May 27, 2022 • 20 mins
The conclusion of the saga of the Butterfly Center at the border. For now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
On the day he was inaugurated, Biden signed an executive
order rescinding Trump's emergency declaration at the southern border and
ending some use of the DoD funding Trump had relied
upon as an end run around accountability, but he didn't
as he promised he would stop building immediately.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
During the Biden Obama administration, Trump campaigned on build that wall.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Are you willing to tear that wall down?
Speaker 4 (00:30):
No?
Speaker 5 (00:31):
There will not be another foot of wall constructed on
my administration.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Number one.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Like so much else, Biden didn't live up to his
promises on the border. There have been some small victories
for basic decency, but Biden's record is deeply mixed. He's
reunited hundreds of children with their families that ended court
negotiations about a financial settlement for them. Migrant apprehensions climbed
to one point seven million, a record in fiscal year
(00:58):
twenty twenty one, but they also reflected an unusually high
rate of adults attempting to cross the border multiple times.
That's because Biden's administration defended Trump's use of Title forty two,
part of a seventy seven year old law called the
Public Health Service Act, which has been interpreted to allow
CBP to release migrants back into Mexico without booking them.
(01:20):
Often this means they turn right back around across again
in a more remote and often more deadly place. Biden
hasn't lived up to his promises on the wall either.
Mariana showed us a pile of wall sections, essentially giant
metal poles, just a little shorter than Trump wall. You
can be forgiven for thinking they're identical, but these, she explained,
(01:42):
were not technically wall.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
And you see the border wall that was being constructed there.
Some of it has the tall ballards with the anti
climb plate that's Trump.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
And then the short.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Calling this levy repair and guard rail. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I snapped moody black and white photos of the wall
from on top of a levee, as I have all
along the hundreds of miles of landscape that it cuts
through like an open wound. Robert went down to see
who made these new pieces of the Biden barrier, but
we didn't have much luck finding a label.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
The wall segments lay out in giant palettes surrounded by
construction debris and dirt. Repalet is labeled, and so are
all the shipping containers. But the wall materials themselves had
no clear maker's mark on them. As we walked back
along the dirt road, we asked Marianna about the video
that brought us here in the first place. If you
haven't seen it, it's a video of Kimberly Low, a
long odds MAGA congressional candidate from Virginia. Kimberly is an
(02:50):
interesting figure. She started out as a Sanders backer in
twenty sixteen and has radicalized a sense to such a
degree that most of her local MAGA people want nothing
to do with her. Some of them think she's some
kind of double agent. Audio from the incident makes it
clear why people might view Kimberly as unhinged.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
We are not here to cause any problems, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
No, you are here to promote your agenda, and your
agenda is not welcome here, thank you. So you're not
for keeping the illegals out, so that has all these
poor people in the minitarian crisis.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
That's what we're here. That's next trafficked and raped.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
That is not at all what this is about. We
have girl scouts spend the night here. That's how safe
it is.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That's good.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah, I have children in the car it's safe here anyway.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
We're not here to it now.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
You're you're here to make a show and to promote
your agenda.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So you can leave now. Thank you for leaving now,
thank you so much. But I'm sorry that you're okay
with children being rat.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
So I'm not okay with any of that, and your
bullshit is a big problem.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Okay, I'm going to go help the world. Boy, I
got a really nasty person.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
We'll let Marianna explain what happened.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
So I was sitting here, actually at the conference table,
and my son was at the front counter. He doesn't
work here, but he was covering for a staff member
who was outsick. And as I was saying, you hear
things that are like hmm, you know. So I was
on a conference call. I had my headphones in, but
(04:27):
my son came over and he gave me a note
and it said, you know, this woman says she's running
for Congress and has her secret Service agent with her,
and you know, I thought.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
That was strange.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
But then I, you know, I'm still on this call,
but I you know, I took my headphones out so
I could hear them. And the one woman, Michelle was
claiming to be secret Service.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And I mean I've had.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
People like betto or Work when he was a congressman
come visit Michelle Beckley, who's the state representative. I mean,
I've had I've had people come visit and they don't
have Secret service, you know. So I knew that that
was not true, that this woman was not secret service,
(05:16):
and the congressional rep I asked my son get her name,
and he did, and I just did, you know, literally
like one or two minute Internet search for her, and
it was immediately apparent that she was a MAGA candidate.
