Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, this is Robert Evans. Welcome to It Could
Speaker 1: Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart, and occasionally
Speaker 1: about how to stop things from falling apart. Today we're
Speaker 1: doing one of those latter episodes. I'm happy to say
Speaker 1: we've we've actually got kind of something that's that's overall
Speaker 1: uplifting to talk about. If you are someone who pays
Speaker 1: much attention to the right wing, and particularly to the
Speaker 1: current right wing campaign against LGBT and most particularly the
Speaker 1: transgender people, you are aware of a guy named Matt Walsh.
Speaker 1: He is a you might call him a pundit at
Speaker 1: the Daily Wire who has taken it upon himself to
Speaker 1: become kind of the one of the central figures in
Speaker 1: the present campaign against trans people to limit their rights
Speaker 1: to transition, to you know, push laws that criminalize their
Speaker 1: existing in public spaces. He's a real piece of shit,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the worst people in the
Speaker 1: country presently, and like all terrible peace people, he has
Speaker 1: been going around in a series of speeches invited generally
Speaker 1: by local student body republican organizations at universities. It's not
Speaker 1: the only people who invite them to speak, but that's
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today. Oliver Wyline is a local
Speaker 1: community activist who showed up at one of these events
Speaker 1: and who recorded what was happening the reaction to Matt
Speaker 1: Walsh being invited to speak at a college in Iowa City.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Oliver, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2: First off, Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just kind of wanted you to start
Speaker 1: with how did you become aware of what was happening
Speaker 1: and decide, you know, to show up and do what
Speaker 1: you did because I became aware of you just reading
Speaker 1: your thread, which was a mix of you know, Twitter
Speaker 1: posts on what was happening in some videos of what
Speaker 1: had been happening on the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I am a towney here in Iowa City. I'm
Speaker 3: not a student, but I have you know, I'm very
Speaker 3: close both physically and you know, just personally with lots
Speaker 3: of activists on campus at Iowa City, lots of young activists,
Speaker 3: particularly organizations like the y DSA. They have a couple
Speaker 3: immigrants rights associations, some lgbt q i A associations and everything.
Speaker 3: So when this was made public that the YAF the
Speaker 3: Young Americans Foundation, that's what it stands for, right, I think.
Speaker 3: But they announced that Matt Walsh was indeed going to
Speaker 3: be speaking in April, and of course, you know, lots
Speaker 3: of people just started sending me things like, wow, I
Speaker 3: can't believe these motherfuckers are bringing Matt Walsh out of everybody,
Speaker 3: even though it wasn't very surprising because they love to
Speaker 3: have the yaf here, loves to bring people to speak
Speaker 3: that are objectively terrible people. They just recently had al
Speaker 3: Alan West.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm sure you know all about.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah he's yeah, yeah, playing the hits with
Speaker 1: Alan Dubbs.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the reaction was, you know, just kind of
Speaker 3: like a general we should do something about this, that
Speaker 3: Matt Walsh has come to campus or is going to
Speaker 3: come to campus. So you know, there was lots of
Speaker 3: flying campaigns, lots of calls online. There is a petition
Speaker 3: circulating trying to get the university to not allow Matt
Speaker 3: Walsh on campus. But here in Iowa, the board of
Speaker 3: regents is all just appointed by our Republican governor, Kim Reynolds,
Speaker 3: so you know, there's no way that they would do that.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so that's how everybody found out about it,
Speaker 3: and you know, it was just a lot of the
Speaker 3: YAF would put up flyers and then they would instantly
Speaker 3: get torn down and they would cry about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was a lot of the build up to this event.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I knew. And one of the things,
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing that because obviously there are different
Speaker 1: right wing shitheads speaking in various places and protests against them,
Speaker 1: you know, every day that go a variety of ways.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I was interested in what you
Speaker 1: had to say and I think that this is a
Speaker 1: worthwhile want to talk to people about is that I
Speaker 1: think the Young America's Americans Foundation kids who invited him
Speaker 1: wound up demoralized at the end of this. That was
Speaker 1: my take on this. This is not an event that
Speaker 1: seems to have gone well to them. So I want
Speaker 1: you to walk through kind of what happened that night,
Speaker 1: both in terms of what you saw from the folks
Speaker 1: showing up to see Walsh and what you saw kind
Speaker 1: of from the response to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say it's a fair assumption that the
Speaker 3: YAF people were demoralized after this.
