Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 49

Episode Date: September 3, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to

in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's got to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hi, everyone. This is Cherine, and you're listening to It Can Happen Here. It could. I always miss up the name of this podcast, and it's really embarrassing because I work on it. It could happen here. Not the same words to me in my head, though. Anyway, we're joined today by a guest that I previously had on the podcast that I co-host, ethnically ambiguous, and she has a podcast coming out that is super important, and I'm excited to talk about what it's about us itself. Joining me today are Garrison and Chris and our guest, Neha Aziz. Hi. Hello. Neha, hello. Welcome.

Thank you. Welcome to the show. So you have a new podcast called Partition. Explain what that's about. Hello. Yes. So Partition tells the story of the separation of India and the formation of Pakistan that took place in 1947 on Monday, well, Sunday, Monday, because it happened at midnight, celebrated its 75th anniversary this year. So it's quite a large event that most people don't really know about. I myself didn't really know the specifics. I first went back to Pakistan where I was born in Karachi. But basically, Britain was like, hey, we're out of money. We can't control India anymore. We're going to leave. And in that process, they were going to transfer the power to India, and they were going to have independence. And then all these other politicians kind of

came in the picture and wanted their own personal agendas. And Pakistan, Dominion, while India would be the Hindu Sikh Dominion. And basically, within this process, it was such a rushed job that 14 million people were uprooted, one to two million people died. The boundary line actually, a few days after independence happened. So no one knew where they were in what country. So it was just like a lot of confusion, a lot of violence, a lot of just a lot of mess that happened. And a lot of the survivors are quite old now. My grandfather's a survivor. He was 14 when it happened. So he's 89 now. And so the only way we can really get these stories are through oral histories. And I never really learned about it in school. And because

my parents, again, like I said, I didn't really know about it for a long time. So if I don't know about it, and this is like my history and my family, I'm sure there are many other people who don't know about it. Well, I definitely was very uninformed before you came on to the other podcast, ethnically ambiguous, because it sounds like I'm plugging it, but I'm not. But also go listen to it. I'm going to play it. It's pretty serene. Thanks. I appreciate that. But but no, I do think it's really important because it's absurd the huge or like kept out of what we're taught in history class, if you can even call it that. But but yeah, I think it's really important to know about this

huge thing that happened in our recent history that created these two. Can you tell us what the process was making this podcast for you and like what research you did and what like just the steps leading up to it? Yeah, so I originally wanted to make this story into a limited narrative series. But I didn't really know how that would happen. And I could agent or anything like that. But it was just a project I wanted to work on. But it's such a vast event. I was like, I don't know know, like, where would even start? And then a couple of months later, I saw that our heart radio was creating a program called NextUp. And that's when the idea for the podcast came along. And I was like, you know, podcasts are a really good way for people to digest information. It's a lot

more accessible, I think, than other forms of media. It doesn't cost any money. It in a number of ways. You can listen to it in a number of ways. So I thought that might be a good place to start. And I ended up getting accepted into the program. And it's still like a lot of work. And it's a lot of just a lot of draining work. Because you have all these like horrible facts written in like one Google doc that you're saying to people because I outline them. And then I write a script. Because it's mostly a lot of my narration with it. But the first thing I did is I talked to family, I talked to my grandpa, I talked to my great aunt, who was actually born the day of independence. Oh, yeah. So

And you said Sunday, Monday, but just in case the date is not, you meant the 14th to 15th? 15th. So this year, it happened to be a Sunday and a Monday. And, you know, so I asked her what stories people told her. I asked my mom, we went to an exhibit in Pakistan. That's kind of what spurred everything for partition for me. And we talked about there. I had like my dad do some voiceover for my grandpa because the our connection wasn't the best. He's in Pakistan. We recorded it via WhatsApp on a pod track recorder. And it's it was like, it was it's very loud over there. There's, you know, constantly, it was just like a, it was a situation. But I just started reading books. And then I started talking to a lot of people. And I ended up talking to an author

named Nisid Hajari, whose book I referenced quite a bit in the second episode, which drops 22. And, you know, the first thing he told me was, you can't cover everything. So once you understand that that's going to be the case, and it's going to be a lot easier, and it's true, like you can't cover everything. And I kind of struggled with the narrative I wanted to tell, because so many of the stories out there are very biased. There's a lot of, you know, like the great men in history stories, which I don't care about. And I just wanted to tell the facts. But I quickly discovered that's really hard. My history, this is my story. This is something that impacts my family for future generations. And my identity, without a doubt. So I was like, let me kind of do it with

the lens of discussion. And I wanted to tell the stories that people don't really hear about. So I didn't want to talk about like meetings that happened in libraries and whatever between like all these politicians, I literally don't care about that. But the way women were treated, it is thought that 70,000 to 100,000 women were raped, abducted, murdered. I wanted to talk about, I wanted to talk to artists and creatives who had kind of like a reckoning with and then use their work to teach people about it. So an artist who reframes the narrative with her pieces, and talks about the actual people it affected, a filmmaker, oral historians, survivors, that I wanted to tell. I didn't want it to be something you would get like on the history channel, which is totally fine.

That's great. There's an audience for that. But that just isn't something that I wanted to do. You're not doing a whole bunch of No. I did watch an episode of Doctor Who that talks about partition, and I think there were like aliens or something in there. Fascinating. There is something thrown in there about some sci-fi stuff though. They needed to see how Doctor Who handles partition. Yeah, it was actually done really well. Oh, really? Yeah, it was written by a South Asian person. Oh, great. Oh, few. And so that was like the first thing that I saw in my research that really case like the emotion and the things that people went through. And I didn't see any British people

besides like the people that originally came on the mission or whatever. So that was nice. But yeah, like there was a sci-fi element. I can't tell you what that side. It was actually something that people told me about when I mentioned partition. They're like, oh, there's this episode of Doctor Who. So I've only seen that one episode. But I think in my research, it was the first thing where I was like, this actually tells a perspective from the people of South Asia. That's good to know. It was written by a South Asian person. At first I was like, I'm not even going to touch that. Yeah. Up next, Steven Mothin writes about apartheid. So I'm curious, not including like including some things with not other things. What,

what, like, how did you decide what to include and what not to include? Yeah. So no way you can say like the actual history is maybe the least important part, I think, of the podcast. Like I talk about like events, like there's something called Direct Action Day that happened about a year before the boundary line was announced. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the future founder of Pakistan, kind of called on Muslims to be, to, to kind of have demonstrations. But it was kind of unclear what exactly that meant and what's massive looting carnage took place. And I don't know how that was like a big catalyst for partition. But I didn't want to like get into like this treaty and this event and like this meeting and, and whatever, because that information

is out there. If people want to know, mentioned that's not really the aspects that I took particular interest in. I wanted to talk about women and survivors and just, you know, I felt, I found it to be very common people who are my age and I just turned them, I guess millennials, you could say, their parents and family don't talk to them about it. So it's been really interesting to talk to people who are my age, who are older than me, who are younger than me, have very similar experiences and how they found out about this information. So those are the kind of things I wanted to focus on because, you know, a lot of our stories find minority communities that are out there in like mainstream media are rarely told from our perspectives. And so I wanted, I wanted this story

to come from me and from other people who have just different experiences with partition, whether they live through it, whether they're an oral historian, they write a fictional novel about it to cope with their trauma, which I interviewed a woman who did do that. She was four years old when it happened. And she disassociated herself a lot with partition until she wrote about until she wrote about it in this fictionalized novel. And I wanted to talk about what forms of media were also out there, which is why I watched that Doctor Who episode. I also watched Gandhi three hours of my life. I'm never going to get back. Terrible. So not great. You know, I love Richard Anbrough, like Jurassic Park is great, but this wasn't it. So I wanted to,

I wanted to point people in a direction where if you actually wanted to dig deeper into this information, like here is where you should go. Like, don't be like, don't watch, I mean, I love the crown, but I mean, like, let's be real, like, you know, like they mentioned, I think India once in the pilot episode, where, and it took place about three months after partition happened, is getting married to Queen Elizabeth. And what's his name? Winston Churchill is walking and he sees Lord Mountbatten, who is tasked with the separation of India, who is also Prince Philip's uncle, and he goes, oh, that's the man who gave India away. And I'm like, that's not really what happened, but okay. And that's the only thing that they say. But I do love period dramas, and I do love

Korgies, which is one of the main reasons I watch the crown. But yeah, wait, sorry. Okay, so Mountbatten's the guy you got whacked by the IRA in the 70s, right? Yes. Jesus. Yes. Yeah, I actually didn't know that until I watched the crown. So, you know, because again, that was getting into him and his history, because I don't care. I ended up seeing it in the crown. Yeah, so I just I really wanted to focus on South Asians, and like our story, and working through how trauma is, and kind of reclaiming our narrative with just kind of the truth. And, you know, something that popped up when I was creating kind of getting deep into the podcast was Miss Marvel, I knew it was going to follow almost great. But I didn't know that they would

talk about partition and how that was like a major plot point. And so people are starting to learn about the history because of that show, which is amazing. So if I can kind of add on to that and expand people's education, something else I also wanted to do was I want people to have empathy and sympathy for immigrants and refugees, especially ones that don't look like them. Because we come in all colors and sizes. And, you know, I think their response to Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees in the UK was great. But I don't really think that same courtesy was extended to refugees from Syria. And I think that's really important, because I'm an immigrant, it took quite a long time for me to become a citizen. So, and it's very hard. And it's

something that people don't know about. And so I just kind of want, I want people to care about things that don't directly affect them, which I think is a very much like an American rooted thing. So I really, I mean, I don't think my podcast is going to change that. But if I can, but if people can like look outside themselves with this, I think that would be really great. Yeah. I was wondering, what do you actually think about the way that Ms. Marful like did like talked about partition? Because I saw a lot of, I don't know, I saw a lot of conflicting sort of arguments. Yeah, so I liked it. But I'm also, I think, with minority, and you see something that has affected you and your family or has oppressed

you, you expect this art form to talk about every single thing, you know, and that we bear as creative artists of color, that if we don't talk about every single thing that's oppressed a community, then it's not worth our time is kind of like the mantra that we have. And for me, I'm like, this show is six episodes. Like, you know, you need to understand that that is not something that they can encapsulate in there while talking about all these other things. So I think it does a really good job capturing emotion. I feel a lot of times you get the partition story from people who are currently in India. So it was nice to see people from Pakistan, like, and they're from Karachi just like I am. And I found it, you know, like every

episode just made me just cry more. I'm also very sensitive. And so I would just, you know, there was there was a particular scene where Kamala is talking to her, her nanny, which means grandmother. And her grandmother is like, my passport says Pakistan, but my roots are in India. And I really felt that because I was my parents were born in Pakistan, but all other generations were born in India. And that is a place because of how tense the borders are between these countries, I will not get to visit for the foreseeable future. If you are born in Pakistan, you are not allowed to go to India, you are not allowed to go to Pakistan. And it's just crazy because I'm like, well, that's where I came from, in a sense, you know. So for me, just because, like I said,

I am a sensitive person, like the emotion, you know, the people going on trains that, you know, that is something that I talk about a lot in my podcast, a lot of people experienced or read about. A lot of people were hoping to get on trains. And when they tried, those trains came and were filled with dead bodies and not people who are alive. And so I think it did a good job capturing the emotion. But it's like, you, there's just no way you can capture the complexity of that event with that, even with my podcast, it's 10 episodes. And like Nisid, you just can't cover everything. So you have to pick and choose what you want. And also, like, it's, as an artist, like, for me, for me specifically, it's like, I want to give you like the crumbs of something.

And then I want you to look into it more, right? Like, I shouldn't have to force feed you information, I should keep you intrigued enough for you to want to look at this information on your own, you know. So like, that's how I, how I see it. But I am in a little bit of a different position because in film and TV, like I program several film festivals and things like that. So I'm also looking through that with that kind of eye. But like, I can understand people are like, oh, I wish they talked about this, I wish they talked about this. But, you know, you know, I'm just like, well, it's six episodes, they have to do all this exposition, they have to do this, that's just impossible. But people aren't thinking that way. But I think it really captured the emotion

and the trauma of that event and how, how sad it is. Because it is sad to be like, I'll never get to see where my great grandparents lived or my grandparents, because they were children, you know, at least until they decide that's not the case anymore. But yeah, I can understand people's but I think for me personally, I thought it did a really good job. And actually, the woman who created the exhibit that I saw in Pakistan that really spearheaded this whole thing for me actually directed episodes four and five of Miss Marvel. So, which is really cool. That was another thing I guess I sort of wanted to ask about was like, what was the process of doing this like emotionally? I know I did a, I wound up doing somewhat similar things for a

couple of episodes about two and like talking to my family about what it was like in China was just like and like just doing this sort of archive of research was just like brutal. And yeah, I want to know like what that was like for you and what that was like for like your family having to talk about it. And yeah. It was really draining because you're just reading so many awful things like I read a number of different books and you know, talking to all these people. And I think for my grandfather, I think like I don't, I don't, he's not a very emotional person. And physically there with him when he was talking to me. And I think it's like something that's for sure like in the past for

him. And he was fortunate in the way that he came from an area that did have violence, but it wasn't to the extent that you of other people's account. And but talking to survivors was really hard. I actually went to San Francisco to talk to someone specifically, because they're very hard of hearing. And so doing it virtually would have been very impossible. And so hard because he was saying all these things, and then he would tear up. And it's like, where do you just listen to this person? And then where do you comfort them is really hard, because I don't want to interrupt, but I don't want them to be like, I don't care about what you're saying, like it's a fact. And that person spoke to me for two and a half hours. And I have yet to really listen to his

audio. I've just like listened to bits and pieces just for like clarity purposes. So that's going to be rough when that happens. And it's going to come up soon. It was just really draining. And it's just like, like highlighting, it's like, you know, when you're reading, I read all these books, and you're highlighting things, but it's like, you're going to highlight the whole book because it's just, there's just so many crazy things. And yeah, it's just really sad. It's really draining. Like I had mentioned writing the script. And I'm like, here's just like 20 minutes of terror in like an eight page Google doc that you have to say. And that also brings up another point where even though this podcast is sad, and it's not particularly in ways, I did want to be myself. And so I

tried to add a little bit of levity in there. Like there was an artist who that I mentioned her work, her name is Prithika Choudhury. She had these really beautiful installations of like female body parts, but they ended up getting ruined in transportation. And so she digitized them and is and made NFTs. And so me trying to explain what an NFT is is just the most ridiculous thing in the world. So I was like, I'm not going to talk about it. But it's like levity in there that we're talking about NFTs in this podcast, you know? But yeah, it was it's still like a really draining process, because I say this a lot. And people I've interviewed say this, that partition isn't something that's in the past, it's in breathing. And

you know, Prithika said it in a really succinct way where she's like, it lives in families. And it really does. So like every day, I feel like I just kind of it's hard for me not to get bogged down with all this information. I am a sensitive person. So I tend to hold things and carry things with me. But yeah, it's been a really rough process. But I think what kind of makes it a little easier is like, well, these people's stories are getting out there. People who are going to learn about it now, and maybe that inspires them to learn about other events that they didn't learn in school, like all of my education was done in Texas. And that can be another podcast within itself, because our education is something to say the least. So that's kind of the way I try to look

at it. Like it's really rough. And then I also, I love reading and everything. So I'm just like, well, I'm going to read this like thirsty romcom to get me away from like, the horribleness of the work I'm doing every day. Definitely a little bit of balance too. I do think to hear you say that you're, I'm very sensitive as well, and how you hold stuff in. I do think as people of color, our families, especially like immigrant families or people that have been through trauma, that's why I don't know about this, because this intergenerational trauma is something that they've kept and barely talked about, if at all. So I'm really glad that like you went to San Francisco and that person was able to like release all of this

and that they were holding probably for their whole life. So, so yeah, I do, I think there are many reasons why your podcast is important, but I think even the chance that someone can like, that not trauma sounds a little bit more dramatic than I wanted to, but like the feelings behind what that means and their family history, or even if you're not South Asian, it's important to know again, something that doesn't affect you. Yeah, whole world really. Yeah, just like understanding your history and like where you come from is Chinese. And she texted me, she was just like, now I kind of want to look into like my history. And I'm like, that's great. Like that's what I, you know, I wanted, if I wanted any kind

of like actionable thing to happen, it's like that exact thing. History, looking into other people's histories. Yeah, totally. Well, um, I, for, we confirmed you as a guest that you're good at talking and this confirmed that. Thank you so much. You were a great guest. I babble a lot. So I was like, no, you're the perfect podcast guest, like just period. Um, but I really appreciate the both effort and like emotional energy that goes into making a show like this, because I can kind of relate when I talk about the Middle East stuff, like it's really, really hard. So I appreciate your time and I'm to learn more about the partition and what that means. Um, can you tell the audience where they can find you and the podcast, obviously is everywhere

you can find it, but let's, I'm going to hand it over to you. Here you go. Um, so partition podcast on August 15th, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts, especially the iHeart radio app. Um, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter, Instagram at Nehaze's Twitter at Nehaze's 13. And you can find partition on Twitter at 1946 edition podcast on Instagram. Nice. Um, on EA, you mentioned a upcoming project you want to do that's also about like a similar topic. Yeah. What that is? Yes. Something that I really wanted to do. And this is another thing that we're kind of talking about of like people not talking about like everything, like encompassing everything in like one, uh, story. So, um, something very happened in 1971 when East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