(05:36):
And my son said, they want us to open the
back seventy for them, but they don't want to pay admission.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
And on her.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Facebook page, I could see their Facebook live stream from
just like five minutes earlier where they had driven down
Sherbock to the gate where y'all have been and seeing,
you know, we have a great, big private property no
trespassing sign and then they up on the levee and
interacted with the Texas National Guard there. Her video ended
(06:06):
before that, but a reporter with stars and stripes I
know was on the levee with National Guard and interacted
with Kimberly and Michelle. So they trespassed on to our property.
Then they came here demanding that they be granted access
without paying admission and declared, just right up front, we
(06:28):
want to go see the river and the illegals crossing
on the rafts to the Butterfly Center.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The rafts they were talking about were referencing a doctored
image circulating around the right wing conspiracy web. We stood
at the dock in the image. On that afternoon, there
were no rafts. Marianna decided to try and talk the
two women down.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
So, you know, I.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Put my phone on record, carried it out there. I
got two business cards because it is my job to
be professional and these people when they come. So I
went out there and I said hello, and the rest
of it is history. As they say, you have that
audio or you know of of me saying I know
(07:13):
who you are and what you're up to. And I
knew then it was a setup for someone to come
here and say those things and be doing their own,
you know, sort of Project Veritas Facebook live stream Border
Adventure from Virginia. As they say, none of it smelled right,
(07:41):
you know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
That didn't work, so she asked them to leave.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
Well, it was when I told them they needed to
leave and if they weren't going to leave, you know,
we would call the police. And I told them, I
gestured to my son, just do it, you know, go
ahead and call the police.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Which he did, and they were like, no, no, we're leaving.
We're leaving.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
They went out the front doors, but then they stopped,
so I opened the door behind them, like, keep it moving, ladies,
you know you have to leave. And I was focused
on Michelle, who was on my left, who was again
saying she was secret Service.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
And laughing at her.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
When I turned and Kimberly was on this side of
me and had her phone up like this, so I
didn't know if she was taking photos or filming, but
we talked about how everybody now has their own triggers.
I do not want my photo taken. I do not
want anyone filming me. I don't want any of that
(08:38):
because of how Coal, Fashion, Bannon and their fake news
outlets and everything else have used my image and.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Have put a target on my back.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
So she's standing there going we're here at the Butterflies
Sanctuary or whatever she called it, and I'm with this
not nice lady, and I was like oh no, And
I just put my hand end up to block her
from photographing or filming me, or to swat it away.
And then I immediately turned back toward the doors to
(09:10):
retreat inside the building. But I didn't make it inside
the building. I was flat on my ass on the ground,
and I didn't know if Michelle had grabbed me from behind,
or if Kimberly had pushed me or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
But then my son busted out of the building.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
And was sort of over me, and I'm trying to
get up off the ground, and all this is caught
on the video camera from the building.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
In a previous video, the women had indicated that they
were armed, which is generally a safe assumption when MAGA
types show up accusing you of child trafficking. The situation
was rapidly growing more dangerous.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
My son.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Feared for my life.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
He thought Michelle was going to stomp my face or
my neck or my head.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
And she's a big girl.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
And and at that point Kimberly ran to her car.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, she fled to
her car where she had her three children waiting. Because
this place is so dangerous and lawless and everything she
brought her three children here for her opportunity to you know,
(10:23):
interact with cartel or whatever. I mean, it's just the
whole thing just gets more bizarre. And Michelle at that
point had taken my phone, and I was just telling her,
you're not leaving with my phone, giving my phone back,
while Kimberly is again live streaming from her car, yelling
(10:43):
at Michelle to come get in the car. Michelle did
walk to the car declare, she's not bothering me.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
About me.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
But my son had run to close the front gate
because he didn't want them. I mean, he had just
called nine one one. Unbeknownst to us, there was a
visitor in the parking lot who had also dialed nine
one one. And you guys have been here. There's police
on the corner. There's police, right, I mean, there's police everywhere.
