May 2, 2023 • 21 mins
Robert sits down to talk about a successful protest against anti-trans bigot Matt Walsh. featuring a very successful has of combat marbles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, everybody, this is Robert Evans. Welcome to It Could
Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart, and occasionally
about how to stop things from falling apart. Today we're
doing one of those latter episodes. I'm happy to say
we've we've actually got kind of something that's that's overall
uplifting to talk about. If you are someone who pays
(00:25):
much attention to the right wing, and particularly to the
current right wing campaign against LGBT and most particularly the
transgender people, you are aware of a guy named Matt Walsh.
He is a you might call him a pundit at
the Daily Wire who has taken it upon himself to
become kind of the one of the central figures in
the present campaign against trans people to limit their rights
(00:49):
to transition, to you know, push laws that criminalize their
existing in public spaces. He's a real piece of shit,
one of the one of the worst people in the
country presently, and like all terrible peace people, he has
been going around in a series of speeches invited generally
by local student body republican organizations at universities. It's not
the only people who invite them to speak, but that's
(01:10):
what we're talking about today. Oliver Wyline is a local
community activist who showed up at one of these events
and who recorded what was happening the reaction to Matt
Walsh being invited to speak at a college in Iowa City.
And yeah, Oliver, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
First off, Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And yeah, I just kind of wanted you to start
with how did you become aware of what was happening
and decide, you know, to show up and do what
you did because I became aware of you just reading
your thread, which was a mix of you know, Twitter
posts on what was happening in some videos of what
had been happening on the ground.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
So I am a towney here in Iowa City. I'm
not a student, but I have you know, I'm very
close both physically and you know, just personally with lots
of activists on campus at Iowa City, lots of young activists,
particularly organizations like the y DSA. They have a couple
(02:10):
immigrants rights associations, some lgbt q i A associations and everything.
So when this was made public that the YAF the
Young Americans Foundation, that's what it stands for, right, I think.
But they announced that Matt Walsh was indeed going to
(02:35):
be speaking in April, and of course, you know, lots
of people just started sending me things like, wow, I
can't believe these motherfuckers are bringing Matt Walsh out of everybody,
even though it wasn't very surprising because they love to
have the yaf here, loves to bring people to speak
that are objectively terrible people. They just recently had al
(02:58):
Alan West.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh yeah, I'm sure you know all about.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Oh no, yeah he's yeah, yeah, playing the hits with
Alan Dubbs.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
So yeah, the reaction was, you know, just kind of
like a general we should do something about this, that
Matt Walsh has come to campus or is going to
come to campus. So you know, there was lots of
flying campaigns, lots of calls online. There is a petition
(03:30):
circulating trying to get the university to not allow Matt
Walsh on campus. But here in Iowa, the board of
regents is all just appointed by our Republican governor, Kim Reynolds,
so you know, there's no way that they would do that.
And yeah, so that's how everybody found out about it,
(03:53):
and you know, it was just a lot of the
YAF would put up flyers and then they would instantly
get torn down and they would cry about it. Yeah,
that was a lot of the build up to this event.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, that's how I knew. And one of the things,
I mean, the thing that because obviously there are different
right wing shitheads speaking in various places and protests against them,
you know, every day that go a variety of ways.
