August 12, 2026 • 31 mins
Hour 3- Monks and Merrill talk to Fraidy Reiss, Founder of at Last Pro Bill about overturning legal child marriage. PLUS PETA will be using the Boyle Heights incident as a promotion for why you shouldn't eat meat. AND Lineage has found no widespread contamination from the Lineage warehouse fire. It's all on KFIAM-640.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Monks and Meryl hosted by Michael Monks and
Chris Merrill.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Monks and Merrill. Fun demand, It's Monks and Meryl.
Can if I am six forty more stimulating talk and
if you haven't done it yet, please subscribe to the
podcast at that follow button on the iHeartRadio Apple follow
us on the social media's as well at Monks and
Merrill at Monks and Meryl. I bring this up because
I was reading an article. Are you familiar with Courtney Stotten?
I think we talked about this in the year a
(00:28):
week or two ago. Courtney Stodden is a young girl
who married an old man. Yeah, she married the guy
from the Green Mile, Remember the creepy like the warden's
nephew that was like Dead May in Dead May in
a Walkie had. That actor was fifty one. She was sixteen.
They got married and people went, Okay, well this is creepy.
(00:50):
And then she was involved in some other some other
things before she'd even turned eighteen, and people went, this
is a child. They went, yeah, but she's emancipated because
she got married, so it's totally okay. There's a push
in California to try to stop people under the age
of eight team from getting married. Freddy Ross is joining
us right now. She's the founder of Unchained at Last,
and Freddy, I mean, the obvious question is why is
(01:11):
it taking so long for California to put age minimums
on getting married? I mean, most every state has these
at this point, don't they.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Actually? So far, seventeen states have bandchild marriage, but thirty
three states still allow marriage at some point before the
age of eighteen. California's laws are especially egregious, among the
worst on the planet. I like to say, because the
marriage age in California is a shocking Do you want
to guess?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Uh? No, Okay, yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You know what embarrassed yourself here? You probably would not
You probably would not have guessed the marriage age is
zero in California.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, crapy, that's crazy. Well how does it work then?
I mean, if you're a child and there is an
adult who wants to marry you, and for some reason,
that child's I mean, that child's parents have to get involved, right,
I mean they have to consent to this.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yes, So one parent does not even need to be
the custodial parent, does not even need to notify the
other parent has to consent, and a court has to
approve it. If there's no parent willing or able to approve,
a court can do this without a parent involved. But
what's really important to note is that it's very rare
that it's a stranger grabbing a kid off the street
(02:24):
and forcing them to marry. It's almost always that parent
who actually is facilitating this or playing a crucial role
in facilitating it. So the idea that a parent consents,
unfortunately provides no protective value for that child.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Freddi Ross is the founder of Unchained at Last, and
she said for this bill, it's an Assembly bill that
would close the exception, would prohibit anyone under the age
of eighteen from getting married or entering into the domestic partnership.
This is relatively rare, though, Is it not that this
happening a lot and we just don't know about it?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Unfortunately, I wish I could say this is happening rarely.
But it's hard to get really good data in California
because California not only is behind the rest of the
country and the world on its marriage age laws, it's
also behind the rest of the country in terms of
tracking age at marriage. But we know across the United States,
hundreds of thousands of children are being entered into marriage,
(03:17):
mostly girls wed to adult men, and in California, according
to census data, it's more than nine thousand minors every
year entered into marriage.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Okay, who are they marrying though? I mean, we shared
a pretty strange case involving the actor here, fifty one
years old married a sixteen year old. That'll definitely get
some headlines. Are we talking about seventeen year olds who
are marrying twenty four year olds? And it's a little
bit I guess easier to digest, even though it's probably
not a great decision.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So, you know, the average spousal age difference across the
United States is a little over four years, so it's
mostly girls age sixteen or seventeen wed to adult men
age on or you know, in their early twenties. And
while that does seem easier to digest than Courtney's thought
in situation, which is so obviously on its face heartbreaking,
(04:08):
that should never happen. A fifty one year old should
never marry a sixteen year old. I'm going to put
out there that it's just as heartbreaking when in nineteen
year old marries a seventeen year old. So a couple
of things on that. First of all, I was forced
to marry someone three years older than I, And I
can tell you being raped repeatedly by someone close in
age to you still pretty sucky. It still is a
(04:32):
terrible situation to be in day after day for the
rest of your life. But also, there's a vast difference
even between a seventeen year old just journey eighteen next
week and an eighteen year old. And it's not about
maturity and it's not about how many years difference. The
difference there is the legal capacity. You don't have the
rights of adulthood until you turn eighteen, and the rights
(04:54):
of adults that are crucial to navigate a contract of
series as marriage. You need the right to leave home,
get into a methic, violence shelter, get help from an advocate,
retain an attorney, bring a legal action. When you have
a couple where one has those rights and one does not,
that's a significant power imbalance that is going to create problems.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Freddy Ross is the founder of Unchained at Last, and Freddy,
obviously you've perked up an awful lot of years when
you talked about being forced into the marriage that you
were in and then being raped repeatedly, which I'm so
sorry that that's part of your story. It's horrific. How
much how much of the issue that we're talking about
right now comes back to the other word, that ease
when you said you were forced into it? How much
of this is a parent arranging something and then making
(05:33):
their child do it, And how much of this is say,
a sixteen year old girl who's screaming, daddy, daddy, I
love him, I love him, I love him kind of nonsense.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
That's a great question, And again that's an area we
just don't have data because there's no place on your
marriage certificate, marriage license application to put do you want this?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Do you not?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Probably should be, by the way, but separate discussion. But
what I will tell you is that globally, all marriage
before age eighteen, even if the child says yes, is
considered forced marriage. For the simple reason of what I
was saying before, you don't have the basic rights of
adulthood before the age of eighteen. You can't even open
(06:12):
the front door and leave home if your parents are
planning an unwanted wedding for you. Leaving home before age eighteen,
and California is a status offense. You'll be taken into
police custody and taken back home. You can't get into
domestic violence shelter, can't retain an attorney, etcetera, etcetera. And therefore,
because you don't have the rights that you need to
say no to marriage, it is understood that you cannot
(06:34):
give full, free consent to marriage, and the United Nations
considers all marriage before age eighteen to be forced, even
if a girl is saying, daddy, daddy.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I want this pretty ross. The founder of Unchained at Last, Freddy,
thank you so much for sharing the story. I want
to continue to follow the story here, and I hope
that you'll be able to join us again in the future,
because I'm both fascinated and disgusted by what this is,
and I have this awful feeling that California is just
not going to get their act together and do the
(07:02):
right thing. It seems to take them forever to fix
loopholes like this that ought to be simple to fix.
So I hope we have a chance to talk with
you again in the future.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, you know what, if it makes you feel any better,
it's been nine years that we've been fighting this in California.
I'm actually joining you from the state Capitol where I'm
here talking to legislators. The bill this year finally has
gotten is making progress. It's gotten out of two committees
for the first time. The Senate is expected to vote
on it on Monday. So I so hope you're wrong,
(07:32):
and I will not hold it against you. I'll not
see when I told you so well to celebrate together.
