It Could Happen Here Weekly 49

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Hi. Everyone, this is Sharene

(00:27):
and you're listening to it can happen here? It could.
I always mess up the name of this podcast, and
it's really embarrassing because I work on it. It could
happen here. Um, not the same words to me in
my head though. Anyway. We're joined today by guess that
I previously had on the podcast that I co host,
Ethnically Ambiguous, and she has a podcast coming out that

(00:48):
is super important and I'm excited to talk about what
it's a as itself. Joining me today are Garrison and
Chris and our guest nasse Hi. Hello, Hello, welcome, thank you,
Welcome to the show. So you're you have a new
podcast called Partition. Explain what that's about? Yes, So Partition

(01:14):
tells the story of the separation of India and the
formation of Pakistan that took place in on Monday, well,
Sunday Monday, because I happened at midnight, celebrated its seventy
anniversary this year. Um. So it's quite a large event
that most people don't really know about. I myself didn't
really know the specif I first went back to Pakistan

(01:38):
where I was born and Cratchy um. But basically Britain
was like, hey, we're out of money, we can't control
India anymore, We're gonna leave. And in that process they
were going to trans for the power UH to India
and they were gonna they were going to have independence.
And then all these other politicians kind of came in

(02:01):
the picture and wanted their own personal agendas and UH
Pakistan um dominion while India would be the Hindu Sikh dominion.
And basically within this process it was such a rushed
job that fourteen million people were uprooted, wanted two million
people died, you know. Um. The boundary line actually a

(02:24):
few days after independence happened, so no one knew like
what where they were in what country. Um. So it
was just like a lot of confusion, a lot of violence,
a lot of just a lot of mess that happened,
and a lot of the survivors are quite old now.
My grandfather's a survivor. He's four He was fourteen when

(02:46):
it happened, so he's eighty nine now. And so the
only way we can really get these stories or through
oral histories. And I never really learned about it in school.
And because i'm parents again, like I said, I didn't
really know about it for a long time. So if
I don't know about it, um, and this is like
my history and my family, UM, I'm sure there are

(03:07):
many other people who don't know about it. Well. I
definitely was very uninformed before you came onto the other podcast.
Ethnically ambiguous because it sounds like I'm plugging it, but
I'm not. Um, but also go listen to it. Thanks,
I appreciate that. But but no, I do think it's
really important because it's absurd the huge like kept out

(03:34):
of what we were taught in history class, if you
can even call it that. Um. But but yeah, I
think it's really important to know about this huge thing
that happened in our recent history that created these two. Um,
can you tell us what the process was making this
podcast for you and like what research you did, and

(03:57):
we like just the steps leading up to it. Yeah.
So I originally wanted to make this UM story into
a limited narrative series, but I didn't really know how
that would happen UM and I Agent or anything like that.
But it was just a project I wanted to work on.
But it's such a vast event. I was like, I

(04:19):
don't know, like where I would even start. Um. And
then a couple of months later, I saw um that
our Heart Radio was creating a program called Next Up.
And that's when the idea for the podcast came along,
and I was like, you know, podcasts are a really
good way for people to digest information. UM. It's a

(04:40):
lot more accessible, I think than other forms of media.
It doesn't cost any money, uh that in a number
of ways. You can listen to it a number of ways. UM.
So I thought that might be a good place to start,
and I ended up getting accepted into the program. And
it's it's still like a lot of work, and it's
a lot of just a lot of draining work, um

(05:04):
because you have all these like horrible facts written in
like one Google dog that you're saying to people because
I outlined them, and then I write a script because
it's mostly a lot of my narration with it. But
the first thing I did is, Um, I talked to family.
I talked to my grandpa. I talked to my great
aunt who was actually born the day of independence. Um. Yeah,

(05:27):
so Sunday Monday, but just in case the day is
not fifteen. So this year it happened to be a
Sunday in a Monday, and you know, so I asked
her what stories people told her? I asked my mom.
We went to an exhibit in Pakistan that's kind of
what spurred everything for partition for me, and we talked

(05:48):
about there. I had like my dad do some voice
over for my grandpa because the our connection wasn't the best.
He's in Pakistan. We recorded it via WhatsApp on a
pad track recorder and it's it was like it's very
loud over there. There's you know. Instantly, it was just
like a it was a situation. Um. But I just

(06:10):
started reading books and then I started talking to a
lot of people, and I ended up talking to an
author named Nisida Jerry, whose book I referenced quite a
bit in the second episode, which drops twenty two. And
you know, the first thing he told me was you
can't cover everything. So once you understand that that's going

(06:31):
to be the case, and it's going to be a
lot easier, and it's true, like you can't cover everything.
And I kind of struggle narrative I wanted to tell
because so many of the stories out there are very biased.
There's a lot of you know, like the great men
in history stories which I don't care about, and I
just wanted to tell the facts. But I quickly discovered

(06:52):
that's really hard. My history, this is my story. This
is something that impacts my family for um future to
generations and my identity without a doubt. So I was like,
let me kind of do it with the lens of disguise. UM.
And I wanted to tell the stories that people don't

(07:15):
really hear about. So I didn't want to talk about
like meetings that happened in libraries and whatever between like
all these politicians. I literally don't care about that. But
out um, the way women were treated. It is thought
that seventy to a hundred thousand women were raped, abducted, murdered.
I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk to

(07:35):
artists and creatives who had kind of like a reckoning
with and then use their work to teach people about it.
So an artist who reframes the narrative with her pieces
and talks about the actual people it affected. A filmmaker,
oral historians, uh, survivors, um that I wanted to tell.

(07:59):
I didn't want it to be um something you would
get like on the History Channel, which is totally fine,
that's great, there's an audience for that. But that just
isn't something that I wanted to do. You're not doing
a whole bunch. No. I did watch an episode of
Doctor Who that talks about partition, and I think there

(08:19):
were like aliens or something in there. There is something
thrown in there about some sci fi stuff though they
did just see how Doctor Who handles partition. I mean
it was actually done really well. It was written by Yeah,
it was written by South Asian person and so that
was like the first uh thing that I saw in

(08:42):
my research that really case, like the emotion and and
the things that people went through. And I didn't see
any British people besides like the people that originally came
on the mission or whatever. So that was nice. Um.
But yeah, like there there was a sci fi element.
I can't what that side. It was actually something that

(09:05):
um that people told me about. When I mentioned partition,
They're like, oh, there's this episode of Doctor Who. So
I've only seen that one episode, but I think it
in the in my research. It was the first thing
where I was like, this actually tells a perspective from
the people of South Asia. Let's get to know it

(09:25):
was written by a South Asian person. At first, I
was like, I'm not even going to touch that. Yeah,
up next Stephen Moffatt writes about apartheiz, so I'm curious
not including like including some things but not other things.
What what like how did you decide what to include

(09:48):
and what not to include? Yeah, so no way you
can say, like the actual history is maybe the least
important part I think of the podcast. Like I talked
about like events like there's something called direct Action Day
that happened about a year before the boundary line was announced.
Uh Mohammad A Legiona, the future founder of Pakistan, kind

(10:11):
of called on Muslims to be to to kind of
uh have demonstrations, but it was kind of unclear what
exactly that meant. And massive looting carnage took place and
how that was like a big catalyst for a partition.
But I didn't want to like get into like this

(10:31):
treaty and this event and like this meeting and whatever,
because that information is out there if people want to know.
I mentioned, that's not really the aspects UM that I
took particular interest in. I wanted to talk about women
and survivors and just you know, I felt I found

(10:52):
it to be very common people who are my age
and I just turned UM, I guess millennials you could say, um,
their parents and only don't talk to them about it.
So it's been really interesting to talk to people who
are my age, who are older than me, who are
younger than me, have very similar experiences and how they
found out about this information. M. So those are the

(11:13):
kind of things I wanted to focus on because you know,
a lot of our stories uh from minority communities UM
that are out there in like mainstream media, are rarely
told from our perspectives, and so I wanted I wanted
this story to come from me and from other people

(11:35):
who UM have just different experiences with partition, whether they
lived through it, whether they're an oral historian, but they
write a fictional novel about it to cope with their trauma,
which I interviewed a woman who did do that. She
was four years old when it happened, and she disassociated
herself a lot with partition until she wrote about until
she wrote about it in this fictionalized novel. UM, and

(12:00):
I wanted to talk about what forms of media were
also out there, which is why I watched that Doctor
Who episode. I also watched Gandhi three hours of my
life I'm never going to get back. Um terrible, so
not great? Um, you know, I love Richard Adinborough like
Dresser Park is great, but this wasn't it. Um, So
I wanted to I wanted to point people in that

(12:23):
direction where if you actually wanted to dig deeper into
this information, like here's where you should go, Like don't
d um, like don't watch I mean I love the Crown,
but I mean like let's be real, like you know,
like if they mentioned I think India. Once in the
pilot episode, um where and it took place about three

(12:45):
months after partition happened. Up it's getting married to Queen
Elizabeth and um what's his name? Once in Churchill is
walking and he sees Lord mount Batten who was tasked
with the separation of India, who was also Prince Philip's uncle,
and Chill goes, oh, that's the man who gave India away,

(13:07):
and I'm like, that's not really what happened, but okay,
and that's the only thing that they say. Um. But
I do love period dramas and I do love Corgis,
which is one of the main reasons I watched The Crown. Um.
But yeah, wait, sorry, one back is the guy who
got whacked for the I r A in the seventies, right,
yes Jesus, yes, yeah, I actually didn't know that until

(13:30):
I was the Crown so uh, you know, um, because
again that was into him and his history. I don't care.
I ended up seeing it in the crowd. Um. Yeah.
So I just I really wanted to focus on South
Asians and like our story and working through how drama

(13:52):
is and kind of reclaiming our narrative with um just
kind of the truth. And you know, something that popped
up when I was creating kind of getting deeper into
the podcast was Miss Marvel. I knew it was going
to follow him most great, but I didn't know that
they would talk about partition and how that was like
a major plot point and so people are starting to

(14:14):
learn about the history because of that show, which is amazing. Um.
So if I can kind of add on to that
and expand um people's education. Something else I also wanted
to do was I want people to have empathy and
sympathy for immigrants and refugees, especially once that don't look
like them, um, because we come in all colors and sizes,

(14:36):
and you know, I think their response to Ukraine, Ukrainian
refugees and the UK was great, but I don't really
think that same courtesy was extended to refugees from Syria.
And I think that's really important because I'm an immigrant.
It took quite a long time for me to become
a citizen so um, and it's very hard and it's

(14:59):
something that people don't know about, and so I just
kind of want I want people to care about things
that don't directly affect them, which I think is very
much like an American rooted thing. So I really I mean,
I don't think my podcast is going to change that,
but if I can, but if people can look outside themselves,

(15:19):
um with this, I think that would be really great. Yeah.
I was wondering what do you actually think about the
way that I smartvil like, did they talked about partition?
Because I saw a lot of I don't know, I
saw a lot of conflicting sort of a yeah. So

(15:43):
I liked it, UM, but I'm also I think worriedy
and you see something that has affected you in your
family or has oppressed you, you expect this art form
to talk about every single thing. You know, UM writ

(16:07):
and that we bear as creative artists of color that
if we don't talk about every single thing that's the
Presidi community, then it's not worth our time. It's kind
of like the mantra that we have UM. And for me,
I'm like, this show is six episodes, Like you know,
you need to understand that that is not something that
they can encapsulate in there while talking about all these

(16:29):
other things. So I think it does a really good
job capturing emotion. UM. I feel a lot of times
you get the partition story from people, UM who are
currently in India. So it was nice to see people
from Pakistan, UM like, and they're from Grati just like
I am. And I found it, you know, like every
episode just made me just crying more I'm also very

(16:51):
sensitive and so I would just um, you know, there
was there was a particular scene where Gamala is talking
to her her nanni which means grandmother, and her grandmother
is like, my passport says Pakistan, but my roots are
in India. And I really felt that because I was
my parents were born in Pakistan, but all other generations

(17:14):
were born in India, and that is a place. Because
of how tense the borders are between these countries, I
will not get to visit for the foreseeable future. If
you are born in Pakistan, you are not allowed to
go to India. You're not allowed to go to Pakistan.
And it's just crazy because I'm like, well that's where
I came from in a sense, you know. Um, so

(17:38):
for me, just because like I said, I am a
sensitive person. Like the emotion, you know, the people going
on trains that you know, that is something that I
talked about a lot in my podcast. A lot of
people experienced or read about. Um, a lot of people
were hoping to get on trains and when they tried,
those trains came, We're filled with bodies and not people

(18:01):
who are alive. And so I think it did a
good job capturing the emotion. But it's like you, there's
just no way you can capture the complexity of that
event with that. Even with my podcast it's ten episodes,
and like NISSID, you just can't cover everything, so you
have to pick and choose what you want. And also
like it's as an artist like for me, for me specifically,

(18:25):
it's like I want to give you like the crumbs
of something and then I want look into it more, right,
Like I shouldn't have to force feed you information. I
should keep you intrigued enough for you don't want to
look at this information on your own, you know. So
like that's how I how I see it. But I
am in a little bit of a different position because

(18:47):
M and TV, like I programmed several film festivals and
things like that, so I'm almost also looking through that
with that kind of I um, but like I can
understand people are like, oh, I wish they talked about this.
I wish they talked about this, but you know, you know,
I'm just like old six episodes. They have to do
all this exposition, they have to do this, that's just impossible.

(19:07):
But people aren't thinking that way. But I think it
really captured the emotion and the trauma of that event
and how how um sad did it? Um because it
is sad to be like I'll never get to see
where my great grandparents lived or my grandparents because they
were children, you know, at least until they decide that's

(19:29):
not the case anymore. Um. But yeah, I can understand
people's but I think for me personally, I thought it
did a really good job. And actually, uh, the woman
who created the exhibit that I saw in Pakistan that
really spearheaded this whole thing for me actually directed episodes
four and five of Miss Marvel, so, which is really cool.

(19:51):
That was another thing I guess I sort of wanted
to ask about was like, what was the process of
doing this? Like emotionally, I know I did a I
wound up doing somewhat similar things for a couple of
episodes about two and like talking to my family about
what it was like in China was just like and
like just doing the sort of our coup of reefers,
which just like brutal, and yeah, I want to know
like what that was like for you and what that

(20:12):
was like for like your family having to talk about it,
and yeah, it was really draining because you're just reading
so many awful things, like I read a number of
different books, and you know, talking to all these people,
and I think, for my grandfather, I think, like I don't,
I don't. He's not a very emotional person physically there

(20:34):
with him when he was talking to me, and I
think it's like something that's for sure, like in the
past for him. And he was fortunate in the way
that he came from an area that did have violence,
but it wasn't to the extent that you of other
people's accounts um and but talking to survivors was really hard.

(20:55):
I actually went to San Francisco to talk to someone
specifically because they're very hard of hearing, and so doing
it virtually would have been very impossible and hard because
he was saying all these things and then he would
tear up, and it's like, where do you just listen
to this person? And then where do you comfort them?

(21:15):
Is really hard because I don't want to interrupt, but
I don't want them to be like I don't care
about what you're saying, like it's a um And that
person spoke to me for two and a half hours,
and I had yet to really listen to his audio
I've just like listened to bits and pieces just for
like clarity purposes. Um. So that's gonna be rough when
that happens, and it's going to come up soon. Um.

(21:37):
It was just really draining, and it's just like like highlighting.
It's like you know when you're reading. I've read all
these books and you're highlighting things, but it's like you're
going to highlight the whole book because it's just there's
just so many crazy things. And Yeah, it's just really sad.
It's really dreaming. Like I had mentioned writing this, and
I'm like, here's just like twenty minutes of terror and
like any page Google doc that you have to say. Um.

(22:01):
And that also brings up another point where even though
this podcast is sad and it's not particularly pertain ways,
I did want to be myself and so I try
to add a little bit of lovity in there. Um.
Like there was an artist who um that I mentioned
Her work name is Parthica Jodrey. She had these really

(22:22):
beautiful installations uh of like female body parts, but they
ended up getting ruined in transportation and so she digitized
them and is and made n f T s and
so me trying to explain what an n f T
is is just the most ridiculous thing in the world.
So I was like, I'm not going to talk about it.
But it's like lovity in there that we're talking about

(22:43):
n f t s in this podcast, you know. Um,
but yeah, it's it was. It's still like a really
draining process because I say this a lot, and people
I've interviewed say this, that partition isn't something that's in
the past. It's been breathing and you know, prothecas it
in a really distinct way where she's like it lives

(23:04):
in families and it really does. So like every day
I feel like I just kind of it's hard for
me not to get bogged down with all this and
I am a sensitive person, so well I tend to
hold things and carry things with me. Um. Yeah, it's
been a really rough process, but I think what kind
of makes it a little easier is like, well, these

(23:24):
people's stories are getting out there. Um, people are going
to learn about it now, and maybe that inspires them
to learn about other events that they didn't learn in school.
Like all of my education was done in Texas and
that can be another podcast within itself because our education
is something to say the least. Uh oh, that's kind

(23:46):
of the way I try to look at it, like
it's really rough. And then I also, um, I love
reading and everything, so I'm just like, well, I'm going
to read this like thirsty rom com to get me
away from like the horrible nous of the work I'm
doing it day. Definitely a little bit of balance too.
I do think to hear you say that you're I'm

(24:07):
very sensitive as well and how you hold stuff in.
I do think as people of color are families, especially
like immigrant families, that people that have been through trauma.
That's that's why, that's why about this, because this intergenerational
trauma is something that they've kept and barely talked about,
if at all. Um, So I'm really glad that like

(24:31):
you went to San Francisco and that person was able
to like release all of this and that they were
holding probably for their whole life. So so yeah, I do.
I I think, um, there are many reasons why your
podcast is important, but I think even the chance that
someone can like that not trauma sounds a little bit

(24:57):
more dramatic than I wanted to, But like the feelings
behind with that means and their family history or even
if you're not South Asian, it's important to note again
something that doesn't affect you. Yeah, the whole world really Yeah,
just like understanding your history and like where you come
it is Chinese. And she texted me she was just like,

(25:18):
now I kind of want to look into like my history,
and I'm like that's great, Like that's what I you know,
I wanted if I wanted any kind of like actionable
thing to happen, it's like that exact thing history looking
into other people's histories. Totally wow. Um, I for we

(25:41):
confirmed you as a guess that you're good at talking,
and this confirmed that. Thank you so much. You were
babbled a lot, so I was like, opinion, the perfect
podcast guest like this period. Um, But I really I
appreciate the both effort and like emotional energy that goes

(26:02):
into making a show like this because I can kind
of relate when I talk about the Middle East stuff,
like it's really really hard. So I appreciate your time
and to learn more about the partition and what that means. Um,
can you tell the audience where they can find you?
And the podcast obviously is where you can find it.

(26:24):
But let's I'm going to hand it over to you.
Here you go, okay. Um. So Partition podcast on augustive teen.
You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, um
sucially the I Heart Radio app. Um. You can find
me on Instagram and Twitter, Instagram at Nahazie's Twitter at
Nahazie's thirteen. And you can find Partition on Twitter at

(26:47):
Didition podcast on Instagram. Nice um on EA, you mentioned
a upcoming project you want to do that's also about
like a similar topic. Yeah, what that is? Yes, something
that I really wanted to do. And this is another

(27:08):
thing that we're kind of talking about of like people
not talking about like everything, like encompassing everything in like
one uh story. So um, something very it happened in
when East Pakislan became Bangladesh. Um and a lot of
my mom's families from there, My grandma UM and a

(27:29):
lot of her family currently live there. And it's again
very similar to Partition, a lot of violence. UM. And
that story, to me, UM deserves its own time and respect.
And I remember when I first talked about partition, They're like, oh,
you're gonna talk about this, and I'm like, I want
to mention it. But it is too just kind of

(27:52):
throw into what I'm doing because it deserves way more
than that. So that is another story that I want
to tell. And it actually celebrated it's fiftie anniversary last year. UM.
And from my understanding, it's all memorials in either India
or Pakistan that commemorates, not commemorates, but showcases like how

(28:15):
partition was. Like we don't you know, there isn't like
a like here all the people who died, or here's
this or here's like the statue of a bird or
that that you know that people. There's no like communal
place of grief. And it is my understand that Bangladesh
really does have these things. I believe there's a Liberation
museum and statues and there is a Partition museum, but

(28:41):
it is not a government sanction thing. It's privately owned.
And again it with it being in India, UM, there's
also a lot of barriers, like it's not a place
I can visit um and so UM that is something
I'm actually trying to go to Bangladesh UM this year
and it's been a little bit difficult, I think, trying
to obtain her visa. But I hope she gets to

(29:03):
go soon, and I hope I get to go with her.
But um, yeah, that's other stories that I want to
tell because I feel like it is starting to kind
of people are starting to understand that. But I feel
like one is just not there at all. Um it's
I think, something that people seem to just forget about,

(29:23):
and it's just crazy to think. I'm like, it's that's
not that long from like seventy five years, like fifty years.
That's not a long time. Um. So it's just like
really insane when you think about it that way, and um,
especially when you think of how ancient these and just

(29:44):
how new these places are. UM. So yeah, that's something
I would definitely love to tell. Um. I would love
for my next project to be on that, um but
that decision is not up to me. So hopefully, um
hopefully it'll work out. Yeah, I really hope so too. UM.
I do really appreciate, I'm sure everyone else does, to

(30:06):
the fact that you're talking about things that are just
glossed over or not even mentioned. Usually I hate that,
like it's usually our job to educate people. But in
the meantime, you're doing a fantastic job and I can't
wait to see the other projects you do. But obviously
listen to Partition everybody first. UM, yeah, that's the show. Hello,

(30:44):
this is it could happen here. And today it's me
James and I'm joined by and Diego and we are
talking about San Diego's lying there and how he likes
to punch down on poor people even though he promised
he wouldn't. So joining me today, I'm gonna ask you
guys to want to introduce yourselves. It can spend a

(31:05):
little bit about a background you have in the area
and then we'll get into it because there's a lot
to talk about. So, Mandy, would you like to go first?
H I'm Mandy. I am I'm a homeless advocate and
mostly do um on the groundwork mutually and then I
advocate for them as much as I can almost city municipalities. Um,

(31:27):
and just organize that way great, And Colleen, you can
go next to us. Okay, Yeah, my name is Colin Cusack.
I'm a criminal defense attorney and I uh represent uh
perhaps my fifty homeless person's pro bono right now who
are sighted with the crimes of survival such as encroachment

(31:48):
and over So I can challenge and have them to
quote unconstitutional McConnell. I'm an advocate for people who are
living unsheltered or homeless, and I've been working on this
for about thirteen years. First part working within this system
as a philanthropist, advocate, volunteers, former vice chair of the

(32:13):
Regional Task Force on the Homeless and founding was a
founding member of a local philanthropy group called Funders Togethered
and Homelessness San Diego. I have participated on quite a
few initiatives Blitz Week where we housed about a hundred
people in three days, Cities initiative where we worked on

(32:33):
any veteran and chronic homelessness created the regions first by
nameless for veterans. Worked on a lot of CEOC continuum
of care initiatives such as how we score projects to
get homelessness funding. H long communicated with our endless elected Yeah,

(32:59):
who's an mayor who's made so many promises over the
years and so many claims on homelessness. People just doubt
almost everything he says about homelessness at this point. Rightfully so,
and uh probably most I on the ground advocacy now
where I do a lot of in Camas support work

(33:22):
with of course unsheltered people, filmed the police around in
camera sweeps and enforcement of of laws at target and
continue that till this day. Nice Yeah, containing a lot
of work on the street. And then LEVI last been
at least ed Hi you guys, I'm levionly with homeful Solutions, UM.