One of the reasons I was interested in what you
had to say and I think that this is a
worthwhile want to talk to people about is that I
think the Young America's Americans Foundation kids who invited him
(04:27):
wound up demoralized at the end of this. That was
my take on this. This is not an event that
seems to have gone well to them. So I want
you to walk through kind of what happened that night,
both in terms of what you saw from the folks
showing up to see Walsh and what you saw kind
of from the response to him.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, I would say it's a fair assumption that the
YAF people were demoralized after this.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So the protests.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
It was last Wednesday, the nineteenth, and the protest was
very you know, there was no leader It was very decentralized,
you know, just lots of people showing up, and instantly
when everybody showed up, like at four o'clock when the
documentary was showing before Matt Walsh was going to speak
his you know, shitty documentary What is a Woman showed beforehand.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
It was like a joyous occasion almost. People just were
trickling in on the park right across the street from
the IMU, and more and more people. There's hundreds of
people came, you know, not just students, but like people
from Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and you know, just
eastern Iowa in general that were just like, we do
not you know, we're feeling really bad that this absolute
(05:38):
fucking shithead is in our state right now. You know,
the air smells bad, so we you know. Yeah, So
it was it was very joyous. And then people were like, Okay,
the documentary is about to get out. And the way
this event was set up was the documentary was being
shown in a theater that's in the IMU, the Memorial Union,
(06:00):
a student hangout spot basically, and then all the people
that were in the documentary were going to then file
into the main lounge whereas where he was speaking. And
so when the documentary got let out, all the activists
or just the people that came to protest him were
just like, all right, we're going inside, you know, We're
(06:22):
not We're not gonna, you know, just stand out here.
You know, we're going to make sure that they know
every second that this is bullshit that you came to
see this guy speak, and especially in Iowa City, this
isn't going to fly, you know, without some type of resistance.
So everybody that lined up for the Matt Walsh speaking
(06:42):
event and who came out of the theater after watching
his documentary had to wait in line and be screamed
at by protesters for like an hour at least. And
it was so funny just these people like they arted
out at first, you know, for a few minutes being
like haha, look at all these triggered libs. But then
(07:05):
after like twenty minutes they were just kind of like
thousand yards steering, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, Yeah, that's really interesting to me because obviously, like
one of the particularly with the younger right right, you know,
I think there is sort of a dividing line both
in my head and in physical behavior between kind of
like older and maybe even less radical Republicans who are
(07:31):
really tied to this idea of the silent majority and
get a degree of emotional comfort from the idea that
most people do think like them, they just don't want
to talk about it. And then there's sort of not
an entirely separate, but certainly much more common attitude among
the younger right wing activists, people who were raised online
in places like four chan about the where a lot
(07:52):
of their focus is on the joy of triggering the left,
which they see as like controlling the culture to a
large degree. And so it's interesting to me, you know,
that's something that these people like to talk about a lot.
They like to at least portray themselves as sort of
above caring, but very few people are capable of like
(08:14):
just being screamed at by a crowd of people and
not feeling shitty after a while. That makes a lot
of sense to me.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, I mean it was definitely breaking through to a
lot of them, I could tell, And I even heard
some conversations amongst them, like very taken aback and like
in shock, you know, like voice shaking when talking about it,
just like why are they doing this? You know, I
mean like putting two and two together, Like it was
very fascinating to hear to eavesdrop on these conversations, and
(08:47):
it was a lot of that, and it was also well,
one thing that happened is I don't know if they
oversold tickets or just didn't track like how many people
were going to be there. But the people that showed
up to see Matt Walsh I would estimate about half
half of them were not able to go see him.
They were told they were keeping track of how many
(09:09):
people were going into the main lounge, and then just
randomly they were just like, all right, that's it. You know,
the cops there and the staff and Matt Walsh's private security,
which I will say there was more private security, or
there was more security there in general than when Mike
Pence spoke at the exact same place.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
At least obvious security with Pench.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
More obviously more obvious security.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, and you know they had bomb snipping dogs and everything.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Oh wow. Interesting. Do you know how full the actual
theater was.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
The YAF claims seven hundred.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
People, and what's capacity for them.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
I don't exactly know, but they said that seven hundred
people were able to see Matt Walsh. And then so
I would say more people came to see Matt Walsh,
if thousand or something, that's another number that the YAF
threw out there. But I would say there was at
least an equal amount of protesters there at its peak too.