Speaker 2: So the protests.
Speaker 3: It was last Wednesday, the nineteenth, and the protest was
Speaker 3: very you know, there was no leader It was very decentralized,
Speaker 3: you know, just lots of people showing up, and instantly
Speaker 3: when everybody showed up, like at four o'clock when the
Speaker 3: documentary was showing before Matt Walsh was going to speak
Speaker 3: his you know, shitty documentary What is a Woman showed beforehand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It was like a joyous occasion almost. People just were
Speaker 3: trickling in on the park right across the street from
Speaker 3: the IMU, and more and more people. There's hundreds of
Speaker 3: people came, you know, not just students, but like people
Speaker 3: from Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and you know, just
Speaker 3: eastern Iowa in general that were just like, we do
Speaker 3: not you know, we're feeling really bad that this absolute
Speaker 3: fucking shithead is in our state right now. You know,
Speaker 3: the air smells bad, so we you know. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: it was it was very joyous. And then people were like, Okay,
Speaker 3: the documentary is about to get out. And the way
Speaker 3: this event was set up was the documentary was being
Speaker 3: shown in a theater that's in the IMU, the Memorial Union,
Speaker 3: a student hangout spot basically, and then all the people
Speaker 3: that were in the documentary were going to then file
Speaker 3: into the main lounge whereas where he was speaking. And
Speaker 3: so when the documentary got let out, all the activists
Speaker 3: or just the people that came to protest him were
Speaker 3: just like, all right, we're going inside, you know, We're
Speaker 3: not We're not gonna, you know, just stand out here.
Speaker 3: You know, we're going to make sure that they know
Speaker 3: every second that this is bullshit that you came to
Speaker 3: see this guy speak, and especially in Iowa City, this
Speaker 3: isn't going to fly, you know, without some type of resistance.
Speaker 3: So everybody that lined up for the Matt Walsh speaking
Speaker 3: event and who came out of the theater after watching
Speaker 3: his documentary had to wait in line and be screamed
Speaker 3: at by protesters for like an hour at least. And
Speaker 3: it was so funny just these people like they arted
Speaker 3: out at first, you know, for a few minutes being
Speaker 3: like haha, look at all these triggered libs. But then
Speaker 3: after like twenty minutes they were just kind of like
Speaker 3: thousand yards steering, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's really interesting to me because obviously, like
Speaker 1: one of the particularly with the younger right right, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there is sort of a dividing line both
Speaker 1: in my head and in physical behavior between kind of
Speaker 1: like older and maybe even less radical Republicans who are
Speaker 1: really tied to this idea of the silent majority and
Speaker 1: get a degree of emotional comfort from the idea that
Speaker 1: most people do think like them, they just don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. And then there's sort of not
Speaker 1: an entirely separate, but certainly much more common attitude among
Speaker 1: the younger right wing activists, people who were raised online
Speaker 1: in places like four chan about the where a lot
Speaker 1: of their focus is on the joy of triggering the left,
Speaker 1: which they see as like controlling the culture to a
Speaker 1: large degree. And so it's interesting to me, you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that these people like to talk about a lot.
Speaker 1: They like to at least portray themselves as sort of
Speaker 1: above caring, but very few people are capable of like
Speaker 1: just being screamed at by a crowd of people and
Speaker 1: not feeling shitty after a while. That makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was definitely breaking through to a
Speaker 3: lot of them, I could tell, And I even heard
Speaker 3: some conversations amongst them, like very taken aback and like
Speaker 3: in shock, you know, like voice shaking when talking about it,
Speaker 3: just like why are they doing this? You know, I
Speaker 3: mean like putting two and two together, Like it was
Speaker 3: very fascinating to hear to eavesdrop on these conversations, and
Speaker 3: it was a lot of that, and it was also well,
Speaker 3: one thing that happened is I don't know if they
Speaker 3: oversold tickets or just didn't track like how many people
Speaker 3: were going to be there. But the people that showed
Speaker 3: up to see Matt Walsh I would estimate about half
Speaker 3: half of them were not able to go see him.