(33:47):
I have lived experience and being homeless. UM. I also
worked with a group about the kids called Lived Experience
Advisors here in San Diego. UM we try to hold
him accountable UM. And uh we're also able to advocate
for uh a lot of what these people need in
the recovery process, just beyond like, UM, housing, which is

(34:11):
the main thing you know that uh, the real estate crisis. UM.
And then I also work as a housing navigator downtown. UM.
So I work with a case load of about two clients, UM,
about sixty or seventy of them. I would say, have
UM s M I s UM really in like uh

(34:32):
kind of one of the main areas of town that UM,
you know, we have a lot of these people living outdoors.
So UM, I'm at kind of the front lines of
it every day when it comes to people needed to
get a show one that they cry to um, you
know when when they think that it's a you know,
when they don't understand that it's the system that's broken.

(34:54):
You know, I'm the one that they get yelled at,
but that gets yelled at, but you know, they think
I'm I'm not doing an off, you know, and be
able to see all sides of it and see the
promises that get made. And I literally have clients come
in and say, oh, hey, look everything's gonna be fine
because the mayor just said this week he's opening a
new shelter. And I'm like, all right, let's do the math.

(35:16):
That's a right, And there's eight thousand homes people in
the county, so you know, and so um, yeah, I
have to kind of break down that. It's a good responsibility,
I guess, to to break down the system to my
clients so that they can understand how broken as uh,
you know, me being able to teach some patients to

(35:37):
get them through the process too. So yeah that's me. Yeah,
that's good, thank you. And so yeah, I want to
get into because it consistently, I think, like every time,
like I like to ride my bike around a lot,
I'm always riding around town. Often are running to people
who are in distress, right, especially when we ride past
the hospital, will do something we can get into and

(35:57):
they'll be like, oh, just just call up what you
sort of out with a shelter like and then they'll
have this horrible moment of realization where they're like, oh shit,
like there's nowhere for this person to go. So let's
talk a little bit about Todd Gloria. Right, Todd Gloria's
are there. He's a Democrat, he ran on a very
progressed uh and what he's done has been extremely reactionary.

(36:22):
And I wanted to start just by reading some Todd tweets.
Todds a poster um, perhaps not not as much of
a poster as Rachel Richel laying his I guess Sian's manager.
I think she has the soul of a poster and
will attack people working like Michael to help people, which

(36:43):
is distressing to see. But I wanted to I wanted
to talk, so I've got a few tweets here. June. Yes,
I will be the first to enforce the law against
those sheltered around sheltered who break any law, but I
will not use our code to harass and criminalize sick
and poor people. That's the number one organ bean. What

(37:06):
if we chose to take the resources we used to
criminalize the homeless and redirect them to building housing instead.
What if Todd um Janu in his tag Michael in
this one. Maybe right, But the sad fact is that
this before the p I t C. That's the point
in time count of un housed people. It happens all

(37:26):
the time. It's unfair to the unsheltered and too STPD.
My goal is to end chronic homelessness. The only way
to do this is with permanent supportive housing, not criminalization. Right,
But that's not what you did, Californians of all political views. No,
a homelessness crisis is a serious problem. More housing and services,
not criminalization. It's past time to tackle this problem. I

(37:49):
could keep going with these things, but I will get
the pictures. So Todge talked a lot about how we
don't need to criminalize poverty, how we don't need to
criminalize living on the street. Uh, and then has proceeded
to criminalize living on the street. Right, and so maybe
we can just start with these happened pretty much consistently.

(38:11):
I think since Todd took office and UH, people might
be familiar with a little bit, like they may have
seen some of the bikes being thrown away that that
was like Michael had a video of that which which
had how many Oh gosh, yeah, it's a lot of
people have seen that. But perhaps one if you would

(38:31):
like to describe like exactly like how a sweep goes
down right, Like like there's there's a process of posting
sometimes a process of posting notices. But this is because
people are encroaching, Like what's the sort of justification for it?
And then what does that look like for people on
the ground every fourteenth of this year, but Glorious started

(38:54):
his sweep enforcement. Um. It was unspoken during COVID, Uh,
they were just killing people with COVID and instead of
my police, although the police were doing so this this
what the police do at the sweeps as they use
a series of unconstitutional ordinances city ordinances only existing in

(39:18):
the city of San Diego. UM. And these unconstitutional ordinances
taken together eagle for um, anybody to exist in public space,
so me, our mothers, our children, anybody in public space
can be ticketed for these violations because they're so overbroad.

(39:40):
For example, standing on a sidewalk, just being there on
a sidewalk, UM will be enough to get you a
citation issued if you can't prove you have a house
to live in. UM. These laws, like I said, they're
written over broad. They apply to everyone. Use their discretion
to only use them against or persons. The Vehicle Habitation

(40:02):
Ordinance UM lists a series of items that if they're
found in your car, police could use those to arrest you.
And those items it's like food, water, trash. So everybody
with food, water, or trash. It doesn't have to be
all three, just one of them. UM could be the

(40:27):
objected to arrested, have their comfort, have their taken to shelter,
having their children taken to CPS, and all because UM,
the city wants to come after poor people with with ordinances. UM.
So here's the fund. These ordinances can be charged either

(40:48):
as misdemeanors or infractions. Mayor Glory announced a progressive ordinance
scheme which means on day one, say Monday of the week,
the individal jewel. On day two, the individual is issued
a infraction citation. That infraction citation gives them a day

(41:09):
to appear months down the road UM to contest the case.
But the very next day, they can be issued a misdemeanor.
That misdemeanor station also has a date months down the
road the resolution and then UM gave four. They can
be arrested and taken into custody UM all without ever

(41:31):
having a day and UM the citations, if there are
issued to people in Midway or downtown San Diego, direct
them to appear in Claremont Mesa. It's about twelve miles away.
These are individuals that have mobility issues. They can't get
to and from court can't They can't really get to
and from the end of the street very well without

(41:52):
police starting to take away their property. Court won't allow
them to bring their property in with them. The buses
won't allow them to bring their property on the buses.
So they have to make a choice. Do they all
the remaining property that they have in the world to
go to court to defend against the charge that they're
really don't have the The police can cite either as

(42:17):
a misdemeanor infraction, but when they sit as an edule
doesn't get UM an appointed attorney and UM nor jury
trial and so UM the punishment the issuance of the
citation becomes the punishment process, we're just to get to

(42:38):
court and take care of your responsibilities becomes a chore,
even if later it's dismissed. We found out through public
records requests that of the misdemeanors that are being cited
are so people aren't getting their attempt, their their opportunity
to defend themselves in court. They're all being dismissed. Um.

(43:00):
So if the city was was serious about believing that
these individuals were committing criminal offenses, and they wouldn't be
dismissing them after of them after they were were issued.
So colleens talking about the the the laws or the
codes that are used to used during enforcement sweeps of

(43:23):
people out here on the streets. So the police go
out and you codes and municipal codes, two right people
tickets and eventually take them to jail. That's just one
kind of sweep. That's the enforcement sweeps. There's also sweeps

(43:43):
or abatement sweeps. We call them homeless and CABA sweeps
or homeless community sweeps where per settlement with past lawsuits,
the city has to post three hour seventy two notices
in areas. Then police and Environmental Services and clean up
cruise and they'll throw away all your belongings if you're

(44:05):
not there, So that's another kind of sweep. So there's
actually two kinds of sweeps. There's these clean up sweeps
where they throw away your belongings, and then there's the
enforcement sweeps where they just go out with sometimes oh gosh, Colleen,
we've probably seen as many as fifteen maybe fifteen plus

(44:26):
police go out to ticket people in a particular homeless community.
So and just to the ringer with all these citations
that Colleen went through. Yeah, and then preps leave. Are
you familiar with the system, right? I think maybe the
the idea here is that the police are supposed to
offer them shelter, right, if they asked a shelter, they're

(44:48):
supposed to offer it to them. Can you just exp
shelter could be extremely difficult or impossible for people to access. Yeah. Absolutely,
And then I'll tell you kind of some of the
consequences that UM people face even or as a result
of this. But um so basically like let me paint
the picture for you. So, UM, our location is a

(45:11):
have any housing here on site? Um? And uh so
the clients will typically there's a line out the gate
when we get here at eight o'clock in the morning.
At eight o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock, all
I do is shelter refer that's everybody that's coming in
the door that wants to get a shelter bed for
that night that night. Right, we're doing this at eight

(45:34):
o'clock in the morning. And UM. Oftentimes I will get
one or two. Some days I don't get anyone into
shelter um clock. All of those beds are full. And
that's what they report back to me, is the service provider,
right is is at nine o'clock in the morning, there's
no more shelter beds. Um. And uh. On top of

(45:57):
that very thing to him mentioned too is like you know,
the police are supposed to offer them shelter, but um
we have like some kind of like conglomerates as far
as organizations go in the shelter space. UM. So if
a client is for some reason not allowed to go back, UM,
that's one pretty much forever um and be it could

(46:18):
be something like behavior like they got anxiety and yelled
at somebody, right, or it could be uh, someone who
can't complete their A d l S as they call it, UM,
or like an incontinence issue. Um, So there's times yes
it is sanitary and medically necessary for you to use
this little bottle or whatever. But then the shelter will
then kick them out and not let them return for

(46:40):
that kind of thing. So by nine o'clock, the shelter
beds are full. Um. In the beginning when playing, they
were doing their sweeps real early. Um. Now they're doing
their sweeps um after the time that I'm being told
as a service provider that the shelters are already full.
And um. And on top of that, our shelter her system,

(47:01):
you're there during the day, right, So some of these
people that they're taking their stuff and throwing it away
are actually in shelter. You know, they just had to
take their belongings with them back to the streets where
everyone can see them every day. And and um. Recently,
I had a client who we had spent like a

(47:22):
month and a half trying to get him in the
shelter every single day and it wasn't going through. Finally
we got him in the shelter, and um a ticket
for encroachment that you know, was not paid and he
didn't go to court. So even though he was in
shelter in the middle of the day, the police officers
stopped him. They arrested him for his warrant. He was

(47:44):
in there all weekend and he lost a shelter. Then, Yeah,
so that's and perhaps you and Mandy could explain then,
like some of the things, because yeah, under the guys,
if I guess a clean up or a bait call it,
like often that actively stripping people of the things that
they need to access shelter, to access housing, to transport

(48:05):
themselves around, right, And just what if you want to
take on like what this means. M Well, they'll you know,
they do it under the guys that we're gonna you know,
we're cleaning up the area. UM. But they will drag
entire tent people's belongings and put them in the compactor.

(48:25):
They won't go through them. They never look. Oftentimes there's
medication and their ideas, paperwork, things that you know, people
have to have to survive. UM. You know, people can't
get have identification. It's really difficult for them to get identification.
UM living on the streets. You know, it's it's a
process and that process UM sets outreach workers back. So

(48:50):
you know you've got an outreach worker who may have
got them an i D and you know they've taken
their UM. It's called the espadat when they're entered into
the how sing system and they're waiting a housing match
and then their i D and everything gets thrown away.
So then the outreach worker has to take time to
go back their i D when they could be helping

(49:12):
you know, someone else get set up to maybe get
into housing. UM. You know they don't, they don't look
through the things. This causes UM so much trauma for
these folks. I've seen so a lot of times with
sweeps UM. Sometimes I say, they'll allow people to gather

(49:32):
their things and move them and then they'll sweep the area.
I've seen times when they have had things, they moved
their things and then the police surround their things while
people are standing there and they place their things in
front of them while they are begging for their things,

(49:56):
and they them and they will put them in the
track compact or in front of them and it's I mean,
the only way that you can view that is it's
just punishment, like you're not you know, you're out here,
you're poor, we don't have many options for you. But
We're going to do this to deter you because we
just don't want to see you here. Yeah, Like I
remember I was talking to someone downtown a couple of

(50:17):
weeks ago and stop to give some folks some water,
and like, this is the ship I chose to bring
with me, Like I didn't. You know, it's not like
I could take everything, And these are the things that
I wanted to keep because they were special to me.
And yet now now they're being trashed. Indeed, I think
a person was thrown in it's right, yeah, like inside

(50:40):
their tent and just fucking unbelievable. And so, yeah, we've
established these sweeps are cruel. We've established that there's not
really anywhere for people to go, and that they don't
they don't provide a lasting solution to homelessness. They just
they just move people around and make it harder for them.

(51:02):
And so one of the things that we do in
San Diego is that we we have this thing quote
a point in time count right, and I think the
students at the sweeps were increased in certain areas around
the point in time counts. Is what if you want
to explain what that count like is and does? Yeah,

(51:22):
so the Point in Time count really only captures, like
one night out of the year, people experiencing homelessness. Um,
there was a couple of ostables. Um that process this
year was particularly really cold that night. Um there were
some tech glitches that should have been worked out way
more in advance. UM. But UM, that really only pictures

(51:44):
like takes capture of one night. The data I like
to often refer to because it just feels more realistic
to me is um our t fh Um states that
in any given year, there's thirty thousand people seeking assistance
for homelessness. So are point in time count you know,

(52:06):
shows one night. Um, there is data being collected all
year round. So at the point in time count, you
have a lot of volunteers, UM go out very early
in the morning. UM, they have them count the population
to some interviews with them real quick. Um. The interviews
are very personal. UM. You know it's it's it's not

(52:28):
necessarily something somebody wants to wake up and answer at
five am. But we found some people that were you know, UM,
but that's that's the point in time count and a
nutshell Okay, And then like, what's I know that downtown
I think the downtown partnership collects our own data, right,
because the data we have is very unreliable, what's the

(52:50):
best guess at people like maybe in the city sheltered
at at this time, over fifteen hundred unsheltered homelessness, meaning
that they're not in a shelter or you know, some
kind of program, okay, in just and that's just in
downtown San Diego, not the whole county, okay, yeah, yeah,

(53:10):
So downtown San Diego, for people not familiar, is a
pretty small part of a very large county, right and
with I think San Diego has the highest ratio of
average income to property prices anywhere in the country now costly,
it's incredibly unaffordable. And so this has led unfortunately but

(53:34):
probably pretty predictably to a number of deaths on our streets,
right and for four last week, for in a seven
day period this August is it's hot. It's it's hot
for San Diego right now. And despite this, we've seen
this just like incredibly callous response from the city. I

(53:56):
guess we've seen Todd for instance, to Gloria, who's on
there giving a speech in front of a shelter where
somebody's remains were taken away a few hours before and
not mentioning that someone had just passed away in that place.
I want to talk gap between rhetoric and reality, because

(54:17):
if you were only learning about this from the city
and towards Twitter account, you'd think that it was fined
right because he's posting about these new shelter pits. But
perhaps you can explain how best that's a it's a
distraction from a problem is getting worse. I think that, Um,
there's the reality that they want the public to ski,

(54:39):
and then there's the reality that's happening. Um. And I
think that they're failing so badly um at getting people
into services because um, many of the services just don't
fit people. UM. So they want to paint this picture
that all the unsheltered people that are out in their tents,
living on the street, or living in their view goals

(55:00):
are service resistant. Um. And I hear that all the time.
You know, we asked them, they don't want to It's
not that people don't want services. Many of these people
have tried some of the service centers in San Diego
and the barriers are extremely high. Um. You know, the

(55:20):
check in time and check out time can be difficult
for people. UM, they'll separate families so UM. You know,
sometimes the they'll tell you, oh, you can go in
together if your husband and wife or if your partners,
and then you get to the shelters and they say,
I'm sorry, you can't be together because okay, so you

(55:40):
have to go to a men's shelter and you have
to go to a women shelter. UM. They'll also do
that with uh. Say a mother has a sixteen year
old son and she needs to go into a shelter,
and there's not a family shelter, UM, she cannot take
her a women shelter with her. He has to go
into a men's shelter. UM. So you know, then you know,

(56:02):
people with their pets, they're only source of like love
and acceptance. You know, a lot of places won't take pets.
A lot of places they're using substances. So we've got
all these boundaries that are keeping people on the streets,
and no one's talking about that, and no one's talking

(56:22):
about the fact that some of not all of them,
but some of the service providers are profiting off of
these poor people because they represent state and federal dollars. UM.
So you've got shelters that are run horribly, and you know,
the more people that come in, they just want to
cycle them through because that gives them money. CEO and

(56:45):
all of their family members that are you know, working
for the nonprofit UM and and these people because they're unsheltered,
they don't feel they have a voice, they don't feel
they can speak up because of retaliation. So they're just
constantly and then you've got the city who's saying, look
at all these fantastic things we're doing UM, which is

(57:07):
couldn't be farther from the truth UM, And then they
constantly use the narrator that folks are service resistant UM.
Services that are out there are too few and too difficult,
and just they're not meaning people where they're at and
they're just setting people up to fail every time. Another

(57:29):
thing I want to get into with the shelter specifically,
is these congregate shelters, right, and what in the in
the context of an ongoing pandemic that maybe is transitioning
into another pandemic, can you explain what what's a congregated shelter? Right?
It's along word, but what does it mean? And how
are those dangerous especially for medically compromised older people living

(57:50):
on the street. Both of our shelter system here in
San Diego. In the city of San Diego is congregate
shelter h meaning people are just placed in big room
or in some cases big circus type tents. We have
a few of those where people are sleeping in cotton
three ft apart. So you can imagine how horrible that

(58:10):
is for the spread of disease. That's why we've had
some very large outbreaks of COVID in our in our
shelter system, and and they're frequently closed to new intakes.
I think it's really let folks know that, Like you said,
if you live, if you look at mayor glorious Twitter
or social media feed, you think they're doing everything they

(58:33):
can and there's all these resources, But on any given day,
there may be a few dozen shelter beds, literally thousands
and thousands of people that are sleeping on our streets
at night. And the only reason there's a few dozen
shelter beds is because they've kicked some people out that
day for a breaking some minor rules. Most people who

(58:54):
leave shelter street, so shelter is not a very good
pathway to anything roughly one in seven people who leaves
a City of San Diego shelter go to a permanent
housing solution. That's that's a very very In fact, under
Mayor Gloria, I've seen some of the lowest success rates

(59:16):
of our system than I've ever seen in my thirteen
years of working on this. Our our system has actually
is actually working worse. For Todd, Gloria took over, so
he has done very very little, and most of what
he's done has been mostly performative, adding some shelter beds

(59:39):
here and there, uh very little on the house. In fact,
he's left tens of millions of dollars on the table
that he hasn't applied for. He did not utilize a
California funding stream called Project Room Key that would have
allowed him to rent hotel rooms most and dime on

(01:00:00):
our taxpayer dime to get people off the street. He
actually refused to do that. He has refused to open
safe camp areas where people could go and camp and
get off of the sidewalk. Many of us and and
others in the community have pushed for real solutions and

(01:00:21):
for him to utilize these funding sources, and he's absolutely
refused to do it. Meanwhile, like we stated earlier, he
has the plus garbage trucks and everybody else to go
out there and make people's lives miserable. So he's just
been an absolute failure on this issue. And at the

(01:00:44):
same time, he's been the one who's given the most
two solutions for this. It is absolutely incredible what a
disaster he has been for, not only for the unsheltered community,
but for San Diego. I've begun I've that he is

(01:01:05):
San Diego's worst enemy, and and I just can't believe
as somebody who supported him, supported him in his election
urge people to vote for him. Oh who do winked?
I was. I just can't believe that this guy has

(01:01:26):
been so horrible for our city and and and every
indication is that he's going to continue being He's gonna
continue running the vide into the ground. People die on
our streets at record numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong,
But but didn't when he came out of the gate,
didn't Gloria how many people he was gonna house under

(01:01:47):
his term, and didn't me low ball at the lower
the number than than in previous years. Oh yeah, that
was some kind of a yeah, they or a federal
government goal that he set, and he actually set a
goal of housing people that was less than we had
done in the previous year. So his his big stretch

(01:02:08):
was to actually house fewer people. I don't know, I
don't even know if he's even getting there. I mean,
this guy, this, this guy is unbelievable. The kind of
nonsense that he is pulling on the citizens of our city.
It is unbelievable. Has invested so much in pr and

(01:02:33):
he's got these folks who who are just good at
spinning this this nonsense to make it sound good. And
because he gets a lot of media big obviously a
big pulpit to disput this nonsense from he's he's able
to get a lot of people to believe it. Now

(01:02:55):
on homelessness, anybody who has a decent set of eyes,
it's basically calling bullshit. I don't know. I don't know
a whole lot of people anymore who think we're we're
doing very well on this issue. And so I think
he's gonna have a harder and harder time convincing people
that he's worthy of worthy of reelection of a higher

(01:03:17):
office at some point, which is all he seems to
care about yeah more so, so he's personally to blame.
He has personal involvement of getting rid of ten thousand
s r O single rental units that that if we
had minus our eight thousand homeless people, we would not

(01:03:38):
have homelessness of units that he was required to replace
and never replace them. That's his fault. UM, I call
him a monster. I I was gonna criminalize, but he
was a Republican. We expected it of him, and he
didn't tell the promise less he was gonna end criminalization

(01:03:59):
to get our vote. UM. One of the reasons that
are probably the only the main reason that that Glory
didn't put funding into Project Group key Um was because
the city is in this unique position of owning and
operating the nonprofit that runs the convention center. So when
COVID hit, they were looking at nonprofit going belly up

(01:04:22):
events in there and having to lay off all their staff.
So instead of putting people in hotels where they'd be safe,
they put them in a convention center where they'd be
exposed to COVID and would die. But the city funded
convin nonprofit would be funded. So UM Dutch and A
hundred and thirty two million dollars is what Todd Gloria

(01:04:42):
got the city to to pay out on a settlement
on Ash Street as his boom dogg all if he
cost us that, he convinced city council to invest all
this money to slide donor money too, slight city money
to his donors for the listeners who aren't familiar with
great scene. So, James, if you were going to go

(01:05:04):
buy a house right now, uh, you would think it
is important a property inspection? Correct? Yes? Ye? Would you
think it would be important to google or seek out
documents that may inform you of asbestos prior to your purchase? Yeah?
I do want to know that. Yeah. So these are

(01:05:26):
two of the opportunities that they missed when they entered
this deal with UH, with the one on one Ash Street. Um,
so they basically had a middleman SISTERA come in and
purchased the property and then least to own it back
to the At no time was an inspection done. The
asbestos wash people were aware of it, um, but there

(01:05:49):
was no studies done on what the impact was going
to be in all that. So now we've got ourselves
sunk into this deal that is taxpayers two hundred and
two million dollars, right, So I punched some of the maths, okay,
And if you assume uh, one year's rent as twenty

(01:06:10):
four thousand dollars, right, two and two million divided by
thousand dollars is more than eight thousand people that this
taxpayer money, you know. And it's always it's just and
it's in a cycle, and it's it's not only the
cycle there. But we don't have enough police, so they're

(01:06:31):
bringing in more police when we don't have the housing.
And then the police that we do have are working
overtime to pick up shopping carts and throw away tents,
you know. So yeah, so the as street deal, there's
plenty to go. It is uh like historically going to
go down in San Diego's screw ups for sure. Yeah,
it's a giant monument to grift go ahead, but we

(01:06:55):
don't have any police. Is also more gas lighting. We
have started professing law thirty years ago to police officers
would show up at the scene. Now at least six
police officers show up every single time. We have an
overblight of of police and we could afford to lay
off two thirds yeah yeah, but instead we just built

(01:07:16):
childcarec and fluid spinking back on that real quick about
the police, um one, I think they also push the
narrative that you know, there's this hot team, the homeless
outreach team, that the police they never take water, they
never really take anything. Um, And they search for unsheltered

(01:07:39):
people and thence and they rarely get any traffic to
these things. And people often wonder why, Um, we cannot
expect unsheltered people to trust and accept help people that
criminalize them, to arisee them, harass them and throw their

(01:08:02):
things away. UM. So you know, adding more police to
deal with homelessness, Um, it's just also a waste of money.
It causes more trauma to the unsheltered people unnecessary. So
we're talking about this duality between like what said and
what what what exists on the street, right, And it's
it's very apparent people on the internet left to be

(01:08:24):
wrong about George or well. But the one time recently
where I felt that like, oh well would be a
useful things to deploy is the idea of a care court,
like which is the thing that Todd has been very
strong on to gavin nuisance. First right courts, in my opinion,
don't care about people. So can someone explain what a

(01:08:45):
care court is and why it's relevant in this setting.
So framework of this is you have a bunch of
um liberals in Gloria and Gavin Knistance ear saying we
have to, uh, we have to end homelessness, and the
politicians are saying, oh, well, we can't and home because

(01:09:06):
they're all mentally ill drug users. Okay, So that's the
first premise that we're working with, and they're not. Ten
are used drugs in a mental illness and debilitating to
an abilitating extent. And the homeless population. Um, this uh
is parallels the rate of drug use in the house community.

