Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Oh it's it could happen here,
Speaker 1: and it, by goodness, it continues to I'm Robert Evans. Um, Sophie,
Speaker 1: my producer just noted to me that we should probably
Speaker 1: uh introduce Sharene Lanna units since you've recently joined the
Speaker 1: team and have been on several episodes, and we just
Speaker 1: kind of rolled with it. Sharine, Wait wait wait wait
Speaker 1: wait wait wait what are you? Who are you? Where
Speaker 1: are you? When are you? Those are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions as I can't answer. You are a frequent ghost
Speaker 1: on guest Um your producer with I heart you're on
Speaker 1: the show, ethnically ambiguous with Anna Hosnia and um you
Speaker 1: are our our our bud, I am your bud, thank you?
Speaker 1: Yeah joined published Yeah, poet a filmmaker a depressed person.
Speaker 1: You know, I took all the boxes. U helped Sophie
Speaker 1: bury that body the other year. That was between us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know why we need to put that on Mike,
Speaker 1: between you and lake Mead m Okay, Well everyone's going
Speaker 1: to know where that body is, so you're gonna find
Speaker 1: it soon anyway. But yeah, I it's really fun to
Speaker 1: talk to you all. So it's nice that we can
Speaker 1: record me doing it now for work. Cool. That's Is
Speaker 1: that a good intro? Yeah, that is a good intro.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have sharing on our team. It's
Speaker 1: uh something that we've been hoping that would happen for
Speaker 1: a while now, and we just feel very fortunate to
Speaker 1: have her voice as part of our as part of
Speaker 1: our very tight knit group. And um, you're welcome, listeners, hucks.
Speaker 1: I feel very honored to be a part of such
Speaker 1: a small, tight knit group, especially because everyone I'm not
Speaker 1: even saying this to Fish please, but everyone here is
Speaker 1: much smarter than me, and so I've been learning a
Speaker 1: lot and I don't do nearly as much research as
Speaker 1: y'all do. So I hope to be the like a
Speaker 1: a someone representing the audience that knows nothing, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, that's my role here is to
Speaker 1: really give people, to let people be seen who have
Speaker 1: their heads empty like mine. So representation matters. Well, I
Speaker 1: feel like we had empty headed represented when I joined
Speaker 1: the team. But fair enough, what are we? What is are?
Speaker 1: Who are we today? What are we doing today? Where
Speaker 1: are we today? Chris, you're the president of this episode?
Speaker 1: Oh no, wait, that's bad. All right, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I think I think I have to assassinate myself as
Speaker 1: the way this works. But yeah, we're legally actually, yeah
Speaker 1: that that I think next episode, I assassinate myself this episode,
Speaker 1: I'd get on elected or something. But yeah, we're we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about sort of two convergent paths of how
Speaker 1: we got to like the most recent disaster but the
Speaker 1: most recent well this isn't even the most recent disaster anymore,
Speaker 1: but I how how how we got to the place
Speaker 1: where review weade is about to die? And you know,
Speaker 1: there's two threads. And tomorrow we'll be talking about the terrorism,
Speaker 1: but today we'll be talking I say, we mostly we shoene,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we're gonna be talking about how the sort
Speaker 1: of like half a century long electoral movement that got
Speaker 1: us to this place. Yeah, it's really interesting because I
Speaker 1: mean some of it is self explanatory and some of
Speaker 1: it isn't that I think interesting to go back in
Speaker 1: time and really figure out how we got where we are.
Speaker 1: So I think it's pretty obvious that like Republicans use
Speaker 1: the abortion issue to forge coalitions with like right wing
Speaker 1: and fundamentalist Christian voters, but Democrats are also using it
Speaker 1: to attract woman voters, and it seems like neither party
Speaker 1: will risk modifying the rigid position that it has for
Speaker 1: fear of alienating those who the abortion issue has helped attract.
Speaker 1: Because it feels like it's this just we're at a
Speaker 1: stand still. It's not solvable. But it's actually when you
Speaker 1: look at the history, it's pretty I don't know, it
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense how we landed here. And every
Speaker 1: presidential candidate or any kid in general will present these
Speaker 1: countries issues with like a sense of urgency, especially this issue,
Speaker 1: but it really feels like they're just using it to
Speaker 1: attract voters and then it gets ignored. Um, but how
Speaker 1: did how did how did abortion become a part of
Speaker 1: an issue in America? The polarization of the parties on
Speaker 1: this issue really started in the nineteen seventies and UM
Speaker 1: party leaders just started moving farther and farther apart on
Speaker 1: the issue. And a lot of scholars say that this
Speaker 1: is a combination of like grassroots activism and also established
Speaker 1: also just political strategy. So in nineteen seventies, UH, the
Speaker 1: politicians used on abortion, it didn't break down on along
Speaker 1: knee party lines. Republican president Gerald Ford, he opposed Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 1: but the first lady was an abortion rights supporter, and
Speaker 1: then his vice president Rockefeller, he presided over the repeal
Speaker 1: of abortion restrictions in New York UM and UH. In Congress,
Speaker 1: Republican Republicans voted against abortion about the same rate as Democrats,
Speaker 1: So there wasn't a huge black and white, good evil
Speaker 1: kind of thing going on UM. And it started to
Speaker 1: change in the seventies. So during his presidential campaign in
Speaker 1: seventy two, Nixon began striking out anti abortion position are
Speaker 1: staking out anti abortion positions as part of a state
Speaker 1: strategy to appeal to Catholic voters and other social conservatives,
Speaker 1: and after he won with the majority of Catholic votes,
Speaker 1: Republican strategists began using the same tactics in Congress, and
Speaker 1: they were forging coalitions with evangelical groups around opposition to abortion.
Speaker 1: And it was really the larger effort to make the
Speaker 1: Republican Party painted as this like pro family to help
Speaker 1: mobilize like socially conservative voters that really value this idea
Speaker 1: of this like traditional and quotes family. So it might
Speaker 1: have been both grassroots organizing, but I think both of
Speaker 1: these efforts really focused around this idea of this traditional
Speaker 1: quote unquote like Christian good family, um. And I think
Speaker 1: that's still the a lot of the intention today is
Speaker 1: to really promote that. And why abortion is wrong is
Speaker 1: because it kind of goes against this idea of what
Speaker 1: a family should look like or how families should act
Speaker 1: like in particular how mother should act. Um. So yeah, thoughts, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I definitely think we see that um everywhere.
Speaker 1: That type of propaganda, uh is you know there obviously
Speaker 1: and then there in like the like oh this is
Speaker 1: like hidden in type thing. But yeah, I mean Chris
Speaker 1: has talked about that quite a bit on certain things.
Speaker 1: So maybe Chris would be best to to deep dive
Speaker 1: on that a little bit. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a there's a couple of things that
Speaker 1: have been like like are perculating around this time too,
Speaker 1: which is also like this is this is a period
Speaker 1: of like really intense feminist monibilization. And this is also
Speaker 1: a period where, you know, the one of the sort
Speaker 1: of rights driving issues had been integration, like like a
Speaker 1: opposing integration and like promoting segregation. And by this period
Speaker 1: they've like they've basically lost that and so they need
Speaker 1: like something right, and like that's something winds up being
Speaker 1: this vision of this sort of like of this like
Speaker 1: very specifically white Christian patriarchal family. And and I think
Speaker 1: it's also interesting that, like, you know, if you look
Speaker 1: at the initial abortion stuff is largely yeah, it's like okay,
Speaker 1: if Republicans are targeting Catholics, right, And the reason they're
Speaker 1: targeting Catholics because Evangelicals particularly like haven't quite figured out
Speaker 1: what they think about this yet and this kind of
Speaker 1: like family stuff and I don't know it ties into
Speaker 1: this this whole sort of this attempt to get evangelicals
Speaker 1: into politics for the first time or not to the
Speaker 1: first time, but they've kind of been out of it
Speaker 1: for a while like on this sort of like while
Speaker 1: the rapture is coming, so like what's the point of
Speaker 1: dealing with like this impire like secular politics thing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they get sort of roped back into it by the
Speaker 1: polarization of abortion and by making like by by by
Speaker 1: making abortion in the family this incredibly sort of central
Speaker 1: part of what the Republican platform is, and by sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, like attempting to destroy the kind
Speaker 1: of like more moderate like Rockefeller liberal wing of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party who just like get stomped don't exist anymore. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. And um, I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I feel like we see a lot of candidates
Speaker 1: go back and forth and issues now, but it even started.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's been going on since forever because politics
Speaker 1: are all scamp But Ronald Reagan really illustrates the shift.
Speaker 1: Um because when he was a governor of California and
Speaker 1: sixty seven he signed a law that loosened abortion restrictions.
Speaker 1: But in his nine presidential campaign he called for the
Speaker 1: appointment of anti abortion judges. So he's just really I mean,
Speaker 1: just like any political candidate, he's going with the tides.
Speaker 1: He's trying to get elected, he's not really no one
Speaker 1: has actual morals that they stand on um, and only
Speaker 1: after or nineteen doesn't show that more Democrats than Republicans
Speaker 1: we're supporting access to abortion, because before then it was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty much, even if not just a little bit,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it was mainly honestly split over whether or
Speaker 1: not you were fucking Catholic, right, Like that was the
Speaker 1: primary determining factor. Yeah. Yeah, And I think that there's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing there too, because a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: because it's like the anti abortion people see Reagan as
Speaker 1: like their guy, but he gets into office and he's
Speaker 1: like not as strong on it as they wanted. And
Speaker 1: well we'll get into some of what that leads to
Speaker 1: next episode. But yeah, this this was like fundamentally, when
Speaker 1: you're looking at like the anti abortion movement, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a Christian nationalist power grab. And at that point
Speaker 1: they had just figured out the strategy. So it was
Speaker 1: good enough that they were able to help get Reagan
Speaker 1: into office, but it was not consolidated enough that Reagan
Speaker 1: really felt the need to do much more than pay
Speaker 1: it up service. You know. Yeah, We'll just an example
Speaker 1: of everyone campaigning on something that they know, we'll get
Speaker 1: them voted and then kind of ignoring it once they're
Speaker 1: in office because like it served its purpose. Um, I
Speaker 1: think there's there's another interesting thing that's going on here
Speaker 1: with that too, which is that at this point, so
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of the John of like
Speaker 1: Jerry Farroll in the more Majority And Okay, if you
Speaker 1: want to hear me talk about this for a really
Speaker 1: long time, don't listen to my episode of the Moon
Speaker 1: Eyes and how Reverend Moon also was a huge part
Speaker 1: of this. But there's like this giant shift in like
Speaker 1: the technology of recruiting voters where this this is where
Speaker 1: you start getting mailing list organizing. This is where you
Speaker 1: start getting like, you know, enormous list of people to
Speaker 1: to call for fundraisers. Is where you start like you know,
Speaker 1: this is where you start basically getting like the weird
Speaker 1: Facebook letter like chain mail things that we have now,
Speaker 1: but like they were just like mail people like scare
Speaker 1: stories about like here's like an actual baby they planned
Speaker 1: parenthood killed and that That's what I was saying by
Speaker 1: like the obvious things propaganda wise, But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that it's also like things on TV, things in movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like uh yeah, they kind of try to pull out
Speaker 1: the heart strings of some invisible heart they think people have. UM.
Speaker 1: But then even like like TV commercials things that like
Speaker 1: the traditional family that like, yeah, the nuclear white Christian
Speaker 1: family is like the default basic family and anything that
Speaker 1: strays from that is abnormal. Um, it's still the case now. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, calls for diversity or like putting a
Speaker 1: black friend in the show still you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not really Yeah, I have eventually I will do
Speaker 1: the entire rant that I have on this, but like,
Speaker 1: like this, this is the thing that like this is
Speaker 1: a powerful enough force that like, for example, if you
Speaker 1: look at like every Asian American movie in the US,
Speaker 1: the entire plot of every Asian American movie is trying
Speaker 1: to repair is a family, like in an Asian family
Speaker 1: trying to become the white Christian nuclear family but having
Speaker 1: problems with it because they're having family issues that get
Speaker 1: resolved and then having problems with it because they're Chinese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's it's just like warping sort of
Speaker 1: like yeah, like structural basis of society that like it's
Speaker 1: like a black hole that like like it tears the
Speaker 1: fabric of reality and pulls everything else into it. You know,
Speaker 1: I have the same gripe with a lot of there's
Speaker 1: in general, like movies and TV shows about marginalized people
Speaker 1: with a least from people. It always seems like the
Speaker 1: crux of the problem is cultural and overcoming whatever issue
Speaker 1: the culture is having to to disrupt this perfect white
Speaker 1: Christian life that is presented as the ideal. But going
Speaker 1: back to abortion, Sorry, no, don't, don't appologize. I would
Speaker 1: love to rant about this with you on another episode.
Speaker 1: You know what won't disrupt the white Christian hegemonic culture
Speaker 1: in the United States capitalism the products as well. Actually,
Speaker 1: it eventually will, because the nature of extractive capitalism, an
Speaker 1: endless growth, will inevitably alter the world in ways that
Speaker 1: makes the lifestyles that those kind of people harken back
Speaker 1: to in their propaganda fundamentally untenable and impossible to exist
Speaker 1: on any kind of scale. But I don't know what
Speaker 1: my point was here. Here's some here's some fucking ads. Oh,
Speaker 1: we're back, We're back. Let's go to the late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties. So the ladies, both Republicans and Democrats at
Speaker 1: this point, they were trying to appeal to the center
Speaker 1: for a while so they can remain as appealing to
Speaker 1: voters as possible. Um. Mary Zigler is a law professor
Speaker 1: at Florida State University who has studied the history of
Speaker 1: abortion and the abortion debate. And she wrote in the
Speaker 1: The Washington Post that the ES and the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: for instance, many abortion opponent and they devoted their energy
Speaker 1: to supporting incremental restrictions like a ban on dilation or extraction,
Speaker 1: which is a technique for abortions later in pregnancy that
Speaker 1: opponents call partial birth abortion. UM. And this restriction was
Speaker 1: eventually passed at the federal level in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: and it's far less sweeping than the heart heartbeat bills
Speaker 1: that many Republican voters favor today, which banned abortions as
Speaker 1: you know at six weeks UM. But Democrats, meanwhile, they
Speaker 1: were somewhat like equivocal on the abortion debate during this
Speaker 1: time period. Uh. Bill Clinton in his campaign he famlessly
Speaker 1: said that abortions should be quote safe, legal, and rare.
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton used the same language when she was running
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight too. Yeah, you really did,
Speaker 1: just absolutely cowardly. Yeah, like we support it, but also
Speaker 1: don't don't do it yeah like yeah. And obviously more
Speaker 1: recently both sides of the abortion debate, they've come to
Speaker 1: seek broader change. Among abortion rights supporters, there's been an
Speaker 1: increasing awareness of reproductive justice. And this term was actually
Speaker 1: coined in and it described an approach focus not just
Speaker 1: on the legal right to abortion, but on safe, affordable
Speaker 1: access to a range of reproductive health care as well
Speaker 1: as the ability the ability to parent children safely. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was in the nineties that a lot of
Speaker 1: organizations started to be formed to help support this, to
Speaker 1: help UH, abortion rights justice like kind of take form. Um.
Speaker 1: Sister Song, which is the Women of Color Reproductive Justice
Speaker 1: Collective was formed, and it was by sixteen organizations of
Speaker 1: women of color that formed these four mini communities. They
Speaker 1: were largely made up of Native American, African American, Latina,
Speaker 1: and Asian American communities. And they recognize that we have
Speaker 1: the right and responsibility to represent ourselves and our communities. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think this is important to note only because
Speaker 1: I don't think women of color get enough credit for
Speaker 1: really like leading the the the fight to get reproductive rights. UM.
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of I mean, I can
Speaker 1: shoot on white feminism all day, trust me, UM, but
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to this, a lot of white
Speaker 1: women are like heralded as like I don't know these
Speaker 1: um political heroes, when really, most of the time, with
Speaker 1: most issues when it comes to this, UH, women of
Speaker 1: color in the background doing most of the work. UM.
Speaker 1: That's another episode. UM. But Sister Song defines reproductive justice
Speaker 1: as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children,
Speaker 1: not have children, and parent the children we do have
Speaker 1: in safe and sustainable communities. So it puts a lens
Speaker 1: on the emphasis of affordability of abortions as well as
Speaker 1: on the legal status that it needs to have to
Speaker 1: even be safe and affordable. UM. Because the right of
Speaker 1: abortion means very little when we can't afford healthcare that
Speaker 1: we need. UM. And this is something that Kimberly Inis
Speaker 1: maguire said, she's the executive director of Unite for Reproductive
Speaker 1: Gender Equity called URGE. UM. This isn't a rights group
Speaker 1: focused on young people. UM. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that emerged during this more recent time that came
Speaker 1: focused on more the justice aspect versus just the right
Speaker 1: to have it, because it does doesn't do much if
Speaker 1: we have the right, and yet um, it's still inaccessible.
Speaker 1: So in the last five years, reproductive justice activists have
Speaker 1: campaigned to repeal the High Amendment, which was first passed
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventies six, and it bars federal funding for
Speaker 1: most abortions. It restricts Medicaid coverage for abortions, and the
Speaker 1: amendment makes it difficult for many low income Americans to
Speaker 1: pay for the procedure. The opponents of the High Amendment
Speaker 1: have had some successes. In twenty seventeen and twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Democrats and Congress introduced the Each E A. C. H.
Speaker 1: Woman Act, which would repeal HIDE and allow Medicaid to
Speaker 1: cover abortions. UM. But Democratic candidates have campaigned to repeal
Speaker 1: HIDE as well. During her presidential run in Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: called for the repeal of HIDE, and the whole Democratic
Speaker 1: Party followed suit. Um, which is something that would have
Speaker 1: been unthinkable in the years when her and her husband
Speaker 1: were calling for abortion to be quote unquote rare. So
Speaker 1: things have progressed a little bit again, I think unfortunately,
Speaker 1: though most of it is for following the trends versus
Speaker 1: actual morals. But that's my opinion. UM. But on Hide, UM, Uh,
Speaker 1: it feels like what has changed in the last five
Speaker 1: years is that a community of people UM, led by
Speaker 1: young people women of color, decided that the status quo
Speaker 1: was not good enough. So again it's just people in
Speaker 1: the background doing most of the work. UM. And at
Speaker 1: same time, abortion rights activists have been working to reduce
Speaker 1: stigma around abortion and to present the procedure as a
Speaker 1: normal part of medical of medical coverage UM. In response
Speaker 1: to efforts to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood, activists
Speaker 1: and ordinary people shared stories of their abortions under the
Speaker 1: hashtag shout your Abortion. So the left party, the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: is definitely leaning now obviously to be abortion positive. UM.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's definitely used as a way
Speaker 1: to attract voters more than anything else. And UM yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean with our current president right now, we all
Speaker 1: know he's Biden has had a mixed rested on abortion,
Speaker 1: which is like very a good a good representation of
Speaker 1: just how flip floppy politicians can be. Because when he
Speaker 1: was in the Senate and seventy three, he was the
Speaker 1: thirty year old practicing Catholic who concluded that the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court went too far on abortion rights in the Row case.