I hope this is finally the year of the California
and child marriage.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I hope you're right that I'm wrong too, and let's
toast together. I'd be happy to you called me and
you say we did it. We did it, thank God,
and we'll put you right back on the air right
that minute.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
All right, Okay, I'm going to hold you to that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Okay, I love it. Thank you. Somebody, Freddie Ross. Not
everybody is in favor of this bill, which means some
people think children have the right to marry an adult.
We'll get into that next. As Monks and Meryl continues.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
You're listening to Monks and Meryll on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Sixporting more stimulating talk. Thanks for being with us. We're
talking about child marriage, which is apparently far easier than
you might suspect. In California. The minimum age for marriage
in the state of California is there isn't worth. Yeah,
that's it. You're born. You can be married off. Crazy.
It is crazy, especially Okay, go ahead, Gay.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Monks and Meryll Brian from Palmdale, Calm In regards to
this child marriage thing, here's the thing is people are
conflating you know, fifty and sixteen year olds getting married
with you know, seventeen and eighteen year olds getting married
like my parents were, you know, and they've been married
for sixty years.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I think there are certain things we.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
Expect parents to be parents and approve and guide accordingly.
It's no different than joining the military at seventeen, which
is what I did.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think Brian makes a really good point. I would
like to see some changes to the law. And this
is why I'm glad the last guest that we had,
who was a survivor of a child bride situation, she
did at the very end of our interview though, talk
about how let's say that you're seventeen and you don't
want to get married. Let's say you want to back
out of it, and your parents say no, no, no,
you are You've already come this far. You have to
(09:19):
you're you legally can't run away. You legally can't back
out of the man. You don't have the legal means
to stop that wedding from happening. You once you're committed
to it, it's somebody else's choice. And then once you're married.
This is the twisty thing. Once you're married, you're an
emancipated minor. Yeah, so you don't have the right to
say no until after you say I do, and then
(09:42):
you could say no, I don't want to that. That's
where I think, certainly to Brian's point, really good point too.
That was why we asked. You know, we're talking about
sixteen year olds marrying nineteen year olds, which again too early,
too young. I don't want to see my kid getting
married at sixteen. But it's a whole lot different than
a sixteen year old marrying a fifty one year old,
because that's just child predation, right, Yeah, I mean, if
(10:05):
you're sixteen and you're nineteen, you've got access to different things.
Even though it's a short it's a small age difference
that in ten years won't matter at all at all.
But and that specific age kind of does you know
you're nineteen, you're well, your brains all developed. Well, they
say twenty five is when you're brain fully developed. Okay,
but you don't have the wherewithal to make it. You're nineteen,
(10:27):
you're an adult. Sixteen, you're not quite an adult yet, right,
And so there is you know, there would be some
concerns about that relationship if you're the parent of the
sixteen year old or the parent of the nineteen year old. Well,
but not all parents have those concerns. Yeah, that's right
because again it's only three years, right, and you may
have circumstances where there was a time where you were
in the same social circle, you were in high school
at the same time. Because sure, I actually wrote something
(10:48):
down here that is of concern to me, and that
is cults like what well, imagine if somebody is in
a cult and the cult leader says, I need to
take your your sixteen year old is my bride? Does
that happen? Of course it's happened. Have you never watched
TLC or any of these other channels that show the
(11:09):
creepiest people on earth?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
My God of course that happens. Plus, I lived in
Arizona for a while. We used to get those stories
out of the Utah Arizona border every now and again.
A lot of culty things happening there. But that would
be legal. And we've certainly had cults in California. I
don't know if you're familiar, we've had cults in California.
So I like the idea of just getting rid of
the law just to protect people from ending up in
a cult. Sure, okay. And so there is this legislation
(11:33):
that seems to be moving according to our guests in
the previous hour, previous segment that yes, the Senate I
think is taking it up on Monday, she said, And
this would change this law. This would make it much
more difficult to marry. She also said, to back my
point about how long it takes, she's been fighting this
in California for nine years. I mean, if I'm a legislator,
the minute I see this, I go, oh yeah, I'll
(11:53):
write a bill on this, no problem. I'll get this
through this week. That seems like such an easy, bipartisan
no brainer, except there's one opponent, and it's not a
small opponent. No, it is the ACLU California action the
only opponent listed in the latest Senate Committee analysis of
Assembly Bill twelve sixty seven. The ACLU says marriage as
(12:17):
part of a miner's personal and not reproductive autonomy. Right,
that's how they see it, Okay, And the ACLU warns
that an absolute ban could remove legal protections from pregnant
teenagers and drive forced unions underground. That's an interesting angle
about the pregnant teenager. But in California, if you're a
(12:40):
pregnant teenager, you can go get you can go to
planned parenthood or if you don't want to though, oh,
if you're married, then then you would have more autonomy.
I don't know. I don't know. I feel like the
ACLU is just finding a reason to claim that this
is a violation of somebody's rights and any Okay, let
(13:01):
me try to be very careful how I phrase this,
because I want to make sure it comes out correctly.
I understand the ACLU being hesitant whenever there's a law
that limits someone's ability to do something, because their whole
thing is civil liberties. Right. However, we all agree that
there are certain restrictions that we put on people for
the betterment of society, can't drive before you're sixteen. Yeah,
(13:24):
we might not always get it right, but at the
time we have decided culturally that this is the right
thing to do for protection. In previous years, maybe that
age was twelve, but right now eighteen seems about right.
If in fifty years that's no longer acceptable, when we say, wow,
you know, we really think people at fourteen should be
getting married, then you can revisit the issue. I understand
(13:45):
the ACLU saying we just don't like laws that limit
people's choices. But going back to what I said before,
their choices are already limited. If mom and dad have
decided you're going to marry the neighbor. We know that
there are cultures where people trade their kids away for dowries.
This is a scenario where absolutely dad can trade his
daughter away for the neighbors sixty seven corvette. But I
(14:08):
think if he wants to, the argument on the pregnant
teen has a little bit of weight to it, just
because if they have a baby, they being the pregnant
teen who's married as someone older than she, she through
marriage would have some access to spousal benefits that she
would otherwise have. Well, then right in the law that
I mean Arthur child support laws already. Yes, yeah, yes.
(14:34):
The aclus also argue that lawmakers should wait for the
state's comprehensive audit that's due next year before they eliminate
the judicial pathway. Recent official reports show small numbers of
these marriages, and they do not document marriages involving children
younger than sixteen. I was living in Kansas at the time.
We had an issue with people in Nebraska. This was
(14:56):
just a young couple and the girl I want to
say she was thirteen, and the minimum age in Nebraska
was fourteen, and so they came to Kansas. I was
doing a radio show there. They came to Kansas because
the minimum age in Kansas was twelve, right, And so
then they came to Kansas so they could no, you can't,
(15:16):
yes Kansas, and the mom had okay this The mom
thought it was great. So she trafficked her kid across
state lines to marry somebody else because this is true love.