Um, and a lot of my mom's families from there, my grandma, um, and a lot of her family currently live there. And it's a, again, very similar to partition, a lot of violence. Um, and that story to me, um, deserves its own time and respect. And I remember when I first like talked about partition, they're like, Oh, you're going to talk about this? And I'm like, I'm going to mention it, but it is just kind of throw into what I'm doing because it deserves way more than that. So that is another story that I want to tell. And it actually celebrated its 50th anniversary last year in 2021. Um, and from my understanding, it's all memorials in either India or Pakistan that commemorates not commemorates, but showcases like how partition was like, we don't, you know,

there isn't like, uh, like here are all the people who died or here's this or here's like this statue of a bird or that, um, that, you know, that people, there's no like communal place of grief. And it is my understanding that Bangladesh really does have these things. I believe there's a liberation museum and statues and there is a partition museum in 2017, but it is not a government sanction thing. It's privately owned. And again, with it being in India, um, there, there's also a lot of barriers. Like it's not a place I can visit. Um, and so, um, that is something I was actually trying to go to Bangladesh, um, this year, and it's been a little bit difficult. I think, uh, trying to obtain her visa, but I hope she gets to go soon. I hope I get to go with her. But, um,

yeah, that's other stories that I want to tell because I feel like it's starting to kind of, people are starting to understand that, but I feel like 1971 is just not there at all. Um, it's, I think something that people seem to just forget about. And it's just crazy to think I'm like, it's, that's not that long. No, like 75 years, like 50 years. That's not a long time. Um, so it's just like really insane when you think about it that way. And, um, especially when you think of how ancient these, and just how new these places are. Um, so yeah, that's something I would definitely love to tell. Um, I would love for my next project to be on that. Um, but that decision is not up to me. So hopefully, um, hopefully it'll work out. Yeah, I really hope so too. Um, I do

really appreciate, and I'm sure everyone else does too, the fact that you're talking about things that are just glossed over or not even mentioned usually. I hate that, like it's usually our job to educate people, but in the meantime, you're doing a fantastic job. And I can't wait to see the other projects you do, but obviously listen to partition everybody first. Um, yeah, that's the show. Hello, this is It Could Happen Here. And today it's me, James, and I'm joined by San Diego. And we are talking about San Diego's lying there and how he likes to punch down on poor people, even though he promised he wouldn't. So joining me today, I'm going to ask you guys to all introduce yourselves. It can spend a little bit about the background you have in the area.

And then we'll get into it because there's a lot to talk about. So Mandy, would you like to go first? Hi, I'm Mandy. I am a homeless advocate. I mostly do on-the-ground work with each aid. And then I advocate for them as much as I can on the city municipalities and just organize that way. Great. And Colleen, you can go next. That's okay. Yeah, my name is Colleen Cusack. I'm a criminal defense attorney, and I represent approximately 50 homeless persons pro bono right now who are cited with the crimes of survival, such as encroachment and overnight. So I can challenge the cause and have them deployed on constitutional. McConnell, I'm an advocate for people who are living unsheltered or homeless.

And I've been working on this for about 13 years. First part, working within the system as a philanthropist, advocate, volunteer, former vice chair of the regional task force on the homeless. I was a founding member of a local philanthropy group called Funders Togethered and Homelessness San Diego. I participated on quite a few initiatives this week where we housed about 100 people in three days. 25 cities initiative where we worked on ending veteran and chronic homelessness, created the region's first by nameless for veterans, worked on a lot of COC continuum of care initiatives such as how we score projects to get homelessness funding, long communicated with our endless elected who's now mayor, who's made so many promises over the

years and so many claims on homelessness. People just doubt almost everything he says about homelessness at this point, rightfully so. And probably most of my on the ground advocacy now where I do a lot of encampment support, work with of course unsheltered people, film the police around encampment sweeps and enforcement of laws that target and continue that till this day. Nice, yeah, you're doing a lot of work on this term. And then Levi, last but not least. Hi, you guys. I'm Levi Giafflioni with Homeful Solutions. I have lived experience in being homeless. I also work with a group of advocates called lived experience advisors here in San Diego. We try to hold them accountable. And we're also able to advocate for a lot of what these people

need in the recovery process, just beyond like housing, which is the main thing we know that a real estate crisis. And then I also work as a housing navigator downtown. So I work with a case load of about 200 clients, about 60 or 70 of them, I would say have SMIs really in like kind of one of the main areas of town that, you know, we have a lot of these people living outdoors. So I'm at kind of the front lines of it. Every day when it comes to people needing to get a shelter, one that they cry to, you know, when, when they think that it's a, you know, when they don't understand that it's the system that's broken, you know, I'm the one that they get yelled at, that gets yelled at, that, you know, they think I'm not doing enough, you know, and

be able to see all sides of it and see the promises that get made. And I literally have clients come in and say, Oh, hey, look, everything's going to be fine. Because the mayor just said this week, he's opening a new shelter. And I'm like, All right, let's do the math. That's a right. And there's 8,000 homeless people in the county. So, you know, and so, yeah, I have to kind of break down that it's a good responsibility, I guess, to break down the system to my clients so that they can understand how broken it is, you know, me being able to teach them patience to get them through the process too. So, and yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. And so yeah, I want to get into how because it consistently, I think like, I every time I like to ride my bike

around a lot, I'm always riding around town, often I run into people who are in distress, right, especially when we ride past the hospital, which is something we can get into. And they'll be like, Oh, just just call up what you sort them out with a shelter. Like, and then they'll have this horrible moment of realization when they're like, Oh, shit, like, there's nowhere for this person to go. So, let's talk a little bit about Todd Gloria, right? Todd Gloria is our mayor. He's a Democrat. He ran on a very progress. And what he's done has been extremely reactionary. And so I wanted to so I wanted to start just by reading some Todd tweets. Todd's a poster. Perhaps not not as much of a poster as Rachel, Rachel laying his, I guess, patients manager, I think. She has the soul of a

poster and will attack people working like Michael to help people, which is distressing to see. But I wanted to, I wanted to talk. So I've got a few quotes here, June 22 2019. Yes, I will be the first to enforce the law against those sheltered or unsheltered who break any law, but I will not use our codes to harass and criminalize sick and poor people. That's number one. What if we chose to take the resources we use to criminalize the homeless and redirect them to building housing instead? What if Todd, January 24 2019. And he's tagged Michael in this one. Maybe right. But the sad fact is that this before the PITC, that's the point in time count of unhoused people. It happens all the time. It's unfair to the unsheltered and to SGPD. My goal is to end

chronic homelessness. The only way to do this is with permanent supportive housing, not criminalization. Right. But that's not what you did. Californians of all political views know our homelessness crisis is a serious problem. More housing and services, not criminalization. It's past time to tackle this problem. I could keep going with these things, but I won't get the picture. So Todd talked a lot about how we don't need to criminalize poverty, how we don't need to criminalize living on the street, and then has proceeded to criminalize living on the street, right? And so maybe we can just start with these happened pretty much consistently, I think, since Todd took office. And people might be familiar with a little bit like they may have

seen some of the bikes being thrown away that that was like Michael had a video of that, which had how many? Oh gosh, I don't know. Yeah, a lot of people have seen that. But perhaps one of you would like to describe like exactly like how a sweep goes down, right? Like there's a process of posting, sometimes a process of posting notices, but you don't just says because people are encroaching like what's the sort of justification for it? And then what does that look like for people on the ground? February 14th of this year is on glorious started his sweep enforcement. It was unspoken, but during COVID, they were just killing people with COVID, instead of by police. Although the police were doing so this was the police do at the sweeps

is they use a series of unconstitutional ordinances, city ordinances only existing in the city of San Diego. And these unconstitutional ordinances taken together are legal for anybody to exist in public space. So me, our mothers, our children, anybody in public space can be ticketed for these violations because they're so overbroad. For example, depending on a sidewalk, just being there on a sidewalk will be enough to get you a citation issued if you can't prove you have a house to live in. These laws, like I said, they're written over broad, they apply to everyone use their discretion to only use them against poor persons. The vehicle habitation ordinance lists a series of items that if they're found in your car,

police could use those to arrest you and those items in slight food, water, trash. So everybody with food, water, or trash doesn't have to be all three, just one of them, could be subjected to arrest, have their equipment, have their taken to shelter, having their children taken to CPS. And all because the city wants to come after poor people with ordinances. So here's the fun. These ordinances can be charged either as misdemeanors or infractions. Mayor Gloria announced a progressive ordinance scheme, which means on day one, say Monday of the week, on day two, the individual is issued a infraction citation. That infraction citation gives them a date to appear months down the road to contest the case.

But the very next day, they can be issued a misdemeanor. That misdemeanor citation also has a date months down the road for resolution. And then day four, they can be arrested and taken into custody, all without ever having a day in prison. The citations, if they're issued to people in Midway or downtown San Diego, direct them to appear in Clermont Mesa. It's about 12 miles away. These are individuals that have mobility issues. They can't get to and from court. They can't really get to and from the end of the street very well without police starting to take away their property. The court won't allow them to bring their property in with them. The buses won't allow them to bring their property on the buses. So they have to make a choice. Do they

hold the remaining property that they have in the world to go to court, to defend against the charge that they really don't have the... The police can cite either as a misdemeanor infraction, but when they cite it as an infraction, it doesn't get an appointed attorney nor a jury trial. And so the punishment, the issuance of the citation becomes the punishment process where just to get to court and take care of your responsibilities becomes a chore, even if later it's dismissed. We found out through public records requests that 100% of the misdemeanors that are being cited are 100% of them. So people aren't getting their attempt, their opportunity to defend themselves in court. They're all being dismissed. And so if the city was serious about believing that these

individuals were committing criminal offenses, then they wouldn't be dismissing them after of them after they were issued. So Colleen is talking about the laws or the codes that are used during enforcement sweeps of people out here on the street. So the police go out and use codes and municipal codes to write people tickets and eventually take them to jail. That's just one kind of sweep. That's the enforcement sweeps. There's also sweeps or abatement sweeps. We call them homeless encampment sweeps or homeless community sweeps where per settlement with past lawsuits, the city has to post three hours, 72-hour notices in areas, then police and environmental services and cleanup crews, and they'll throw away all

your belongings if you're not there. So that's another kind of sweep. So there's actually two kinds of sweeps. There's these cleanup sweeps where they throw away your belongings, and then there's the enforcement sweeps where they just go out with sometimes, oh gosh Colleen, we've probably seen as many as 15, maybe 15 plus police go out to ticket people in a particular homeless community. So and just to the ringer with all these citations that Colleen went through. Yeah, and then perhaps Liva, you're familiar with the system, right? I think maybe the idea here is that the police are supposed to offer them shelter, right? And if they ask for shelter, they're supposed to offer it to them. Can you just explain that shelter can be extremely

difficult or impossible for people to access? Yeah, absolutely. And then I'll tell you kind of some of the consequences that people face even or as a result of this. But so basically like, let me paint the picture for you. So our location is having any housing here on site. And so the clients will typically, there's a line out the gate when we get here at eight o'clock in the morning. And eight o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock, all I do is shelter refer. That's everybody that's coming in the door that wants to get a shelter bed for that night, that night, right? We're doing this at eight o'clock in the morning. And oftentimes I will get one or two some days, I don't get anyone into shelter. Clock, all of those beds are full.

And that's what they report back to me as the service provider, right? Is at nine o'clock in the morning, there's no more shelter beds. And on top of that, the other thing to mention too is like, you know, the police are supposed to offer them shelter. But we have like some kind of like conglomerates as far as organizations go in the shelter space. So if a client is, for some reason, not allowed to go back, that's one pretty much forever. And be it could be something like behavior, like they got anxiety and yelled at somebody, right? Or it could be someone who can't complete their ADLs as they call it, or like an incontinence issue. So there's times, yes, it is sanitary and medically necessary for you to use this little bottle or whatever.

But then the shelter will then kick them out and not let them return for that kind of thing. So by nine o'clock, the shelter beds are full. In the beginning, when they were playing, they were doing their sweeps real early. Now they're doing their sweeps. After the time that I'm being told as a service provider that the shelters are already full. And on top of that, our shelter system, you're there during the day, right? So some of these people that they're taking their stuff and throwing it away are actually in shelter. You know, they just had to take their belongings with them back to the streets where everyone can see them every day. And recently, I had a client who we had spent like a month and a half trying to get him in the shelter

every single day. And it wasn't going through. Finally, we got him in the shelter and a ticket for encroachment that was not paid and he didn't go to court. So even though he was in shelter in the middle of the day, the police officer stopped him. They arrested him for his warrant. He was in there all weekend and he lost his shelter bed. Jesus. Yeah. So let's perhaps you or Mandy could explain then like some of the things because yeah, under the guise of I guess a cleanup or a bay called it like often they're actively stripping people of the things that they need to access shelter, to access housing, to transport themselves around, right? And so it's one of you want to take on like what this means. Although, you know, they do it under the

guise of we're going to, you know, we're cleaning up the area. But they will drag entire 10 people's belongings and put them in the compactor. They won't go through them. They never look. Oftentimes, there's medication in their IDs, paperwork, things that, you know, people have to have to survive. You know, people can't get have identification. It's really difficult for them to get identification living on the streets. You know, it's a process and that process sets outreach workers back. So, you know, you've got an outreach worker who may have gotten them an ID and, you know, they've taken their, it's called a BSPADAT where they're entered into the housing system and they're waiting a housing match and then their ID and everything gets thrown away. So then the

outreach worker has to take time to go back other ID when they could be helping, you know, someone else get set up to maybe get into housing. You know, they don't, they don't look through the things this causes so much trauma for these folks. I've seen so a lot of times with sweeps, sometimes I say they'll allow people to gather their things and move them. And then they'll sweep the area. I've seen times when they have had things, they moved their things and then the police surround their things while people are standing there and they place their things in front of them while they are begging for their things and they will put them in the trash compactor in front of them. And it's, I mean,

the only way that you can view that is it's just punishment. Like you're not, you know, you're out here, you're poor. We don't have any options for you, but we're going to do this to deter you because we just don't want to see you here. Yeah. I remember I talked to someone downtown a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to stop to give some folks some water and like, this is the shit I chose to bring with me. Like I didn't, you know, it's not like I could take everything and these are the things that I wanted to keep because they were special to me and then, yeah, now, now they're being trashed. Indeed, in 2018, I think 2018, a person was thrown in this right? Yeah, like inside their tent. Just fucking unbelievable. And so, yeah,

we've established that these sweeps are cruel. We've established that there's not really anywhere for people to go. And they don't, they don't provide a lasting solution to homelessness. They just, they just move people around and make it harder for them. So one of the things that we do in San Diego is that we have this thing called a point in time count, right? And I think there have been some suggestions that the sweeps were increased in certain areas around the point in time count. So what if you want to explain what that count like is and does? Yeah. So the point in time count really only captures like one night out of the year people experiencing homelessness. There was a couple of obstacles. That process this year was particularly really cold that night.