Speaker 1: He told an interview or the following year that a
Speaker 1: woman shouldn't have the soul right and say to what
Speaker 1: should happen to her body. That's a quote, the soul
Speaker 1: right to say what should happened to her body. She
Speaker 1: doesn't think women should have that. And by the time
Speaker 1: he left the Vice President's mansion in seventeen, he was
Speaker 1: seventy four years old, and he argued a far different
Speaker 1: view that government doesn't have the right to tell other
Speaker 1: people that women can't control their body. Um. Which is
Speaker 1: interesting because he not only was very vocal about being
Speaker 1: anti abortion, but like he uh used like in he
Speaker 1: crafted the Binded Amendment to ban the use of foreign
Speaker 1: aid for biomedical research related to abortion. So he was
Speaker 1: not only like vocal about it, he actually tried to
Speaker 1: push it back. And he repeatedly voted for the Tide
Speaker 1: Amendment that prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions,
Speaker 1: including medicaid. As I said, and both of these policies
Speaker 1: remain in place today despite efforts by Democrats to end
Speaker 1: the ban on the use of federal funds. Here's one
Speaker 1: thought that I have and again I I continue to
Speaker 1: be an advocate and don't take this the wrong way.
Speaker 1: We should learn from the right and how they made
Speaker 1: the progress they did with abortion. There are lessons there,
Speaker 1: and one of those lessons is that when you make
Speaker 1: something into the kind of issue that can get a
Speaker 1: politician elected, um, they will not actually pursue that issue
Speaker 1: if it's difficult, unless you create true believers and put
Speaker 1: them into politics. Right, Reagan got elected in part on abortion.
Speaker 1: Reagan didn't really do much about it. It was it
Speaker 1: was diligent periods of time of not just like putting
Speaker 1: people in politics who believed in the cause, but also
Speaker 1: of applying brutal pressure to elected leaders over decades who
Speaker 1: didn't confirm, firm, or conform. And we don't have that
Speaker 1: kind of time with like let's say climate change. But
Speaker 1: the same basic tactics need to be followed, which is,
Speaker 1: you need to be vicious when you when your leaders,
Speaker 1: when the people you elect don't move on these issues, Um,
Speaker 1: you need to be vicious and like a concerted and
Speaker 1: organized and like you need to come down on them
Speaker 1: like the hammer of fucking God. You know. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's how you win. But I think that's the
Speaker 1: biggest difference with Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats unfortunately
Speaker 1: are far more cowardly in voicing what they want. Even
Speaker 1: even now, Biden is pro abortion quote unquote, but he
Speaker 1: hasn't even said the word abortion out loud ever. He's
Speaker 1: like he put it in a statement in a tweet,
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a website, there's a web there's
Speaker 1: a website that is called has Biden said abortion yet?
Speaker 1: And there's just a big no on it right now? Obviously. Um.
Speaker 1: But he has like cast this evolution of his views
Speaker 1: as a like like wrestling with his teaching of his
Speaker 1: faith or whatever. Um. But it's obviously more it reflects
Speaker 1: a political calculation more than his views of fucking religion. Um.
Speaker 1: And in for example, he said, I'm prepared to accept
Speaker 1: that at the moment that the athe moment of conception,
Speaker 1: there's human life and being. But I'm not prepared to
Speaker 1: say that to other god fearing non god fearing people
Speaker 1: have a different view. Heard nothing do Caward Joseph Robinette,
Speaker 1: motherfucking Biden? What risting fun does that mean? Yeah? He
Speaker 1: also has quote has been quoted to say that this
Speaker 1: issue is the um like the most difficult thing he's
Speaker 1: had to wrestle with as a Catholic kind of thing.
Speaker 1: He's definitely made it this. I think he needs to
Speaker 1: overcome or whatever the ship. It's a religion, right, sure,
Speaker 1: it's a religion, and your religion has been at the
Speaker 1: very least. What I'll say about the Catholics is they
Speaker 1: did not adopt this as like a venal political strategy,
Speaker 1: which the evangelical right did, like they've been. The Catholic
Speaker 1: Church has been consistent on this for a minute now,
Speaker 1: So I get why somebody who is legitimately a believing
Speaker 1: Catholic would have to struggle with this. But the way
Speaker 1: you what what you what you say, if you're actually
Speaker 1: not like a fucking if you're not being a fucking
Speaker 1: goober about it, Um, what you say is, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: this is tough for me because of my faith, But
Speaker 1: this is the United States of America, and my faith
Speaker 1: does not dictate what other people get to do. And
Speaker 1: so I support the right to access to a portion
Speaker 1: that's right. Please can? I mean, I only want to
Speaker 1: bring that up because I just think the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: has conducted themselves in a really howardly way when it
Speaker 1: comes to stuff like this versus Republicans are so outright,
Speaker 1: even like volatilely trying to tell you how they feel.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that. Where do we go from here?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um yeah, the world is the world.
Speaker 1: It's certainly assuring. And uh, we'll be back tomorrow, Chris Water.
Speaker 1: What's our focus tomorrow? Tomorrow we're going to look at
Speaker 1: the other side of how they got abortion, other than
Speaker 1: like sort of running it as an electoral issue, which
Speaker 1: is they did a an amount of terrorism that is
Speaker 1: so large that like most of the people talking about
Speaker 1: the terrorism missed most of the terrorism. Yeah, it takes
Speaker 1: a minute to list speaking of terrorism, I I just
Speaker 1: wanted to Sorry, there is post role ads, but if
Speaker 1: you're listening to them, that's a choice. Blood. Hey, we
Speaker 1: always support people making the choice to listen to our
Speaker 1: wonderful advertisers like the Washington State Highway Patrol and lately Taser.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they've been running. Look we didn't. We don't
Speaker 1: approve that. We're getting them removed. But it is funny.
Speaker 1: Can I get a taser first? Or that is that?
Speaker 1: Not what that is? Um? I mean, Sharine, we can
Speaker 1: expense you with taser. Oh ship great, I'll send a
Speaker 1: list of what I want perfect. Okay, fine, it happened here.
Speaker 1: The thing that happened here was at anti abortion terrorism
Speaker 1: at High and Christopher Wong. I'm posting this. We're doing
Speaker 1: this really speedy with me, Sharne, Robert Garrison, and Sophie. Hi. Yeah, Hi,
Speaker 1: don't feel too speedy. I mean this is a yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're we're going through the interests. We can get
Speaker 1: to the we can get to the content fast. Get
Speaker 1: to the meat. Yeah, let's get to the fucking meat.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the sandwich portion of the I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing. We're talking about terrorism, Sophie, your
Speaker 1: favorite thing first save the day. So okay, well, we've
Speaker 1: we've talked about sort of abortion as a as a
Speaker 1: legal issue, but running parallel to the sort of legal
Speaker 1: electoral pain against abortion was a wave, a systemic campaign
Speaker 1: of terror that ranged Trevor from you know, sort of
Speaker 1: individual personal humiliation and terrorization of individual women seeking abortion
Speaker 1: to like nail bombs and blowing abortion provider's heads off
Speaker 1: with shotguns. Um. Yeah, so it's it's extremely bad, obviously,
Speaker 1: but I think there's a tendency among people who look
Speaker 1: at antibustion violence is sort of like isolated from its
Speaker 1: historical text, which is that, Okay, the American right has
Speaker 1: always ruled by terror from like literally its earliest extermination
Speaker 1: campaigns against addition as people who like whose land they
Speaker 1: stole to, you know, the sort of horrific psychological abuse
Speaker 1: and violence inflicted against slaves on their own plantation, who
Speaker 1: there's an entire history of like denying abortion people to
Speaker 1: slaves for numerous reasons. So you know, there's no reason
Speaker 1: really to expect that anti abortion militants like wouldn't be violent.
Speaker 1: And I think it's worth noting that that the tactics
Speaker 1: of of the sort of militant wing of the anti
Speaker 1: abortion movements, which are things like our arson bombings and
Speaker 1: assassination are these these are the key tactics of the
Speaker 1: of the segregationist movement when they're finding against integration and
Speaker 1: you know, low and behold, like as as abortion becomes
Speaker 1: the political glue for the right, after they sort of okay,
Speaker 1: well they sort of lose the fight over integration, they
Speaker 1: lose the ability to legally says like that you can't
Speaker 1: do integration, but a lot of the sort of factors
Speaker 1: aggregation like still exists. But yeah, like as I do
Speaker 1: that like you still see you know, you see a
Speaker 1: new generation of sort of right wing militants like taking
Speaker 1: the tactics of the old right wing militants and using
Speaker 1: them to kill people, which is to add, yeah, for
Speaker 1: the for the record, yes that is our official position.
Speaker 1: But we're taking up bold stands here radicals. So I
Speaker 1: think we should start with someone who was not killing people,
Speaker 1: because I think it's it's useful to see the sort
Speaker 1: of like the arc of of how this movement goes.
Speaker 1: So John O'Keefe was a Catholic anti war protester. He
Speaker 1: his thing was okay, so he's anti abortion, right, but
Speaker 1: he wants to fuse like the anti nuclear anti war
Speaker 1: movements with the anti abortion movements sort of in the
Speaker 1: wake of Roe v. Wade. And this doesn't work because
Speaker 1: the anti war and the answer nuclear movements are like
Speaker 1: driven by leftist and feminists and they're like no, like
Speaker 1: funk Off, like we're not gonna like we want people
Speaker 1: to have abortions, so you know, but but he he
Speaker 1: he still is like dead set that there should be
Speaker 1: this sort of like direct actually against abortion clinics. And
Speaker 1: he managed to convince this convince this like quicker peace
Speaker 1: activist named Charles Fager to like teach the anti abortion
Speaker 1: movement the sort of like techniques of like the civil
Speaker 1: rights movements and do like no violence ofilius obedience, and
Speaker 1: so people like like in the in the early seventies,
Speaker 1: like as az Row like is happening, people start like
Speaker 1: changing themselves to abortion clinics, and you know, like, I
Speaker 1: think this is if you've been around the left long enough,
Speaker 1: like these are tactics I think you'd recognize. But these
Speaker 1: these are very very different campaigns. Then you're sort of
Speaker 1: like changing yourself to a tree like the And the
Speaker 1: biggest difference is like the the extent to which the
Speaker 1: focus is just purely on terrorizing people. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a would have like what these protests actually
Speaker 1: look like? Um from the book Living in the Crosshairs,
Speaker 1: The Untold Stories of Anti Abortion Terrorism. The protesters stand
Speaker 1: at the entrance to the clinics parking lot and badger
Speaker 1: the patients. When they come in, they get screamed at.
Speaker 1: The protesters write down their license plates, they send them cards,
Speaker 1: they make phone calls to their homes. Protesters also swarm
Speaker 1: clinics and harass the people who work there. Those window blinds. Christina,
Speaker 1: who's works at a clinic, explained while pointing at the
Speaker 1: huge windows that surround the conference table in one of
Speaker 1: her clients. You pull them down, you can look through them,
Speaker 1: and you could find the protesters at the windows looking in.
Speaker 1: And Krista, who's the person who's talking about this, like
Speaker 1: she describes like the like these protesters would walk up
Speaker 1: to her and like say her kids names, you know.
Speaker 1: In order to get like the doctor into this clinic
Speaker 1: who is doing the abortions, like they have to smuggle
Speaker 1: him in like that. He can't park in the parking
Speaker 1: lot because the abortion protesters will get to him, so
Speaker 1: they have to they have to like smuggle him in
Speaker 1: in in Christa's car. And like even then people follow
Speaker 1: them constantly, Like the doctors and nurses have to like
Speaker 1: change the roots to work every day. They have these
Speaker 1: like decoys they have to use. Um. Like yeah, and
Speaker 1: if for the record, I've gotten reports from folks who
Speaker 1: work for abortion access organizations saying they are now in
Speaker 1: multiple states using drones to follow people as they leave
Speaker 1: the Jesus their their license playing numbers. Yeah that God,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But it's yeah, like these people like Krista,
Speaker 1: the person I was talking about, Like she she had
Speaker 1: to transfer her kids to a private school that like
Speaker 1: knew what her job was so that her kids wouldn't
Speaker 1: get harassed. And like, well, we'll come back to this
Speaker 1: sort of quote unquote non violent stuff later, but like
Speaker 1: even in it's sort of like non violent face. This
Speaker 1: is a terror campaign, like the the the goal of
Speaker 1: this is to terrorize everyone involved, like stalking them, by
Speaker 1: intimidating them, by harassing them, to get them to not
Speaker 1: do abortions anymore, making patients or people that want to
Speaker 1: wortion is too afraid to get them, and people that
Speaker 1: provide them too afraid to provide them. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: but you know this doesn't really work in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and but by time you shoot the eighties, it starts
Speaker 1: to get really violent. Um in nice and eight two
Speaker 1: or is this guy named Donnie Ben don Benny Anderson.
Speaker 1: It is two nephews, Matt and Wayne Moore carry out
Speaker 1: the first anti abortion, the first action of this this
Speaker 1: right wig anti abortion. Also they're like really anti gay,
Speaker 1: Like they they have a thing later on where they
Speaker 1: like they have this giant celebration for like the Saudia's
Speaker 1: beheading too gay dudes, three gay dudes, Like they're they're horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this network is called the Army of God. And
Speaker 1: oh these guys they're that sounds relier, Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: this very actually in some ways like they're they were
Speaker 1: very sort of quintessentially modern terrorist organization and that like
Speaker 1: they don't they don't have like a command structure. It's
Speaker 1: not even so much essentialized cells. It's just like people
Speaker 1: just sort of can freely affiliate to it. And like
Speaker 1: he used his name to carry out attacks. And the
Speaker 1: first one of these is it's it's this guy Johnny
Speaker 1: Benny Anderson. He kidnaps Dr Hector Zavalos and his wife
Speaker 1: Jean and originally, like the their their plan is to
Speaker 1: kill them, um don Benny Anderson like he but what
Speaker 1: he writes about it is that he has been talking
Speaker 1: to God and he has been talking to art Change,
Speaker 1: to the archangel Michael, and they have commanded him to
Speaker 1: go and kill this person. And eventually, like negotiators fortunately
Speaker 1: are able to talk them down, and like the doctor
Speaker 1: makes this like tells him like yeah, no, no no, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do abortions anymore. That they let them go.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think, like, like like it is important to
Speaker 1: note that, like among people who are like this hardcore
Speaker 1: and and this isn't you know, And I said, like,
Speaker 1: there are people a lot of people who are more
Speaker 1: moderate than this, Like the the whole sort of talking
Speaker 1: to God thing like that is not uncommon. No, that
Speaker 1: is like very good. No, these are all people who
Speaker 1: in their churches will like say a bunch of gibberish
Speaker 1: words and tell everyone each other that they're speaking in
Speaker 1: like the secret language of God that God has like
Speaker 1: speak into their brains, speaking in tongues. Yes, yeah, so
Speaker 1: like and yeah, like and I think I think like
Speaker 1: there's some tendency to like, like I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: people trying to write this office of people who are
Speaker 1: mentally ill. It's like no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: These are desearching, so they don't believe in a different
Speaker 1: world than you do, and they're willing to use violence
Speaker 1: to make their world real. Yeah, and the letter that
Speaker 1: they write, I like, why while they're holding these people captives,
Speaker 1: says quote, those who truly love God would kill the
Speaker 1: baby killers. And it turned out later that they've been
Speaker 1: funding their activities by robbing abortion clinics. And actually that's no,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that doesn't that I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen any of the like, like I don't think
Speaker 1: this doesn't get included in like the list of terrorist
Speaker 1: things people do against abortion clinis. But they get robbed
Speaker 1: a lot, Like there's like a lot of these builitians
Speaker 1: are just robbing abortion clinics to to fund their stuff.
Speaker 1: Um and and this is again like the thing you
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind when you're trying to an
Speaker 1: it like, if you literally believe the things that these
Speaker 1: people literally believe, this is the only moral thing to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they're if there were just trying like getting their heads,
Speaker 1: if there were an organization literally murdering babies every single day,
Speaker 1: this would be the right thing to do. That's like
Speaker 1: you have to actually like they're not crazy. They fundamentally
Speaker 1: exist in a world that is as different from from
Speaker 1: the one you live in as the world in a
Speaker 1: fucking Marvel comic. Like it's it's it's just another reality
Speaker 1: that they exist within. Yeah, and like you get sort
Speaker 1: of like you get like like I don't know, you're
Speaker 1: called like people who are trying to play the centrist
Speaker 1: ango who were like oh, like people on the left
Speaker 1: don't understand that. It's like it's not about autonomy for them.
Speaker 1: They literally believe they're killing babies. And it's like that
Speaker 1: doesn't like a no, but like yeah, like yeah, the
Speaker 1: fact that they literally believe that abortion is killing children,
Speaker 1: the only thing that does is make them more fanatical
Speaker 1: and more militants. And it's like, yeah, like I used
Speaker 1: to sort of believe, like I used to believe that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: black people don' understand they really think they're killing babies thing.
Speaker 1: And then I went to college and I like read
Speaker 1: started reading about the history of genocides, and I started
Speaker 1: reading about like what how how common it is for
Speaker 1: people who commit genocides to literally believe that if they
Speaker 1: don't do this genocide, that the people that genocide and you
Speaker 1: you are going to kill them. And it was like oh,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, that that actually that just makes you
Speaker 1: more likely to do violence, Like it's and yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and this this goes exactly how to expect in fact
Speaker 1: that the and this is one of the other things
Speaker 1: that they're very effective about, which is each attack like
Speaker 1: radicalizes more people to start doing attacks. So remember remember
Speaker 1: John O'Keefe, the guy who was doing the non violent stuff,
Speaker 1: Like he starts questioning whether non violence is like the
Speaker 1: right tactic and he never like bombs anything, but he
Speaker 1: likes stops condemning violence in public. And this this goes
Speaker 1: really really really badly really quickly. Um, the Army of
Speaker 1: God publishes this, like it's initially a very clandestine thing,
Speaker 1: but they published this manual about how to attack abortion clinics,
Speaker 1: but has stuff from like like pouring concrete overheating pipes,
Speaker 1: how to make bombs. Um, they have this thing that
Speaker 1: the antibortion people do a lot, which is pouring bucolic acid,
Speaker 1: which smells like it is the thing that makes vomits
Speaker 1: smell bad. Like you you can you can smell like
Speaker 1: two parts per ten million like of this thing like
Speaker 1: in a room and they'll they'll take like a syringe
Speaker 1: and they'll inject it into a facility and like like
Speaker 1: one drop of this stuff is enough that like you
Speaker 1: can smell it like months later, there's no way to
Speaker 1: like easily clean it. And eventually like they're pouring gallons
Speaker 1: of this stuff like into abortion clinics into the ventilation system. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there are more than a hundred of these attacks
Speaker 1: today to like it. They've they've done this a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By n four, this whole thing goes into overdrive. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from from the book
Speaker 1: Armored for Life, The Army of God and anti abortion terror.
