December 15, 2022 • 31 mins
Gare and James talk about the background of some of the unicorns and their lives in the valley since the siege
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
The ranch in July two is a very different place
to the one I've visited in March of one. For
one thing, it's not so cold that my water bottle
freezes every night. But more notably, there's less tension in
the air, and no one's wearing a plate carrier. Not
everyone who is there for the seed stayed. Some of
them had only been visiting or they found other places
(00:29):
to live since then, but Penny, cat Jen and Jay
have been constant on the ranch since. Something I've struggled
with so far. It's giving a sense of just what
a welcoming and friendly place to tenaceous unicorn ranches. It's
a thing I haven't really stopped thinking about since I
first visited, and a thing that a lot of folks
have been looking for for a very long time, even
(00:52):
in the worst time to the siege, when Penny and
Jay barely slept when Alo was out running off Chad
with guns, or when Paul and I was sat up
all night absolutely destroying the Costco snack mileunge that Penny
had prepared for us. People always seem to be laughing
when we sat down to talk about the siege. We
started off by laughing. It's a difficult topic, and it
(01:13):
was a scary time. But I guess it's easier to
laugh about it a year later, when you know everyone's okay, Well,
let's go over everyone's legal names, date of births, such
a security number maybe you're four digit, or list of fears,
that sort of thing lots don't have. We don't want
(01:39):
this to be just a story about the worst week
the ranch ever had. We wanted to be a story
about a community that overcame adversity and is thriving. That
community extends way beyond the dome which Unicorn school home,
and even beyond the valley that they live in. But
we should start with that valley, because even at the
peak of the siege, it seems think most people were
(02:00):
on the Unicorn side, or at least they just wanted
to leave them alone. It was because of warnings from
other people in the valley they knew to patrol their
perimeter at night. Had they not been there, this might
be a very different story. A year later, everyone in
the valley values of Unicorns being there. During the few
(02:22):
days we spent there this summer, we visited neighbors for drinks,
We went into town for donuts, and coffee and dropped
in on Jordan's, the Tribune publisher his ranch. It's none
of the unicorns of pariahs sitting up in their house
surrounded by guns and afraid of what's coming next. They're
active members of the community and they're very welcome. There
was a time when this community wasn't as friendly to
(02:43):
queer people, but they've always been here. I spoke to
Penny about this last year while we drove to recycling
center in the next county to recycle Westliff cats, Like
we're doing the same thing y'all are doing, Like you
not pick up on that, not to mention also that
like there are queers here. We first wave like yeah,
(03:05):
it's like we're not breaking any fucking mold, like you
know what I mean, Like it's we're definitely loud. We're
not like we didn't like get cow Town and fucking
like bent over and like told to shut up our
whole life. So we're definitely like, fuck you were queer
and they don't like that, Like, yeah, that makes good
(03:26):
old boys uncomfortable and I get it. Also fuck you,
Like yeah, I know we're gonna be who we are,
living the way we want to, like if you can
hang to Trump flags and a Confederate flag from the
back of your truck and drive down Main Street screaming fucking, horrible,
hateful things and feel perfectly justified in doing that. I'm
(03:48):
gonna just be queer, Like, I'm gonna go ahead and
be as loud as I want to be. Like, obviously
you think it's okay to have personal expression. Yeah, like
right there, right, you really really think it's okay. So
I'm gonna go ahead and take you up on that.
They had to, like, I didn't know if it was
some kind of like don't ask, don't tell. Yeah, well
(04:10):
that's what they keep saying, does right. It's like, well,
you don't have to be in our face about it. Mother,
I'm just living. But I'm not like you know, I'm
not coming into your home and humping your couch like,
I'm just being alive. Like it can be easy, especially
if you only connect with the row places through the media,
to see cities as queer spaces and the countryside is
unfriendly to quit people. Well, politics and roll America can
(04:34):
be pretty bad. It's never really been true to that.
Quit people don't belong there. The unicorns pointed this out
historically if you know anything about history, Like country spaces
are queer fucking spaces, Like we're the ones out here
doing the actual work while fucking old fucking sis white
men just collecting money from doing shitty ranching that damages
(04:55):
the animals, damages the earth and fucking does not build
community or help anybody but themselves. For your integration into
country spaces is so fucking important because we bring heart
and empathy and all these things, uh that that capitalism
has stripped out of, uh these areas, Um, we bring
that back. And we've always fucking been here. Like fun off,
(05:17):
real cowboys were constantly fucking constantly, they fucked a lot
of each other, and they were mostly like black and
brown people. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't white. The West was
not white. And by the way, like we have said
this before and we'll say it again, nature is inherently queer.
And we fucking belong here, like we fucking belong wherever
(05:40):
the funk we go, Like that is a queer space.
There is no like hard line that country spaces are
forsis people fuck that, Like we belong here, We've always
been here, and we're really good at it. After the
Siege and its coverage. Everyone noticed that the unicorns quit
Icon's but they're only pototical, quick can mean, and they
(06:00):
have other folks over for Game ninth once a week.
They told us one story about Pride Month in Westcliffe
this year, and thankfully it didn't involve the a t F.
There was a really adorable During Pride Month, we went
to Family Dollar, which is like one of the few
stores in town, and I guess we were talking to
the manager who was checking us out, and uh and
(06:22):
he mentioned like, oh, yeah, like I have like I
have a gay and a trans working here, Like you know,
I love y'all, you know, And it was it was
very it was a little a little embarrassing, but but
the heart was there. It was very like But but
the point is, like, like even Family Dollar, in the
middle of nowhere West Cliff has two queer employees, Like,
(06:45):
you know, we're everywhere. Queer people had always been in
the valley, but it had become harder to share who
they were with their neighbors in recent decades. They never
stopped existing, but they stopped being safe. Yeah, we're connecting
with a lot of queer people that have lived here
for a long time. Yeah, it's the fact that a
(07:07):
community is so hostile that their queer community has to
be closeted does not mean that the queer community isn't here.