There were some tech glitches that should have been worked out way more in advance. But that really only pictures like takes capture of one night. The, the data I like to often refer to because it just feels more realistic to me is our TFH states that in any given year, there's 30,000 people seeking assistance for homelessness. So our point in time count, you know, shows one night. There is data being collected all year around. So at the point in time count, you have a lot of volunteers go out very early in the morning. They have them count the population, do some interviews with them real quick. The interviews are very personal. You know, it's, it's, it's not necessarily something somebody

wants to wake up and answer at 5am. But we found some people that were, you know, but that's, that's the point in time count in a nutshell. Okay. And then like what's, I know that downtown, I think the downtown partnership collects their own data, right? Because the data we have is very unreliable. What's our best guess at people like maybe in the city sheltered at, at this time? Over 1500 unsheltered homelessness, meaning that they're not in a shelter or, you know, some kind of program. Okay. In just, and that's just in downtown San Diego, not the whole county.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So downtown San Diego for people not familiar is a pretty small part of a very large county, right? And with, I think San Diego has the highest ratio of average income to property prices anywhere in the country now. Correctly. It's incredibly unaffordable. Um, so this has led, uh, unfortunately, but probably pretty predictably to a number of deaths on our streets, right? And for, for last week, if I were in a seven day period, this August is it's hot, it's, it's hot for San Diego right now. And despite this, we've seen this just like incredibly callous response from the city, I guess. We've seen Todd, for instance, talk, Laurie, who's on there giving a speech in front

of a shelter where somebody's remains were taken away a few hours before and not mentioning that someone had just passed away in that place. I want to talk to a gap between rhetoric and reality, because if you were only learning about this from the city and Todd's Twitter account, you'd think that it was fine, right? Cause he's posting about these new shelter beds, but perhaps you can explain how at best that's a distraction from the problems getting worse. I think that, um, there's the reality that they want the public to see, and then there's the reality that's happening. And I think that they're failing so badly, um, at getting people into services because, um,

many of the services just don't fit people. Um, so they want to paint this picture that all the unsheltered people that are out in their tents living on the street or living in their vehicles are service resistant. Um, and I hear that all the time, you know, we asked them, they don't want, it's not that people don't want services. Many of these people have tried some of the service centers in San Diego and the barriers are extremely high. Um, you know, the, the check in time and check out time can be difficult for people. Um, they'll separate families. So, um, you know, sometimes the, the, they'll tell you, Oh, you can go in together if your husband and wife, or if your partners, and then you get to the shelters and they say, I'm sorry,

you can't be together because so you have to go to a men's shelter and you'd have to go to a women's shelter. Um, they'll also do that with, uh, say a mother has a 16 year old son and she needs to go into a shelter and there's not a family shelter. Um, she cannot take her a women's shelter with her. He has to go into a men's shelter. Um, so, you know, then, you know, people with their pets, their only source of like love and acceptance, you know, a lot of places won't take pets. A lot of places, they're using substances. So, we've got all these boundaries that are keeping people on the streets and no one's talking about that and no one's talking about the fact that some of, not all of them, but some of the service providers are profiting off of these poor people because

they represent state and federal dollars. Um, so you've got shelters that are run horribly and, you know, the more people that come in, they just want to cycle them through because that gives them money. CEO and all of their family members that are, you know, working for the nonprofit. Um, and, and these people, because they're unsheltered, they don't feel they have a voice, they don't feel they can speak up because of retaliation. So, they're just constantly and then you've got the city who's saying, look at all these fantastic things we're doing. Um, which is, is couldn't be farther from the truth. Um, and then they constantly use the narrative that folks are service resistant. Um, services that are out there are too few and,

um, too difficult and just they're not meeting people where they're at and they're just setting people up to fail every time. Another thing I want to get into with the shelters specifically is these congregate shelters, right? And what in the, in the context of an ongoing pandemic that maybe is transitioning into another pandemic, can you explain what, what's a congregate shelter, right? It's a long word, but it's, what does it mean and how are those dangerous, especially for medically compromised or older people living on the street? Look at our shelter system here in San Diego in the city of San Diego is congregate shelter. Uh, meaning people are just placed in one big room or in some cases big circus type tents.

We have a few of those where people are sleeping and caught three feet apart. So you can imagine how horrible that is for the spread of disease. That's why we've had some very large outbreaks of COVID in our, in our shelter system and, and they're frequently closed to new intakes. I think it's really folks know that like you said, if you look at Mayor Gloria's Twitter or social media feed, you think they're doing everything they can and there's all these resources. But on any given day, there may be a few dozen shelter beds, literally thousands and thousands of people that are sleeping on our streets at night. And the only reason there's a few dozen shelter beds is because they've kicked some people out that day for breaking some minor rules. Most

people who leave shelter. So shelter is not a very good pathway to anything. Roughly one in seven people who leaves a city of San Diego shelter go to a permanent housing solution. That's, that's a very, very light. In fact, under Mayor Gloria, I've seen some of the lowest success rates of our system than I've ever seen in my 13 years of working on this. Our, our system has actually, is, is actually working worse before Todd Gloria took over. So he has done very, very little. And it, most of what he's done has been mostly performative, adding some shelter beds here and there. Very little on the fact he's left tens of millions of dollars on the table that he hasn't applied for. He did not utilize a California funding stream called project room key that

would have allowed him to rent hotel rooms. Most of the time on our taxpayer dime to get people off the street. He actually refused to do that. He has refused to open safe camp areas where people could go and camp and get off of the sidewalk. Many of us and others in the community have pushed for real solutions and for him to utilize these funding sources and he's absolutely refused to do it. Meanwhile, like we stated earlier, he has deployed these garbage trucks and everybody else to go out there and make people's lives miserable. So he's just been an absolute failure on this issue. And at the same time, he's been the one who's given the most to solutions for this. It is absolutely incredible what a disaster he has been for

not only for the unsheltered community, but for San Diego. I've begun that he is San Diego's worst enemy and I just can't believe as somebody who supported him, supported him in his election, urged people to vote for him. How the hoodwing die was. I just can't believe that this guy has been so horrible for our city and every indication is that he's going to continue running into the ground. People die on our streets at record numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when he came out of the gate, didn't Gloria, how many people he was going to house under his term and didn't he lower the number than in previous years? Oh yeah, that was some kind of a aid or a federal government goal that he set. And he actually set a goal of housing people

that was less than we had done in the previous year. So his big stretch was to actually house fewer people. I don't even know if he's even getting there. I mean this guy, this guy is unbelievable, the kind of nonsense that he is pulling on the citizens of our city. It is unbelievable as invested so much in PR and he's got these folks who are just good at spinning this nonsense to make it sound good and because he gets a lot of media, obviously a big pulpit to spew this nonsense from, he's able to get a lot of people to believe it. Now on homelessness, anybody who has a decent set of eyes is basically calling bullshit. I don't know a whole lot of people anymore who think we're doing very well on this issue and so I think he's going to have a

harder and harder time convincing people that he's worthy of re-election of a higher office at some point which is all he seems to care about. Yeah and can I ask some more? So he's personally to blame. He has personal involvement of getting rid of 10,000 SROs, single rental units, that if we had minus our 8,000 homeless people, we would not have homelessness. So some of the units that he was required to replace and never replace them, that's his fault. I call him a monster. I was going to criminalize but he was a Republican. We expected it of him and he didn't tell a promise last year he was going to end criminalization to get our vote. One of the reasons that are probably the only, the main reason that that Gloria didn't put funding into Project Grunty

was because the city is in this unique position of owning and operating the non-profit that runs the convention center. So when COVID hit, they were looking at non-profit going belly up events in there and having to lay off all their staff. So instead of putting people in hotels where they'd be safe, they put them in a convention center where they'd be exposed to COVID and would die but the city funded non-profit would be funded. So that's and $132 million is what Todd Gloria got the city to pay out on a settlement on Ash Street. Ash Street is his boondoggle, he cost us that. He could be a city council to invest all this money to slide donor money to city money to his donors. What is Ash Street for the listeners who aren't familiar with our real

estate grift scene? So James, if you were going to go buy a house right now, you would think it is important a property inspection, correct? Yes, yeah, yeah. Would you think it would be important to Google or seek out documents that may inform you of as best as prior to your purchase? Yeah, I do want to know that. Yeah, so these are two of the opportunities that they missed when they entered this deal with the 101 Ash Street. So they basically had a middleman Cistera come in and purchase the property and then lease to own it back to the city. At no time was an inspection done. People were aware of it, but there was no studies done on what the impact was going to be and all that. So now we've got ourselves sunk into this deal that is taxpayers $202 million,

right? So I punched some of the maths, okay? Yeah. And if you assume that one year's rent is $24,000, right? Yeah. $202 million divided by $24,000 is more than 8,000 people that this taxpayer money, you know? And it's just in a cycle and it's not only the cycle there, but it's we don't have enough police. So they're bringing in more police when we don't have the housing. And then the police that we do have are working overtime to pick up shopping carts and throw away tents, you know? So the Ash Street deal, there's plenty to go. It is like historically going to go down in San Diego's screw-ups for sure. Yeah, it's a giant monument to grift. Go ahead, Kaleen. But we don't have any police is also more gaslighting. We have started practicing law 30 years ago,

two police officers would show up at the scene. Now at least six police officers show up every single time. We have an overblight of police and we could afford to lay off two thirds. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. But instead, we just built childcare center for them. Just piggyback on that real quick about the police. One thing I think they also push the narrative that, you know, there's this hot team, the homeless outreach team, that the police, they never take water. They never really take anything and they search for unsheltered people and they rarely get any traffic to these things. And people often wonder why. We cannot expect unsheltered people to trust and accept help

people that criminalize them, terrorize them, harass them and throw their things away. So, you know, adding more police to deal with homelessness is just also a waste of money. It causes more trauma to the unsheltered people. Unnecessary. So we're talking about this duality between like what said and what exists on the street, right? And it's very apparent. People on the internet love to be wrong about George Orwell. But the one time recently where I felt that like Orwell would be a useful thing to deploy is the idea of a care court, like, which is the thing that Todd's been very strong on the Gavin Newsom's post, right, courts in my opinion don't care about people.

So can someone explain what a care court is and why it's relevant in this setting? So the framework of this is you have a bunch of liberals in Gloria and Gavin Newsom's ear saying, we have to end homelessness. And the politicians are saying, oh, well, we can't end because they're all mentally ill drug users. Okay, so that's the first premise that we're working with. And they're not 10% are use drugs and have mental illness and to a debilitating extent in the homeless population. This is parallels the the rate of drug use in the house community, we don't take houses away from drug users who are housed and make them get sober before we return their houses to them.

So requiring that they be sober, we have to get them into housing first. Now the care court is set up just to pass more money to their donors. That's all it's set up to do. It's not going to ease anything. It's going to set up a situation where a person is considered gravely disabled, then they can be put into a conservatorship and gravely disabled is defined as unable to provide shelter for oneself. So essentially, everybody who is pulled is gravely disabled. And the rich who got them in this position can make all the decisions for them. I'm very passionate about this because it's it's cruel and it's it's it's it's essentially the return of all the that was set set turned off. The whole reason that, you know, Reagan got every get everybody

released from the prisons because of the mental illness, but he never paid there was never any payment into community mental health services. So now they want to return them to the institutionalization after never providing any street a sufficient street services for them. And that's that's just cruel. Yeah. And so with the whole care court plan, there's like a one is that it does not mention that there is any housing stipulation at all. So it does not say that the conservator must provide them shelter. The check in guidelines are once every 30 days, which is a time period that we have them check in with their case managers is at least once every 30 days. And they also try to try to tell it like, well, it's it could be temporary, right? Like,

once they get better, then they'll be off the console. As to me is it's like, okay, you force them into treatment. And then once they get kicked out of treatment, you say, okay, they're healed. And then, you know, they're back away from their services. And I've had clients who thought maybe a conservatorship is right for me. Begging where they're like, I just can't do stuff right. Like, you know, and I had one client specifically asked me to be her conservator. And I care about her so much. And if I thought that her having a conservator would really benefit her. But as of right now, there's no difference in whether a conservator can get somebody shelter better than me as a service provider, or if they can get them into a treatment program better than

a service provider. Now Colleen was talking about how only 10% of our homeless population has a drug in San Diego County has a whole 15% of San Diegans have a substance use issue, right? My 10% was debilitating a debilitating. Okay, good to clarify. We said 15% is way more than our homeless population. Those aren't the only ones with substance use. But if you are on MediCal, right, if you're low income and low income in San Diego is anyone making less than $76,000 per year, which is a lot more people than they really are. If you are low income. Can I talk about bumping? Just because you thought if you're low income, but I have some memes here, I wanted to point some

facts on the care court. Care court claims to address houselessness, $35 million budget, zero will go to housing, and zero will go to mental health services. That's shocking. Zero to mental health services are housing. Care court will weaponize its unchecked power and worsen the historical violence communities. And care court claims to address mental health disabilities, but allows a judge to rub anyone they find unfit of autonomy over their health, home, and life. Yeah, and I did remember my thoughts. So like the people on MediCal, they're as far as like we already know fentanyls and everything now, even if somebody thinks

they're getting coke or whatever they think it is, typically there is fentanyl in it. So anyone who does wish to go through a detox, it's impossible to get them bets. Have clients who come in there like, please, I know, I know, I got to get work this out of my life, and I'm going to try, can you get me into detox? And we'll spend the whole day, you know, and there's one. And like all these people are competing for the detox facility. So if it was like we had the infrastructure set up, and we had this awesome mental health care, and we had these awesome like street medics and street therapy, and we had, okay, and everyone in the conservatorship is going to be housed at this place like

maybe, but like this whole thing is just it's it's a load of crap. So Levi, if we had if we had all those things, if we had a good system that had good substance use treatment, good mental health care, and housing, we wouldn't have all these folks on the street. Amen. And so it's kind of interesting that they're creating something to solve an issue that they don't have the infrastructure to solve. But I think it's important to note that care court is a conservatorship, but we already have conservatorship laws. Conservatorship laws, they're very strict. It's a very high threshold to get somebody conserved currently. For good reason, you're taking away somebody's civil,

you're taking away somebody's rights to make their own decisions is what a conservatorship. But for some folks that are gravely disabled and impaired, it is the best thing to do. It's for, you know, for very few people. But but the the city attorneys and the people in the hospital, the workers, they don't want to go through it because it is very difficult and challenging. And oftentimes, the judge, the judge will deny it because that's how important it is for people to have these civil rights. So sometimes you even have to do it multiple times with somebody who, you know, who may actually need it. And I speak from first hand experience of helping people, you know, go through this process and try to, you know,

conservatorship on somebody who just really, really needs it. Care court would lower that threshold so much. I doubt it's legal. I'm sure it's going to get challenged in court. It is such a dangerous leap against our civil liberties or civil rights that I just am going to find it incredible if judges allow this to move forward when it's challenged. But the point is that people need help. They need care, not court. And if we would provide the care, which our elected officials don't want to do, I think this is just a cop out on their part. I think this is, this is the elected official saying we have failed. So we'll just pun it to the courts and let them take ownership and control of this,

which in effect, the courts are just kicking it to the county is our behavioral health provider, who's going to have to provide these services and be responsible for these folks. I think this is going to be such a train wreck. But the one thing it is illuminating is that our behavioral health system is so broken, so dysfunctional that they would even be trying to do this. I think it's basically an indictment system. But care court is not going to fix anything. That's, and I think it's setting people up for failure. I've talked to some families who are really, now these are who have seriously mentally ill loved ones, whether it's spouses or children, siblings, they see this as a silver bullet to get their loved ones. And maybe it works better

for that segment of the population because they have somebody. They have a loved one as an advocate to make sure that the care is the focus. But for unsheltered folks, they're going to be abused and used by this system. Maybe warehoused, who knows, they're going to end up worse off in my opinion. And so against it as it's written, and certainly fear that the implementation of it is going to be a travesty that I just can't imagine. This so-called liberal state would try to trample the rights of people like this. And, oh boy, I tell you, there's so much dangerous about this, that I mean, we could have a hold of this and maybe, and I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about this down the road. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what I want to do is focus a little bit to

finish up here on some solutions. So the things that a lot of you guys are doing right now to provide people with help to provide people with the basic thing that dignified existence and like how the state could do better, right? Like what housing first solutions look like? What solutions are informed by evidence rather just informed by sort of cruelty and the desire to brush the problem aside? What are those? I think you have to, you know, you can't expect people to get well on the street. So you've got to get them inside. And congregate shelters, we've already talked about why those are so problematic on so many levels. There is a model in San Diego that's being used by a nonprofit. Right now, it's only for elderly individuals. It's called housing for

the homeless. And they put unsheltered elderly folks in hotel rooms. And it's had tremendous success. For some reason, it cannot get funding for county funding. But getting these people off the street and out of survival mode is first and foremost. And then you've got them in a stable place so that services can find them when they need them. They can get mental health services. You know, we need to bolster our rehab and addiction services. We also need more harm reduction. You know, it can take you one to three weeks to detox at McAllister, which is the only detox center in San Diego, south of Encinitas. And detox is separate from sober living. So you may detox and then it may be another one to three week wait

get into sober living, which is just enough time to get turned back out on the streets and relax again. And after that, even there's no housing at the end of the tunnel. So, you know, really the biggest thing that we're missing is housing. And then everything else trickles down from there. You know, just building these relationships with people so that they can can trust that you're on their side and you're not going to lie to them, give them any promises or use them in some way to monetize them for you is one of the biggest things that I've found of importance for me as an on the ground, you know, outreach worker and doing mutual aid. Most of the time these people just don't have

water, you know, they're thirsty, they're hungry, but poverty looks like. So I think we've, you know, we've got to get these people inside immediately. And then we start deploying the resources to them to help them recover from the trauma or, you know, whatever trauma led them to be in that situation. I think people often forget that a lot of folks on the street, you know, there's the foster to the streets pipeline, there's the jail to the streets pipeline. So, you know, many people don't end up on the streets because they have family to help them. And a lot of these folks on the streets, they don't have any family members. So, you know, as a community, we need to step up and be their family.