Speaker 1: In the United States, the National Abortion Federation identifies thirty
Speaker 1: incidents of arson or bombing in nine four, exceeding the
Speaker 1: previous seven years combined. The series of bombings included, but
Speaker 1: was not limited to, the offices of the National Abortion
Speaker 1: Fund and the Americans Civil Liberties Union in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: As well as abortion clinics in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
Speaker 1: The signature of the Army of God was also found
Speaker 1: in a subsequent clinic bombing in Saratosa, Florida. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the other things that they do that is that
Speaker 1: is great, is so they have to have a declaration
Speaker 1: of war that the Army of God sends. They also
Speaker 1: like like specifically send a death threat to Harry Blackman,
Speaker 1: who was the black Man was who was the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote the Supreme Court justice who wrote Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 1: which is like, you know, this is a fun thing
Speaker 1: if you've been like the whole discourse cycle. But oh,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't protest that these houses. Like yeah, man, a
Speaker 1: terrorist group like threatened to kill the jestice who wrote
Speaker 1: this thing, like and and that guy, um, the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote that eventually carried out like this enormous bombing
Speaker 1: campaign where he started strapping like twenty pounds like liquid
Speaker 1: pro pain tanks to dumpowder bombs and blowing up clinics
Speaker 1: with them. And this stuff spread start spreads like wildfire.
Speaker 1: People start using the Army of God's bomb recipes to
Speaker 1: attack clinics in other ways like yeah, we talked, We've
Speaker 1: talked about so of the other campaign stuff that they use.
Speaker 1: Um and and this this starts to like a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who wind up in the full on
Speaker 1: terrorism stuff where like people who used to be like
Speaker 1: non violent protesters. So Shelley Shelley Shannon, who who had
Speaker 1: previously been like a non violent protester like goes violent
Speaker 1: and two and starts doing these like fautric acid attacks
Speaker 1: and then she graduates to arson. She attacks seven clinics,
Speaker 1: offices and health centers. And these aren't like when I
Speaker 1: say attacks, like this isn't like they threw a ball
Speaker 1: off at it. Like she is making napalm and like
Speaker 1: detonating napalm bombs like inside of these clinics, it is,
Speaker 1: do they even care if people are inside or so?
Speaker 1: It's weird. Initially they're they're targeting empty buildings, but they're
Speaker 1: like they're like working themselves up to it, and like
Speaker 1: they they start to be they you could read this
Speaker 1: in their writing like they they're working themselves up to
Speaker 1: a point where they're like, Wow, Okay, if there was
Speaker 1: a person in this building, we don't really care, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and but I see two the Army of God like
Speaker 1: specifically in it in its manual, like as justification for
Speaker 1: killing people, m and lo and behold. One year later
Speaker 1: after this is one of the other strategies to use
Speaker 1: what what what What was their justification they're killing It's like, well,
Speaker 1: they're killing babies and have to have a bunch of
Speaker 1: Bible verses that they sit and they're like, now we
Speaker 1: can kill people because they're killing babies. It's great. It's
Speaker 1: that's that's truly like in writing to horrify. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like like literally the next year there's all these they
Speaker 1: start doing this thing where they put wanted posters with
Speaker 1: like an abortion doctor's name in them like like literally
Speaker 1: like stuff out of like a like a Battled West movie,
Speaker 1: and they'll have like their name and like where they
Speaker 1: live and like that fact that they're a doctor and
Speaker 1: say they kill babies, and uh so you know, in
Speaker 1: in in in in three, these posters go up for
Speaker 1: this doctor named Dr David Gunn and he's one day
Speaker 1: walking back to his car when he gets shot three
Speaker 1: times in the back by Michael Griffin and he he dies,
Speaker 1: and he is the first that David Gunn is the
Speaker 1: first abortion provider to be killed, and he is not
Speaker 1: going to be the last. Yeah, so this immediately and
Speaker 1: the moment someone does it, like it opens the floodgates
Speaker 1: and suddenly everyone is doing it. And so you know,
Speaker 1: this makes people like Shelly Shannon and who we talked
Speaker 1: about like setting off napalm bombs, who until this point
Speaker 1: has only like bombed anti buildings, Like she starts like
Speaker 1: considering killing people and a few months later she shoots
Speaker 1: Dr George Tiller. And if you're thinking to yourself, hold
Speaker 1: on weight, I thought Dr George Tiller was killed in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine and not, you are right. Shelley's
Speaker 1: assassination attempts like she shot him like in both arms,
Speaker 1: but he survived to be murdered a a decade and
Speaker 1: a half later. Um, Meanwhile, there's this guy named Paul
Speaker 1: Hill who's just like a like abortion clinic like protester, right.
Speaker 1: He he emerges in like the national media scene because
Speaker 1: he's he's like the he's like the guy who will
Speaker 1: go on TV and defends Michael Griffin killing killing a doctor,
Speaker 1: and they just let him do this. He does the
Speaker 1: whole fucking talk show circuits. They just let him do
Speaker 1: this to defend on Life TV. He's on all of
Speaker 1: the mainstream networks to defend killing abortion doctors. And he
Speaker 1: does it again with Shelly Shannon's attempt to kill George Chiller.
Speaker 1: And a year later, uh, Paul Hill walked up to
Speaker 1: Dr Joe Britten Britten and blew his head off with
Speaker 1: the shotgun wounds. His wife turns around and then killed
Speaker 1: an abortion uh like at clinic escort named James Barrett.
Speaker 1: Like they had this guy on TV fucking every night
Speaker 1: saying that like calling the saying that killing abortion doctors
Speaker 1: is justified, and then he fucking kills he blew an
Speaker 1: abortion doctor's head off with a shotgun the next year. Well,
Speaker 1: and uh yet I don't think I'm what's exciting is
Speaker 1: that I'm sure that when there are more attacks uh
Speaker 1: by pro choice oriented people, at no point will anyone
Speaker 1: get brought on TV network to say anything. But but
Speaker 1: asked that cops get more money to crack down on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like just the media a symmetry. She was awful.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about this more in a bit because
Speaker 1: it gets even worse. Um So that that's a year.
Speaker 1: In ninety four, there's a gunman named John Scali the
Speaker 1: Third who walks into a building and murders Shannon Loney,
Speaker 1: who is a social worker in anti abortion like she's
Speaker 1: she's an anti abortion and an anti child debrief advocate
Speaker 1: who's working at Plant Parenthood, and he just walks and
Speaker 1: shoots her. She shoots at a bunch of the doctors
Speaker 1: and the patients and luckily they all survived. But then
Speaker 1: he goes to another clinic and he kills social worker
Speaker 1: Leanne Nichols, who was like working at the front desk there,
Speaker 1: and he's eventually arrested. He gets away with both of
Speaker 1: these ones, but then he goes and tries to shoot
Speaker 1: up a third clinic, and that one finally like he
Speaker 1: gets arrested for. But like and the other thing is
Speaker 1: like the third clinic that he shoots at, Like that's
Speaker 1: a clink that already had already been bombed, is a
Speaker 1: clink that they've been protest that for years. And he's
Speaker 1: you know, he goes there and he shoots at these
Speaker 1: these people and he kills two more people, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, and they just like keep doing this.
Speaker 1: And one of the sort of incredibly grotesque things is
Speaker 1: that like, Okay, so the Army of God has this.
Speaker 1: They have a website, right, and their website has these
Speaker 1: these things they called the Prisoners of Christ, who are
Speaker 1: like people who are like it's like prisoners of conscience
Speaker 1: but like Christ, who they like celebrate and they're like
Speaker 1: raise funds for. And one of the ways they do
Speaker 1: this is they have this thing called the White Rose Banquet,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the most offensive names I've
Speaker 1: ever seen for an organization. That's it's named after the
Speaker 1: White Rose Society, which is just like Christian anti Nazi
Speaker 1: like nonviolent resistance group who's like leaders were all killed
Speaker 1: by Hitler for opposing Hitler. And they they're thing is like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the abortion is the is the new Holocaust, and
Speaker 1: so you know they have this banquet that's like in
Speaker 1: support of these terrorists and they at the first one
Speaker 1: of these, they released this thing called the Nuremberg File Project,
Speaker 1: which was this like it was this archive of like
Speaker 1: abortion providers. It has like their names, has their addresses
Speaker 1: as photos, it has their phone numbers. Um. They target
Speaker 1: like they and it's not just like doctors, right, they
Speaker 1: target clinic staff, the target security guards, stark at anyone
Speaker 1: who's who's around there, and that they have like these
Speaker 1: like lists of different categories of people. So first, if
Speaker 1: you're still alive, your name will be in like bolded black.
Speaker 1: If you've been wounded, your name will be grade like
Speaker 1: great out. And then if you die, there's like if
Speaker 1: you get killed or you die, there's a strike through
Speaker 1: through it. So this is this is a killed list
Speaker 1: they've assembled. And this is just like going around the internet.
Speaker 1: There's enormous numbers of people who like providers who are
Speaker 1: who are put on this and they also like the
Speaker 1: White Rose siety, Like at this banker, they start putting
Speaker 1: out wanted posters with like a thousand dollar rewards for
Speaker 1: closing a clinic and for like convincing a doctor to
Speaker 1: stop giving abortions. And because these people are just like
Speaker 1: like I can on emphasis is enough like literal monsters
Speaker 1: in the night. The auction off the gun that Shelly
Speaker 1: Shannon used to kill George Chiller, that's like a fundraising thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's a number of things you think about that.
Speaker 1: One of that is one of them is the fact
Speaker 1: that the local police department absolutely had to be um
Speaker 1: involved in that because normally murder weapons don't go back
Speaker 1: anyone that they're destroyed, um, which means the police were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we absolutely want you guys to be able to auction
Speaker 1: this gun on cool stuff. The fear tactics they would
Speaker 1: be like, of course they would work if your whole
Speaker 1: if your name is on this list and you have
Speaker 1: a family and you you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: it's I will say that there is an interesting thing
Speaker 1: with this where like a lot of some of a
Speaker 1: lot of people who like get targeted by this stuff,
Speaker 1: like it just pisces them off and they get even
Speaker 1: more committed to it, which is like incredibly rad but
Speaker 1: also like Jesus Christ, they just they have these abortion
Speaker 1: provider kill lists, and people on this list get killed.
Speaker 1: It's encouraged, like the people are encouraging to kill them.
Speaker 1: And like they do this in the open, like there
Speaker 1: are like literally like Christian radio stations will like they
Speaker 1: will be they'll they'll do this thing where like they'll
Speaker 1: they'll they'll start listing like like like by name and
Speaker 1: the addresses of like where the abortion providers dear them
Speaker 1: are and then start talking about the biblical verses to
Speaker 1: justify killing them. And then they will literally say on
Speaker 1: the radio, go kill this person. And they could just
Speaker 1: do this. No one stopped them ever. They just got
Speaker 1: away with this for for decades and decades. So one
Speaker 1: of one of the other. I think this bombing is famous,
Speaker 1: but I don't think the reason why it happened is famous.
Speaker 1: Um so there's a guy Eric Rudolph. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was was wondering whenday we're gonna talk about Rudolf? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's right now. So so Eric Rudolph is most
Speaker 1: famous for nail bombing the Atlanta Olympics. He yeah, he
Speaker 1: put he was hundreds of peace yeah, yeah, he entered people,
Speaker 1: he kills killing killed one. Yeah, it was more Special
Speaker 1: Forces guy, right, yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, And he says
Speaker 1: that his commander and the ar Assault Regiment taught him
Speaker 1: how to make bombs like out of out of like
Speaker 1: scrap stuff. So he like yeah, so so okay, so
Speaker 1: and he does in nine ninety six, he doesn't get caught,
Speaker 1: right this this this guy, this guy detonated a nail
Speaker 1: bomb at the fucking Olympics. As that a year later. Oh,
Speaker 1: don't worry, we're gonna We're gonna a year later. This
Speaker 1: twice next year. The next year he sets off a
Speaker 1: bunch of bombs, and he sets off a bomb at
Speaker 1: an abortion clinic. And this is like this, this is
Speaker 1: a double tap bomb. There is a there is a
Speaker 1: bomb in a trash can behind that that's that's designed
Speaker 1: to kill the first responders. Um, this is seven people.
Speaker 1: And then in seven and it kills the police officer.
Speaker 1: Actually it doesn't, Oh I didn't, but yeah, kills the
Speaker 1: police officer. Yeah. And then like the next one, he
Speaker 1: bombs in Atlanta nightclub and win six people. I'm sorry specifically, yeah,
Speaker 1: he bombed, he bombs, I bought, he bombs a gay bar.
Speaker 1: Um and there were that one he also like in
Speaker 1: the adjacent parking lot, because again he was trying to
Speaker 1: kill the first responders that the police find a bomb
Speaker 1: and defuse it before it can go off. And again
Speaker 1: they still don't get this guy the not until two
Speaker 1: thousand three. The next year, he bombs another rebortion clinic
Speaker 1: with a nail bomb. In this kind just good time,
Speaker 1: he kills a security guard named Robert Sanderson, and like
Speaker 1: permanently injures a nurse name Emi Leon's, who was like
Speaker 1: Emily Leon's who was he was left like half blind
Speaker 1: and like permanently made by the fact that again he
Speaker 1: set off a fucking nail bomb and he was not caught.
Speaker 1: He he was not he was not caught for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I want to stop here and talk about like
Speaker 1: how the bombing stuff has carried in the media, right, um,
Speaker 1: as best I could tell, and I went to look
Speaker 1: for this. No anarchist has killed someone with a bomb
Speaker 1: in the US for a hundred years. Like Coral Marx
Speaker 1: was closer to seeing the moon landing, then a baby
Speaker 1: born today is of seeing an anarchist kill someone THEOS
Speaker 1: with the bomb. And yet anarchism everywhere is so constantly
Speaker 1: associated with bombs. Meanwhile, the anti abortion freaks. Fucking they
Speaker 1: bombed the nineties six Olympics with a nail bomb. And
Speaker 1: he on when he was in his trial, he released
Speaker 1: to benifesto talking about how deadly force is justified against
Speaker 1: people who operate abortion clinics. He talks, he talks about
Speaker 1: the whole a whole munch of like whole bunch of
Speaker 1: anti gay stuff, whole bunch of anti abortion stuff, like
Speaker 1: and he's like he's given them like like on his
Speaker 1: trial just used to like read his manifesto. It's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty wild. Where all the pro life activists when
Speaker 1: it comes to taking life. That's interesting. Well, but I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's the thing though. They're all they're all
Speaker 1: in favor of of like they see, Yeah, they're arguing
Speaker 1: that it's self defense or it's defensive. These these these
Speaker 1: babism not the well defensive, those who can't defend themselves.
Speaker 1: What they'll talk about it is entirely within them, the
Speaker 1: moral universe within they operate. It's it is entirely consistent.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things. Whenever like liberals will be like,
Speaker 1: why don't they do this or why don't they that's
Speaker 1: not pro life and it's like, well, because the word
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the same thing to you, it does well,
Speaker 1: and the guy's doing this terror because you will occasionally
Speaker 1: you'll get some I mean, some of the pro life
Speaker 1: people oppose this because I think it's bad optics, right,
Speaker 1: But apparently it's not bad optics because again, like, who
Speaker 1: are the people who get fucking remembered as bombers? Like,
Speaker 1: and I want to I want to read a quote
Speaker 1: from from the FBI. This is this is this is
Speaker 1: from from the book Armed for Life. In In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, the year with the highest abortion clinic bombings
Speaker 1: to date, FBI Director William Webster went on television and
Speaker 1: informed the public, quote, Bombing a bank or a post
Speaker 1: office is terrorism. Bombing an abortion clinic is not an
Speaker 1: active terrorism because the objective is social. Is social and
Speaker 1: anti abortion violence, and I don't believe it currently meets
Speaker 1: our definition of terrorism. Reagan's called Reagan called the anti
Speaker 1: abortion it's worse, okay, Reagan called called the bombings. The
Speaker 1: abortion clinic bombing is quote anarchist activities, Like the fucking
Speaker 1: they are blowing up abortion clinics and we're still getting
Speaker 1: fucking blamed for it, Like Jesus Christ. I don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about anything, and so this is a lot
Speaker 1: of this is used to me, which is wild that
Speaker 1: I'm hearing about a lot of this for the first time.
Speaker 1: How have I not known about this? They bombed the
Speaker 1: Olympics and know what talks about it? Actually, like I
Speaker 1: was just losing my mind the whold like it's it's
Speaker 1: bad and it's it's still happening. It's not. It's just
Speaker 1: like three people were killed and nine people were injured
Speaker 1: an attacked on a planned parenthood clinic in Colorado. Back
Speaker 1: in um there has been over at least at least
Speaker 1: at least eleven murders tied to anti abortion uh like
Speaker 1: like action. I guess six attempted murders, at least forty
Speaker 1: two bombings, two hundred arsons, and then thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of more like assaults and random random incidents. We should
Speaker 1: also point out here when we're talking about the murder counts,
Speaker 1: murder count is lower vet it actually is because the
Speaker 1: murder count doesn't count to people who like the Americans,
Speaker 1: like specifically the Americans who went to Canada to shoot
Speaker 1: abortion doctors and the Americans who went to Australia to
Speaker 1: shoot abortion doctors, both of which happened, and threats against
Speaker 1: abortion providers have increased exponentially just since just since, like
Speaker 1: they have more than quadrupled, Like this is it's constant.
Speaker 1: It's been escalating at such a at such a rate
Speaker 1: that every year's data is insufficient for talking about the
Speaker 1: current period. Like it's it's you can't you can't even
Speaker 1: talk about it because all of the data is so inaccurate. Now,
Speaker 1: that's how fast this stuff is accelerating. And and like
Speaker 1: there's there's a few other things that like like we
Speaker 1: should mention when we talked about statistics. So one of
Speaker 1: the reason is the reason the death toll is like
Speaker 1: quote unquote only eleven is because bomb making is really
Speaker 1: hard and a lot of these bombs don't go off.
Speaker 1: So for example, in Canada, a worker right a clinic
Speaker 1: discovered a bomb with two pounds of nails in it
Speaker 1: that quote how to destructive capability of a hundred feet
Speaker 1: um and you know, and also like I should put
Speaker 1: this out like okay, so like they they there's a
Speaker 1: lot of abortion doctors who are killed like outside of
Speaker 1: their clinics. But also there's a guy named James Copp
Speaker 1: who who shot He shot like four doctors and he
Speaker 1: shot them like in their homes like with with with
Speaker 1: with an s KS, like in their homes through their windows.
Speaker 1: And he he killed Dr Barrett Slippian in the nineties
Speaker 1: and like and you know and like it. They like
Speaker 1: they keep doing stuff like this, Like in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. I don't know if I wonder how many
Speaker 1: people actually remember this. Uh, there was this huge anthrax scare.
Speaker 1: What was an anthwstor like that people were like they
Speaker 1: were later they were anthract attacks. People were like mailing
Speaker 1: people letters with anthrax in it. And so right as
Speaker 1: this is happening, um, a guy named Clay Wagner since
Speaker 1: eight hundred letters signed by the RB of God with
Speaker 1: fake anthrax, the plan players heard clinics in seventeen states
Speaker 1: and these antis packets like it's not just like flower, right,
Speaker 1: these antis packets have BT in it, which is there's
Speaker 1: a pesticide that is so similar to anthrax at the
Speaker 1: package just texted tested positive. And so all of these people,
Speaker 1: these eight eight hundred clinics who opened these letters like
Speaker 1: thought they were going to die because they opened they
Speaker 1: opened a letter. There was White Potter in it it
Speaker 1: said it was anthrax, and then it tested positive for anthrax.