It just means that a lot of assholes are here.
Don't Ask, don't tell, an institutional version of closeting is
something that Penny is very familiar with. She was in
the army as a Calvary scout while the policy was
(07:27):
still in place. If you're not familiar, Don't Ask, Don't
Tell was a military policy that was in place nineteen
nine four until two thousand eleven. Under the policy, anyone
who wasn't straight was to remain in the closet, and
in theory they were protected from discrimination, but if they
came out as gay, or buy or trans or otherwise queer,
(07:47):
they could be discharged. Queer people were not even allowed
to talk about anything related to their queerness because doing so,
quote would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards
of morale, good order, and discipline and unit cohesion that
are the essence of military capability. Don't ask, don't tell?
What the fuck up? Like? I remember girlfriend when I
(08:10):
was in the military, um, and I definitely it was
like this is my best friend of Germany, and it
comes over. It sometimes spends the night because we're best
friend knows. I don't know. It was really really damaging.
It was just really really damaging to like not being
able to be yourself, um, but then also like be
(08:33):
able to leave posts and have a secret life where
you were yourself, you know, like and then when you
go out with the guys, like there's always those weird
moments where you like do run into other gay locals
that you have like known and like you've had deep
conversations with another context and just have to be like,
(08:54):
don't don't talk to me. Every won't know each other, um,
which is I'm sure damaging for them, you know, Like
that can't be fucking normal, Like, I don't know, that's weird.
And then on the from on top of that that
you're also a girl, like you know what I mean, Like,
so you're pretending to be a gay man who's straight
(09:15):
sometimes around certain people, um, but really you're a gay
you're a bisexual woman um pre surgery and with the
wrong um hormones. And so it just ends up being
a soup of just like compartmentalization to the point where
(09:38):
you just like forgetting people and then they show back
up and you're like, oh yeah, like you're from this
quadrant of my life, Like, I don't know. It's not healthy,
it doesn't do good things. Don't ask, don't tell had
pretty devastating consequences for the mental health of thousands of
service people. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that of
(09:59):
transp people have served in the military over twice the
rate of cis gender people, but until very recently, they
weren't even allowed to do so openly. Not being able
to be yourself with people that you're expected to risk
your life for isn't really conductive to good morale or
indeed quote the unit cohesion that is the essence of
(10:21):
military capability. There's no doubt that being familiar with guns,
something they gained from military experience, did help the unicorns,
but it's not the only thing that helped them. Sometimes,
especially on Twitter, where things seem to get reduced to
simple terms to fit into the discourse of the day,
the Tenacious Unicorn ranch story has been reduced to a
(10:43):
story about guns. Undoubtedly, guns are a part of the story,
but they would have been useless without community and solidarity.
That is something that the unicorns at the ranch have
taken to heart. A year later, they're doing mutual aid
work with the Laicode people on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
driving truckloads of donations to them every few months and
(11:06):
using their Internet presence to get donations. If we want
to look at this story as an example of anarchism
in action, and it's important to remember that if we
want a world where the state is not the only
entity with the ability to do violence, then we should
also want a world where it's not the only entity
responsible for caring for people with unmet material needs. Alongside
(11:28):
ranch work, Penny and j also make ends meet by
working construction jobs on local buildings. Something that George from
the Sentinel is very proud of and that other local
residents are beginning to regret, is that Custer County doesn't
have a building code. Here's the snippet of his conversation
with t L about that. Then, one example to you
(11:52):
is this county is so free. We don't even have
building codes. If you're going to live here, you can
build yourself shock with twas you know. That's uh, that's
the way it is here in my little berg in
Texas too. Do you really need them? Do you really need?
(12:12):
I mean, that's something I think should be attacked in
other ways, but go ahead. But that's one of the
things that make Custer County and one of the reasons
I moved to this one. Yeah, yeah, I mean fail
that goes to the basically, of course housing prices who
(12:33):
become unreachable for the middle class. The problem with this
conservative utopian vision is that it has resulted in a
lot of residents getting ripped off by less than upstanding
builders and now left with their homes falling apart. That's
where Penny and Jake can step in and make a
decent side income drywalling and finishing buildings that well often
(12:56):
are not very old, are already crumbling. Like we've always said, um,
this community is awesome, UM, and that has held true.
We uh, we do contracting work because there are no
UM building codes in Custer County as opposed to what
(13:17):
like the libertarian ideal of no building codes is. It
actually just means that there's a bunch of shoddy houses
that need repaired constantly, UM, and we have construction skills,
So we're in people's homes repairing them and doing work
for the actual people of the county daily. Um, we
(13:38):
frequent businesses up here because we're all about local support.
We build community, UM gleefully we build community like we
really enjoy it up here. The community now is a
(13:59):
little smaller when James first visited. Currently five people live
at the ranch full time, but they still have a
couple of trailers open to transfolks in need of a
safe place to stay or you know, visiting journalists looking
for a safe place to stay. Is how Jay first
came to the ranch. Like a lot of us, she
(14:19):
had a difficult time at the start of the pandemic.
The world was changing and it seemed in May of
that America was as well. For a lot of people
with less progressive parents, the BLM uprising presented a difficult
choice between family and community. Jay was one of those
people that had to face that choice. So basically, UM,
(14:44):
I was living in Dallas, work in retail, when living
in my car when the UM pandemic started, and so
I was furloughed. Luckily, Texas is actually some risingly good
about unemployment, so I you know, had that. Um it
(15:05):
was my parents are retired from the military around there,
and when the BLM uprisings happened. I participant, you know,
did some things, and basically my parents were like, you
either can stay here or and not be associated with
(15:26):
Antifa or you know, you you can't stay here if
you're associated with Antifa. And so I was like, okay,
I'm I guess I'm leaving then, which is fine. Um
there was a lot of tension there anyways. Uh it
wasn't good for me. So um I because of the unemployment.
