Speaker 1: Welcome. We welcome to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: here it happens. Uh, yeah, that that that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm Christopher Long. I'm doing my best Robin impersonation
Speaker 1: because Robert has abandoned us for another interview. We yeah,
Speaker 1: we were. We are here to talk today about the
Speaker 1: fact that it did, in fact happen here, by which
Speaker 1: I mean, the Supreme Court has essentially, by fiat overturned
Speaker 1: drove Way and allowed Texas as a just draconian, weird
Speaker 1: snitch paying, indescribably illegal anti abortion law to go into effect.
Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of people I think are
Speaker 1: shocked by this, and I think we're all sort of horrified.
Speaker 1: But for those of us who grew up in sort
Speaker 1: of right wing, magelical Christian communities, and watch how they
Speaker 1: organized and watch how I'm mobilized, it's not really a surprise. No,
Speaker 1: I'm so bored with everybody's surprise. Please stop. I've been
Speaker 1: saying this for so long, so long, so just like
Speaker 1: just like standing in the street screaming from the rooftops.
Speaker 1: Just please, yeah, y'all listen now. It's like like when
Speaker 1: there's like a list of like the set schedule for
Speaker 1: a show and then you're surprised that it actually had
Speaker 1: that they do all those songs. Yes, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like the writing has been on the wall and the
Speaker 1: and the floor and the paper and the years, forty
Speaker 1: fucking years, like there should be there, like there should
Speaker 1: be outrage, but there should be no shock. Yes. Correct,
Speaker 1: Garrison's also here. Hi Garrison, Hello, this is that could
Speaker 1: happen here. We're talking about Texas is Um abortion ruling
Speaker 1: and well, and then in the Supreme Court's ruling on Garrison,
Speaker 1: Christopher already said that they're here. And then who who
Speaker 1: are our other two people today? I'm Karen Darkwater. I'm
Speaker 1: the co host of the Kitchen Table Cult podcast and
Speaker 1: also a Democratic Assembly District delegate for California, and I
Speaker 1: have feelings. And I'm Eve Attinger, the other co host
Speaker 1: of Kitchen Table Cult podcast and angry writer. Mostly I
Speaker 1: think all of us on this podcast could be qualified
Speaker 1: as angry writers professionally angry online. I just realized we
Speaker 1: should probably say that Karen and I grew up Quiverful,
Speaker 1: which is you know, relevant to this subject. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: should go into because I think all all four of us,
Speaker 1: UM have grown up in some degree of of the
Speaker 1: of the more extreme Christian factory. And yeah, you two
Speaker 1: specifically have some what why why don't you explain to
Speaker 1: the listeners kind of what your background is like. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like the text version of it, because we
Speaker 1: have other other things to talk about as well. Okay. UM.
Speaker 1: I was raised as part of the Sovereign Grace Ministries
Speaker 1: cult and was homeschool K through twelve and UM the
Speaker 1: oldest of nine kids. My family were hardcore, quarter full
Speaker 1: courtship people. UM. And then I left and got married
Speaker 1: and then got divorced and got out and it exploded
Speaker 1: my whole family and now they're all out too nice.
Speaker 1: Very similar to Eve, with the exception of UM. My
Speaker 1: parents did not go to Sam and Grace. They did
Speaker 1: their own thing, and we're their own cult and church
Speaker 1: hopped around a lot. Um. I'm the oldest eight ish
Speaker 1: my parents had. My mom had ten full term pregnancies,
Speaker 1: but two of them were still born, so I'm the
Speaker 1: oldest of technically ten, but in reality eight. UM also
Speaker 1: homeschooled K through twelve, grew up being told that I
Speaker 1: was supposed to be, you know, a housewife and have
Speaker 1: lots of babies, ran away in my eighteenth birthday, got married,
Speaker 1: was married for seven years and a surprisingly healthy ish marriage. Um,
Speaker 1: got divorced, started HRT, wound up in California, have been
Speaker 1: working through all of that ship for the last like
Speaker 1: twelve years at this point. And we grew up together
Speaker 1: sort of. We know each other from high school. We've
Speaker 1: been you know, conspiring to take over the world since
Speaker 1: we were like fifteen. Yeah. Yeah, we've been friends since
Speaker 1: we were like fifteen and did a lot of writing
Speaker 1: in the day, and we still do. Like everything that
Speaker 1: we're doing now is still stuff we did in high school.
Speaker 1: It's like everything and nothing has changed. Like we're still writing,
Speaker 1: we're still doing podcasts. It's just, uh, we've we've switched. Uh.
Speaker 1: We were doing pod us when Audacity was in beta,
Speaker 1: Like it was hard. Yeah, I guess I'm in the
Speaker 1: slightly weird position of being in a group of people
Speaker 1: where I had probably like I had not even probably
Speaker 1: I had the least funked up right wing Christian childhood.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I still grew up in a I guess
Speaker 1: more mainline like a town that was sort of dominated
Speaker 1: by a sort of more mainline Evangelical University. It's as
Speaker 1: hard to say, go back to the beginning on this
Speaker 1: because you can pick like seven millions of roments. But
Speaker 1: I think since since we're sort of focusing on abortion, um,
Speaker 1: I want to start by asking about the story of
Speaker 1: sort of how the Evangelical started caring about abortion, because
Speaker 1: that's that's a relatively recent thing, especially compared to sort
Speaker 1: of Catholicism, and so yeah, I guess how how how
Speaker 1: did that start? And how you know what what sort
Speaker 1: relationship between that and and the birth of the modern
Speaker 1: religious right. Well, have you heard of Philish? Lastly? Philish? Laughly?
Speaker 1: So much? Um? Gross, Okay, I'm not enough rage just
Speaker 1: more than Enoe. I was trying to think of like
Speaker 1: an appropriate like horror sound effect to go right after
Speaker 1: her name. Yeah, we can. We can get Daniel to
Speaker 1: add a horror Daniel add the worst possible sound effect
Speaker 1: you can think of for after you says do you
Speaker 1: know philis shop Philip shoply if it will not be enough,
Speaker 1: but we have to try. Yeah, it will not, It
Speaker 1: will not be dark enough. But just no, I'm just
Speaker 1: sitting here being like, there's so much information. If I
Speaker 1: just start is going to be a waterfall and like
Speaker 1: somebody's going to have to jump in and be like
Speaker 1: stop talking. Yeah, okay. So back in the sixties and
Speaker 1: the book Jesus and John Wayne by Christ and Dum
Speaker 1: gets into this a lot um, the church was having
Speaker 1: kind of like a crisis of self in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Um, this is the height of the free
Speaker 1: love movement, and the Vietnam War is going very badly
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the church is losing youth to
Speaker 1: cynicism and drugs and sex and like. So there's this
Speaker 1: this whole like contingent of like OCEHP we have to
Speaker 1: like get the political and religious stuff back on track
Speaker 1: according to our belief system um, and birth control and
Speaker 1: abortion we're not really part of the picture um for
Speaker 1: that that strategy until like the eighties, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of this whole like thing that was a manufactured crisis, um,
Speaker 1: but it was it was the thing that they could
Speaker 1: get voters of both Catholic and evangelical backgrounds to coalesce around.