So my son ran to close the gate one so
(11:17):
they couldn't leave with my phone. Two so they would
be here when the police got here. But then the
police didn't come. And as she fled the property, she's
filming herself and she's gunning it the car as she
races towards the gate, screaming, get the fuck out, of
my way, Get the fuck out of my way, and
(11:39):
then she swerves like this at my son, who had
to leap to the ground out of the way to
avoid being hit by her red range rover.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The center was full of visitors, some of them called
nine one one, but no one stepped into.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Help prior to this experience. Yes, I would have expected
our visitors.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Any decent human being to respond to a woman's screaming,
help help me, please, please help, but nobody did. Only
my son.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
At first, they didn't fully grasp what was happening, but
soon Marianna had worked out who her attacker was.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
And so I relayed all of that to my boss
and to the police, and you know, my boss was
kind of like, well, do whatever you want. If you
feel like you need to close.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Next weekend, then close next weekend. So we did.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
We closed that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then we
came back in the next Monday. And that's when we
saw and people started sending us the.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Videos that.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Berkwam and Hutcherson had filmed here presumably on Sunday. And
there's probably a lot more stuff out there that we
haven't seen.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
After leaving the Butterfly Center. One day, we went for
a walk towards some nearby trailer parks. They're full of
people who the locals call Winter Texans, people from the
colder parts of the US who spend a few months
in trailer homes on the border so they can wear
shorts in March and not pay expensive heating bills. We
bumped into some Winter Texans who run their way to
a bird sanctuary we just visited. They said they'd missed
(13:31):
their usual trips to the butterfly Center. Their friends in Minnesota,
they said, cann't believe that they would go down to
the border because.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
By the stuffio stuff you good.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
In Minnesota is not reality as to what's going on
in the border down here and what was it well,
and people don't understand, you know, why are you coming
down and really the ideas of of people attacked in there.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
You know, it's like the people.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Coming out of from your.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Brain right now.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
I mean that's the person.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
They can and we say, you know, we go on,
you drew, you go in.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
They do their best to help change perceptions, they say,
and then we try to.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
We kind of do as much as we can to
get factual information back home to people with questions and
stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
We worked maybe well, we haven't come the last few
years because they COVID, But four or five years ago
we were working with the rest of the center here
with tropic charities when there.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
Were so many women they were allowing people sho The
other thing at home is I don't think that people
realize because of the river, there's not a straight line exporder,
that you can't just build a wall.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Straight out, and that people live in their houses south
of the wall, you know, and people's farms are out
of the wall.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah, sometimes there's a wall.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Everywhere we go along the border, we see division. Locals
are losing places they love and people from a long
way away are performing a charade for personal and political gain.
But it's not all that cut and dried. One taco
shop we walk past has a special parking spot reserved
for DHS employees. A trailer park we drive by has
(15:27):
simblue line flags flying. Despite my best attempts at pulling
the clueless foreigner card. When we call them, they won't
tell me why they have the flags or what they mean.
Some of the National Guards troops we spoke to have
been out of work before they came down to the border.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Actually, I didn't have a job.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Oh okay, it gave me a good opportunity. And I'm
planning to say, you're like probably next to you.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Okay, wow, yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
You get active duty pay while you're somewhat it's like.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It's different because it's na.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Orders that Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Everyone on the border wants to feel safe, including Mariana.
But the reason the border is remarkable at all is
because so many people have to cross it. Some cross
for work, some cross for fun, some cross to change
their lives. But without people, the border doesn't have any significance.
For Mariana. Without people, she can't even enjoy the quiet,
(16:23):
calm and the sanctuary.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
She hopes.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
She says they can reopen soon.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I mean, honestly, I hope it doesn't last a whole
lot longer, because we all miss one another, We miss.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Being here.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
You know, really, of all the jobs that a person
can have in the world, one where you get to
interact with wildlife and garden and breathe fresh air and
you don't feel the rain on.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Your face, I mean it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
Yeah, and interact with people who were absolutely thrilled and fascinated,
especially the children, just delighted, gleeful about their interactions here.