So that's great. And I think, I think we have to understand that the homeless service system, and I'm going to talk about some of the good things that are it's important for people to know there's a ton of stuff happening, both grassroots all the way up. But it's important to understand that the homeless service system can only do so much. As Mandy was talking about these pipelines that feed homelessness, people are becoming homelessness. I've never seen so many new people out here on the street in my work. I'm on the street some part, well, a lot of the every day. And I'm seeing more new people than I've ever seen in my last 13 years. And there's all these feeder systems. It's child welfare, it's foster care, it's the education system.

You know, you can name it. It's the health care system. All these things are feeding homelessness. It's the how we've commoditized housing. I mean, I can go on and on talking about what's feeding homelessness. It's safety nets. It's a lack of good mental health care and substance use care. So homeless services cannot control these things up above these systems, these billion dollar systems that are that are failing people and feeding homelessness. What system is and I like to say they've got a lot of mission creep going on here because ideally they really should be focused on getting people into housing and out of homelessness, but they've become this this big system that is really getting very costly and efficient and effective. But we know what

solves homelessness. Housing and services solve homelessness, period. And it works. We see when these new quality projects like Zephyr or Trinity Place, they're not projects, they're housing. They're housing with services. So we call them projects, but they're just like any other apartment building really, except they have supportive services for folks and they work extremely well. They have a 95% plus rate of keeping folks housed, even folks who have some who are disabled and have some significant issues. And it helps provide that self-sufficiency by providing a deep rental subsidy and supportive services for folks who aren't taking care of their own rent totally themselves. There is no free housing. Everybody who gets these units pays 30% of their income.

Whether it's disability income, social security, retirement, whatever, they're paying some free housing. People are helping themselves and that's really important to say and they're participating in services. But once you're in housing, your participation in services rates go up because people want to keep going better and stay in the housing. These things are being built, they're being built as we speak, but at a snail's pace. And that's the things that I fault our elected leadership for is they're nibbling around the edges. So has Todd Gloria done some a few, but they're so small and he blows them up to like he's solving something and he's not. Has the county done some good things? Yeah, they've actually done more good things than I've ever

seen them do, but it's still not any work that we need. They've opened up some mental health crisis centers that are actually walk-in centers. They've put together some mental health crisis teams that respond to a small percentage of cases of when you call 911, but it is helping. All of these, what really needs to be done is the things that we know work need to be taken to scale, but we have to also understand the challenges of that. We can't just fault the elected officials for some things they don't have control over. As we all know, it's a hard time hiring people, so we need a lot more staff that work with, that are providing mental health services and substance use services, but we won't get there. And this is where the officials have a lot of fault,

have a lot of fault is they've really not put a priority on this issue. And this is where there's the biggest disconnect. On one hand, you have Todd Gloria constantly saying how this is his number one issue. On the other hand, I'm a big believer in bicycle safety and safe roads and things like that, but he seems to put more importance on a bike lane than he does solving homelessness. And they're both important, but 500 people dying on our streets because they're homeless. He needs to put, he needs to back up his talk with action, just like they're expanding some bike lanes. And I think they need to do it a lot smarter because some of them don't seem to be that safe to me, but that's a whole other show too. I shouldn't be involved in, but they

don't seem to be very strategic to me. They don't seem to care. They seem to be more interested in hoodwinking the public so they can get their next job. We need people who care, mostly that care about people, but also care efficiently and effectively. But some of the grassroots stuff, like I say, getting people into hotel rooms and then getting into housing is a good pathway. The county opened a small shelter. I think it's 44 beds or so. It's the first day open that's really more tailored toward people with substance use and mental health needs. It has a great uptake rate and the feedback from people on the streets is good. So here we have something that the county did that was good. We need a lot more of them. They're opening another

jumbo tent. So these things are very frustrating to folks like myself and Mandy, Colleen, the different people, the people who are actually on the ground working that are trying to get people into them. We know what we know the things that people will go into, including substance use help. But whenever you try to get somebody in it and you're told there's a three-week waiting list, you'll lose that person. They want to go now. You've got to be responsive to the person's motivation in that moment to get the help. And it's heartbreaking for people like Mandy and me who are out there on the street and people are crying out for this help. Bullshit when these folks, whether it's the police or the mayor, say that the people don't want help. It's really

disgusting because when you're on the street like we are and people are pleading for this help and we can't help them because it's not available, we can't. And we call bullshit. We call bullshit on the rhetoric that comes out of these people's mouths. We know the people. We see their faces. Those tears are real. That pleading for help is real. And we can't help them if we do what's right. And so we could talk all day about some of the good things, too, that the grassroots people like Mandy are out there just on the ground. None of us here on this call except for Levi. Levi works within the system. And thank goodness for him. And the last thing I want to say, and I'm always remiss if I don't remember to say this, but I always want to send a shout-out.

It's not the fault of the hard-working people on the street. Whether you're paid or not, I just want to say thanks to all of the folks who take on this job, paid or not, to go out and help people firsthand do the best with this shitty system that they're given. So there's a lot of people who take very little pay. They do this because they care or the volunteers who do it because they care to help people. And there's a lot of folks out there and hard to help folks. And they are helping people one by one by one. And we need the support. We need, we have to have the support of the Todd Gloria's and the Nathan Fletcher's of the world and the Gavin Newsom's to do the right thing and to keep funding what works and to quit doing what doesn't.

And so I think it's just important to round out by saying that. Yeah, I think that's very good. All of you are out helping people. I see it all the time on your social media. Where can people find you and how can they support what you're doing if it's getting people tense, getting people water, that kind of thing? Should we start with, let's just go down the list. I'll start with Mandy. I usually kind of bum off with Michael for funding. Because most of everything I do, I pay for myself. So he has, he does a GoFundMe and then he'll be like, hey, I got GoFundMe money and I meet him and he loads up my car and off I go.

People can find me on Twitter. Cooper too. I'm very passionate. So it's like, be careful what you look at on my feed. I love these people and I want to see them because they're, I want to see them get the help. And one thing that Michael taught me in the very beginning of this, because I started this maybe about two, three years ago, one thing that Michael said to me that resonated with me because I call them parades now, which are like liberal marches, yelling at buildings when I once in and then going home and feeling good about what I did. And he said, you know, Mandy, he said, social justice issue, that everyone fights for Black Lives Matter, immigration, disability,

you know, all of these things come together from LGBTQIA plus. All of those people are overrepresented in the homeless population. And so it shakes down to that. And so I thought, you know, my mind was like blown and I was like, oh my God, you know, I'm out here marching for people. Most marginalized of them are living on the street. And there's very little help for those people because unfortunately, whether whatever marginalized group you come from, when you become over takes all of them. And there is a huge public hatred for unsheltered people. And it is bipartisan across the board. So we all just need to realize that this is, you know, this is a societal failure and a social justice. And I hope that, you know,

more people will get up and get go to the ground and start talking to your unsheltered neighbors, try to build a relationship with them, reach out to their humanity. And one person, if each of us just did it with one person, it would make such a difference. Even if you can't get them in housing, or you don't have a lot of money, literally just treating them like a human being means so much to these folks. Yeah, that's very important. Kelly, what would you like to say? Where can people find you? How can they help? That was just like how to find us, right? I know. I thought it was going to commit. Sorry. No, I thought it was really good. You should have a Mandy. My name is Colleen Cusack, C-U-S-A-C-K. You can Google me and find me.

I am in searchable and new attorney directory, my number is 619-823-460. And my email address is C, another C-U-S-A-C-K dot policy at gmail.com. And I'm on Twitter at symbol HN, which stands for objection. Great. Thank you. All right. Michael. So, like Mandy, I've just funded my work myself also, except for about, oh, do a go. I was out on the street filming some sweeps, watching the police and the environmental service workers throw away people's tents. And I said, well, I'm going to go get those people some new tents. Officer told me, go ahead, we can throw them out faster than you can give them out. And I tweeted about that. And, you know, I think it really, you know,

struck a chord with people. So I've had people, but I've just had this real outpouring of offerings to help lately. So for the first time ever, I set up a go fund me. And in the first day, I just said, you know, this is just to help supporting campments that are impacted by the sweeps or whatever. Or other grassroots people like Mandy, who are out there. And I think I raised about $3,000 in the first day. And I was like, wow, that it really was touching because, you know, I didn't even hardly, I just put it out on Twitter, I think. And I haven't promoted it much since, but I think we're up to six or $7,000. Why are we shopping? And I use that every day. I don't wear you. I'm retired, so I get to do this all day long. People like Mandy,

they have a job, they're doing this as a second job that's unpaid. So what I do is help, is the buy stuff. I help other organizations. I also promote vetted go fund me's of other people on my social media site. So I really would appreciate you following me on Twitter. It's at Homelessness SD. On Facebook, it's Homelessness News San Diego. On Instagram, it's the same. And on YouTube, it's, I think it's Homelessness News San Diego on YouTube. I just started a YouTube page, but I just started posting stuff on there. Do I have a lot of followers? It's a pretty active conversation, especially on Twitter. I get the bears people lashing out at me, attacking me because they don't like me calling them out. I get haters on there too. I let them

voice their opinion. I let the conversation flow. But what I do is, and I do warn you, that especially on Twitter, it's heart wrenching stuff. On the ground, I'm seeing people die. I'm seeing horrible stuff, and I'm sharing it with you because I think people deserve to know the truth. So elected officials like Mayor Todd Gloria, they don't want you to know the truth, but I'm going to bring it to you. I work to bring you the truth that's going on out here on the street, and it's ugly. But it's also, I also see some amazing stuff. I also see some amazing heartwarming stuff, people helping people. So it's everything. Polar coaster ride folks. So, just be prepared. And from there, you can find my GoFundMe. But most of all, you can get educated

on the issue. Make up your own mind. The bullshit that's spewed out of City Hall. See it on the ground for yourself. I take people out with me. I do a lot of work with the media, but just join the conversation. Learn. Donate if you want to. Learn where you can donate your time to other people. Yeah, message me. You can come with me. Yeah. Yeah. We're just real people out there doing, you know, doing. And I worked within the system trying to, I went to all these meetings. I spent a whole ton of money within the mainstream system, which I'll never do again, because it's a black hole. So I mostly promote grassroots stuff. And we're just out there doing it and doing what we can in a very difficult situation. But join the conversation and see what's going on.

And that's James. I just, I appreciate all your support over the years, both amplifying our messages, getting messages out on social media, and just for everything that you do on social justice issues and safety issues. Thank you. And hold them accountable on the bike stuff. Yeah, absolutely will do. That's another episode. I will plug Levi on Levi's behalf because I have to jump off to sort out an emergency, but it's which on Twitter is at the solution 619. You can find them there and leave. I can help folks if they are in San Diego access services. So yeah, that's been us today. Please do follow these people and be a good neighbor to the unhoused community wherever you are. Feel free to reach out to any of us if you need some help or

advice on how to do that or want to come out here in San Diego. All right. Thank you very much, everyone. Appreciate you taking some of your time. Welcome to it could happen here podcast about how the world is falling apart and sometimes about how to put it together today, mostly about the people who are accelerating the falling apart garrisons with me, shereens with me. We are talking today about the merchant of death, the Lord of War, Victor boot. So she probably started off by talking about Victor boot. Victor boots always an interesting topic of conversation, but he's come up recently because he's one of the people who has been proposed to be exchanged for two US citizens held by Russia, one being Brittany Greiner and one being Paul Whelan.

So I'm guessing folks are pretty familiar with the Brittany Greiner situation. If not, what's the TLDR on that? TLDR is Brittany Greiner is a two time Olympic gold medallist. She's a basketball player and she often plays off season basketball in Russia, which tells you a lot about in wages between men and women in professional sport. And unfortunately, when she was traveling to Russia, I guess she had a weed vape cartridge in her bag and so she was arrested and accused of drug smuggling. My God. Yeah. As we go through this, it will become very clear that I don't think it's controversial to

say that the Russian state engages in hostage taking, right? Oh, for sure. I don't think that's like a controversial statement. This lady is not drug smuggling. Yeah. I too would probably want to take drugs if I had to spend my off seasons in Russia. But like it's so transparent what they're doing. It's like they don't even attempt to not, it's just, yeah, they're not being sneaky about it. They're very clearly being like, we're taking this person hostage. Yeah. And we will hold this person hostage until you give us the person that we want back, right?

Thank you. And even so there was a, he was a Marine held by Russia. So there's Paul Wheelan as the other guy, right? Paul Wheelan was a Marine. He had a, he didn't have a dishonorable discharge. He had what's called, I think, an other than honorable. He was doing a couple of things. He was embezzling shit from the United States government, which is pretty based. Yeah. Yeah, we should all be so lucky. And he was also writing bad checks. His checks were bouncing. So he booted from the Marine Corps for that and was doing some kind of private security work it seemed like. So he was arrested in Russia in 2019. Another former Marine called Trevor Reed was arrested and his case is just like, it's not comic, but the guy was driving

with his girlfriend at the time. They've been on a big night out. They were in a car, he got drunk, got belligerent, started getting fighty. And they pulled over and some of his mates were like, look, if you don't calm down, so you keep fighting with us, they called the police. The police were like, right, we'll take you in, you sleep it off, deal with you in the mornings, kick you out. And then at some point, the next morning, the FSB turned up, which is like the inheritor of the legacy of the KGB. Like, oh, Trevor, why did you attack the cops last night? Why did you do that? Why would you assault the police, the Russian police? And he was like, what are you talking about, bro? And they were like, yeah, you're going to jail,

you're a spy. Government Biden, under Biden swapped him out. And the two who are left, well, there are other people left, obviously. But who was swapped out for the other guy? Trevor Reed. I'm not sure who was traded for Trevor Reed. It's the most like weird, I mean, that nothing is too strange at this point. But like, when you really countries like trading people, yes, so strange to me. Yeah, he was, he was, he was was one who was in here on drug trafficking charges, I guess. And so they switch out Reed, right? But Reed and Whelan have become close in their captivity and Reed's been a big advocate for having Whelan released. Whelan's kind of, yeah, you're taking the piss of you think Britney

Grindel's a drug trafficker, but Whelan does have like five different nationalities. I think he's, he's got American, he's got Canadian, he might only have four. I think he's got British and Irish. So he's a former service member in the United States. And like this guy was broke, right? He was, he was bouncing checks, as we'll learn in this episode. One of the things intelligence agencies tend to like is people who are bouncing check. Those of those people are easy to recruit, right? Like if you're, if you're, if you're trying to buy shit that you can't afford, you might be easier to recruit if you, if they offer you money, right? So I'm not saying no idea whatsoever, I got no unique insight into that. But I am saying that like, his case is a

little bit more interesting. So the United States has proposed trading Victor Boot for both Griner and Whelan. That was kind of doing the rim of fashion source confirmed it last weekend. So that's why we want to talk about Victor Boot today. It's about BAUT, by the way, if anyone's looking up. If people are familiar with Victor Boot at all, it was from the Nicholas Cage film, Lord of War. Have you seen that either of you? I subjected Chris to it. Now Chris can't make the podcast. So that's good. We'll be Nicholas Cage free in this. It is a pretty epic film. It's a good film. Does Nicholas Cage play boot? Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah. I need to see that. I need to see that. Yeah. I wish, yeah, I wish I could share with you just the scene where like it's, he just

turns to the camera. Like there's, there's 550 million guns in the world. That's one for every 12 people. And my only question is how do we arm the other 11? But at some point, he like just puffs on a fat cigar in the middle of that. Does he have an accent? No, he doesn't do a rush disappointing. Allegedly, that's a real quote from, from Victor Boot, by the way. You can find a clip. We can slice it in. Yeah, I can find a clip. I got one. I got one lined up on my computer. I will send it to our fair editors. There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every 12 people on the planet. The only question is how do we arm the other 11?