Speaker 1: And they stumbled into this because fucking phillashial athlete was
Speaker 1: um really good at direct mail organizing. She was able
Speaker 1: to get mailing lists and get like housewives with free
Speaker 1: time to get on the phone and call elected officials
Speaker 1: and just kind of show up storm Barton, storm Capital
Speaker 1: Steps and like talk to officials and get you know
Speaker 1: this like overwhelming appearance of like your constituency is for
Speaker 1: this thing um, which is a really common thing that
Speaker 1: you see in the religious rights still to Yeah, mailing
Speaker 1: lists have such a has such an interesting background and
Speaker 1: right wing organizing, but that would be like physical mailing
Speaker 1: lists back in the day. Lots of the big names
Speaker 1: in in like the growing fire right to that, and
Speaker 1: even today you can even look at like stuff for
Speaker 1: January six with like Trump's email list follows the same
Speaker 1: follows the same strategy, and like the left ing the
Speaker 1: Democrats never do this. Ship well, okay, actually there's there's
Speaker 1: one instance. So there was someone who was involved with
Speaker 1: shlafley Is organizing and the mailing list stuff who was
Speaker 1: who flipped and was participating in Act Up New York
Speaker 1: organizing and taught them how to use mailing lists. So
Speaker 1: sure Sarah Schulman's book about Active New York gets into this,
Speaker 1: and it's really interesting to see, like, but I think
Speaker 1: that's the only instance I can think of that like
Speaker 1: the left picked up on that, but shlaughly started it,
Speaker 1: focused on the family, picked it up, everybody ran with it,
Speaker 1: and it is the default method now for organizing a
Speaker 1: block voter base. Yea. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: she was doing, so she was against the r A
Speaker 1: and that was like her thing was the r A
Speaker 1: is going to actually limit women's rights. And it was
Speaker 1: kind of about, like, you have certain protections as a
Speaker 1: housewife because you're entitled to like this level of support
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff, and like you don't want
Speaker 1: to be drafted. And so that was kind of how
Speaker 1: she was framing that conversation. And she framed in one
Speaker 1: of her Equal Forum newsletters the conversation about abortion as
Speaker 1: being tied up in that, and that got people's attention.
Speaker 1: And she was a Catholic, and the Catholics are have
Speaker 1: consistently been against abortion, and the Evangelicals up until that
Speaker 1: point were not, and they really just wanted to separate
Speaker 1: themselves from the Catholics on this issue. And they called
Speaker 1: it therapeutic abortion. So if it's like rape, incest, or
Speaker 1: like dangering the life of the mother, they assumed that
Speaker 1: those were reasonable reasons to do that, and they, you know,
Speaker 1: we're worried about overpopulation, and so they were talking about
Speaker 1: birth control is a good thing, and and the Catholics
Speaker 1: were against all of it. And so Shafley was able
Speaker 1: to mobilize this Catholic and Evangelical female voter base. Um,
Speaker 1: white ladies, primarily white women. Um, white women are always
Speaker 1: the problem. Um too move the the attention and the
Speaker 1: conversation in this particular direction. And once they killed the
Speaker 1: e r A, the rest of the evangelical political leadership
Speaker 1: on the right, we're like, okay, this is like we're
Speaker 1: crossing the ecumenical aisle. We should pay attention to this. Um.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I've got um this this book in
Speaker 1: front of me, here, all my sources here. So this
Speaker 1: is The Evangelicals by Francis Fitzgerald, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: the definitive history of the Evangelicals in America, and it's
Speaker 1: fucking great. Um. One of the things that she traces
Speaker 1: is this whole conversation. And there's this line in here
Speaker 1: where it's like the Southern Baptist Convention affirmed a like
Speaker 1: neutral stance on abortion, like against abortions on demand and
Speaker 1: like you know, doing it thoughtlessly, but like they were
Speaker 1: neutral on the concept overall until sucking yep, as they're
Speaker 1: like group doctrinal policy. And that's around when like the
Speaker 1: moral majority started becoming a thing, and also when people
Speaker 1: were starting to freak out about like they're not being
Speaker 1: a majority of white people. And at some point the
Speaker 1: the rhetoric turned from well, I mean, it's always been
Speaker 1: like about the babies, but at some point it got
Speaker 1: translated into we have to literally outbreed the left, which
Speaker 1: is what I grew up in. Yeah, so we grew
Speaker 1: up in UM under the influence of Mary Pride's The
Speaker 1: Way Home and The Long like All the Way Home Heard,
Speaker 1: two books that she wrote about kind of that kicked
Speaker 1: off the quiverable movement. UM. But let me go back.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to go through this timeline
Speaker 1: that I pulled pulled together yesterday. So the Moral majority
Speaker 1: was started by way Rich in nineteen seventy The Southern
Speaker 1: Baptist Convention started their pro abortion or neutral toward abortion
Speaker 1: policy in in nineteen seventy two was when Schlafley started
Speaker 1: opposing the e R A. N. Seventy three is rov Wade.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy four is when Schlafley's newsletter goes out arguing
Speaker 1: that the ear A is gonna make abortion you know
Speaker 1: on the and um Billy Graham is still pro abortion,
Speaker 1: and then Carter loses in yeah, and that's when the
Speaker 1: whole thing flips once Reagan wins. That is that is
Speaker 1: such an interesting timeline of events and basically basically it
Speaker 1: went perfect for them, except except for like Roevie Wave
Speaker 1: was a little bit of like a hiccup, but like
Speaker 1: they really were successful in organizing in a way that's
Speaker 1: almost kind of unparalleled in the ramp up to Reagan
Speaker 1: getting an office, right, and then Mary Pride was in
Speaker 1: the late eighties, and like it was so she like
Speaker 1: founded the coverful movement of the like, actually, women, you
Speaker 1: are being um contrary to your own satisfaction for yourself
Speaker 1: if you are staying at work and not having babies,
Speaker 1: and you will be like fulfilled if you go home
Speaker 1: and keep house and had babies. And birth control is
Speaker 1: against God's will and is like thwarding your like self
Speaker 1: fulfillment and your best purpose. So like that's the book
Speaker 1: that kicked my parents down the quiver full road. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one of the interesting things here is and
Speaker 1: you see this like in Italy too, although it's a
Speaker 1: less right ring form with with the Christian Democrats. But
Speaker 1: it's like this is like the the focus on, like
Speaker 1: the sort of Christian focus on on rolling back feminism
Speaker 1: and then bringing women into their movements is something that's
Speaker 1: very very important to not just anti abortion stuff, but
Speaker 1: to this sort of the broader rollback of of the
Speaker 1: left over the whole course in the twenty century. And
Speaker 1: you see this in you know, in the way that's
Speaker 1: sort of you know, what what what what the left
Speaker 1: is doing at this time, Like they have the feminist movement,
Speaker 1: but the feminist movement in a lot of ways is
Speaker 1: detached from sort of the workers movements, and this becomes
Speaker 1: like the way you roll back the worker's movement is
Speaker 1: the workers movements ignoring women, and so you know, the
Speaker 1: right targets them and wins and and I think also
Speaker 1: you know, and this this is also you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about this sort of with Reagan's alliance with the evangelicals. Weird,
Speaker 1: but it's somewhat tenuous, but you know that this is
Speaker 1: you know, in in in a lot of ways, this
Speaker 1: stuff like these people that this is more matority, like
Speaker 1: this is this is how neoliberalism happens, and I think
Speaker 1: like in in a lot like this, this is sort
Speaker 1: of like I guess like you could have it like
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, it's it's one of the
Speaker 1: sort of electoral shock troop things that that happens to
Speaker 1: start pushing this stuff. Well, it's such a class and
Speaker 1: race based thing. And this is why that, like the
Speaker 1: pushing back against feminism stuff started being so popular among
Speaker 1: this particular group. I think is you had this idea
Speaker 1: of like, oh, ship, this means that if our husbands
Speaker 1: leave us or we leave them, we have to support
Speaker 1: ourselves because we might might not be able to give
Speaker 1: like stay at home wife levels of alimony anymore because
Speaker 1: we won't have the legal protections under the e r
Speaker 1: A if it passes, so like, uh, that means we'd
Speaker 1: have to work. And that's not what white ladies do.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just kind of like this like white
Speaker 1: lady fragility thing. You know, it goes all the way
Speaker 1: back through everything. Yeah, it becomes just like it becomes
Speaker 1: this hammer that you can beat like everyone else with
Speaker 1: like whatever sort of like and I think this is
Speaker 1: why there's so much shock about Texas right now is
Speaker 1: because It's like, um, the only women who are going
Speaker 1: to be like actually introduced to new dangers right now
Speaker 1: or the uterus having people introduced to new dangers under
Speaker 1: this abortion ban under this new policy is white ladies.
