 2:22:50.600 --> 2:22:52.760 and they've had a little tussle. Is he's shooting from 2:22:52.840 --> 2:22:54.440 the back of the car. All these things are going 2:22:54.520 --> 2:22:56.280 through my head, but the main thing is that he's 2:22:56.360 --> 2:22:57.680 in the back of the car. He's got a gun, 2:22:57.760 --> 2:22:59.760 and we missed it, and somehow he shot Deputy her. 2:22:59.840 --> 2:23:04.920 Now so she also couldn't remember who shot first, but 2:23:05.080 --> 2:23:07.440 she denied the notion that she started shooting because she 2:23:07.560 --> 2:23:11.560 thought Hernandez fired his gun first. She was confident in 2:23:11.680 --> 2:23:16.400 her her own use of gunfire before before she could 2:23:16.480 --> 2:23:18.120 tell that Jesse was firing. 2:23:18.640 --> 2:23:21.040 Yeah, interesting quote. 2:23:21.440 --> 2:23:23.400 The threat was someone had shot him. We had an 2:23:23.440 --> 2:23:25.480 armed suspect in the back of the vehicle. Jesse was shot. 2:23:25.560 --> 2:23:27.480 I'm watching him, you know, fumble on the road. How 2:23:27.520 --> 2:23:29.000 do I give him more time? How do I draw 2:23:29.000 --> 2:23:31.160 the attention to me? How do I save him? I 2:23:31.240 --> 2:23:33.400 thought I was watching him get murdered. The tone in 2:23:33.480 --> 2:23:35.800 his voice, look on his face, the physical reactions. I'm 2:23:35.800 --> 2:23:37.480 thinking we missed the gun and this is it. How 2:23:37.520 --> 2:23:40.280 do I get to Jesse to save him. She she 2:23:40.480 --> 2:23:42.720 talks about how she quote couldn't let him be shot 2:23:42.840 --> 2:23:44.840 again again, as all of this is like so confident 2:23:45.040 --> 2:23:48.080 that that that this has happened, and they're so confident 2:23:48.160 --> 2:23:50.640 in their own use of force. She was also concerned 2:23:50.720 --> 2:23:54.119 that if the suspect got away, other people's lives could 2:23:54.120 --> 2:23:56.480 be in danger, like his girlfriend who was nearby and 2:23:56.560 --> 2:24:00.680 the friend who was talking to police about their domestic issue. Quote, 2:24:00.800 --> 2:24:02.280 there was a threat in the back of the patrol car. 2:24:02.360 --> 2:24:03.920 I had a deputy that was on the ground that 2:24:04.040 --> 2:24:05.440 was still a threat to Jesse's life. I needed to 2:24:05.440 --> 2:24:07.520 provide him some sort of cover or bring the attention 2:24:07.640 --> 2:24:10.039 to me. I'm watching him die. I've got to do something. 2:24:10.040 --> 2:24:12.879 I've got to do something. There's that just like overall 2:24:14.040 --> 2:24:19.600 constantly throughout this interview with the Professional Standards Investigation, she's 2:24:19.680 --> 2:24:22.680 just constantly saying how she thought that this man was 2:24:22.720 --> 2:24:24.920 gonna die. That's why she responded the way she did. 2:24:25.320 --> 2:24:27.760 Like she talks about how she can't render aid if 2:24:27.800 --> 2:24:30.840 there's still a threat, she has to like get regain 2:24:30.920 --> 2:24:31.960 control the situation. 2:24:32.480 --> 2:24:35.240 All of those are reasonable things to say, Yeah, all 2:24:35.240 --> 2:24:37.080 of those are reasonable things to say in a real 2:24:37.160 --> 2:24:37.640 gun fight. 2:24:38.600 --> 2:24:42.160 Yes, it's just a little bit less less valid with 2:24:42.320 --> 2:24:47.680 the en shiting incident. Is an acorn falling on a roof? Yes, 2:24:48.080 --> 2:24:51.360 and you're shooting directly at a man who's your own 2:24:51.480 --> 2:24:55.000 big car been searched two times and is wrapped inside, 2:24:55.000 --> 2:24:56.040 who has handcuffs on. 2:24:56.720 --> 2:24:56.760 Like. 2:24:58.480 --> 2:25:01.320 So, Yeah, After both cops spared off this large valley 2:25:01.440 --> 2:25:05.040 of bullets, they both repositioned behind cover, called in more backup, 2:25:05.480 --> 2:25:08.240 and Roberts tended to manage the situation and the other 2:25:08.280 --> 2:25:12.200 individuals in the area and eventually check in on Deputy Hernandez. Quote, 2:25:12.680 --> 2:25:15.440 the threat was still a threat until we were able 2:25:15.520 --> 2:25:17.959 to remove him from the car. Again, they're not viewing 2:25:18.040 --> 2:25:20.040 him as a person, They're viewing him as a threat. 