We want to get back to that, but we have
to have more We have to have more help. Before
(17:19):
we can do that, we need professional guidance beyond what
we've received three years ago when the first wave of
community defense and mutual aid hit the ground. Here.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Marianna doesn't know, and she'll feel safe, but even with
the scent of poister reopen as we write this, she
isn't secure yet.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
You know, I feel like it's a cat and mouse thing,
and they're the cat and wear the mouse, and that
they are going to continue to come back again and
again until something really bad happens. I think it's almost
(18:02):
a challenge maybe at this point, from what I can
tell about their.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Psyche.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
You know, it goes right back to that winning. You know,
Steve Bannon's no loser. He's not used to losing, and
anything short of achieving his goal, whatever that may be,
is not winning.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what
you can do to help. If, like most Americans, you
live a long way from the southern border and I
never visited, it might seem strange. Take up and travel
there to meet a nice lady and talk about butterflies QAnon,
while you have to drive past soldiers and fatigued with
assault rifles to look at her pollinator gun. But Marianna
(18:51):
says that even the small acts of solidarity make a
huge difference.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
Even people just sending really nice email or letters is
so good. We'll probably have a wall of that when
we get back, because the flip side of that is
the hate mail, the ugly messages, the death threats, the
voicemails that are so horrible.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
So to hear from people that do support.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Us and stand with us and feel like what's happening
is horrible, People who write to say, you know, I
told my quilting circle about what's happening at the Butterfly Center, or.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
You know, I mean and we're going to make a
quilt for you, or you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
It helps, it really does, And.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
Then they can share our story because it's not just
about the Butterfly Center. It's about what's happening to our democracy.
It's about how these operations work to manipulate people with lies. Yes,
(20:00):
I don't want to call it conspiracy theories or misinformation or.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Any of that anymore.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
They're just lies, and people need to start to understand that.
Whether it's about COVID or the Trucker Convoys, or trans
Kids or the Butterfly Center, It could Happen here as
a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
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.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Thanks for listening,
On the day he was inaugurated, Biden signed an executive
order rescinding Trump's emergency declaration at the southern border and
ending some use of the DoD funding Trump had relied
upon as an end run around accountability, but he didn't
as he promised he would stop building immediately.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
During the Biden Obama administration, Trump campaigned on build that wall.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Are you willing to tear that wall down?
Speaker 4 (00:30):
No?
Speaker 5 (00:31):
There will not be another foot of wall constructed on
my administration.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Number one.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Like so much else, Biden didn't live up to his
promises on the border. There have been some small victories
for basic decency, but Biden's record is deeply mixed. He's
reunited hundreds of children with their families that ended court
negotiations about a financial settlement for them. Migrant apprehensions climbed
to one point seven million, a record in fiscal year
(00:58):
twenty twenty one, but they also reflected an unusually high
rate of adults attempting to cross the border multiple times.
That's because Biden's administration defended Trump's use of Title forty two,
part of a seventy seven year old law called the
Public Health Service Act, which has been interpreted to allow
CBP to release migrants back into Mexico without booking them.
(01:20):
Often this means they turn right back around across again
in a more remote and often more deadly place. Biden
hasn't lived up to his promises on the wall either.
Mariana showed us a pile of wall sections, essentially giant
metal poles, just a little shorter than Trump wall. You
can be forgiven for thinking they're identical, but these, she explained,
(01:42):
were not technically wall.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
And you see the border wall that was being constructed there.