Speaker 1: And like to this day, a bunch of abortion clinics
Speaker 1: like have like like the when when they're like when
Speaker 1: they open their mail, they have they have like a
Speaker 1: special room that is like sealed off so that if
Speaker 1: they open the mail, they open a chemical weapon. Only
Speaker 1: the person reading the mail will die. Great, that's the
Speaker 1: side of a good system. Yeah. They also a lot
Speaker 1: of planned parenthoods have something kind of similar set up
Speaker 1: with the receptionist, where basically the way it's set up
Speaker 1: is that if there's a mass shooter, the receptionist can
Speaker 1: like seal off everyone but them. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: thing that you know you're getting into if you're in
Speaker 1: a plant, if you if you're in that gig, it's
Speaker 1: like someone might come in and I might have to
Speaker 1: die to try and stop them from getting to everyone else.
Speaker 1: It's it's bad. I mean, just just from there was
Speaker 1: a hundred increase in reports of assaults and batteries uh
Speaker 1: inside and outside clinics. Um there was double the amount
Speaker 1: of death threats from and things have not gotten better since.
Speaker 1: So we're just waiting for all that new data to
Speaker 1: come in because oh boy, Yeah. And I think there's
Speaker 1: another thing when we need to keep in mind with
Speaker 1: this data is that there's so much stuff doesn't get reported.
Speaker 1: All of those numbers are low, every single one of
Speaker 1: them is normally low. And there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff that is people do that just never gets
Speaker 1: talked about. Um, well, okay, so I think before we
Speaker 1: get into that, I do want to talk about the
Speaker 1: most famous abortion provider who got murdered, which is Dr
Speaker 1: George Tiller, who is like a genuinely incredibly heroic figure
Speaker 1: who he was keep doing it after the first time
Speaker 1: you were shot, Like you would be a hero if
Speaker 1: you did it up until you got shot. Going after
Speaker 1: like he got shot. He's a clinic got bombed. There
Speaker 1: was an entire Yeah he's clinic up bomb What was
Speaker 1: the other one? Yeah, he he was, he was one
Speaker 1: of the he was I think he was actually I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was that anthrax threat or like
Speaker 1: a different anthrax threat, but like people people like he
Speaker 1: kept getting anthrax threats. Um that there was this thing
Speaker 1: called Operation Rescue, which is I guess that there's still
Speaker 1: version of us around, but they are these like they
Speaker 1: do these like giant like non violent severe disit obedience
Speaker 1: campaigns were like thousands of people will will will will
Speaker 1: show up to a place and they'll like change themselves
Speaker 1: the buildings, and they'll like prevent anyone from getting in,
Speaker 1: and they'll like terrorize everyone around there. And his office
Speaker 1: is one of the is one of the ones that
Speaker 1: was targeted NET ninety one, which is like in there
Speaker 1: like that they had this big campaign called Operation Rescue.
Speaker 1: It was targeting like him specifically. And there is one
Speaker 1: fun story in this which is they tried this in
Speaker 1: Minneapolis next ninety three, but they got their as escape
Speaker 1: by a bunch of anarchists and had to all run away,
Speaker 1: which was extremely funny. But yeah, like I'm the The
Speaker 1: other thing that that's important with with Tiller specifically is
Speaker 1: the extent to which the right wing media is like
Speaker 1: like culpable in this um like Tiller, like Bill O'Reilly specifically,
Speaker 1: is constantly yelling about Tiller. He calls Tiller the baby killer.
Speaker 1: He uses him of running a a operating a death mill,
Speaker 1: executing baby is about to be born, and destroying fetuses
Speaker 1: for just about any reason right up until birthdate. H
Speaker 1: he want one of his rants, he he literally says
Speaker 1: like right before, well not like pretty close to when
Speaker 1: Tiller has assassinated. Uh quote, if I could get my
Speaker 1: hands on Tiller, well you know, can't be vigilantes, can't
Speaker 1: do that. It's just a figure of speech. But despicable.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it doesn't get worse? Does it get worse? No? Wow?
Speaker 1: So he's just like this is just like the ship
Speaker 1: that that he's that that he's being subjected to by
Speaker 1: the media. And then oh lo and behold he gets murdered.
Speaker 1: You know what, doesn't I don't know, I have nothing
Speaker 1: to say. Doesn't do uh coordinated you know what would
Speaker 1: be dope. Here here's what I'll say. You know, it
Speaker 1: would be dope if when somebody came to shoot George
Speaker 1: Tiller that person had gotten a shot repeatedly. That would
Speaker 1: have been cool. M that would have been neat. But anyway,
Speaker 1: here's ads and we're back with more horrifying stuff. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of focus I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of media coverage recently about this
Speaker 1: just because like you know, as as a reaction to
Speaker 1: the incredibly bad faith like, oh, look at the sanctity
Speaker 1: of of people protesting at the Supreme Court. It's like
Speaker 1: they blew people's heads office shotguns. But you know, and
Speaker 1: like that's good, and I'm really glad there's there's more
Speaker 1: media reporting about this. But I want to talk about
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's an incredible focus here on the
Speaker 1: shootings and bombings, and like there's good reason for that,
Speaker 1: But I want to talk about some other ship that
Speaker 1: the force birth fanatics do because it's horrifying. It doesn't
Speaker 1: get talked enough about enough. Um. So, one of the
Speaker 1: people who gets interviewed in Living in the cross Hairs,
Speaker 1: which is a great book by the way, it's it's
Speaker 1: about I mean, okay, I don't agree with all of
Speaker 1: its policy recommendations, but it's a book like interviewing like
Speaker 1: abortion providers about their experiences. One of the people they
Speaker 1: interview is this guy named Rodney Smith, who's an abortion doctor. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna eat the stuff that they do
Speaker 1: to this guy because it's okay, So protesters show up
Speaker 1: to his son's wedding. Um, they burn his house and
Speaker 1: his farm down, They burns to death, They kill their dog,
Speaker 1: their cats, and all of their possessions. Yeah. From the book,
Speaker 1: help Kill Babies can you tell me that the cats, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will imagine script did this. Yeah, everyone would lose
Speaker 1: their minds. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a
Speaker 1: quote about this from this book. Someone mailed a letter
Speaker 1: postmarked the morning of the fire justifying killing the animals
Speaker 1: on Rodney's farm because Rodney quote murdered little children. However,
Speaker 1: the letter was untraceable. Wow. They do this ship all
Speaker 1: the fucking time, and it never gets reported. Because the
Speaker 1: reason never gets reported is because when when, when, when
Speaker 1: this this the city comes to investigate, They fucking destroyed
Speaker 1: the entire scene of the crime. They showed the entire
Speaker 1: scene of the crime so thoroughly that when the fire
Speaker 1: marshal showed up the day after, they tried to arrest um.
Speaker 1: They tried to arrest Rodney Smith Smith for evidence tampering
Speaker 1: because I thought that he had done it right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Wow. And and let's less lest you
Speaker 1: think this is the end of the ship. That that
Speaker 1: that that this guy goes through, right, Like they when
Speaker 1: they find out he's like going to like a conference,
Speaker 1: or like they find out he's staying in a hotel.
Speaker 1: That they do these campaigns where like they'll they'll do
Speaker 1: these mass columns to the hotel saying, hey, there's this
Speaker 1: person here, and if you don't kick them out, like
Speaker 1: we're going to protest all your branches. He get kicked
Speaker 1: out of hotels. Um, he gets attacked by an anti
Speaker 1: abortion protester in the chambers of the Supreme Court, like
Speaker 1: that Supreme Court, the big one. How did they even
Speaker 1: get in the two the chambers of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: He was just one of it was one of the
Speaker 1: people who was showing up at this thing, and that
Speaker 1: the guy like throws him out of his chair, grabs him,
Speaker 1: throws him out of his chair, picks up the chair
Speaker 1: and starts beating the ship out of him reach his
Speaker 1: own chair in this is indie chambers of the Supreme courts.
Speaker 1: They beat an abortion doctor with his own chair. And
Speaker 1: you know, especially Roddy had had security with him, right
Speaker 1: because I you know it. It's yeah, when when you're
Speaker 1: abortion doctor and and people are this target at you, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have security so you don't get attacked like this.
Speaker 1: But the court wouldn't let him like bring his private
Speaker 1: security inside. And their rationalization was, uh, he he had
Speaker 1: been assured that quote nothing ever happens in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: And the thing about this, right, you cannot find a
Speaker 1: news article about this. Right, a guy got beat up
Speaker 1: by these people in the Supreme Court. If literally anyone
Speaker 1: who was not a fucking forced birth anti abortion fanatic
Speaker 1: did this, there would have been a new cycle that
Speaker 1: would have lasted until the fucking end of time. There
Speaker 1: have been a movie and and three shows made about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's just nothing well like wild like that is
Speaker 1: really showing like these things don't get These things aren't
Speaker 1: big problems, right because they aren't challenging to any kind
Speaker 1: of power structure. So they're allowed to happen because they're
Speaker 1: just reinforcing things. They're not actually challenging things. Um. But
Speaker 1: still it's very brazen. When you're killing like seventeen horses
Speaker 1: and going into the Supreme Court to beat someone with
Speaker 1: a chair, you would think that someone would say something. Um.
Speaker 1: And I've never heard of this before either, Alley gear.
Speaker 1: I know, this is like the thing the thing I
Speaker 1: want to emphasize about this. This is the things they
Speaker 1: did to one guy, one doctor. This is happening, This
Speaker 1: is right, Like this stuff, this kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: happening to people every fucking day across the country, and
Speaker 1: there is nothing. There is jack shit. You might maybe
Speaker 1: see a report in local papers like maybe it is
Speaker 1: a it is a it is a just an incredible
Speaker 1: campaign of chair. But this guy is like she is
Speaker 1: staggeringly based he that this is quote from that book. Again,
Speaker 1: Rodney is used to this type of verbal abuse and
Speaker 1: sometimes reacting kind. When a priest called him a murderer, uh,
Speaker 1: Rodney responded by calling the priest a child molester. When
Speaker 1: protesters told Rodney they were praying for him, he responded, no,
Speaker 1: you're preying upon us. There's a difference. So he rules
Speaker 1: and she likes he'd been a doctor who like did
Speaker 1: other stuff and when they worshiped people, I think I
Speaker 1: think it was after they burned his house down, he
Speaker 1: was like, no, fuck you, I'm only going to do abortions.
Speaker 1: Now he's exaggeratedly based like yeah, which which I guess
Speaker 1: also like this is this is a thing that like
Speaker 1: so like obviously, like, I don't think any leftist has
Speaker 1: ever fucking lit people's horses on fire, not that I
Speaker 1: know of the generally left. Generally they would have more
Speaker 1: of an instinct to free the horses. Yeah, like that
Speaker 1: you have to you have to be like genuinely monstrous
Speaker 1: to to light horses on fire, like they screamed, like
Speaker 1: horses scream like when you let them on fire. I mean,
Speaker 1: and and and cats and dogs animal like at animal
Speaker 1: abusts and animal murder. But it's it's like pretty pretty despicable.
Speaker 1: And there's uh just justifying it by saying it's because
Speaker 1: they were on the property of someone who helps gives abortions.
Speaker 1: Is some wild some wild thinking, Well, none of those
Speaker 1: what's in the Bible, Actually there is, There is a
Speaker 1: lot of animal murdering in the Bible. Never mind. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well but but but but I mean, I I will
Speaker 1: say that there is a thing that can happen where
Speaker 1: if if you like, sometimes targeted protests on a person
Speaker 1: just like makes them bin for it, like dig into
Speaker 1: their beliefs. And that's some tops in and and I
Speaker 1: think like here, I think like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are just stunning Lee Brave who go through
Speaker 1: this ship and just still keep doing it because like
Speaker 1: this is something that they believe in. And you know,
Speaker 1: and those aren't even like that extreme examples of like
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that happens again again. We've talked
Speaker 1: about like again nail bombs, right, like people getting their
Speaker 1: head blown off with shotguns. There's there's a systemic campaign
Speaker 1: of terror that has felt incredibly acutely by the people
Speaker 1: who need these services, who need to get abortions, who
Speaker 1: need to get reproductive healthcare, and is felt by the
Speaker 1: providers of that healthcare, and nobody else in society sees
Speaker 1: about it or talks about it, and they have you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: so the I'm gonna read another quote from Living in
Speaker 1: the Crosshairs about the tactics that these groups use because
Speaker 1: they have they have so many things. These tactics include bombings,
Speaker 1: arson and threat scares, and mass blockades. Extremists have also
Speaker 1: thrown beautric acid into clinics, glued clinic locks, shut locked
Speaker 1: themselves to clinic property using items such as bicycle locks
Speaker 1: or chains, drilled holes into clinic roops so that clinics
Speaker 1: flood invaded, invaded clinics, vandalized clinics, made threatening phone calls,
Speaker 1: try to persuade patients to go to fake clinics, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about that in our our episode on Cristis
Speaker 1: pregnancy centers. But those that is also like part of
Speaker 1: the systemic campaign of terror is deceiving and humiliating people
Speaker 1: into not getting abortions. Uh, they put spikes on driveway
Speaker 1: as they they they'll they'll still stand one of them.
Speaker 1: This is a very common things. They'll stand on stand
Speaker 1: outside of abortion clinics talking about how they're gonna make
Speaker 1: bombs and like the kind of close that they're mixing
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, they they'll they'll lay down on sidewalks
Speaker 1: in front of buildings. They will they will jump on
Speaker 1: people's cars. Uh, they will camp out in front of
Speaker 1: clinics for like multiple day stretches that they send decoy
Speaker 1: patients like into the clinics to disrupt it. It's just
Speaker 1: so much Yeah, and like like the brazenness with like
Speaker 1: again like that if there are things on there, like okay,
Speaker 1: and like okay, So like I don't want to like
Speaker 1: make this point too much because like, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get away with a lot of stuff, right, even if
Speaker 1: the state is hunting for you. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that you could do that you can get away with.
Speaker 1: But like the level of stuff they've been able to
Speaker 1: get away with, like the fact that they've been able
Speaker 1: to literally on the air say that you should murder
Speaker 1: a specific abortion doctor mentioned them by name. And the
Speaker 1: fact that I know people who have had the FBI
Speaker 1: show up to their doors because of jokes they made
Speaker 1: on Twitter, it is it is fucking appalling. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean they're not they don't. The law doesn't
Speaker 1: exist a lot, a lot doesn't matter. It's all about
Speaker 1: who's actually challenging the systems of power. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the police are like again this this is one of
Speaker 1: those They literally do cross burnings, like fucking like, they
Speaker 1: literally do clan style fucking cross burning. So I I
Speaker 1: can once again go back to the old rage against
Speaker 1: the machine classics. Some of those who work forces are
Speaker 1: the same coop burn crosses because it is literally the
Speaker 1: same people. The cops will cooperate with them. Like, Um,
Speaker 1: there's the other thing that do a lot is they'll
Speaker 1: just like shoot bullets through the windows of clinics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is constantly, and they never no, no, no one,
Speaker 1: no one cares. That is very common. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: fire bombs happened to do this day that one of
Speaker 1: the incidents they talked about in that book was, um,
Speaker 1: so they like this, this is stuff that happened at
Speaker 1: like one clinic, they set the clinics fence on fire
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. They luged the downspouts
Speaker 1: on like the roof after like a giant snowstorm, so
Speaker 1: that like when when the snow melted, the water like
Speaker 1: poured into this whole they drilled it flooded the entire clinic.
Speaker 1: Um they had another one where they they drilled holes
Speaker 1: in the ceiling of the clinic and ran a garden
Speaker 1: hose through it and flooded the entire building. And yeah,
Speaker 1: again like none of this stuff ever makes the news,
Speaker 1: Like like well you and you you can compare, you
Speaker 1: compare the re action to this to like how they
Speaker 1: reacted the Animal Liberation Front right that that caused there
Speaker 1: was like there were like that, there were there were
Speaker 1: like like law enforcement like techniques. There are law enforcement
Speaker 1: organizations that exist today specifically to stop people like like
Speaker 1: that existed a specifically because of this campaign to stop
Speaker 1: the animal liberation friend for freeing animals like these people.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I should say this like also
Speaker 1: like there's this whole push to like, oh, we need
Speaker 1: to call these people terrorists and like yeah, like Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton called these people terrorists and like what happened, nothing
Speaker 1: like they they they got one law that was like fine,
Speaker 1: that was like that was that was about trying to
Speaker 1: keep people from protesting grass out of backet struck down
Speaker 1: by the Screame Court. Because again, we live in in
Speaker 1: a size society that is constantly moving towards the acratic fascism.
Speaker 1: If you torch construction sites or sedans or people wanting
Speaker 1: to destroy sections the forest, then you're then you're a terrorist. Um.
Speaker 1: If you mail pops and to kill a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of horses, you're just you're just some some dudes, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things incredibly frustrating about the story
Speaker 1: is there will be people who are being stalked right
Speaker 1: whether they're being harassed, and like they're they're being intimidated.
Speaker 1: These people keep showing up, they'll call the FBI, and
Speaker 1: the FBI will go in, we don't care, And then
Speaker 1: the next day I'll get shot by the same person.
Speaker 1: This happens multiple times with multiple and like like that.
Speaker 1: We talked about this with the person who killed tiller Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of the people who do use anti abortion
Speaker 1: murders like we're just irregular anti abortion prisoners and protesters,
Speaker 1: and like everything happens a lot is like people will
Speaker 1: go to jail for an abortion bombing, they'll come out
Speaker 1: and they'll do it again. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the really scary things about
Speaker 1: this as well, I know this is this has been
Speaker 1: stated before. This isn't by any means a new a
Speaker 1: new a new thought or framing. But with all of
Speaker 1: the laws getting enacted around the whole like bounty hunter
Speaker 1: side of things, for like how there's going to be
Speaker 1: you know, citizens being deputized to track down both abortion
Speaker 1: providers people who sought out abortion. Um, it's giving all
Speaker 1: of this strain of thought, like this whole, all of
Speaker 1: the striving ideology, it's deputizing it, and it's giving it
Speaker 1: actual legal backing. So it's no longer just ignored by
Speaker 1: law enforcement. It is now being encouraged by local governments. Um.
Speaker 1: All of these all of these same motivations are now
Speaker 1: like you can get rewarded for doing this um And
Speaker 1: oh boy, well people sees on that opportunity. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that there's a thing we can talk about
Speaker 1: with with fascism here where it's like Okay, So, like
Speaker 1: what what is fascism? And if if you're looking at
Speaker 1: like one of the one of the things that like,
Speaker 1: if you if you're using like a strict classical definition
Speaker 1: of fascism is the integration of of like parties sort
Speaker 1: of like party paramilitary forces into the state. And this
Speaker 1: is what we're looking at, is we're looking at these
Speaker 1: people who have been sucking a bombing abortion clinics for
Speaker 1: fifty years, like starting to do this stuff. And I think,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna read another passage about the kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff they do to individual people because like I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I keep going back to just
Speaker 1: like here's the high level terror that they're doing, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the individual people. Um. After being verbally targeted at
Speaker 1: our clinic for years, protesters started harassing Tammy Madison through
Speaker 1: various written communications. First, the protesters distributed flyers throughout Tammy's neighborhood,
Speaker 1: including one at Tammy's door. The flyer listed Tammy's address,
Speaker 1: the make and model of Tammy's car, and listed a
Speaker 1: telephone number reporter to be Tammy's number. Then the protest
Speaker 1: disappeared at her home with Science Is playing her name
Speaker 1: that said she kills babies and hires the baby killers.