Speaker 3: They were told they were keeping track of how many
Speaker 3: people were going into the main lounge, and then just
Speaker 3: randomly they were just like, all right, that's it. You know,
Speaker 3: the cops there and the staff and Matt Walsh's private security,
Speaker 3: which I will say there was more private security, or
Speaker 3: there was more security there in general than when Mike
Speaker 3: Pence spoke at the exact same place.
Speaker 1: At least obvious security with Pench.
Speaker 2: More obviously more obvious security.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know they had bomb snipping dogs and everything.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Interesting. Do you know how full the actual
Speaker 1: theater was.
Speaker 2: The YAF claims seven hundred.
Speaker 1: People, and what's capacity for them.
Speaker 3: I don't exactly know, but they said that seven hundred
Speaker 3: people were able to see Matt Walsh. And then so
Speaker 3: I would say more people came to see Matt Walsh,
Speaker 3: if thousand or something, that's another number that the YAF
Speaker 3: threw out there. But I would say there was at
Speaker 3: least an equal amount of protesters there at its peak too.
Speaker 3: And I will also say that there were people keeping
Speaker 3: track of the cars leaving when they were able to leave,
Speaker 3: and there was a considerable amount of out of state
Speaker 3: plates and out of county plates. People traveled pretty far
Speaker 3: to see Matt Wall's speak, is kind of and there
Speaker 3: were people that showed up that, you know, the right
Speaker 3: wing weirdos that I know that live in Des Moines,
Speaker 3: which is like two hours away, and even some in
Speaker 3: Omaha that came that I recognized personally. So yeah, people
Speaker 3: came pretty far for this, and a bunch of those
Speaker 3: people that came pretty far were not able to see
Speaker 3: Matt Wall's speak and they were extremely pissed. And so
Speaker 3: I was watching a lot of these people yell at
Speaker 3: staff and trying to bargain with police officers, like come on,
Speaker 3: we drove, like, let us in everything. The cops were
Speaker 3: just not having it, and so the mood turned pretty angry.
Speaker 2: At that point.
Speaker 1: I would say, I'm interested in sort of are you aware,
Speaker 1: kind of like who was organizing the counter response and
Speaker 1: how that was. People were like informed that there was
Speaker 1: going to be something, because you know, it's not usually
Speaker 1: a simple matter to get that folks many folks to
Speaker 1: show up around one thousand for a counter protest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think mainly there were multiple student orgs. I
Speaker 3: think I named them a little bit earlier that you know,
Speaker 3: there was the Graduates Union, a COGS union, a graduate students' union.
Speaker 3: They put out a statement inviting you know, not only
Speaker 3: their members to come, but everybody to come. They do
Speaker 3: a lot of good work around the university. The why
Speaker 3: d Essay, the Young Democratic Socialists of America they have
Speaker 3: a chapter here and they were organizing. They did heavy
Speaker 3: flying campaigns around town, not just campus, but around Iowa
Speaker 3: City itself. And on top of that, I would say,
Speaker 3: just sharing flyers and word of mouth, like on the
Speaker 3: internet too. People know that Matt Walsh is kind of
Speaker 3: public enemy number one when it comes to the LGBTQ community,
Speaker 3: specifically the trans communities. So I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people were just extremely pissed that he was here in
Speaker 3: this town, in Iowa City, people call Iowa City a
Speaker 3: gayer town than San Francisco.
Speaker 2: People have referred to Iowa City as that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if trial hiar it is. San Francisco
Speaker 1: is a very gay town.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well if you Iowa City people call it little
Speaker 3: San Francisco for that reason.