It's great. It's classic Nicholas Cage. He can't do anything wrong. It's so true. Yeah. Ghost writer never happened. I don't know what you're talking about. Nope. It's been erased from my memory. So aside from Nicholas Cage's accent portrayal, the film isn't that accurate. Notably, he didn't actually grow up in Brighton Beach, Old Victor. He grew up in Dushanbe in that's, it was in the Tajik province of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, right? Now it's in Tajikistan. And we know, well, there's a lot of stories about this guy. It's very hard to confirm which of them is true. There are, he's clearly

told as many background stories as he's met new groups of people when he's moved around. His mum is on the scene. So we do know that his mother is still alive. I think she's 85. She will occasionally pop up in the Russian press and ask Joe Biden to let her poor innocent son go, which is very amusing. He was a car mechanic. So he's not like a child of privilege, particularly. But at some point, he seems to have joined the Soviet military, probably the Air Force, and he trained at their military Academy of Languages and his capacity for language is insane. He can go down the shops in like 15 different languages. He can speak fluently in half a dozen. He can, you know, order a sandwich in like 20 languages. Yeah. I want that power.

Yeah. Don't we all. It seems to be like these people who like thrive in like non-state activities in crime and stuff like do seem to like having a capacity for language benefit in that world. You hear about quite a lot. Later on, when he's in prison in Thailand, he learned Sanskrit. He doesn't bother to learn Thai. He doesn't want people to think they can understand what he's saying. Fuck it. I'll learn Sanskrit while I'm here, like I'm running out of options. Yeah. He's got this amazing capacity for language, which probably ends up with him being a spook. It's not like we it's not for the KGB, but it seems that way. We know that he was bouncing around in Angola as part of the Civil War there. So it's unlikely that he was a pay clerk or

like the guy who changed the tires on the airplanes and them to Angola. And when the Soviet Union collapses, Victor is in Angola, right? Or at least he gets to Angola pretty quickly. Not, I think, because it's the place he wanted to be, but because places that had the least regulations on civilian use of military aircraft. So this is where he goes from KGB dude who speaks a lot of languages to beginning to be this international arms sort of God. And he does that by buying these Antonov planes. People might not be familiar with Antonov. It's just a giant plane. It's a huge cargo plane. Obviously a little bit outdated now, but you'll still see them. But it's like the Russian big hauler, right? It carries a lot of stuff to a lot of places. And by getting

those and having absolutely zero morals, he launches this career and like he's not just selling weapons. He's American people don't get this thing. We have this British stereotype of like the Wheeler dealer as epitomized by like Delboy in the TV series called Only Fools and Horses, but he's like a market trader. He'll buy whatever he thinks he can score, whatever he thinks he can sell expensive, right? So he's moving like frozen chicken at one point. He's moving flowers from South Africa and like throughout his career is this massive international arms dealer. He'll just be like, Oh, chicken over. Right. Let's move that chicken over here. We can make a killing. Like he doesn't, I think like we should stress that he's not like

a guy who's obsessed with guns and weapons and killing people. I don't think I think he's a guy who has absolutely zero and it's just like, well, there's a high profit margin on guns. So that's what I'll move. But I don't think it's like, there seems to be no moral angle to his existence. And like very quickly after doing that, he's the Democratic Republic of Congo. He's selling into Liberia in the conflict there, Sierra Leone, Rwanda after the genocide, he's there, right? But he's also like transporting French troops to Rwanda. We'll be doing contracts for the United States government, for the British government, and for most of the Western governments that participate in the forever war, right? And

it's very funny, actually, like you're in the phase when the for him, which is a bit later when he becomes like a wanted man, he keeps doing these different shell companies, right, to avoid things like sanctions. And the way that he, the way that the United States Department of Justice publishes a list, there'll be every year, right? No one can do business with these companies. They're bad, they're connected to arms dealing. And then the United States Department of Defense will go down its list of people it does business with and be like, oh, shit, there's like six of them who we like, integrally relying on and then and so it's fine because they change the name and and then there's like, it's like Tom and Jerry or whack a mole, you know, he keeps popping up with

these new companies. So he sort of really gets this massive boost around 2001 with 9 11. So 9 11 is a big win for him. Well, that's the episode, everybody. Yeah. That's the sound bite. That's the sound bite. Yeah. So he's super tight with Ahmed Shah Massoud. People are familiar with what we call the Northern Alliance, right? The the people in Afghanistan who the United States backed to fight the Taliban. He'd been selling weapons to Massoud for a while. And he he seems to actually like with Massoud, like he talks about him. And we'll get on to how we know him talking about him in a little bit. He talks about him very fondly. He's he's a big Massoud guy. And so he claims he doesn't trade with the Taliban. And he holds for a long time until a crew his plane

and crew are held by the Taliban, an airport in Afghanistan, which like, how did they get there, Victor? And there's two really like how they escape. The one story is that like the Taliban require them to maintain this plane every so often, because they want to be able to use the plane, right? So these these Russian guys or these these contractors for Victor for doing the plane. And then they like, in sort of like a Michael Caine movie style, like, cosh, their guards over the head, jumpstart the plane, and just pin it to the end of the runway, take off and fly to freedom. And that's the narrative until Victor boot was like, nah, like, I know all those people I just called them was like, do you want to do business with Victor boot? Or do you want to hold this plane

hostage? Because it's one or the other, and you're fucked without me. And see, yeah, it's a shame. I like I like story. I like story two. Story two is objectively, in my opinion, a little bit more badass on his part. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's the power he has. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think when this this guy clicks his fingers, the world, the world listens did until he was in prison learning Sanskrit, right? Yeah, if you're the pilot, there's there was an interview I found on YouTube with one of his pilots as well. He's like, yeah, man, you can't do that for very long. He's like, we're constantly landing, like we're being shot at woman landing, we're being shot at woman. We get on the ground and just like, eat everything out the back and then just take off again. And

like, we make a ton of money because no one else is prepared to do that. But probably isn't great for your long term well being. And so he's by the peak of his career in the early 2000, he's got hundreds of employees. He's got 60 aircraft. And he's moved his operation to Sharjah, which is a very sort of conservative emirate. It's a twist or it's right. But it has what's called a free trade zone. So on top of all his other shit, he's also not paying import export taxes. And so he's based there, which seems to allow him to operate pretty much without him. He's moving a ton of small arms from Ukraine. So at the end of the Soviet Union, Ukraine makes a big thing of being like, we're returning our nuclear weapons, right? People will be familiar with this. They don't want their nukes

anymore. But they also amassed just an incredible amount of small arms, right? So that's like guns, bombs, grenades, things like that, right? Machine guns. And because a bunch of the small arms are stored in Ukraine, that becomes like the nexus for the black market. And we think the boot is ethnically Ukrainian. And he certainly seems to have just been shoveling weapons out of Ukraine, two conflicts in it, largely. There's a civil war that you know about in Africa, or one that you don't know about. Probably both sides were using his weapons, like that's a that's a fair assumption to make. And by the late 90s, early 2000s, he's selling everywhere and business to launder money for other legal activities. And he was he was linked to the Gaddafi regime, he was also selling

to rebels in Libya. So it's a huge operation. He's the go to guy for weapons, right? And he sort of comes they interpol go after him in 2002. There's a Belgian warrant for him. But Belgium ends up having to drop their case because it's unclear where he lives. They can't be like, Yeah, he's a resident here. He's a Belgian resident because like now this this guy keeps moving around. Like, it's not clear if you have jurisdiction. Central African Republic also, I think had a warrant out for him. But they haven't, I guess, been successful in in serving that warrant. In the in the Belgian, when they dropped their case, they noted that it would be impossible and very time consuming to prosecute him. Which is kind of funny, given that he's doing a lot of crimes.

But despite this, in 2003, he does this incredible New York Times, like this thousands of words, profile interview of the world's largest arms dealer. It's like a relic of another era of journalism. They send this writer to like, look for Victor Booth to try and find Victor Booth. Wow. What year was this? 2003. That was a different era. That was completely different. Yeah. Yeah, that is. Yeah, it's a shame. You look at I look I looked at it and I just couldn't help this, but they just let this person expense a shit ton of flights. Wow. Like this, this doesn't happen anymore. And such a shame. I would love to go to a Russian nightclub and drink carrot juice with arms dealers. But on the job. Yeah, yeah. And then all that to the New York

Times. And yeah, in the piece, he drinks carrot juice. He he's vegetarian. He calls himself a scapegoat and a family man. He's what a hero. Yeah. Every day Joe trying to sell some Kalashnikovs to people who are doing genocide. And he is. Go ahead. Is this interview how we know a lot about him? Yes, that and his this man loves to hand the home video. Right. I don't know why that's international crime spray is the best idea we ever had for quirky little dude. But he's not doing crimes in his videos. He just looks like like I from the office who is just like the most mundane dude in ill fitting suit. He just looks like a salary man who drives like a regular car and on the weekends like select go to Buffalo Wild Wings and what

sports events like he or to slide with his like white ass body and potbelly at one point in one of these home videos and like he just yeah, he just strikes you as the most boring family guy. Like he's not he seems to be like more drugs at one point. Like it's fascinating and bizarre. And I'm assuming he has children if he's a family man. I think he does have children. He certainly has a wife. His wife is out there. His wife is pretty vocal about let my man go. Right. Right. Yeah. So I'm pretty sure he does have children. Yeah. Probably more than we know about. But maybe not. Maybe he's a wife guy. Well, I just think it's funny in these home videos. Like he's like no one else. No family members. There would be pretty yeah,

that would be pretty, pretty entertaining. So 2003, it's the article clearly has these like it's named after George Bernard Shaw play called Arms and the Man. And it's just like epic and meandering and very long. And he talks about in the article, he's like, look, they're using me as like this is a thing that like the reason they that it's very hard to prosecute they to boot is because there are not that many laws against arms dealing. And the reason there are not that many laws against arms dealing integral to how we do foreign policy. Right. Like we are hosed without people like Victor Boo. And that's like the other side of this coin that yeah, we need a Nicholas Cage bad guy to pin this stuff on. And yeah, he

pretty horrific things or sold weapons to people who did horrific things. But he what he's doing is not that like abnormal and it's not that always illegal. As we'll see, we'll turn into like gross entrapment to arrest this guy. And he is right that like, is he really the biggest arms dealer in the world? Or is that like Dick Cheney or you know, Lockheed Martin or Raytheon? Like is he really any more evil than like I live in San Diego, right? Or most of the companies I just mentioned have offices here. I rode past one of them today, you know, and those people also go on the water slide with their kids. And he does have a kid. He has a daughter, one daughter or child, I don't know, boarded in the

Emirates and they're 28. So I bet he knows where they are now. Yeah, I bet he's a great dad. He's been in jail. That's sad. Yeah, he has a wife to Allah, it's his wife. Just she was she's a fair bit younger than him. So also he's really lost weight in jail and he's looking pretty good in picture of him. But with the mustache and stuff, he's really he's having a glow up, I think, in jail. Are you thirsty on an international arms dealer? Pretty thirsty for victory. Yeah, look at that mustache. Tell me you could say no. And one of the things he says in his interview, which is interesting is if I told you everything, I know I'd get the red hole right here, and then points to the middle of his forehead. So I wonder what he meant by that.

Yeah, he has a poet. Yeah, he has a way with words. Yeah. And he's got some of these great one-liners which it's people have recently like re interpreted that to be like, does he know some shit about Putin, which is exchanging? Or is he just saying that like, like he might possibly have something like signed by someone who's today a senator, right, like engaging in business with one of his companies or something like that, because that's how this works. Yeah, I don't know. He's rich and powerful people have probably done business with him whether they knew it or not. And he's aware of this. So that article really bounces him up in the sort of World Bad Guys list, which is when Nick Cage steps in, makes a whole just does a whole vibe about it

that moves the person to Brighton Beach. Because I guess American audiences don't know what Russia is. Yeah, to Jikestan, no less. If you're looking for a film, The Notorious Mr. Boot 2014, that's the home videos. Sundance Film Festival Award winner, just depicting his dad bought adventures. I think I think it's worth it for Friday night. Wait, are you serious? Was that Sundance? Yeah, it's classic. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I can't tell if you're fucking with me. I know I saw the time and I will believe anything at this point. So no, I crazy. 14 film. Yep, screened at Sundance Film Festival. Holy shit. Yep, it's a classic.

It's got it's got some real scenes seriously like 80% on rotten tomatoes. Yep. And then if you watch, actually, you get it. There's like some pictures of him, like dad dancing with his partner at the time. It's just, yeah, it's good stuff. I would recommend it. And there's pictures of him around lots of weapons, obviously. You're about boot. Yep, yep. The Notorious Mr. Boot. Yeah, it's a goodie. It is. Yeah, it is very, very bizarre. This guy is just a quirky little dude. Like what is, what a little dork. Yeah, does war crimes is a quirky little dude. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a picture of him pretending to throw it.

You know what I mean? It's not like, he's just, I don't know. Do you expect him to be like evil and I don't know, smoking in a dark room all the time? No, this is how they get away with it. Yep. Yeah, like you would see this guy, right? Like you go to the lounge, like of my life, it lounges in like small air parts in like, I don't know, Middle East, Africa, whatever, trying to fly cheap. You would see this dude in the lounge and you wouldn't be like, oh, there goes an international arms dealer. It'd be like, if that man is in conductors or, you know, yeah, yeah, like he's not, he's not the Joker. And no, he is a Joker though. You can see him having some good old Japs in this film.

When Nicholas Cage plays him, he doesn't even have a mustache. I know, that's disappointing, isn't it? Because that is his trademark feature. Oh, okay. Okay. So technically, the character Nicholas Cage plays is a fictional illegal arms dealer based on the stories of Victor Bout and other real life arms dealers and smugglers. They want to play at both ways. Yeah. So I've just got to bit in a trailer where he's just like eye contact with the camera hip thrusting and it's wow. Okay. Well, thank you for that description. That's all right. That's all right, guys. Cutting edge of journalism here. Yes, that's right. All right. So we should return to

the narrative and not my description of Victor B. Dancing. So his arrest is kind of fascinating. And again, like his arrest is one of those things where you're like, Oh, this is terrible. And then you realize that again, we do this shit all the time, right? And so to understand his arrest, you've got to first understand this guy, Andrew Smollion, former he's British, he's born in Britain, but he's a South African Air Force officer. Then he goes into commercial flying. But at some point, he's turned by their intelligence delivering shipments of stuff and then doing a little bit spying on the side. Spying on the side. Yeah. Yeah. It's who's among us hasn't found themselves doing a little

side hustle. Yeah, everyone has their side hustles. Better side spying for the doing in the apartheid era, but probably we certainly in their military in the apartheid era. Yikes. Yeah. Smully is not not a man with morals, I don't think as we'll find out. So Smollion has fallen on hard times by 2000 and is working in a hypodermic syringe factory in Tanzania. And that's just a fact that I found without context and I haven't felt any need to research further. And and at that point, Smully is contacted by our generals, right? Revolutionary Armed Forces, Columbia, FARC, right, a left wing Marxist guerrilla group that have been fighting in the jungles for, I think they're one of the world's longest insurgencies

for decades. And these FARC generals are like, Hey, Smully, come and meet us in a tiki bar in Curacao. And we will have a chat. Smully and right, he wants to get out the syringe factory. So he's all about it. He hops on the plane and they meet in a tiki bar, right, which is obviously a good place to do an arm steal. And very, I mean, movies are right about that stuff going down in tiki bars. Yep. That's that's the one thing that was in fact, cinematic universe of Victor Boot. So they're in the tiki bar, right? Now, it should be noted that these two FARC generals, shockingly, are not really FARC generals. They are DEA assets. And in fact, they have been in the Colombian Armed Forces, but they've decided to pivot to a career in selling cocaine.