2:25:20.280 --> 2:25:23.200 Like that is that is like he's no longer like 2:25:23.240 --> 2:25:23.760 a human being. 2:25:23.840 --> 2:25:26.720 He is he is a threat. That is what he represents. 2:25:26.800 --> 2:25:26.920 Now. 2:25:27.400 --> 2:25:30.000 Yeah, well, and that is that is how they're trained 2:25:30.160 --> 2:25:32.360 to talk. And that is, by the way, like in 2:25:32.480 --> 2:25:35.240 a court of law, how you should talk, right, you don't. 2:25:35.440 --> 2:25:36.960 You would not say, if you were involved in the 2:25:37.080 --> 2:25:40.440 legal defensive shooting, I shot to kill. You would say 2:25:40.480 --> 2:25:42.600 I shot to stop the threat. That is like how 2:25:42.640 --> 2:25:44.840 people are trained, because that's what plays best in the court. 2:25:45.320 --> 2:25:45.520 Yeah. 2:25:45.560 --> 2:25:48.520 No, she all of her interview is very polished. She is, 2:25:48.640 --> 2:25:51.640 she likes very she's she's been a caught for fifteen years, 2:25:51.680 --> 2:25:53.920 like she is. She knows what she's saying here. 2:25:54.040 --> 2:25:56.560 Yes, she's been coached before. Yeah, she's she's aware. 2:25:57.360 --> 2:25:59.360 So after they were able to get to cover, she 2:25:59.480 --> 2:26:02.040 called in more resources. Quote, that's when we were able 2:26:02.080 --> 2:26:05.480 to treat it as more of a barricaded armed suspect situation. 2:26:06.240 --> 2:26:08.960 This poor dude, Yeah, like what do you do? 2:26:09.240 --> 2:26:11.800 Like you're hanging in the back of the car like everywhere, 2:26:11.920 --> 2:26:15.240 like like it seems like this guy is guilty of 2:26:15.680 --> 2:26:18.240 having a little bit of having an emotional breakdown with 2:26:18.440 --> 2:26:21.200 his partner and doing things he should not have done, 2:26:21.480 --> 2:26:23.920 none of which the penalty for is getting shot at 2:26:24.040 --> 2:26:25.400 while strapped into a car. 2:26:25.640 --> 2:26:28.359 Yeah, he stole his girlfriend's car, He sent her threatening messages. 2:26:28.400 --> 2:26:31.279 He was described as being abassive in the past. Yeah, 2:26:31.360 --> 2:26:33.800 there's bad things, but that doesn't mean you can get 2:26:33.840 --> 2:26:37.400 executed by police because they hurt an a chord Like, No, 2:26:37.959 --> 2:26:38.480 that is. 2:26:38.520 --> 2:26:40.560 Not that is not what our society has deemed the 2:26:40.600 --> 2:26:43.840 punishment for those options for those behaviors should be so. 2:26:45.600 --> 2:26:48.400 Roberts closed this interview by saying, quote, I don't think 2:26:48.440 --> 2:26:51.040 there's anything funny about it. It just went from zero 2:26:51.160 --> 2:26:52.920 to one hundred within the drop of a hat. I 2:26:53.000 --> 2:26:54.680 know we talk about it all the time, but when 2:26:54.720 --> 2:26:57.280 it does, it does. And she's talking about how, like 2:26:57.400 --> 2:27:01.279 how fast the situation escalates, like from a very standard 2:27:01.320 --> 2:27:04.960 interaction towards you're now multiple people are shooting, like this 2:27:05.160 --> 2:27:07.959 is it happens so quickly. It went from the zeer 2:27:08.000 --> 2:27:09.440 to one hundred within the drop of the hat. 2:27:10.080 --> 2:27:13.240 Yeah, that's that is what happens with shootings. 