Speaker 1: That's sweet. I don't think I've actually been to Iowa City.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it is definitely the place in Iowa
Speaker 3: where it is, you know, eastern Iowa. It's considered the
Speaker 3: lib part of Iowa, but specifically Iowa City. People call
Speaker 3: it the People's Republic of Iowa City because like the
Speaker 3: right wingers think it's so left wing here, but in
Speaker 3: reality it's our city council is run by like Pete
Speaker 3: Boodh Judge supporters, but you know, to them, that's communism.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, So I think just.
Speaker 3: The spirit of Iowa City in general, like everybody was
Speaker 3: just pissed that this guy was coming to town, and
Speaker 3: everybody found out one way or another, and yeah, people
Speaker 3: showed up and showed out for sure.
Speaker 1: When it comes to like kind of confrontations and stuff.
Speaker 1: How would you describe sort of the uh, the general
Speaker 1: mood towards that sort of behavior outside like, was this
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where there was there uh action
Speaker 1: sort of taken beyond like the yelling, or was it
Speaker 1: kind of like mostly focused on demoralization and providing kind
Speaker 1: of a visual show of how much resistance there is
Speaker 1: to walshit his ideas well.
Speaker 3: After a lot of them were denied entry, I think
Speaker 3: a lot of them were extremely pissed off. And at
Speaker 3: that point I saw a bunch of old like, not
Speaker 3: a bunch, I would say, a handful of almost scuffles
Speaker 3: breaking out. The couple I saw were definitely the vaults
Speaker 3: and instigated by Matt Walsh attendees, because you know, they
Speaker 3: probably drove really far and weren't able to get in,
Speaker 3: and now you got all these people with trans flags
Speaker 3: screaming at you and calling you a Nazi and a
Speaker 3: fascist and that you're a piece of shit, you know,
Speaker 3: and so but there was a lot of people and
Speaker 3: a lot of cops that were really, really really wanting
Speaker 3: to make sure that that didn't happen. So after these
Speaker 3: people weren't allowed in, they were being escorted towards the
Speaker 3: back entrance where they came in. And so they all
Speaker 3: went back towards the back entrance, and that is when
Speaker 3: somebody or some people I didn't see it. I only
Speaker 3: heard it dumped thousands and thousands of marbles by that exit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my favorite thing that I saw in
Speaker 1: your thread. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then the cops were like, well, shit, sorry, guys,
Speaker 3: you can't come this way, so you have to go
Speaker 3: back through the gauntlet of screaming protesters to get out.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, area denial, taking a yeah, area
Speaker 1: denial and also kind of re routing them from an
Speaker 1: area that's going to force them to confront the least
Speaker 1: pleasant aspect of it. Yeah, that's very smart exactly.
Speaker 3: And then even after that, lots of people were going
Speaker 3: to like the way the imus set up. There is
Speaker 3: a park by it, and there's also a parking garage
Speaker 3: right across the street from it, and there's a one
Speaker 3: way out of the parking garage, so there's one way
Speaker 3: out if you parked in the parking garage. And towards
Speaker 3: the end of his talk, and when everybody was filing
Speaker 3: out of the Matt Walsh event, protesters had completely taken
Speaker 3: over that street, So there was no way any of
Speaker 3: these people were getting out. They just kind of like
Speaker 3: came out in a giant like horde of people, and
Speaker 3: then they slowly started realizing, you know, since all these
Speaker 3: people were blocking the street and there is a pet
Speaker 3: band in the middle of the street playing, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: they were starting to understand that, oh shit, we're not
Speaker 3: gonna be able to leave.
Speaker 2: So a lot of them were really mad about that,
Speaker 2: and they.
Speaker 3: Started going up to police officers and staff saying like,
Speaker 3: you got to get these people out of here. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to leave, you know, and the cops there was
Speaker 3: only like outside, I would say, there was only like
Speaker 3: seven police officers and there is no way, Like the
Speaker 3: cops tried to get people to move out of the street.