(01:09:28):
We don't take houses away from drug users who are
housed and make them get sober before we return their
houses to them. So requiring that they be sober bes
how is asked backwards? Um, we have to get them
into housing first. Now the care court is set up
just to pass more money to their donors. That's all

(01:09:50):
it's set up to do. It's not gonna ease anything.
It's gonna set up a situation where a person is
considered gravely disabled then they can be put into a conservatorship.
And gravely disabled is defined as unable to provide shelter
for oneself. So essentially everybody who is cooled, bably disabled

(01:10:11):
and the rich who got them in this position can
make all the decisions for them. I'm very passionate about
this because it's it's cruel and it's it's it's it's
essentially the return of all the yea that was set
set turned off. The whole reason that you know, Reagan
got every get everybody released from the prisons because of

(01:10:34):
the mental illness, but he never paid. There was never
any payment into community mental health services. So um, now
they want to return them to the institutionalization after never
providing any street a sufficient street um services for them.
And that's that's just cruel. Yeah. And so with the

(01:10:55):
whole care court plan, there's like all in it. One
is that it does not mention and that there is
any housing uh stipulation at all, So it does not
say that the conservator must provide them shelter. Um. The
checking guidelines are once every thirty days, which is about
time period that we have them checking with their case

(01:11:15):
managers is at least once every thirty days. Um. And
they also try to try to tell it like, um,
well it's it could be temporary, right, like, once they
get better, then they'll be off. The concert as to
me is it's like, okay, you forced them into treatment,
and then once they get kicked out of treatment, you say, okay,
they're healed, and then you know they're back away from

(01:11:38):
their services. And I've had clients who thought maybe a
conservatorship is right for me, begging where they're like, I
just can't do stuff right like you know. Um. And
I had one client specifically asked me to be her conservator,
and I care about her so much, UM and if
I thought that her having a conservator would really benefit her.

(01:12:02):
But as of right now, there's no difference in um,
whether a conservator can get somebody shelter better than me
as a service provider, or if they can get them
into a treatment program better than a service provider. Now,
Colleen was talking about how only ten of our homeless
population has a drug in San Diego County as a whole,
fifteen percent of Sandy against have a substance use issue. Right,

(01:12:26):
my type percent was debilitating, a debilitating Uh yeah, okay,
good to clarify, Um, Instead pcent is way more than
our homeless population. Those aren't the only ones with substance use.
But if you're on medical right, if you're low income
and low income in in San Diego as anyone making
less than seventy six thousand dollars per year UM, which

(01:12:47):
is a lot more people than they really if you
are low income um untilicet bumping just because if you're
low income. But I have some memes here. I want
to point facts on the care Court. Care Court to
address houselessness. Five million dollar budget, zero will go to

(01:13:09):
housing and zero will go to mental health services. That's shocking.
Zero to mental health services are housing. Care Court will
weaponize its unchecked power and worse than historical violence against communities,
and care Court claims to address mental health ability disabilities,
but allows a judge to rub anyone they find unfit

(01:13:30):
of autonomy over their health, home, and life. Yeah, and
I did remember my thoughts. So um, like the people
on medical um there as far as it's like we
already know fentin als and everything. Now, even if somebody
thinks they're getting coke or or whatever they think it is,
typically there is s fentl in it. So um, anyone

(01:13:52):
who does wish to go through a detox um it's
impossible to get them bets of aients who come in there,
like please, I know, I know, I've got to get
work this out of my life, and I'm gonna try.
Can you get me into detox? Almost spend the whole day,
you know? And and and there's one and like all

(01:14:13):
these people are competing, but the detox facility. So if
it was like we had the infrastructure set up, and
we had this awesome mental health care, and we had
these awesome like street medics and street therapy, and we
had okay, and everyone in the Conservative ship is gonna
be housed at this place, like maybe, but like this

(01:14:33):
whole thing, it's just it's it's a lot of crap.
So if I if we had, if we had all
those things, if we had a good system that had
good substance use treatment, good mental health care, and housing,
we wouldn't have all these folks on the street. Amen.
So it's kind of interesting that they're creating something to

(01:14:56):
solve an issue that they don't have the infrastructure to solve.
But I think it's important to note that h Care
Court is a conservatorship, but we already have conservatorship law.
Conservatives laws, they're very strict. It's a very high threshold
to get somebody conserved currently for good reason. You're taking

(01:15:19):
away somebody's civil You're taking away somebody's right to make
their own decisions, is what a conservators But for some
folks that are gravely disabled and impaired, it is the
best thing to do. It's for you know, for very
few people. But but that the city attorneys and the
people in the hospital, uh, the workers, Uh, they don't

(01:15:45):
want to go through it because it is very difficult
and challenging, and oftentimes the judge, the judge will deny
it because that's how important it is for people to
have these civil rights. So sometimes even have to do
it multiple times with somebody who probably you know, who
may actually need it. And I speak from firsthand experience

(01:16:07):
of helping people, you know, go through this process and
try to you know, and conservatorship on somebody who just
really really needs it care court would lower that threshold
so much I I doubt it's legal. I'm sure it's
gonna get challenged in court. It it is such a

(01:16:30):
dangerous leap against our civil liberties or civil rights, uh
that I I just am gonna find it incredible if
if judges allow this to move forward when it's challenged. Uh.
But thing is that people need help, they need care,
not court. And if we would provide the care, which

(01:16:54):
are elected officials don't want to do. I think this
is just a cop out on their part. I think
is this is the elected officials saying, uh, we have failed,
so we'll just pun it to the courts and let
them take ownership and control of this, which in effect

(01:17:14):
the courts are just kicking it to the county. Is
our behavioral health provider who's gonna have to provide these
services and be responsible for these folks. I think this
is gonna be set a train wreck. But the one
thing it is illuminating is that our behavioral health system

(01:17:36):
is so broken, so dysfunctional, that they would even be
trying to do this. I think it's basically a an
indictment and but care court is not going to fix
anything that's and I think it's setting people up for failure.

(01:17:57):
I've talked to some families who are who are really
now These are who have uh seriously mentally ill loved ones,
whether it's spouses or children, um siblings. They see this
as a silver bullet two get their loved ones. And

(01:18:24):
maybe it works better for that segment of the population
because they have somebody, they have a loved one as
an advocate to make sure that the care is the
care is the focus. But for for unsheltered folks, they're
gonna be abused and used by this system. Uh maybe warehoused.

(01:18:48):
Who knows, they're gonna end up worse off in my opinion,
and so and against it as it's written, and certainly
fear that the implementation and of it is going to
be a travesty that I just can't imagine. I can't
imagine this so called liberal state. Uh, we try to

(01:19:14):
trample the rights of people like this, and oh boy,
I tell you it's there's so much dangerous about this
that I mean, we could we could have a whole
of this and maybe and I'm sure there will be
a lot of talk about this down the road. Yeah yeah, alright.
So what I want to do is focus a little

(01:19:36):
bit to finish up here on some solutions. So the
things that a lot of you guys are doing right
now to provide people with help, to provide people with
the basic being a dignified existence, and like how the
state could do better? Right like, what what housing first
solutions look like? What solutions are informed by evidence rather

(01:19:59):
just informed by sort of cruelty and the desire to
brush the problem aside. Those I think you have to.
You know, you can't expect people to get well on
the street, so you've you've got to get them inside
UM and congregate shelters. We've already talked about why those
are so problematic on so many levels. UM. There is

(01:20:19):
a model in San Diego that's being used by a
nonprofit UM there right now. It's only for elderly UM individuals.
It's called Housing for the Homeless, and they put UM
unsheltered elderly folks in hotel rooms and it's had tremendous success.
For some reason, it cannot get funding for UM county funding. UM.

(01:20:42):
But getting these people off the street and out of
survival mode is first and foremost. And then you've got
them in a stable place so that services can find
them when they need them. They can get the at
mental health services UM. You know, we need to bolster
our our rehab an addiction UM services. We also need

(01:21:06):
more harm reduction UM. You know it can take you
one through two detox at McAlister, which is the only
UM detox center in San Diego south of Incimidi's and
Detox is separate from UM. So we living. So you
made detox and then it may be another one to

(01:21:26):
three week wait, UM get into sober living, which is
just enough time to get turned back out on the
streets and relax again. UM. And after that, even there's
no housing at the end of the tunnel, so you know,
really the biggest thing that we're missing is housing, and
then everything else trickles down from there. UM. You know,

(01:21:48):
just building these relationships with people so that they can
can trust that you're on their side and you're not
going to lie to them, give them antie promises or
or use them in some way to uh, to monetize
them for is one of the biggest things that I've
found of importance for me as an on the ground
UM you know, outreach worker and doing mutual aid. UM.

(01:22:09):
You know, most of the time, these people just don't
have water, you know, they're they're thirsty, they're hungry, UM
what poverty looks like. UM. So I think we've you know,
we've got to get these people inside UM immediately, and
then we start deploying the resources to them, um, to
help them recover from the trauma or you know, whatever

(01:22:34):
trauma led them to be in that situation. Um. I
think people often forget that a lot of folks on
the street. Um, you know, there's the foster to the
streets pipeline, there's the jail to the streets pipeline. So
you know, many people don't end up on the streets
because they have family to help them. And a lot

(01:22:54):
of these folks on the streets they don't have any
family members. So um, you know, as a community, we
need to set up and be their family. So that's great,
and I think I think we we have to understand
that the homeless service system, and I'm gonna talk about
some of the good things that are it's important for

(01:23:15):
people to know there's a ton of stuff happening both
grassroots all the way up. But it's important to understand
that the homeless service system can only do so much.
As as Manny was talking about these pipelines that feed homelessness,
people are becoming homelessness. I've never seen so many new
people out here on the street. In my work, I'm
on the street some part well a lot of the

(01:23:36):
every day and I'm seeing more new people than I've
ever seen in my last thirteen years. And there's all
these feeder systems. It's it's child welfare, it's foster care,
it's it's the education system. You know, you can name it.
It's it's uh, the health care system. All these things
are feeding homelessness. It's the it's the how we've commoditized housing.

(01:23:56):
It's I mean, I can go on and on talking
about feeding homelessness. It's safety nets, it's a lack of
good mental health care and substance use care. So homeless
services cannot control these things up above, these systems, these
billion dollar systems that are feeds that are failing people
and feeding homelessness. What system is And I like to say,

(01:24:20):
they've got a lot of mission creep going on here
because ideally they really should be focused on getting people
into housing and out of homelessness, but they've become this
this big system that's UH is really getting very costly,
be inefficient and effective. But we know what solves homelessness.
Housing and services solve homelessness, period and it works. We

(01:24:43):
see when these new quality projects like Zephyr or Trinity
place these uh they're not projects, they're housing. They're housing
with services, so we call them projects, but they're just
like any other apartment building really, except they have supportive
services for folks and they work extremely well. They have

(01:25:04):
a nine plus rate of keeping folks housed, even folks
who have some who are disabled and have some significant issues.
And it helps provide that self sufficiency by providing a
deep rental subsidy and supportive services for folks who aren't
take care of their own rent totally themselves. There is

(01:25:26):
no free housing. Everybody who gets these these units pays
thirty of their income, whether it's disability income, social Security retirement, whatever,
they're paying some free housing. People are helping themselves and
that's really important to say. And they're participating in services.
But once you're in housing, your participation in services rates

(01:25:51):
go up because people want to going better and stay
in the housing. These things are being built, there're being
built as we speak, but at a snail's pace. And
that's the things that I fault are elected leadership for
is they're nibbling around the edges. So Todd has Todd
Gloria done some a few, but they're so small, and

(01:26:14):
he blows them up to like he's solving something and
he's not. Has the county done some good things, Yeah,
they've actually done more good things than I've ever seen
them do, but it's still not anywork the piece that
we need. They've opened up some mental health crisis centers
that are actually walk in centers. They put together some
mental health crisis teams that respond to a small percentage

(01:26:36):
of cases of when you call. But it is helping
all of these What really needs to be done is
the things that we know work need to be taken
to scale. But we have to also understand the challenges
of that. We can't just fault the elected officials for
some things they don't have control over. As we all know,

(01:27:00):
there's it's hard time. It's a hard time hiring people.
So we need a lot more staff that work with
that are providing mental health services and substance use services.
But we won't get there. And this is officials have
have a lot of fault is they've really not put
a priority in on this issue. And this is where

(01:27:21):
there's the biggest disconnect. On one hand, you have Todd
Gloria constantly saying how this is his number one issue.
On the other hand, so that I'm a big believer
in in bicycle safety and safe roads and things like that.
But he seems to put more importance on a bike
lane than he does solving homelessness. And they're both important.

(01:27:45):
But people dying on our streets because they're homeless, that's
you know, he he needs to put. He needs to
back up his his talk with action, just like you know.
There they're expanding some bike lanes and I think, uh,
I think they need to do it a lot smarter
because some of them don't seem to be that safe

(01:28:07):
to me. But that's a whole another show too I
shouldn't be involved in. But they don't seem to be
very strategic to me, and they be very they don't
seem to care. They seem to be more interested in
hoodwinking the public so they can get their next job.
We need people who care mostly that care about people,

(01:28:32):
but also care any efficiently and effectively. But some of
the grassroots stuff, like I say, getting people into hotel
rooms and then getting into housing is a good pathway.
The county opened a small shelter. I think it's forty
four beds or so. It's the first they open that's
really more tailored towards people with substance use and mental

(01:28:54):
health needs. It has a great uptake rate and and
and the feedback from people on the street, which is good.
So here we have something that the county did that
was good. We need a lot more of them. They're
opening another jumbo tent. So these things are very frustrating
to folks like myself and Mandy Fellen, the different people

(01:29:17):
that the people who are actually on the ground working
that are trying to get people into We know what
we know the things that people will go into, including
substance use help. But whenever you try to get somebody
in it and you're told there's a three week waiting list,
you lose that person. They want to go. Now, you've

(01:29:39):
got to be responsive to the person's motivation in that
moment to get the help. And it's heartbreaking for people
like Mandy and me who are out there on the
street and people are crying out for this help. Bullshit
when these folks, whether it's the police or the mayor,
say that there's the people don't want help, it's really

(01:30:01):
disgusting because when you're on the street like we are
and people are pleading for this help and we can't
help them because it's not available. And and we call bullshit.
We call bullshit on on the rhetoric that comes out
of these people's mouths. We know the people, we see
their faces, those tears are real, that pleading for help

(01:30:24):
is real, and help them if we do what's right.
And so uh, we could talk all day about some
of the good things too, that the grassroots people like
Mandy are out there, um just on the ground doing
We're yes, none of us here on this call except

(01:30:45):
for Leave. I Leave works within the system, and thank
goodness for him. And the last thing I want to say,
and I I'm always remiss if I don't remind remember
to say this, but I always want to send a
shout out. It's not the fault on the hard working
people on the street, whether you're paid or not. I

(01:31:05):
just want to say thanks to all of the folks
who take on this job, paid or not, to go
out and help people firsthand to the best with this
shitty system that they're given. So there's a lot of
people who take very little pay they do this because
they care, or the volunteers who do it because they

(01:31:26):
care to help people. And there's a lot of folks
out and hard to help folks, and they are helping
people one by one by one, and we need to
support we need we have to have the support of
the Todd Gloria's and the Nathan Fletchers of the world
and the Gavin Newsomes to do the right thing and

(01:31:48):
and to keep funding what works and to quit doing
what doesn't. And so, UM, I think it's just important
to round out by saying that, Yeah, I think it's
pretty good. Oh, if you are out helping people, see
it all the time on your on your social media,
where can people find you? Uh? And how can they
support what you're doing if it's getting people tend to

(01:32:11):
getting people water that kind of thing. Uh, tree start
with let's just go down to this. We'll start with Mandy.
I usually UM kind of bum off of Michael for
funding UM because most of everything I do, UM, I

(01:32:32):
pay for myself. UM. So he has he does a
go fund me and then you know he'll be like, hey,
I gotta go fund me money, and you know, I
meet him and he like loads up my car and
off I go. UM. You know people can can find
me on Twitter. UM Cooper to UM, I'm I'm very passionate.

(01:32:56):
So UM. You know it's like because let you look
at on my feed. UM. You know, I just I
love these people and I want to see them because
there I want to see them get the help. And
one thing that Michael taught me in the very beginning
of this, because you know I started this, um maybe

(01:33:17):
about two or three years ago. One thing that Michael
said to me that resonated with me because you know,
he's you know, like I call them parades now, which
are like liberal marches, um, you know, yelling at buildings
when I want was in and you know, then going
home and feeling good about what I did. UM. And
he said, you know, Mandy, he said, social justice issue

(01:33:43):
that everyone fights for, Black lives matter, immigration, UM, disability. UM.
You know, all of these things come together, l G B,
t q I A plus all of those people are
overrepresented in the homeless population and so it shakes down

(01:34:05):
to that and so I thought, you know, my mind
was like blown and I was like, oh my god,
you know, I'm not her marching for people most marginalized
with them are living on the street. UM, and there's
very little help for those people because unfortunately, whether what
whatever marginalized group you come from, when you become that

(01:34:28):
overtakes all of them. And there is a huge public
hatred for unsheltered people. And it is my parson across
the board. Um so we we all just need to
realize that this is you know, this is a societal
failure in a social um and I hope that you know,
more people would will get up and and get go

(01:34:51):
to the ground and start talking to your unsheltered neighbors.
Try to build a relationship with them, reach out to
their humanity. Um and and one person, if each of
us just did it with one person, it would make
such a difference. Even if you can't get them in
housing or you don't have a lot of money, literally,
just treating them like a human being means so much

(01:35:13):
to these folks. Yeah, that's that's very important, Kelle. What
would you like to say? Where can people find you?
How can they help? That was just like how to
find us? Right? I know, I thought it was great commits. Sorry, yeah,
I thought it was really good. We should have a mandy.

(01:35:37):
Um I I my name is Colleen Q. Sack c
U S A c K. You can google me and
find me. I'm in searchable on the attorney directory. My
number six two and my email address is C another
c U S A c K dot policy at gmail

(01:36:00):
dot com. UM, and I'm on Twitter at symbol chan,
which stands for objection Great, thank you, all right, Michael. So, I,
like Mandy, I've just funded my work myself. Also, except
for about oh two ago, I was out on the

(01:36:22):
street film in some sweeps, watching the police and the
environmental service workers throw away people's tents and and I
and I UM, and I said, well, I'm gonna go
get those people some new tents. Sir told me go ahead.
We can throw them out faster than you can give
them out. And I tweeted about that, and you know,

(01:36:46):
I think it really you know, I struck a chord
with people. So I've had people, but I've just had
this real outpouring of of offerings to help lately. So
for the first time ever, I set up a go
fund Me and in the first day I just said,
you know, this is just to help support encampments that
are impacted by the sweeps or or whatever, or other

(01:37:09):
grassroots people like Mandy who are out there. And I
think I raised about three thousand dollars in the first day,
and I was like, wow, that. It really was touching
because you know, I didn't even hardly. I just put
it out on Twitter, I think, and I haven't promoted
it much since, but I think we're up to six
or seven thousand dollars use that every day. I don't

(01:37:34):
where are you the uh I'm retired, so I get
to do this all day long. People like Mandy, they
have a job. They're doing this as a second job
that's unpaid. So um So what I do is is
is is help UH is the buy stuff. I help

(01:37:55):
other other organizations. I also promote that it uh go
fund me of other people on my social media site.
So I really would appreciate you following me. On Twitter
it's at Homelessness Homelessness SD. On Facebook it's Homelessness News

(01:38:17):
san Diego. On on Instagram it's the same, and on
YouTube it's I think it's Homelessness New San Diego on YouTube.
I just started a YouTube page, well, but I just
started posting stuff on there. I have a lot of followers.
It's a pretty active conversation, especially on Twitter. I get
the bear's people lashing out at me, attacking me because

(01:38:40):
they don't like me calling them out. Um, I get
I I get haters on there too. I let them
voice their opinion. Uh. I let the conversation flow. Um.
But what I do is your what And I do
warn you that, especially on Twitter, it's heart wrenching stuff.