What kind of backwater It's very old school, that's very
nineteenth century and earlier. I think it was very I
(15:36):
think there was a lack of education in that family.
Oh I see, yeah, I think there was also a
lack of a lot of things in that family. And
then they came to Kansas and they ended up getting married,
which of course made Kansas. The Kansas legislature addressed this issue. Now,
they could have just come to California at age nine
if they wanted to. There is a history of people
leaving the planes for California. You think that's why they
(15:58):
did it. You think this is going to r our
uh hurt inward migration to California if we changed the
age of marriage. I mean from certain places, perhaps like
your old stomping grounds. Who's living in your house? You know,
I've never met your wife? What great is she in?
She starts school today, So that's it's funny you say
(16:19):
that because my wife is eight years older than me. Yeah,
you are the she robbed your creator, and I give
her grief about this. Talking about when something is okay,
like nineteen to sixteen is a little creepy. Right now,
in ten years, nobody's gonna care If somebody's twenty nine
and twenty six and they get married, right like, that's
totally normal. I was twenty five and she was thirty
three when we started dating. So some people were giving
us a little bit of a side eye at the time.
(16:40):
Nobody cares now, But that's one of the situations where
I used to say, Hey, your old enough. You could
have been my babysitter. She loves it what I do.
That's true. She's a big fan of me doing that. Yeah,
we should do it more often. I'm gonna send her
a text. That's a good idea. Hey, imagine live in
a neighborhood that had endured the blackest of smoke, the
nastiest of smells, and an infestation of rats and flies
(17:01):
not seen since the plagues of Egypt. I bet what
you'd want to see for your neighborhood is a billboard
in your face telling you that it's your fault. The
activist group that's lecturing the locals of Boyle Heights is
next Monks and Meryl KFIAM six forty relive everywhere in
the iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill on demand from KFI
AM six.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Why the people of Boyle Heights are the problem. You
are the reason it smells so bad, according to one
billboard that has now gone up in Boyle Heights. Before
we get to that, though, Michael Monks. I wanted to
follow up on our child bride child groom a conversation
here because there is no minimum age for marriage in
the state of California, and after a nine year battle,
(17:46):
it's finally gotten out of committee this bill to try
to stop that from happening. We had a few people
that had thoughts about this, and I wanted to make
sure that we gave a fair perspectives.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
I think it's a mess up law if someone takes
advantage of it in a negative way. Out of my example,
it is. But my buddy and I we have a
mutual friend who had a daughter who came down to leukemia.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Leukemia. He said, could you make that up? Daughter came
down with leukemia.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
We're both in the military, so we have good insurance,
say be married or and other people went through and
she was covered by an insurance and they saved a
little girl's life.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I mean, how sad is our Yeah, that's a dommentary
on a lot of things. Yeah, it really is. It
really is, Chris. If you can't back out of a
marriage if you're under eighteen, then that's indentured servitude and
that violates the Constitution. Okay, you can back out of
the marriage after you're married. You can't back out of
(18:50):
the marriage before you're marriage. Why because if you're underage
and your parents have said, excuse me, let me rephrase it.
You can't back out of the marriage with your parents' permission.
If you want to leave home, you're a runaway because
you're still a minor. You live with your parents. Right,
if your parents give you the go ahead to get married,
(19:11):
and you said I don't want to get married, Let's
say in some cases you may have Again, some cultures
will marry their kids off, right, They kind of trade
their their daughters away for land and cattle or something
of the sort. Right that some of those cultural rituals
have come to the United States, And so you may
have a parent that says, you're sixteen, it's time for
(19:31):
you to get married. I don't want to. If the
daughter runs away, the police have to go find the
daughter as a runaway, and then the police bring the
daughter back home. Because but the child doesn't have to
consent to the marriage. Is that what you're saying, Yeah,
child doesn't have to consent to the marriage, sign a contract.
I thought the child would have to want it and
(19:52):
get permission from this. That's what our guest was saying
at the very end. I don't I felt a little
jumble there at the end. You have to pay attention
to the whole internestry talking about the eighteen and the
seventeen year old and the old stuff. Honest, I don't
know if I'm buying all. So you just you just
forget everything else. No, I just know how reliable is
this information? Well, if only you had all of the
(20:13):
information in the world. Right is your fingertips? I do
have it here, but I'm just saying I don't like
every commercial breakout there flirting with Jesse instead of with
Jesse I asked him to get better at his job.
Feels a bit flirtious. It's not flirtatious. Kaylakay flirting.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Thank you, gentlemen, You're missing the point. The whole idea
is that these are underage pregnant girls and marriage is
the only way to avoid the statutory and rape charges.
Happens all across the United States, and it's in the
federal law enforcement child sexual exploitation out of for many years.
It's always a matter of marrying this girl before you
(20:49):
are charged with statutory rates still allows it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, that does make sense. And what's weird. When we
first started talking about this topic, we didn't bring this up.
But every state has maybe a different age of consent
or it's different, it depends on the state. In California
it's eighteen, and you know you you cannot engage with
engage in sex with anyone under the age of eighteen
if you were already an adult, right, And that's not
(21:14):
true in other states. I mean in some states, I
think it's like fourteen. Right, So California is very strict
about protecting kids from sexual predation, but not from child marriage.
That's how you get out of the statutory rape here.
So yeah, if you're if you are an adult, you're
having a sexual relationship where you're sexually abusing someone under
the age of eighteen, Yeah, put a ring on it,
(21:37):
legalize it, convincement, and then either mom or dad and
then I guess it's exempt from the criminal code. Yeah, congratulations.
Weird how about that? Did you see that Boyle Heights
has going a new billboard? I did. Another group that's
very popular here with our listeners, the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals also known as PITAY. I think
deperent marks on on the board of placed a meat
(22:01):
Stinks billboard. You're the fire damaged Lineage Logistics warehouse there
in Boyle Heights using the neighborhood's weeks of misery to
promote veganism. Yeah, that's what they need right along. So
I wanted to s put a mariachi band up next to
that billboard, and you'll you'll cross off a bunch of boxes.
So I'm really bothered by Peter putting the sign up
in Boile Heights because what they're trying to do is
(22:22):
say everything that smells bad here is because of rotting meat.
If you didn't eat meat, this wouldn't be a problem.
In other words, Boile Heights, it's your fault that you've
got the smell of rotting food in your neighborhood. It's
all because you like your carne asada exactly. I mean
you are talking to a place where the carne asada
is very popular. It's part of the heritage of the
(22:43):
people in the community. Yes. In fact, Boyle Heights smelled
like a big carne asada until this disaster, and it
smelled delicious. And the other thing that bothers me is
Peters pretending like rotting vegetables don't smell bad, dude, and
they smell foul faster than meat. It's like, have you
ever smell the vegan's farts? Okay, the worst, Deborah? Debor
(23:06):
Michael would like to talk to you? No, Michael would
do what do you want? We're just going to toss
it over to you to do the news because he's
getting to be dist I propose that vegan smart farts
smell far worse than a normal foul. Well, since I
can't tell you. Yeah, that was the best retort yet.