2:27:13.720 --> 2:27:16.560 She knew that Hernandez was prior military and when in 2:27:16.680 --> 2:27:20.360 training Hernandez was training on her shift, she described him 2:27:20.360 --> 2:27:24.039 as quote a very squared away person, somebody that if 2:27:24.040 --> 2:27:26.760 they tell you something, you don't question it. I wanted 2:27:26.840 --> 2:27:28.960 Jesse on my shift. When I observed him in high 2:27:29.000 --> 2:27:33.200 stressful situations, he reacted appropriately. He wasn't afraid to respond 2:27:34.000 --> 2:27:36.800 and he's I think that last part is certainly true. 2:27:37.000 --> 2:27:38.680 He was not afraid to respond well. 2:27:38.720 --> 2:27:42.120 And this is why, again, when the response for a 2:27:42.160 --> 2:27:43.760 lot of people when I would talk about this to 2:27:43.879 --> 2:27:45.640 them is suspecting it had something to do with his 2:27:45.720 --> 2:27:49.160 military training that he responded this way. Soldiers aren't trained 2:27:49.240 --> 2:27:52.720 this way. Again, this is soldiers contrained in the field. 2:27:53.040 --> 2:27:56.200 But soldiers are generally trained to not air on the 2:27:56.280 --> 2:27:59.680 side of opening fire blindly because war crimes are a 2:27:59.720 --> 2:28:02.080 thing they're concerned about and they have a sense of 2:28:02.160 --> 2:28:05.280 professional pride against Again, not to say that they do 2:28:05.440 --> 2:28:07.840 not kill innocent people. They do all the time, because 2:28:07.879 --> 2:28:10.320 that's what war is. But this is not the way. 2:28:10.680 --> 2:28:14.199 So this is police training. This guy's bias towards reacting 2:28:14.280 --> 2:28:16.680 this way is the result of police training, not special 2:28:16.760 --> 2:28:17.520 forces training. 2:28:18.080 --> 2:28:20.920 She kind of reaffirmed her trust in Hernandez as a 2:28:20.920 --> 2:28:23.920 person who was like reliable, saying when they were on 2:28:24.080 --> 2:28:26.880 night shift during training, quote, he acted appropriately, He did 2:28:26.920 --> 2:28:28.840 not lose control of his emotions. I have a lot 2:28:28.840 --> 2:28:31.080 of respect for him. Actually, when he tells you something, 2:28:31.280 --> 2:28:33.680 it's not something like are you sure you know he'd 2:28:33.720 --> 2:28:36.480 tell you something and that's what's happening, or that's what happened. 2:28:36.920 --> 2:28:38.879 I don't think there's anything malicious about what he did. 2:28:39.360 --> 2:28:40.160 I'm not mad at him. 2:28:40.160 --> 2:28:42.520 I'm not upset about it because I truly believe that 2:28:42.680 --> 2:28:46.360 he thought that's what was happening, unquote, which is again, 2:28:46.400 --> 2:28:50.280 it just I'd be pissed you almost, Like I don't 2:28:50.280 --> 2:28:52.680 know if I was tricked into almost killing someone. 2:28:53.600 --> 2:28:58.320 I don't understand this reaction. Like it's this thin blue 2:28:58.400 --> 2:29:01.480 line shit, right, Yeah, they have to group together so 2:29:01.800 --> 2:29:07.160 so hard. Yeah, it's it's and it's like this guy 2:29:07.760 --> 2:29:11.160 got you into a situation where you could have shot 2:29:11.240 --> 2:29:15.000 a child, Like I would never forgive someone who put 2:29:15.080 --> 2:29:18.840 me in that position for no good reason, right, Like, 2:29:19.560 --> 2:29:21.840 it's why that's such such an insane response to me. 2:29:22.360 --> 2:29:24.600 So she has to keep affirming that he has like 2:29:24.600 --> 2:29:26.400 a good judgment, and it's it's so bizarre. 2:29:26.520 --> 2:29:30.199 No, he doesn't, like he very clearly doesn't. You'll watch 2:29:30.280 --> 2:29:33.440 the video. It'd be one thing if like they were 2:29:33.600 --> 2:29:36.200 under fire and he shot and his bullet went wide 2:29:36.240 --> 2:29:38.440 and hit a civilian and it's no, that's like absolutely, 2:29:38.600 --> 2:29:41.440 it's just a horrible accident. But like his judgment wasn't bad. 2:29:41.520 --> 2:29:44.520 It was just a terrible situation. This is so different, 2:29:44.920 --> 2:29:47.120 like and that she's still going to bat for him, 2:29:47.160 --> 2:29:50.320 says everything about cop cops, cop brain. 