Speaker 1: When they were outside Tammy's house, they handed out flyers
Speaker 1: about her. And when walking by, they do things like
Speaker 1: they'll they'll use like licenses for example, cause again you
Speaker 1: have to get licenses right to to to provide abortions,
Speaker 1: to be a doctor. And so they use a licenses
Speaker 1: to find personal information about people. These the people out
Speaker 1: there are like I mean their right wingers, right, so
Speaker 1: they're they're really racist. They like they they love screaming
Speaker 1: jew doctor at people because yeah, like they racial slurs.
Speaker 1: They constantly out people like the nail bob guy also
Speaker 1: attacked a gay bars. Yeah, there's a lot of crossover
Speaker 1: in terms of who they want to attack. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like they use constant death thrust. There's also a thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk a bit about, which is like
Speaker 1: these malicious legal lawsuits. So one of one of the
Speaker 1: ways that people go after like clinks is that they're
Speaker 1: constantly these clinics are like constantly under legal for people
Speaker 1: are constantly suing them. People people are suing them just
Speaker 1: to find out personal information about them because the court
Speaker 1: will give court will give you information. Uh, they get
Speaker 1: they have like these fake like fake case inspectors who
Speaker 1: will come in in order to in filtrate the things,
Speaker 1: like they have. There's legal enormous legal pressure from the
Speaker 1: state itself, which is often trying to destroy these clinics.
Speaker 1: They're they're like they'll they'll pass laws specifically to make
Speaker 1: us with the clinics can't operate in various ways. Um
Speaker 1: like people who are just like district attorneys will, we'll
Speaker 1: do investigations into them over and over again. They also
Speaker 1: they go after like the kids of providers constantly. I
Speaker 1: read a story from this book that again, like no
Speaker 1: one ever talks about, like they they kidnapped this this
Speaker 1: provider's child like her like twelve year old child like
Speaker 1: at a clinic and like try to indoctrinate them and
Speaker 1: then eventually gave them back after a few hours. But
Speaker 1: like again, like they they kidnapped a child of one
Speaker 1: of the people who works at these things, and there
Speaker 1: no one even talks about it, Like it's never there's
Speaker 1: never anything. I just I don't know, like I just
Speaker 1: like the more you go into this is like the
Speaker 1: more stuff that you see that like like they target
Speaker 1: people's parents still like show up at like the nursing
Speaker 1: homes of like the parents of like of these doctors,
Speaker 1: like they target their neighbors. They go after the donors
Speaker 1: to clinics a lot, like they'll they'll they'll send them
Speaker 1: pictures of like bullets and knives. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: things they do often is that those burned down completely
Speaker 1: the wrong clinic. So there's been a lot of cases
Speaker 1: where they just they attacked the clinic next to it
Speaker 1: because they're not the stuff they've gone. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to end on this guy named John
Speaker 1: Brockenhoff who he bombs three abortion clinics over two decades,
Speaker 1: Like he's one of the guys who they sent to prison,
Speaker 1: and then he came out and they bounded another abortion clinic. Um,
Speaker 1: And I want I want to read this quote from him.
Speaker 1: My orders to Vietnam didn't suddenly material materialize unexpectedly. I
Speaker 1: volunteered to go because I saw the South Vietnamese people
Speaker 1: were being threatened by a Communist takeover, and I figured
Speaker 1: if they were willing to fight for freedom, they deserve
Speaker 1: to be free and deserved help too. He goes on
Speaker 1: to point out in anywhere of seventy three, I had
Speaker 1: just returned from voluntary participation in a bombing campaign in
Speaker 1: support of the liberty of people eight thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: So I hope you will believe I will. I would
Speaker 1: not have turned my back on my own people, American babies,
Speaker 1: my own people, American babies. If you had asked for
Speaker 1: my help in bombing an abortion an abortionary in this country,
Speaker 1: even in seventy three, and especially since it was not
Speaker 1: mere liberty but very of their very lives at stake,
Speaker 1: I would have gone with you. So this guy is
Speaker 1: literally saying he's still fighting the Vietnam War, but he's
Speaker 1: doing it to bom abortion clinics, and he went to
Speaker 1: Vietnam because he want to kill communists. And this guy
Speaker 1: was at the Capitol at January six. But that that
Speaker 1: sounds about right. So yeah, like it's like one of yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're like the moment we are at now is
Speaker 1: this sort of detritus of like every crime the US
Speaker 1: has ever committed is just rolling back and you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're we're we're seeing all of these people who, yeah,
Speaker 1: fought in Vietnam and came back home and like killed
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who did abortions and did a
Speaker 1: bunch of bombings, and now they you know, and they tried,
Speaker 1: they just try to do a coup. They're probably going
Speaker 1: to get away with like in actually like a legal
Speaker 1: coup pretty soon because they've now seen control of the
Speaker 1: court system and it's like, well they've done they do
Speaker 1: a really effective combination of violent direct action and legal challenges.
Speaker 1: Uh there their actions able to be so successful. Uh
Speaker 1: one because like the tactics they choose that cause material
Speaker 1: damage and material change. But also obviously like they're not
Speaker 1: getting like investigated the same way anyone else would, right
Speaker 1: because like they are they are capable of doing this
Speaker 1: effective action because they don't face any any similar level
Speaker 1: of oppression to any other group that would that would
Speaker 1: be doing doing this, especially if they're on the left.
Speaker 1: Um So, like it's it's it's it's always useful to
Speaker 1: look at the tactics of your enemy and how they
Speaker 1: and how they do certain things. But you can always
Speaker 1: have to realize, like this is the same thing with
Speaker 1: January six, if it was a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: in black block storming, that the response from the cops
Speaker 1: would have been very different initially and continue on throughout
Speaker 1: the whole day and these subsequent investigations. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: always good to look into tactics, but the response from
Speaker 1: the government is always going to differ depending on who's
Speaker 1: doing the actual challenging. Yeah, and I think, as I said,
Speaker 1: you thinks about this one, like there are things you
Speaker 1: can learn from how the right operates. You can't carbon
Speaker 1: copy their tactics and try to do them from the
Speaker 1: left because it just won't work because the start to
Speaker 1: structural conditions for the left are just different. But the
Speaker 1: second thing is also that like it is simultaneously true
Speaker 1: that the level of oppression against leftist is higher than
Speaker 1: it is against right wingers. And also that's true, and
Speaker 1: it's also true that you can do stuff and like
Speaker 1: people have and yeah, I mean none of the change
Speaker 1: revenge people have gotten caught yet. So like you know,
Speaker 1: webels people see, yeah comes out and like, well, well
Speaker 1: we'll see like in general, right, especially when movements are decentralized. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, wow, they should get they should
Speaker 1: get to get away with a whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: You can be doing like pretty public of bombing incidents
Speaker 1: for almost a decade and not get caught. If you
Speaker 1: just can bomb the Olympics and not get caught for
Speaker 1: like seven years. It's wild. And I'm also just assuming
Speaker 1: the vast majority of these guys are white, and so
Speaker 1: they're not. So it's also that and also the fact
Speaker 1: that this didn't happen like a long time ago. It's
Speaker 1: still happening, and that's crazy that we still don't hear
Speaker 1: about it, Like yeah, like we we talked about we
Speaker 1: talked about on this show like a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: like people people lit another abortion clinic on fire, like
Speaker 1: that happens still and will continue to happen, and people
Speaker 1: continue to not care about it because it doesn't and
Speaker 1: anyone who's in power ins what the media doesn't care.
Speaker 1: And it's been happening long enough that there's this sense
Speaker 1: of like normalization around it. It's not seen as radical,
Speaker 1: it's seen as oh, obviously, some people think that's justified.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not surprising, um, and that normalization allows
Speaker 1: way more people to both feel capable of doing something
Speaker 1: and it when it happens, there's not as big of
Speaker 1: a fuss. I do think it's also true though, like
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of people, like I
Speaker 1: think most people don't know that this happened like I think,
Speaker 1: I think there's an extent to which the level of
Speaker 1: violence has been totally invisibilized. And you know, because I
Speaker 1: mean they ever think about this again, is the reason
Speaker 1: that they're working like this is because this this is
Speaker 1: a completely minoritary and position, right, Like, they don't actually
Speaker 1: have that many numerical supporters. It's just that they're able
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, they they have enough people
Speaker 1: to wage systemic cam pain of terror and because of
Speaker 1: that they're able to inflict their sort of able to
Speaker 1: inflict their their fascism on the rest of the population. Ah,
Speaker 1: that was a good ending sigh. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, some
Speaker 1: of these recordings haven't got the best sound quality. We
Speaker 1: were walking around the Butterfly Center. We tried the best
Speaker 1: to block the wind, but some of it's pretty blown
Speaker 1: out and we still wanted you to hear them. So
Speaker 1: we've included them, but apologies that the sound quality isn't
Speaker 1: what it could be. There was a time when you
Speaker 1: could have been forgiven for believing that American fascism had
Speaker 1: been thoroughly beaten back, marginalized, and damaged beyond the capacity
Speaker 1: for reconstitution. Only the very foolish and dishonest believe that today,
Speaker 1: every time the far right has taken a serious beating
Speaker 1: in this country, they've had a place to retreat, to
Speaker 1: a sanctuary, to reorganize, recoup, and surge it again towards
Speaker 1: the halls of power. That sanctuary is the U. S.
Speaker 1: Mexico border. There's a song I quite admire by the
Speaker 1: drive by Truckers named after a young Mexican man, Ramon Casiano.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty one, after the kind of stupid altercation
Speaker 1: young men have been having since time immemorial, Ramon was
Speaker 1: murdered by another kid named Harlan Carter. Harlan was convicted
Speaker 1: of murder and then led off by another judge due
Speaker 1: to a procedural issue with his case. It hardly needs
Speaker 1: to be said that Harlan was white. He went on
Speaker 1: to join the Border Patrol during a period when it
Speaker 1: was seen as a model of good racial policy by
Speaker 1: the Nazi government in Germany. Carter rose to lead the
Speaker 1: Border Patrol, helped to militarize it, and then went on
Speaker 1: to run the n r A and turn it from
Speaker 1: a simple gun advocacy organization to the far right culture
Speaker 1: war institution. It became everything we're dealing with today from
Speaker 1: the far rights started at the border, and to quote
Speaker 1: from that song, that's still where it is today. But
Speaker 1: the border is more than just a battle ground in
Speaker 1: America's endless culture war, and it is more than just
Speaker 1: the system of violencemnlike Carter helped make it into the
Speaker 1: United States. Border with Mexico stretches from the Atlantic to
Speaker 1: the Pacific, through the homelands of many indigenous peoples, and
Speaker 1: across the migratory trails of numerous species, and to many
Speaker 1: many people today, it's still just home. Marianna Jones right,
Speaker 1: runs a butterfly sanctuary that has somewhat improbably provoked the
Speaker 1: direct ire of a U. S President and become the
Speaker 1: center of a series of conspiracy theories. She also grew
Speaker 1: up along the border in the Rio Grande Valley. In
Speaker 1: high school, she'd take trips to discothecas and bars in Rainosa,
Speaker 1: just across the border from McAllen, Texas. Today, she runs
Speaker 1: the National Butterfly Sanctuary just outside of the nondescript town
Speaker 1: which seems to have endless strip malls, big box stores,
Speaker 1: and family run Mexican food joints. You can go there
Speaker 1: and see wildflowers walk in the woods, and if you're
Speaker 1: lucky like we were, you might even find a snake
Speaker 1: in some monarch butterflies making their way across the continent
Speaker 1: without regard for borders or immigration checks. So you know,
Speaker 1: growing up here, we all live very fluid lines. And
Speaker 1: I used that word. I mean in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: during the Classic crisis, you know, when the Harder was president,
Speaker 1: we would literally drive to Mexico to gas upper cars
Speaker 1: and then come back. We would for lunch and cocktas,
Speaker 1: come back for class to say of class, and come
Speaker 1: back to football names from the points. We were all
Speaker 1: in Mexico partying our casts. They had the best discos
Speaker 1: and clothes, and our parents were over there too, having
Speaker 1: to turn. I know people or citizens who lived next
Speaker 1: because it's more affordable because they have reliable with electricity.
Speaker 1: Y'all are laughing. But the border for most people living there,
Speaker 1: sometimes called fronts, is an inconvenience. You have to drive
Speaker 1: to a certain crossing. Sometimes your truck gets checked, sometimes
Speaker 1: the port of entry is closed and you're late for work.
Speaker 1: But in the public eye, especially during and after the
Speaker 1: presidential campaign, it looms like a scene from Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings, and since then it's also started to look
Speaker 1: like one. So growing up here I knew there was
Speaker 1: illegal immigration. It's impossible not to know. I mean nearly
Speaker 1: everyone knows. Someone who came across is a family on
Speaker 1: a short term home, or they crossed the river somewhere.
Speaker 1: But you'll see here our river is hite deep and dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's deadly, um. I mean when I was growing up
Speaker 1: here and I'm fifty two, I had friends who really
Speaker 1: do weeks ago. Their parents had homes and businesses here
Speaker 1: and there. Some of them read rode the bus across
Speaker 1: the bridge every day for school in the morning. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was nothing. We never thought of anyone's, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of citizenship or house. And they also play
Speaker 1: sort of liminals where two passports to navigate and co
Speaker 1: trees have since they have nothing, and there seems to
Speaker 1: be hardly any in between. In mainstream media, the border
Speaker 1: is presented as dangerous, as are the people crossing it.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to feel that you're in danger when
Speaker 1: you're watching the sunset over the real grand and listening
Speaker 1: to the owls who begin their work after dusk, and
Speaker 1: they have a diminishing wild places along the river's north bank.
Speaker 1: Up until a couple of months ago, we were coming
Speaker 1: out here four or five times a week, sometimes twice
Speaker 1: a day on our boat and bringing a lot of
Speaker 1: journalists out. It almost never wound up in the portage
Speaker 1: because they never seen you know. They were like, yes,
Speaker 1: take us out on the river. We want to see
Speaker 1: the illegals crossing. We're like, We're like, dude, the only
Speaker 1: way to do that is to hook up with campaign
Speaker 1: officials working some of the most beautiful and fragile landscapes
Speaker 1: in the country along the southern border. Part of Marianna's
Speaker 1: work is introducing kids to them. I've been lucky enough
Speaker 1: to spend time in many of them, camping in East County,
Speaker 1: San Diego, where the PCT begins. It is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to do. Writing my bike in southern
Speaker 1: Arizona is an adventure. I take it every opportunity, and
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one. From jaguars to butterflies, many
Speaker 1: species of wildlife live along the border and pass over
Speaker 1: it on a daily basis. The border might look serious
Speaker 1: on a map, but for much of the last century
Speaker 1: you'd have struggled to point to it on the ground
Speaker 1: lest you had a GPS device and far too much
Speaker 1: free time on your hands. These kids that will be
Speaker 1: here this week as part of their academic study, they
Speaker 1: thought the Rio Rand Valley was a desert. They didn't
Speaker 1: know you know that we had eleven biologically distinct ecosystems
Speaker 1: in a four county region that would fit in side
Speaker 1: San Diego County, California. That you know that we have
Speaker 1: the river that's not a trickle when everybody flushes their toilets,
Speaker 1: you know, like it can be an El Paso. I mean,
Speaker 1: they had no idea that we are the edge of
Speaker 1: subtropical you know, America, the neo Tropics. Since eleven, though,
Speaker 1: the board has become a physical thing, a landscape thriving
Speaker 1: with life that's somehow found a way to exist in
Speaker 1: places that can kill you with heat in the day
Speaker 1: and cold the night, and sometimes both in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Has been torn apart to provide people who have never
Speaker 1: been there with a chance to grandstand about security, and
Speaker 1: various government contractors a chance to line their pockets. Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz recently posed in a boat, wearing body armor and
Speaker 1: standing next to a machine gun, just feet away from
Speaker 1: where we watched recreational boaters sail lately along the river.
Speaker 1: As we walked from the center down to the river,
Speaker 1: we spotted some trash on the ground and went to
Speaker 1: pick it up. Turned out to be a battery, the
Speaker 1: kind used in a tactical flashlight or weapon light. Marianna
Speaker 1: doesn't use those, and it wasn't there last time she
Speaker 1: walked down a trail. It's not just the wall that's
Speaker 1: ruining this landscape, she says, it's a constant presence of
Speaker 1: militarized border patrol. We see the area as a conflict zone,
Speaker 1: not a conservation one. As I was saying, they're the
Speaker 1: ones stuff as well. They're very commonly used on the
Speaker 1: kind of lights yea of the little night. They're so expensive.
Speaker 1: Marianna knows this only too well. Her butterfly center backs
Speaker 1: up to the Rio Grand. It's a beautiful, peaceful place,
Speaker 1: but since two thousands seventeen it has been under threat
Speaker 1: from the relentless militarization of the Southern Border. The butterflies,
Speaker 1: she says, are important for a number of reasons. So
Speaker 1: butterflies are critical pollinators to all of the green stuff,
Speaker 1: most of which we don't eat. People know bees pollinate
Speaker 1: about one third of our food and so they care
Speaker 1: about bees now because everyone would hate to lose one
Speaker 1: third of our food. But butterflies pollinate all of the grasses,
Speaker 1: wild flowers, shrubs, and trees on the planet. The ones
Speaker 1: that reduce erosion by holding the ground in place against
Speaker 1: wind and against rain and floods. The plants that reduce
Speaker 1: the radiant heat that would come off of the earth
Speaker 1: if we didn't have the green stuff. They filter the
Speaker 1: water going into the water table, and they produce oxygen
Speaker 1: for us. They filter our air. That's why butterflies matter,
Speaker 1: and that's why everybody should care about them and do
Speaker 1: what they can in their commune at ease with their
Speaker 1: intimate native plants to provide habitat for butterflies. It's not
Speaker 1: just the butterflies who are in danger either. It's disgusting, um,
Speaker 1: but it is I hate to say, entirely predictable, but
Speaker 1: it's fairly predictable in an in stage capitalist society. We're
Speaker 1: removing from military doesn't to a border security one where
Speaker 1: border walls and more security are the United States one.
Speaker 1: And how most people don't even know about art. I
Speaker 1: have been shot at by wordpeck many times, and people
Speaker 1: don't realize it was the CBP drums that we're flying
Speaker 1: overhead in Minneapolis. To understand exactly what is at stake,
Speaker 1: both for the border and the butterflies, it's important to
Speaker 1: understand exactly what the border wall looks like on the ground.
Speaker 1: The border wall ecosystem is not just a wall. It's
Speaker 1: a towering thirty foot steel structure topped with anticlimb plates.
Speaker 1: Along the barrier, which is often hundreds of yards from
Speaker 1: the actual border, there's a road wide enough for two
Speaker 1: of the expensive pickup trucks the CBP drives to pass
Speaker 1: each other in remote areas. A road to allow construction
Speaker 1: vehicles to get to the wall also had to be
Speaker 1: built for landscapes that had been untouched for centuries. It's
Speaker 1: been catastrophic. That's why the National Butterfly Sanctuary fought the
Speaker 1: border wall. In the summer of two thousands seventeen, they
Speaker 1: found contractors on their land using heavy equipment to destroy
Speaker 1: the plants they had worked so hard to protect. After
Speaker 1: we found the contractors here illegally clearing our land with
Speaker 1: no right of entry, no eminent domain exercise, no waver
Speaker 1: of NIPA, and other laws we um you know, we
Speaker 1: filed suit against the federal government. That brought some publicity
Speaker 1: and with it a lot of people who said, you
Speaker 1: know that we if we opposed border wall, we must
Speaker 1: be for illegal immigration, as though the issue is that simple.