That was really good. Thank you, Deborah. You're I like
it when she brings me back on track.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill on from kf I
AM six, available anywhere on the IRT radio app.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
It is Monks and Meryll Let's finish this show today,
put it to bed. We were mentioning that Peta has
this new billboard in boil Heights saying don't eat meat
or basically the reason your neighborhood stinks right now is
because of meat. Right, that's not going to work. Why
they're they're the worst at recruiting new members, I think,
but they don't seem to have a dwindling. Where does
(23:57):
their money come from? That's a really good question. Meanwhile,
the LA Unified School district says it is they just
completely funded by Leonardo DiCaprio or something like those bars,
a big peda guy. Is it all just celebrities there?
I don't know. It's branding is just so confrontational and dumb.
LAUSD says it's in. It was just strange because like
(24:17):
how sceptable are we to diet fads? Right? I mean,
con it's low car, but it's a low fat. It's
this and this. If you come at me with that angle,
I'll listen. I'll listen. But Peter's been doing this for decades.
It has to be working. Boring all right? Back to
the story, okay. Also related to the Boyle Heights fire,
LAUSD says its environmental testing has found no widespread contamination
(24:40):
from the Lineage warehouse.
Speaker 7 (24:41):
FU Districts has its Office of Environmental Health and Safety
studied air, dust and soul samples from fifteen schools located
within a three mile radius of the Lineage warehouse that
went up in flames last June. Those samples were taken
from inside and outside the school and were then compared
(25:01):
to classrooms in other areas, and based on those findings,
OEHS concluded that the Lineage fire did not result in
widespread residual contamination or conditions at campuses posing a health
hazard to students or staff.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Well, what did they follow?
Speaker 7 (25:15):
Schools are ready to start the school year as planned.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay, that's from KTLA. However, they did find that the
dirt was dirty, Yeah, they did. They found reasons, they say,
to remain cautious because only ten of fifty three campuses
within three miles were tested. Two schools had elevated soil
lead readings elevated and continued clean up. They say could
(25:41):
create conditions that one round of sampling does not capture.
We should point out that when we say elevated the
threshold in California's eighty milligrams per whatever. Yeah, I don't
know what that means. City Terrace Elementary was double that.
Christopher Dina Elementary School was one and a half times
the minimum. But they said it's okay, you you kids
are probably okay to go back there. I mean, you
(26:04):
already go to public school. Just don't eat the dirt. Yeah, oh,
I'm sorry. Some of us had to go to public school.
I went to public school. It's just oh, you didn't
go to private school. I was asked to leave. You
never chee the story. Fourth grade, they kicked me out.
It's public school all the rest of the way. That's
some behavior problems. That's not a joke. Might not be,
(26:26):
but it's funny because look where it landed.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
You.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, right where I belong. You know, they tell you
talk too much. Were being punished. This is karma for you.
They also find ammonia in the school. That concerns me. Ammonia, Yeah,
because we were told that the ammonia didn't really leak
from this fire. Oh I see remember. So now if
you're finding ammonia detected at these campuses, where did that
(26:50):
ammonia come from? If not from the fire at the
warehouse and Boyle Heights where they said, don't worry. We
were concerned about the ammonia leaking, but it didn't, so
we're all safe. If it didn't leak from the warehouse,
where did the ammonia come from that was detected in
the samples taken at these elementary schools. So school's back
in session today for the LA School District and the
(27:12):
district says, it deep cleaned the campuses, it pressure washed
the outdoor services, It replaced HVAC filters twice. Yep, okay,
and they seem to be satisfied with their cleaning efforts.
That's good. One of the things that we're not getting
those is a baseline reading. So while we talk about
the schools being tested around this fire, and we were
(27:34):
seeing that you've got soil samples that have double the
threshold for California's lead. You've got ammonia that's been found.
You've also got formaldehyde that's appeared, and manganese has been
found in some of these samples as well. I'm not
a chemist. They right, Yeah, where did that come from?
What's the baseline? What was it before the fire? So
(27:56):
while we're hearing, oh we found these things after the fire,
did the fire cause these things? Or is the fire
the reason that we're testing and we're uncovering stuff that's
been there all along? Ooh right, there's my question here
because I'm wondering if these kids have been exposed to
some of these toxic chemicals for a while and we
just didn't know it. And it also makes me wonder
(28:18):
what other neighborhoods are being exposed to some of these
two toxic chemicals, and we just don't know it because
I'm guessing that soil sampling from around campuses is not
something that happens every year. I would like to think
they do it occasionally so that we have an idea.
But even when we did the soil sampling, remember we
had that story just what was it last week? We're
talking about soil sampling in Altadena and they were finding
(28:40):
that you could have a soil sample at one side
of the yard that would show incredibly elevated levels of lead,
but on the other side of the yard there was nothing.
So I mean, we're talking about something that can change
meter by meter by meter, or if you're an American
yard by yard by yard. I just didn't want to
confuse it because you know yards and yas. Yeah, So
all of these things lead me to wonder, what are
(29:02):
we doing at the schools to make sure kids are
not being exposed to these toxins? Because if if they
can be from one sample at one side of the
playground to the other sample at a different side of
the playground and they can vary, what are we doing
to make sure the playgrounds are safe. And does it
take a fire like this to draw attention to a
matter like are my kids playing in sandboxes that are
(29:24):
going to give them lead poisoning? Well, one thing we
could do to make playgrounds safe, Chris is a councilwoman
Isabel Herado would vote in favor of removing homeless camps
from near them. Go on, and to stop being in
favor Perpernalia. I just, I mean, it's just the contradiction
of the grand standing that we see in the neighborhood
and what we're concerned about today when they're not concerned
about anything else any other day, and any of these neighborhoods.
(29:46):
It's just so irritating to watch. Okay, but have you
considered what if they bring out a mariachi band ninety
maachi while we're in a crisis. That will never get
old to me, never What a dumb decision of all
the dumb decisions from everyone. Their neighborhood's on fire. Let
(30:10):
me tell you that people are going to be fired
up at this meeting. They're going to be mad at us,
But you know what could win them over? Mariachi. I
think that's where Nero went wrong. He just had one fiddle,
literally Fiddland brought everyone else literally Fiddland. Oh my gosh,
the show the Godfather. I've talked righty other great John
Cobbolt is chopping at the band. He can't wait to
get in here, and and he will here in just
(30:30):
a few moments. By the way, he laughed last segment
when we asked Deborah about the smell of Yeah, I
don't want to revisit that digestives hang on the digestive
systems of vegans.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It did make him giggle. And there's something about it
that anytime I can make guy a big meat guy. Yeah,
he comes in here with piles of meat on bread
and she sits there and watches him eat it. It's
psychological warfare starting. I like it in just I'm always
in favor of terrorizing Deborah Mark. We'll be back again
tomorrow and give you another chance to win ticket to
go see that that incredible Master of the Movies, the
(31:03):
Tribute to John Williams, and other pair tickets we're giving away,
and tomorrow's show we start Munish KFI AM six forty
live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app. Have you ever smelled
a vegans, farts, Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
The worst.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
KFI on demand you've been listening to Monks and merrill.