Speaker 3: They even put their hands on some people to try
Speaker 3: to move them, but then forty more people would just
Speaker 3: get in the street, and so they realized that that
Speaker 3: wasn't going to happen. So after going through a gauntlet
Speaker 3: of protesters and stepping over marbles, you know, these people
Speaker 3: are then also not able to leave the event when
Speaker 3: they want to. And I would say the road was
Speaker 3: blocked probably for like an hour hour fifteen minutes until
Speaker 3: the police were finally able to kind of like wedge
Speaker 3: a way out for these people. And that's when one
Speaker 3: confrontation that I know happened where one of the Matt
Speaker 3: Walsh attendees started shining a strobe light in people's faces
Speaker 3: and someone put a sign in front of it to
Speaker 3: stop them from doing that, and then that person grabbed
Speaker 3: the other person and there was kind of a fight
Speaker 3: that happened. But that was the only physical confrontation that
Speaker 3: I saw the entire night, besides cops putting their hands
Speaker 3: on protesters trying to get them out of the street
Speaker 3: at one point.
Speaker 1: So would you say, we're kind of the main takeaways
Speaker 1: from this for people? You know, this is going to
Speaker 1: continue to be a thing. Folks are looking at participating
Speaker 1: in or organizing responses to EVINCED like this in the future.
Speaker 1: What were your kind of big takeaways? My takeaways is
Speaker 1: that marbles obviously great idea. Marbles, Yes, marbles are a
Speaker 1: great idea, you know, But also what I think is
Speaker 1: kind of worth taking from that is that like it's
Speaker 1: not enough. We often see this when like different tactics
Speaker 1: go viral. Don't like do the cargo cult version of it? Right,
Speaker 1: The reason why the marbles were effective wasn't just that
Speaker 1: like it made an exit inaccessible. It's that because it
Speaker 1: made it was in a situation where it rerouted people
Speaker 1: back through that screaming gauntlet of counter protesters, which was demoralizing.
Speaker 1: So strategy is also like worth taking into account when
Speaker 1: you're adopting new tactics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 3: And from how it seemed to me is that that
Speaker 3: was intentional, that it was meant to block that exit,
Speaker 3: so they had to go back through the screaming people
Speaker 3: to get out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: You know, marbles are funny, but it was deployed in
Speaker 3: such a way where it was even more funny, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and effective. A takeaway that I had was that, you know,
Speaker 3: there's always going to be risk with this type of thing,
Speaker 3: risk of you know, risk of anything really you know,
Speaker 3: physical harm, emotional harm, people getting in trouble at school
Speaker 3: or something. But I think these kids and a lot
Speaker 3: of these attendees went there expecting to own the libs
Speaker 3: and then walked away really demoralized, you know, And so
Speaker 3: I think it was definitely worth it to put our
Speaker 3: bodies on the line and everything and put ourselves on
Speaker 3: the line to just send that message and also make
Speaker 3: it clear that other people can do this too. And
Speaker 3: Matt Walsh speaks, you know, just make it miserable. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't even necessarily have to prevent him from speaking,
Speaker 3: even though that would be pretty cool. But even though
Speaker 3: he did speak, like, no one's talking about that, and
Speaker 3: no one's talking about what he said. People are talking
Speaker 3: about how all the Matt Walsh people got stranded, and
Speaker 3: how there were more bulls that blocked their exit, and
Speaker 3: how the pet band came and played to a cadence
Speaker 3: of Buck Matt Walsh.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, all right, was there anything else
Speaker 1: you want to talk about before we roll out?
Speaker 2: I'd say that about does it for me, unless you
Speaker 2: have any more questions about specifics of the night.
Speaker 1: No, thank you for coming on, Oliver. Is there any
Speaker 1: sort of plugs you've got for anything you want to
Speaker 1: direct listeners towards before we end?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an organization around here called Iowa Trans Mutual
Speaker 3: Aid that does a lot of really really really good
Speaker 3: work for people in the state of Iowa that currently
Speaker 3: is experiencing, like so much of the country, really really
Speaker 3: really bad anti trans legislations. So if you find it
Speaker 3: in your heart or have the means to donate to
Speaker 3: such an Iowa Trans Mutual Aid, I really, I really
Speaker 3: can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Oliver, and a big
Speaker 1: thank you to everybody who showed up that night in
Speaker 1: Iowa City. That is it for us today. Everybody, have
Speaker 1: a great rest of your day, all right, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It Could Happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.