Some of it has the tall ballards with the anti
climb plate that's Trump.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
And then the short.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Calling this levy repair and guard rail. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I snapped moody black and white photos of the wall
from on top of a levee, as I have all
along the hundreds of miles of landscape that it cuts
through like an open wound. Robert went down to see
who made these new pieces of the Biden barrier, but
we didn't have much luck finding a label.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
The wall segments lay out in giant palettes surrounded by
construction debris and dirt. Repalet is labeled, and so are
all the shipping containers. But the wall materials themselves had
no clear maker's mark on them. As we walked back
along the dirt road, we asked Marianna about the video
that brought us here in the first place. If you
haven't seen it, it's a video of Kimberly Low, a
long odds MAGA congressional candidate from Virginia. Kimberly is an
(02:50):
interesting figure. She started out as a Sanders backer in
twenty sixteen and has radicalized a sense to such a
degree that most of her local MAGA people want nothing
to do with her. Some of them think she's some
kind of double agent. Audio from the incident makes it
clear why people might view Kimberly as unhinged.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
We are not here to cause any problems, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
No, you are here to promote your agenda, and your
agenda is not welcome here, thank you. So you're not
for keeping the illegals out, so that has all these
poor people in the minitarian crisis.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
That's what we're here. That's next trafficked and raped.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
That is not at all what this is about. We
have girl scouts spend the night here. That's how safe
it is.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That's good.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah, I have children in the car it's safe here anyway.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
We're not here to it now.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
You're you're here to make a show and to promote
your agenda.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
So you can leave now. Thank you for leaving now,
thank you so much. But I'm sorry that you're okay
with children being rat.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
So I'm not okay with any of that, and your
bullshit is a big problem.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Okay, I'm going to go help the world. Boy, I
got a really nasty person.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
We'll let Marianna explain what happened.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
So I was sitting here, actually at the conference table,
and my son was at the front counter. He doesn't
work here, but he was covering for a staff member
who was outsick. And as I was saying, you hear
things that are like hmm, you know. So I was
on a conference call. I had my headphones in, but
(04:27):
my son came over and he gave me a note
and it said, you know, this woman says she's running
for Congress and has her secret Service agent with her,
and you know, I thought.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
That was strange.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
But then I, you know, I'm still on this call,
but I you know, I took my headphones out so
I could hear them. And the one woman, Michelle was
claiming to be secret Service.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And I mean I've had.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
People like betto or Work when he was a congressman
come visit Michelle Beckley, who's the state representative. I mean,
I've had I've had people come visit and they don't
have Secret service, you know. So I knew that that
was not true, that this woman was not secret service,
(05:16):
and the congressional rep I asked my son get her name,
and he did, and I just did, you know, literally
like one or two minute Internet search for her, and
it was immediately apparent that she was a MAGA candidate.
(05:36):
And my son said, they want us to open the
back seventy for them, but they don't want to pay admission.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
And on her.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Facebook page, I could see their Facebook live stream from
just like five minutes earlier where they had driven down
Sherbock to the gate where y'all have been and seeing,
you know, we have a great, big private property no
trespassing sign and then they up on the levee and
interacted with the Texas National Guard there. Her video ended
(06:06):
before that, but a reporter with stars and stripes I
know was on the levee with National Guard and interacted
with Kimberly and Michelle. So they trespassed on to our property.
Then they came here demanding that they be granted access
without paying admission and declared, just right up front, we
(06:28):
want to go see the river and the illegals crossing
on the rafts to the Butterfly Center.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The rafts they were talking about were referencing a doctored
image circulating around the right wing conspiracy web. We stood
at the dock in the image. On that afternoon, there
were no rafts. Marianna decided to try and talk the
two women down.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
So, you know, I.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Put my phone on record, carried it out there. I
got two business cards because it is my job to
be professional and these people when they come. So I
went out there and I said hello, and the rest
of it is history. As they say, you have that
audio or you know of of me saying I know
(07:13):
who you are and what you're up to. And I
knew then it was a setup for someone to come
here and say those things and be doing their own,
you know, sort of Project Veritas Facebook live stream Border
Adventure from Virginia. As they say, none of it smelled right,
(07:41):
you know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
That didn't work, so she asked them to leave.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
Well, it was when I told them they needed to
leave and if they weren't going to leave, you know,
we would call the police. And I told them, I
gestured to my son, just do it, you know, go
ahead and call the police.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Which he did, and they were like, no, no, we're leaving.