And in that career pivot, they've unfortunately come into contact with the DEA, which is generally not good. Yeah, right. They're just trying to sell cocaine and do the other thing. Yeah. Yep. They're just vibing and killing indigenous people, probably they they have a pretty rough record in the Colombian military, it's fair to say. Yikes. So the DEA C7 is like, yep, those are our people. And gives them a ton of money, citizenship, families, I believe, and turns them right, ask them to pretend to be FARC generals, which they're like, yep. Can you can you spell the word you're saying? What is the word? Yeah. F-A-R-C, Fuerzas Armaras.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, like, sorry. F, yeah, F-A-R-C. Fuck. I might have got the answer. I am, I am someone that does not know what that is. So no, honest about that. Sorry. Yeah, no, there's no reason to, unless you're a global conflict, understander slash dork. They're very nice people, some of them, actually. They've started a micro brewery now. Yeah, they have a micro brewery. I don't believe anything you say. Don't fucking, I will send you a story. Brewery. I'm like scarred by Robert. He just tells me all these crazy things that are not true, and I believe. I'm not like Robert. I'm a man of the truth. I'm gonna, I will drop it in the chat.

Like, yeah, they definitely have started a micro brewery. These are such weird little doofts. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Actually, the person who runs a micro brewery is a woman. Oh, good, good for her. We love feminism. We love a girl boss on the show. Girl boss. So far, we're very committed to gender equality. They had women there in their, in their military. Yeah, we'll do an episode of Robert and I want to go to their micro brewery. It's, it's one of our goals. Why not? Sure. Yeah, we've, we've got this far. No one's called us out. Yeah. So anyway, interestingly, the US government had just done exactly the same thing to Monser el

Casa, who's a Syrian arms dealer. They've done the same. We're two FARC generals. We would like to buy these weapons. And in the discussion, the FARC generals are like, we would like to buy these weapons to kill Yankees. We want to kill Americans. It would be great to have this gun with a sniper scope so we could see if they're American before we shoot them. Just like, this is where this is where we get to like the entrapment, right? And the Smootians like, yeah, whatever, bro, like you want guns, I know a guy. And they're like, to kill the American. So and he's like, yeah, dude, whatever you need. Okay, it's getting weird. Um, but then Smootian that he is goes, okay, so my guy is Victor boot

V I K T O R B O U T. Oh my God. Which that is that is a poor move on Smootie's part. So Smootie drops him in organize a meeting, right, the two generals, quote unquote generals, and Victor in a hotel in Bangkok. And that is where the the Victor boot story sort of ends, at least the free Victor. So they go through the deal. And again, he's being like, I can't believe he conducted his whole life like this, because his, his degree of concern with security is minimal. That he'll be like, you guys are getting like 5,000 AK, also some surface to wear missiles and like writing it on the hotel notepad. Amazing. Yeah. Like, normally this isn't like, like the DEA rolled a Yakuza arms dealer recently,

and they had to explain he was talking about cake and ice cream. He meant like surface to wear missiles. Same for me, actually. I'm just going to head down to the cake shop. That guy fucked up by sending a selfie of him weapon to the Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's good. It's a good picture. I'll send you that picture because he does look like an international supervillain. He has blue aviators, I think, like, my God. Some people know they're playing the part, you know what I mean? Yeah, you got to lean in. He leans in. But so, Bout is in this room, right? He's negotiating with his two Colombian friends and income the Thai police, right? The way the DEA say it, they're like, he put his hands in a bag and we all pointed our guns at him

and we're like, Victor, no, it's over. And like, they thought he was going to pull a gun on them. But like, in the video, he kind of is just like, oh, I think he says the game is up. He has some like Bond villain like line. Wow. Of course, he's a poet. What did I say? Yeah, it's true. Bowery. Yeah. Yeah. That's why they're letting him out for his contribution to art. I do what if there's ever like, he was a poet, Sharid, just like, just like, hey, I, yes, quote. A claim podcast. Who says red dot to describe a gunshot? Come on.

On his graves done. He was a poet. Nothing else. You had to speak to Bruce. Poet. Had no other gigs I was aware of. What a slide enthusiast. And so, they arrest him, right? They hold him in fights the extradition. He's like, I'm just a businessman. I don't know what you're talking about. I just wanted to sell you cake and ice cream or whatever. And eventually they bring him back to the United States. They try him in this federal jurisdiction in New York, where they

try nearly every terrorism case like this, right? Like the recent 09 a case was in the same jurisdiction. So like, that makes sense. Yeah, they always do it in New York. I think that his trial was like September or October. You know, you're trying someone like seven years after 9 11, six years after 9 11 in New York around the anniversary of what happened of 9 11, right? So people are pretty, and then you're like, and this dude sold weapons to the town. He moved gold out of Afghanistan for Al Qaeda. And so he's pretty screwed. Cancel culture strikes again.

Yeah. The work mob came for Victor. And his wife says outside the court, which I thought was interesting. They're trying Nicholas Cage, not my husband. Oh, shit. That's actually a really interesting statement in terms of like media perceptions of people. No. Yeah. Yeah, they do not go after this guy until they and then Victor and then what's it called the Nicholas Cage movie Lord of War? Yeah. And then you can't separate. I don't think the like, look, he's a piece of shit. But I mean, like he did make a movie about himself, though. Well, he did. I also got that they really said 2014, like seven years after he gone down. Oh, okay. I didn't look at the date. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Sorry. I was like, that's what I was completely different up until

just this second. Oh, yes. No, no. My mistake. No, that's not that big. The Sundance film seven years later. The notorious Victor Boop. It would have been amazing if he'd made that himself. Yeah. Get that up with our listenership. We could get that up to the 90s, I reckon. And I'll give it a thumbs up. So I think they probably did, right? Like in organizations like the DEA in these big federal law enforcement agencies, there are a lot of people who want top jobs. And I think one of the ways to advance is getting one of these. I have a little federal law enforcement understanding, but it strikes me that they kind of they had the DEA agent in charge of his arrest on ABC, I think, or in 60 minutes or something. The guy talks about himself and

on there, it's a bit weird. It's clearly like a career defining thing, right? And I really don't think it would have been if like, no one made a film about Montreal Casa, right? He was selling all the weapons to, you know, they didn't trap him in the same way, actually, but it's not such a big thing. So Boop goes to jail. He's been in jail about 12 years now. And now the by administration seems to or at least know that he's like worth offering. And they offered him in trade for Snowden, apparently. Yeah. And Russia didn't take that. I think there's probably they see more value in Snowden. But the, yeah, they seem to have offered him again in this brand grinder wheel and trade. It's still unclear if Russia will accept him or not. Like we said

before, it's a very weird practice to be like like Pokemon cards. Yeah, are like literally like the NBA, like the thing that yeah, pretty great or works for it's like you're literally creating like a fantasy team or whatever the shit of prisoners and or people that you want, like hostages. Yeah. It's interesting to see like Russia kind of just like, I don't know if they sort of want to be like, look how much we owned you like we made you trade the world's most notorious arms dealer for a basketball player. Like if they kind of I don't know the ridiculousness of what they've done or somehow win for them. Or if Russia wants him back because he has some kind of intel that they're afraid of. I'm not sure if that's the case. He lived in Moscow for a while.

I didn't know how close he was to the Russian state. I'm sure he knows some stuff. It's almost does not much of a state in the world that he doesn't have something on, right? So it's possible. And I guess he's kind of served his purpose, which was this like, you know, we can find you anywhere. We can come after you anywhere. We can arrest you. And I don't want to be like, like pro arms dealer on the podcast, but like on the podcast. James is completely different. But on Mike, James is going to say that we're not technically pro arms dealing. Yeah, this is not not a pro arms dealing podcast. Technically. Yeah, that would be a good place for an ad pivot, wouldn't it? But do you know who is pro arms dealer? Yeah, yeah. Based on I don't

know how long we have left. So an ad may not make sense here, but we can leave the joke in to prove that we're funny. Yeah, exactly. That we sometimes think about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're considerate and funny. Yeah. Yeah. And kind and not pro arms dealer. And most importantly. Yeah. So Victor is in prison. He's been in prison for about 12 years. He's got he got 25 years. The judge you've not proved he was going to do any crimes other than the ones you kind of talked him into. Like a fair. Yeah. Yeah. Woke judge. Because again, when they're meeting him, they're like, we want to kill America. The scopes are high enough magnification so we can see they're American. There's some specific dialogue about the sniper scopes to like to to ensure and then

they're trying to get surface to our missiles as well, right? And surface to our missiles are one of the harder things to acquire in the international arms market. And so he's going to supply those and they claim they're going to shoot down American airliners and do a terrorism. Yeah, that'll definitely get them mad. Yeah, that'll get them. Well, but he only says that because the two DEA plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think the dude would have batten Nylid either way. I mean, typical Fed behavior, right? They walked in there in the cool flannel shirts and he did. Hey, who's a crime? Let me escalate the level of crime. So he's in prison. They've offered to trade him. It remains to be seen like,

I don't know how relevant he will be if he comes out. It's interesting, like the area I'm most familiar with the books, firearms transactions is in Myanmar, right? Robert and I've spent some time writing about that. And the price of weapons going small arms, going to rebels in Myanmar is insane right now. And so maybe taking him out has changed that market a bit. I don't know, you'd think someone would have stepped in to fill that gap in the time that he'd been out of the game. You'd think especially after the giant clusterfucker of leaving Afghanistan by the we'd have dumped a lot more weapons onto the market. So what you're saying is there's Yeah, get your resume ready listeners. Yeah, you know, learn those languages. That's what I'm saying.

Go to the other applicants. Yeah. Learn Sanskrit put on your resume. No one will call you on it. It'll be fine. It's okay to lie about Sanskrit unless you're I guess going to theological college. Yeah, he's learned Sanskrit. He's learned a bunch of other languages in prison. He's probably writing poems in their right. Oh, 100%. Yeah. He's probably dropping a book is what he'll do or come out and drop a book. Honestly, I'm not I wouldn't be surprised by that if that was true. I would read a book written by one of the world's most famous international arms dealers. Yeah, add poets. And that's right. Add poets. Yeah. Hey, based on what the quotes are that he's given so far, I'm sure he has really good writing. So yeah, who knows. No one knows.

We don't know how much money he has. No one seems to have done a good job of hiding it. We don't know what the state of his business is. It seems like he has just kind of peaced out, hung out in jail, and maybe now we'll be going back to Russia to live in his dacha and just write slides all day. We can dream. It feels like if they offered him for Snowden already, and now they're offering him again, like is either the only like quote unquote good Russian hostage like worth worthy Russian hostage or they in my head, I feel like they're trying to make a big statement like Brittany Griner is so important to us. Keep this man. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Yeah. I mean, look, what's

happening to her is disgusting, right? And every day he spends a fucking abhorrent. And so like, yeah, you hope that I think, yeah, I think he's there's no real, I don't know, it doesn't really serve the interest of the state to keep him in prison, right? Like the big win was getting him there. And that I think showed people doing what he does that like the US will come after you. And and so like that, it really I think 12 years is a long enough time, you know, like, so I don't I don't understand the motivations of world leaders. But hopefully we get some updates. I don't know. Hopefully, Brittany Griner doesn't have to longer in what I'm sure is a pretty terrible Russian prison for having a vape pen because that is bollocks. And I just want to say before

we finish up here that we are indebted to our friend, Matt, who is at, I think, enjoy on Twitter or raccoon liberation front. Black flag enjoy is Matt's handle. Matt actually came on to help us do an interview with this. Matt has worked in a lot of these places, not as an arms dealer, I should add, but doing some like civil and even thinks that he ran into Victor boot in a bar in Somali land once. And because of we discussed, you would not know that this dude was an arms dealer. And fortunately, Matt's audio was unrecoverable. And much debt for his help. And you should follow him on Twitter if you want to. Anything else we should plug. Shareen Garrison. No, I think I think that does it for us today. So just Google Victor boot. Yeah, enjoy your weekend.

Oh, hi. This is this is it could happen here. This isn't my episode. This is actually Chris. Um, but I guess I guess we're starting. Chris, how are you doing today? You know, I'm running on very little sleep and a lot of bubble tea. And by bubble tea, I mean canned bubble tea. This is the good shit. This is the really this. Yeah. I mean, in terms of it being bubble tea, it's kind of okay. In terms of it being like a thing that has more sugar than like any human should ever consume and functions as an energy drink while tasting good. It's good shit. That's why I live. That's why I live that bang life, baby. We would not we would not get any of my scripted episodes done without bang bang. Yeah, I drink rip it.

Oh, god. It really is. So speaking of colonialism, actually, I don't have a colonialism tie into this. Uh, but what I do have is a bunch of people attacking a children's hospital. So on August 30th, 2022, police in Boston were called to investigate a bomb threat against bomb hospital. As parents waited outside in adjunct terror for their children's who were still trapped in the building, police bomb squad swept the building for hours. This time, there was no bomb. Next time, we might not be so lucky. Welcome to the next day. Trans people. So, okay, how did we get to right wingers calling in bomb threats to a children's hospital, a thing that I feel like I need to make a carve out at the beginning of this episode to talk about how

absolutely absurd it is that people are sending death threats to a children's hospital. Children's hospital, they take care of, they do health care for children like what? So the answer to why this is happening is basically the right to new media strategy. One of it all, once again, is Chaya Raychik, who is better known as Libs of Tiktok. And yeah, Libs of Tiktok. Yeah, enemy of the pod. Recurring character on the pod. She's kind of displaced. She's kind of displaced. Done that much lately as like the recurring pod like person. Her and her and Matt wanting to. Oh, don't worry. He's coming. Bigger character. Yeah. The walls will appear.

And the Washington Post editorial page, that one always. Oh, God. You know, I could write. I could write like all of my episodes about the Washington Post editorial page. So I don't do it. And I instead talk about this fucking Twitter account, which was and, you know, okay, last seen sickening rabid moms with reactionaries on teachers, schools, drag queens and random children on the internet for the crime of being queer or supporting queer kids in any way. Yeah. Yeah. Not the last time we're going to talk about her unless like miraculously she's destroyed in the next like three days. But what we're going to do here is sort of take a deep dive into how our media strategy works and how sort of like the broader right wing media sphere uses

and launders Raychik's talking point, pseudo, pseudo intellectual babble stuff to sell to a wider audience. And the strategy like functionally is not is like it's literally the same thing Alex Jones does. It's like, okay, so you you misread a headline, right? Or someone puts a video in front of you that you haven't won. You lie about what it says. And then you when you like invents basically some incredibly dramatic story about what it says. And then you get a bunch of other people the right wing media sphere to like back you up for it. And then when inevitably someone's like, hey, you're wrong, you claim you're being censored. Yeah. But I don't I don't mischaracterize anything. I just post people's own videos that that they that they themselves post

and then also then also just call them a pedophile for saying that they wear pronoun pins. Yeah, anyway. Yeah. So so on August 11 lives at tiktok posted a tweet that said quote Boston Children's Hospital at Boston Children's is now offering quotes gender refirming hysterectomies for young girls. And so there's a video attached to this, right? The video young girls do not say anything about this, right? The video is literally just an explanation of what his directory is. And, you know, but but this this like goes viral, like literally three hours later, Bat Walsh, a man who once said on video and my kids can sense all the time. I tweeted quote, so he said that that's all the deal. I am not selecting this. He just said that.