(15:48):
I was like, okay, I, you know, for once, have
some resources. I can just kind of you know, I'm
already living in my car. I can just kind of
travel around for a bit. Why not? And I think
I just posted on Twitter like trans commune win you know,
as as probably most queer people have, and one of
(16:08):
my permaculture mutuals actually it was like, hey have you
heard of this place? It's not far from you and
posted a link to I think it was the Vice article. Yeah,
and uh I sent a message and with a bunch
of questions about it and making sure it wasn't you know,
like trans medicalists or anything like that, which is always
(16:29):
like what you want to see when somebody contacts the ranch,
think about coming up. I wait, prefer an in depth
breakdown and a lot of questions to I'll just show
up and figure it out. In case you're not familiar
with what a trans medicalist is, we'll let Paul ask
that question for you. And we're gonna play this not
to make Paul look bad. We're playing it for you
(16:51):
because I think it's important to see what kind of
space the ranch is. It's not one where you can't
get things wrong. It's one where you can ask if
you don't know something. And because everyone there had shown
that they were willing to risk life and limb for
one another, they assume that you're asking it because you
care about them and you want to know how to
say things in a way that won't hurt anyone. What
(17:13):
the fund is A trans medicalist someone who thinks that
primarily well, so this does not describe any of us,
but a trans medical list is someone who, uh first
and foremost thinks that all trans people should be on hormones,
all trans people should have surgery, all trans people should
strive towards YA. And they don't believe in yeah, and
(17:35):
they don't believe in anything but the gender binary as well. Like, basically,
if you don't want to transition directly from like a
male to a female or direct whatever, ma, like you're
not transon did they think they think those trans people
are making it worse for other trans people? Okay, so
(18:00):
like that was my next question, like our non binary Yeah,
they hate those people. They think they're faking. So, but
like do they say they're not trans and different? They
often call them trans trenders because it's like a popularity
contest they think. So yeah, okay, and those people suck.
Jay has found a home at the ranch now, and
(18:21):
just like everyone else there, she's a part of the
family which takes care of one another. It was actually
really funny because Jay showed up and the assumption I
thought was that just gonna stay for a little bit
and then you just didn't leave and it was great. Yeah,
it was very This is exactly what you know a
lot of queer people talk about online, which is, yeah, well,
(18:42):
when Jay brought a passion that we hadn't seen with
a lot of people that had come up. A lot
of people had come up with this like yeah, we'll
just see what it is or whatever. But Jay came
up with like knowledge about theory and like had studied
and was really like conscience. Just like a part of
this project UM, which was huge, I mean for me,
(19:04):
like part of what Jay has been able to help
with is organizing the moving of animals to different pastures.
James was at the ranch last year when they were
replacing their old fence and planning out their fields ready
as fence. UM and this back fence here as we
build the new kind of structure for the girls out
(19:27):
in matt Field. UM, when we're doing the fence heightening,
so it's not only UM security increase, but we're also
will fence off the driveway. And then the girls watched
the babies that mom will actually get access all the
way down the driveway and up this hill a little bit. Hey,
babies come on, UM and uh yeah, we'll just structure
(19:52):
our fields a little bit better and then the girls
will have two pastures, which is kind of into and
we can start actual perma culture or is it perm culture.
I mean it's regeneration in this context, it's like regenerative agriculture.
You know, you can also like perma culture. People do
it too, you know. Yeah, but by what we're doing
(20:14):
is that's both. Really we'll be doing both. Okay, Yeah,
so you can use either are experts. Okay, there's definitely
an industry, like, oh, regenerative agriculture is the new thing,
and but it's still capitalism and it's still exploitative. But
there are also people doing real regenerative Talking with Jay,
it's very evident just how passionate they are about these
(20:36):
topics and how things like biodiversity and regenerative and perma
culture processes tie into many aspects of the ranch itself.
The you know, capitalist project is homogenization and simplification. The
entire goal is things like mono crops. The entire goal
is you know, you know, the gender binary and controlling
(20:56):
the reproduction of labor, controlling sisue men and queer gender
expression is a big part of that. Like you can't
have those things and have a capitalist, white supremacist environment
where you can extract from the earth and from labor.
That is such a key component of this whole, like
(21:19):
you know, m Western project or whatever you want to
call it. And nature doesn't care. Nature is queer nature,
like nature is just exists. Fungi have thousands of sexes
and genders and that's fine. In fact that that's in fact,
like the part of the point of nature is biodiversity,
(21:39):
because that is the most effective method for actually iterating
and testing what works and sing and surviving and and
we're biomodal, by the way, not binary like. And you know,
if you need to look that up, you can go
ahead and do that. And in Perman culture in particular,
you know some one big problem with Perma culture is
(22:02):
there's a lot of white people who uh use the
practices and don't acknowledge that it all comes from indigenous cultures.
It all comes from indigenous life ways, and they make
a lot of money by not saying that not, you know,
so that's important to address. Uh. Perma culture has its
(22:22):
you know, value, But if you're not learning from indigenous
people and giving back to indigenous people, you're doing wrong.
Just because the immediate threat of armed men breaking into
(22:44):
the ranch has gone away, it doesn't mean that they
still don't have to be careful. In April one, after
the siege was over, the then sheriff Shannon Bayerley claimed
that one of his deputies went to the ran to
ask questions about a road traffic accident that one of
the ranchers had been involved in. He claimed the deputy
(23:07):
was met by armed and uncooperative ranchers who barred the
deputy from entering. Body cam video obtained by Reuter's thanks
to a Public Records Act request, shows nothing of the sorts.
The deputy met a single person, not visibly armed, who
was polite and courteous. In subsequent interviews, Byerly acknowledged that
(23:28):
he had been mistaken in his account, but we'll let
you hear Jay's account of the events that day. So,
my Chevy Blazer had been sitting over the winter. Um
it had a bad alternator, and I finally, like we
finally got you know, the money together, fixed to replace
the alternator. UM, looked it over, Everything seemed fine, um.