We're leaving.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
They went out the front doors, but then they stopped,
so I opened the door behind them, like, keep it moving, ladies,
you know you have to leave. And I was focused
on Michelle, who was on my left, who was again
saying she was secret Service.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
And laughing at her.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
When I turned and Kimberly was on this side of
me and had her phone up like this, so I
didn't know if she was taking photos or filming, but
we talked about how everybody now has their own triggers.
I do not want my photo taken. I do not
want anyone filming me. I don't want any of that
(08:38):
because of how Coal, Fashion, Bannon and their fake news
outlets and everything else have used my image and.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Have put a target on my back.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
So she's standing there going we're here at the Butterflies
Sanctuary or whatever she called it, and I'm with this
not nice lady, and I was like oh no, And
I just put my hand end up to block her
from photographing or filming me, or to swat it away.
And then I immediately turned back toward the doors to
(09:10):
retreat inside the building. But I didn't make it inside
the building. I was flat on my ass on the ground,
and I didn't know if Michelle had grabbed me from behind,
or if Kimberly had pushed me or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
But then my son busted out of the building.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
And was sort of over me, and I'm trying to
get up off the ground, and all this is caught
on the video camera from the building.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
In a previous video, the women had indicated that they
were armed, which is generally a safe assumption when MAGA
types show up accusing you of child trafficking. The situation
was rapidly growing more dangerous.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
My son.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Feared for my life.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
He thought Michelle was going to stomp my face or
my neck or my head.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
And she's a big girl.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
And and at that point Kimberly ran to her car.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, she fled to
her car where she had her three children waiting. Because
this place is so dangerous and lawless and everything she
brought her three children here for her opportunity to you know,
(10:23):
interact with cartel or whatever. I mean, it's just the
whole thing just gets more bizarre. And Michelle at that
point had taken my phone, and I was just telling her,
you're not leaving with my phone, giving my phone back,
while Kimberly is again live streaming from her car, yelling
(10:43):
at Michelle to come get in the car. Michelle did
walk to the car declare, she's not bothering me.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
About me.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
But my son had run to close the front gate
because he didn't want them. I mean, he had just
called nine one one. Unbeknownst to us, there was a
visitor in the parking lot who had also dialed nine
one one. And you guys have been here. There's police
on the corner. There's police, right, I mean, there's police everywhere.
So my son ran to close the gate one so
(11:17):
they couldn't leave with my phone. Two so they would
be here when the police got here. But then the
police didn't come. And as she fled the property, she's
filming herself and she's gunning it the car as she
races towards the gate, screaming, get the fuck out, of
my way, Get the fuck out of my way, and
(11:39):
then she swerves like this at my son, who had
to leap to the ground out of the way to
avoid being hit by her red range rover.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The center was full of visitors, some of them called
nine one one, but no one stepped into.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Help prior to this experience. Yes, I would have expected
our visitors.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Any decent human being to respond to a woman's screaming,
help help me, please, please help, but nobody did. Only
my son.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
At first, they didn't fully grasp what was happening, but
soon Marianna had worked out who her attacker was.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
And so I relayed all of that to my boss
and to the police, and you know, my boss was
kind of like, well, do whatever you want. If you
feel like you need to close.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Next weekend, then close next weekend. So we did.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
We closed that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then we
came back in the next Monday. And that's when we
saw and people started sending us the.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Videos that.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Berkwam and Hutcherson had filmed here presumably on Sunday. And
there's probably a lot more stuff out there that we
haven't seen.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
After leaving the Butterfly Center. One day, we went for
a walk towards some nearby trailer parks. They're full of
people who the locals call Winter Texans, people from the
colder parts of the US who spend a few months
in trailer homes on the border so they can wear
shorts in March and not pay expensive heating bills. We
bumped into some Winter Texans who run their way to
a bird sanctuary we just visited. They said they'd missed
(13:31):
their usual trips to the butterfly Center. Their friends in Minnesota,
they said, cann't believe that they would go down to
the border because.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
By the stuffio stuff you good.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
In Minnesota is not reality as to what's going on
in the border down here and what was it well,
and people don't understand, you know, why are you coming
down and really the ideas of of people attacked in there.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
You know, it's like the people.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Coming out of from your.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Brain right now.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
I mean that's the person.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
They can and we say, you know, we go on,
you drew, you go in.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
They do their best to help change perceptions, they say,
and then we try to.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
We kind of do as much as we can to
get factual information back home to people with questions and
stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
We worked maybe well, we haven't come the last few
years because they COVID, But four or five years ago
we were working with the rest of the center here
with tropic charities when there.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
Were so many women they were allowing people sho The
other thing at home is I don't think that people
realize because of the river, there's not a straight line exporder,
that you can't just build a wall.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Straight out, and that people live in their houses south
of the wall, you know, and people's farms are out
of the wall.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah, sometimes there's a wall.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Everywhere we go along the border, we see division. Locals
are losing places they love and people from a long
way away are performing a charade for personal and political gain.