Speaker 1: Everybody else has been vulnerable in this way already, and
Speaker 1: so the shock and surprise is like, Yeah, being a
Speaker 1: white woman does not necessarily protect you from the patriarchy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you're not rich, Like if you have money
Speaker 1: to fleet the state of Texas, you're fine, but otherwise,
Speaker 1: like you're just sucked. Racial solidarity screws you over once again.
Speaker 1: M hmm. Everything comes back to racism, honestly. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I think everything with this coalition is it like a
Speaker 1: lot of the original basis of this and you can
Speaker 1: talk about was more than I camp, but was about
Speaker 1: like the original thing they were trying to do was
Speaker 1: stopping desegregation from happening and maintaining desegregation, you know, And
Speaker 1: this this feeds into sort of private school stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even take it Away movement started. I'm like, so have
Speaker 1: you heard about Jones University? Sound effect for that one too?
Speaker 1: We could we could talk. I'm planning and writing a
Speaker 1: Bastards about Bob Jones University coming up here soon to degregate. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh that only and like it was like like ninet
Speaker 1: nine they allowed interracial dating, I think, Yeah, but they
Speaker 1: were I think it was like yes, but also only
Speaker 1: if your parents agree. Yeah, we still require parental consent.
Speaker 1: All of all of my English was by Bob Jones
Speaker 1: University Press. We ran into that a lot too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the fun thing about the English is that you're
Speaker 1: not actually learning English. You're learning like propaganda through the
Speaker 1: veil of English. So like you learn about like climate
Speaker 1: change denialism through your English program. Just just it's one
Speaker 1: of the most most fun things. Yeah, is the way
Speaker 1: that they structure their education. And like oddly to like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure this is similar to I don't know
Speaker 1: how your personal opinions on abortion evolved throughout your process
Speaker 1: of de radicalization. Yeah, but like like like for me,
Speaker 1: like for some reason, that was one of the last
Speaker 1: things to change, Like I I got on, like that
Speaker 1: was one of the last things to actually get like
Speaker 1: kicked off of of my brain. Like I like I
Speaker 1: changed on like a whole bunch of other views around
Speaker 1: around like queerness and stuff, like way before I switched
Speaker 1: around abortion, it was one of the things that like
Speaker 1: they really like, like I think that's their propaganda, and
Speaker 1: it really was able to like sink sink its claws
Speaker 1: into my brain. Well, it's like it's like the Q
Speaker 1: and On stuff and all of the like mythology around
Speaker 1: sex trafficking that we have right now is like it's
Speaker 1: all about save the babies. And then that's like engender
Speaker 1: such a lack of critical thinking because your emotional engagement
Speaker 1: locks immediately and they can convince you of anything and
Speaker 1: most of it's not true. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it really is similar to a lot of mean,
Speaker 1: all the qun stuff we're cut and stuff you know
Speaker 1: that that was popped that was getting very big last year.
Speaker 1: It's really just a continuation of this same thing. It's
Speaker 1: just with it's just for the new mask on um.
Speaker 1: A lot of this kind of stuff play is on
Speaker 1: the same interest that is put into focused by the
Speaker 1: same bad actors. Yeah, Like, it's honestly not surprising to
Speaker 1: me that so many evangelical Christians and just like generally
Speaker 1: right wing people fell for Q and On because it
Speaker 1: already confirms all of their priors, Like they're already believing
Speaker 1: most of this stuff and it's just like, oh, sure,
Speaker 1: I can make that leap of logic, and like for us,
Speaker 1: we're like there was, you know, a whole gymnastics of
Speaker 1: course you had to go through, but they were already
Speaker 1: already there. Okay, I want to jump in here and
Speaker 1: tie up some some threads between these conversations, because one
Speaker 1: of the things that these these conspiracy theories and the
Speaker 1: like anti abortion stuff having common is anti Semitism and UM.
Speaker 1: And so the mythology of the Q and on, like
Speaker 1: celebrities using babies blood for skincare kind of thing goes
Speaker 1: back to the Middle Ages to blood libel, which is
Speaker 1: an anti Semitic um mythology that was used to excuse
Speaker 1: like murdering lots of Jews um. And the similarly, the
Speaker 1: whole conversation around abortion, the using stuff from the Old
Speaker 1: Testament to proof text your evangelical belief in like like
Speaker 1: the you know, life starts from conception kind of thing
Speaker 1: um goes against Jewish tradition and Jewish understanding of these texts,
Speaker 1: Like the Jewish tradition is life starts at the first breath,
Speaker 1: so like if the baby is viable on its own
Speaker 1: and able to come out and like then it breathes,
Speaker 1: then it's a life, then it's a person. That's when
Speaker 1: the spirit enters the body. As far as I'm my
Speaker 1: understanding goes, and so the like evangelicals again using biblical
Speaker 1: literalism and proof texting and trying to you know, shape
Speaker 1: the Bible into a uh texts that they can reinforce
Speaker 1: all of their prior beliefs around, rather than reading it
Speaker 1: as literature with a historical context and like like collective
Speaker 1: understanding by another group of people, like it's just one
Speaker 1: of those another one of those examples, and so this
Speaker 1: is built into it is this like yeah, well the
Speaker 1: Bible says this that they It's like no, actually, like
Speaker 1: that's not how the rest of the world has interpreted
Speaker 1: these same texts. This plays into so many other things
Speaker 1: that the right is currently grasping on. Like we we
Speaker 1: could usually talk about the intersection and not not even
Speaker 1: not even this intersection, but the direct continuation of anti
Speaker 1: abortion stuff into anti vaxx stuff, Like all of these
Speaker 1: things are the exact same thread. They all come from
Speaker 1: the exact same place, and it's propagated by the same people. Um,
Speaker 1: Like all of these things like once you start to
Speaker 1: look into this, you're like, oh, no, it's all the
Speaker 1: same thing. It's always wrapped up in this same spiral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the m and it goes into using essential
Speaker 1: oils for like healing and like not trusting doctors and
Speaker 1: like there's good reasons to mistress the medical institution and
Speaker 1: like big pharma. Not for these reasons though, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: like Glonial Silver maybe not, Like we couldn't if we
Speaker 1: went to the doctor as a kid, like if our
Speaker 1: parents were got to the doctor, that was that was
Speaker 1: like a breach of faith. Um, you know, yeah, my
Speaker 1: mom's a nurse, so like we actually had like skipped
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff. But Karen has stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my parents they got involved in this cult called Cleansing
Speaker 1: Stream and that was where they were introduced to demonic
Speaker 1: possession and also faith healing, and they left the cult
Speaker 1: because they believed the demonic possession levels of that group
Speaker 1: was ridiculous and it was, but they didn't leave behind
Speaker 1: the faith healing, so did not Like I literally didn't
Speaker 1: see a doctor from the time I was like maybe
Speaker 1: five until I was eighteen, and I went to the
Speaker 1: doctor and I was like, I know, I had my
Speaker 1: tetanus before it was ten and everything else nothing happened,
Speaker 1: So please catch me up, because I didn't see anyone.