(10:12):
And I will also say that there were people keeping
track of the cars leaving when they were able to leave,
and there was a considerable amount of out of state
plates and out of county plates. People traveled pretty far
to see Matt Wall's speak, is kind of and there
were people that showed up that, you know, the right
(10:32):
wing weirdos that I know that live in Des Moines,
which is like two hours away, and even some in
Omaha that came that I recognized personally. So yeah, people
came pretty far for this, and a bunch of those
people that came pretty far were not able to see
Matt Wall's speak and they were extremely pissed. And so
I was watching a lot of these people yell at
(10:53):
staff and trying to bargain with police officers, like come on,
we drove, like, let us in everything. The cops were
just not having it, and so the mood turned pretty angry.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
At that point.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I would say, I'm interested in sort of are you aware,
kind of like who was organizing the counter response and
how that was. People were like informed that there was
going to be something, because you know, it's not usually
(11:32):
a simple matter to get that folks many folks to
show up around one thousand for a counter protest.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, I think mainly there were multiple student orgs. I
think I named them a little bit earlier that you know,
there was the Graduates Union, a COGS union, a graduate students' union.
They put out a statement inviting you know, not only
their members to come, but everybody to come. They do
a lot of good work around the university. The why
(11:59):
d Essay, the Young Democratic Socialists of America they have
a chapter here and they were organizing. They did heavy
flying campaigns around town, not just campus, but around Iowa
City itself. And on top of that, I would say,
just sharing flyers and word of mouth, like on the
(12:19):
internet too. People know that Matt Walsh is kind of
public enemy number one when it comes to the LGBTQ community,
specifically the trans communities. So I think a lot of
people were just extremely pissed that he was here in
this town, in Iowa City, people call Iowa City a
(12:40):
gayer town than San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
People have referred to Iowa City as that.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I don't know if trial hiar it is. San Francisco
is a very gay town.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, well if you Iowa City people call it little
San Francisco for that reason.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's sweet. I don't think I've actually been to Iowa City.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Yeah, I mean, it is definitely the place in Iowa
where it is, you know, eastern Iowa. It's considered the
lib part of Iowa, but specifically Iowa City. People call
it the People's Republic of Iowa City because like the
right wingers think it's so left wing here, but in
reality it's our city council is run by like Pete
(13:18):
Boodh Judge supporters, but you know, to them, that's communism.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So I think just.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
The spirit of Iowa City in general, like everybody was
just pissed that this guy was coming to town, and
everybody found out one way or another, and yeah, people
showed up and showed out for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
When it comes to like kind of confrontations and stuff.
How would you describe sort of the uh, the general
mood towards that sort of behavior outside like, was this
the kind of thing where there was there uh action
sort of taken beyond like the yelling, or was it
kind of like mostly focused on demoralization and providing kind
(13:57):
of a visual show of how much resistance there is
to walshit his ideas well.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
After a lot of them were denied entry, I think
a lot of them were extremely pissed off. And at
that point I saw a bunch of old like, not
a bunch, I would say, a handful of almost scuffles
breaking out. The couple I saw were definitely the vaults
and instigated by Matt Walsh attendees, because you know, they
(14:27):
probably drove really far and weren't able to get in,
and now you got all these people with trans flags
screaming at you and calling you a Nazi and a
fascist and that you're a piece of shit, you know,
and so but there was a lot of people and
a lot of cops that were really, really really wanting
to make sure that that didn't happen. So after these
(14:50):
people weren't allowed in, they were being escorted towards the
back entrance where they came in. And so they all
went back towards the back entrance, and that is when
somebody or some people I didn't see it. I only
heard it dumped thousands and thousands of marbles by that exit.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, that was my favorite thing that I saw in
your thread. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So then the cops were like, well, shit, sorry, guys,
you can't come this way, so you have to go
back through the gauntlet of screaming protesters to get out.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I love that. Yeah, area denial, taking a yeah, area
denial and also kind of re routing them from an
area that's going to force them to confront the least
pleasant aspect of it. Yeah, that's very smart exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
And then even after that, lots of people were going
to like the way the imus set up. There is
a park by it, and there's also a parking garage
right across the street from it, and there's a one
way out of the parking garage, so there's one way
out if you parked in the parking garage. And towards
(15:52):
the end of his talk, and when everybody was filing
out of the Matt Walsh event, protesters had completely taken
over that street, So there was no way any of
these people were getting out. They just kind of like
came out in a giant like horde of people, and
then they slowly started realizing, you know, since all these
(16:12):
people were blocking the street and there is a pet
band in the middle of the street playing, you know, yeah,
they were starting to understand that, oh shit, we're not
gonna be able to leave.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So a lot of them were really mad about that,
and they.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Started going up to police officers and staff saying like,
you got to get these people out of here. I'm
trying to leave, you know, and the cops there was
only like outside, I would say, there was only like
seven police officers and there is no way, Like the
cops tried to get people to move out of the street.