Speaker 1: The wall, in addition to being a colossal expense, much
Speaker 1: of which is funneled to Zeckelmann Industries, a Canadian owned
Speaker 1: steel company, which was fined dollars by the FBC for
Speaker 1: legal donations to the Trump campaign, is pretty useless. That
Speaker 1: the border wall is built miles inside the United States,
Speaker 1: that Border Patrol picks up ladders every day, um to
Speaker 1: share photos of ramps built so vehicles could literally drive
Speaker 1: over border wall like you know the old range rover
Speaker 1: commercials and and and also other breaches. UM. We also
Speaker 1: got a chance to explain to them that up until
Speaker 1: President Trump, the Border Patrol Union itself had opposed border wall.
Speaker 1: They had called it a waste of money's ineffective, um,
Speaker 1: and really irrelevant to their mission of preventing illegal entry
Speaker 1: to the United States. Walking along the border, we found
Speaker 1: half a dozen ladders constructed from old wooden pallets. Alongside
Speaker 1: them were I D. S clothing And to try this
Speaker 1: that migrants had either abandoned on their journey north, or
Speaker 1: had thrown out for them by border patrol agents who
Speaker 1: had apprehended them. Either way, these discarded things told a
Speaker 1: sad story of young people, sometimes parents and sometimes children
Speaker 1: with siblings, crossing a river and then a wall to
Speaker 1: try to get a chance at a better life. What
Speaker 1: the border wall does do very effectively is funnel people
Speaker 1: through the giant gaps in it. From Texas to California.
Speaker 1: The Trump had aministration has rushed to build as much
Speaker 1: wall as it could in order to live up to
Speaker 1: the wildly exaggerated claims that Trump made in his election debates.
Speaker 1: We now have as strong a border as we've ever had.
Speaker 1: Were over four hundred miles of brand new wall. Of
Speaker 1: that over four hundred miles, three hundred and fifty odd
Speaker 1: were repairs to existing barriers or secure fences as they
Speaker 1: are technically termed, but the rest was built in places
Speaker 1: that were easiest to access. In southern California, mountains and
Speaker 1: valleys are simply skipped. The wall stretches across the flat
Speaker 1: lands in between. People are forced to cross in these
Speaker 1: gaps in the hardest places, and as a result, many
Speaker 1: more of them die. The Butterfly Center isn't one of
Speaker 1: the hard places. But Marianna has found dozens of identity documents,
Speaker 1: some of them in evidence bags labeled Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 1: She says that people aren't dumping them, they are being
Speaker 1: stripped of their documents when they are detained. I know
Speaker 1: that the other side at the end of at the
Speaker 1: cart counts the ragrance of their phone and there I
Speaker 1: and that's a littl the migrants to keep phones piffle.
Speaker 1: It's how they hit the family to say you have
Speaker 1: to sit on you know, operated to spur um. The
Speaker 1: phone is the bank lifelibe not only uh you know,
Speaker 1: leads for the immigrant the cartel. That's the only way
Speaker 1: they get paid. And the fact that order patrol is
Speaker 1: making people undocumented is something folks in the United States
Speaker 1: don't understand. They don't see that. We find garbage bands,
Speaker 1: scroll of medical records, birth certificates, marriage licenses, ideas and
Speaker 1: other things from mons identities and their illness or the
Speaker 1: violence that they've they've suffered and every day to make
Speaker 1: their asylum cases, but more patrol trashes. Throughout the four
Speaker 1: years of the Trump presidency, the Butterfly Center fought to
Speaker 1: protect the ecosystem they had created and to keep the
Speaker 1: pristine riverbank for barn owls, not border patrol trucks. Marianna
Speaker 1: isn't alone. The South Texas Birding Preserve was forced to
Speaker 1: back out of a deal with the FEDS after a
Speaker 1: Cohinity outcry at the thought of the loss of one
Speaker 1: of the very few wild places in the area. While
Speaker 1: they have so far been able to stop the construction
Speaker 1: of portions of the border wall, they have not been
Speaker 1: able to stop the multiple armed agencies that police the
Speaker 1: border and often each other, from encroaching on the center's land. County.
Speaker 1: In Texas, there are several overlapping missions to protect the border.
Speaker 1: Under Operation and Loan Star, Texas National Guard soldiers are
Speaker 1: deployed to protect the border and prevent drugs smuggling and
Speaker 1: child trafficking, at least according to the Office of Governor
Speaker 1: Greg Abbott. Sadly, they're not able to protect themselves from
Speaker 1: each other. So far, four soldiers have died by suicide,
Speaker 1: two in accidental shootings. Texas law allows National Guard soldiers
Speaker 1: to bring their own personal weapons, which were responsible for
Speaker 1: both deaths, and one drowned trying to save migrants from
Speaker 1: the river Because the troops are deployed under state orders,
Speaker 1: not federal ones, they receive fewer benefits and their families
Speaker 1: are not compensated as well in the event that they die.
Speaker 1: In addition to the ten thousand Texas troops, there are
Speaker 1: also four thousand National Guard soldiers on federal orders along
Speaker 1: the border. Task Force Phoenix, as it's called, is a
Speaker 1: combination of thirty four different Guard units stitched together with
Speaker 1: very little cohesion or prior experience working together, and has
Speaker 1: been blighted by low morale. Troops in this deployment are
Speaker 1: three times likely to have a car accident that sees
Speaker 1: illegal drugs, and a battalion deployed to McCallan had three
Speaker 1: soldiers die, the same number as arrest of the National
Speaker 1: Guard combined that year. D u I use is so
Speaker 1: common the breathalyzers are being issued to units. The crisis
Speaker 1: isn't at the border. The crisis is the border. It's
Speaker 1: not only United States soldiers dying along the southern border,
Speaker 1: it's also migrants. According to the Missing Migrants Project, and
Speaker 1: the state is admittedly better viewed than it is heard.
Speaker 1: Migrants coming from Central or South America are far more
Speaker 1: likely to die at the USA's southern border than they
Speaker 1: are at any other point on the way there. One thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty eight people died or went missing
Speaker 1: last year and making the trek north, five hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five of them at the border. Given that the border,
Speaker 1: both under Republicans and Democrats', is a weapon that's increasingly
Speaker 1: effective at killing people an increasingly present in political debate,
Speaker 1: it's surprising how many people have never been there. The border,
Speaker 1: at least the bits of it without the wall, doesn't
Speaker 1: feel violent. One night, while we were in Texas, we
Speaker 1: sat on the bank of the Rio Ground and looked
Speaker 1: across the river as the sunset. Behind us was a
Speaker 1: wall funded by private donations to a group called We
Speaker 1: Build the Wall. It's built so close to the river
Speaker 1: that the weight from the border patrol boats will see
Speaker 1: it undermined and washed away in less than five years.
Speaker 1: Across from us, little Cabanias and Bars studied the shoreline.
Speaker 1: They looked at Dylick and were it not for the
Speaker 1: thousands of armed people who make it their job to
Speaker 1: stop it, it would have been quite nice to swim
Speaker 1: across for a drink. Swimming over was out of the question.
Speaker 1: But the peaceful border we encountered was not the one
Speaker 1: you'd recognize if you've seen Fox News over the past
Speaker 1: four years. For much of Middle America, the border is
Speaker 1: constructed as a lawless land somehow also as a desert,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that miles of it and marked that river,
Speaker 1: and a place where cartel violence goes unchecked. Human trafficking
Speaker 1: runs rampant. A young children are snatched away from their
Speaker 1: families and sold in sex slavery. Of course, young children
Speaker 1: are snatched away from their families at the border, but
Speaker 1: that's your taxpayer money at work, not the zetas or
Speaker 1: cartels with dinner. Sadly, the butterfly centers opposition to the
Speaker 1: wall combined with this political theater at the border to
Speaker 1: place a group of people who just wanted to be
Speaker 1: left alone, to be nice to butterflies, at the center
Speaker 1: of a culture ward they wanted nothing to do with.
Speaker 1: At some point, the Trump White House became aware that
Speaker 1: a hundred acres of Texas grasslands were holding out against
Speaker 1: all the legal and questionably legal efforts of Department of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security and the Trump administration to destroy the little
Speaker 1: haven along the real ground. We know that Jared Kushner
Speaker 1: said in May of twenty nineteen, in the Oval Office,
Speaker 1: we solved the butterfly thing. And and Steve Bannon had been, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the former former special adviser to President Trump,
Speaker 1: and then he is the one who who started this psyop.
Speaker 1: And they took aim at us, and instead of us
Speaker 1: being against the wall and possibly for um open borders,
Speaker 1: they declared that we were a cartel front and actively
Speaker 1: engaged in trafficking humans and drugs, that we were not
Speaker 1: about conservation at all, but we were selling women and
Speaker 1: children into sex slavery. Marianna's Twitter bio at a time
Speaker 1: of writing reads do no harm, take no ship, and
Speaker 1: that's approach she took. As a marga community began to
Speaker 1: sling an increasing amount of ship. The North American Butterfly
Speaker 1: Association filed suit against Brian Cole Fage slash we Build
Speaker 1: the Wall, Tommy Fischer slash Fishers and Gravel slash TRG Construction,
Speaker 1: A Lance new House slash new House and Sons. On
Speaker 1: December third, twenty nineteen. Call Phage, a US Air Force veteran,
Speaker 1: attempted to crowd fund the war after Congress wouldn't fund
Speaker 1: it to the ridiculous extent that Trump desired. He raised
Speaker 1: over twenty five million. In August of twenty twenty, call
Speaker 1: Phage was indicted, along with Steve Bannon two other co defendants,
Speaker 1: on federal charges of defrauding hundreds of thousandth of We
Speaker 1: Build the Wall donors. Federal prosecutors said that despite repeatedly
Speaker 1: assuring donors that call Phage would not be paid, the
Speaker 1: defendants engaged in a scheme to divert three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars to call Phage, which he used to
Speaker 1: fund his lavish lifestyle. Call Phage was separately indicted May
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one on federal charges related to his
Speaker 1: falsification of tax returns. In April of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: Cauthage entered a guilty plea, having accounted for about ten
Speaker 1: million in spending a little under five miles of actual war.
Speaker 1: Call Page's attempts to build the Wall in Texas were
Speaker 1: hampered by the National Butterfly Center lawyers, who argued that
Speaker 1: it was a flood risk because it is and by
Speaker 1: various tax issues at call Fedge's team seemed entirely unaware of.
Speaker 1: While they hope to transfer the war they built, which
Speaker 1: they called the Lamborghini of walls, to federal ownership. CBP
Speaker 1: wanted nothing to do with it, as they were building
Speaker 1: their own wall outside of the floodplane. After ignoring a ruling,
Speaker 1: call Fege eventually built about three miles of wall in
Speaker 1: Texas and then declared the project complete November. With litigation ongoing,
Speaker 1: call Fadge took to Twitter to accuse the National Butterflies
Speaker 1: Center of having a rampant sex trade taking place on
Speaker 1: your property and the death sick bodies. When we first
Speaker 1: saw Brian call Fage's tweets and then we build the
Speaker 1: wall videos using my image and talking about the Butterfly
Speaker 1: Lady and everything and the Butterfly Center. Um, at first,
Speaker 1: you know, we we kind of reacted with humor, like
Speaker 1: this is too funny, Like who in their right mind
Speaker 1: would believe any of this? And you know, we even
Speaker 1: tried addressing I mean, I didn't know who Brian cole
Speaker 1: Fass was at the time, but you know, we replied like, um,
Speaker 1: you have a very very active imagination or you're a
Speaker 1: really you know, twisted person. And we used the hashtag
Speaker 1: liar liar pants on fire because we really did think
Speaker 1: it was ridiculous, but any notion that this was not
Speaker 1: deadly serious was soon dismissed. And now I've become this
Speaker 1: or extremism in Americ politics word, as I told others, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had I've had a lot of journalists asked me,
Speaker 1: what does it feel like to be in the cross
Speaker 1: roads of the culture wars in America? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not at the crossroads of the culture war. I
Speaker 1: live in the borderlands, which are the proving grounds for
Speaker 1: fascism in America. That's where I live. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: see it more and more. Everybody's going to see it
Speaker 1: more and more. They test things like the aerostat balloons here,
Speaker 1: and the fact that we didn't cut them loose and
Speaker 1: shoot them down and set them on fire. The fact
Speaker 1: that we were like, oh, that's kind of a pretty innocuous,
Speaker 1: you know, white balloon in the sky. We can live
Speaker 1: with it means that now it's gone out from under
Speaker 1: DHS to d O D and it's being deployed across
Speaker 1: the United States coming soon were community. A few weeks
Speaker 1: after cal Fidges tweeting, the Butterfly Center closed its Rusty Gate.
Speaker 1: It reopened in late April of two, but the almost
Speaker 1: three months in between were harrowing experience for Marianna and
Speaker 1: for the staff. And we arrived at a center in
Speaker 1: early March. There was a police surveillance tower posted in
Speaker 1: the car park and young men and hum vys on
Speaker 1: the road. We traveled down together there despite them, or
Speaker 1: perhaps in a sense because of them. In the theater
Speaker 1: they represent, Marianna doesn't feel safe. She carries a gun
Speaker 1: on her property even without the wall. The mintorization of
Speaker 1: the border has had a huge impact on the center.
Speaker 1: You will go into the river. She shows us some
Speaker 1: of the roads and access routes had been built. Concrete
Speaker 1: goes here in the base of the levier, midway in
Speaker 1: the levee. The gap to make this road up here
Speaker 1: wide enough for two to three vehicles, and they're down here.
Speaker 1: They'll have a high speed all weather road. So we
Speaker 1: fully expect. There's porter wall and then there's border walls, system,
Speaker 1: the road, the lighting, the sensors, um those sorts of
Speaker 1: things part of the system. Clear and alter this par system.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they come down this high speed all weather road,
Speaker 1: have to slow down, but and drive along the canal.
Speaker 1: And we know the number one killer of Troy Agents accidents.
Speaker 1: As we walk along one of the roads, we talk
Speaker 1: about the impact that wall has had a wildlife. I
Speaker 1: tell her a story about idea I saw try to
Speaker 1: get around the wall into a point. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it was so desperately sad that I can't forget it.
Speaker 1: The devastation the border reads on human life tends to
Speaker 1: get the most pressed and rpefully so. But Marianna has
Speaker 1: spent years watching the wall spread like a cancer at
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. She loves the addition of herbicide, you know,
Speaker 1: keep the enforcement zone dead and free of any vegetation.
Speaker 1: It has to do with the installation of all night
Speaker 1: bright lighting that disrupts mammals, and of course the wall
Speaker 1: when it eliminates range area. When it when it forms
Speaker 1: that barrier for land mammals and reptiles, you eliminate yea
Speaker 1: genetic diversity from from breeding, you eliminate seed distribution, all
Speaker 1: kinds of other things. So um no, there's no way
Speaker 1: to build all in the Lower Reo Ran Valley Wildlife Observation.
Speaker 1: Of course, the human cost is even high. Marianna first
Speaker 1: became aware of exactly what was at stake when she
Speaker 1: like millions of other people, opened up her phone learned
Speaker 1: about the most recent in a string of hate crimes
Speaker 1: inspired by anti immigrant rhetoric. A very disturbed young man
Speaker 1: drove from plane oh to the Walmart and El Paso
Speaker 1: and massacred twenty two people and injured dozens others. We
Speaker 1: were very much aware of that, and I believe that
Speaker 1: is ultimately what we build. The wall seeks to provoke. Here.
Speaker 1: The shooter, who openly targeted Mexicans and believed in the
Speaker 1: Great Replacement theory, which is common among white nationalists, had
Speaker 1: posted a manifesto on h Chan before he started his
Speaker 1: killing spree. In that manifesto, he complained of a Hispanic
Speaker 1: invasion and used rhetoric that mirrored that of Colfage and
Speaker 1: his fundraising collaborator, Steve Bannon. Two thousand nineteen was the
Speaker 1: year the eight Chan shootings dominated news coverage on extremism.
Speaker 1: I found myself as the world media's go to guy
Speaker 1: for explaining what had happened. The hardest thing to get
Speaker 1: across was how much of the hate that had ended
Speaker 1: in dozens of murders had started with ship posting, people
Speaker 1: spreading racist memes and hateful jokes. Within the confines of
Speaker 1: a digital echo chamber. For Marianna, the El Paso shooting
Speaker 1: was a wake up call, hard evidence that online bullshit
Speaker 1: can turn into deadly violence. The longer she spent online
Speaker 1: reading far right conversations, the more she realized co Fage's
Speaker 1: baseless allegations might mean real danger for her in her colleagues.
Speaker 1: After we filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: and and there is publicity about that, And honestly, the
Speaker 1: timing of that was kind of good because we filed
Speaker 1: suit at the beginning of December, so by the time
Speaker 1: media picked up on it, people were really already distracted
Speaker 1: by Christmas. You know, they were holiday planning and partying
Speaker 1: and shopping and all that. So there wasn't this enormous
Speaker 1: explosion of publicity and negative backlash. But we did start
Speaker 1: getting what we call disaster tourists, people who would show
Speaker 1: up going we heard they're gonna build the wall across
Speaker 1: the Butterfly Center, show us where they're gonna build our
Speaker 1: president's big, beautiful wall. And as long as they behaved,
Speaker 1: you know, we have maps, we would take their entry
Speaker 1: fee and say, okay, now you've got to walk a
Speaker 1: quarter mile that way to the canal. That's where they're
Speaker 1: going to build it, and then walk another one point
Speaker 1: two miles to the border, to the actual border. And
Speaker 1: again it gave us a chance to educate people. And uh,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of head scratching with people going
Speaker 1: but why would they build the wall? Things seemed to
Speaker 1: be going well, but then they took a turn for
Speaker 1: the worst. Kovach had tweeted that quote. The only butterflies
Speaker 1: we saw were swarming a decomposing body surrounded by tons
Speaker 1: of rotting trash left behind by illegals. And his lies
Speaker 1: had become something of a fixture on the places where
Speaker 1: MAGA and Q and on overlap. Almost none of these
Speaker 1: people had ever visited the border, but years of propaganda
Speaker 1: had given them a fixed set of expectations about this place.
Speaker 1: They spun up ever more ridiculous fantasies, and by late
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, some of them had even started to show
Speaker 1: up in person. About that same time, police arrested to
Speaker 1: young men with Adam Woffen in West Texas and they
Speaker 1: had been stopped and uh, you know, pulled over, and
Speaker 1: they had all kinds of weapons and munitions and grenades
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, improvised explosive devices and everything in
Speaker 1: the car, and they said they were headed to the border.
Speaker 1: Then the militia people started coming here. And um, I
Speaker 1: was here the day the first ones came. The first
Speaker 1: that we know of, came inside the building to case
Speaker 1: the joint. And sometimes I sit here at the conference
Speaker 1: table to work. Sometimes I'm in this office right here,
Speaker 1: but I can always hear what's going on at the
Speaker 1: front counter, and we have a door time. And so
Speaker 1: there are questions that people ask when their first time visitors.