Speaker 1: I had literally like infections that could have been treated
Speaker 1: with antibiotics and cleared up in like a week that
Speaker 1: lasted for like two years because my parents were that
Speaker 1: adamant about the doctors being evil. And the reason was
Speaker 1: because in the concordance, if you look up the word
Speaker 1: uh for like medicine, it's parmachea and farmachea translates into witchcraft.
Speaker 1: And so my parents were like, well, obviously that means
Speaker 1: medicine is witchcraft, and witchcraft is of the devil, So
Speaker 1: therefore all doctors in all medicine is bad. Excuse me?
Speaker 1: Did they still take communion because that's also witchcraft? That's
Speaker 1: that's right. But it was okay because it was Jesus
Speaker 1: blood and body and not totally this like expired thing
Speaker 1: of grape juice that has been sitting around in the
Speaker 1: church closet for like who knows how long, for like
Speaker 1: at least twelve years. At least it's aged grape juice.
Speaker 1: I blank communion on all my witchcraft practicings. Now it's
Speaker 1: got a lot of weird projection stuff with it where
Speaker 1: it's like like blood libel. It's like, okay, so you
Speaker 1: are from a religion the basic practice of which is
Speaker 1: thinking something you think is blood, and so we are
Speaker 1: now going to accuse everyone else of doing the thing
Speaker 1: that we do as a religious tendant. But you know
Speaker 1: the stuff doesn't that narcissist thing of accusing everybody else
Speaker 1: of doing what you actually do? Yeah? Yeah, And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's kind of a at least
Speaker 1: this is something that I've read into, is that like,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't do that much good to point
Speaker 1: out that there's beliefs or inc consistent like something it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, which it doesn't matter. Okay, so you'll know G. K. Chesterton, right, Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: So G. K. Chesterton was a British Englican pundit um
Speaker 1: had like you know, wrote a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: cute little cozy mysteries, but also was a Catholic theologian.
Speaker 1: And in his book Orthodoxy he has this concept which
Speaker 1: is like outdated like ablest terms, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: run with it because it's a really good analogy. Um.
Speaker 1: He calls it the Madman's box, and he's like the
Speaker 1: ad Man is the most sane of all creatures because
Speaker 1: anything that does not work in his reality, he removes
Speaker 1: it does not exist. So everything within his universe, if
Speaker 1: you accept the terms of his universe, is true. And
Speaker 1: I think about this all the time when you think
Speaker 1: about fundamentalists and the stuff we grew up with is
Speaker 1: but like, if it is going to threaten your core
Speaker 1: logic system, remove it. It does not exist because it's
Speaker 1: a you can, you can, and the like his whole
Speaker 1: thing was like, actually, like the universe is huge, and
Speaker 1: like we can't control it, and like we have to
Speaker 1: get okay with that knowing things, which I love because
Speaker 1: that's true. And the people we grew up with just
Speaker 1: can't do that because they believe that like God is noble,
Speaker 1: the universe is noble. And also, um, we're right about everything.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't rip someone out of an alternate reality.
Speaker 1: It's not it's that's not how that works. You have
Speaker 1: to you have to slowly coax them up with breadcrumbs
Speaker 1: and even and that can take that can take years
Speaker 1: or decades. Like you can't. There's there's never gonna be
Speaker 1: a switch. Okay, So let's talk about our own shifts
Speaker 1: like when did you when did you start believing that
Speaker 1: abortion was cool? Like everybody here and what changed well
Speaker 1: around when I was like fifteen or sixteen, Um, I
Speaker 1: was in the years prior to that, I was learning
Speaker 1: my own like queerness, which was kind of pulling me
Speaker 1: out of some of like the harder beliefs that I
Speaker 1: was into. It's like a it's like a preteen um. So,
Speaker 1: like queerness was like the first step. But abortion was
Speaker 1: like the last thing to crack because you're so ingrained
Speaker 1: in this thing, like no, like you have to like
Speaker 1: i'm i'm I'm against killing people, and if babies are people,
Speaker 1: they have to be against killing babies, you know, no
Speaker 1: matter what kind of age they are. That gets so ingrained. Um.
Speaker 1: What what got me out was learning like more about
Speaker 1: um philosophy of like bodily autonomy. Um. So that that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that was like the last thing
Speaker 1: to crack. It's like learning about the importance of autonomy
Speaker 1: and how that extends to pregnant people. Um. And so
Speaker 1: that was the but it was, yeah, it was it
Speaker 1: was like it was the last thing from like my
Speaker 1: right wing like from like my far right wing upbringing
Speaker 1: to get expelled, like it. It stuck around for a
Speaker 1: ridiculously long time. Like I already considered myself kind of
Speaker 1: like a social democrat, but I was still but still
Speaker 1: was like yeah, but I think abortion should be avoided
Speaker 1: at all costs. It was, it was, it stuck around
Speaker 1: for such a long time. Yeah. That that was just
Speaker 1: like for me too, And it was interesting. So like
Speaker 1: my my like immediate family was like my parents were
Speaker 1: like pretty liberal, but like everyone else around me was
Speaker 1: like like extreme, like you know, it's far evangelical people
Speaker 1: and like that. That sort of like the the well,
Speaker 1: the pro life people have a point, we shouldn't kill babies.