So yeah, he he tweeted a nice effort to fight back against the drugging and mutilation of children. There should be rallies outside of the hospitals that butcher children. There should be marches on Washington with hundreds of thousands of people. I will try to get this ball rolling. Yeah, he's he's been increasingly trying to do like this moral like superiority war and be like, of course, we should hate. I'm not a morally compromised degenerate. And that's kind of this tile of talking points that he's trying to mainstream. He's a popular guest on Fox News. He made the he made the infamous anti trans documentary. What is a woman earlier this year? Talk about at some point. Yeah, but he's he's he's he's trying to present himself as like

an authority figure in the war against trans people. He's his work's been boosted by J.K. Rowling. He describes himself as a theocratic fascist kind of jokingly just completely accurate. There's no such a difference between what he believes and like what the fucking people believe. So like no or the or like he's wanting to organize rallies outside of like trans health clinics to like destroy trans research. What does huh? Yeah, where have we seen this before? Never happened in human history before anyway. Yeah, continue. Yeah, so I also want to mention this. OK, so as bad as was a woman is he made an even he's actually created something even worse than this, which is like maybe history's most dog shit children's book.

I don't know the war is just unbelievably transphobic piece of shit thing that he made. Like I don't think a single child is ever read willingly. The daily wires kind of pushed like a children's media creation has been kind of wacky. It's awful. Like it's it's I don't know. These people like they just they they're all hacks. But the problem is if you want to make a children's book thing, like you actually have to make something. But you have to make something that like a child will literally just like you don't you don't need to you have to sell it to parents. Well, yeah, sure. Right. It's not about the actual kid. It's about the parents like the actual children will be extremely unhappy about this. But like, you know, OK, yeah, you can you

can you can sell pictures of a walrus to your like 40 year old mothers who are scared that their kid is wearing dresses or, you know, whatever. So all right. So so Matt Walsh, the kid's consent man, I is on I go on by by August 15, Matt Walsh is on a show which is called the Matt Walsh show, which is the thing. All of these people great title all of these people, the name of their show is just their name. And it's like, that's why this that's why this show is called the Robert Evans show. It's true why in which Robert Evans occasionally appears on. It's true. So you had it to Tim Poole. He made the Tim cast. He showed some some real initiative there. Look, this this is this is the kind of innovation that only

the only the right and only entrepreneurship can bring us. They change the market has to live it by three words. I mean, I still remember like a decade ago when Matt Walsh was like a niche but growing figure in like the evangelical influencer community. It's like a younger evangelical kid kind of interested in what Matt Walsh was doing because he was like kind of like a hipster and trying like doing like more like modern spins on some on some more kind of classic evangelical evangelical topics. And then as I was getting evangelical Christianity, Walsh was like was getting way more radical in kind of in line with like, you know, the lead up to Trump. And then he just went fully off the deep end. And even even

as like in my in me ages of being Christian, we're like, oh, this Walsh guy is like kind of nuts. He's like he is like going in some weird directions. He used to be kind of more like a moderate evangelical, still very conservative, but like used to kind of be the cool kid on the block in the sphere. And then we're like, Oh, no, he is like, he's doing some weird shit. Yeah. And that weird shit. So like, okay, so he goes on a show and he starts screaming about how Cuban puberty blockers are chemical trend castration. Which is like, this is objectively not true. Like people like Matt, Rachel will argue that like, it's the same drug. And like, yeah, you can use fertilizer to make a car bomb. That doesn't mean that gardening is terrorism.

Yes. As well as you, if as long as you are taking it, make you not able to reproduce as you are taking it, then when you stop taking it, you can reproduce again. Also, it's kind of concerning how much they're they're worried about 12 year olds not being able to reproduce temporarily. Matt Walsh repeat Matt Walsh. Let me go back and read this exact quote. It is. I don't want this to be taken. I don't want him to argue that I'm quoting him. I violate my kid's consent all the time. Oh, man. No, he claims that forcing his kids to clean their room. But well, that is some interesting word choices. You know, okay. And obviously for like the puberty puberty blocker thing, we've talked about this on the show before,

they're trying to frame this as like, if you take if your kid gets on puberty blocker permanently sterile, which just isn't true. That's just false. Like that is that is not that's not how these drugs work. This they're also claimed that these drugs are are like fatal. They're like, look, with people who took this drug, this this massive percentage of them as they were on it. And this is because the drugs also used to treat terminal illnesses. So the it's like a specific like heart condition or like, I think, I think it's I think it's some heart condition thing. So people like old people who are on the drug will because of their because of their condition that drug is treating them for. So they try to use that false statistic to then make it be like kids are dying on this puberty

blocker, which is again, is not true. It's all blatantly false things. Yeah, we're gonna get into more of the bullshit they get into a second. Correct. Yeah, it's it's a it's a time he's doing it. They've really they've really started leaning into this one is screaming about hospitals mutilating children because you know, this is it's an incredibly sort of lurid image. And it's like, okay, so he's literally what he's describing is just a hysterectomy, right, which is like a thing that is just a regular that also and I cannot emphasize this enough, no one under 18 is getting a hysterectomy. Not really. I mean, there is, again, I think a few a few places have specific conditions for people who are over the age of medical state that they're in, like, for instance,

Oregon's medical consent for most things is 16 years old. There's certain conditions for like 17 year olds usually to start the process. If they want that down the line, you can get consult. Like, yeah, the thing about the hospital, they're they're all screaming about is there's a thing that says 17 on a document talking about this. And what they mean is that you can start consultations when you're 17. But in Boston, like this hospital has never they've never done this. This isn't a thing that happens to a 17 year old. They're not doing top surgery on like 15 year olds that that just like that just yeah, that happens. There's possibly been like, like, like literally a couple like literally like, pause like one to three extremely rare incidents that patients, doctors,

therapists, medical professionals have have done things to to help treat very severe gender dysphoria but that is only extremely few instances because all of these surgeries and all these treatments are so medically gate like gatecapped like I've been trying to get top surgery and they are an adult and they've been doing this process and it like it takes years like it's so it's so challenging. Yeah, like there there is an entire system of gender bureaucrats who's like entire job is you have to like, like you have to convince these people that your gender is real and it yeah, yeah, the gender you're allowed to do things you're allowed to sign off on things happening to your body. Yeah, yeah, like, okay, you know, okay, the product of all of this bullshit is like, you

know, all the surgery back, they're coming for your kids, succession, this like absolute obsession with making sure that people with uterus is can like, you can force them to have kids later down the line. Yeah, the product of this is Matt, Matt starts yelling about how this needs to be stopped and then like coily suggest maybe we should start with Boston Children's Hospital. Like that same day, Boston Children's Hospital is deluge with death threats. Now, media matters goes after him. And Matt Walsh makes a bunch of tweets about how he's protecting context and the death threats aren't his fault. But like, you know, okay, the context is him yelling, well, somebody rid us of this and meddle some children's hospital over and over again. So I think Matt Walsh doth protest too

much. And you know, even as the sort of like the threats mount, right, like this fake story all over the conservative, like, ecosystem like wildfire, like Breitbart has an article up about it, like on day one, like, within a few hours of like, right check, making this like fake tweet. Within within a week, it's on Gateway, daily callers on the blazes on daily wires on Fox News, it's, you know, it's hit the entire ecosystem. The problem, okay, like try to write check, like, very quickly realize this is going viral, she just keeps tweeting about it, keeps tweeting about it, keeps tweeting about it. But she has this problem, which is that everything she's saying is an incredibly easily demonstrable lie. And so she keeps having to like, try to yell

at like fact checkers and like regular people who are going like, this is just bullshit. And like, like the hospital itself has to issue a statement being like, hey, we don't actually get to change their website to make it clear that 17 year olds don't actually get the surgeries, you can just get nobody ever has like, they've never done this, like this, well, you know, and this is kind of a problem for the propaganda wing, because like, try a right check is like a fucking hack. Going to convince anyone who like isn't already convinced that like trans people are evil and that like, you know, okay, at this point, I think in earlier in 2021 or 2022, I think she may have been able to craft propaganda, which convinces people

at this point, it's gone so much further. Her radius is gonna is gonna is gonna severely grow in terms of people who are like, you know, if someone's fine with trans people, I don't think they're gonna look at her page and suddenly be like, Oh, these trans people seem like they're bad actually. No, she doesn't have she doesn't have like the doesn't have the sort of like advertising ability to do this. But do you know who does have the advertising ability to sell you things? Is it our lovely, our lovely and very, very trans friendly sponsors, every single one of them, Chevron. What other sponsors do we have? I have no idea. I need patrol. That's right. Blueway patrol. Blueway. Well, we can't we can't say that.

Yeah, we got. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of a fatherly archetypal deity. That's right. All of these people will love and accept you for being trans and then offer you a job at a defense contractor. Anyway, here's. So you can post about it. All right. So we're we're we're we're back. We reveal the prior right check is that she's a hack and she can't convince anyone isn't convinced. And this is where a bunch of people who are not actually any smarter than try a right check but like can write more fancy swinging the gear. Yeah. And I'm going to walk through some of the arguments they're using so you can like even the quote unquote more research shit is once you actually look at the stuff

they're citing and these like very official looking threads. So for example, on August 17th, Wesley Yang, who was a hack pundit who admittedly I must applaud him for doing more in his lifetime to combat the stereotype that any other person ever born has. Did a did a threat attempting to defend lives of ticktocks like, you know, thing about Boston Children's Hospital giving a hysterectomy is. And OK, so it starts with him going. All right. All right. So we're we're going to work for this right. He's like, OK, gender surgery. I wonder what that means. Why it means it means they gave like three people mastectomies. Right. And then you've done it. Yeah. Under what conditions like apparently, apparently, they may actually have given like three people who were like 17

mastectomies, which is again, not a hysterectomy. This is a different thing. OK. And then and then he goes, well, OK, so hospital. There's hospital doc showing it that they do do genitals or he admits that they don't. It's never happened. Yeah. Also, the doctor says they could do it, but they never have a base. This document that I misread and don't understand the difference between a consultation and getting it a surgery clown and a hack who destroyed his entire brain for money in like 2015. I would be interested in seeing, you know, if they're arguing that 17 year olds cannot medically consent to surgeries. I are on what 17 year olds can consent to in other in other situations. Well, I mean, there's there's two angles for that, right? There is the

there is what percentage of these people like fucking Tucker Carlson have gone on a show and defended child marriage. And then there's the second question, which is, OK, so if these people aren't OK, so if a teen year old is too young to quote unquote mutilate their bodies, why are you allowing people why are you allowing these people to be in the lead up to joining the army, a place where you will, in fact, get actually mutilated. Also, ignore the concept of circumcision. Anyway, let's continue. You know, OK, yeah, it's great. So OK, so the last thing he does, he starts ranting about other clinics who've done mastectomy. So like, like, let's take this piece by piece. So first of all, again, no trans dude under 18 is getting like at this hospital. It has never

happened. It will never happen. There's anecdotal evidence that suggests that trans women have been able to get bottom surgeries like elsewhere when they were when they were like at like age 17. But if you chase down the citation, the evidence for this is purely anecdotal. So there's no actual like evidence that like this happened. It's just they found they found several studies, all of which are citing with each other. And the beginning one starts with, I heard some stories about this. This is going great. I love this. On the mastectomy, friends, like, like, OK, so like the like some there are some trans men who have got mastectomies like when they were technically a minor, right? But like, OK, I just want to say again, depending

on the age of medical consent in the state and depending on what other years and other treatment options were available after years of therapy and consultations. And also, we should mention this like mastectomy, cis girls get mastectomies like all the time. This is like just a regular procedure that like get. We should explain what mastectomies and hysterectomies are for people and just in case they're not familiar, I think. Yeah. So, OK, so hysterectomy basically is OK, what was the simplest way to explain it? Like, you're called removal of the uterus, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. So it's mostly the removal of the uterus. There are like some versions of it where you get your ovaries taken out to. Yeah. Yeah. Mastectomy is like you getting your breast

removed or sometimes it's like size reduction stuff. Yeah. It's a it's a fairly common procedure. This happens like all the time. And OK, if you look at what's happening here, right? So there's no evidence that the kids are getting hysterectomies. So what what Leslie Yang and like is redirect focus on gender affirming mastectomies, because again, they don't have any evidence of first things happening. And then because they don't have any evidence, they have to start using conspiracy logic and going like, well, this other thing happens and other people also did a completely other unrelated. And this is evidence that this hospital has secretly been giving these things out, even though you just said like three treats before they've never done one. They've never

actually done a hysterectomy. It's incredible stuff, right? Like this guy, I need to point this out. Like what Wesley Yang, like there was a period of understanding of like people people who weren't around in 2010s to understand like how bad the intellectual scene was. Like there was a time where this guy was like the like the rising Asian American intellectual like star who was like supposed to be like this is the sort of like great revolutionary like thinker of the new 21st century. And here he is doing this bullshit because absolute goddamn clown. I hate him. Yeah. OK, so moving on to other stuff like the thing is like this doesn't matter. Like the fact that everything they're saying is a lie and is bullshit like doesn't matter to is like they need this

sort of like visceral emotional pull of the sort of like they're mutilating children's shit. And then the other thing they need is like threads that make it look like what they're saying is true. And this is enough to get a huge part of the sort of conservative base on board. And you know, it starts to move, right? The story spreads to to the Donald, which is like the rehosting of the old r slash the Donald subreddit that was banned for being like an absolute cesspool of abuse. And they start organizing campaigns to harass people who work at this hospital. And this just gets worse. People like Steve Deese like start targeting specific doctors and calling them demonic and screaming about like butchers. And so OK, so by the 18th, we're on like day six

or day seven of people like doing this five of people setting death threats with Children's Hospital. And finally, a platform does something. So Facebook bans lives of TikTok for one day. Right. And then they're back. Yeah, it worked. You know, OK, but they use that time to reflect, right? And to think about what they done. Yeah, yeah, their change was we need to post more about this. And so, you know, we should be like, the social media companies are never actually going to talk because Luther Tiktok, especially with Twitter, Luther Tiktok is good for Twitter in the same way that Trump was like, you know, like its presence, it brings traffic. They generate conflict, which is the entire purpose of the Twitter algorithm. They drive like advertiser

revenue. They get a lot of engagement. There's no reason to ban them. Yeah. And like with Twitter, especially like they need like Trump gone, right? They had they had to ban Trump for political reasons because he, you know, tried to overthrow the government. But like, you know, Trump gone like Twitter. Twitter is like just a declining like social media. It sure is. And, you know, man, I watched I watched Donald Trump Pizza Hut commercial yesterday and I forgot how funny Donald Trump was. Like he's as long as he's playing the character of Donald Trump, he's actually really funny that I that I remembered all the fascism parts and then else anyway. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, okay, so yeah, okay. So like the way this thing works, right, is that

they get all these users in engagement from the right starting like a campaign against children's hospital, then they get engagement from the left going after them. They make money no matter who wins. And like, you know, sometimes they'll ban like Trump, right? Because, you know, or the new temporary right wing people, because that gives you like good liberal media attention. And then, you know, and that that that that gives time for a cycle to sort of build up for the conservatives to all talk about how they're being censored. And then when they return to the platform, they do their whole I was censored arc. Like we've seen this at Jordan 15 times. So when there's a TikTok on the 25th, they on August 25th, they start targeting another

children's hospital. And this this this time, it was a children's national hospital in Washington, DC, which is like DC's by far largest and most important children's hospital. And they bring their website down, like the same stuff is happening. And Twitter finally locks lives of TikTok off of their account for a week. Partially, what's happening here was like, there's pressure by friend guest Alejandra Carbayo, who's been doing like a lot of great work like documenting and like, documenting what lives are talking about doing and like sparring with them. And I try to right check like keeps misgendering her because Chai is a fucking enormous piece of shit who should be flushed down the ship belongs. Unfortunately, like, well, okay, so some of the some of the like

dozens of tweets that that I live to talk made about children's hospitals and take it down, a lot of them are still up. And, you know, probably what's going right, right now, banned off Twitter. But like, you know, what's going to happen is there's going to be like a wave of like good liberal media press, and then there's going to be the next wave of the conservative outrage over censorship and cancer culture stuff. And then she'll be back. In a sub stack post, our right shake said, quote, now more than ever, I need your support. Consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can continue this important work. When I get banned permanently, it's only a matter of time. I'll need your help to keep the lights on so I can continue telling the truth. They can't