Hear the show live weekdays from noon to three on
kf I Am six forty at anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app
This is Monks and Meryl hosted by Michael Monks and
Chris Merrill.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Monks and Merrill. Fun demand, It's Monks and Meryl.
Can if I am six forty more stimulating talk and
if you haven't done it yet, please subscribe to the
podcast at that follow button on the iHeartRadio Apple follow
us on the social media's as well at Monks and
Merrill at Monks and Meryl. I bring this up because
I was reading an article. Are you familiar with Courtney Stotten?
I think we talked about this in the year a
(00:28):
week or two ago. Courtney Stodden is a young girl
who married an old man. Yeah, she married the guy
from the Green Mile, Remember the creepy like the warden's
nephew that was like Dead May in Dead May in
a Walkie had. That actor was fifty one. She was sixteen.
They got married and people went, Okay, well this is creepy.
(00:50):
And then she was involved in some other some other
things before she'd even turned eighteen, and people went, this
is a child. They went, yeah, but she's emancipated because
she got married, so it's totally okay. There's a push
in California to try to stop people under the age
of eight team from getting married. Freddy Ross is joining
us right now. She's the founder of Unchained at Last,
and Freddy, I mean, the obvious question is why is
(01:11):
it taking so long for California to put age minimums
on getting married? I mean, most every state has these
at this point, don't they.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Actually? So far, seventeen states have bandchild marriage, but thirty
three states still allow marriage at some point before the
age of eighteen. California's laws are especially egregious, among the
worst on the planet. I like to say, because the
marriage age in California is a shocking Do you want
to guess?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Uh? No, Okay, yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You know what embarrassed yourself here? You probably would not
You probably would not have guessed the marriage age is
zero in California.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, crapy, that's crazy. Well how does it work then?
I mean, if you're a child and there is an
adult who wants to marry you, and for some reason,
that child's I mean, that child's parents have to get involved, right,
I mean they have to consent to this.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yes, So one parent does not even need to be
the custodial parent, does not even need to notify the
other parent has to consent, and a court has to
approve it. If there's no parent willing or able to approve,
a court can do this without a parent involved. But
what's really important to note is that it's very rare
that it's a stranger grabbing a kid off the street
(02:24):
and forcing them to marry. It's almost always that parent
who actually is facilitating this or playing a crucial role
in facilitating it. So the idea that a parent consents,
unfortunately provides no protective value for that child.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Freddi Ross is the founder of Unchained at Last, and
she said for this bill, it's an Assembly bill that
would close the exception, would prohibit anyone under the age
of eighteen from getting married or entering into the domestic partnership.
This is relatively rare, though, Is it not that this
happening a lot and we just don't know about it?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Unfortunately, I wish I could say this is happening rarely.
But it's hard to get really good data in California
because California not only is behind the rest of the
country and the world on its marriage age laws, it's
also behind the rest of the country in terms of
tracking age at marriage. But we know across the United States,
hundreds of thousands of children are being entered into marriage,
(03:17):
mostly girls wed to adult men, and in California, according
to census data, it's more than nine thousand minors every
year entered into marriage.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Okay, who are they marrying though? I mean, we shared
a pretty strange case involving the actor here, fifty one
years old married a sixteen year old. That'll definitely get
some headlines. Are we talking about seventeen year olds who
are marrying twenty four year olds? And it's a little
bit I guess easier to digest, even though it's probably
not a great decision.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So, you know, the average spousal age difference across the
United States is a little over four years, so it's
mostly girls age sixteen or seventeen wed to adult men
age on or you know, in their early twenties. And
while that does seem easier to digest than Courtney's thought
in situation, which is so obviously on its face heartbreaking,
(04:08):
that should never happen. A fifty one year old should
never marry a sixteen year old. I'm going to put
out there that it's just as heartbreaking when in nineteen
year old marries a seventeen year old. So a couple
of things on that. First of all, I was forced
to marry someone three years older than I, And I
can tell you being raped repeatedly by someone close in
age to you still pretty sucky. It still is a
(04:32):
terrible situation to be in day after day for the
rest of your life. But also, there's a vast difference
even between a seventeen year old just journey eighteen next
week and an eighteen year old. And it's not about
maturity and it's not about how many years difference. The
difference there is the legal capacity. You don't have the
rights of adulthood until you turn eighteen, and the rights
(04:54):
of adults that are crucial to navigate a contract of
series as marriage. You need the right to leave home,
get into a methic, violence shelter, get help from an advocate,
retain an attorney, bring a legal action. When you have
a couple where one has those rights and one does not,
that's a significant power imbalance that is going to create problems.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Freddy Ross is the founder of Unchained at Last, and Freddy,
obviously you've perked up an awful lot of years when
you talked about being forced into the marriage that you
were in and then being raped repeatedly, which I'm so
sorry that that's part of your story. It's horrific. How
much how much of the issue that we're talking about
right now comes back to the other word, that ease
when you said you were forced into it? How much
of this is a parent arranging something and then making
(05:33):
their child do it, And how much of this is say,
a sixteen year old girl who's screaming, daddy, daddy, I
love him, I love him, I love him kind of nonsense.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
That's a great question, And again that's an area we
just don't have data because there's no place on your
marriage certificate, marriage license application to put do you want this?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Do you not?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Probably should be, by the way, but separate discussion. But
what I will tell you is that globally, all marriage
before age eighteen, even if the child says yes, is
considered forced marriage. For the simple reason of what I
was saying before, you don't have the basic rights of
adulthood before the age of eighteen. You can't even open
(06:12):
the front door and leave home if your parents are
planning an unwanted wedding for you. Leaving home before age eighteen,
and California is a status offense. You'll be taken into
police custody and taken back home. You can't get into
domestic violence shelter, can't retain an attorney, etcetera, etcetera. And therefore,
because you don't have the rights that you need to
say no to marriage, it is understood that you cannot
(06:34):
give full, free consent to marriage, and the United Nations
considers all marriage before age eighteen to be forced, even
if a girl is saying, daddy, daddy.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I want this pretty ross. The founder of Unchained at Last, Freddy,
thank you so much for sharing the story. I want
to continue to follow the story here, and I hope
that you'll be able to join us again in the future,
because I'm both fascinated and disgusted by what this is,
and I have this awful feeling that California is just
not going to get their act together and do the
(07:02):
right thing. It seems to take them forever to fix
loopholes like this that ought to be simple to fix.
So I hope we have a chance to talk with
you again in the future.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, you know what, if it makes you feel any better,
it's been nine years that we've been fighting this in California.
I'm actually joining you from the state Capitol where I'm
here talking to legislators. The bill this year finally has
gotten is making progress. It's gotten out of two committees
for the first time. The Senate is expected to vote
on it on Monday. So I so hope you're wrong,
(07:32):
and I will not hold it against you. I'll not
see when I told you so well to celebrate together.