Speaker 1: If if you have to do abortion, it should be
Speaker 1: like extremely rare, and like we should try to stop
Speaker 1: it like that. Like that was what was one of
Speaker 1: the sort of full things that I picked up, even
Speaker 1: though like you know, like the anti abortion protests will
Speaker 1: show up my school and I'd be like ha ha,
Speaker 1: they're doing creation, but like you know that that like
Speaker 1: that that the sort of like oh, well you don't
Speaker 1: you don't want to kill babies, right? Like that that
Speaker 1: took like even when I was like sort of going
Speaker 1: further left in high school like that took really until
Speaker 1: almost like college before I was like, wait, this is
Speaker 1: ridiculous and sort of started picking up. Yeah. Again, it
Speaker 1: was partially the bottle autonomy, and then partly it was
Speaker 1: about learning the actual history of of what this stuff
Speaker 1: is about and like coming like understanding the fact that
Speaker 1: like it's not actually about none of the people talking
Speaker 1: about this like actually genuine they care about the lives
Speaker 1: of babies, like it's it's not about that, and like
Speaker 1: abortion isn't soundmentally about that, and you know, and and
Speaker 1: you know it's in some ways, like you know, then
Speaker 1: this is a lot of people sort of will do
Speaker 1: this thing where they like they like yell at the
Speaker 1: at the Amagel closers like you don't care about babies,
Speaker 1: like you'll shot them off the war or you're like
Speaker 1: you let them like starve. It's like no, they don't care,
Speaker 1: like it's it's not about that, it's just about sort
Speaker 1: of yeah, and I think, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: and I think like even a lot of people sort
Speaker 1: of still get this, like don't understand that very well,
Speaker 1: even even like the liberals on the left that like
Speaker 1: they don't care, like it's it's it's it's just about
Speaker 1: power and not anything else, and that you shouldn't like
Speaker 1: take their argument seriously. Yeah. Yeah, So for for me
Speaker 1: it was it was twofold. When you talk about like
Speaker 1: the emotional thing that pulls you out of out of
Speaker 1: like a illogical belief. It was one, I got additional
Speaker 1: data about how birth control works. And two I had
Speaker 1: a friend who had an ectopic pregnancy who was a
Speaker 1: Catholic hospital and almost died because they wouldn't help her
Speaker 1: out in time because even though it was very early
Speaker 1: and it was not viable, the Catholic hospital would not
Speaker 1: wait until like required her to wait until she was
Speaker 1: at death store to intervene to save for a wife,
Speaker 1: thank God. So that was the that was the emotional
Speaker 1: thing that like kicked that down the road. The other
Speaker 1: was just learning about like how conception works and then
Speaker 1: the math of it and like so like seven out
Speaker 1: of ten fertilized eggs will not implant in the uteran
Speaker 1: wall and gets left off, like you can have a
Speaker 1: whole lot more conceptions than you have pregnancies and you
Speaker 1: will never know and that is perfectly normal and um
Speaker 1: and just understanding that like taking birth control actually reduces
Speaker 1: the risk of that taking oral ramonal birth control means
Speaker 1: that you have like far less chance of having a
Speaker 1: lost conception. That way, I was like, oh wait, so
Speaker 1: if they were actually pro life, they would be making
Speaker 1: everybody go on birth control because if they actually believe
Speaker 1: to that it started at conception. Oh fuck. And and
Speaker 1: of course like later on and this is maybe a
Speaker 1: little t m I, but like, um, I had a
Speaker 1: super early miscarriage last year, and just like thinking through
Speaker 1: like how comfortable I was with all of my my
Speaker 1: logic and decisions and where I'd come from and where
Speaker 1: it was in believing these things. Like I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, like I barely knew I was pregnant, and
Speaker 1: like most people don't and I don't. This is not
Speaker 1: a big deal. Yeah for me, it was like it
Speaker 1: was it was a mix um of like one when
Speaker 1: my when I was seventeen and my mom had her
Speaker 1: last pregnancy, that's when I knew I never wanted kids
Speaker 1: ever did not. I was googling how to sterilize, Like
Speaker 1: what what can I do? I kept Okay, but you
Speaker 1: have to tell you have to like give give a
Speaker 1: little more deep one. Yeah yeah, okay, So uh, every
Speaker 1: time that my mom got pregnant, my life would end,
Speaker 1: and I, as a child, was the person who was
Speaker 1: solely responsible for running the house. So I had to
Speaker 1: feed my siblings, educate my siblings, bathe my siblings, make
Speaker 1: sure they didn't die being children, like, do all of
Speaker 1: the inside girl chores, um, and take care of my mom,
Speaker 1: who like half the time had untreated preclampsia and like
Speaker 1: could not move and was like a planet and it
Speaker 1: would just happen. I like literally like there. I remember
Speaker 1: having thoughts of like, she's a fixed object in the
Speaker 1: entire household, is orbiting, orbiting exactly, That's exactly what it
Speaker 1: felt like. Yeah, I was like, everybody's gonna assume you
Speaker 1: mean size. That is not what you mean. I mean gravity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's definitely isn't isn't uncommon for anyone in the
Speaker 1: quiver fool type community at all. Yeah, it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: par for the course. Like that's that's what the job
Speaker 1: of the eldest daughter is. At least that's what my
Speaker 1: parents blewd, which is why they did it every single time,
Speaker 1: every like eighteen months for a decade straight. And I
Speaker 1: got burnt the funk out because it started when I
Speaker 1: was eight and ended when I ran away. Um, and
Speaker 1: my mom was still pregnant when I ran away, and
Speaker 1: I was just like, I can't like stop being a
Speaker 1: person every like year for nine months straight, like my
Speaker 1: I was responsible for my education as well, so like
Speaker 1: my tank. And then when I was fifteen, they were like,
Speaker 1: you know everything you need to do to be a
Speaker 1: successful wife and mother. You don't need to learn math
Speaker 1: or science or any of that ship um and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so when I was exactly and they were like and
Speaker 1: now like after I was fifteen, like when I turned sixteen,
Speaker 1: they were like, well, now you're basically an adult and
Speaker 1: you can like court and get married. So that tried
Speaker 1: to happen, and they really just wanted me to like
Speaker 1: go live their fantasy of becoming a wife and mother,
Speaker 1: and it was a dream I never shared. One last
Speaker 1: mouth to feed, one less mouth to feed, although I
Speaker 1: don't think they thought it completely through because then they
Speaker 1: lost like the one person who knew how to keep
Speaker 1: the house functioning, um, which is their fault. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so with the last one, nutshell, I was courting my
Speaker 1: mom got the positive pregnancy tests, they were like, well,
Speaker 1: like this wasn't the answer they gave me. They were like,
Speaker 1: we have theological problems with your partners, uh family, and
Speaker 1: that's why I were breaking you up. But really it
Speaker 1: was because my mom was pregnant and they needed me
Speaker 1: to run the house again. And so I saw that
Speaker 1: coming because I had, after a decade, become aware of
Speaker 1: when my mom was pregnant before she was and I
Speaker 1: was like, hmmm, this feels like pregnancy, um and yeah.
Speaker 1: I looked up like what it took to become sterilized,
Speaker 1: and I found Scarlett teen and I read about birth control,
Speaker 1: and I read about how it works, and I realized
Speaker 1: that I had been lied to. It doesn't abort babies.
Speaker 1: It like, like you said, even it's it's honestly better
Speaker 1: because then you're not like accidentally aborting by having your period,
Speaker 1: just a whole fucking thing. Um and yeah. And I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I don't want this for myself, and
Speaker 1: I became aware that like that was a choice that
Speaker 1: I had, And so the first thing I did when
Speaker 1: I saw a doctor was asked for birth control. And
Speaker 1: it was through like having my own agency and realizing
Speaker 1: that me not wanting to have children didn't make me
Speaker 1: a bad person. And didn't make me a bad spouse,
Speaker 1: and that it was like my choice made me have
Speaker 1: a lot more compassion for other people. And then one
Speaker 1: of my friends had an abortion and I was like,
Speaker 1: and it was really good idea, and I was like
Speaker 1: I was there for them, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're not ready to have a kid, that's valid
Speaker 1: and you should do the thing. Because at that point
Speaker 1: I had been like, you know, after raising my siblings,
Speaker 1: like I understood how much it is to be a
Speaker 1: parent and I knew that, like, if I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a parent, I knew the responsibility that would be
Speaker 1: and I knew I didn't want that responsibility and I
Speaker 1: wasn't ready for that responsibility and who my friend wasn't.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of through being burnt out by
Speaker 1: raising children and then reading that like everything I've been
Speaker 1: talking about birth control was bullshit, that I became okay
Speaker 1: with it. But that was also like it wasn't it
Speaker 1: was one of the first things to happen, but it
Speaker 1: happened slowly, like I I became approach choice gradually over time,
Speaker 1: instead of it just being like one kind of revelation,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, this is okay for me, But
Speaker 1: am I sure? Is it? Is? It in in a
Speaker 1: lot of like internal fighting. And I think all of
Speaker 1: this can be really hard to understand if you did
Speaker 1: not grow up inside because like if you grew up
Speaker 1: in like like a liberal like democratic area and you
Speaker 1: didn't go to church, all this probably sounds very whacky.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, why didn't you just like why couldn't
Speaker 1: you just not do that? Right? It's like it makes
Speaker 1: very very hard, it's very hard to really grasp you.