(23:50):
And I was going back to Texas to grab some
stuff and bring it back. UM, and went around a
h apparently black ice corner. And I'm pretty sure what
happened was my tire popped around Like I was only
going like thirty because you know, black there's ice. It's
(24:12):
still went. Yeah, it was. It was like four or
five o'clock in the morning or something like that, And
I'm pretty sure what happened was my tire popped and
then my blazer proceeded to tumble. Uh. You know, roll over, Yeah,
into the Luckily not a ditch or anything, just on
the left of the south left side of the road.
(24:34):
And so I called Penny and got picked up. Yeah,
we take care of it. Was it only was you
there no reason? And and then I was like, okay,
let me look at towing around the area. Let me
see and the towing the local towing company which is
just like a small family owned one guy basically. Um.
(24:59):
They on their Facebook like business page, they said they
opened it like nine or ten or something like that.
So I was like, okay, So I'm it's gonna be
on the side of the road until then. That's fine,
I'll call and I'm going to go to sleep until
then because I was just in a rollover. Actually probably
can cuss, like yeah, probably whiplashed at least. And then
(25:19):
so I was in my trailer and I suddenly in
my pj's and suddenly get a call from dispatch and
they're like, there's a deputy at your gate. Uh you know,
can you go blah blah blah. So I was like, okay,
take took a vehicle downs. I didn't. I didn't have
a pistol in the car or on me, and UM,
(25:42):
I basically just you know, as you do with cops,
as any sane human does, answer to the extent that
you're legally required to be polite, but also like I'm
not going to invite you on. I'm not gonna be
your friends. You don't need to be You're not my friend. Um,
but you answered office and he he he, you know,
he did the usual, like you know where you were
(26:04):
you drinking? And I was like, it's like five o'clock
in the morning. It's like six o'clock right now. Like
I was going back. I was driving back to Texas
to pick up stuff. I was starting a road trip.
That's not when you like get blitzed, like yeah, and
uh So he gave me his card and left and
(26:26):
I was like, okay, that's you know, that's fine. That
was weird, but and it was weird to me too
that like they apparently have some kind of relationship with
this towing guy where because they didn't even ask me, like, hey,
do you to this place? Um, they just towed it
before they even contacted me. And so either you bring
(26:50):
the title over to sign it over to the towing person,
or you pay him like four or five out here
to bring it back here. So that's what actual we happened.
But then for some reason, the local sheriff started telling
a very different account of what took place outside the
Unicorns driveway. So that was the that was the actual incident.
(27:15):
Then Byerley, the sheriff started getting interviewed, and in those
interviews he would say they there were six of them.
They met us at the gate, armed, were extremely hostile,
to the point where my my sheriff felt definitely felt
fear for his life and had to retreat back and
fear for his life. But he also said we don't
(27:38):
go there anymore. But he said on record, we don't
go there anymore because it's too scary. And so that
is setting us up to be killed. That is setting
us up to be marked by the place. It's like,
you know, this is Kiwie Farm, says this all the time,
This is trainy Waco. Yeah, and that is the setup
(27:59):
for it took become that and so because then now
all of his deputies are just ready to shoot us
on site because we're dangerous. A reporter from Reuters was
looking into the incident and heard the conflicting stories from
the sheriff and the unicorns, but she thought of an
easy fix to definitively know what happened. She just boyed
(28:19):
the body cam footage, which proved unequivocally that they were
lying there fucking ass off and we were telling the truth.
And Byerley retired this year. I don't know if well,
and she when she oh yet it, she went back,
oh god, yeah, And Byerley was like, can I remove
my comments from because she she asked she she like,
(28:41):
I don't know if it was a follow up, do
you have any additional comments? And his additional comments were
can you please remove my my previous statements from the record,
and she emphatically said no and then published it internationally.
This wasn't the first suspect incident regarding the local SHAREFF.
When Paul was at the ranch and the immediate aftermath
(29:03):
of the original siege, he witnessed cops hanging out with
a group of people who were actively harassing the ranch.
I was here for a week and at one point
they always like fifteen to twenty cars at hud Ranch.
Which it's up to you to release that location, right,
we just called ranch, but it's the ranch. You can
(29:25):
you can visit. You can see it from you can
you can see it from here, and um, there were
two sheriff's deputies sitting at the curb the entire time
as those cars pulled in there, and they were protecting
our harasses. Yeah. Well they were sitting there side by
side talking to each other while the cars pulled in there.