(01:39:00):
On the ground, I'm seeing people die. I'm seeing horrible stuff,
and I'm sharing it with you because I think people
deserve to know the truth. The elected officials like Mayor
Todd Gloria, they don't want you to know the truth.
But I'm gonna bring it to you. I've worked to
bring you the truth that's going on out here on
the street. And it's ugly, it's it's it's but it's

(01:39:21):
also I also see some amazing stuff. I also see
some amazing, heartwarming stuff. People helping people. So it's everything
holar coaster, right, folks. So you know, just be prepared
and from there you can find my go fund me um.
But most of all, you can get educated on the issue,

(01:39:45):
make up your own mind. Uh. The bullshit that's spewed
out of city Hall. Uh, see it on the ground
for yourself. Take people out with me. Uh. I do
a lot of work with the media, but but just
just just join the conversation. Conversation learn, donate if you

(01:40:07):
want to learn where you can donate your time to
other people. Yeah, message me, you can coust me. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
We're just real people out there doing, you know, doing
And I worked within the system trying to I went
to all these meetings. I spent a whole ton of
money within the within the mainstream system, which I'll never

(01:40:31):
do again because it's a black hole. So I mostly
promote grassroots stuff and we're just out there doing it
and and doing what we can, uh in a very
difficult situation. But join the conversation and see what's going on.
And thanks James. I just I appreciate all your support
over the years, uh, both amplifying our messages, getting messages

(01:40:56):
out on social media and just for everything that you
do on social justice issues and and and safety issues. Um,
so I can hold them accountable on the bike stuff. Yeah, absolutely,
well do that's another episode. I will plug LEAVI on
Levi's behalf because I leave. I had to jump off
to sort out an emergency. But it's which on Twitter

(01:41:18):
is at the Solution nine. You can find them there
and leave. I can help folks if they are in
San Diego access services and so yeah, that's being us today.
Please do follow these people and be a good neighbor
to the young housed community. Wherever you are, feel free
to reach out to any of us if you need

(01:41:39):
some help or advice on how to do that or
want to come out here in San Diego. All right,
thank you very much. Everyone appreciate you taking some of
your afternoons. Welcome to it could happen here podcast about

(01:42:05):
how the world is falling apart and sometimes about how
to put it together. Today mostly about the people who
are accelerating the falling apart. Garrison's with me, Sharen's with me.
We are talking today about the Merchant of Death, the
Lord of War, Victor Boot. So she probably started off
by we're talking about Victor Boot. Victor Boots always an

(01:42:29):
interesting topic of conversation, but he's come up recently because
he's one of the people who has been proposed to
be exchanged for to US citizens held by Russia, one
being Brittany Grinder and one being Paul Wheelan. So I'm

(01:42:51):
guessing folks are pretty familiar with the Brittany Grinder situation.
If if not, what's the what's the t LDR on
that t l d R is. Brittany Grinder is a
two time Olympic gold medalist. She's a basketball player and
she often plays offseason basketball in Russia, which tells you
a lot about in wages between men and women in

(01:43:15):
professional sport. And unfortunately, when she was traveling to Russia,
I guess she had a weed vape cartridge in her
back and so she was arrested and accused of drug smuggling.
Oh my god. Yeah, which, yeah, like it's as you
as as we go through this, it will become very

(01:43:37):
clear that I don't think it's controversial to say that
the Russian state engages in hostage taking, right for sure?
Yeah don't. I don't think that's like a controversial statement
that this lady is not drug smuggling. Yeah, I too
would probably want to take drugs if I had to
spend my off seasons in Russia. But like, it's so

(01:43:58):
transparent what they're doing. It's like, don't even attempt to
not it's just yeah, it's they're are being sneaky about it.
They're very clearly being like, we're taking this person hostage. Yeah,
and we will hold this person hostage until you give
us the person that we want back, right, there and
even so there was a um he was a marine

(01:44:21):
held by Russia. So if there's Paul Wheeler as the
other guy, right, Paul Wheeland was a Marine, he had
a he didn't have a dishonorable discharge. He had what's called,
i think, an other than honorable. He was doing a
couple of things. He was embezzling shipped from the United
States government, which is pretty based. Yeah, yeah, we should

(01:44:45):
all be so lucky. And he was also writing bad checks.
His checks were bouncing, so booted from the Marine Corps
for that, and was doing some kind of private security
work it seemed like. So he was arrested in Russia.
Another former Marine towards Trevor Reid was arrested and his
cases just well, it's not coming. But the guy was

(01:45:09):
driving with his girlfriend at the time. They've been on
a big night out there in a car. He got drunk,
got belligerent, started getting fighty uh, and they pulled over
and some of his mates were like, look, if you
don't calm down so you keep fighting with us, they
called the police. The police were like, right, we'll take
you in, you sleep it off, deal with you in
the morning to kick you out. And then at some

(01:45:31):
point the next morning, the FSB turned up, which is
like the inheritor of the legacy of the KG, like, oh, Trevor,
why did you attack the cops last night? Why why
did you do that? Why why would you assault the
police the Russian police? And he was like, what are
you talking about, bro? And they were like, yeah, you're
going to jail. You're a spy. Yeah, the government Biden

(01:45:55):
and the Biden swapped him out, and the two who
are left, well, there are other people left, obviously, But
when he stopped out for for the other guy, Trevor Read,
I'm not sure who was traded for Trevor Read. It's
the most like weird. I mean that nothing is too
strange at this point, but like when you really countries

(01:46:17):
like trading people, Yes, so strange to me. Yeah he was,
he was. He was when who was in here on
drug grafting charges? I guess? So they switch out Read, right,
But Read and Weiland have become close in their captivity,
and Read's been a big advocate for having Whelan released.

(01:46:40):
Wiland's kind of yeah, you're taking the pit if you
think Brittany grind is a drug traffiica. But Whillan does
have like five different nationalities. I think he's he's got American,
he's got Canadian, he might only have four. I think
he's got British and Irish. So he's a former service

(01:47:01):
member in the United States. And like, this guy was broke, right,
he was. He was bouncing checks. As we're learning this episode.
One of the things intelligence agencies tend to like is
people who are bouncing checks. Those of those people are
easy to recruit, right leg if you're if you're if
you're trying to buy ship that you can't afford, you

(01:47:21):
might be easier to recruit if you if they offer
you money. Right So it's I'm not saying no idea whatsoever.
I've got no unique insight into that, but I am
saying that, like, his case is a little bit more interesting.
So the United States has proposed trading Victor Boot for

(01:47:42):
both Grinder and Wheelan that was kind of doing the
m Aussian source confirmed it last weekend. So that's why
we want to talk about Victor Boot today. It's spelled
bo u t by the way, if anyone's looking up,
if people are familiar with Victor at all, I believe

(01:48:03):
from the Nicolas Cage film Lord of War. Have you
seen that either of you know? I subjected Chris to it.
Now Chris can't make the podcast, so that's good. Will
be Nicolas cage free in this it's a pretty epic film.
It's a good thing. Cholas Cage play boot Yeah. Oh

(01:48:23):
fuck yeah, yeah, Like I need to see that to
see that. I wish, I wish I could share with
you just the scene where like he just turns to
the camp like there's there's fifty million guns in the world.
That's one for every twelve people on My only question
is how do we arem the other eleven? But at

(01:48:43):
some point he like just puffs on a fat cigar
in the middle of that. You have an accent. No,
he doesn't do a Russian. It's appointing. Allegedly, that's a
real quote from from Victor boot. By the way, you
can find a clip, we can slice it in. Yeah,
I can find a clip. I got one. I got
one lined up on my computer. I will send it

(01:49:05):
to our our fair editors. There are over five hundred
fifty million firearms and worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for
avery twelve people on the planet. The only question is
how do we wren in the other eleven. It's great,

(01:49:25):
it's classic Nicholas Cage. He can't do anything wrong. It's
so true. Ghost ghostwriter never happened. I don't know what
you're talking about. Nope, it's been a race from my memory.
So aside from Nicolas Cage's accent, betrayal of the film

(01:49:46):
is in and that accurate. Notably, he didn't actually grow
up in Brighton Beach, Old Victor. He grew up in
Duschan bay In. That's uh. It was in the tagic
province of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Right now,
it's introgugoush And we know, well, there's a lot of

(01:50:08):
stories about this guy. It's very hard to confirm which
of them is true. There are He's clearly told as
many background stories as he's met new groups of people,
when he's moved around, as his mom is on the scene.
So we do know that his mother is still alive.
I think she's eighty five. She will occasionally pop up
in the Russian press and ask Joe Biden to let

(01:50:31):
her poor innocent son go, which is very amusing. It
was a car mechanic, so he's not like a child
of privilege particularly, But at some point he seems to
have joined the Soviet military, probably the Air Force, and
he's trained at their military academy of languages. And guy's

(01:50:52):
capacity for languages insane, Like he can go down the
shops in like fifteen different languages. He can speak flule
in half a dozen. He can, you know, order a
sandwich in like twenty language. Yeah, I want that power, Yeah,
don't we all? It seems to be like, um, these

(01:51:15):
people who like thrive in like nonstate activities in crime
and stuff like do seem to like having a capacity
for language benefit in that world. And you hear about
quite a lot later on when he's in prison in Thailand,
he learned Sanskrit. Um. He doesn't bother to learn Thai.

(01:51:36):
He doesn't want people to think they can understand what
he's saying. But I'll learned sanscrit while I'm here, like
I'm running out of options. So yeah, he's got this
amazing capacity for language, which probably ends up with him
being a spook. It's not like it's not for the KGB,

(01:51:57):
but it seems that way. We know that he was
bouncing around in Angola as part of the civil war there,
so it's it's unlikely that he was a pay clerk
or like the guy who changed the tires on the airplanes.
And then to Angola, and and when the Soviet Union collapses,

(01:52:18):
Victor is in Angola, right, or at least he gets
to Angola pretty quickly. Not I think because it's the
place he wanted to be, but because places that had
the least regulations on civilian use of military aircraft. So
this is where he goes from KGB duty speaks a

(01:52:39):
lot of languages to beginning to be this international arms
sort of god. And he does that by buying these
Antonov planes. People might not be familiar with Antonov. It's
just a giant plane. It's a huge cargo plane. Obviously
a little bit outdated now, but you'll still see them.
But it's like the Russian big hauler, right, carries a

(01:53:03):
lot of stuff to a lot of places. And by
getting those and having absolutely zero morals, he launches his career.
And like he's not just selling weapons, he's um American
people don't get this, Like we have this British stereotype
of like the wheeler dealer, as epitomized by like Delboy

(01:53:25):
in a TV series called Only Fools and Horses. But
he's like a market trader. He'll buy whatever he thinks
he can scorch wherever he thinks he can sell expensive. Right,
so he's moving like frozen chicken. At one point, he's
moving flowers from South Africa, and like throughout his career
is this massive international arms dealer. He'll just be like, oh, chicken, right,

(01:53:48):
let's move that chicken over here. We can make a killing.
Like he doesn't, I think like we should stress it.
He's not like a guy who's obsessed with with the
guns and weapons and killing people. I don't think. I
think he's a guy who has absolutely zero and it's
just like, well, there's a high profit margin on guns,
so that's where I'll move. But I don't think it's

(01:54:10):
like there's there seems to be no moral angle to
his his existence. Like very quickly after doing that, he's
Democratic Republic of Congo. He's setting into Liberia in the
conflict there Sierra Leone, Rwanda after the genocide. He's there, right,
but he's also like transporting French troops to Rwanda, will

(01:54:36):
be doing contracts for the United States government, for the
British government, for most of the Western governments participate in
the Forever War, right, And it's very funny actually, like
if you're in the phase when the for him, which
is a bit later when he becomes like a wanted man.

(01:54:56):
He keeps doing these different shell companies right to avoid
things like sanction and the way that he the way
that the United States Department of Justice publishes their list
there will be every year, right, no one can do
business with these companies. They're bad, they're connected to arms dealing.
And then the United States Department of Defense will go
down its list of people it does business with and

(01:55:17):
be like, oh, ship, there's like six of them who
we were like integrally relying on. And then and so
it's fine because they change their name and then it's
like they're it's like Tom and Jerry or whack a mole.
You know. He keeps popping up with these new companies. Um,
so he sort of really gets this massive boost around

(01:55:38):
two thousand and with eleven. So nine eleven is a
big win for him. It's well, that's the oppisode here,
that's the sound by Yeah, so he's super tight with
Ahmed shah Masud. People are but that we call the
Northern Alliance, right, um, the the people in Afghanistan who

(01:56:02):
the United States back to fight the Taliban. He'd been
selling weapons to Massued for a while, and he seems
to actually like with Massud, Like he talks about him,
and we'll get onto how we know him talking about
him a little bit, but he talks about him very fondly.
He's he's a big Massud guy. And so he claims

(01:56:23):
he doesn't trade with the Taliban, and he hoped for
a long as time until crew his plane and crew
are held by the Taliban at an airport in Afghanistan,
which like how did they get their Victor? And there's
two really like how they escape. The one story is

(01:56:45):
that like the Taliban require them to maintain this plane
every so often because they want to be able to
use the plane. Right, so these these Russian guys are
these these contractors for Victor for doing the plane. And
then they like in sort of like Michael Caine movie style,

(01:57:06):
like cosh their guards over the head, jump start the
plane and just pin it to the end of the runway,
take off and fly to freedom. And that's the narrative
popular until Victor boot was like nah, like I know
all those people. I just called him, was like, do
you want to do business with Victor boot or do
you want to hold this plane hostage? Because it's one
or the other and you're fund without me and seem yeah,

(01:57:29):
it's a shame. I like. I like story. I like
story to story too is objectively, in my opinion, a
little bit more badass on his part, you know what
I mean. Yeah, that's the power he has. Yeah, oh yeah,
I think when this this guy clicks his fingers, the
world the world listens. Did until he was in prison

(01:57:49):
learning sanscript. Yeah, if you're the pilot, there's There was
an interview I found on YouTube with one of his
pilots as well. He's like, yeah, man, you can't do
that for very long. He's like, what study landing? Like,
we're being shot at woman landing, We're being shot at woman.
We get on the ground and just like eat everything
out the back and then just take off again, and
like we make a ton of money because no one

(01:58:11):
else is prepared to do that, but probably isn't great
for your long term well being. And so he's by
the peak of his career in the early two thousand,
he's got hundreds of employees. He's got sixty aircraft and
he has moved his operation to Charger, which is a

(01:58:32):
very sort of conservative emirate. It's a twist, alright's right,
but it has what's called a free trade zone, so
on on top of all his other ship, he's also
not paying import export taxes and so he's based there,
which seems to allow him to operate pretty much with that.

(01:58:52):
He's moving a ton of small arms from Ukraine. So
at the end of the Soviet Union, Crane makes a
big thing of being like we're returning on nuclear weapons. Right,
people will be familiar with this that they don't want
their nukes are but they also amassed just an incredible
amount of small arms, right, So that's like guns, bombs, grenades,

(01:59:17):
things like that, right, machine guns. And because a bunch
of the small arms are stored in Ukraine, that becomes
like the nexus for the black market. And we think
that if ethnically Ukrainian, and he certainly seems to have
just been shoveling weapons out of Ukraine to conflicts in

(01:59:38):
largely there's a civil war that you know about in
Africa or one that you don't know about. Probably both
sides were using his weapons like that, that's a that's
a fair assumption to make. And by the late nineties
early two thousands, he's selling everywhere and business to laund
the money for other leagal activities and he was he

(02:00:01):
was linked to the Kaddafi regime. He was also selling
to rebels in Libya. Um, so it's a huge operation.
He's the go to guy for weapons, right, and he
sort of comes and they interpolo after him. In two
thousand and two, there's a Belgian warrant for him, but
Belgium as of having to drop their case because it's

(02:00:23):
unclear where he lives, so they can't be like, yeah,
he's a resident here, he's a Belgian resident, because like
now this this guy keeps moving around like it's not
clear if you have jurisdiction. And Central African Republic also
I think had a warrant out for him, but they
haven't I guess, been successful in serving that warrant um

(02:00:44):
in the In the Belgian when they dropped their case,
they noted that it would be impossible and very time
consuming to prosecute him, which is kind of funny given
that he's doing a lot of crimes. But despite this,
in two thousand and three, he does this incredible New
York Times, like this thousands of words profile interview of

(02:01:07):
the world's largest arm stealer. It's like a relic of
another era of journalism. They send this writer to like
look for Victor Boo, to try and find Victor Boo. Yeah,
two thousand and three, there was a different era that
was completely different. Yeah, yeah, that is. Yeah, it's a shame.

(02:01:28):
You look at I look. I looked at it, and
I just couldn't help this. But they just let this
person expense a shift out of flights. Wow, like this,
this doesn't happen anymore. Such a shame. I would love
to go to a Russian nightclub and drink carriage juice
with armed stealers on the job. Yeah. Yeah, and then
that to the New York Times and yeah, in the

(02:01:51):
PC drinks carriage Jews. He's vegetarian, he caught himself, a
scapegoat and a family man. He's what a hero every
day Joe trying to sell some kalashnikovs to people who
are doing genocide and he is does this interview. How

(02:02:12):
we know a lot about him? Yes? That and his Uh,
this man loves a hand the home video, right, international
crimes the best idea we ever had. Quirky little dude,
but he's not doing crimes in his videos. He just

(02:02:32):
looks like like ah I from the office, who is
just like the most mundane dude and ill fitting suit.
He just looks like a salary man who drives like
a regular car and on the weekends like to like
go to Buffalo Wild Wings and what sports events, like
he or to slide with his like white ass body

(02:02:55):
and pot belly at one point in one of these
home videos, and like he just yeah, he just strikes
you as the most boring family guy. Like he's not.
He seems to be like more drugs one point. It's
fascinating and bizarre and one of assuming he has children

(02:03:16):
if he's a family man. I think he does have children,
certainly has a wife. His wife is out there. His
wife is pretty vocal about let me let my man
go right right right, Yeah, so I'm pretty sure he
does have children. Yeah, probably more than we know about,
but maybe not. Maybe he's your wife guy. Well, I
just think it's funny in these home vid like he's yeah,

(02:03:38):
like no one else, no family, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that would be pretty yeah, that would be pretty pretty entertaining.
So two thousand and three, where it's the the article
clearly has these two like it's named after George Bernard
Shaw play called Arms and the Man, and it's just

(02:04:01):
like epic and meandering and very long. And he talks
about in the article. He's like, look, they're using me
as like this is a thing that like the reason
there that it's very hard to prosecute Victor boot is
because there are not that many laws against arms stealing.

(02:04:23):
And the reason there are not that many laws against
arm stealing heedral to how we do foreign policy, right,
Like we are hosed without people like Victor Boo. And
that's like the other side of this coin that yeah,
we need a Nicolas Cage bad guy to pin this
stuff on. And yeah, he pretty horrific things or sold

(02:04:45):
weapons to people who did horrific things, but he what
he's doing is not that like abnormal and it's not
that always illegal. And as we'll see tr into like
gross entrapment to arrest this guy, and he is right

(02:05:06):
that like is he really the biggest arms deader in
the world or is that like Dick Cheney or you know,
Lockheed Martin or that's raytheon, Like, is he really any
more evil than like I live in San Diego, right
or most of the companies I just mentioned have offices
here a road past one of them today, you know,

(02:05:27):
and those people also go on the waterside with their kids.
He does have a kid. He has a daughter, one
daughter or a child, I don't know, born in the Emirates,
and they really are now. Yeah, he's a great dad.
He's been in jail. Yeah, he has a wife to Allah.

(02:05:52):
It's his wife, just she was. She's a fair bit
younger than him. Um so as he's really lost weight
in jail. And he's looking pretty good picture of him,
but with a mustache and stuff. He's really he's having
a glow up, I think in jail. Are you pretty

(02:06:15):
thirsty for Victor? Here? Yeah? You look at that mustache.
Tell me you could say no. And one of the
things he says in this interview, which is interesting, is
if I told you everything I know, I'd get the
red hole right here, and then points to the middle
of his forehead. I wonder when he meant by that. Yeah,

(02:06:35):
a poet, he has a way with words. Yeah, and yeah,
he's got some of these great one liners and which
it's people have recently like reinterpreted that to be like
does he know some ship about put it which is
to exchange it? Or is he just saying that like

(02:06:56):
like he might possibly have something like signed by someone
who's today a senator, right, like engaging in business with
one of his companies or something like that, because that's
how this works. Yeah, I don't know. He's rich and powerful.
People have probably done business with him, whether they knew
it or not, and he's aware of this. So that

(02:07:17):
article really bounces him up in the sort of world
Bad Guys List, which is when Nick Cage steps in,
makes a whole just there's a whole vibe about it
that moves the person to Brighton beach Um because I
guess American audiences don't know is yeah to Gikastan no less.

(02:07:40):
If you're looking for a film the notorious Mr Boot
that's the Home Videos Sundance Film Festival Award winner just
depicting his dad bought adventures. I think I think it's
worth a serious It was at Sundance. Yeah, it's classic. Yeah,

(02:08:00):
I'm pretty sure they keep working with me. I know
all the time, and I will believe anything at this point,
so crazy. I quourteen film yep screen the sun Dance
Film Festival. Holy shit, yep, it's a classic. Um, it's
got It's got some real scenes seriously like on Rotten Tomatoes. Yep.