I hope this is finally the year of the California
and child marriage.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I hope you're right that I'm wrong too, and let's
toast together. I'd be happy to you called me and
you say we did it. We did it, thank God,
and we'll put you right back on the air right
that minute.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
All right, Okay, I'm going to hold you to that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Okay, I love it. Thank you. Somebody, Freddie Ross. Not
everybody is in favor of this bill, which means some
people think children have the right to marry an adult.
We'll get into that next. As Monks and Meryl continues.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
You're listening to Monks and Meryll on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Sixporting more stimulating talk. Thanks for being with us. We're
talking about child marriage, which is apparently far easier than
you might suspect. In California. The minimum age for marriage
in the state of California is there isn't worth. Yeah,
that's it. You're born. You can be married off. Crazy.
It is crazy, especially Okay, go ahead, Gay.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Monks and Meryll Brian from Palmdale, Calm In regards to
this child marriage thing, here's the thing is people are
conflating you know, fifty and sixteen year olds getting married
with you know, seventeen and eighteen year olds getting married
like my parents were, you know, and they've been married
for sixty years.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I think there are certain things we.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
Expect parents to be parents and approve and guide accordingly.
It's no different than joining the military at seventeen, which
is what I did.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think Brian makes a really good point. I would
like to see some changes to the law. And this
is why I'm glad the last guest that we had,
who was a survivor of a child bride situation, she
did at the very end of our interview though, talk
about how let's say that you're seventeen and you don't
want to get married. Let's say you want to back
out of it, and your parents say no, no, no,
you are You've already come this far. You have to
(09:19):
you're you legally can't run away. You legally can't back
out of the man. You don't have the legal means
to stop that wedding from happening. You once you're committed
to it, it's somebody else's choice. And then once you're married.
This is the twisty thing. Once you're married, you're an
emancipated minor. Yeah, so you don't have the right to
say no until after you say I do, and then
(09:42):
you could say no, I don't want to that. That's
where I think, certainly to Brian's point, really good point too.
That was why we asked. You know, we're talking about
sixteen year olds marrying nineteen year olds, which again too early,
too young. I don't want to see my kid getting
married at sixteen. But it's a whole lot different than
a sixteen year old marrying a fifty one year old,
because that's just child predation, right, Yeah, I mean, if
(10:05):
you're sixteen and you're nineteen, you've got access to different things.
Even though it's a short it's a small age difference
that in ten years won't matter at all at all.
But and that specific age kind of does you know
you're nineteen, you're well, your brains all developed. Well, they
say twenty five is when you're brain fully developed. Okay,
but you don't have the wherewithal to make it. You're nineteen,
(10:27):
you're an adult. Sixteen, you're not quite an adult yet, right,
And so there is you know, there would be some
concerns about that relationship if you're the parent of the
sixteen year old or the parent of the nineteen year old. Well,
but not all parents have those concerns. Yeah, that's right
because again it's only three years, right, and you may
have circumstances where there was a time where you were
in the same social circle, you were in high school
at the same time. Because sure, I actually wrote something
(10:48):
down here that is of concern to me, and that
is cults like what well, imagine if somebody is in
a cult and the cult leader says, I need to
take your your sixteen year old is my bride? Does
that happen? Of course it's happened. Have you never watched
TLC or any of these other channels that show the
(11:09):
creepiest people on earth?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
My God of course that happens. Plus, I lived in
Arizona for a while. We used to get those stories
out of the Utah Arizona border every now and again.
A lot of culty things happening there. But that would
be legal. And we've certainly had cults in California. I
don't know if you're familiar, we've had cults in California.
So I like the idea of just getting rid of
the law just to protect people from ending up in
a cult. Sure, okay. And so there is this legislation
(11:33):
that seems to be moving according to our guests in
the previous hour, previous segment that yes, the Senate I
think is taking it up on Monday, she said, And
this would change this law. This would make it much
more difficult to marry. She also said, to back my
point about how long it takes, she's been fighting this
in California for nine years. I mean, if I'm a legislator,
the minute I see this, I go, oh yeah, I'll
(11:53):
write a bill on this, no problem. I'll get this
through this week. That seems like such an easy, bipartisan
no brainer, except there's one opponent, and it's not a
small opponent. No, it is the ACLU California action the
only opponent listed in the latest Senate Committee analysis of
Assembly Bill twelve sixty seven. The ACLU says marriage as
(12:17):
part of a miner's personal and not reproductive autonomy. Right,
that's how they see it, Okay, And the ACLU warns
that an absolute ban could remove legal protections from pregnant
teenagers and drive forced unions underground. That's an interesting angle
about the pregnant teenager. But in California, if you're a
(12:40):
pregnant teenager, you can go get you can go to
planned parenthood or if you don't want to though, oh,
if you're married, then then you would have more autonomy.
I don't know. I don't know. I feel like the
ACLU is just finding a reason to claim that this
is a violation of somebody's rights and any Okay, let
(13:01):
me try to be very careful how I phrase this,
because I want to make sure it comes out correctly.
I understand the ACLU being hesitant whenever there's a law
that limits someone's ability to do something, because their whole
thing is civil liberties. Right. However, we all agree that
there are certain restrictions that we put on people for
the betterment of society, can't drive before you're sixteen. Yeah,
(13:24):
we might not always get it right, but at the
time we have decided culturally that this is the right
thing to do for protection. In previous years, maybe that
age was twelve, but right now eighteen seems about right.
If in fifty years that's no longer acceptable, when we say, wow,
you know, we really think people at fourteen should be
getting married, then you can revisit the issue. I understand
(13:45):
the ACLU saying we just don't like laws that limit
people's choices. But going back to what I said before,
their choices are already limited. If mom and dad have
decided you're going to marry the neighbor. We know that
there are cultures where people trade their kids away for dowries.
This is a scenario where absolutely dad can trade his
daughter away for the neighbors sixty seven corvette. But I
(14:08):
think if he wants to, the argument on the pregnant
teen has a little bit of weight to it, just
because if they have a baby, they being the pregnant
teen who's married as someone older than she, she through
marriage would have some access to spousal benefits that she
would otherwise have. Well, then right in the law that
I mean Arthur child support laws already. Yes, yeah, yes.
(14:34):
The aclus also argue that lawmakers should wait for the
state's comprehensive audit that's due next year before they eliminate
the judicial pathway. Recent official reports show small numbers of
these marriages, and they do not document marriages involving children
younger than sixteen. I was living in Kansas at the time.
We had an issue with people in Nebraska. This was
(14:56):
just a young couple and the girl I want to
say she was thirteen, and the minimum age in Nebraska
was fourteen, and so they came to Kansas. I was
doing a radio show there. They came to Kansas because
the minimum age in Kansas was twelve, right, And so
then they came to Kansas so they could no, you can't,
(15:16):
yes Kansas, and the mom had okay this The mom
thought it was great. So she trafficked her kid across
state lines to marry somebody else because this is true love.
What kind of backwater It's very old school, that's very
nineteenth century and earlier. I think it was very I
(15:36):
think there was a lack of education in that family.