2:29:50.640 --> 2:29:53.200 Yeah, there's a few lines that I want to read 2:29:53.240 --> 2:29:55.840 before we close. Out here that are in the conclusion 2:29:56.400 --> 2:29:59.840 of the of the report can't wait. They describe her 2:30:00.000 --> 2:30:03.960 and his legs as quote, stopped working correctly. I think 2:30:04.000 --> 2:30:05.800 it's just a really funny way to phrase it. 2:30:06.200 --> 2:30:07.720 I would describe his brain that way. 2:30:07.840 --> 2:30:11.640 But yeah, his legs weren't responding as he intended. But 2:30:11.800 --> 2:30:14.800 there was no evidence to support anything impacted Deputy Hernandez. 2:30:15.000 --> 2:30:17.280 No defects are found on his uniform or his blistering 2:30:17.320 --> 2:30:21.439 vests support the impact Hernandez. It's response was not objectively reasonable, 2:30:21.959 --> 2:30:26.879 so they they ruled that Hernandez's response was not objectively reasonable, 2:30:26.959 --> 2:30:28.080 that it was not appropriate. 2:30:28.480 --> 2:30:30.920 Positively surprised about that, but they. 2:30:30.920 --> 2:30:34.800 Found Sergeant Roberts's response as being reasonable because she believed 2:30:34.800 --> 2:30:37.119 Hernandez has been shot because of his tone of voice, 2:30:37.400 --> 2:30:39.760 his stumbling, attempts to move and stand up, and it's 2:30:39.760 --> 2:30:42.480 apparent quote lack of control over his body. 2:30:43.400 --> 2:30:45.320 Yeah, I would not call it. I wouldn't say her 2:30:45.360 --> 2:30:47.840 response is reasonable. I would say her response is what 2:30:47.879 --> 2:30:49.680 I would expect most people to do. 2:30:49.920 --> 2:30:53.160 No, or it is reasonable in terms of how police 2:30:53.240 --> 2:30:58.039 procedure operates, like she followed the correct protocols for interacting 2:30:58.080 --> 2:30:59.039 as a police officer. 2:30:59.240 --> 2:31:02.080 Yeah, I don't believe under the laws she would have 2:31:02.120 --> 2:31:03.840 been found liable by any court. 2:31:04.280 --> 2:31:07.040 No, they said, quote Robert's found out Hernandez to be 2:31:07.080 --> 2:31:08.920 a reliable depity that she could trust. She had no 2:31:08.959 --> 2:31:11.120 reason to doubt what Hernandez had been telling her. She 2:31:11.240 --> 2:31:14.520 described the auditory tone of Hernandez's voice as terror, the 2:31:14.600 --> 2:31:17.840 look on his face as being quote consistent with being 2:31:17.920 --> 2:31:22.480 in feary. I love that kind of cop speak, consistent 2:31:22.640 --> 2:31:23.640 with being in fear. 2:31:23.879 --> 2:31:28.320 Yeah, he looked scared. Yeah, amazing. I I do want 2:31:28.360 --> 2:31:30.360 to go over one thing before we come out, because 2:31:30.360 --> 2:31:32.680 this is again something I've been asked by people, and 2:31:33.160 --> 2:31:35.000 you know, maybe this is actionable. If you ever found 2:31:35.040 --> 2:31:37.400 yourself handcuffed in the back of a police car and 2:31:37.560 --> 2:31:39.880 they start shooting at you, you should know how this 2:31:40.000 --> 2:31:42.760 guy survived because reading the interview with him, he was like, 2:31:42.879 --> 2:31:44.440 as soon as I realized they were shooting at me, 2:31:44.600 --> 2:31:48.600 I like flung myself down sideways and laid flat. I 2:31:48.720 --> 2:31:50.320 think in front of the seat. He might have been 2:31:50.360 --> 2:31:52.280 on the seat. I would get in front of the 2:31:52.360 --> 2:31:57.120 seat if you can. But the reason he survived is 2:31:57.360 --> 2:32:02.360 that handguns number one, police carry hollow points in their handguns. 2:32:02.400 --> 2:32:04.600 Which is a bullet that has a hole in the 2:32:04.680 --> 2:32:07.600 slug the thing that goes into somebody. And the reason 2:32:07.640 --> 2:32:09.920 why you make a hollow point is that a hollow 2:32:10.000 --> 2:32:14.879 point expands immediately upon impact, so it doesn't penetrate as well. 2:32:15.000 --> 2:32:17.120 It will not go through armor, and it will not 2:32:17.280 --> 2:32:20.960 go through objects very well. But when it hits meat, 2:32:21.080 --> 2:32:25.400 it expands and so instead of going through a body, 2:32:26.000 --> 2:32:28.840 it stops and it imparts