(02:08:25):
And if you watch actually you get it. There's like
some pictures of him like dad dancing with his his
partner at the time. It's just yeah, it's good stuff.
I would recommend it. And there's picture to him around
lots of weapons. Obviously you're about Boots yep, yep, tourist
Mr Boots. Yeah, it's a kitty. It's yeah, it's very

(02:08:47):
very busy. It's just a quirky little dude, Like what
is what a little a little dude? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's a picture of impertend I know what I mean.
It's not like he's just do you expect him to
be like evil and I don't know, smoking in a

(02:09:09):
dark room all the time. No, this is how they
get away with it. Yeah. Yeah, Like you would see
this guy right like you go to the lounge like
my life, it lounges in like small airparts in like
the Middle East Africa whenever trying to fly cheap. You
would see the student the lounge, and you wouldn't be like, oh,
there goes in international arms dealer. It'd be like if

(02:09:32):
that man is in conductors or you know, yeah, yeah,
like he's not, he's not the joker, and no, he
is a joker that you can see him having some
good old japes in this film. When Nicholas Cage plays him,
he doesn't even have a mustache. I know that's disappointed

(02:09:55):
because that is his trademark feature. Well okay, okay, So
technically the character Nicholas Cage plays is a fictional illegal
arms dealer based on the stories of Victor about another
real life arms dealers and smugglers. They want to play
both ways. Yeah, so I've just got to bitness trailer

(02:10:17):
where it's just like eye contact with the camera, hip
thrusting and it's wow. Okay, well, thank you for that description.
That's all right, that's all right, guys cut the edge
of journalism here. Yes, that's right, all right, So we
should return to to the narrative and not my description
of a Victor beat dancing. So, um, his arrest is

(02:10:42):
kind of fascinating and again, like his arrest is one
of those things where you're like, oh, this is terrible,
and then you realize that again, we do this ship
all the time, right, and so to understand his arrest,
you've got to first understand this guy Andrew Smoollian uh former,
he's British, he's born in Britain, but he's a South
African Air Force officer. Then he goes into commercial flying,

(02:11:07):
but at some point he's turned by their intent delivering
shipments of stuff and then doing a little bit spying
on the side. Spying on the side. Yeah, yeah, who's
the longest hasn't found themselves doing a little Everyone has
their side hustles, a side spying for the doing in
the Aparthei era, but probably we're certainly in their military

(02:11:29):
in the Aparthei era. Yikes. Yeah, smoothly is not not
a man with morals, I don't think, as we'll find out.
So Simolean has fallen on hard times by two thousand
and is working in a hypodermic syringe factory in Tanzania.
And that's just the fact that I found without context,

(02:11:50):
and I haven't felt any need to research further. And
at that point, slowly it's contacted by generals, right um
Revolutionary enforces Columbia. Fuck right left wing Marxist guerrilla group
that have been fighting in the Jungles for I think
they're one of the world's longest insurgencies for decades. And

(02:12:15):
these fuck generals are like, hey, Smooleian, come and meet
us in a tiki bar in curis out and we
will have a chat. Smoleyan right, he wants to get
out the syringe factory, so he's got about it. He
hops on the plane and they meet in a tiki bar, right,
which is obviously a good place to do at armsteel

(02:12:37):
and very I mean movies are right about that. Stop
going down in yep, that's a that's the one thing
that was in fact Cinematic University Victor Boot. So um,
they're in the tiki bar right now. It should be
noted that these two farn generals, shockingly are not really
fun generals. They are d e A assets. In fact,

(02:13:01):
they have been This isn't the Colombian Armed Forces, but
they've decided to pivot to a career in selling cocaine,
and in that career pivot they've unfortunately come into contact
with the d A, which is generally not good. Yeah right,
they're just trying to sell cocaine and do the other thing. Yeah. Yeah,
they're just vibing and killing indigenous people. Probably. They have

(02:13:23):
a pretty rough record in the Colombian military. It's fair
to say so. D A C. C. M Is like, yet,
those are our people, and gives them a ton of
money citizenship families, I believe, and turns them right. Asked
him to pretend to be fun generals, which they're like, yeah,
can you can you spell the word you're saying, what

(02:13:43):
is the fun? Yeah? F A r C matas Okay, yeah,
thank you? Yeah, like sorry, f A R C. Fuck.
I might have got the act I am. I am
someone that does not know what that is. So honest
about that. Sorry, you know, there's no reason to unless

(02:14:05):
you're a global conflict understand the slash doc. They're very
nice people, some of them actually, Um they've started micro
brewery now, Um, yeah, they have a micro brewery. Anything
you say that, fucking I will send you a store brewery.
Unlike Scarred by Robert, he just tells me all these

(02:14:27):
crazy things that are not true. And I believe I'm
not like Robert. I'm a man of the truth. I'm
gonna I would drop it in the chat like, yeah,
they definitely have started a micro brewery. These are such
a weird little dudes. I'm saying, Okay, actually the person
who runs a micro brewery is a woman. Uh good,

(02:14:48):
good for her feminism. We love girl bus funk. We're
very committed to dender quart with you. They had women
there in their in their military. Yeah, we'll do an
episode of Robert and I want to go to the
micro brewery. It's one of my why not sure, We've
we've got this far. No one's caught us out. So anyway, Interestingly,

(02:15:12):
the US government had just done exactly the same thing
to Monzer al Kassa, who's a Syrian arms dealer. They've
done the same we're too farck, generals, we would like
to buy these weapons, And in the discussion the quo
fuck generals are like, we would like to buy these
weapons to kill Yankees. We want to kill Americans. It

(02:15:34):
would be great to have this gun with a sniper
scope so we could see if they're American before we
shoot them. Just like this is where this is where
we get to like the entrapment, right, and this really
is like yeah, whatever, bro, like you want guns. I
know a guy and they're like to kill the Americans.
So and he's like, yeah, dude, whatever you need. Okay,
it's getting weird um. But then Smoothly and so he

(02:15:59):
is go, okay, so my guy's Victor boot v I
K T O R B O U T Oh my god,
which that is? That is a poor move and Smoothy's part.
So Smoody drops him in organize a meeting, right the
two generals quote unquote generals and Victor in a hotel

(02:16:21):
in Bangkok, and that is where the Victor boots story
sort of ends, at least the free Victor. So they
go through the deal and again he's being like, I
can't believe he conducted his whole life like this because
his his degree of concern with security is minimal. That

(02:16:42):
he'll be like, you guys are getting like five thousand
a k also some surface to wear missiles and like
writing it on the hotel notepad. Amazing. Yeah, Like normally
this isn't the Like the d A rolled a yakuza
arms recently and they had to explain he was talking

(02:17:03):
about cake and ice cream. He meant like surface to
wear missiles the same for me. Actually, yeah, I'm just
going to head down to the cake shop. That guy
funked up by sending a selfie of him weapon to
the Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's a good picture.

(02:17:24):
I'll send you that picture because he does look like
an international supervillain. He has blue aviators. I think, like,
oh my gosh, some people know they're playing the part,
you know what I mean? Yeah, you gotta lean in,
and he leans in. But so about is in this
in this room, but he's negotiating with his two Colombian

(02:17:45):
friends and income the Taype police right the way the
d A say it. They're like he put his hands
in the bag and we all pointed our guns at him,
or like Victor, no, it's over, and and like they
thought he was going to pull a gun on them.
But like in the video, he kind of just like

(02:18:05):
then I think he says the game is up. He
has some like Bond villain like a line of course.
Is he the poet? What did I say? Yeah that's true. Yeah, yeah,
that's why they're letting him out for his contribution to
our I do what if there's ever like he was

(02:18:26):
a poet Sharide just like hey, yes quote acclaimed podcast.
This is red shot to describe a gunshot on his groomstad.
He was a poet, nothing else, poet and no other gigs.

(02:18:46):
I was aware what slide duty ast. And so they
arrest him, right, they hold him in fights the extradition,
He's like, I'm just a businessman. I don't know what
you're talking about. I just wanted to say cake and
ice cream or whatever. And eventually they bring him back
to the United States. They try him in this federal

(02:19:07):
jurisdiction in New York where they try and nearly every
rorism case like this, right, Like the recent oh nine
A case was in the same jurisdiction, so like that
makes sense. Yeah, they always do it in New York.
I think that his trial was like September or October.
The you know, you're trying someone like seven years after

(02:19:31):
nine eleven, six years after nine eleven in New York,
around the anniversary of what happened eleven, right, so people
are pretty and then you're like, in this dude sold
weapons to the town. He moved gold out of Afghanistan
for al Qaeda, and he's pretty screwed. Cancel culture strikes again.
The work mob came for Victor and his wife says

(02:19:56):
outside the court, which I thought was interested. They're trying
Nicholas Cage, not my husband. Oh, Ship, that's actually a
really interesting statement in terms of like media perceptions of people. Yeah, yeah,
they do not go after this guy until and then
Victor and then what's it called the Nicolas Cage movie

(02:20:18):
Lord of War? Yeah, and then you can't separate. I
don't think the like, look, he's a piece of shit,
but like he did make a movie about himself, though
he didn't. I scot that they already sent seven years
after he gone down, Okay, I didn't look at the
date that. Yeah, no, I was like, that's why, completely

(02:20:41):
different until just this second, my mistake, the Sundance film
seven years later Victor boot It would have been amazing
if yeah, get that up with our listeners, Ship, we
could go it up to the nineties. I reckon m

(02:21:02):
H and that because the thumbs up, So I think
they probably did write. Like in organizations like the d A,
in these big federal law enforcement agencies, there are a
lot of people who want top jobs, and I think
one of the ways to advance is getting one of
the right. I have very little federal law enforcement understanding,

(02:21:22):
but it strikes me that they kind of they had
the d A agent in charge of his arrest on
ABC I think, or in sixty minutes or something, the
guy talks about himself and point on there. It's a
bit weird. It's clearly like a career defining a thing, right,

(02:21:43):
And I really don't think it would have been if
like no one made a film about Monterel Castle, right,
he was selling all the weapons to you know, they
didn't trap him in the same way actually, but it's
it's not such a big thing. So Boot goes to jail.
He's been in jail about twelve years now, and now
the Biden administration seems to or at least know that

(02:22:08):
he's like worth offering, and they offered him in trade
for Snowden apparently, uh yeah, and Russia didn't take that. Um.
I just think it's probably that they seem more value
with Snowden. But the yeah, they they seem to have
offered him again in the in this grinder wheeling trade.

(02:22:30):
It's still unclear if Russia will accept him or not.
Like we said before, it's a very weird practice to
be like like Pokemon cards, yeah, or like literally like
the NBA, like the thing that yeah, pretty greater works
for It's like you're literally creating like a fantasy team
or whatever, the ship of of prisoners and or people

(02:22:51):
that you want the hostages. Yeah, it's interesting to see
like Russia kind of just like I don't know if
they sort of want to be like, look how much
we owned you, Like we made you trade the world's
most notorious arms dealer for a basketball player, Like if
they kind of I don't know the ridiculousness of what

(02:23:14):
they've done to somehow win for them, or if Russia
wants him back because he has some kind of intel
that they're afraid of. I'm not sure if that's the case.
He lived in Moscow for a while, I didn't know
how close he was to the Russian state. I'm sure
he knows some stuff. It's almost does not much of

(02:23:34):
a state in the world that he doesn't have something on, right,
So it's possible, and I guess he's kind of served
his purpose, which was just like you know, we can
find you anywhere, we can come after you anywhere, Um,
we can arrestue And I don't want to be like
like pro armed dealer on the podcast, but like on

(02:23:56):
the podcast, James flee different. But Mike James is gonna
say that we're not technically pro arms stealing. Yeah, this
is not not a prom stealing podcast technically. Yeah. That
would be a good place for an ad pivot, wouldn't it.
But do you know who is pro stealing? Yeah? Yeah,

(02:24:18):
based on I don't know how long we have left though,
and may not makes sense here, but we can leave
the joke in to prove that we're funny, Yeah, that
we sometimes think about it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're considerate
and funny yea, yeah, and kind and I'm not pro
arm stealer and most apportently yeah. Yeah. So Victor is

(02:24:40):
in prison. He's been imprisoned for about twelve years. He's
got he got twenty five years. The judge, you've not
proved he was going to do any crimes other than
the ones you kind of talked him into, like a
fair Yeah. Yeah, it woke judge because again, when they're

(02:25:00):
meeting him, they're like, we want to kill America. The
scopes are hig enough magnification so we can see their American.
There's some specific dialogue about the sniper scopes too, like
to ensure and they they're trying to get surface to
our missiles as well, right, and surface to our missiles
one of the harder things to acquire in the international
arms market. And so he's gonna supply those. And they

(02:25:20):
claim they're going to shootwn American airliners and do a terrorism. Yeah,
that'll definitely get them mad. Yeah they're gonna Well, but
he only says that because the two d a plants.
Yeah yeah, yeah. I don't think the dude would have
bat nihlid either way. I mean typical fed behavior, right, like, yeah,

(02:25:41):
they walked in there in the cool flannel shirts and
he did, Hey, who is a crime? Let me escalate
the level of crime. So he's in prison, they've offered
to trade him. It remains to be seeing, Like, don't
know how relevant he will be if he comes out.

(02:26:01):
It's interesting, Like the area I'm most familiar with the
books firearms transactions is in Myanmar, right, Robert, Now, I've
spent some time writing about that, and the price of
weapons going small arms going to rebels in Mihama is
insane right now, like it, And so maybe taking him

(02:26:25):
out has changed that market a bit. I don't know,
you'd think someone would have stepped in to fill that
gap in the time that he'd been out of the game.
You'd think, especially after the giant clusterfucker of leaving Afghanistan
by the but we'd have done a lot more weapons
onto the market. So what you're saying is there's yeah,
get your resume ready, listeners. Yeah, you know, learn those languages.

(02:26:51):
That's what I'm saying to the other applicants. Yeah, yeah,
learned soundscript. But on your resume, no one will call
you on it. It will be fine. It's okay to
lie about Sanskrit unless you're I guess going to theological college.
And but yeah, he's learned Sanskrit, he's learned a bunch
of other languages. In prison. He's probably writing poems in there, right, Yeah,

(02:27:12):
he's probably dropping a book, is what he'll do, or
come out. I'll drop a book, Honestly, I'm not I
wouldn't be surprised by that. If that was true. I
would read a book written by one of the world's
most famous international arms dealers. Add poets And that's right,
add poets. Hey, based on what the quotes are that
he's given so far, I'm sure he has really good writing.

(02:27:35):
So who knows. We don't know. How much money he has.
No one seems it's done a good job of hiding it.
We don't know what the state of his businesses. It
seems like he has just kind of pieced out, hang
out in jail and maybe now we'll be going back

(02:27:55):
to Russia to live in his ducher and just right
sides all day we can dream. It feels like, yeah,
if they offered him for Snowden already and now they're
offering him again, either the only like quote unquote good
Russian hostage, like worth worthy Russian hostage, or they in

(02:28:19):
my head, I feel like they're trying to make a
big statement like Brittney Grinder is so important to us
this man. Does that make sense? Yeah it does? Yeah,
I hope. I mean, look what's happening to her is disgusting, right,
and every day he spent abhorrent and so like, yeah,
you hope that that they I think, Yeah, I think

(02:28:40):
he's there's no real I don't know. It doesn't really
serve the interests of the state to keep him in prison, right,
Like the big win was getting him there, and that
I think showed people doing what he does that like
the US will come after you and and so like that.
It really I think twelve years is a long enough time,

(02:29:00):
you know, leg So I don't know, I don't understand
the motivations of world leaders. But hopefully we get some
up this I don't know. Hopefully Britty grinded doesn't have
to don't get in what I'm sure it's a pretty
terrible Russian prison for having a vape pen, because that
is bollocks. And I just want to say before we

(02:29:22):
finish up here that we are indebted to our friend Matt,
who is at I think enjoy It on Twitter or
Raccoon Liberation Front Black Flag Enjoyers Matt's Handel. Matt actually
came on to help us do an interview with this.
Matt has worked in a lot of these places, not
as an arms dealer, I should add, but doing some

(02:29:43):
like civilis and even thinks that he ran into Victor
boot in a bar in Somali land once. And because
if we discussed you would not know that the student
was an arms dealer. Unfortunately Matt's audio was unrecoverable, and
and as debt for his help, and you should follow

(02:30:04):
him on Twitter if you want to anything else, WEECHI
plug Sharene Garrison now I think I think that does
it for us today. So just google Victor boot up. Yeah,
here weekend? Oh hi, this is this is it could

(02:30:36):
happen here. It's this. This isn't my episode, this is
actually christ Um. But I guess I guess we're starting. Uh, Chris,
how are you doing today? You know I'm running on
very little sleep and a lot of bubble tea. And
by bububble tea, I mean canned bubble tea. This is
the good ship really in terms of it being bubble

(02:30:56):
tea is kind of okay, in terms of it being
like a thing that has more sugar than like any
human should ever consume and functions as an energy drink
while tasting good, It's good ship. That's why I lived.
That's why I lived that Bang life, Baby. We would
not we would not get any of my scripted episodes
done without Bang. Yeah. I drink rip it. It really is.

(02:31:22):
So speaking of colonialism, actually I don't have a colonialism
tie into this, all right, But what I do have
is a bunch of people attacking a children's hospital. Ah So,
on August, police and Boston were called to investigate a
bomb threat against as parents waited outside an agect terror

(02:31:47):
for their children's who are still trapped in the building.
Police bomb squad swapped the building for hours. This time
there was no bomb. Next time we might not be
so lucky. Welcome to the next Day, trans People. So okay,
how how did we get to right wingers calling in
bomb threats to a children's hospital? A thing that I

(02:32:08):
feel like I need to make a carve out at
the beginning of this episode to talk about how absolutely
absurd it is that people are sending death threats to
eight children's hospital's. Children's hospital, they take, they do health
care for children, like So the answer to why this

(02:32:28):
is happening is basically the right's new media strategy drive
it all once again is Chaya Raychick, who is better
known as Lives of TikTok and the Enemy of the
Pod recurring character on the POT. She's she's kind of displaced.
She's kind of displaced, done that much lately, And it's

(02:32:50):
like the recurring pod like person her and her and Matt,
don't worry, He's bigger, easy the walls, walls will appear
and the Washington Post editorial page that one always God,
you know, I I could I could write I could

(02:33:11):
write like all of my episodes about the Washington Post
editorial page, so I don't do it and instead talk
about this fucking Twitter account whereas and you know, okay,
last scene sticking rabid mobs of reaction areas on teachers, schools,
drag queens and random children on the internet for the
crime of being queer or supporting queer kids in anyway. Yeah,

(02:33:36):
not the last time we're gonna talk about her, unless
like miraculously he's destroyed in the next like three days.
But well, we're gonna do here sort of take a
deep dive into how and media strategy works and how
sort of like the broadert right wing media sphere uses
in Launder's rachex talking point pudo pseudo intellectual babble stuff
to sell to wider audience, and the strategy like functionally

(02:33:59):
is not It's like it's literally the same thing Alex
Jones does. It's like, okay, so you you missread a headline, right,
or someone puts a video in front of you that
you haven't won, do you lie about what it says?
And then you and you like invents basically some incredibly
dramatic story about what it says and then you get
a bunch of other people the writing media sphere to
back you up for it. And then when inevitably someone's like, hey,

(02:34:21):
you're wrong. You claim your being censored. Yeah, but I don't.
I don't mischaracterize anything. I just post people's own videos
that that they that they themselves posts and then also
then also just call them a pedophile for a saying
that they were pronoun pants. Um yeah, anyway, yeah, um

(02:34:42):
so so on. On August eleventh, lives a TikTok posted
a tweet that said, quote Boston Children's Hospital at Boston
Children's is now offering quote gender refirming his directomies for
young girls. And so there there's there's a video attached. Right,
does not say anything about this. Right, the video is
literally just an explanation of what it has directed me is.

(02:35:05):
And you know, but but this this like goes viral
like literally three hours later. Matt Walsh, a man who
once said on video and I think my kids consent
all the time, I tweeted quote he said that that's
on video that I am not selectively editing this. He
just said that, so yeah, he he tweeted up. Nice

(02:35:30):
effort to fight back against the drugging and mutilation of children.
There should be rallies outside of the hospitals that butcher children.
There should be marches on Washington with hundreds of thousands
of people. I will try to get this ball rolling. Yeah,
he's he's been increasingly trying to do like this moral
like superiority war and be like, of course we should

(02:35:50):
hate I'm not a morally compromised degenerate and that that's
kind of that style of talking points that he's trying
to mainstream. He's a popular guest on Fox News. He
made the he made the infamous anti trans documentary What
Is a Woman? Earlier this year. Talk about at some point,
but he's he's, he's he's trying to present himself as

(02:36:12):
like an authority figure in the war against trans people.
He's his work has been boosted by J. K. Rolling.
He describes himself as a theocratic fascist kind of jokingly
just completely accurate. There's no sub such a difference between
what he believes in, like what the fucking people believe
so like no or the like. He's wanting to organize

(02:36:32):
rallies outside of like trans health clinics to like destroy
trans research. What does huh? Yeah, never happened in human
history anyway, continue, I also want to mention this. Okay,
so as bad as was a woman is, he made
it even He's actually created something even worse than this,

(02:36:53):
which is like maybe history's most dogshit children's book, Johnnie
the Walrus, like just unbelievably transphobic piece of ship thing
that he made. Like I don't think a single child
has ever read willingly. The Daily Wires kind of pushed
like a children's media creation has been kind of wacky,

(02:37:16):
it's awful, like it's it's I don't know these people,
like they just they're all hacks. But the problem is
if you want to make a children's book thing, like
you actually have to make something, but you have to
make something that like a child will really just like
you don't you don't need to. You have to sell
it to parents. Yeah that's not actual kid, it's about parents.

(02:37:41):
Like the actual children will be extremely unhappy about this,
but like, you know, okay, yeah you can, you can.
You can. You can sell the pictures of a walrus
to like forty year old mothers who are scared that
their kid is wearing dresses or you know whatever. So
all right, so Matt Walsh, the Kid's consents Man, is

(02:38:07):
on go. By August fifteen, Matt Walsh is on a
show which is called The Matt Walsh Show, which is
the thing people great type. All of these people the
name of their show is just their name, and it's like,
that's why this, that's why this show is called the
Robert Evans Show why in which Robert Evans occasionally appears on.
It's true. So Tim Pool, he made the Tim cast.

(02:38:32):
He showed some real initiative there. Look, this, this is
this is the kind of innovation that only the only,
the right and only entrepreneurship can bring us. They changed
by three words. I mean, I still remember like a
decade ago when Matt Walsh was like a niche but
growing figure and like the evangelical influencer community, it's like

(02:38:56):
a younger evangelical kid kind of interest in what Matt
Walsh was doing because he was like kind of like
a hipstern trying like doing like more like modern spins
on some on some more kind of classic evangel evangelical topics.
And then as I was getting evangelical Christianity, Walsh was
like was getting way more radical in kind of in

(02:39:18):
line with like you know, the lead up to trump
Um and then he just went fully off the deep end.
And even even as like in my meeting stages of
being Christian were like, oh, this Walsh guy is like
kind of nuts. He's like he is like going in
some weird directions. He used to be kind of more
like a moderate evangelical, still very conservative, but like he

(02:39:41):
used to kind of be the cool kid on the
block and through spear and then we're like, oh no,
he's like he's doing some weird ship. Yeah, and and
that weird ship. So like okay, So he goes on
his show and he starts screaming about how Cuban purity
blockers are chemical trend castration, yes, which is like this

(02:40:01):
is objectively not true. Like people like Matt rich I
will argue that, like it's the same drug and like, yeah,
you can use fertilizer to make a car bomb. That
doesn't mean that gardening his terrorism. Yes, as as you
if as long as you were taking it make you
not able to reproduce as you're taking it, then when
you stop taking it you can can reproduce again. Also,

(02:40:24):
it's kind of concerning how much they're they're worried about
twelve year olds not being able to reproduce. Uh, correct,
Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh, I violate. Let me go back
and read this exact quote. Don't. I don't want this
to be taken. I don't. I don't want him to
argue that I'm quoting him. I violate my kids consent
all the time, Matt. No, he claims that forcing his

(02:40:49):
kids to clean their room. But will that is some
interesting word choices, you know, Okay, And obviously for like
the pauty puberty blocker thing. We've talked with this in
the show before. They're trying to frame this as like
if you take if your kid gets on puberty permanently sterile,
which just isn't true. That that's just false, like that
that that is, that is not that's not how these

(02:41:09):
drugs work. Um They're also claimed that these drugs are
are like fatal. They're like, look with people who took
this drug, this mat this massive percentage of them and
um as they were on it. And this is because
the drugs also used to treat terminal illnesses, so the
it's like like a specifically heart condition or like I
think I think it's I think it's some some the

(02:41:31):
heart condition thing. Um, so people like old people who
are on the drug will because of their because of
their like condition that drug is treating them for. So
they try to use that false statistic to then make
lead like kids are dying on this puberty blocker, which
is again is not true. It's it's all blatantly false things.
We're gonna get into more of the bullshit they get

(02:41:52):
into a second. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a
time he's doing it that they've they really really started
leaning into this. One is screwing about like hospitals mutilating
children because you know, this is it's an incredibly sort
of lurid image and it's like, okay, so she's just
like literally what he's describing it is just a hysterectomy, right,
which is like a thing that it's just a regular
that also, and I kind of emphasize this enough, no

(02:42:14):
one under eighteen is getting a hysterectomy, not really, I
mean there is. Again, I think a few a few
places have specific conditions for people who are over the
age of medical state that they're in, like, for instance,
Oregan's medically consent for most things. Is a sixteen years old. Um,
there's certain conditions for like seventeen year olds usually to

(02:42:36):
start the process if they want that down the line
can get consulted. Like the Yeah, the thing of Boston
Joe's Hospital they're they're all screaming about, is there's a
thing that says seventeen on a document talking about this,
and what they mean is that you can start consultations
when you're seventeen. But in Boston, like this hospital has
never they've never done this that happens to surgery on

(02:42:58):
like fifteen year olds that that just like just that happens. Um,
there's possibly been like uh like like literally a couple
like literally like through like one to three extremely rare
incidents that patients, doctors, therapists, medical professionals have have done

(02:43:19):
things to to help treat very severe gender dysphoria. But
that is only extremely few instances because all of these
surgeries and all these treatments are so medically gate like
gate caps. Like I've been trying to get top surgery
at their an adult and they've been doing this process
and its like it takes years like it is so

(02:43:43):
it's so challenging. Yeah, like there there is an entire
system of gender bureaucrats whose like entire job is you
have to like like you have to convince these people
that your gender is real and it yeah, the gender
allowed to do things, year allowed to sign off on
things happening to your body. Yeah, like okay, you know, okay.