Oh I see, yeah, I think there was also a
lack of a lot of things in that family. And
then they came to Kansas and they ended up getting married,
which of course made Kansas. The Kansas legislature addressed this issue. Now,
they could have just come to California at age nine
if they wanted to. There is a history of people
leaving the planes for California. You think that's why they
(15:58):
did it. You think this is going to r our
uh hurt inward migration to California if we changed the
age of marriage. I mean from certain places, perhaps like
your old stomping grounds. Who's living in your house? You know,
I've never met your wife? What great is she in?
She starts school today, So that's it's funny you say
(16:19):
that because my wife is eight years older than me. Yeah,
you are the she robbed your creator, and I give
her grief about this. Talking about when something is okay,
like nineteen to sixteen is a little creepy. Right now,
in ten years, nobody's gonna care If somebody's twenty nine
and twenty six and they get married, right like, that's
totally normal. I was twenty five and she was thirty
three when we started dating. So some people were giving
us a little bit of a side eye at the time.
(16:40):
Nobody cares now, But that's one of the situations where
I used to say, Hey, your old enough. You could
have been my babysitter. She loves it what I do.
That's true. She's a big fan of me doing that. Yeah,
we should do it more often. I'm gonna send her
a text. That's a good idea. Hey, imagine live in
a neighborhood that had endured the blackest of smoke, the
nastiest of smells, and an infestation of rats and flies
(17:01):
not seen since the plagues of Egypt. I bet what
you'd want to see for your neighborhood is a billboard
in your face telling you that it's your fault. The
activist group that's lecturing the locals of Boyle Heights is
next Monks and Meryl KFIAM six forty relive everywhere in
the iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill on demand from KFI
AM six.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Why the people of Boyle Heights are the problem. You
are the reason it smells so bad, according to one
billboard that has now gone up in Boyle Heights. Before
we get to that, though, Michael Monks. I wanted to
follow up on our child bride child groom a conversation
here because there is no minimum age for marriage in
the state of California, and after a nine year battle,
(17:46):
it's finally gotten out of committee this bill to try
to stop that from happening. We had a few people
that had thoughts about this, and I wanted to make
sure that we gave a fair perspectives.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
I think it's a mess up law if someone takes
advantage of it in a negative way. Out of my example,
it is. But my buddy and I we have a
mutual friend who had a daughter who came down to leukemia.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Leukemia. He said, could you make that up? Daughter came
down with leukemia.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
We're both in the military, so we have good insurance,
say be married or and other people went through and
she was covered by an insurance and they saved a
little girl's life.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I mean, how sad is our Yeah, that's a dommentary
on a lot of things. Yeah, it really is. It
really is, Chris. If you can't back out of a
marriage if you're under eighteen, then that's indentured servitude and
that violates the Constitution. Okay, you can back out of
the marriage after you're married. You can't back out of
(18:50):
the marriage before you're marriage. Why because if you're underage
and your parents have said, excuse me, let me rephrase it.
You can't back out of the marriage with your parents' permission.
If you want to leave home, you're a runaway because
you're still a minor. You live with your parents. Right,
if your parents give you the go ahead to get married,
(19:11):
and you said I don't want to get married, Let's
say in some cases you may have Again, some cultures
will marry their kids off, right, They kind of trade
their their daughters away for land and cattle or something
of the sort. Right that some of those cultural rituals
have come to the United States, And so you may
have a parent that says, you're sixteen, it's time for
(19:31):
you to get married. I don't want to. If the
daughter runs away, the police have to go find the
daughter as a runaway, and then the police bring the
daughter back home. Because but the child doesn't have to
consent to the marriage. Is that what you're saying, Yeah,
child doesn't have to consent to the marriage, sign a contract.
I thought the child would have to want it and
(19:52):
get permission from this. That's what our guest was saying
at the very end. I don't I felt a little
jumble there at the end. You have to pay attention
to the whole internestry talking about the eighteen and the
seventeen year old and the old stuff. Honest, I don't
know if I'm buying all. So you just you just
forget everything else. No, I just know how reliable is
this information? Well, if only you had all of the
(20:13):
information in the world. Right is your fingertips? I do
have it here, but I'm just saying I don't like
every commercial breakout there flirting with Jesse instead of with
Jesse I asked him to get better at his job.
Feels a bit flirtious. It's not flirtatious. Kaylakay flirting.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Thank you, gentlemen, You're missing the point. The whole idea
is that these are underage pregnant girls and marriage is
the only way to avoid the statutory and rape charges.
Happens all across the United States, and it's in the
federal law enforcement child sexual exploitation out of for many years.
It's always a matter of marrying this girl before you
(20:49):
are charged with statutory rates still allows it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, that does make sense. And what's weird. When we
first started talking about this topic, we didn't bring this up.
But every state has maybe a different age of consent
or it's different, it depends on the state. In California
it's eighteen, and you know you you cannot engage with
engage in sex with anyone under the age of eighteen
if you were already an adult, right, And that's not
(21:14):
true in other states. I mean in some states, I
think it's like fourteen. Right, So California is very strict
about protecting kids from sexual predation, but not from child marriage.
That's how you get out of the statutory rape here.
So yeah, if you're if you are an adult, you're
having a sexual relationship where you're sexually abusing someone under
the age of eighteen, Yeah, put a ring on it,
(21:37):
legalize it, convincement, and then either mom or dad and
then I guess it's exempt from the criminal code. Yeah, congratulations.
Weird how about that? Did you see that Boyle Heights
has going a new billboard? I did. Another group that's
very popular here with our listeners, the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals also known as PITAY. I think
deperent marks on on the board of placed a meat
(22:01):
Stinks billboard. You're the fire damaged Lineage Logistics warehouse there
in Boyle Heights using the neighborhood's weeks of misery to
promote veganism. Yeah, that's what they need right along. So
I wanted to s put a mariachi band up next to
that billboard, and you'll you'll cross off a bunch of boxes.
So I'm really bothered by Peter putting the sign up
in Boile Heights because what they're trying to do is
(22:22):
say everything that smells bad here is because of rotting meat.
If you didn't eat meat, this wouldn't be a problem.
In other words, Boile Heights, it's your fault that you've
got the smell of rotting food in your neighborhood. It's
all because you like your carne asada exactly. I mean
you are talking to a place where the carne asada
is very popular. It's part of the heritage of the
(22:43):
people in the community. Yes. In fact, Boyle Heights smelled
like a big carne asada until this disaster, and it
smelled delicious. And the other thing that bothers me is
Peters pretending like rotting vegetables don't smell bad, dude, and
they smell foul faster than meat. It's like, have you
ever smell the vegan's farts? Okay, the worst, Deborah? Debor
(23:06):
Michael would like to talk to you? No, Michael would
do what do you want? We're just going to toss
it over to you to do the news because he's
getting to be dist I propose that vegan smart farts
smell far worse than a normal foul. Well, since I
can't tell you. Yeah, that was the best retort yet.