all of the force from 2:32:28.920 --> 2:32:31.160 the bullet into that body, so it is better at 2:32:31.240 --> 2:32:33.640 stopping people. But what that means is when someone is 2:32:33.640 --> 2:32:35.880 shooting at something like a car and shooting into the 2:32:35.920 --> 2:32:38.320 back of a car and you have that whole reinforced 2:32:38.360 --> 2:32:40.320 trunk and backseat of a police car to go through 2:32:40.800 --> 2:32:44.600 those nine millimeters, rounds are unlikely to penetrate very far. 2:32:44.800 --> 2:32:47.160 So if you are laying down in front of the 2:32:47.240 --> 2:32:49.960 seat or flat on the seat, your odds of not 2:32:50.160 --> 2:32:53.320 getting hit are pretty good. Like he had, I'm not 2:32:53.480 --> 2:32:56.760 surprised he survived having done what he did. You know, 2:32:56.800 --> 2:32:59.120 if you're sitting up and you've got body parts that 2:32:59.240 --> 2:33:02.480 are like view of the windows, you're very likely to 2:33:02.560 --> 2:33:05.320 get hit. But because he did what he did, he 2:33:05.520 --> 2:33:09.400 essentially saved his own life, is what it's my interpretation 2:33:09.520 --> 2:33:10.600 of what I've read. 2:33:10.959 --> 2:33:13.600 Yeah, no, I mean it's it's it is a terrifying 2:33:13.600 --> 2:33:16.280 scenario that there was. There was an instant recently of 2:33:17.840 --> 2:33:20.280 this officer who made his first ever arrest. He had 2:33:20.640 --> 2:33:24.840 two suspects locked in the back and he got distracted 2:33:24.879 --> 2:33:27.640 about driving. He drove his car off the road into 2:33:27.720 --> 2:33:29.240 a lake, and both of. 2:33:29.400 --> 2:33:32.199 The suspects drowned. Jesus fucking Christ. 2:33:32.080 --> 2:33:34.280 Like this is this is like all these things point 2:33:34.320 --> 2:33:37.720 towards just inherent problems with the policing system. 2:33:38.520 --> 2:33:40.279 Cops bad, avoid at all costs. 2:33:40.520 --> 2:33:43.080 It's terrifying, Like it's it is like these people can 2:33:43.160 --> 2:33:45.480 just act like this can kidnap, people can do all 2:33:45.560 --> 2:33:49.640 these things and face basically no repercussions at least turn 2:33:49.720 --> 2:33:52.040 ind as is no longer a cop, which is good, 2:33:52.240 --> 2:33:54.560 but like that doesn't fix any of the underlying problems 2:33:54.600 --> 2:33:56.960 with training that cause people to react like this in 2:33:57.040 --> 2:34:00.360 the face of a squirrel armed with an AI corn 2:34:01.200 --> 2:34:03.560 being the most dangerous thing that you can encounter. 2:34:04.160 --> 2:34:08.160 Yeah, it's very bad police work. Avoid cops. 2:34:09.520 --> 2:34:12.440 Yeah, yeah, pretty much pretty much. So, Yeah, that is 2:34:12.760 --> 2:34:14.760 that is what we have to say on the acorn 2:34:14.840 --> 2:34:15.560 involved shooting. 2:34:16.000 --> 2:34:17.520 Yeah, great stuff. 2:34:17.920 --> 2:34:20.760 Watch out for acorns, Watch out for droops. Also dangerous. 2:34:20.800 --> 2:34:24.360 They can fall off a tree. Yeah, pine cones can 2:34:24.440 --> 2:34:25.400 sometimes be lethal. 2:34:25.640 --> 2:34:27.680 Oh they call those the widow makers. 2:34:28.200 --> 2:34:30.160 Eyes on the sky, folks, You never know. 2:34:31.680 --> 2:34:38.440 All right, bye, Hey, We'll be back Monday with more 2:34:38.520 --> 2:34:41.160 episodes every week from now until the heat death of 2:34:41.200 --> 2:34:41.720 the Universe. 2:34:42.360 --> 2:34:44.680 It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. 2:34:44.920 --> 2:34:47.560 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 2:34:47.640 --> 2:34:49.800 cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the 2:34:49.879 --> 2:34:53.280 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 2:34:53.720 --> 2:34:55.800 You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated 2:34:55.879 --> 2:34:58.879 monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. 2:34:59.120 --> 2:34:59.879 Thanks for listening.