(02:44:06):
The product of all of this bullshit is, like, you know,
all the surgery back they're coming for your kids ship succession,
just like absolute obsession with making sure that people with
eaters is can like you can force them to have
kids later down the line. The product of this is
Matt starts yelling about how this needs to be stopped,
and then, like COYLEI suggests maybe we should start with
Boston Children's Hospital. Um, like that same day, Boston children

(02:44:26):
Hospital is delis with death threats. Now the media matters
goes after him, and Matt Walsh makes a bunch of
tweets about how he's been context and that death threats
aren't his fault. But like, you know, okay, the context
is him yelling, well, somebody rid us at this battles
some children's hospital over and over again. So I think
Matt Walsh doth protest too much. And you know, even

(02:44:47):
as this sort of like the threats mount right, like
this fake story all over the conservative like ecosystem, like wildfire,
like bright Burt has an article up about it, like
on day one, like within a few hours is of
like right check making this like fake tweet. Um. Within
within a week, it's on Gateway, Daily Callers, on the Blaze,

(02:45:08):
on Daily Wires, on Fox News. It's it's you know,
it's hit the entire ecosystem. Um. The problem, Okay, let
try a right check. Like very quickly realized this is
going viral. She just keep tweeting about it, keeps treading
about it, keeps treating about it. But she has this problem,
which is that everything she's saying is incredibly easily demonstrable lie.
And so she keeps having to like trying to yell

(02:45:29):
at like fact checkers and like regular people who are
going like this is just bullshit. And like like the
hospital itself has to issue a statement being like, hey,
we don't actually have to change their website to make
it clear that seventeen year olds don't actually get the
surgeries you can just get. The company has like they've
never like, well, you know, and this is this is

(02:45:50):
kind of a problem. For the propaganda wing, because like,
try a right check is like a fucking hack. I
gonna convince anyone who like isn't already convinced that like,
transpeople are evil. Like you know, at this point, I
think in earlier in two, I think she may have
been able to crap propaganda which convinces people. At this point,

(02:46:10):
it's gone so much further. Her radius is gonna is
gonna is gonna severely grow in terms of people who
are like you know, if someone's fine with trans people,
I don't think they're gonna look at her page and
suddenly be like, oh, these trans people seem like they're bad. Actually, no,
she she she doesn't have She doesn't have like that.

(02:46:31):
She doesn't have the sort of like advertising ability to
do this. But do you know who does have the
advertising ability to sell you things? Is it our lovely,
our lovely and very very fans friendly sponsors, every single
one of them, Chevron. Uh, what what other sponsors do

(02:46:52):
we have? I have no idea watch that's right, highway
patrol blue ape. Well we can't. We can't say that
of a fatherly archetypal deity. That's right, all of these people,
uh will love and accept you for being trends and
then offer you a job at a defense contractor. Um. Anyway,

(02:47:13):
you alright, so we're we're we're we're back. Uh we
revealed the problem try a right check is that she's
a hack and she can't convince anyone wh doesn't connects.
And this is where a bunch of people who are
not actually any smarter than try a right check, but
like can write more fancy swinging the gear. Um, and

(02:47:35):
I'm gonna walk through some of the arguments they're using
so you can like even the quote unquote more research
it is once you actually look at the stuff they're sighting,
and these like very official looking threads. So, for example,
on August seventeenth, Wesley Yang he was a hack pundit who,
admittedly I must applaud him for doing more in his
lifetime to combat the stereotype the eight than any other
person ever born. Has um did a di did a

(02:47:58):
threat attempting to defend lives of TikTok's like you know
the thing about Boston Children's Hospital giving out his directomes
and Okay, so it starts with him going all right,
all right, so we're going gonna work for this right,
He's like, okay, gender surgery. That means it means they
gave like three people missectomies, right, and then under what

(02:48:23):
condition apparently apparently eight they may actually have given like
three people who were like seventeen missectomies, which is again
not his director, this is a different thing. Okay. And
and then and then he goes, well, okay, so hospital,
there's hospital doc showing it they that they do do
genitals or he admits that they don't. It's never happens,

(02:48:47):
says they could do it, but they never had document.
But I've misread and don't understand the feed a consultation
and getting it a surgery clown and the who destroyed
his entire brain for money in like two thousand and fifteen.
I would be interested in seeing, you know, if if

(02:49:08):
they're arguing that seventeen year olds cannot medically consent to surgeries,
are on what seventeen year olds can consent to another
another situation. There's there's two angles for that, right. There
is the uh, there is what what percentage of these
people like fucking Tucker Carlson have gone on a show
and defended child marriage? And then there's the second question,

(02:49:31):
which is okay. So if these people aren't okay, so
if jenior Old is too young to quote unquote mutilate
their bodies, why are you allowing people? Why are you
allowing these people to be in the lead up the
joining the army a place where you will in fact
get actually mutilated. Also ignore the concept of circumcision. Anyway,
let's you okay, Yeah, it's great, So so okay, so

(02:49:54):
and and is the last thing he does. He starts
ranting about other clinics who have done sectomies, so like like,
let's let's take this piece. So first of all, again,
no trans dude under eighteen is getting like at this hospital.
It has never happened, it will never happen. Uh, there's
anecdotal evidence that suggests that trans women have been able

(02:50:15):
to get bottom surgeries like elsewhere when they were when
they were like at like age seventeen. But but if
you if you chase down the citation, the evidence for
this is purely anecdotal. So there's no actual like evidence
that like this happened. It's just they found They found
several studies, all of which are siding with each other.
And at the beginning, one starts with I heard some

(02:50:36):
stories about this. This is going great on the sectomy fronts,
like like okay, so like the like some there are
some trans men who have gotten sectovies, like when they
were technically a minor, right, but like okay, I again,
depending on the age of medical consent in this day,
depending on what other there's another treatment options were available

(02:51:00):
after years of therapy and consultations. And also we should
mention this like with actually sis sis girls get missectomies
like all the time. This is like this, this is
a regular procedure that like get we should explain what
messectomies and its directs me off for people in just
in case they're not familiar. I think, Yeah, so okay,
so his directomy basically is the okay, what what was

(02:51:24):
the simple sway to explaining like surgical removing of the uterus,
right yeah, well yeah, yeah, it's it's it's mostly so
it's this is a rouble of the uterus. There are
like some versions of it where you get your overras
taken out to um. Yeah yeah. Missectomy is like you're
getting your breast removed or sometimes it's like size reduction stuff. Um,

(02:51:46):
it's a it's a fairly common procedure. This happens like
all the time. And okay, if if you look at
what's happening here, right, So there's no evidence that the
kids are getting his directivies. So what what Resley Yang
and like who is redirect focus on gender affirming mussectomies?
Because again they don't have any evidence first things happening,
and then because they don't have any evidence, uh, they

(02:52:08):
have to start using conspiracy logic and going like, well
this other thing happens, and other people also did a
completely other unrelated and this is evidence that this hospital
has secretly been giving these things out even though you
just said like three treats before, they've never done one
and they've never actually done his director. It's incredible stuff, right,
Like this guy, I need to point this out, like
what Wesley Yang, Like there was a period of you

(02:52:31):
get an understanding of like people people who weren't around
at the dosen't tends to understand like how bad the
intellectual scene was. Like there was a time where this
guy was like the like the rising Asian American intellectual
like star who was like supposed to be like this
is this sort of like like great revolutionary like thinker
of the new twenty one century, and here he is
doing this bullshit because absolute goddamn clown. I hate him. Yeah, okay,

(02:52:55):
so moving on to other stuff, Like but the thing
is like this doesn't matter, like the fact that everything
they're saying is a lie and his bullshit like doesn't
matter to trans is like they need this sort of
like visceral emotional pull of the sort of like their
mutilating children ship. And then the other thing they need
is like threads that make it look like what they're
saying is true. And this is enough to get a
huge part of the sort of conservative base on board,

(02:53:18):
and you know, it starts to move right. The story
spreads to to the Donald, which is like the re
hosting of the old ar slast to Donald sub bredit
that was banned for being like an absolute accessible of abuse.
And they start organizing campaigns to harass people who work
at this hospital, and this just gets worse. People like
Steve Diese like start targeting specific doctors and calling them

(02:53:39):
demonic and screaming about like Butcher's and so okay, So
by the eighteenth we're on like day six or day
seven of people like doing this, five of people setting
death rests to a children's hospital and finally a platform
does something. Uh so Facebook bands lives TikTok for one

(02:54:00):
day and then it worked, you know, Okay, but they
use that time to reflect, right and to think about
what they do. Yeah. Yeah, and there there change was
we need to post more about this, and so you know,
we should be like, like the social media companies are

(02:54:21):
never actually gonna talk because louser TikTok, especially with Twitter.
TikTok is good for Twitter in the same way that
Trump was, like, you know, like its presence. It brings
traffic generation, they generate conflict, which is the entire purpose
of the Twitter algorithm. They drive like advertising revenue. They
got a lot of engagement. There's no reason to ban them. Yeah,
and like and with Twitter especially like they like with

(02:54:43):
Trump gone right, they had to they had to ban
Trump for political reasons because you know, tried to overthrow
the government. But like you know what Trump gone, Like Twitter,
Twitter is like just a declining like social media as
sure is. And you know, so I I watched I
watched Donald trump pizza Hut commercial yesterday, and I forgot

(02:55:06):
how funny Donald Trump was. Like he's as long as
he's plagued the character of Donald Trump. He's actually really
funny that I that I remembered all the fashions and
parts and then else anyway, Yeah yeah, but like you know, okay,
so yeah, okay, So like they the way the sort
of thing works, right is that they get all these

(02:55:26):
users and engagement from the right, starting like a campaign
against the children's hospital. Then they get engaged with from
the left going after them. They make money no matter
who wins, and like you know, sometimes they'll band like
Trump right because you know, or the dow temper of
right wing people, because that that gives you like good
liberal media attention. And then you know, and that that
that that that gives time for a cycle to sort
of build up for the conservatives to all talk about

(02:55:49):
how they're being censored, and then when they returned to
the platform, they do their whole eye was censored arc
like we've seen there's Jordan's fifteen times. So with the
loser ticktow on, they August they start targeting another children's
hospital and this this is time. It was a Children's
National Hospital in Washington, d C. Which is like DCS

(02:56:11):
by far largest and most important children's hospital and they
bring they bring their website down, like the same stuff
is happening, and Twitter finally locks Lives of TikTok off
of their account for a week. Um partially what's happening
here was like there's pressure by friends, guess Alejandra klar Baio,
who's been doing like a lot of great work like
documenting and like documenting what lives tum be doing and

(02:56:34):
like sparring with them and try a right check like
keeps miss gendering her because China is a fucking enormous
piece of ships who should be flushed down the ship
belongs unfortunately, Like well, okay, so so some of the
some of the like dozens of tweets that that I
lives talk made about children's hospitals and take it down.
A lot of them are still up and you know,

(02:56:56):
probably was gonna right still band off Twitter, But like,
you know what's gonna happen is there's gonna be like
a wave of like good glberal media press, and then
there's going to be the next wave of the conservative
outrage over censorship and cancel culture stuff, and then she'll
be back in a subject post a right chick said
quote Now more than ever, I need your support. Consider
becoming a paid subscriber so I can continue this important

(02:57:18):
work when I get banned permanently. It's only a matter
of time. All need your help to keep the light
song so I can continue telling the truth. They can't
cancel me if you don't let them, because there it
is begins. Yeah, I mean, like I kind of says enough,
like this has all always been a grift, Like this
is like her fourth attempt. She's been trying her fourth attempt. Yeah,

(02:57:41):
like she's been trying to become a vital Twitter personality
for years. She gets found the one. She finally found
something that worked, and that's uh baiting conservatives into being
mad at her, yeah, giving them like some kind of
excuse for being mad at trans people, right, Like yeah,

(02:58:01):
it's like a self self validation thing. Yeah, specific specific
and specific targets too, and like yeah, I mentioned this,
like okay, like right check like is an actual human
piece of ship. Like her ideology is bad, but like
it is the stuff that she's doing is mostly about money,
and this is true of like the entire ecosystem, right,

(02:58:22):
like all of the conservative outlets is why, like Matt
Walsh and is like like all of these people spent
all of their time staring at metrics and looking at
their fucking viewer data looking at the anti trans. The
anti trans documentary is paywalled behind plus the hit new

(02:58:43):
Like it's like it's funny because like all of these
people like ran constantly and there's there's there's like increasingly
anti semitic versions of it about how like the TRANSACTISI,
the trans lobby or like funded by billionaires, Like every
single of these people paid by fucking sorryes presumably well
all all supposedly we're all getting paid by by George Sorrows.

(02:59:05):
In reality, it's it's the rights all getting paid by
what my black other guy's name, the fucking Fox guy. Teal, No,
they are, they're now getting paid but the guy guy,
uh no, the yeah, they're they're they're also all getting

(02:59:26):
paid by just like the rabid base of like yeah,
dealerships just think they're working class because they have a
four enet and like, yeah, it sucks so true. They're
about nine hundred thousand subscribers to this daily were Daily
Wire plus the hit new streaming service. That's correctly, that's

(02:59:46):
why it's a hit. Then they give me such a
catchy name. But yeah, that's a ship ton of money
for someone, right, pumping out hate getting Gina Curiso to
make crappy films. That's right. Yeah, that an amazing career. Yeah,
she went from and Pooled to Star Wars to Ben Shapiro,

(03:00:08):
just gonna have her own Star Wars show on the prairie.
It's amazing. Fucking countr bidy like that, that's the god. Like, Oh,
the Hunter Biden trailer. Yeah, there's this trailer for a
film that I forget Who's I forget, who's Who's um
making this one? Um? But it's it's a film about

(03:00:32):
all of Hunter Biden scandals and Gina, Gina is in
it and Tyler. It looks like if this was directed
by a smart person, this could be an amazing comedy
like this, like the way the everything about it is
so innately comedic, yet they're playing it as a political scandal.
But no, it's just And if it was, if it

(03:00:55):
was directed by somebody with any competency, they would have
recognized it's a comedy film and it would be hilarious
to watch. But instead it's going to be boring because look,
conservatives are getting good at comedy left is worried. The
left is getting very scared like the other the moments
I knew that Glenn Greenwald had like like he wasn't

(03:01:15):
just purely grifting, had like actually falling down the rabbit
hole was what he spent like fucking like two years
pretending that literally anyone on earth gave a shit about Hunter.
Biden's also here here. Yeah, he's been simping for for
limps of TikTok. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all
all leading up to his uh, incredibly hardball interview with

(03:01:37):
Alex Jones. Great, great, incredible journalism. Just god, I love
it here, so it all sucks and the other like
the other big problem here, Right, It's like okay, on
the one hand, like all these people are just doing
this to make money. But the problem is that and
I kind of emphasize this enough, it is easier to

(03:01:58):
get the material brom and it needs to get gender
affirming surgery. And this is a real fucking issue because
it turns out when you convince a bunch of people
that children's hospitals and mutilating children, what happens? Oh wait,
hold on, I don't even need to go back to
the anti abortion terrorism, the people bring down abortion clinics
and murdering healthcare workers. I could just talk about the
reaction to uh. Like almost immediately after the lockdown started,

(03:02:18):
a guy tried to buy a bond to blow up
a children's hospital and was killed in the shootout with
the FBI. He was killed like a week maybe like
a week and a half before. Another guy tried to
derail a train to Rammay Navy medical ship. M hm.
There was also the Staddy lady, the lady who tried
to shake all the knives on board the hospital ship. Yeah,
like it's just like okay, like if they're allowed to

(03:02:41):
keep doing this ship, like, people are going to die.
And this isn't to say like they can't be beat,
especially I r L with first of these people in
total are actually pretty small because like the number of
people who actually rapidly care about this stuff is like
a vanishing lea small minority of the US. And you know,
and and I r L. That works for us because

(03:03:03):
these people suck. Everyone hates them. Communities will come out
to like to try to communities will come out to
confront and defeat them. But this is you know that
this is the this is the ecosystem, the media ecosystem
of the modern right. It works like spreading conspiracy theories
and citing mobs and then claiming they're being the censor
when everyone tries to stop them, like in two to
three weeks, when they found another one of these things.
I don't know, it will be like fucking like transgender

(03:03:24):
clowns are working make a wish foundation or something like
we're gonna be talking about another instance, another instance like
this in tomorrow's episode. Um, it's great, it's it's good.
It's not good at all. That is bad. Yeah. Yeah,
if you do want to be mad about force historict

(03:03:46):
uh that immigration services force historicts means on people in
their custody, it's a good thing to be mad about. Yeah,
it's it's it's a good time on that we have
here on this earth. Yeahs. Warning for some pretty intense

(03:04:14):
transphobia and miss gender ing. Eighty year old Julie Jaman
was permanently banned from her local y m c A
after demanding that a transgender worker leave the women's locker room.
Jaman said that she was trying to protect little girls
from a biological man and a women's swimsuit who was

(03:04:37):
watching them undressed? So this week a few dozen people
joined Jaman to protest the y m c A. Some
of the protesters, including her, were assaulted by lunatics men
dressed as women. Okay, first of all, that granny rocks.
But when pressed Poor Towns in Washington police said that
Mr Mrs Jayman had an emotional response to a strange

(03:04:58):
male being in the bathroom and how helping a young
girl take off her bathing suit. Well, I should hope
the response to that would be emotional. Yeah, because this,
you know, you can just picture this kind of situation
where they're grooming little kids, uh, completely inappropriately, and you're
you're you're doing the thing that a lot of people

(03:05:18):
want you to do and that a lot of people
watching would But I hope everybody is aware that this,
from what I understand, is pretty wonderful profit for big
pharma and medical systems. It's and what's happening to children
becomes even more disastrous. And you were protecting the kids.

(03:05:41):
You were protecting the kids. I mean, they should have
a responsibility to do that. The Young Men's Christians Association
UH should be doing that themselves if they were playing
any role in this whatsoever. It's pretty frightening. This is
it could happen. He Yer. I'm Garrison, and today we're

(03:06:02):
talking about a recent flare up of anti trans hate
and the anti trans protests and campaigning that's engulfed a
small town in northern Washington in what conservatives describe as
the culture war front. The past month, for right media
personalities and anti trans so called feminists have partnered together

(03:06:26):
to create an international nexus point for the increasing attacks
on trans and queer people, resulting in a wave of harassment,
death threats, and rallies, including an upcoming anti trans rally
in association with the Proud Boys and Three per Centers
slated for Saturday, September three. Port Townsend is a small

(03:06:49):
city of just around ten thousand people located on the
Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, just north of Seattle. The
city has a geographic footprint of just under ten square miles.
Over the course of the past month, the quaint beachside
city has become the focus of a disinformation campaign against

(03:07:10):
trans people and transgender inclusivity. But unless you frequent right
wing news outlets, you probably haven't heard anything about this story,
let alone are aware of the massive amount of harassment
and death threats being targeted at trans people and their allies.
Anti trans and far right activists have already descended on

(03:07:33):
this small city from all around the country and plan
to do so again on September three, with Proud Boys
and three per Centers promising to show up. So what
actually happened that escalated things to this point? On July
and eighty year old woman named Julie Jammin was in

(03:07:53):
a pool locker room and began verbally harassing a trans
woman who was on the job as an employer of
the Olympic Peninsula y m c A. Julie Gemmen asked
invasive questions about her genitals and later accused her of
engaging in inappropriate conduct while continuously mis gendering this employee.

(03:08:15):
Both the employee and y m c A officials, and
like everyone else present in the locker room, have disputed
Julie's highly publicized version of events, which we'll get into
in a bit, but first we're going to hear from
the original target of the harassment. A few days ago,
I was able to talk with Clementine, young trans woman

(03:08:38):
about what happened to her near the end of July
while working at the y m c A. It was
a pretty normal day that week. We were doing uh
swimming with the kids. UH and man the other childcare
workers you know, use the locker rooms kind of as expected,

(03:09:02):
and I was using the woman's locker room just because
you know, that works for me, um, and that lines
up with how I feel. We went through all that
no problems. We got the kids, the kids got changed
and their stalls, and then once we were out in
the pool, one of the kids needed to use the

(03:09:23):
locker room bathroom, so I took that kid and another
kid into the locker room in accordance with the wise
rule of three system. To clarify, at the y m
c A, there is a quote rule of three where
staff always accompany children in a group of three, so
that a staff person is never alone with a child

(03:09:45):
and children are never alone with each other. As Clementine
was standing with a kid outside the restroom stall, waiting
on the other kid who was using the bathroom, Julie
Germmond was showering nearby in a curtained off stall across
the locker room. I was waiting outside of the bathroom
stall with the kid being the buddy making small talk.

(03:10:07):
When Julie Jaman initiated the dialogue by asking if I
was a member of the lgbt Q plus community. I responded, yes,
I'm trans And she asked me if I had a penis,

(03:10:29):
and it kind of caught me off guard. Um, and
I and I told her that, you know, that's none
of your business. Um, Julie asserted that I needed to
leave and that I can't be there. And then in
response to her assertion, I just shook my head. Now, Um,

(03:10:49):
I couldn't really leave or I'd be leaving the kids unattended.
And you know, I was backed into a corner the kid.
At some point, UM, the kid using the bathroom exited
the stall and had her swimming. Her bathing suit like

(03:11:11):
wasn't fully pulled up, and she asked me for help,
and so I assisted her by pulling it up by
its straps. And you know, there were other patrons present
in the locker room at this time. And at some
point around the girl coming out and meeting her straps
pulled up, Julie was back in her shower stall. And

(03:11:36):
then around this time two more kids entered the locker room.
It might be good to mention I have prescribed glasses. Um,
I wasn't wearing my glasses and I couldn't see anything,
which is kind of terrifying because you know, it was
like a shot in the dark, like I just heard
a voice and I had to search around before I

(03:11:58):
figured out who was talking to me. But anyways, uh,
the kids. Two more kids came into the locker room
and they overheard Julie shouting at me and asked me
what was going on, and like they had this concerned
look on their face, and I just kind of told
them to leave because I didn't want them to get involved.