You probably said, I have said this before and I
just don't didn't remember. Yeah, I mean, it must spend
(29:46):
twenty of them. So the other end of that is
then when it got publicized, the sheriff then said, oh,
we don't, we don't know anything about it, Like they
didn't contact us. We didn't because of by the statements
made in the media about threats against the ranch. Were
just hanging out at the fascist well and they were
(30:07):
super stooty about it. They made it sound like, well,
ranch clearly doesn't want to be part of our community,
so I would help them that That seemed to be
the implication. Sheriff Buyerley, who spoke at a fifteen Oathkeepers rally,
has since resigned as sheriff, But for understandable reasons, the
Unicorns still don't dial when they feel in danger. Instead,
(30:30):
they reach out to Paul to Aldo and a network
of community members who helped with their security both online
and on the ground. They also routinely trained with firearms
and have added a much more serious fence to the
property than the one that the intruders climbed over. Right
after James and I's most recent visit this past summer,
(30:53):
Kiwi Farms started being in the news a lot more
due to a campaign attempting to take it down. But
as the hateful where I'm entered the discourse again, the
unicorns said started noticing cars driving past the ranch repeatedly,
something that Paul Aldo and James observed during the siege,
and now in just the past few weeks, trans people
(31:14):
have been killed in a nightclub just an hour away
from their house, just a few miles away from the
bar where we met them this past summer. To celebrate
at Jay's birthday tomorrow, we'll talk about what those threats
mean for the ranch and where they are now. It
(31:34):
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The ranch in July two is a very different place
to the one I've visited in March of one. For
one thing, it's not so cold that my water bottle
freezes every night. But more notably, there's less tension in
the air, and no one's wearing a plate carrier. Not
everyone who is there for the seed stayed. Some of
them had only been visiting or they found other places
(00:29):
to live since then, but Penny, cat Jen and Jay
have been constant on the ranch since. Something I've struggled
with so far. It's giving a sense of just what
a welcoming and friendly place to tenaceous unicorn ranches. It's
a thing I haven't really stopped thinking about since I
first visited, and a thing that a lot of folks
have been looking for for a very long time, even
(00:52):
in the worst time to the siege, when Penny and
Jay barely slept when Alo was out running off Chad
with guns, or when Paul and I was sat up
all night absolutely destroying the Costco snack mileunge that Penny
had prepared for us. People always seem to be laughing
when we sat down to talk about the siege. We
started off by laughing. It's a difficult topic, and it
(01:13):
was a scary time. But I guess it's easier to
laugh about it a year later, when you know everyone's okay, Well,
let's go over everyone's legal names, date of births, such
a security number maybe you're four digit, or list of fears,
that sort of thing lots don't have. We don't want
(01:39):
this to be just a story about the worst week
the ranch ever had. We wanted to be a story
about a community that overcame adversity and is thriving. That
community extends way beyond the dome which Unicorn school home,
and even beyond the valley that they live in. But
we should start with that valley, because even at the
peak of the siege, it seems think most people were
(02:00):
on the Unicorn side, or at least they just wanted
to leave them alone. It was because of warnings from
other people in the valley they knew to patrol their
perimeter at night. Had they not been there, this might
be a very different story. A year later, everyone in
the valley values of Unicorns being there. During the few
(02:22):
days we spent there this summer, we visited neighbors for drinks,
We went into town for donuts, and coffee and dropped
in on Jordan's, the Tribune publisher his ranch. It's none
of the unicorns of pariahs sitting up in their house
surrounded by guns and afraid of what's coming next. They're
active members of the community and they're very welcome. There
was a time when this community wasn't as friendly to
(02:43):
queer people, but they've always been here. I spoke to
Penny about this last year while we drove to recycling
center in the next county to recycle Westliff cats, Like
we're doing the same thing y'all are doing, Like you
not pick up on that, not to mention also that
like there are queers here. We first wave like yeah,
(03:05):
it's like we're not breaking any fucking mold, like you
know what I mean, Like it's we're definitely loud. We're
not like we didn't like get cow Town and fucking
like bent over and like told to shut up our
whole life. So we're definitely like, fuck you were queer
and they don't like that, Like, yeah, that makes good
(03:26):
old boys uncomfortable and I get it. Also fuck you,
Like yeah, I know we're gonna be who we are,
living the way we want to, like if you can
hang to Trump flags and a Confederate flag from the
back of your truck and drive down Main Street screaming fucking, horrible,
hateful things and feel perfectly justified in doing that. I'm
(03:48):
gonna just be queer, Like, I'm gonna go ahead and
be as loud as I want to be. Like, obviously
you think it's okay to have personal expression. Yeah, like
right there, right, you really really think it's okay. So
I'm gonna go ahead and take you up on that.
They had to, like, I didn't know if it was
some kind of like don't ask, don't tell. Yeah, well
(04:10):
that's what they keep saying, does right. It's like, well,
you don't have to be in our face about it. Mother,
I'm just living. But I'm not like you know, I'm
not coming into your home and humping your couch like,
I'm just being alive. Like it can be easy, especially
if you only connect with the row places through the media,
to see cities as queer spaces and the countryside is
unfriendly to quit people. Well, politics and roll America can
(04:34):
be pretty bad. It's never really been true to that.
Quit people don't belong there. The unicorns pointed this out
historically if you know anything about history, Like country spaces
are queer fucking spaces, Like we're the ones out here
doing the actual work while fucking old fucking sis white
men just collecting money from doing shitty ranching that damages
(04:55):
the animals, damages the earth and fucking does not build
community or help anybody but themselves. For your integration into
country spaces is so fucking important because we bring heart
and empathy and all these things, uh that that capitalism
has stripped out of, uh these areas, Um, we bring
that back. And we've always fucking been here. Like fun off,
(05:17):
real cowboys were constantly fucking constantly, they fucked a lot
of each other, and they were mostly like black and
brown people. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't white. The West was
not white. And by the way, like we have said
this before and we'll say it again, nature is inherently queer.
And we fucking belong here, like we fucking belong wherever
(05:40):
the funk we go, Like that is a queer space.
There is no like hard line that country spaces are
forsis people fuck that, Like we belong here, We've always
been here, and we're really good at it. After the
Siege and its coverage. Everyone noticed that the unicorns quit
Icon's but they're only pototical, quick can mean, and they
(06:00):
have other folks over for Game ninth once a week.
They told us one story about Pride Month in Westcliffe
this year, and thankfully it didn't involve the a t F.
There was a really adorable During Pride Month, we went
to Family Dollar, which is like one of the few
stores in town, and I guess we were talking to
the manager who was checking us out, and uh and
(06:22):
he mentioned like, oh, yeah, like I have like I
have a gay and a trans working here, Like you know,
I love y'all, you know, And it was it was
very it was a little a little embarrassing, but but
the heart was there. It was very like But but
the point is, like, like even Family Dollar, in the
middle of nowhere West Cliff has two queer employees, Like,
(06:45):
you know, we're everywhere. Queer people had always been in
the valley, but it had become harder to share who
they were with their neighbors in recent decades. They never
stopped existing, but they stopped being safe. Yeah, we're connecting
with a lot of queer people that have lived here
for a long time. Yeah, it's the fact that a
(07:07):
community is so hostile that their queer community has to
be closeted does not mean that the queer community isn't here.
It just means that a lot of assholes are here.