Speaker 1: We didn't like grub this because like even for me,
Speaker 1: like I already was like by by the time I
Speaker 1: was like fourteen and fifteen, I was like yeah, like
Speaker 1: like birth controls fine, like contraptions like contraceptive should be
Speaker 1: free for people, like all these other like things. But
Speaker 1: it's still like but we still we still shouldn't actually
Speaker 1: do abortions, like we can, we can do all these
Speaker 1: other things to limit abortions, so you can you can
Speaker 1: get you can get like super far into that way
Speaker 1: because like you get ingrained with this, like like even
Speaker 1: even like saying like no abortions in the case of
Speaker 1: incestor rape because as the because the phrase that was
Speaker 1: repeated and to me as a kid. It's like, why
Speaker 1: would you punish the child for the for the for
Speaker 1: the sins of the father. Like that is so like
Speaker 1: all of these things get ingrained in use so much
Speaker 1: you can you can like wrap, you can like change
Speaker 1: all of these strings in your brain to try to
Speaker 1: have it make sense. Still you can be like, no,
Speaker 1: I still want all these other things free, I want
Speaker 1: all these other preventive measures, but still that this this
Speaker 1: last part, actually doing an abortion, is still something that
Speaker 1: shouldn't happen for for these moral reasons. You know. I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the reasons that this like decision
Speaker 1: process or like process of like dismantling that whole thought
Speaker 1: for us. One of the things that sped it up
Speaker 1: was the fact that we got married so young, and
Speaker 1: so it became like critically relevant, this is not theoretical
Speaker 1: question anymore. This was a like we're burnt the funk out,
Speaker 1: and like we do not want to get stuck in
Speaker 1: the same path that our mothers were in. What the
Speaker 1: fun do we do? I had in laws and my
Speaker 1: excommunicated parents who wanted grandchildren, and I was like I
Speaker 1: told people, like, give me ten years because I'm tired.
Speaker 1: And then I had a his style. No, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not a coincidence that the time that
Speaker 1: I've really started to like understand the more science aspects
Speaker 1: of it and understand the party autonomy aspects was also
Speaker 1: around the time I was starting to have sex with
Speaker 1: you with with people like that. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that that that is not a coincidence either. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a combination of learning about these things and personal
Speaker 1: experience and like the urgency of it got so intensified
Speaker 1: for me when I realized, like my ex husband was
Speaker 1: abusive to our cat, which was a kitten, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, oh God, this is not going to
Speaker 1: bode well for kids. And we were in the process
Speaker 1: of like splitting up, and he listened to a Mother's
Speaker 1: Day sermon at church and was like very inspired by
Speaker 1: it and was like, actually, maybe we could make things
Speaker 1: work if you were a mom. I think I could
Speaker 1: love you if you or a mom. And I kind
Speaker 1: of looked at him and I was like, what the
Speaker 1: fuck did you just really fucking say that? And he
Speaker 1: was like, where do you have to be like that?
Speaker 1: I was like, oh no, we're done, Oh no, we
Speaker 1: are done. Just like just having to have those conversations
Speaker 1: brings the issue to the foreground so fucking quickly, like
Speaker 1: you really suddenly realize it is actually life or death
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah. And I think the last thing that
Speaker 1: we could maybe touch on is the whole bounty hunter
Speaker 1: aspect plays into a lot of this as well, of
Speaker 1: like raising like holy warriors to track down these people
Speaker 1: who are doing the ungodly acts. Like this is kind
Speaker 1: of like a wet and dream for a lot of
Speaker 1: young males who grew up in this thought process. Um
Speaker 1: and watching this start to take shape in Texas is
Speaker 1: like I think is very much kind of a should
Speaker 1: be used as a warning of things to come. Do
Speaker 1: you think they're going to do spin off of Fireproof
Speaker 1: inspired by this events? Absolutely? Yeah, you know, like I
Speaker 1: like really like I'm I'm sure they will be like
Speaker 1: churches making their own web series that are like you know,
Speaker 1: like a little like YouTube videos of people tracking down
Speaker 1: like abortion doctors, Like this is going to happen, like absolutely,
Speaker 1: Like this is this is like stuff like this has
Speaker 1: been fantasized about for a long time. Well I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about like there's this alright, I'm liking on the name
Speaker 1: of it, But this movement in Florida in Operation Rescue. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, no, that that's the whole other thing. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the church group that C. J. Mhaney learned
Speaker 1: accountability practices from UM. But basically there was this like
Speaker 1: whole theological movement at in the as like a subset
Speaker 1: of the Jesus movement that was like encouraging everybody to
Speaker 1: basically be like syn cops to each other because it
Speaker 1: was like for your own spiritual purification, and like everybody
Speaker 1: was ratting out everybody to the pastor, and the pastor
Speaker 1: would be like, we have concerns about this pattern, simple
Speaker 1: pattern in your life, and you need to think about
Speaker 1: your sin of pride because you are questioning me, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that UM, And it got replicated in sovereign
Speaker 1: Grace ministries and kind of spread a lot of places
Speaker 1: out from there. Yeah. So, and like the courtship world
Speaker 1: and the purity culture world, like you know, you'd have
Speaker 1: like if you violated modesty codes, writing each other out
Speaker 1: was like rewarded. If you were like kissing your boyfriend
Speaker 1: and not telling your parents, you would get read it
Speaker 1: out and that would be rewarded. So like all of
Speaker 1: these things like this is just like we're just involving
Speaker 1: the police now to get money for it. We're now
Speaker 1: just making it into an act. Yeah, we're now we're
Speaker 1: now just turning up the actual consequences of this leading
Speaker 1: to like violence and acted by the state, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the wet dream of a lot of these
Speaker 1: of a lot of these groups, is that being able
Speaker 1: to like, you know, tie this type of evangelical Christianity
Speaker 1: to this state. This is kind of their end that,
Speaker 1: I mean, that was that was the end goal of
Speaker 1: Focus on the Family. That was an end goal of
Speaker 1: a lot of these groups is to start you know,
Speaker 1: this is just the whole Christian dominionist thing is getting
Speaker 1: these types of things enforced by the state instead of
Speaker 1: having to be enforced by like the church community. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the one thing I do want
Speaker 1: to mention is that there's a a great TikTok video
Speaker 1: that came out a few days ago about the the
Speaker 1: the reporting website where you can whistle blow abortion people.