They even put their hands on some people to try
to move them, but then forty more people would just
(16:47):
get in the street, and so they realized that that
wasn't going to happen. So after going through a gauntlet
of protesters and stepping over marbles, you know, these people
are then also not able to leave the event when
they want to. And I would say the road was
blocked probably for like an hour hour fifteen minutes until
(17:08):
the police were finally able to kind of like wedge
a way out for these people. And that's when one
confrontation that I know happened where one of the Matt
Walsh attendees started shining a strobe light in people's faces
and someone put a sign in front of it to
stop them from doing that, and then that person grabbed
(17:29):
the other person and there was kind of a fight
that happened. But that was the only physical confrontation that
I saw the entire night, besides cops putting their hands
on protesters trying to get them out of the street
at one point.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So would you say, we're kind of the main takeaways
from this for people? You know, this is going to
continue to be a thing. Folks are looking at participating
in or organizing responses to EVINCED like this in the future.
What were your kind of big takeaways? My takeaways is
that marbles obviously great idea. Marbles, Yes, marbles are a
great idea, you know, But also what I think is
(18:14):
kind of worth taking from that is that like it's
not enough. We often see this when like different tactics
go viral. Don't like do the cargo cult version of it? Right,
The reason why the marbles were effective wasn't just that
like it made an exit inaccessible. It's that because it
made it was in a situation where it rerouted people
back through that screaming gauntlet of counter protesters, which was demoralizing.
(18:35):
So strategy is also like worth taking into account when
you're adopting new tactics.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
And from how it seemed to me is that that
was intentional, that it was meant to block that exit,
so they had to go back through the screaming people
to get out.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
You know, marbles are funny, but it was deployed in
such a way where it was even more funny, Yeah,
and effective. A takeaway that I had was that, you know,
there's always going to be risk with this type of thing,
risk of you know, risk of anything really you know,
physical harm, emotional harm, people getting in trouble at school
(19:14):
or something. But I think these kids and a lot
of these attendees went there expecting to own the libs
and then walked away really demoralized, you know, And so
I think it was definitely worth it to put our
bodies on the line and everything and put ourselves on
the line to just send that message and also make
(19:38):
it clear that other people can do this too. And
Matt Walsh speaks, you know, just make it miserable. You know,
you don't even necessarily have to prevent him from speaking,
even though that would be pretty cool. But even though
he did speak, like, no one's talking about that, and
no one's talking about what he said. People are talking
about how all the Matt Walsh people got stranded, and
(19:59):
how there were more bulls that blocked their exit, and
how the pet band came and played to a cadence
of Buck Matt Walsh.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
You know, yeah, yeah, all right, was there anything else
you want to talk about before we roll out?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I'd say that about does it for me, unless you
have any more questions about specifics of the night.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, thank you for coming on, Oliver. Is there any
sort of plugs you've got for anything you want to
direct listeners towards before we end?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, there's an organization around here called Iowa Trans Mutual
Aid that does a lot of really really really good
work for people in the state of Iowa that currently
is experiencing, like so much of the country, really really
really bad anti trans legislations. So if you find it
in your heart or have the means to donate to
such an Iowa Trans Mutual Aid, I really, I really
(20:46):
can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Oliver, and a big
thank you to everybody who showed up that night in
Iowa City. That is it for us today. Everybody, have
a great rest of your day, all right, Thank you
so much. It Could Happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Thanks for listening.