Don't Ask, don't tell, an institutional version of closeting is
something that Penny is very familiar with. She was in
the army as a Calvary scout while the policy was
(07:27):
still in place. If you're not familiar, Don't Ask, Don't
Tell was a military policy that was in place nineteen
nine four until two thousand eleven. Under the policy, anyone
who wasn't straight was to remain in the closet, and
in theory they were protected from discrimination, but if they
came out as gay, or buy or trans or otherwise queer,
(07:47):
they could be discharged. Queer people were not even allowed
to talk about anything related to their queerness because doing so,
quote would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards
of morale, good order, and discipline and unit cohesion that
are the essence of military capability. Don't ask, don't tell?
What the fuck up? Like? I remember girlfriend when I
(08:10):
was in the military, um, and I definitely it was
like this is my best friend of Germany, and it
comes over. It sometimes spends the night because we're best
friend knows. I don't know. It was really really damaging.
It was just really really damaging to like not being
able to be yourself, um, but then also like be
(08:33):
able to leave posts and have a secret life where
you were yourself, you know, like and then when you
go out with the guys, like there's always those weird
moments where you like do run into other gay locals
that you have like known and like you've had deep
conversations with another context and just have to be like,
(08:54):
don't don't talk to me. Every won't know each other, um,
which is I'm sure damaging for them, you know, Like
that can't be fucking normal, Like, I don't know, that's weird.
And then on the from on top of that that
you're also a girl, like you know what I mean, Like,
so you're pretending to be a gay man who's straight
(09:15):
sometimes around certain people, um, but really you're a gay
you're a bisexual woman um pre surgery and with the
wrong um hormones. And so it just ends up being
a soup of just like compartmentalization to the point where
(09:38):
you just like forgetting people and then they show back
up and you're like, oh yeah, like you're from this
quadrant of my life, Like, I don't know. It's not healthy,
it doesn't do good things. Don't ask, don't tell had
pretty devastating consequences for the mental health of thousands of
service people. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that of
(09:59):
transp people have served in the military over twice the
rate of cis gender people, but until very recently, they
weren't even allowed to do so openly. Not being able
to be yourself with people that you're expected to risk
your life for isn't really conductive to good morale or
indeed quote the unit cohesion that is the essence of
(10:21):
military capability. There's no doubt that being familiar with guns,
something they gained from military experience, did help the unicorns,
but it's not the only thing that helped them. Sometimes,
especially on Twitter, where things seem to get reduced to
simple terms to fit into the discourse of the day,
the Tenacious Unicorn ranch story has been reduced to a
(10:43):
story about guns. Undoubtedly, guns are a part of the story,
but they would have been useless without community and solidarity.
That is something that the unicorns at the ranch have
taken to heart. A year later, they're doing mutual aid
work with the Laicode people on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
driving truckloads of donations to them every few months and
(11:06):
using their Internet presence to get donations. If we want
to look at this story as an example of anarchism
in action, and it's important to remember that if we
want a world where the state is not the only
entity with the ability to do violence, then we should
also want a world where it's not the only entity
responsible for caring for people with unmet material needs. Alongside
(11:28):
ranch work, Penny and j also make ends meet by
working construction jobs on local buildings. Something that George from
the Sentinel is very proud of and that other local
residents are beginning to regret, is that Custer County doesn't
have a building code. Here's the snippet of his conversation
with t L about that. Then, one example to you
(11:52):
is this county is so free. We don't even have
building codes. If you're going to live here, you can
build yourself shock with twas you know. That's uh, that's
the way it is here in my little berg in
Texas too. Do you really need them? Do you really need?
(12:12):
I mean, that's something I think should be attacked in
other ways, but go ahead. But that's one of the
things that make Custer County and one of the reasons
I moved to this one. Yeah, yeah, I mean fail
that goes to the basically, of course housing prices who
(12:33):
become unreachable for the middle class. The problem with this
conservative utopian vision is that it has resulted in a
lot of residents getting ripped off by less than upstanding
builders and now left with their homes falling apart. That's
where Penny and Jake can step in and make a
decent side income drywalling and finishing buildings that well often
(12:56):
are not very old, are already crumbling. Like we've always said, um,
this community is awesome, UM, and that has held true.
We uh, we do contracting work because there are no
UM building codes in Custer County as opposed to what
(13:17):
like the libertarian ideal of no building codes is. It
actually just means that there's a bunch of shoddy houses
that need repaired constantly, UM, and we have construction skills,
So we're in people's homes repairing them and doing work
for the actual people of the county daily. Um, we
(13:38):
frequent businesses up here because we're all about local support.
We build community, UM gleefully we build community like we
really enjoy it up here. The community now is a
(13:59):
little smaller when James first visited. Currently five people live
at the ranch full time, but they still have a
couple of trailers open to transfolks in need of a
safe place to stay or you know, visiting journalists looking
for a safe place to stay. Is how Jay first
came to the ranch. Like a lot of us, she
(14:19):
had a difficult time at the start of the pandemic.
The world was changing and it seemed in May of
that America was as well. For a lot of people
with less progressive parents, the BLM uprising presented a difficult
choice between family and community. Jay was one of those
people that had to face that choice. So basically, UM,
(14:44):
I was living in Dallas, work in retail, when living
in my car when the UM pandemic started, and so
I was furloughed. Luckily, Texas is actually some risingly good
about unemployment, so I you know, had that. Um it
(15:05):
was my parents are retired from the military around there,
and when the BLM uprisings happened. I participant, you know,
did some things, and basically my parents were like, you
either can stay here or and not be associated with
(15:26):
Antifa or you know, you you can't stay here if
you're associated with Antifa. And so I was like, okay,
I'm I guess I'm leaving then, which is fine. Um
there was a lot of tension there anyways. Uh it
wasn't good for me. So um I because of the unemployment.