Speaker 1: There's this this video this person made about and they
Speaker 1: got a script for iPhones. They can flood you. You
Speaker 1: can flood the tip line with fake with fake information. Um,
Speaker 1: So that is great. You should you could vice as
Speaker 1: an article about it. You can just look up TikTok
Speaker 1: abortion was the blower, you can you can get all
Speaker 1: the info on that. Can. I just add a whole
Speaker 1: big footnote to this entire conversation, and that is that
Speaker 1: this just like keep this in mind as you were
Speaker 1: thinking about this question and this issue. This is the
Speaker 1: preview for how trans writes were going to be handled,
Speaker 1: because bodily autonomy for abortion and remmal birth control is
Speaker 1: the same situation as bodily autonomy to create your gender
Speaker 1: through hormonal injections or whatever. Like, same story going to
Speaker 1: end here. No, their their goals to have this whole
Speaker 1: whistle blower bounty hunter thing be extended to anyone performing um,
Speaker 1: anyone performing any type of reproductive character they're doing now,
Speaker 1: but also any type of gender affirming treatment UM reporting
Speaker 1: actual like trans youth like oh like like you see
Speaker 1: this happening in in the in the church all the time.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, someone getting reported for having you know,
Speaker 1: not not performing there they're prescribed gender correctly. This gets
Speaker 1: talked about all the time, and this is gonna be
Speaker 1: the next step for them, um that you know, the
Speaker 1: abortion thing is gonna is gonna spread to other states, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But the next thing they're gonna go for after his
Speaker 1: trans rights, um, and go after this type thing. And
Speaker 1: then they're gonna go after after like like um, gay
Speaker 1: things in general. Um, And like this it doesn't stop here,
Speaker 1: Like you're not safe just because you are not Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because you weren't born with uterus doesn't mean you're
Speaker 1: not safe from this. Like it's gonna this is gonna
Speaker 1: extend out to many other facets. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: you know, and and the real danger here, and I
Speaker 1: think this is one of the things we need to
Speaker 1: talk about is that like the left, particularly democratic parties
Speaker 1: organizing this has been terrible. This does not exist, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know for their party, like this is like abortion
Speaker 1: is just a fundraising thing, like they don't care that,
Speaker 1: don't dre' do noathing and you know, and then the
Speaker 1: broader left is being just absolutely blown out of the
Speaker 1: water by by the way, like by the organizations happened here,
Speaker 1: and like even even in terms of like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean just yeah, I definitely want everyone else here
Speaker 1: to talk more about this because I have less way
Speaker 1: less knowledge about this, Like you know, like these guys
Speaker 1: did like terrorism like they were. They've they've murdered people,
Speaker 1: they bombed clinics like they like that. They did the
Speaker 1: whole range of sort of like every everything from sort
Speaker 1: electoralism to like what they're sort of twisted version of
Speaker 1: profigative politics where you know, you you create your own
Speaker 1: sort of like right wing like Evnel the households right.
Speaker 1: They're like a mote of the news side. They did
Speaker 1: everything they did. Electoralism they did, yeah, um like they
Speaker 1: they did, the demonstrations they did, they know, they killed
Speaker 1: people like they did everything. It worked, and we have
Speaker 1: not been doing this and this is that's a big
Speaker 1: part of why this is happening now. So I wrote
Speaker 1: about this for Rewired News and I guess it should
Speaker 1: be coming out to usday. But um yeah, it's basically
Speaker 1: like the last left, as soon as they achieve a
Speaker 1: small victory stops organizing, and the right is always thinking
Speaker 1: if further ahead, and they are they already have the
Speaker 1: infrastructure for that, like grassroots act like activate the network
Speaker 1: to get them to call the offices. I'm like, be like,
Speaker 1: don't vote on that bill or vote this way on
Speaker 1: that bill, and we really just don't have that infrastructure
Speaker 1: in place. We've done it for one off situations, but
Speaker 1: we don't have it as a habitual, regular, regular, daily practice,
Speaker 1: and we are not training our teams to be involved
Speaker 1: in that like they are. UM, and that there's just
Speaker 1: so much I could say about this. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I can. I can kind of speak to this as
Speaker 1: someone who like is kind of up close in the
Speaker 1: California Democratic Party, at least as up close as you
Speaker 1: can be without being friends with the fucking chair. UM.
Speaker 1: I am still livid because what I learned they're being
Speaker 1: elected is that there is no organizing structure at all.
Speaker 1: Like I went to California campus Camp in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: And if you're in California and you go to a
Speaker 1: community college and you haven't grown up being an organizer,
Speaker 1: I definitely recommended, Yeah, if you didn't do Teampact, go
Speaker 1: to campus camp. But I was there, and they're talking
Speaker 1: about how Paul Wellstone was this leftist organizer in like
Speaker 1: I don't know, the eighties, um, and how he invented
Speaker 1: this radical way of organizing. It's literally grassroots organizing. It's
Speaker 1: literally what I've been doing since I was a child.
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, this is this cool new thing
Speaker 1: that we're trying to do. This is really effectively he
Speaker 1: had no ship. That's how the Republicans win everything. We
Speaker 1: don't have that. There is no organization in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party that is ongoing round advocating for the issues we
Speaker 1: say we value. There is no connection between the State
Speaker 1: Democratic Party and the Democratic National Convention or like the
Speaker 1: National Democratic Party. The d n C literally only exists
Speaker 1: for the Convention to do the fucking platform and there
Speaker 1: was nothing else. There's no except for in queer circles
Speaker 1: organizing gets this, gets this right, but as soon as
Speaker 1: you get to like middle class white democratic moderate organizing,
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist. You know, I am, I'm literally only
Speaker 1: talking about the Democratic Party itself, like Camocratic Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: the institution. Queer organizers have been doing this, like a
Speaker 1: lot of grassroots leftist organizations have been doing this, labor organized,
Speaker 1: labor organizers like there are so many organizations in Oakland
Speaker 1: alone that do this very well, like the Anti Police
Speaker 1: Terror Project. They're fucking badass. They get ship done. Um.
Speaker 1: But the Democratic Party itself as an institution does not
Speaker 1: have this, does not support this actively like sidelines. The
Speaker 1: organizers like there is a whole progressive wing of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party that has recently gotten elected, and we are
Speaker 1: sidelined and not allowed to do ship because there is
Speaker 1: just like we get blocked at every time. I think.
Speaker 1: I think, I think part of the problem is because
Speaker 1: of the rights connection to apocalyptic um predictions via the equstianity.
Speaker 1: Like the right has the right and even like the
Speaker 1: conservative establishment, they have a goal in mind, like they
Speaker 1: have an end goal of how they want to see
Speaker 1: the world. The Democrats don't have that. Even large swass
Speaker 1: of the left don't have that. We can just we
Speaker 1: just want the role to be kind of a little
Speaker 1: bit better slowly. The right has an actual view like
Speaker 1: they they have like an end point, which is why
Speaker 1: they always have the next thing planned that They're never
Speaker 1: satisfied with any of their victories. They're always onto the
Speaker 1: next thing because they have a set goal that they
Speaker 1: want to see the world become. So you're saying the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party needs to get in they retreat and do
Speaker 1: a vision board. That's not what I'm saying. Honestly, it
Speaker 1: will help, I think, you know what. I think The
Speaker 1: other sort of fundamental side, fundamental dynamic of this is
Speaker 1: that the Republican Party is a real political party, right like,
Speaker 1: it has, it has a base, it has, it has
Speaker 1: the thing they're trying to do, and like you know,
Speaker 1: it has it has a set of goals that that
Speaker 1: is trying to enact. The Democratic Party is not is
Speaker 1: not a political party. The Democratic Party is basically a
Speaker 1: giant engine for absorbed. So you know, the right is
Speaker 1: powered by a combination of an enormous amount of money
Speaker 1: by the sort of capitalist backers, and you get all
Speaker 1: this AstroTurf stuff from the Cokes and from the sort
Speaker 1: of the Boultons and their their networks, and then you
Speaker 1: know that they have they have a sort of right
Speaker 1: wing social movement base, which is a lot of the
Speaker 1: evangelical stuff, and you know, and that that that's what
Speaker 1: drives the party, right like, that's that's that's that's that's
Speaker 1: like the party is there to enact, you know, the
Speaker 1: different facts of different visions that parties there to their visions. Right,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is there too, the party like there's
Speaker 1: you have the equivalence of the sort of left wing
Speaker 1: social movements, and the Democratic Party is there to destroy them.