(03:12:20):
The kids went to the pool manager, Rowan, and asked
for help with the escalating situation. They went straight to
her and asked her to come help and told her
that someone was yelling at me. And moments later, Rowan entered,
and as she walked by, I got her attention and

(03:12:40):
I told her, you know, there's an older lady yelling
at me to leave right now. Uh, And I pointed
at the shower stall that Julie was using. Roan kind
of like posted up and Rowan stood in between me,
the kids, and Julie and waited for her to come out.

(03:13:02):
And then Julie you know, poked her head back out
and said get out, you're a man. Um and Rowan
you know, intervened when she sort of like popped back
out and said, no, actually you need to leave because
right now you're discriminating and kind of being a bigot.

(03:13:23):
So it's actually that you need it's actually you that
needs to leave right now. And Julie told Rowan she
was confused about gender. And then Julie pointed at me
and said, he has a fucking penis. He has no
business being around little girls. He has a penis, and
he could rape someone. And after that, Rowan uh sort

(03:13:46):
of ushered me and the girls out of the locker
room and uh told me to go to her office,
and then the other staff members found me and helped me.
UM and Rowan stood outside the lobby side of the
office when I was in there, and UM, I guess like, yeah,
after the police have been called, Julie came out and

(03:14:08):
engaged with her, uh, and they were yelling. But I
kind oft hear what was going on, and I mean
that's kind of the end of it. I know that
Julie left after that, and I just kind of checked
out for an hour two. It shocked me. I haven't

(03:14:30):
had someone do that to me before. I've never been
talked to in a bathroom or locker room before, especially
in that way. The y m c A pool manager
told Julie Gemmen that she needed to leave and suspended
her membership for violating the Wise Code of Conduct, which

(03:14:50):
prohibits quote discrimination, hatred, derogatory or unwelcome comments, intimidation, conduct
or actions based on an individual's sex, race, ethnicity, age, religion, disability,
sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status unquote, as
well as having no tolerance for disrespectful words or gestures

(03:15:12):
towards y m c A staff or others. Part of
an official statement released by the Olympic Peninsula y m
c A, published as the incident in question was growing
into a much broader anti transspectacle, clarified that Julie has
had quote several incidents where she has repeatedly violated the
Wise Code of Conduct, specifically using disrespectful words or gestures

(03:15:36):
towards y m c A staff or others, and abusive,
harassing and or obscene language or gestures towards y m
c A staff or others. The Aquatics manager then informed
the patron that she was permanently suspended from Mountain View
Pool and all Olympic Peninsula y m c A facilities unquote.

(03:15:57):
After Julie was banned from the pool on Monday August one,
she started showing up outside the facility with anti trains
signs and led a small group of people into a
city council meeting, resulting in an hour of public comment
logged about the incident. Here is some of the statement

(03:16:17):
Julie read in the city council meeting, which also gives
a look at her version of events at this time.
Personal podium, state your name and where you live for
the record, Peninsula, and I'm here because I had an
experience that you need to know. I have sent it
to you all in detail. In an effort by the

(03:16:40):
city and the y m c A to apply the
neocultural gender rules at Mountain Viewpool dressing shower room facilities,
women and children are being put at risk. My experience
while showering after my swim was hearing a man's voice
in the women's dressing area and seeing a man in
a women's swims watching little girls pull down their bathing

(03:17:02):
suits in order to use the toilets in the dressing room.
I reacted by telling him to leave, and the consequence
is that I have been banned from the pool. There
is no signage informing women the shower room is now
all gender and what that means. Nor have parents been
informed of what they can expect with these news policies.

(03:17:26):
The why has not provided any dressing shower room options
for women who do not want to be exposed to
men who identify as women. The y m c A,
the city, the police and sheriff's, the parents, the professionals
who assist victims of royalism, peeping tom's, pedophilia, and assault

(03:17:47):
need to come together to figure out how to make
the new policies work for all pool patrons, not just
one group. How to keep children who are less able
to discriminate safe. It is ironic that women who discriminate
when a situation threatens their safety or their children a

(03:18:07):
message from our ancestors are now accused of discrimination, as
if they have made someone else a victim. We need
to do much more intelligent and wise about applying the
rules and developing policies that are respectful and inclusive. Thank you,

(03:18:28):
thank you, thank you, so just a few notes about
that trans inclusivity at the Y is not some new policy.
For years, it's been literally Washington State law that people

(03:18:49):
have the right to access the locker rooms, changing rooms,
and bathrooms that align with their gender identity. This has
been the case since the law states, quote, entities shall
allow individuals to use the gender segreted facilities such as westrooms,
locker rooms, dressing rooms, and homeless or emergency shelters that

(03:19:10):
are consistent with that individual's gender expression or gender identity unquote.
And regarding Julie's account of the incident, there have been
no complaints from children or parents who are using the pool,
and multiple accounts conflict with Julie's telling of the story,
as the employee never did help anyone undress, nor was

(03:19:34):
watching anyone change. Throughout this city council meeting, there were
several public comments in support of trans rights that pushed
back on Julie's outrageous claims and called out the overall
trend of miss gendering and the groomer style transphobia. At
the end of the meeting, city officials themselves took a

(03:19:56):
stand against the transphobic rhetoric that was present throughout the
hour of public comments. Oddly enough, for this show, one
of the people I interviewed for this episode serves as
a Port Townsend City councilwoman. Right. Um, my name's Lebby Winstrom. Um.
I'm an elected city councilor for the City of Port Townsend,

(03:20:17):
and I'm speaking today on as myself rather than as
a representative of the city or a representative of the
city council as a whole. When did you first kind
of hear about this thing that's now ballooned into this
larger issue with people coming in from out of state
to do protests and all this kind of stuff. I
think I first heard about it on Sunday night, which

(03:20:39):
would have been I guess the thirty one July, and
I heard about it from the y m c A
Aquatics director Rowan mackins Um, and it was more in
the tone of kind of a heads up that this
was a thing that was going on. And then I
heard a lot more about it the next day, which
was Monday, the first of August um, when uh Julia

(03:21:03):
Jaman showed up at the pool with a whole group
of people doing a protest that they were picketing at
the pool, and she also submitted a public comment to
the City council meeting that night. And at that point
I realized that a group of people, including Julie, was
probably going to plan on attending the City council meeting.
UM and reached out to some friends and acquaintances in

(03:21:26):
the UM trans and Allies community, UM Olympic Pride, UM,
the Social Justice Group and at the Unitarian Church here
in town and various other people who had been kind
of resourced and say, hey, this is going on, you
need to be aware of it. And in fact, that
night there was over an hour of public comment. There

(03:21:49):
wasn't anything on these council agenda. There wasn't anything we
were discussing. It wasn't really a matter. It wasn't really
i think, even on the city's radar. But people show
up the City council meeting and normally when there's a
public comment about an item that's not on the agenda,
they cut off public comment half an hour, but for
whatever reason, let it run that night, so it was

(03:22:10):
well over an hour of public comment. And some of
the things said, we're pretty shocking, and um, you know,
to the to the tune of that you know all
transgender people were pedophiles or that you know, this was
a rape happening, and some some stamons it was just
not true. And then based on what I heard that night,

(03:22:34):
I was really concerned and felt that this was both
you know, this was ballooning out of proportion, which now
seems kind of funny given how much more belit's out
of proportion. It's gotten. There's not really any action here
for the city or for the pool. I mean, one
of the things that Julia Jaman has retained legal counsel
and sent a demand letter to the city, but her

(03:22:55):
demands were like, well, you should fire people. Well they
don't work for the city. There why I'm a employee.
Um well you should change your policy. While the policy
is literally state law and you know a bunch of things,
so it's just you can't do this. Um. So it's
not really clear why this is all focusing on the
city because the city doesn't really have there's not really

(03:23:16):
any action that the city could take here. On top
of the dozens of people Julie lead in giving public testimony,
which largely consisted of transphobia, miss gender ing, and baseless
accusations that trans people are pedophilic inherently, but that same day,
August one, she also led a protest to outside of

(03:23:36):
the y m c A. To learn more about this,
I talked with Cass and Raven, who are both part
of a local affinity group. The first protest was August feet,
and they announced that they'd be back the same time
on the second, third, and fourth. So the second drew
a much larger counter protest um, and then a lot

(03:24:01):
of the same people who were there on the second
came back the third and fourth, but there was nobody
to counter protest against because the protesters gave up in
Lenthallum after one day when they saw the kind of
backlash they were facing, and most people, I think, thought
that was the end of it, But people who do

(03:24:23):
this kind of thing more often realized that this was
more likely the vibe of the beginning stages of something bigger.
A lot of red flags went off when we found
out they were protesting at a city council meeting planning
to come back the following week. Oh, that's right, that
was The Other thing was the council meeting on the first,
where there was a lot of public comment logged. It

(03:24:47):
seemed to us like this was going to escalate further,
but other people um tended to feel that it was
going to be a quick, you know, one and done
type thing, with how fast the news cycle picks up
a new issue. And I think it was probably about
a week later on the council meeting on the eighth,

(03:25:10):
because by that point we knew about the planned turf
action on the fifteen. That's when it started to click
for a lot of people that this was going to
become a bigger thing. But I don't think anybody, including us,
thought it was going to become an ongoing issue. When

(03:25:30):
I searched Court Townsend on Twitter and saw trending hashtags
on a wall of anti transferator, a lot of red
flags went off. Since the city council public comments, the
y m c A had started receiving threatening phone calls,
and Jamen had been returning to facility nearly daily with

(03:25:50):
some friends to protest, approaching everybody coming in and out
of the pool and talking about how men are allowed
in the locker room and airing signs that miss gendered
the employee. Julie's group had said they were going to
be picketing every day at the pool that week. Um
that they showed up and there were about a hundred

(03:26:10):
counter counterprochesters isn't even really the right word, um people
that were there. Was sort of like a little pride
parade there, and um, Olympic Pride had a kind of
a booth table set up and we're handing out Pride
flags and the Social Justice group from the q o
F had a um, you know, standing on the side
of love banner, and there were kids blowing bubbles and

(03:26:33):
and it was just it was much more of it.
Just kind of a lot of people here. As these
initial picket style protests were happening in front of the Y,
the head of the Jefferson County Transgender Support Group called
some friends and assembled this sort of counter protest to
voice their support for the trans employee and the y
m c A, which resulted in this gay as trans

(03:26:56):
rights party massively overshadowing Julie Gemmen and her friends little protest.
As she was getting outnumbered in person, Julie took to
alternative tactics by getting in touch with media outlets that
will give her a soapbox, resulting in a new wave
of harassment targeted at the Y. There were about a

(03:27:19):
hundred people and it was I think it was Julian
one or two other people, and people had some conversations
with Julie and it sort of seemed like that was
going to be the end of it. And the next
day the pool was closed and about fifty Trance Right
supporters showed up and nobody showed up to pick it,
and the pool was closed because pool employees were receiving

(03:27:42):
death threats and just so much harassment. They basically couldn't
use their phones because the phone lines were jammed and
voicemails were filling up in fifteen minutes, things like that,
um so, and then the pool ended up staying closed,
I think, from the third which was a Wednesday, all
the way through out week in the and the following week,
and it was just kind of a safety issue of

(03:28:04):
not wanting to have children present for day camps and
patrons there if they were going to be harassed. Right after,
I think probably on Monday, the first um of August,
Julie reached out too. There's a local sort of far
right blog site called the Port Townsend Free Press that
isn't really a newspaper a news source at all. It's

(03:28:25):
it's kind of this this one guy, Jim James Guarantino's blog,
and she reached out to that and he did an article.
That first Port Townsend Free Press quote unquote article came
out to August two and served as a mouthpiece for
Julie's inflammatory version of events, coupled with some conservative transphobia.

(03:28:47):
More reputable news outlets and local press didn't really cover
the story until it had already turned into a vital
topic on the right, which means there was over a
week where the only documented right of the incident was
the Port Townsend Free Press blog post. Two days after
that piece was published, Andy Knows the Post Millennial posted

(03:29:10):
an article largely pulling directly from the Port Townsend Free
Press right up, and that was just the start. The
next day, August five, Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire did
an article about Julie Gammond and the danger of men
watching little girls undressed in the locker room. Later that night,

(03:29:31):
the story was on Laura Ingram's Fox News show, citing
reporting from the Post Millennial, which of course cited their
reporting from the Port Townsend Free Press. And across the
country in Washington State, we found perhaps the most maddening
story of the week, an eight year old grandmother was
banned there from her y m c A after demanding

(03:29:53):
that a biological male leave the woman's locker room where
little girls were undressing. They then went to play clips
of Julie's public comment at the city council meeting, amplifying
Julie's ever changing, altered version of events. Now on the
national stage, I think the mainstream actual you know, real

(03:30:16):
local newspapers didn't pick it up until the seventh or
the tenth, respectively, for the Peninsula Daily News and The Leader,
and that gap when they amplified it out to the
larger right wing press that's got picked up by bright Bary,
got picked up by the Daily Mail. They kept quoting
that original portens of Free Press article, which was very
inaccurate about in terms of what it described as having happened,

(03:30:39):
and I mean it was both outright wrong and it
also left a bunch of things out, like that the
transgender person was a y m c A employee, for instance,
or that they were in the locker room because they
were supervising children. Um and uh, I think we're really
hit a crescendo on Thursday, the ninth sheet now earlier whatever,

(03:31:05):
not Thursday's past week, but the previous Thursday. Um, it
was on Tucker Carlson. And that's where I really saw
the email volume explode for plate people from outside the area,
where it was like, you know, you're getting thirty emails
in five minutes, and they're from you know, they're from Texas,
there from Tennessee, they're from New Jersey, they're from Australia,
they're from the UK, etcetera. That when it got picked

(03:31:26):
up by Fox News, the reach really got broad. The
first time the story was covered on Tucker Carlson. Tonight
took place on August eleven, in an episode guest hosted
by Brian Clemide by m c A. Has changed a
lot over the years. Now women and young girls at
the Y finding themselves in locker rooms and showers with

(03:31:46):
men who identify as women, but they still have all
their genitalia with them. And if you're complaining to the
y m c A about the genitalia and what they're
dressed like, you might get yourself banned. It's what exactly
happened to an eight year old woman in Washington State.
Here to explain but not actually make excuses for but
explain is our West Coast correspondent, Seattle based radio host

(03:32:08):
Jason Rance. Jason set the scene. Yeah, so, I mean,
here's the scene. Democrats used to stand up for women,
but now they can't even define one. And as a result,
you have eight year old Julie Jamon who said she
was banned from a pool and locker room facility that
was managed by the Olympic Peninsula y m c A
on Port Towns in Washington. Now. She said she was
headed into the locker room to shower and she saw

(03:32:29):
something pretty alarming. She explained what happened at this council meeting.
Then a clip from the public comments plays and I
will not subject you to that again, but here is
a little bit more of that clip. So a number
of residents showed up to support her at this council meeting,
but the mayor, his name is David Faber, he was
not pleased, accusing them of transphobia. Townsend is a welcoming

(03:32:51):
community and hate and discrimination has no place in this community.
I listen to you quietly. I'd like you to listen
to me quietly. Now, given the rise in harassment and bigotry,
the trans persons are experienced recently. It's essential that we

(03:33:13):
all speak up. The CIS gendered people like me speak
up in support of our trans community. Now, Jamon says
the staff accused her of being discriminatory. The YMC put
out a statement basically saying we're not going to tolerate
the bias, discrimination or hatred. And of course, in Washington State,

(03:33:33):
the law allows anyone to use locker room change, remember
bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. So they're basically saying,
we're doing what we have to do, except, of course,
protect women who don't want to see this. Unbelievable. That
guy should be ashamed of himself behind the mask in
the media after Methodist, did you see it alluding to
this scale or did you think this is just like
a one and done traumatic incidents? Absolutely not. Um I

(03:34:00):
I really just thought, you know, oh my my days came.
I finally have the bad bathroom experience. And I know
a lot of people do have that bad experience. Um nobody,
nobody is ready for it to be, you know, to
have this much attention called just such a small thing.

(03:34:24):
Um No, because I wasn't eaving for it to be
like this, Because yeah, it's escalated to the point where
you're like on international news for these like right wing
grifters who are trying to basically get trans people killed. Um, yeah,
and you're I don't know, it's really it's really upsetting

(03:34:46):
to have my face and and name, you know, sort
of be pushed out like that. And it it's crazy
how that feeling, that the sinking feeling when I saw
my my name and face I don't even think it
was my face at the time, when I saw my
name appear on that local PP Free Press article, and

(03:35:09):
you know, at the time it was that still a
pretty big impact. And then to have that just keep
happening and it got it gets like kind of depressingly numbing. Yeah,
just have it keep intensifying. I mean, yeah, I've been
on hormones for almost a year now and I've avoided

(03:35:33):
that for kind of reasons like this that it sucks
because I just feel like, I feel like this is
a very common experience with trans people who are like
starting out, like you just can't really go anywhere because
you look too weird to go in the vince room
and you're not quite like you don't feel comfortable the
woman's room because of stuff like this, and you know,
if you're not in binary that, if it's a whole

(03:35:54):
other issue of like where the fund do I go,
Like there's there's there's not a lot of options sometimes,
but then to have something that's already very stressful we
turned into like a fucking like Daily Wired New York
Post Info warship is like like what like like it's

(03:36:15):
we like Tucker Carlson, like all of it. It's really
it's disappointing that there's this idea that I, you know,
I'm I'm actively trying to violate people's space, and and
it's really frustrating because of how uncomfortable I feel putting

(03:36:37):
myself in that position, being in that room. Um, and
I don't want to have something like this happened, and
I don't, you know, I don't abuse that space because
I'm not some guy trying to prey on people. I'm
I'm just trying to use the bathroom and get changed

(03:36:58):
and and like do you try to talk about like oh,
you know, walking in penis, hanging out and and all
of these things. But I don't change in the public space.
I go into a changing room, and you know, I
I understand, you know, that confusion, and I try to

(03:37:18):
subtract myself from the space as much as possible and
make it, you know, more comfortable. When when I'm in
a position like that where I'm trying to, you know,
sort of entertain a kid who's not happy to be
a bathroom buddy. And and I'm kind of putting that
position where I have to talk um, it's super vulnerable

(03:37:40):
and and I just remember feeling small and and I
just shrunk when she talked to me like that, And
I don't even the space just got so small. Piggy
backing off the groomer and growing anti trans attacks we've
seen this year. A large swath of right wing influencers

(03:38:02):
and media personalities jumped on this story to drive outrage
and push their rhetoric. Here is a brief clip from Newsmax.
They're more than willing to just ignore possible pedophilia happening
at the y m c A in the locker room. Well,
it's from my point of view, it seems more like
some sort of hypnotism. I know the word woke has

(03:38:24):
been put to it, but I have to tell you
that all public agencies I'm connected to UH as a
citizen in a very small town. They are all operating
with this gender identity, and you've got to wonder what
is happening and those most private places that people, particularly
women need to have. We've we've had you on We've

(03:38:47):
had you on the show a couple of times now,
and you seem very level headed, Yes, very very level headed. Indeed.
Um By now the story has been headlined and obviously
very miscare seized and transphobic fashion, but still headlined by
The Post, Millennial, The Daily Wire, Fox News, Daily Mail,

(03:39:07):
Bright Bart News, Max Info, Wars, New York Post, The Federalist,
and the quote unquote feminist news site Redux. As false
retellings about what happened in the Olympic Peninsula y m
c A went viral on the right. Threatening emails and
phone calls started pouring into the y m c A,

(03:39:28):
prompting them to shut down the entire facility for over
a week, leaving many local families without childcare services. Intense
harassment and death threats were sent to city officials who
voiced support of trans rights, and also to the pool manager.
In my conversation with Libby Winstrom from last week, she

(03:39:51):
detailed some of the threats and the impact the harassment
has had on the community. A lot more of the
ire is now kind of directed at the city and
the mayor and just at the pool director, unless at employees. UM.
The transgender employee who was you know, attacked in the

(03:40:15):
locker room by Julie Dremond is actually no longer. Why
UM and other people have left is another undisclosed location,
just out of concern of trying to get the kids
as far away from this whole process as possible. And
and so that took a little bit of time in
juggling to set up, and they were so short staff

(03:40:36):
they were actually calling for volunteers in order to try
to keep the childcare open this week just because UM
they were already somewhat short staffed and with people leaving,
it had just been even harder. UM. The y has
been open I think all week this week. I think
it was open Monday, Tuesday, today's Wednesday. UM. So it

(03:40:57):
has been able to reopen. They've they've changed the around.
It's now not open Saturdays again, UM and shuffled and
I think some staff are working seven days a week
in order to try to keep it open. UM. People
are still getting threats. UM still getting I got a
terrible email last night. I haven't been getting death threats.

(03:41:19):
I've been getting things like, UM, you know you're a disgusting,
fat pig bitch, why don't you go back to the buffet? Um,
and you know, things like that. It hasn't for me
been death threats. UM. The pool director was receiving photographs
of her children saying there next and UM, some pretty

(03:41:41):
explicit threatening messages like I'm coming for you, I know
where you are. UM. And Mayor Favor has been getting
similar things. He got one where somebody was threatening to
come to his home and rape his wife. UM. So
these have been pretty horrifying messages. For the most part,
most of the email has voicemails have been coming from

(03:42:03):
out of the area. You know, they're not they're not local. UM.
So it's a little hard to gauge whether these are
serious threats. But at some of you you feel like
you have to take it somewhat seriously. UM. And that
I think has been pretty disruptive, both for the y
employees and for the city. As Julie's retelling of the
story was going viral across the right wing and turf media,

(03:42:25):
resulting in the pool having to temporarily shut down. So
called press conference was scheduled outside of another city council
meeting for August by Julie and her allies. There's a
local UM she builds yourself. There's a sort of radical
feminist UM named Ami Susa who has a uh so

(03:42:50):
anti trans blog site, and Um, she has really taken
this and run with it. So I've plugged in, but
not well, she's really taken this and run with it
and has I think has been really this kind of
driving force between behind a lot of this amplification onto

(03:43:10):
far right media. UM and Amy Susa held a what
she built as a press conference on the August fifteenth,
the night of the most recent Um City council meeting,
and showed up with a group of I don't know,
probably twenty five or thirty supporters, and there were estimates

(03:43:31):
are between three and fifty and four hundred UM trans
rights folks from town. I mean that there were local
who had just showed up and most of them were
waiting in line to go into the council meeting and
you know, flying flags and raising gland at banners and stuff. UM.
But there was some heated shouting and one person got
arrested for shoving. There weren't any charges filed. I did

(03:43:55):
confirm that with um UH, the Sheriff's office, um that
with the courts, that that not no charges got filed
out of that, which is contrary to those stories they've
been putting out that like there were some charges filed,
that's not true. I believe there were about three hundred
people that came out to confront less than twenty UM

(03:44:18):
people coming to try and bring Hayten to our community.
And it feels like that really inspired a lot of
the different networks to get connected. UM. Our personal little
networks are incredibly white. Most of us are are trends
of some reguard UM and we were reached out to
by a local bipop community that we've we've had some

(03:44:43):
crossover with, but not a lot. But since this happened,
UM just the interconnectivity with with that group has just exploded.
After the press conference, protest footage of the event went viral,
spawning another new wave of right wing media outrage. Clips
from the quote unquote feminist re Dux magazine Twitter account

(03:45:06):
show Julie trying to give a speech while being drowned
out by chance in support of trans people, and at
one point someone running behind Julie to rip down a
Suffragette flag put up by one of the turfs. And
a side note, in some much less viral footage, we
can see turfs trying to rip Pride flags out of

(03:45:27):
the hands of people who are counter protesting. So conservative
coverage of the protest painted a pearl clutching picture of
scary trans people assaulting women. A few days after the
press conference, Julie Jaman herself made an appearance on Tucker
Carlson tonight. Julie Jaman is one of them. She's eighty

(03:45:48):
years old. She's now been banned from stepping inside a
y m c A y because she dared to object
when a male employee was assigned to watch little girls
remove their bathing suits in the back room in a
women's locker room. So this week a few dozen people
joined Jaman to protest the y m c A. Some
of the protesters, including her, were assaulted by lunatics men

(03:46:09):
dressed as women. Here's some of the footage from that.
On Monday, you may have read some version of my
personal experience a naked old lady in the women's shower
room and what I saw that day the police. You

(03:46:36):
can see women screaming at her. Julie Jaman is the woman,
the brave woman. Just on the video she joins us sight. Julie,
thanks so much. We're grateful that you are joining us.
Why at this stage in your life are you taking

(03:46:58):
it upon yourself to speak up against this in the
face of what we just saw. I was in the
shower and I saw that man in that women's suit,
and I saw him watching little girls. You can't not
act when you see that going on. You must do something,
So I and and bless you for doing that. That's

(03:47:20):
exactly right. Your your moral sense is just is clear.
I have no idea what your background is, but you
have a very clear sense of right and wrong, and
I wish more people had it. So you tried to
explain that in the video we just played, and rather
than listen to you, people screamed at you and then
appeared to come at you. Have you noticed there's no
conversation about this. There was. It was a mob of

(03:47:45):
hundreds of people that came streaming into this permitted gathering,
and they kettled us. I think that's what you'd call it.
They pushed shoved, They knocked women to the ground. These
are the men in the supporters of men that apparently
the y m c A and the city want to
allow into the women's dressing and shower area. I object.