Speaker 1: There are questions people ask when they're part of our tribe,
Speaker 1: when they're naturalists, when they've come for the butterflies and
Speaker 1: the birds and all of that. And then there are
Speaker 1: questions people ask that make all of your spidy senses,
Speaker 1: you know, go off. And I heard heard that kind
Speaker 1: of questioning, And whenever that happens, I get my phone
Speaker 1: open to camera and I go out there. What the
Speaker 1: question you heard? Was that kind of They were asking
Speaker 1: about the lay of the land and how they would
Speaker 1: get to the river from here, And those aren't regular questions.
Speaker 1: When most people show up. They're like, we're here on
Speaker 1: family vacation and not our way to south padre, but
Speaker 1: we heard there was a butterfly center, so we stopped.
Speaker 1: You know, so they may say, like where are the butterflies?
Speaker 1: People show up thinking we're a betterfly house, and you know,
Speaker 1: but when people immediately say like how do I get
Speaker 1: to the river from here, or explained to me where
Speaker 1: the access points are there, you're kind of like, okay,
Speaker 1: we know that's And I took a picture of them
Speaker 1: from behind, and then I went out there and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, hello, gentlemen, can I help you?
Speaker 1: You know, and make sure they you know, it's like
Speaker 1: we are looking you in the face, we can identify you.
Speaker 1: And one of them kind of turned and walked off,
Speaker 1: and one of them stayed to talk to me, and
Speaker 1: they were lazing, well, we've just you know, never been
Speaker 1: here before, and tell us which all are all about.
Speaker 1: And it was the week of Thanksgiving and we'd actually
Speaker 1: just had our pot luck for staff and some of
Speaker 1: our members. So they're like, and you've got food, and
Speaker 1: they're like, can we have some pecan pie or have
Speaker 1: a slice of pie? But the other guy who had
Speaker 1: peeled off, I noticed him walking around. He came and
Speaker 1: looked back here. He was noticing the cameras and all
Speaker 1: the places. He made his way towards the back of
Speaker 1: the building and started the same thing, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and I told Luciano, go outside, photograph all the vehicles
Speaker 1: in the parking lot, you know, get license plates, get
Speaker 1: all the identifying information that we would need. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: there were two trucks backed in with the punisher stickers
Speaker 1: and the thirteen stars in a circle and the you
Speaker 1: know that don't tread on me and this and that.
Speaker 1: One of them was from New Mexico, and I believe
Speaker 1: the other one was from I want to say, like
Speaker 1: Oregon or somewhere, but it was, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was I've still got all that information. And then I
Speaker 1: uh so after they left, we downloaded the security camera
Speaker 1: video and put our photos and everything together, and I
Speaker 1: emailed everything to the commander for DPS down here as
Speaker 1: well as the Mission police chief and UM and then
Speaker 1: asked to meet with them. And of course the Mission
Speaker 1: p D guys had no idea about the adam often
Speaker 1: people being arrested in Texas. They had no idea the
Speaker 1: militia was in town. UM. And then they more and
Speaker 1: more of them kept coming, and you know, one of
Speaker 1: them would drive up and down Sherbock and his huge
Speaker 1: jacked up truck. There's a red truck with the Trump flags,
Speaker 1: and he had two big great danes that you know,
Speaker 1: and he would just be loud and annoying. He wanted
Speaker 1: everybody to know he was here on patrol and and
Speaker 1: ready to intimidate. That was disconcerting, but the police responded.
Speaker 1: They wound up having several interactions with various militia people
Speaker 1: and even taking at least two of them that we
Speaker 1: know of, into custody, and at least one of those
Speaker 1: was turned over to the FBI. The man arrested had
Speaker 1: outstanding warrants and had been flying a drone in a
Speaker 1: controlled air space. Another had been impersonating a law enforcement officer.
Speaker 1: Seeing the threat, Marianna realized that if she wanted to
Speaker 1: stay safe, he was going to have to take matters
Speaker 1: into her own hands. We don't know if it was
Speaker 1: done here or somewhere else. I assume it was not
Speaker 1: here because they didn't tell us it was here. Oh No.
Speaker 1: The mission p D officer who is their liaison with
Speaker 1: the FBI came and met with me and thanked me
Speaker 1: for sharing all of that information. I mean, we knew
Speaker 1: what hotel they were staying at. We and we had
Speaker 1: We've had to become our own sort of security and
Speaker 1: detective force because nobody else is doing it. And I
Speaker 1: think most people in communities around the country think the
Speaker 1: police know what's going on and they're out there, you know,
Speaker 1: safeguarding us, when we have learned the hard way that
Speaker 1: that is absolutely not true. Soon she was plumbing the
Speaker 1: parts of the Internet that she'd only heard mentioned on
Speaker 1: passing in the news. We were aware of Pizza Gate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were aware that they had declared that Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: and associates were running as Saint anach child you know,
Speaker 1: sex ring with you know, ritual sacrifice and all kinds
Speaker 1: of other preposterous stuff out of the basement of a
Speaker 1: d C. Pizza parlor, you know where the pizza parlor
Speaker 1: didn't even have a basement, much less a Satanic ritual
Speaker 1: child sex trafficking ring. Just a few weeks after the
Speaker 1: shooting an El Paso, we build the war Broke ground
Speaker 1: on their Phase two project within sight, very much within
Speaker 1: shooting distance to the National Butterfly Center. Marna was under
Speaker 1: no illusion about the stakes. They know that they have
Speaker 1: the ability to incite violence in that way to motivate
Speaker 1: people to take action, and they use a lot of
Speaker 1: really inflammatory rhetoric. Even Steve Bannon's broadcast is called the
Speaker 1: War Room. You know, we're all at war. We're war
Speaker 1: against the cartels, and we're at war for the soul
Speaker 1: of our nation, and we're at war against the Democrats,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and now they're at war against
Speaker 1: the Butterfly Center. In addition to her intelligence gathering, she
Speaker 1: started taking steps to protect herself and her workers. They
Speaker 1: weren't exactly the sort of thing she'd expected when she
Speaker 1: took a job. What you'd hope to write grunts and
Speaker 1: talk to kids about butterflies. We had to develop some
Speaker 1: very rudimentary safety plans, like if there were a shooting,
Speaker 1: where you would shelter, how we would try to safeguard visitors, um,
Speaker 1: and other things to like the women on staff, even
Speaker 1: the guys on staff, UM, Like I never have my
Speaker 1: hair down. I always keep it up or under a
Speaker 1: hat or something. Because you just learned in basic self
Speaker 1: defense that somebody's going to grab your ponytail or your
Speaker 1: hair as the fastest, easiest way to take control of
Speaker 1: your whole body. Basically, so we just we all take
Speaker 1: um a variety of precautions, and it has radically changed
Speaker 1: the way we we operate here and the way we
Speaker 1: perceived this place which used to be. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were blissful idiots coming to work in this oasis of
Speaker 1: of flowers and butterflies every day. And you know, my
Speaker 1: children described me as snow white, that I'm out there
Speaker 1: just with the you know, the butterflies landing on me,
Speaker 1: in the hummingbirds coming up and saying hello. Luckily she
Speaker 1: wasn't alone. As soon as people heard about the threats
Speaker 1: to her in the center, she began to receive mass
Speaker 1: us of support. It turns out it's not only right
Speaker 1: wing grifters. You can summon people to remote part of
Speaker 1: southern Texas, whether Rio Grand Tristrough the reads a local
Speaker 1: switch to English and Spanish as a mood suits soon
Speaker 1: groups him across the country, from veterans to indigenous nations,
Speaker 1: reached out to office support. So first we had the
Speaker 1: water protectors and indigenous people's like the Gattisco, Marugo and
Speaker 1: Navajo and other nations. People came here and set up camp.
Speaker 1: They were good being here night and day to be
Speaker 1: our eyes and ears and a deterrent for the militia
Speaker 1: entering the property. And along with them came others like
Speaker 1: the Sierra Club Military Outdoors Program participants who also camped
Speaker 1: out here for a week. And we had the brown
Speaker 1: Berets and veterans for Peace and um even UH folks
Speaker 1: from the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to even include that since we get called
Speaker 1: pinko comyne, libtards, snowflakes and all of that, but those
Speaker 1: folks showed up willing to help in the face of
Speaker 1: UH fascism, in the face of these militia lit all
Speaker 1: this stress and the need for constant patrols and vigilants
Speaker 1: to gets told even with support. Being the center of
Speaker 1: a fabricated firestorm of lies is no fun. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just Marianna who's impacted. The constant stressed and the NonStop
Speaker 1: over flights of the Border Patrol helicopters impacted her staff
Speaker 1: as well. And then in nineteen like all bets are off.
Speaker 1: Anybody can say anything they want. They can. You know,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but people hit mental health
Speaker 1: days now if they pay, if they just for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: are like I can't deal with this ship. Today they
Speaker 1: don't have to come to work, and I've lost good employees. Briefly,
Speaker 1: we built the wall one an injunction and kept building
Speaker 1: their privately funded wall. Massive erosion quickly undermined it, but
Speaker 1: the International Boundary and Water Commission report on the construction
Speaker 1: wasn't completed until March, by which time we build the
Speaker 1: wall had completed three miles of wall. The consensus among
Speaker 1: hydrologists and engineers interviewed by Pro Publica for a report
Speaker 1: on the wall said that the Rio Grand had scoured
Speaker 1: against the base of the wall, causing erosion and putting
Speaker 1: the wall in danger of collapse. With its very shallow foundation,
Speaker 1: Coal Fager's wall was an immediate danger of toppling into
Speaker 1: the river. In response to this, Trump did what Trump
Speaker 1: does and took to Twitter to blame everyone else. In July, tweeted,
Speaker 1: I disagreed with doing this very small, tiny section of
Speaker 1: the wall, going on to say it was only done
Speaker 1: to make me look bad and perhaps it now doesn't
Speaker 1: even work. Should have been built like rest of wall
Speaker 1: five hundred plus miles. I should also note that he
Speaker 1: misspelled perhaps in that tweet. While Coal Flas was still
Speaker 1: reeling from this condemnation, the acting U. S. Attorney for
Speaker 1: the Southern District of New York announced indictments of Coal,
Speaker 1: Fas and Bannon for wire fraud. The charging documents themselves
Speaker 1: are an unusually compelling read. We did a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes of Behind the Bastards covering them. The whole situation
Speaker 1: would be much funnier, though, if it weren't for all
Speaker 1: of the lives that Colfage and his cronies directly threatened. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it turned out they had been taking huge sums for
Speaker 1: their own personal use, while concealing their use of funds
Speaker 1: that donors thought would be spent on the wall by
Speaker 1: creating quote sham and voices and accounts to launder donations
Speaker 1: and cover up their crimes. Initially, all four entered not
Speaker 1: guilty please. They seem to be buying time, hoping that
Speaker 1: Trump would pardon them. In the end, he did pardon
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon, and you can make of that what you will,
Speaker 1: but the others were left to hang in the wind.
Speaker 1: This April call, Fage entered a guilty plea to these
Speaker 1: and other charges. The failure of Bannon and Colfage's grift
Speaker 1: didn't stop them from using the butterfly sanctuary as a
Speaker 1: punching bag and their fundraising grants that they published to
Speaker 1: whatever sites had not gotten around to banning them yet.
Speaker 1: As right wing radicals were d platform from Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter in the lead up to the election, Marianna stopped
Speaker 1: getting hagged in their rants, But they didn't stop ranting.
Speaker 1: Soon as it became clear that Trump had lost the
Speaker 1: election and refused to concede it, he began to lie
Speaker 1: about the election and then attempted to overturn it by
Speaker 1: encouraging his supporters to storm the US capital. At this point,
Speaker 1: it became clearer that the same people who were fanatical
Speaker 1: about building the wall had also become entirely detached from reality.
Speaker 1: Even after Biden had been inaugurated and their lie had failed.
Speaker 1: Who's who or perhaps a Who's not in jail for sedition.
Speaker 1: Yet of MAGA grifters continued to focus their rage at
Speaker 1: the que and on adjacent fantasies they had concocted about
Speaker 1: unspecified cartel's smuggling children across a butterfly sanctuary to sexually
Speaker 1: abuse them. Sometimes, they claimed they cut the heads off
Speaker 1: of children so that the corpses were easier to transport.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of habitual, unhinged escalation that liberals and
Speaker 1: lefties on Twitter love to consume mockingly via aggregator accounts
Speaker 1: that enable mass gawking at the far right. But for
Speaker 1: Marianna it was not at all amusing. Like I didn't
Speaker 1: even know rumble existed. I didn't know what rumble was.
Speaker 1: And they and we were sent the video that Christy
Speaker 1: Hutcherson and Lindsay Something from South Carolina made here in
Speaker 1: front of the Butterfly Center. And you know, of course
Speaker 1: there's the been Berkam stuff, and you know, we don't
Speaker 1: watch War Room, but sometimes I do have to go
Speaker 1: find and film portions of those broadcasts where Steve Bannon
Speaker 1: is still bashing us and and using that platform to
Speaker 1: bolster um the lies and and you know, really stir
Speaker 1: up the the the terrible sentiment and and ultimately we
Speaker 1: fear the stochastic terrorism. Let's stop for a second and
Speaker 1: go into more detail about the people she's referencing here.
Speaker 1: Christie Hutcherson founded a group called Women Fighting for America
Speaker 1: on their websites about page they today Americans closely held
Speaker 1: beliefs in freedoms seem to be under constant attack from
Speaker 1: mainstream media, elitist academia, judicial activists, foreign aggressors, and many
Speaker 1: times elected politicians. These attacks highlight the two extremely different
Speaker 1: ideologies fighting for our country's future, where we stand by
Speaker 1: and let America become a socialist, Marxist or communist nation
Speaker 1: and give our children up to this hopeless vision. I
Speaker 1: should also note that women fighting for America actively solicit donations,
Speaker 1: which they note are not tax deductible. Hutcherson incited rioters
Speaker 1: during the January sixth insurrection and is generally what you
Speaker 1: might call a B list MAGA star. Ben Birkwam is
Speaker 1: a correspondent for Real America Voice, the network that hosts
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon's War Room podcasts. In general, the folks most
Speaker 1: focused on harassing the Butterfly Sanctuary are a lower grade
Speaker 1: of MAGA influencer than the major national names, but they
Speaker 1: all have connections higher up to those big names, and
Speaker 1: when they do land a successful line of propaganda, it
Speaker 1: tends to filter up quite efficiently to those bigger names.
Speaker 1: In January of twenty two, a year after the failed
Speaker 1: coup at the capital, some of these MAGA holdouts came
Speaker 1: to the Rio Grand Valley to pick on a target
Speaker 1: they thought they might have a better chance of taking.
Speaker 1: The Wee Stand America Border Security rally was headlined by
Speaker 1: the few remaining Q and On conspiracy theorists and supporters
Speaker 1: of former President Trump who had not gotten in trouble
Speaker 1: for the Capital stuff. In part, like the entire phenomenon,
Speaker 1: the conference was a giant grifft, but for many of
Speaker 1: the people taken up with its religious proclamations and wild
Speaker 1: lives of child trafficking and sexual abuse, it was the
Speaker 1: last chance they felt they had to stop something evil.
Speaker 1: Marianna up until that time, hadn't been aware of how
Speaker 1: serious the threats against her sanctuary were. Then a friend
Speaker 1: involved in local Republican politics reached out and told her
Speaker 1: be armed at all times or out of town. Ahead
Speaker 1: of the rally. beIN Burquam appeared in a video on
Speaker 1: Getter outside of the sanctuary holding a pair of children's shoes,
Speaker 1: which he claimed were evidence of trafficking, and stated that
Speaker 1: he and the Butterfly Center were calling on Joe Biden
Speaker 1: to shut down the border were down here are actually
Speaker 1: heading down to Benson State Park to look at the
Speaker 1: end of the wall where Joe Biden stopped building the
Speaker 1: wall and this place, the Butterfly Center. They said they
Speaker 1: were afraid they had some credible threats that something was
Speaker 1: gonna go on. So we came down here and we
Speaker 1: want to join our voices with the Butterfly Center and
Speaker 1: say we stand against the credible threats of the cartel's
Speaker 1: trafficking children through the Butterfly Center, and we demand we
Speaker 1: call on Joe Biden to close this border down to
Speaker 1: protect the butterflies, because we all care about butterflies. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know the children that are being sold. These shoes
Speaker 1: were from one of the children that was trafficked across.
Speaker 1: This wristband was from one of the children that was
Speaker 1: trafficked across. Smaller than my four year old daughter's arm.
Speaker 1: But it really matters to the Democrats are the butterflies.
Speaker 1: And so we unite with them if that's what it
Speaker 1: If that's what it's gonna take to shut this border down,
Speaker 1: we unite with them and say protect the butterflies. Joe
Speaker 1: closed down the border because we know you don't care
Speaker 1: about the kids. The same day, Piper Loomis and hutchardson
Speaker 1: the p in their own video holding the same suspiciously
Speaker 1: new looking children's shoes, and they're horrifically overexposed video. They
Speaker 1: suggested that NBC was quote more concerned about butterflies than
Speaker 1: the little children, and that the Butterfly Center was used
Speaker 1: as a route for the sex trafficking of children. Together,
Speaker 1: the video's title said they would save America. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: this is Lindsay Piper Loomis. I'm here with my bestie,
Speaker 1: Christie Hutcherson and founder of Women Fighting for America. I
Speaker 1: went to the border with her last year for six days.
Speaker 1: We are here at the Butterfly Center. Look at the
Speaker 1: credible threat. They said, there's gonna be a big protest here.
Speaker 1: There's no protests. They're protesting. What tell them about the butterflies?
Speaker 1: Tell them why? Like, what was the big deal? I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure, but um, I got news. I've been
Speaker 1: hit by every single tabloid there is. But there's some
Speaker 1: kind of credible threat with butterflies here. UM in Mission Texas,
Speaker 1: UM from we stand America and Women Fighting for America.
Speaker 1: I can tell you Women Fighting for America loves butterflies,
Speaker 1: and we care about butterflies very much. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to come down here and see what the credible threat was, Um.
Speaker 1: And if we have to protect the butterflies, we need
Speaker 1: to protect the butterflies. I agree with that, So Biden,
Speaker 1: why don't you build the wall to protect the butterflies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really that simple. UM. But my question to this
Speaker 1: administration and to the National Butterfly Museum here, why are
Speaker 1: you more concerned? Why are you more concerned about butterflies
Speaker 1: than you are than the little children who are being
Speaker 1: trafficked right behind this center, and they use the butterfly
Speaker 1: land to come up through and bring these children who
Speaker 1: are trafficked and these women who are trafficked. You know,
Speaker 1: Tom Homing yesterday was speaking on stage and was telling
Speaker 1: one of the stories where he's seen a little child
Speaker 1: where he had to rescue and that one child had
Speaker 1: over twenty two different people's d n A inside of them.
Speaker 1: That's disgusting. So as much as I care about butterflies,
Speaker 1: I can tell you this, Lindsay, I care a lot
Speaker 1: more about our children and the children who are coming
Speaker 1: up and being exploited from the different countries by the cartels.