Hey, everybody, this is Robert Evans. Welcome to It Could
Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart, and occasionally
about how to stop things from falling apart. Today we're
doing one of those latter episodes. I'm happy to say
we've we've actually got kind of something that's that's overall
uplifting to talk about. If you are someone who pays
(00:25):
much attention to the right wing, and particularly to the
current right wing campaign against LGBT and most particularly the
transgender people, you are aware of a guy named Matt Walsh.
He is a you might call him a pundit at
the Daily Wire who has taken it upon himself to
become kind of the one of the central figures in
the present campaign against trans people to limit their rights
(00:49):
to transition, to you know, push laws that criminalize their
existing in public spaces. He's a real piece of shit,
one of the one of the worst people in the
country presently, and like all terrible peace people, he has
been going around in a series of speeches invited generally
by local student body republican organizations at universities. It's not
the only people who invite them to speak, but that's
(01:10):
what we're talking about today. Oliver Wyline is a local
community activist who showed up at one of these events
and who recorded what was happening the reaction to Matt
Walsh being invited to speak at a college in Iowa City.
And yeah, Oliver, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
First off, Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And yeah, I just kind of wanted you to start
with how did you become aware of what was happening
and decide, you know, to show up and do what
you did because I became aware of you just reading
your thread, which was a mix of you know, Twitter
posts on what was happening in some videos of what
had been happening on the ground.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
So I am a towney here in Iowa City. I'm
not a student, but I have you know, I'm very
close both physically and you know, just personally with lots
of activists on campus at Iowa City, lots of young activists,
particularly organizations like the y DSA. They have a couple
(02:10):
immigrants rights associations, some lgbt q i A associations and everything.
So when this was made public that the YAF the
Young Americans Foundation, that's what it stands for, right, I think.
But they announced that Matt Walsh was indeed going to
(02:35):
be speaking in April, and of course, you know, lots
of people just started sending me things like, wow, I
can't believe these motherfuckers are bringing Matt Walsh out of everybody,
even though it wasn't very surprising because they love to
have the yaf here, loves to bring people to speak
that are objectively terrible people. They just recently had al
(02:58):
Alan West.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh yeah, I'm sure you know all about.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Oh no, yeah he's yeah, yeah, playing the hits with
Alan Dubbs.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
So yeah, the reaction was, you know, just kind of
like a general we should do something about this, that
Matt Walsh has come to campus or is going to
come to campus. So you know, there was lots of
flying campaigns, lots of calls online. There is a petition
(03:30):
circulating trying to get the university to not allow Matt
Walsh on campus. But here in Iowa, the board of
regents is all just appointed by our Republican governor, Kim Reynolds,
so you know, there's no way that they would do that.
And yeah, so that's how everybody found out about it,
(03:53):
and you know, it was just a lot of the
YAF would put up flyers and then they would instantly
get torn down and they would cry about it. Yeah,
that was a lot of the build up to this event.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, that's how I knew. And one of the things,
I mean, the thing that because obviously there are different
right wing shitheads speaking in various places and protests against them,
you know, every day that go a variety of ways.