(03:48:10):
And you, at the age of eighty, were banned by
the y m c A. It's hard to even believe
this is real because you were taking a shower and
there was a man in there and they banned you,
not him. What could tell us if that's true? A
and B. What y m c A. Is this? Yes,
that's correct. I told that guy to get out of

(03:48:31):
the shower, and then a staff member came around the
corner and I said to her, get him out of here,
and she said, that's discrimination. You're out of here for life.
And I'm calling the cops. Can you tell us what? Why?
M c Where did this happen. This happens in Port Townsend,
that's on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. It's just

(03:48:56):
it's I hope they are punished for the way that
they treated you, and I appreciate your bravery and forthrightness.
I do too. We did try and get the police
to come help us. They were standing across the streets
and they were told by a directive to stand down.

(03:49:16):
They did not come to help us. I hope they
wrought Juli Jaman, thank you for all you've done. I
appreciate it. Good to see you tonight. Throughout all the
media spectacle, I feel like the actual original victim of
this harassment has kind of been forgotten, despite them being
the current face of the transgender menace. In my conversation

(03:49:39):
with Clementine, we talked about what it's like to be
turned into this sort of outrage symbol, Like I've I
watched the three hours of public testimony UM a few
nights ago, which was I was, I was on so
much caffeine. UM, it's the only way is that the

(03:50:02):
meeting that happened right after the incident or the Monday
meeting from both. I did both in one day. Yeah,
it was Yeah. And one of the more shocking things
was just how how how miss one how mischaracterized the
incident was and to just like how much blatant miss

(03:50:27):
gendering there was, and like talking about you not as
like an actual person, but as almost this like evil
archetype in people's minds, Like it's so dehumanizing in a
really bad way um let alone all of like the
like miss gendering stuff like it's it was. It was

(03:50:47):
wild watching this person after person completely mindlessly create this
villain in their own heads um and then just attached
it onto an actual human being who's like, you, like,
your privacy has actually been violated. Like you're like like
you're like like private information, your pictures, names is going

(03:51:07):
all over these like like neo fascist news sites, and
like if something you know, people are framing this is
like you know, safety and privacy, Like if you want
to look at what's actually going on, it's so different.
And there's such a disconnect between watching all of that
public testimony and looking at all of you know, the

(03:51:31):
the right wing press of this incident, and I don't know,
it's it's very depressive framing. It's really clear and disappointing
when you're the subject of it because I know what
happened in that space, and you know, there were people
to witness what happened, and we worked to get our

(03:51:53):
reports out quickly, but it just didn't you know, it
didn't matter because of how dedicated this woman was to
getting her side or whatever. I mean. In reality, it
just feels like she was dedicated to hurting. Um. I
don't know what her motivation was, but it's the blatantly

(03:52:17):
false side of the story that really hurts because accusations
that I was standing there watching I think they go
anywhere from like two to five kids. It's their number. Um.
I was watching the Tucker Carlson and I think I
saw that number five watching five kids undress, um, when

(03:52:41):
that's just not what happened. I was standing there with
one kid who was fully clothed, chatting while we waited
for another kid to come out of the bathroom. And
it's just wrong. It's misinformation, and it's not about you know,
it's not even a about um pushing an agenda. It's

(03:53:03):
it's about people's livelihood. And it's really damaging to have
my privacy violated like that, you know, Um, straight up,
that's what it is. It almost feels like you're just
like this sacrificial archetype that. Yeah, it's like they're not

(03:53:24):
even but they're not even like interested in you as
a person. Really, they're interested in you on this this
this this this like idea, and to project you onto
this whole other idea, which is so fucked up because
you're an actual person, Like yeah, well, and and you
can see in the comments and stuff on some of

(03:53:44):
these that it's pretty you know, I won't try to
dig into like the ugly, the ugly and the bad
of Twitter, but like I've seen people say that I'm
like a fully bearded man, or like I'll be paralleled
as a lumberjack, and it's like I mean, and not
that you know, your appearances matter, It's it's about how

(03:54:09):
you feel. But it's kind of, you know, interesting to
see how I'm I'm painted in such a weird and
twisted light. Despite going viral in the right wing and
turf news sphere, local sentiment in the port towns in
the area has been widely in supportive trans rights and
not very pleased that their town has been upended for

(03:54:31):
over a month due to one woman's personal prejudice and discomfort.
I've lived for twenty four and a half years, and
in talking to people over the last couple of weeks,
I would say nearly universally, the local sentiment is why
is this such a big deal? Like this basically somebody
got startled in a locker room, made kind of a

(03:54:53):
jerk of herself, and is now trying to blow this
into some kind of international incident, and you know, here's
this little tiny town at the edge of the continent,
and we're like, why, why, why is this the most
important thing? You know? Why did you know dozens of
families not have child care for ten days? Why did

(03:55:16):
you know the y m c A employees have to
not get paid? Why? Why did you know? The the
impact of this has been so outsized relative to the
actually what actually happened. The person who started the initial
incident with the trans employee. It's it's kind of funny

(03:55:37):
in a way that yes, she's gotten out her message
to the whole community, but it's spread as a result
of the organizing against her and against the group of
people that she's bringing into the area. And it's gotten
to a point where just random community members that we
don't have any direct connection to our recognizing her and

(03:56:00):
knowing why she's a known person, and are just kicking
her out of their businesses on site. It's like the
the backlash against that incident is really spreading really well,
and we're getting this really good organic network building throughout

(03:56:21):
the community. Earlier in August, before the big press conference thing,
various BIPOC and queer collectives and affinity groups started networking,
and a solidarity meeting was set up to figure out
how to take care of each other as the far
right's spotlight on the town grows. Myself and one another

(03:56:42):
person went and maybe a couple of others who I
didn't know, but the two of us were the main
ones who are more directly involved with the queer community
side of responding to what was going on, and it
was really great, like they just like, we want to
support you, We want to, you know, help take care

(03:57:03):
of you. What can we do? And then for the
action on the fifteenth, when we were talking about you know,
like here's here's the kind of response that we're wanting
from the whole community, but here's some of these background needs.
Because none of them were experienced enough with protesting to
feel comfortable going out on the front lines and doing stuff,

(03:57:23):
they went about a quarter mile away and set up
a community picnic. And I don't think people took nearly
enough advantage of it because the planning happened so last minute,
but they did a great job of setting up in
solidarity and in solidarity and in support and we're really

(03:57:45):
looking forward to working with them more. We spent the
last few years running small group basic medical classes UM
and UH workshops and really making innections like within our
community and having this come about and having everyone come
out to one place and see each other and going, oh,

(03:58:07):
we know you and I know you UM and from
different communities coming together. We've really been able to enable
those folks to come together to start building more of
a unified front. I want to reiterate that with all
the media spectacle, it's important to not lose sight of
the original target of all of this hate and transphobia.

(03:58:31):
The physical and mental effect of such a massive wave
of bigoted harassment and boxing can take a substantial toll.
I had to stop going into work at a certain
point because I couldn't do it. I woke up in
the morning and I looked in the mirror and and

(03:58:51):
I just broke down because it was too much to
keep going into keep trying to bring that bright energy
uh uh to work UM and a lot of doubt. UH.
That's what I've been experiencing is a lot of you
see so many people trying to divulge your character in

(03:59:13):
a negative way, and it's you know, it's toxic, and
it can kind of seep through and make your life toxic.
And that's why I just had to stop looking because
it hurt too much and it's putting me in this limbo.

(03:59:34):
I don't feel like I've gotten a break for a month.
I feel like I've just been tired and like rust,
I feel like I'm purgatory. You know, has there been
any kind of like support on the community level that
has been helpful? Yeah? Yeah, Um, I've been I've been

(03:59:55):
definitely grateful and um blessed to have the community response
be really astounding and supportive. Yeah. I've been given the
opportunity to be so much more connected with my local
queer community as well as my local community period. Um,
there were a lot of supportive voices. Uh that made

(04:00:19):
it a little bit easier to ignore the darker side
of this um and elephant in the room. Uh. The
go fund me. I don't know how I would feel
if there wasn't, you know, something rigid and like a
rock to lean on, like to go fund me, to
be able to have something hopeful to look forward to

(04:00:41):
and think that I can you know, be me and
that I can afford being me. Uh, I don't know
how I would navigate the storm without something like that
in the distance. It's been overwhelming and I've just been

(04:01:03):
waiting for it to end, and it looks like it's
finally slowing down. But um, the support makes it easier.
And the support is a kind of attention that really
helps right now, because it's strikingly easy to feel bad, ah,

(04:01:26):
to feel just associated when when your life is kind
of thrust into a different lens and what felt like
a day, what kind of was just a day or
a week. This month has felt like longer than my
entire summer break. The situation in Port Townsend is not

(04:01:47):
over yet. In a bit, we'll talk about the upcoming
anti trans rally on September three. And there is this
kind of absurd irony that's not uncommon when digging into
these types of issues, at the types of talking points
common among reactionaries, and all the complaints around violations of
privacy just end up actually being enacted by the people

(04:02:12):
who push these moral panics and so things that just
continue to kind of escalate and escalate my understanding, And
I wasn't there for this. Is that yesterday which was
Amy Susan, I'm not sure if Julie Jaman was there,
not because of course juli Jaman has been banned from
the pool. UM showed up at the pool with a
film crew and was trying to push their way into

(04:02:34):
the locker room when patrons were there using the locker room,
trying to film inside the locker room and got asked
to leave. UM. So it's it's still continuing to escalate.
One of the things that I've been noticing a lot,
and it's something that for those of us who are
more involved, this is kind of a you don't say moment,
and it's the people who are coming in and making

(04:03:00):
accusations and making attacks against the community are very much
doing the exact thing that they're making accusations of. Uh.
There was an issue the other day of the people
who planned and hosted the protest at the council meeting
going into the y with a camera crew and demanding

(04:03:23):
to film the locker rooms while people were using them. UM.
There's lots of accusations that have been thrown that we
bust in people from Portland, and in reality, the main
aggressors who were there on the fift in their group
did come from Vancouver area. Or we're flown in from
Texas or we're flown in from Texas. Yeah, Like, this

(04:03:45):
was three hundred people who live within twenty minutes of
Court towns and showed up because they care, and they
had to fly people from as far as Pennsylvania to
post an hour long press conference with twenty people. And
so we're seeing that a lot recurring. The person organizing

(04:04:05):
this upcoming action is also lives in Vancouver area and
is inviting people from all over to come up and
start fights here and try to get video of confrontations going.
And everybody up here wants to just be left alone
and live in peace, but they also want to show up,

(04:04:28):
and they're kind of getting an opportunity to show up
in the most low effort way. It's it's in your
own town, you might as well show up. I remember
a few weeks ago there was this headline from a
federalist think piece that when a bit viral for being
a big yike's almost mirroring the fascist framing of blood libel.

(04:04:51):
If you replace quote the transgenders with quote the Jews,
you'll see what I mean. The headline reads, quote the
transgender movement is not just intolerant, it's barbaric and violent
and it's coming for your children unquote, almost exclusively. Its

(04:05:12):
sources are Twitter accounts like libs of TikTok and a
few random turfs. And this is what we mean when
we talk about how things that seem like they should
just be insignificant Twitter bullshit actually do affect the world
off of social media. This is how entire conversations on

(04:05:33):
the validity of people's existence get formed and directed. Now,
the last section of the Federalist story is about the
Boston Children's Hospital, and if you listened to yesterday's episode
of It could happen here, you can guess the kind
of disinformation the article pedals, and many readers, many of
whom are not on Twitter, will take whatever it says

(04:05:55):
at face value. Same thing for Libs of TikTok stuff
being boosted on Fox News. The majority of the Federalist
think piece, though, is about Port Townsend and everything stemming
out of the y m c A incident, and the
whole article is as terrifying and fascistic as its headline.

(04:06:16):
I remember seeing the Federalist article headline and just being like, Oh,
here's another another piece doing the same thing, and I
didn't realize it was about like this specific incident until
much later and now. Yeah, it's the kind of it
kind of does play into the idea that like, we
know these things happen, you just don't expect them to
happen like right where you are, until it's until it's

(04:06:39):
until it's going on. Yeah, I've spent years screaming at
a wall telling people that this is coming, and AH
really hope that all of my preparation had been for
nothing and it's happening in my hometown now and getting
national media attention everything from you know, Ben Shapiro to
Info Wars to interviews on Tucker Facting the Trump presidency,

(04:07:03):
we were pretty much just gun nerds and UH had
started a small little UH gun club and we're inviting
our friends and our our local queer community up to
to learn about that. And it went really quickly from
that to people having more of an interest in the

(04:07:25):
medical suffering teaching specifically UH stopped the Bleed and UH
so after the Trump presidency was over, UM a lot
of people dropped off and just the majority of the
people that stuck around happened to be trans UM. But
we continued offering these classes. We were hosting ones out

(04:07:45):
here about the escalation, about stop the bleed, We're hosting
the os on stuff. UM. I think with UM they're
being such limited options for direct actions in the area,
a lot of people were kind of naturally tending towards
how can we better support our friends who live in

(04:08:06):
areas that are doing direct actions, And we started getting
a lot more interest in those kinds of support roles
than medical training to de escalation, even things like emergency
preparedness and food security. UM yeah UM. But because of that,
we've just spent the last few years running these just

(04:08:27):
a small group like wonderful people UM basically workshops on
all these different subjects and built somewhat of a connection
with the community, a bit of respect. So when this happened,
we actually had that to draw on and we could
really help enable people to organize themselves and create some

(04:08:48):
form of unity. So it's not small groups of people
coming in without a plan, but a large group of
people showing up all at once. UM that we're not
directly involved in any sort of lead a ship of
it's just naturally organically happened, UM. But have really spent
the last few years just feeling like Kok screaming at

(04:09:08):
a wall. Um until this happened in our small town
and completely unexpectedly, and now we're actually somewhat useful. Before
we close out, we do need to talk about the
upcoming anti trans rally planned for the afternoon of Saturday,
September three at Pope Marine Park. Organizers are explicitly tied

(04:09:34):
to the Proud Boys, and this rally is one of
the most clear examples of how Turf's self described feminists
or people just looking out for biological women's rights are
perfectly willing to ally with fascists if it means hurting
trans and queer people. The rally is billed as quote

(04:09:55):
a rally for decency, stand up against men in woman's
public pool locker rooms, and tell the city of Port
Townsend to let Julie swim unquote Yeah. The guy who
runs Common Sense Court Conservatives, a man named Robert Um.
I always mess up his name m Zurfling. I think
it is zurfing z r f I and g Um

(04:10:19):
who's associated in some way with the Proud Boys and
his associated with Roger Stone. He runs this blog called
Common Sense Conservative. He is organizing something that's being billed
as quote rally for decency unquote UM to be here
in Port Townsend on the Labor Day weekend Saturday, which
is the third and UM, it's unclear whether this is

(04:10:44):
going to be a large event or a small one.
They have not as of yesterday, pulled a permit for
that UM, and there's some questions about, you know, if
you're planning a large event, what what's that unfold? Like, Uh,
Poor Johnson is a tourist community and at this time
of year, we've got a lot of people in town
over Labor Day weekend. UM, so a large Proud Boy

(04:11:07):
rallies is kind of you know, it doesn't feel very comfortable.
It's kind of the first kind of big instant where
you've had these types of like you know, more kind
of experienced activists on like the anti trans side or
on you know, affiliate with Proud Boys or whatever kind
of come in and try to make this problem inside
the town. We've had little bits and pieces of stuff. Um,

(04:11:28):
the Proud Boys or something kind of connected had a
kind of truck drive through parade rally in sort of
just prior to the election. UM that kind of drove
through town and you know, with a bunch of big trucks,
and I think some people were open carrying, and it
was it was mostly a bunch of noise. UM. But

(04:11:48):
it hasn't This is a very liberal community, UM, and
it hasn't really hit us. This is also just for context.
This is a town of ten thousand people and and
it's the biggest town for you know, fifty miles in
any direction. So it's not you know, it isn't like
ten thousand people that's a suburb. This this is the
big town. This is the county seat. UM. So it's

(04:12:12):
We've been kind of insulated from a lot of things.
You know, we had, you know, we definitely had some
Black Lives Matter protests. We definitely had you know, we
had a big women's march in sen but we haven't
seen that kind of explosive clashing protests that you know,
Seattle or Portland have. The far right is planning to

(04:12:32):
mobilize people from around the Pacific Northwest, pulling from folks
in Oregon and Idaho, and are expecting anywhere between fifty
to a hundred people to show up on the anti
trans side, especially people from Proud Boy and three percenter
affiliated networks. One of the leaders of the Washington State

(04:12:53):
three PC of militia, Eric Road, has stated that he
will be present and is encouraging his fall blowers to
join him, saying on telegram, quote, I don't care if
five of you show up or fifty of you show up.
I will always march against men staring at girls as
young as eleven pulling off their swim trunks. It would

(04:13:15):
be pretty cool if people could cancel their plans and
show up to stand against child molesters. God said, if
you even look back, I'll turn you into a pillar
of salt. I wouldn't have looked back, but I never
failed to answer the call to something so simple as
don't stare at little girls when they take off their
clothes unquote. He then goes on to do some unhinged

(04:13:40):
rambling about federal observation and his commitment to God and country,
but he ends that post by saying, quote, when I
get threatened by Antifa, all matched Antifa unquote, which I
don't even know what that means. The grammar on that
is very confusing. Another telegram post from a three percenter

(04:14:02):
account reads quote calling all patriots, all proud boys, all
three percenters, all lone wolves, We roll out to Port
Townsend on September three. Hope to see you there. We
got proud boys and three pers rolling in from all
over unquote. The three percenter crew is also planning a

(04:14:23):
pre and post rally barbecue party on Friday and Saturday
night at Wildby Island, which sounds like an awful time.
That sounds like a horrible party. Our major concerns going
forward is if protesters keep coming out here, UM, that

(04:14:44):
the right wing will get more footage that they can
spin UM, bringing more attentions on this, bringing more harm
to the trans community across the country. UM. That the
right wing will attack someone locally around here. UM. Or
that all of the spun footage will inspire someone from
outside of the area or someone just sitting in the

(04:15:06):
woods who will come and pause serious harm to a
large group of our our local trans community. UM. And
our intent is to be there to have some sort
of response via medical or otherwise. Trying to think of
how to say this UM. I've lived here on and

(04:15:26):
off most of my life and had started UM working
towards transitioning, but due to the national political situation, specifically
when the former president temporarily got rid of trans protections

(04:15:49):
and medical canceled all that changed my medical records back
and have been presenting as a cis white dude since then,
specifically because of the amount of privilege that gives me
and having a trans partner who is working on their

(04:16:09):
transition in this town while this is happening is hitting
home to a level that I was completely unprepared for.
And the emotional impact that all of this has been
having on me, and the fact that it's not just
here but that this is getting national attention is something

(04:16:34):
I'm still trying to wrap my head around. And I'm
just really thankful for all of the networks that we've
built and all of the community, the local community, the
broader Washington community, all the people who have just shown
so much support for us, and it makes me feel
like there is there is a future where we can

(04:16:56):
just be left in peace. And that is the story
of what's been happening in Port Townsend over the course
of the past month and what could happen in the
next few days. I'm going to close this episode with
Clementine discussing the details of her go fund me. The
go fund me is sort of a general transition fund

(04:17:19):
for me. I originally made it specifically for two surgeries.
I low balled the amount greatly because I felt like
if I asked for too much, I wouldn't get anything.
And I still got nothing for a long time. At
some point when the articles were coming out, one of
the nationals used one of the national articles used my

(04:17:43):
go fund me as a source um to find out
more about me. But that got my go fund me
out there um and a lot of different people started
picking up on it and spreading it. I actually didn't
do much at all to to help that. I it
was never something on my mind. The go fund me.

(04:18:04):
It just happened and I looked at it one day
and I thought, that's strange. I have more donations than
the last time I checked, and it was pretty empowering
to see that, or or more hopeful um. But now now,
so I talked about the go fund me was originally

(04:18:25):
for two specific surgeries, and I lobald the amount UM.
I later revised. Actually, it took me a couple of
times in a lot of consideration because I didn't want
to feel like I was cheating the people that were
being gracious to me, which I'm not trying to be.

(04:18:45):
But yeah, uh, finding out that things cost more than
I thought. But you know, it's way better than it
was before. And to find it, I mean, I'm pretty
sure it's the first thing that comes up when you
look up my name now, which is better than Fox
News is video or or a daily Wire article or whatever.

(04:19:09):
The big thing that would pop up otherwise is but um, yeah,
it's called Clementine's Transition fund fund go fund me. You
can find the transition go fund me at go fund
me dot com slash s r s for Clem and
that link will be in the description, or you can

(04:19:31):
just search Clementine's Transition Fund on your search engine of choice.
See you on the other side. Hey, we'll be back
Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,

(04:19:52):
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool Zone meda dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,