Speaker 1: Like their their whole goal is to make sure that
Speaker 1: none of these movements ever actually like come anywhere close
Speaker 1: to taking power, and so you know, and and this
Speaker 1: this creates is symmetry. But we're seeing this on abortion
Speaker 1: right where you know, you have you have the Publican Party,
Speaker 1: which is you know, fanatically dedicated to to to this
Speaker 1: issue to winning here, and you have the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: who's like there their their their job is to turn
Speaker 1: like people people's concern over abortion into inaction and fundraising.
Speaker 1: And then that fundraising doesn't go doesn't fundraison, doesn't go
Speaker 1: to you know, keeping abortion legal, Like the fundraising goes
Speaker 1: to just getting getting getting getting the keep keeping Democratic
Speaker 1: Party people in power, keeping their consultants paid, and keeping
Speaker 1: their sort of like you know, keeping keeping their sort
Speaker 1: of keeping Yeah, it's keeping their corporate their corporate backers happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it is. It just it exists to
Speaker 1: fondres for elections for people with the D beside their name,
Speaker 1: who don't challenge things, you don't actually want to get
Speaker 1: ship done, and to just like like as soon as
Speaker 1: they get power, they sit back and are like oh cool,
Speaker 1: we want and and then they're like we're we're fine,
Speaker 1: now we don't have to do anything like they don't
Speaker 1: exist to enact their platform. The most that we can
Speaker 1: do as delegates is like pass resolutions and amend the platform,
Speaker 1: so we can, like pass the resolution that says, let's
Speaker 1: not take any fossil fuel money. This actually happened. We
Speaker 1: passed the resolution said let's not take any fossil fuel money.
Speaker 1: The Democratic Party chairs still accept fossil fuel money. Brought
Speaker 1: it up at the e Or convention, like literally last weekend.
Speaker 1: It was shot down and said it was out of order,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that we were just trying to enforce
Speaker 1: our own rules that we put upon ourselves. And the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party is accountable to no one, no one but itself,
Speaker 1: And so the people who are inside the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: of problems with the Democratic Party can ask questions and
Speaker 1: we get zero response. Like all I know is that
Speaker 1: we give money to strategists who no one will tell
Speaker 1: me who they are, no one knows who they are,
Speaker 1: and just fundraise into this big pot for democratic elections
Speaker 1: for the people who the chair and his friends like.
Speaker 1: And the entire by laws of the Democratic Party are
Speaker 1: written to give like and outrageous amount of power to
Speaker 1: the people who are already elected, like Nancy Pelosi has
Speaker 1: like thirty plus votes in the Democratic Party. I have one,
Speaker 1: I wrote I I will send you the link to
Speaker 1: the power breakdown that I wrote about this because I
Speaker 1: was so mad about it during the convention. But like
Speaker 1: it really, the Democratic Party is not going to save us.
Speaker 1: It's not going to save anyone. What we need to
Speaker 1: do is be building dual power structures like the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers did. But that is a lot of fucking work
Speaker 1: and we don't have the funding for it. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we have. We have to wrap this up sooner than later.
Speaker 1: But like and I try to end these episodes with
Speaker 1: some type of like if not, if not, like a
Speaker 1: call to action, but like something to help figure out
Speaker 1: what the heck to do in the future, Like something
Speaker 1: that we can think about in a new way or
Speaker 1: try to try to try to ponder or achieve. And
Speaker 1: this this is tough because it's hard. It's well, like,
Speaker 1: how like wrapping up all of these types of things around,
Speaker 1: like abortion and the rise of the end of of
Speaker 1: the of the religious right, what can regular people do?
Speaker 1: There are groups doing this work already. Do not try
Speaker 1: to reinvent the We all get involved with your local
Speaker 1: mutual a groups get involved with your local abortion funds,
Speaker 1: get involved with your local organizing groups. They exist, they're
Speaker 1: doing the work. Figure out what is going on where
Speaker 1: you live and look at it on a local level
Speaker 1: and get involved and show up to meetings, figure out
Speaker 1: who's running for city council, figuring out where the budget
Speaker 1: is going like, ask questions, attend the meetings, pay attention,
Speaker 1: like show up to public hearings and hold their feet
Speaker 1: to the fire. Do the local work and the rest
Speaker 1: will follow. It is surprisingly easy to take over local politics,
Speaker 1: like literally, all you have to do is show up.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's simple. You get coffee with your city counselor.
Speaker 1: That's what their job is is to meet with you.
Speaker 1: So do you have yours? You are their boss, and
Speaker 1: you can even do that with your state representative, your
Speaker 1: state senator. They are there to talk to you and
Speaker 1: if you have a feeling about a thing, email them,
Speaker 1: call them, be like hey, I want get coffee like that.
Speaker 1: Some students in college don't use office hours like they should,
Speaker 1: and so they fail the course. This is us. We
Speaker 1: have these elected officials and we are at their boss.
Speaker 1: We need to show up to office hours and ask
Speaker 1: them questions. Like, that's what that's what the right is doing.
Speaker 1: That's why they're so successful. We need to be organizing
Speaker 1: our own, our own calling about things. If people want
Speaker 1: to hear more about your, your guys's work and all
Speaker 1: of these really fun topics, where can where can they
Speaker 1: find you? Online? They can they can find our podcast,
Speaker 1: Kitchen Table Cult at Kitchen Table cult dot com. We're
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Kitchen Cult Pod. My handle is blue
Speaker 1: pup Boy but with an eye instead of a Y
Speaker 1: at the end. And I'm eve Ettinger on Twitter and
Speaker 1: I'm verified Verified, I'm real good job and the only one.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, and we're we're working in a couple
Speaker 1: of big projects. Um, stay tuned, funds down ahead. Thank
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on to talk about
Speaker 1: the religious right, abortion and all these kind of interconnected issues,
Speaker 1: because they really are interconnected. Um, and yeah, we need
Speaker 1: to We can definitely learn how to organize a whole
Speaker 1: lot better and learn learn from how the right has
Speaker 1: been so successful in a lot of ways. Um. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: uh for more, it could happen here. You can follow
Speaker 1: us um on Twitter and Instagram, it happened here pod
Speaker 1: and cool Zone Media can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Hungry bow Tie and uh, Chris, I know you. You
Speaker 1: you have a Twitter. Yeah, I'm I'm in h R
Speaker 1: three on Twitter or the ice on speed Destroyed guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, cool Zone also as a Twitter that's at
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media and great, see you see everyone again. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about these issues in the next in
Speaker 1: the next few days and weeks. That's all for today. Goodbye.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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