One of the reasons I was interested in what you
had to say and I think that this is a
worthwhile want to talk to people about is that I
think the Young America's Americans Foundation kids who invited him
(04:27):
wound up demoralized at the end of this. That was
my take on this. This is not an event that
seems to have gone well to them. So I want
you to walk through kind of what happened that night,
both in terms of what you saw from the folks
showing up to see Walsh and what you saw kind
of from the response to him.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, I would say it's a fair assumption that the
YAF people were demoralized after this.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So the protests.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
It was last Wednesday, the nineteenth, and the protest was
very you know, there was no leader It was very decentralized,
you know, just lots of people showing up, and instantly
when everybody showed up, like at four o'clock when the
documentary was showing before Matt Walsh was going to speak
his you know, shitty documentary What is a Woman showed beforehand.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
It was like a joyous occasion almost. People just were
trickling in on the park right across the street from
the IMU, and more and more people. There's hundreds of
people came, you know, not just students, but like people
from Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and you know, just
eastern Iowa in general that were just like, we do
not you know, we're feeling really bad that this absolute
(05:38):
fucking shithead is in our state right now. You know,
the air smells bad, so we you know. Yeah, So
it was it was very joyous. And then people were like, Okay,
the documentary is about to get out. And the way
this event was set up was the documentary was being
shown in a theater that's in the IMU, the Memorial Union,
(06:00):
a student hangout spot basically, and then all the people
that were in the documentary were going to then file
into the main lounge whereas where he was speaking. And
so when the documentary got let out, all the activists
or just the people that came to protest him were
just like, all right, we're going inside, you know, We're
(06:22):
not We're not gonna, you know, just stand out here.
You know, we're going to make sure that they know
every second that this is bullshit that you came to
see this guy speak, and especially in Iowa City, this
isn't going to fly, you know, without some type of resistance.
So everybody that lined up for the Matt Walsh speaking
(06:42):
event and who came out of the theater after watching
his documentary had to wait in line and be screamed
at by protesters for like an hour at least. And
it was so funny just these people like they arted
out at first, you know, for a few minutes being
like haha, look at all these triggered libs. But then
(07:05):
after like twenty minutes they were just kind of like
thousand yards steering, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, Yeah, that's really interesting to me because obviously, like
one of the particularly with the younger right right, you know,
I think there is sort of a dividing line both
in my head and in physical behavior between kind of
like older and maybe even less radical Republicans who are
(07:31):
really tied to this idea of the silent majority and
get a degree of emotional comfort from the idea that
most people do think like them, they just don't want
to talk about it. And then there's sort of not
an entirely separate, but certainly much more common attitude among
the younger right wing activists, people who were raised online
in places like four chan about the where a lot
(07:52):
of their focus is on the joy of triggering the left,
which they see as like controlling the culture to a
large degree. And so it's interesting to me, you know,
that's something that these people like to talk about a lot.
They like to at least portray themselves as sort of
above caring, but very few people are capable of like
(08:14):
just being screamed at by a crowd of people and
not feeling shitty after a while. That makes a lot
of sense to me.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, I mean it was definitely breaking through to a
lot of them, I could tell, And I even heard
some conversations amongst them, like very taken aback and like
in shock, you know, like voice shaking when talking about it,
just like why are they doing this? You know, I
mean like putting two and two together, Like it was
very fascinating to hear to eavesdrop on these conversations, and
(08:47):
it was a lot of that, and it was also well,
one thing that happened is I don't know if they
oversold tickets or just didn't track like how many people
were going to be there. But the people that showed
up to see Matt Walsh I would estimate about half
half of them were not able to go see him.
They were told they were keeping track of how many
(09:09):
people were going into the main lounge, and then just
randomly they were just like, all right, that's it. You know,
the cops there and the staff and Matt Walsh's private security,
which I will say there was more private security, or
there was more security there in general than when Mike
Pence spoke at the exact same place.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
At least obvious security with Pench.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
More obviously more obvious security.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, and you know they had bomb snipping dogs and everything.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Oh wow. Interesting. Do you know how full the actual
theater was.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
The YAF claims seven hundred.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
People, and what's capacity for them.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
I don't exactly know, but they said that seven hundred
people were able to see Matt Walsh. And then so
I would say more people came to see Matt Walsh,
if thousand or something, that's another number that the YAF
threw out there. But I would say there was at
least an equal amount of protesters there at its peak too.