Speaker 1: That's what I care about. So I've been telling you
Speaker 1: guys about how children are tattooed according to how they're
Speaker 1: going to be trafficked or sold into what type of trafficking,
Speaker 1: organ harvesting, sex, drug and human trafficking. How they use
Speaker 1: their body, they kill them, They use their body cavities
Speaker 1: to haul drugs across that border until the bodies start
Speaker 1: decaying and they find the bodies decaped, decapitated. Told you
Speaker 1: about the rape trees. But here we actually have a
Speaker 1: shoe from and this actually this is this is what
Speaker 1: so lindsay, this is a little bracelet and there's a
Speaker 1: little how much money it costs for this person to
Speaker 1: be brought aside um to to America from the cartels.
Speaker 1: The other thing is is that the cartels when they're
Speaker 1: getting ready to move children, they call them tickets. So
Speaker 1: they have no regard for life. They don't care. They'll
Speaker 1: throw them in the river, they'll leave them in the
Speaker 1: desert to die. Um, and they call them tickets. That's
Speaker 1: that's how disgusting this whole thing is. And America needs
Speaker 1: to wake up and understand we are at a war
Speaker 1: with the cartels. We are at the war to save
Speaker 1: our children, and every so much. Yeah, and every states
Speaker 1: the border state and South Carolina is ranked one of
Speaker 1: the top and then nation for trafficking. Lindsay Piper limits
Speaker 1: with Christie Hudgerson. Together, we're saving America. God bless. But
Speaker 1: this time they didn't stop with posting. On the day
Speaker 1: he was inaugurated, Biden signed an executive order re sending
Speaker 1: Trump's emergency Declaration at the southern border and ending some
Speaker 1: use of the d D funding. Trump had relied upon
Speaker 1: as an end run around accountability, but he didn't as
Speaker 1: he promised he would stop building immediately during the Biden
Speaker 1: Obama administration, Trump campaigned on um build that wall. Are
Speaker 1: you willing to tear that wall down? No, there will
Speaker 1: not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration
Speaker 1: number one. Like so much else, Biden didn't live up
Speaker 1: to his promises on the border. There have been some
Speaker 1: small victories for basic decency, but Biden's record is deeply mixed.
Speaker 1: He's reunited hundreds of children with their families, the ended
Speaker 1: court negotiations about a financial settlement for them. Migrant apprehensions
Speaker 1: climbed to one point seven million of record in fiscal
Speaker 1: year twenty one, but they also reflected an unusually high
Speaker 1: rate of adults attempting to cross the border multiple times
Speaker 1: that's because Biden's administration defended Trump's use of Title forty two,
Speaker 1: part of a seventy seven year old law called the
Speaker 1: Public Health Service Act, which has been interpreted to allow
Speaker 1: CVP to release migrants back into Mexico without booking them.
Speaker 1: Often this means they turned right back around across again
Speaker 1: in a more remote and often more deadly place. Biden
Speaker 1: hasn't lived up to his promises on the wall either.
Speaker 1: Marianna showed us a pile of wall sections, essentially giant
Speaker 1: metal poles, just a little shorter than Trump war. You
Speaker 1: could be forgiven for thinking they're identical, but these is,
Speaker 1: she explained, well, not technically wall. And you see the
Speaker 1: border wall that was being constructed there. Some of it
Speaker 1: has the tall ballards with the anti climb plate that's
Speaker 1: and then the short levy repair and guardrail. Well, I
Speaker 1: snapped moody black and white photos of the wall from
Speaker 1: on top of the levee, as I have all along
Speaker 1: the hundreds of miles of landscape that it cuts through
Speaker 1: like an open wound. Robot went down to see who
Speaker 1: made these new pieces of the Biden barrier, but we
Speaker 1: didn't have much luck finding a label the wall segments
Speaker 1: lay out in giant palettes surrounded by construction debris and dirt.
Speaker 1: Every palette is labeled, and so will are all the
Speaker 1: shipping containers, but the wall materials themselves had no clear
Speaker 1: maker's mark on them. As we walked back along the
Speaker 1: dirt road, we asked Marianna about the video that brought
Speaker 1: us here in the first place. If you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: it's a video of Kimberly low along Odds. Marga congressional
Speaker 1: candidate from Virginia, really is an interesting figure. She started
Speaker 1: out as a Sanders backer in sixteen and has radicalized
Speaker 1: sense to such a degree that most of her local
Speaker 1: MAGA people want nothing to do with her. Some of
Speaker 1: them think she's some kind of double agent. Audio from
Speaker 1: the incident makes it clear why people might view Kimberly
Speaker 1: as unhinged. We're not here to cause any problems, I'm sorry. No,
Speaker 1: you are here to promote your agenda, and your agenda
Speaker 1: is not welcome here. So you're not for keeping the
Speaker 1: illgals out. So you're not that has all these four
Speaker 1: people in the humanitarian crisis. That's what we're here. So
Speaker 1: you're next trafficked and righted them that is not at
Speaker 1: all what this is about. We have girl scouts spend
Speaker 1: the night here. That's how safe it is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have children in the car. It's safe here. Anyway, We're
Speaker 1: not here to it now. You're you're here to make
Speaker 1: a show and to promote your agenda. So you can
Speaker 1: leave now, thank you for leaving, now, thank you? All right,
Speaker 1: But I'm sorry that you're okay with children being great.
Speaker 1: I'm not okay with any of that, and I thank you.
Speaker 1: Your bullshit is a big problem. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: help the world. I got a really nasty person. We'll
Speaker 1: let Marianna explain what happened. So I was sitting here,
Speaker 1: actually at the conference table, and my son was at
Speaker 1: the front counter. He doesn't work here, but he was
Speaker 1: covering for a staff member who was outsick. And as
Speaker 1: I was saying, you hear things that are like m
Speaker 1: you know, So I was on a conference call. I
Speaker 1: had my headphones in, but my son came over and
Speaker 1: he gave me a note and it said, you know,
Speaker 1: this woman says she's running for Congress and has her
Speaker 1: secret service agent with her, and you know, I thought
Speaker 1: that was strange. But then I you know, I'm still
Speaker 1: on this call, but I you know, I took my
Speaker 1: headphones out so I could hear them. And the one woman, Michelle,
Speaker 1: was claiming to be secret service. And I mean, I've
Speaker 1: had people like bettor Work when he was a congressman
Speaker 1: come visit Michelle Beckley, who's a state representative. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had I've had people come visit and they don't
Speaker 1: have secret service, you know. So I knew that that
Speaker 1: was not true, that this woman was not secret service.
Speaker 1: And the congressional rep I asked my son get her name,
Speaker 1: and he did, and I just did, you know, literally
Speaker 1: like one or two minute Internet search for her, and
Speaker 1: it was immediately apparent that she was a MAGA candidate.
Speaker 1: And my son said, they want us to open the
Speaker 1: back seventy for them, but they don't want to pay admission.
Speaker 1: And on her Facebook page, I could see their Facebook
Speaker 1: live stream from just like five minutes or or where
Speaker 1: they had driven down Sherbock to the gate where we
Speaker 1: all have been and seeing, you know, we have a great,
Speaker 1: big private property no trespassing sign, and then they went
Speaker 1: up on the levy and interacted with the Texas National
Speaker 1: Guard there. Her video ended before that, but a reporter
Speaker 1: with stars and stripes. I know, was on the levee
Speaker 1: with National Guard and interacted with Kimberly and Michelle. So
Speaker 1: they trespassed onto our property. Then they came here demanding
Speaker 1: that they be granted access without paying admission and declared,
Speaker 1: just right up front, we want to go see the
Speaker 1: river and the illegals crossing on the rafts to the
Speaker 1: Butterfly Center. The rafts they were talking about, we're referencing
Speaker 1: a doctored image circulating around the right wing conspiracy web.
Speaker 1: We stood at the dock in the image. On that
Speaker 1: afternoon there were no rafts. Marianna decided to try and
Speaker 1: talk the two women down, so, um, you know, I,
Speaker 1: I put my phone on record, carried it out there.
Speaker 1: I got to business cards because it is my job
Speaker 1: to be professional and grieve these people when they come.
Speaker 1: So I went out there and I said hello, and
Speaker 1: the rest of it is history. As they say, you
Speaker 1: have that audio or um you know of of of
Speaker 1: me saying I know who you are and what you're
Speaker 1: up to. And I knew then it was a setup
Speaker 1: for someone to come here and say those things and
Speaker 1: be doing their own uh you know, sort of project
Speaker 1: Veritas Facebook live stream Border Adventure from Virginia. As they say,
Speaker 1: none of it smelled right, you know, that didn't work,
Speaker 1: so she asked them to leave. Well, it was when
Speaker 1: I told them they needed to leave and if they
Speaker 1: weren't going to leave, you know, we would call the
Speaker 1: e And I told him. I gestured to my son,
Speaker 1: just do it, you know, go ahead and call the
Speaker 1: call the police, which he did, and they were like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're leaving, We're leading. They went out the front doors,
Speaker 1: but then they stopped, so I opened the door behind them,
Speaker 1: like keep it moving, ladies, you know you have to leave.
Speaker 1: And I was focused on Michelle who was on my left,
Speaker 1: who was again saying she was Secret Service and laughing
Speaker 1: at her. When I turned and Kimberly was on this
Speaker 1: side of me and had her phone up like this,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know if she was taking photos or filming,
Speaker 1: but we talked about how everybody now has their own triggers.
Speaker 1: I do not want my photo taken. I do not
Speaker 1: want anyone filming me. I don't I don't want any
Speaker 1: of that because of how cold Fasion, Bannon and their
Speaker 1: fake news outlets and everything else have used my image
Speaker 1: and have put a target on my back. So she's
Speaker 1: standing there going we're here at the Butterfly Sanctuary or
Speaker 1: whatever she called it, and I'm with this not nice lady,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh no, and I just put
Speaker 1: my hand up to block her from photographing or filming
Speaker 1: me or to swat it away. And then I immediately
Speaker 1: turned back towards the doors to retreat inside the building.
Speaker 1: But I didn't make it inside the building. I was
Speaker 1: flat on my ass on the ground, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know if Michelle had grabbed me from behind, or if
Speaker 1: Kimberly had uh pushed me or whatever. But then my
Speaker 1: son busted out of the building and was sort of
Speaker 1: over me um and I'm trying to get up off
Speaker 1: the ground, and all this is caught on the video
Speaker 1: camera from the building. In a previous video, the women
Speaker 1: had indicated that they were armed, which is generally a
Speaker 1: safe assumption when MAGA type show up accusing you of
Speaker 1: child trafficking. The situation was rapidly growing more dangerous. My
Speaker 1: son feared for my life. He thought Michelle was going
Speaker 1: to stamp my face or my neck or my head.
Speaker 1: And she's a big girl, and and at that point
Speaker 1: Kimberly ran to her car. Somewhere in the midst of
Speaker 1: all that, she she fled to her car, where she
Speaker 1: had her three children waiting because this place is so
Speaker 1: dangerous and lawless and and everything. She brought her three
Speaker 1: children here for her opportunity to, you know, interact with
Speaker 1: cartel or whatever. I mean, it's just the whole thing
Speaker 1: just gets more bizarre. And uh. And Michelle at that
Speaker 1: point had taken my phone, and I was just telling her,
Speaker 1: you're not leaving with my phone, giving my phone back,
Speaker 1: while Kimberly is again live streaming from her car, yelling
Speaker 1: at Michelle to come get in the car. Uh. Michelle
Speaker 1: did walk to the car declare, she's not bothering me
Speaker 1: about me. Um. But my son had run to close
Speaker 1: the front gate because he didn't want them. I mean,
Speaker 1: he had just called. Unbeknownst to us, there was a
Speaker 1: visitor in the parking lot who had also dial and
Speaker 1: you guys have been here. There's police on the corner.
Speaker 1: There's police, right, I mean, there's police everywhere. So my
Speaker 1: son ran to close the gate one so they couldn't
Speaker 1: leave with my phone too, so they would be here
Speaker 1: when the police got here. But then the police didn't come,
Speaker 1: and as she fled the property, she's filming herself and
Speaker 1: she's gunning it the car as she races towards the gate, screaming,
Speaker 1: get the funk out of my way, Get the funk
Speaker 1: out of my way, and then she swerves like this
Speaker 1: at my son, who had to leap to the ground
Speaker 1: out of the way to avoid being hit by her
Speaker 1: red range rover. The center was full of visitors, some
Speaker 1: of them called nine, but no one stepped into help
Speaker 1: prior to this experience. Yes, I would have expected our visitors,
Speaker 1: any decent human being, to respond to a woman's screaming, help, help,
Speaker 1: help me, please, please help, but nobody did, only my son.
Speaker 1: At first, they didn't fully grasp what was happening, but
Speaker 1: soon Marianna had worked out who her attacker was. And
Speaker 1: so I relayed all of that to my boss and
Speaker 1: to the police, and uh, you know, my boss was
Speaker 1: kind of like, well, do whatever you want. If you
Speaker 1: feel like you need to close next weekend, then close
Speaker 1: next weekend. So we did. We closed that Friday, Saturday,
Speaker 1: and Sunday, and then we came back in the next Monday,
Speaker 1: and that's when we saw and people started sending us
Speaker 1: the videos that Berkewam and Hutcherson had filmed here, presumably
Speaker 1: on Sunday, And there's probably a lot more stuff out
Speaker 1: there that we haven't seen. After leaving the Butterfly Center
Speaker 1: one day, we went for a walk towards some nearby
Speaker 1: trailer parks. They're full of people who the locals called
Speaker 1: Winter Texans, people from the colder parts of the US
Speaker 1: who spend a few months in trailer homes on the
Speaker 1: border so they can wear shorts in March and not
Speaker 1: pay expensive heating bills. We bumped into some Winter Texans
Speaker 1: who are on their way to a bird sanctuary we
Speaker 1: just visited. They said they'd missed their usual trips to
Speaker 1: the Butterfly Center their friends in Minnesota. They said, I
Speaker 1: can believe that they would go down to the border
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. Is not reality as to what's going on
Speaker 1: in the border down here. Um, people don't understand. You know,
Speaker 1: all the world wire you coming down and really says
Speaker 1: the idea of sports of people attacking you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the people coming out of your brain right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the impression they get, and we
Speaker 1: say we go. They do their best to help change perceptions,
Speaker 1: they said, And then we try to We try to
Speaker 1: do as much as we can to get factual information
Speaker 1: back home to people with questions and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: We worked, Um maybe well we haven't done the last
Speaker 1: few years because I couldn't. But yeah, um, four or
Speaker 1: five years ago we were working with the rest of
Speaker 1: It Center here with topic charities, and there were some
Speaker 1: men where allow of the people could go over and
Speaker 1: on it. The other thing, I come, I don't think
Speaker 1: that people realize because of the river there's not a
Speaker 1: straight line, or that you can't just build a wall,
Speaker 1: and that people live in their houses south of the wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and people's farms are selves of the wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes there's sometimes there isn't. Everywhere we go along the border,
Speaker 1: we see division. Locals are losing places they love, and
Speaker 1: people from a long way away of performing a charade
Speaker 1: for personal and political gain. But it's not all that
Speaker 1: cut and dried. One taco shop we walked past has
Speaker 1: a special parking spot reserve for DHS employees. A trailer
Speaker 1: park we drive by has sim blue line flags. Fine,
Speaker 1: despite my best attempts at putting the clueless foreigner card
Speaker 1: when we call them. They won't tell me why they
Speaker 1: have the flags or what they mean. Some of the
Speaker 1: National Guards troops we spoke to have been out of
Speaker 1: work before they came down to the border. Actually I
Speaker 1: didn't have a job. Okay, give me, and I'm planning
Speaker 1: to say, You're like, okay, yeah, you get active, dud,
Speaker 1: you pay while you're somewhere where it's like it because border.
Speaker 1: Everyone on the border wants to feel safe, including Marianna.
Speaker 1: But the reason the border is remarkable at all is
Speaker 1: because so many people have to cross it. Some cross
Speaker 1: will work, some cross for fun, some cross to change
Speaker 1: their lives. But without people, the border doesn't have any significance.
Speaker 1: For Mariana. Without people, she can't even enjoy the quiet
Speaker 1: calm in the sanctuary. She hopes, she says, they can
Speaker 1: reopen suit. I mean, honestly, I hope it doesn't last
Speaker 1: a whole lot longer, because we all miss one another.
Speaker 1: We miss uh being here. You know, really, of all
Speaker 1: the jobs that a person can have in the world,
Speaker 1: one where you get to interact with wildlife and garden
Speaker 1: and breathe fresh air and you don't feel the rain
Speaker 1: on your face. I mean, it's pretty awesome. And uh
Speaker 1: and interact with people who are absolutely thrilled and fascinated,
Speaker 1: especially the children, just delighted, gleeful about their interactions here.
Speaker 1: We want to get back to that, but we have
Speaker 1: to have more, Um, we have to have more help
Speaker 1: before we can do that. We we need professional guidance
Speaker 1: beyond what we've received three years ago when the first
Speaker 1: wave of community defense and mutual aid hit the ground. Here.
Speaker 1: Mariana doesn't know and she'll feel safe, but even with
Speaker 1: the center poise to reopen as we write this, she
Speaker 1: isn't secure yet. You know. I feel like it's a
Speaker 1: cat and mouse thing, and they're the cat and wear
Speaker 1: the mouse, and that they are going to continue to
Speaker 1: come back again and again until something really bad that happens.
Speaker 1: I think it's almost a challenge maybe at this point,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell about their their psyche. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: it goes right back to that winning. You know, Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon's no loser. He's not used to losing, and anything
Speaker 1: short of achieving his goal, whatever that may be, is
Speaker 1: not winning. If you've made it this far, you're probably
Speaker 1: wondering what you can do to help. If, like most Americans,
Speaker 1: you live a long way from the southern border, and
Speaker 1: I've never visited. It might seem strange take up and
Speaker 1: travel there to meet a nice lady and talk about butterflies,
Speaker 1: Q and on, while you have to drive past soldiers
Speaker 1: in fatigued with assault rifles to look at her pollinated gun.
Speaker 1: But Marianna says that even the small acts of solid
Speaker 1: arcty make a huge difference. Even people just sending really
Speaker 1: nice email or letters is so good. We'll probably have
Speaker 1: a wall of that when we get back, because the
Speaker 1: flip side of that is the hate mail, the ugly messages,
Speaker 1: the death threats, the voicemails that are so horrible. So
Speaker 1: do you hear from people that do support us and
Speaker 1: stand with us and feel like what's happening is horrible.
Speaker 1: People who write to say, you know, I told my
Speaker 1: quilting circle about what's happening at the Butterfly Center, or
Speaker 1: you know, I mean and uh and we're gonna make
Speaker 1: a quilt for you, or you know whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, it helps, It really does, And then
Speaker 1: they can share our story because it's not just about
Speaker 1: the Butterfly Center. It's about what's happening to our democracy.
Speaker 1: It's about how these operations work um to manipulate people
Speaker 1: with lies. I don't I don't want to call it
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories or misinformation or any of that anymore. They're
Speaker 1: just lies, and people need to start to understand that,
Speaker 1: whether it's about COVID or the Trucker Convoys, or trans
Speaker 1: Kids or the Butterfly Center. Hey, we'll be back Monday
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: Death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.