(15:48):
I was like, okay, I, you know, for once, have
some resources. I can just kind of you know, I'm
already living in my car. I can just kind of
travel around for a bit. Why not? And I think
I just posted on Twitter like trans commune win you know,
as as probably most queer people have, and one of
(16:08):
my permaculture mutuals actually it was like, hey have you
heard of this place? It's not far from you and
posted a link to I think it was the Vice article. Yeah,
and uh I sent a message and with a bunch
of questions about it and making sure it wasn't you know,
like trans medicalists or anything like that, which is always
(16:29):
like what you want to see when somebody contacts the ranch,
think about coming up. I wait, prefer an in depth
breakdown and a lot of questions to I'll just show
up and figure it out. In case you're not familiar
with what a trans medicalist is, we'll let Paul ask
that question for you. And we're gonna play this not
to make Paul look bad. We're playing it for you
(16:51):
because I think it's important to see what kind of
space the ranch is. It's not one where you can't
get things wrong. It's one where you can ask if
you don't know something. And because everyone there had shown
that they were willing to risk life and limb for
one another, they assume that you're asking it because you
care about them and you want to know how to
say things in a way that won't hurt anyone. What
(17:13):
the fund is A trans medicalist someone who thinks that
primarily well, so this does not describe any of us,
but a trans medical list is someone who, uh first
and foremost thinks that all trans people should be on hormones,
all trans people should have surgery, all trans people should
strive towards YA. And they don't believe in yeah, and
(17:35):
they don't believe in anything but the gender binary as well. Like, basically,
if you don't want to transition directly from like a
male to a female or direct whatever, ma, like you're
not transon did they think they think those trans people
are making it worse for other trans people? Okay, so
(18:00):
like that was my next question, like our non binary Yeah,
they hate those people. They think they're faking. So, but
like do they say they're not trans and different? They
often call them trans trenders because it's like a popularity
contest they think. So yeah, okay, and those people suck.
Jay has found a home at the ranch now, and
(18:21):
just like everyone else there, she's a part of the
family which takes care of one another. It was actually
really funny because Jay showed up and the assumption I
thought was that just gonna stay for a little bit
and then you just didn't leave and it was great. Yeah,
it was very This is exactly what you know a
lot of queer people talk about online, which is, yeah, well,
(18:42):
when Jay brought a passion that we hadn't seen with
a lot of people that had come up. A lot
of people had come up with this like yeah, we'll
just see what it is or whatever. But Jay came
up with like knowledge about theory and like had studied
and was really like conscience. Just like a part of
this project UM, which was huge, I mean for me,
(19:04):
like part of what Jay has been able to help
with is organizing the moving of animals to different pastures.
James was at the ranch last year when they were
replacing their old fence and planning out their fields ready
as fence. UM and this back fence here as we
build the new kind of structure for the girls out
(19:27):
in matt Field. UM, when we're doing the fence heightening,
so it's not only UM security increase, but we're also
will fence off the driveway. And then the girls watched
the babies that mom will actually get access all the
way down the driveway and up this hill a little bit. Hey,
babies come on, UM and uh yeah, we'll just structure
(19:52):
our fields a little bit better and then the girls
will have two pastures, which is kind of into and
we can start actual perma culture or is it perm culture.
I mean it's regeneration in this context, it's like regenerative agriculture.
You know, you can also like perma culture. People do
it too, you know. Yeah, but by what we're doing
(20:14):
is that's both. Really we'll be doing both. Okay, Yeah,
so you can use either are experts. Okay, there's definitely
an industry, like, oh, regenerative agriculture is the new thing,
and but it's still capitalism and it's still exploitative. But
there are also people doing real regenerative Talking with Jay,
it's very evident just how passionate they are about these
(20:36):
topics and how things like biodiversity and regenerative and perma
culture processes tie into many aspects of the ranch itself.
The you know, capitalist project is homogenization and simplification. The
entire goal is things like mono crops. The entire goal
is you know, you know, the gender binary and controlling
(20:56):
the reproduction of labor, controlling sisue men and queer gender
expression is a big part of that. Like you can't
have those things and have a capitalist, white supremacist environment
where you can extract from the earth and from labor.
That is such a key component of this whole, like
(21:19):
you know, m Western project or whatever you want to
call it. And nature doesn't care. Nature is queer nature,
like nature is just exists. Fungi have thousands of sexes
and genders and that's fine. In fact that that's in fact,
like the part of the point of nature is biodiversity,
(21:39):
because that is the most effective method for actually iterating
and testing what works and sing and surviving and and
we're biomodal, by the way, not binary like. And you know,
if you need to look that up, you can go
ahead and do that. And in Perman culture in particular,
you know some one big problem with Perma culture is
(22:02):
there's a lot of white people who uh use the
practices and don't acknowledge that it all comes from indigenous cultures.
It all comes from indigenous life ways, and they make
a lot of money by not saying that not, you know,
so that's important to address. Uh. Perma culture has its
(22:22):
you know, value, But if you're not learning from indigenous
people and giving back to indigenous people, you're doing wrong.
Just because the immediate threat of armed men breaking into
(22:44):
the ranch has gone away, it doesn't mean that they
still don't have to be careful. In April one, after
the siege was over, the then sheriff Shannon Bayerley claimed
that one of his deputies went to the ran to
ask questions about a road traffic accident that one of
the ranchers had been involved in. He claimed the deputy
(23:07):
was met by armed and uncooperative ranchers who barred the
deputy from entering. Body cam video obtained by Reuter's thanks
to a Public Records Act request, shows nothing of the sorts.
The deputy met a single person, not visibly armed, who
was polite and courteous. In subsequent interviews, Byerly acknowledged that
(23:28):
he had been mistaken in his account, but we'll let
you hear Jay's account of the events that day. So,
my Chevy Blazer had been sitting over the winter. Um
it had a bad alternator, and I finally, like we
finally got you know, the money together, fixed to replace
the alternator. UM, looked it over, Everything seemed fine, um.