(10:12):
And I will also say that there were people keeping
track of the cars leaving when they were able to leave,
and there was a considerable amount of out of state
plates and out of county plates. People traveled pretty far
to see Matt Wall's speak, is kind of and there
were people that showed up that, you know, the right
(10:32):
wing weirdos that I know that live in Des Moines,
which is like two hours away, and even some in
Omaha that came that I recognized personally. So yeah, people
came pretty far for this, and a bunch of those
people that came pretty far were not able to see
Matt Wall's speak and they were extremely pissed. And so
I was watching a lot of these people yell at
(10:53):
staff and trying to bargain with police officers, like come on,
we drove, like, let us in everything. The cops were
just not having it, and so the mood turned pretty angry.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
At that point.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I would say, I'm interested in sort of are you aware,
kind of like who was organizing the counter response and
how that was. People were like informed that there was
going to be something, because you know, it's not usually
(11:32):
a simple matter to get that folks many folks to
show up around one thousand for a counter protest.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, I think mainly there were multiple student orgs. I
think I named them a little bit earlier that you know,
there was the Graduates Union, a COGS union, a graduate students' union.
They put out a statement inviting you know, not only
their members to come, but everybody to come. They do
a lot of good work around the university. The why
(11:59):
d Essay, the Young Democratic Socialists of America they have
a chapter here and they were organizing. They did heavy
flying campaigns around town, not just campus, but around Iowa
City itself. And on top of that, I would say,
just sharing flyers and word of mouth, like on the
(12:19):
internet too. People know that Matt Walsh is kind of
public enemy number one when it comes to the LGBTQ community,
specifically the trans communities. So I think a lot of
people were just extremely pissed that he was here in
this town, in Iowa City, people call Iowa City a
(12:40):
gayer town than San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
People have referred to Iowa City as that.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I don't know if trial hiar it is. San Francisco
is a very gay town.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, well if you Iowa City people call it little
San Francisco for that reason.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's sweet. I don't think I've actually been to Iowa City.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Yeah, I mean, it is definitely the place in Iowa
where it is, you know, eastern Iowa. It's considered the
lib part of Iowa, but specifically Iowa City. People call
it the People's Republic of Iowa City because like the
right wingers think it's so left wing here, but in
reality it's our city council is run by like Pete
(13:18):
Boodh Judge supporters, but you know, to them, that's communism.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So I think just.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
The spirit of Iowa City in general, like everybody was
just pissed that this guy was coming to town, and
everybody found out one way or another, and yeah, people
showed up and showed out for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
When it comes to like kind of confrontations and stuff.
How would you describe sort of the uh, the general
mood towards that sort of behavior outside like, was this
the kind of thing where there was there uh action
sort of taken beyond like the yelling, or was it
kind of like mostly focused on demoralization and providing kind
(13:57):
of a visual show of how much resistance there is
to walshit his ideas well.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
After a lot of them were denied entry, I think
a lot of them were extremely pissed off. And at
that point I saw a bunch of old like, not
a bunch, I would say, a handful of almost scuffles
breaking out. The couple I saw were definitely the vaults
and instigated by Matt Walsh attendees, because you know, they
(14:27):
probably drove really far and weren't able to get in,
and now you got all these people with trans flags
screaming at you and calling you a Nazi and a
fascist and that you're a piece of shit, you know,
and so but there was a lot of people and
a lot of cops that were really, really really wanting
to make sure that that didn't happen. So after these
(14:50):
people weren't allowed in, they were being escorted towards the
back entrance where they came in. And so they all
went back towards the back entrance, and that is when
somebody or some people I didn't see it. I only
heard it dumped thousands and thousands of marbles by that exit.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, that was my favorite thing that I saw in
your thread. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So then the cops were like, well, shit, sorry, guys,
you can't come this way, so you have to go
back through the gauntlet of screaming protesters to get out.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I love that. Yeah, area denial, taking a yeah, area
denial and also kind of re routing them from an
area that's going to force them to confront the least
pleasant aspect of it. Yeah, that's very smart exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
And then even after that, lots of people were going
to like the way the imus set up. There is
a park by it, and there's also a parking garage
right across the street from it, and there's a one
way out of the parking garage, so there's one way
out if you parked in the parking garage. And towards
(15:52):
the end of his talk, and when everybody was filing
out of the Matt Walsh event, protesters had completely taken
over that street, So there was no way any of
these people were getting out. They just kind of like
came out in a giant like horde of people, and
then they slowly started realizing, you know, since all these
(16:12):
people were blocking the street and there is a pet
band in the middle of the street playing, you know, yeah,
they were starting to understand that, oh shit, we're not
gonna be able to leave.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So a lot of them were really mad about that,
and they.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Started going up to police officers and staff saying like,
you got to get these people out of here. I'm
trying to leave, you know, and the cops there was
only like outside, I would say, there was only like
seven police officers and there is no way, Like the
cops tried to get people to move out of the street.