But it's not all that cut and dried. One taco
shop we walk past has a special parking spot reserved
for DHS employees. A trailer park we drive by has
(15:27):
simblue line flags flying. Despite my best attempts at pulling
the clueless foreigner card. When we call them, they won't
tell me why they have the flags or what they mean.
Some of the National Guards troops we spoke to have
been out of work before they came down to the border.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Actually, I didn't have a job.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Oh okay, it gave me a good opportunity. And I'm
planning to say, you're like probably next to you.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Okay, wow, yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
You get active duty pay while you're somewhat it's like.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It's different because it's na.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Orders that Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Everyone on the border wants to feel safe, including Mariana.
But the reason the border is remarkable at all is
because so many people have to cross it. Some cross
for work, some cross for fun, some cross to change
their lives. But without people, the border doesn't have any significance.
For Mariana. Without people, she can't even enjoy the quiet,
(16:23):
calm and the sanctuary.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
She hopes.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
She says they can reopen soon.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I mean, honestly, I hope it doesn't last a whole
lot longer, because we all miss one another, We miss.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Being here.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
You know, really, of all the jobs that a person
can have in the world, one where you get to
interact with wildlife and garden and breathe fresh air and
you don't feel the rain on.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Your face, I mean it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 5 (16:56):
Yeah, and interact with people who were absolutely thrilled and fascinated,
especially the children, just delighted, gleeful about their interactions here.
We want to get back to that, but we have
to have more We have to have more help. Before
(17:19):
we can do that, we need professional guidance beyond what
we've received three years ago when the first wave of
community defense and mutual aid hit the ground. Here.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Marianna doesn't know, and she'll feel safe, but even with
the scent of poister reopen as we write this, she
isn't secure yet.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
You know, I feel like it's a cat and mouse thing,
and they're the cat and wear the mouse, and that
they are going to continue to come back again and
again until something really bad happens. I think it's almost
(18:02):
a challenge maybe at this point, from what I can
tell about their.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Psyche.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
You know, it goes right back to that winning. You know,
Steve Bannon's no loser. He's not used to losing, and
anything short of achieving his goal, whatever that may be,
is not winning.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what
you can do to help. If, like most Americans, you
live a long way from the southern border and I
never visited, it might seem strange. Take up and travel
there to meet a nice lady and talk about butterflies QAnon,
while you have to drive past soldiers and fatigued with
assault rifles to look at her pollinator gun. But Marianna
(18:51):
says that even the small acts of solidarity make a
huge difference.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
Even people just sending really nice email or letters is
so good. We'll probably have a wall of that when
we get back, because the flip side of that is
the hate mail, the ugly messages, the death threats, the
voicemails that are so horrible.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
So to hear from people that do support.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Us and stand with us and feel like what's happening
is horrible, People who write to say, you know, I
told my quilting circle about what's happening at the Butterfly Center, or.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
You know, I mean and we're going to make a
quilt for you, or you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
It helps, it really does, And.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
Then they can share our story because it's not just
about the Butterfly Center. It's about what's happening to our democracy.
It's about how these operations work to manipulate people with lies. Yes,
(20:00):
I don't want to call it conspiracy theories or misinformation or.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Any of that anymore.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
They're just lies, and people need to start to understand that.
Whether it's about COVID or the Trucker Convoys, or trans
Kids or the Butterfly Center, It could Happen here as
a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
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.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Thanks for listening,
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