That was really good. Thank you, Deborah. You're I like
it when she brings me back on track.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill on from kf I
AM six, available anywhere on the IRT radio app.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
It is Monks and Meryll Let's finish this show today,
put it to bed. We were mentioning that Peta has
this new billboard in boil Heights saying don't eat meat
or basically the reason your neighborhood stinks right now is
because of meat. Right, that's not going to work. Why
they're they're the worst at recruiting new members, I think,
but they don't seem to have a dwindling. Where does
(23:57):
their money come from? That's a really good question. Meanwhile,
the LA Unified School district says it is they just
completely funded by Leonardo DiCaprio or something like those bars,
a big peda guy. Is it all just celebrities there?
I don't know. It's branding is just so confrontational and dumb.
LAUSD says it's in. It was just strange because like
(24:17):
how sceptable are we to diet fads? Right? I mean,
con it's low car, but it's a low fat. It's
this and this. If you come at me with that angle,
I'll listen. I'll listen. But Peter's been doing this for decades.
It has to be working. Boring all right? Back to
the story, okay. Also related to the Boyle Heights fire,
LAUSD says its environmental testing has found no widespread contamination
(24:40):
from the Lineage warehouse.
Speaker 7 (24:41):
FU Districts has its Office of Environmental Health and Safety
studied air, dust and soul samples from fifteen schools located
within a three mile radius of the Lineage warehouse that
went up in flames last June. Those samples were taken
from inside and outside the school and were then compared
(25:01):
to classrooms in other areas, and based on those findings,
OEHS concluded that the Lineage fire did not result in
widespread residual contamination or conditions at campuses posing a health
hazard to students or staff.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Well, what did they follow?
Speaker 7 (25:15):
Schools are ready to start the school year as planned.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay, that's from KTLA. However, they did find that the
dirt was dirty, Yeah, they did. They found reasons, they say,
to remain cautious because only ten of fifty three campuses
within three miles were tested. Two schools had elevated soil
lead readings elevated and continued clean up. They say could
(25:41):
create conditions that one round of sampling does not capture.
We should point out that when we say elevated the
threshold in California's eighty milligrams per whatever. Yeah, I don't
know what that means. City Terrace Elementary was double that.
Christopher Dina Elementary School was one and a half times
the minimum. But they said it's okay, you you kids
are probably okay to go back there. I mean, you
(26:04):
already go to public school. Just don't eat the dirt. Yeah, oh,
I'm sorry. Some of us had to go to public school.
I went to public school. It's just oh, you didn't
go to private school. I was asked to leave. You
never chee the story. Fourth grade, they kicked me out.
It's public school all the rest of the way. That's
some behavior problems. That's not a joke. Might not be,
(26:26):
but it's funny because look where it landed.
Speaker 6 (26:28):
You.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, right where I belong. You know, they tell you
talk too much. Were being punished. This is karma for you.
They also find ammonia in the school. That concerns me. Ammonia, Yeah,
because we were told that the ammonia didn't really leak
from this fire. Oh I see remember. So now if
you're finding ammonia detected at these campuses, where did that
(26:50):
ammonia come from? If not from the fire at the
warehouse and Boyle Heights where they said, don't worry. We
were concerned about the ammonia leaking, but it didn't, so
we're all safe. If it didn't leak from the warehouse,
where did the ammonia come from that was detected in
the samples taken at these elementary schools. So school's back
in session today for the LA School District and the
(27:12):
district says, it deep cleaned the campuses, it pressure washed
the outdoor services, It replaced HVAC filters twice. Yep, okay,
and they seem to be satisfied with their cleaning efforts.
That's good. One of the things that we're not getting
those is a baseline reading. So while we talk about
the schools being tested around this fire, and we were
(27:34):
seeing that you've got soil samples that have double the
threshold for California's lead. You've got ammonia that's been found.
You've also got formaldehyde that's appeared, and manganese has been
found in some of these samples as well. I'm not
a chemist. They right, Yeah, where did that come from?
What's the baseline? What was it before the fire? So
(27:56):
while we're hearing, oh we found these things after the fire,
did the fire cause these things? Or is the fire
the reason that we're testing and we're uncovering stuff that's
been there all along? Ooh right, there's my question here
because I'm wondering if these kids have been exposed to
some of these toxic chemicals for a while and we
just didn't know it. And it also makes me wonder
(28:18):
what other neighborhoods are being exposed to some of these
two toxic chemicals, and we just don't know it because
I'm guessing that soil sampling from around campuses is not
something that happens every year. I would like to think
they do it occasionally so that we have an idea.
But even when we did the soil sampling, remember we
had that story just what was it last week? We're
talking about soil sampling in Altadena and they were finding
(28:40):
that you could have a soil sample at one side
of the yard that would show incredibly elevated levels of lead,
but on the other side of the yard there was nothing.
So I mean, we're talking about something that can change
meter by meter by meter, or if you're an American
yard by yard by yard. I just didn't want to
confuse it because you know yards and yas. Yeah, So
all of these things lead me to wonder, what are
(29:02):
we doing at the schools to make sure kids are
not being exposed to these toxins? Because if if they
can be from one sample at one side of the
playground to the other sample at a different side of
the playground and they can vary, what are we doing
to make sure the playgrounds are safe. And does it
take a fire like this to draw attention to a
matter like are my kids playing in sandboxes that are
(29:24):
going to give them lead poisoning? Well, one thing we
could do to make playgrounds safe, Chris is a councilwoman
Isabel Herado would vote in favor of removing homeless camps
from near them. Go on, and to stop being in
favor Perpernalia. I just, I mean, it's just the contradiction
of the grand standing that we see in the neighborhood
and what we're concerned about today when they're not concerned
about anything else any other day, and any of these neighborhoods.
(29:46):
It's just so irritating to watch. Okay, but have you
considered what if they bring out a mariachi band ninety
maachi while we're in a crisis. That will never get
old to me, never What a dumb decision of all
the dumb decisions from everyone. Their neighborhood's on fire. Let
(30:10):
me tell you that people are going to be fired
up at this meeting. They're going to be mad at us,
But you know what could win them over? Mariachi. I
think that's where Nero went wrong. He just had one fiddle,
literally Fiddland brought everyone else literally Fiddland. Oh my gosh,
the show the Godfather. I've talked righty other great John
Cobbolt is chopping at the band. He can't wait to
get in here, and and he will here in just
(30:30):
a few moments. By the way, he laughed last segment
when we asked Deborah about the smell of Yeah, I
don't want to revisit that digestives hang on the digestive
systems of vegans.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It did make him giggle. And there's something about it
that anytime I can make guy a big meat guy. Yeah,
he comes in here with piles of meat on bread
and she sits there and watches him eat it. It's
psychological warfare starting. I like it in just I'm always
in favor of terrorizing Deborah Mark. We'll be back again
tomorrow and give you another chance to win ticket to
go see that that incredible Master of the Movies, the
(31:03):
Tribute to John Williams, and other pair tickets we're giving away,
and tomorrow's show we start Munish KFI AM six forty
live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app. Have you ever smelled
a vegans, farts, Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
The worst.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
KFI on demand you've been listening to Monks and merrill.
Hear the show live weekdays from noon to three on
kf I Am six forty at anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app
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