They even put their hands on some people to try
to move them, but then forty more people would just
(16:47):
get in the street, and so they realized that that
wasn't going to happen. So after going through a gauntlet
of protesters and stepping over marbles, you know, these people
are then also not able to leave the event when
they want to. And I would say the road was
blocked probably for like an hour hour fifteen minutes until
(17:08):
the police were finally able to kind of like wedge
a way out for these people. And that's when one
confrontation that I know happened where one of the Matt
Walsh attendees started shining a strobe light in people's faces
and someone put a sign in front of it to
stop them from doing that, and then that person grabbed
(17:29):
the other person and there was kind of a fight
that happened. But that was the only physical confrontation that
I saw the entire night, besides cops putting their hands
on protesters trying to get them out of the street
at one point.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So would you say, we're kind of the main takeaways
from this for people? You know, this is going to
continue to be a thing. Folks are looking at participating
in or organizing responses to EVINCED like this in the future.
What were your kind of big takeaways? My takeaways is
that marbles obviously great idea. Marbles, Yes, marbles are a
great idea, you know, But also what I think is
(18:14):
kind of worth taking from that is that like it's
not enough. We often see this when like different tactics
go viral. Don't like do the cargo cult version of it? Right,
The reason why the marbles were effective wasn't just that
like it made an exit inaccessible. It's that because it
made it was in a situation where it rerouted people
back through that screaming gauntlet of counter protesters, which was demoralizing.
(18:35):
So strategy is also like worth taking into account when
you're adopting new tactics.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
And from how it seemed to me is that that
was intentional, that it was meant to block that exit,
so they had to go back through the screaming people
to get out.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
You know, marbles are funny, but it was deployed in
such a way where it was even more funny, Yeah,
and effective. A takeaway that I had was that, you know,
there's always going to be risk with this type of thing,
risk of you know, risk of anything really you know,
physical harm, emotional harm, people getting in trouble at school
(19:14):
or something. But I think these kids and a lot
of these attendees went there expecting to own the libs
and then walked away really demoralized, you know, And so
I think it was definitely worth it to put our
bodies on the line and everything and put ourselves on
the line to just send that message and also make
(19:38):
it clear that other people can do this too. And
Matt Walsh speaks, you know, just make it miserable. You know,
you don't even necessarily have to prevent him from speaking,
even though that would be pretty cool. But even though
he did speak, like, no one's talking about that, and
no one's talking about what he said. People are talking
about how all the Matt Walsh people got stranded, and
(19:59):
how there were more bulls that blocked their exit, and
how the pet band came and played to a cadence
of Buck Matt Walsh.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
You know, yeah, yeah, all right, was there anything else
you want to talk about before we roll out?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I'd say that about does it for me, unless you
have any more questions about specifics of the night.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, thank you for coming on, Oliver. Is there any
sort of plugs you've got for anything you want to
direct listeners towards before we end?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, there's an organization around here called Iowa Trans Mutual
Aid that does a lot of really really really good
work for people in the state of Iowa that currently
is experiencing, like so much of the country, really really
really bad anti trans legislations. So if you find it
in your heart or have the means to donate to
such an Iowa Trans Mutual Aid, I really, I really
(20:46):
can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Oliver, and a big
thank you to everybody who showed up that night in
Iowa City. That is it for us today. Everybody, have
a great rest of your day, all right, Thank you
so much. It Could Happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Thanks for listening.
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