(23:50):
And I was going back to Texas to grab some
stuff and bring it back. UM, and went around a
h apparently black ice corner. And I'm pretty sure what
happened was my tire popped around Like I was only
going like thirty because you know, black there's ice. It's
(24:12):
still went. Yeah, it was. It was like four or
five o'clock in the morning or something like that, And
I'm pretty sure what happened was my tire popped and
then my blazer proceeded to tumble. Uh. You know, roll over, Yeah,
into the Luckily not a ditch or anything, just on
the left of the south left side of the road.
(24:34):
And so I called Penny and got picked up. Yeah,
we take care of it. Was it only was you
there no reason? And and then I was like, okay,
let me look at towing around the area. Let me
see and the towing the local towing company which is
just like a small family owned one guy basically. Um.
(24:59):
They on their Facebook like business page, they said they
opened it like nine or ten or something like that.
So I was like, okay, So I'm it's gonna be
on the side of the road until then. That's fine,
I'll call and I'm going to go to sleep until
then because I was just in a rollover. Actually probably
can cuss, like yeah, probably whiplashed at least. And then
(25:19):
so I was in my trailer and I suddenly in
my pj's and suddenly get a call from dispatch and
they're like, there's a deputy at your gate. Uh you know,
can you go blah blah blah. So I was like, okay,
take took a vehicle downs. I didn't. I didn't have
a pistol in the car or on me, and UM,
(25:42):
I basically just you know, as you do with cops,
as any sane human does, answer to the extent that
you're legally required to be polite, but also like I'm
not going to invite you on. I'm not gonna be
your friends. You don't need to be You're not my friend. Um,
but you answered office and he he he, you know,
he did the usual, like you know where you were
(26:04):
you drinking? And I was like, it's like five o'clock
in the morning. It's like six o'clock right now. Like
I was going back. I was driving back to Texas
to pick up stuff. I was starting a road trip.
That's not when you like get blitzed, like yeah, and
uh So he gave me his card and left and
(26:26):
I was like, okay, that's you know, that's fine. That
was weird, but and it was weird to me too
that like they apparently have some kind of relationship with
this towing guy where because they didn't even ask me, like, hey,
do you to this place? Um, they just towed it
before they even contacted me. And so either you bring
(26:50):
the title over to sign it over to the towing person,
or you pay him like four or five out here
to bring it back here. So that's what actual we happened.
But then for some reason, the local sheriff started telling
a very different account of what took place outside the
Unicorns driveway. So that was the that was the actual incident.
(27:15):
Then Byerley, the sheriff started getting interviewed, and in those
interviews he would say they there were six of them.
They met us at the gate, armed, were extremely hostile,
to the point where my my sheriff felt definitely felt
fear for his life and had to retreat back and
fear for his life. But he also said we don't
(27:38):
go there anymore. But he said on record, we don't
go there anymore because it's too scary. And so that
is setting us up to be killed. That is setting
us up to be marked by the place. It's like,
you know, this is Kiwie Farm, says this all the time,
This is trainy Waco. Yeah, and that is the setup
(27:59):
for it took become that and so because then now
all of his deputies are just ready to shoot us
on site because we're dangerous. A reporter from Reuters was
looking into the incident and heard the conflicting stories from
the sheriff and the unicorns, but she thought of an
easy fix to definitively know what happened. She just boyed
(28:19):
the body cam footage, which proved unequivocally that they were
lying there fucking ass off and we were telling the truth.
And Byerley retired this year. I don't know if well,
and she when she oh yet it, she went back,
oh god, yeah, And Byerley was like, can I remove
my comments from because she she asked she she like,
(28:41):
I don't know if it was a follow up, do
you have any additional comments? And his additional comments were
can you please remove my my previous statements from the record,
and she emphatically said no and then published it internationally.
This wasn't the first suspect incident regarding the local SHAREFF.
When Paul was at the ranch and the immediate aftermath
(29:03):
of the original siege, he witnessed cops hanging out with
a group of people who were actively harassing the ranch.
I was here for a week and at one point
they always like fifteen to twenty cars at hud Ranch.
Which it's up to you to release that location, right,
we just called ranch, but it's the ranch. You can
(29:25):
you can visit. You can see it from you can
you can see it from here, and um, there were
two sheriff's deputies sitting at the curb the entire time
as those cars pulled in there, and they were protecting
our harasses. Yeah. Well they were sitting there side by
side talking to each other while the cars pulled in there.
You probably said, I have said this before and I
just don't didn't remember. Yeah, I mean, it must spend
(29:46):
twenty of them. So the other end of that is
then when it got publicized, the sheriff then said, oh,
we don't, we don't know anything about it, Like they
didn't contact us. We didn't because of by the statements
made in the media about threats against the ranch. Were
just hanging out at the fascist well and they were
(30:07):
super stooty about it. They made it sound like, well,
ranch clearly doesn't want to be part of our community,
so I would help them that That seemed to be
the implication. Sheriff Buyerley, who spoke at a fifteen Oathkeepers rally,
has since resigned as sheriff, But for understandable reasons, the
Unicorns still don't dial when they feel in danger. Instead,
(30:30):
they reach out to Paul to Aldo and a network
of community members who helped with their security both online
and on the ground. They also routinely trained with firearms
and have added a much more serious fence to the
property than the one that the intruders climbed over. Right
after James and I's most recent visit this past summer,
(30:53):
Kiwi Farms started being in the news a lot more
due to a campaign attempting to take it down. But
as the hateful where I'm entered the discourse again, the
unicorns said started noticing cars driving past the ranch repeatedly,
something that Paul Aldo and James observed during the siege,
and now in just the past few weeks, trans people
(31:14):
have been killed in a nightclub just an hour away
from their house, just a few miles away from the
bar where we met them this past summer. To celebrate
at Jay's birthday tomorrow, we'll talk about what those threats
mean for the ranch and where they are now. It
(31:34):
could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, 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 Media dot com
slash Sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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