cancel me if you don't let them. Because there it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I kind of says enough like this is all always been a grift. Like this is like her fourth attempt. She's been trying. Yeah. Yeah, it's like she's been trying to become a viral Twitter personality for years. Yeah. She just found the one she finally found something that worked. And that's baiting conservatives into being mad at her. Yeah. Oh, giving them like some kind of excuse for being mad at trans people, right? Like, yeah, it's like a self self validation thing. Yeah. Yeah. They want targets specific specific targets to her. And like, yeah, I think this is like, okay, like, right. Check like is an actual human piece of shit. Like her ideology is bad. But like it is the stuff that she's doing

is mostly about money. And this is true of like the entire ecosystem, right? Like all of the conservative outlets is why like Matt Walsh and his like dementia is like all of these people spent all of their time staring at metrics and looking at their fucking viewer data, looking at the anti trans data. The anti trans documentary is paywalled behind plus the hit news. Yeah, like it's like it's funny because like all of these people like rant constantly and there's there's there's like increasingly anti Semitic versions of it about how like the trans activists, the trans lobby are like funded by billionaires, like every single paid by fucking George sorry, presumably. Well, supposedly, we're all getting paid by by George Soros. In reality, it's the

rights all getting paid by my black guy's name, the fucking Fox guy teal. No, they're they're now getting paid. Well, they are they are too much you'll but but yes, like the guy the fucking media guy. No, Murdoch Murdoch. Yeah, they're all getting paid. They're all they're also all getting paid by just like their rabid base of like, yeah, dealerships and think they're working class because they have a Ford F 150. And like, yeah, it sucks. So true. They're at about 900,000 subscribers to this daily wire to daily wire plus the hit new streaming service. That's correct. Yeah, that's why it's a hit. Then they give me such a catchy name. But yeah, that's a shit ton of money for someone right. Pumping out hate, getting Gina Caruso to make

crappy films. That's right. Yeah, that's an amazing career arc. And yeah, she went from a pool to Star Wars to Ben Shapiro was going to have her own Star Wars show. Tara on the prairie. It's amazing fucking Hunter Biden like that. That's the God like, oh, the Hunter Biden trailer. Yeah. Yeah. There's this trailer for a film that I forget who's I forget who's who's making this one. But it's it's a film about all of Hunter Biden scandals and Gina Gina's in it. And man, it looks like if this was directed by a smart person, this could be an amazing comedy like this like the way the everything about it is so innately comedic yet they're playing it as a political scandal. But no, it's just and if it was if it was directed by somebody with any

competency, they would have recognized it's a comedy film and it would be hilarious to watch. But instead, it's going to be boring. Because look, look, conservatives are getting good at comedy. The left is worried. The left is getting very scared. Like the other day. The moment I knew that Glenn Greenwald had like like he wasn't just purely grifting had like actually fallen down the rabbit hole was what he spent like fucking like two years pretending that literally anyone on earth gave a shit about Hunter Biden. Yeah, he's been simping for for lips of tick tock. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, this is all leading up to his incredibly hardball interview with Alex Jones. Great, great stuff. Incredible journalism.

Oh, God, I love it here. Yeah, so it all sucks. And the other like the other big problem here, right? It's like, okay, on the one hand, like all these people are just doing this to make money. But the problem is that and I cannot emphasize this enough, it is easier to get the material bomb than it is to get gender affirming surgery. And this is a real fucking issue because it turns out when you convince a bunch of people that children's hospitals are mutilating children, what happens? Oh, wait, hold on. I don't even need to go back to the anti abortion terrorism, the people burning down abortion clinics and murdering health care workers. I could just talk about the reaction to like almost immediately after the lockdown started,

a guy tried to buy a bomb to blow up a children's hospital and was killed in the shootout with the FBI. He was killed like a week, maybe like a week and a half before another guy tried to derail a train to ram a Navy medical ship. There was also the stabby lady, the lady who tried to take all the knives on board the hospital ship. Yeah. Like, it's just like, okay, like, if they're allowed to keep doing this shit, like people are going to die. And this isn't to say like they can't be beat, especially IRL where the numbers of these people in total are actually pretty small, because like the number of people who actually rapidly care about this stuff is like a vanishing least small minority of the US. And you know, and IRL that works for us because these people

suck, everyone hates them, communities will come out to like, communities will come out to confront and defeat them. But this is, you know, this is the ecosystem, the media ecosystem of the modern right, it works like spreading conspiracy theories and citing mobs and then claiming they're being censored when everyone tries to stop them. Like in two to three weeks when they found another one of these things, I don't know, it'll be like fucking like transgender clowns are working at make a wish foundation or something like, we're gonna be talking about another instance, another instance like this in tomorrow's episode. It's great. It's good. It's not good at all. That is very bad. Yeah. If you do want to be mad about forced hysterectomy,

that our immigration services has forced hysterectomies on people in their custody. It's a good thing to be mad about. Yeah. It's a good time that we have here on this earth. Warning for some pretty intense transphobia and misgendering. 80 year old Julie Jamon was permanently banned from her local YMCA after demanding that a transgender worker leave the women's locker room. Jamon said that she was trying to protect little girls from a biological man in a women's swimsuit who was watching them undress. So this week, a few dozen people joined Jamon to protest the YMCA. Some of the protesters, including her, were assaulted by lunatics men dressed as women.

Okay. First of all, that granny rocks. But when pressed, Port Townsend, Washington police said that Mrs. Jamon had an emotional response to a strange male being in the bathroom and helping a young girl take off her bathing suit. Well, I should hope the response to that would be emotional. Yeah. Because this, you know, you can just picture this kind of situation where they're grooming little kids completely and appropriately. And you're doing the thing that a lot of people want you to do and that a lot of people watching would. But I hope everybody is aware that this, from what I understand, is a pretty wonderful profit for big pharma and medical systems. And what's happening to children becomes even more

disastrous. And you were protecting the kids. You were protecting the kids. I mean, they should have a responsibility to do that. The Young Men's Christians Association should be doing that themselves if they were playing any role in this whatsoever. It's pretty frightening. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison, and today we're talking about a recent flare-up of anti-trans hate and the anti-trans protests and campaigning that's engulfed a small town in northern Washington in what conservatives describe as the culture war front. The past month, far-right media personalities and anti-trans so-called feminists have partnered together to create an international nexus point for the increasing attacks on trans and queer people,

resulting in a wave of harassment, death threats, and rallies, including an upcoming anti-trans rally in association with the Proud Boys and Three Percenters slated for Saturday, September 3rd. Port Townsend is a small city of just around 10,000 people, located on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State just north of Seattle. The city has a geographic footprint of just under 10 square miles. Over the course of the past month, the quaint beachside city has become the focus of a disinformation campaign against trans people and transgender inclusivity. But unless you frequent right-wing news outlets, you probably haven't heard anything about this story, let alone are aware of the massive amount of harassment

and death threats being targeted at trans people and their allies. Anti-trans and far-right activists have already descended on this small city from all around the country and plan to do so again on September 3rd, with Proud Boys and Three Percenters promising to show up. So what actually happened that escalated things to this point? On July 26th, an 80-year-old woman named Julie Jammon was in a pool locker room and began verbally harassing a trans woman who was on the job as an employee of the Olympic Peninsula YMCA. Julie Jammon asked invasive questions about her genitals and later accused her of engaging in inappropriate conduct, while continuously misgendering this employee. Both the employee and YMCA officials, and like everyone else present in

the locker room, have disputed Julie's highly publicized version of events, which we'll get into in a bit. But first, we're gonna hear from the original target of the harassment. A few days ago, I was able to talk with Clementine, a young trans woman about what happened to her near the end of July while working at the YMCA. It was a pretty normal day. That week, we were doing swimming with the kids and me and the other child care workers used the locker rooms kind of as expected. And I was using the woman's locker room just because, you know, that works for me. And that lines up with how I feel. We went through all of that, no problems. We got the kids, the kids got changed in their stalls. And then once we were out in the pool, one of the kids needed to use the locker

room bathroom. So I took that kid and another kid into the locker room in accordance with the wise rule of three system. To clarify, at the YMCA, there is a quote rule of three, where staff always accompany children in a group of three so that a staff person is never alone with a child and children are never alone with each other. As Clementine was standing with a kid outside the restroom stall, waiting on the other kid who was using the bathroom, Julie Jammond was showering nearby in a curtain doff stall across the locker room. I was waiting outside of the bathroom stall with the kid being the buddy, making small talk when Julie Jammond initiated the dialogue by asking if I was a member of the LGBTQ plus community. I responded, yes, I'm trans. And she asked me if

I had a penis. And it kind of caught me off guard. And I told her that, you know, that's none of your business. Julie asserted that I needed to leave and that I can't be there. And then in response to her assertion, I just shook my head no. I couldn't really leave or I'd be leaving the kids unattended. And, you know, I was backed into a corner. The kid, at some point, the kid using the bathroom exited the stall and had her swimming, her bathing suit, like, wasn't fully pulled up. And she asked me for help. And so I assisted her by pulling it up by its straps. And, you know, there were other patrons present in the locker room at this time. And at some point around the girl coming out and needing her straps pulled up, Julie was back in her shower stall.

And then around this time, two more kids entered the locker room. It might be good to mention I have prescribed glasses. I wasn't wearing my glasses. And I couldn't see anything, which was kind of terrifying because, you know, it was like a shot in the dark. Like, I just heard a voice and I had to search around before I figured out who was talking to me. But anyways, the kids, two more kids came in to the locker room. And they overheard Julie shouting at me and asked me what was going on. And like, they had this concerned look on their face. And I just kind of told them to leave because I didn't want them to get involved. The kids went to the pool manager, Rowan, and asked for help with the escalating situation. They went straight to her

and asked her to come help and told her that someone was yelling at me. And moments later, Rowan entered. And as she walked by, I got her attention. And I told her, you know, there's an older lady yelling at me to leave right now. And I pointed at the shower stall that Julie was using. Rowan kind of like posted up. And Rowan stood in between me, the kids, and Julie, and waited for her to come out. And then Julie, you know, poked her head back out and said, get out. You're a man. And Rowan, you know, intervened when she sort of like popped back out and said, no, actually, you need to leave. Because right now you're discriminating and kind of being a bigot. So it's actually that you need, it's actually you that needs to leave

right now. And Julie told Rowan, she was confused about gender. And then Julie pointed at me and said, he has a fucking penis. He has no business being around little girls. He has a penis and he could rape someone. And after that, Rowan sort of ushered me and the girls out of the locker room told me to go to her office. And then the other staff members found me and helped me. And Rowan stood outside the lobby side of the office when I was in there. And I guess like, yeah, after the police had been called, Julie came out and engaged with her. And they were yelling, but I couldn't hear what was going on. And I mean, that's kind of the end of it. I know that Julie left after that. And I just kind of checked out for an hour or two. It shocked me. I haven't had

someone do that to me before. I've never been talked to in a bathroom or locker room before, especially in that way. The YMCA pool manager told Julie Gemmon that she needed to leave and suspended her membership for violating the Y's code of conduct, which prohibits, quote, discrimination, hatred, derogatory or unwelcome comments, intimidation, conduct or actions based on an individual's sex, race, ethnicity, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status, unquote, as well as having no tolerance for disrespectful words or gestures towards YMCA staff or others. Part of an official statement released by the Olympic Peninsula YMCA, published as the incident in question was growing into a much broader anti-trans

spectacle, clarified that Julie has had, quote, several incidents where she has repeatedly violated the Y's code of conduct, specifically using disrespectful words or gestures towards YMCA staff or others, and abusive, harassing, and or obscene language or gestures towards YMCA staff or others. The aquatics manager then informed the patron that she was permanently suspended from Mountain View Pool and all Olympic Peninsula YMCA facilities, unquote. After Julie was banned from the pool on Monday, August 1st, she started showing up outside the facility with anti-trans signs and led a small group of people into a city council meeting, resulting in an hour of public comment logged about the incident. Here is some of the statement Julie read in the city council meeting,

which also gives a look at her version of events at this time. There's the podium. State your name and where you live for the record. I'm here because I had an experience that you need to know. I have sent it to you all in detail. In an effort by the city and the YMCA to apply the neocultural gender rules at Mountain View Pool, dressing, shower, room, facilities, women and children are being put at risk. My experience while showering after my swim was hearing a man's voice in the women's dressing area and seeing a man in a women's swimsuit watching little girls pull down their bathing suits in order to use the toilets in the dressing room. I reacted by telling him to leave and the consequence is that I have been banned

from the pool. There is no signage informing women the shower room is now all gender and what that means, nor have parents been informed of what they can expect with these new policies. The Y has not provided any dressing, shower room options for women who do not want to be exposed to men who identify as women. The YMCA, the city, the police and sheriffs, the parents, the professionals who assist victims of voyeurism, peeping toms, pedophilia and assault need to come together to figure out how to make the new policies work for all pool patrons, not just one group. How to keep children who are less able to discriminate safe. It is ironic that women who discriminate when a situation threatens their safety or their children, a message from our

ancestors, are now accused of discrimination as if they have made someone else a victim. We need to do much more intelligent and wise about applying the rules and developing policies that are respectful and inclusive. Thank you. So just a few notes about that. Trans inclusivity at the Y is not some new policy. For years, it's been literally Washington state law that people have the right to access the locker rooms, changing rooms and bathrooms that align with their gender identity. This has been the case since 2016. The law states, quote, entities shall allow individuals to use the gender segregated facilities such as restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms and homeless or emergency shelters

that are consistent with that individual's gender expression or gender identity, unquote. And regarding Julie's account of the incident, there have been no complaints from children or parents who are using the pool and multiple accounts conflict with Julie's telling of the story, as the employee never did help anyone undress nor was watching anyone change. Throughout the city council meeting, there were several public comments in support of trans rights that pushed back on Julie's outrageous claims and called out the overall trend of misgendering and the groomer style transphobia. At the end of the meeting, city officials themselves took a stand against the transphobic rhetoric that was present throughout the hour of public comments. Oddly enough

for this show, one of the people I interviewed for this episode serves as a Port Townsend City Councilwoman. Right. My name is Libby Wendstrom. I'm an elected city councillor for the city of Port Townsend and I'm speaking today on as myself rather than as a representative of the city or a representative of the city council as a whole. When did you first kind of hear about this thing that's now ballooned into this larger issue with people coming in from out of state to do protests and all this kind of stuff? I think I first heard about it on Sunday night, which would have been, I guess, the 31st of July, and I heard about it from the YMCA Aquatics Director, Rowan Mackins. And it was more in the tone of kind of a heads up that this was a thing that was going on. And then

I heard a lot more about it the next day, which was Monday, the 1st of August, when Julie Jamon showed up at the pool with a whole group of people doing a protest that they were picketing at the pool. And she also submitted a public comment to the city council meeting that night. And at that point, I realized that a group of people, including Julie, was probably going to plan on attending the city council meeting and reached out to some friends and acquaintances in the trans and allies community, Olympic Pride, the social justice group, and it at the Unitarian Church here in town and various other people who had been kind of resourced and say, hey, this is going on, you need to be aware of it. And in fact, that night, there was over an hour

of public comment. There wasn't anything on this council agenda. There wasn't anything we were discussing. It wasn't really a matter. It wasn't really, I think, even on the city's radar. But 30-ish people showed up the city council meeting. And normally, when there's a public comment about an item that's not on the agenda, they cut off public comment at half an hour, but for whatever reason, let it run that night. So it was well over an hour of public comment. And some other things said were pretty shocking. And to the tune of that all transgender people were pedophiles or that this was a rape happening, some statements that were just not true. And then based on what I heard that night, I was really concerned and felt that this was both, this was ballooning out

of proportion, which now seems kind of funny given how much more balloon it's out of proportion that it's gotten. There's not really any action here for the city or for the pool. I mean, one of the things that Julie Jimenez retained legal counsel and sent a demand letter to the city, but her demands were like, well, you should fire people. Well, they don't work for the city. They're YMCA employees. Well, you should change your policy. Well, the policy is literally state law. And, you know, a bunch of things, it's just, you can't do this. So it's not really clear why this is all focusing on the city because the city doesn't really have, there's not really any action that the city could take here. On top of the dozens of people Julie led in giving public testimony,

which largely consisted of transphobia, misgendering and baseless accusations that trans people are pedophilic inherently. But that same day, August 1st, she also led a protest outside of the YMCA. To learn more about this, I talked with Cass and Raven, who are both part of a local affinity group. The first protest was August 1st, and they announced that they'd be back the same time on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th. So the 2nd drew a much larger counter protest. And then a lot of the same people who were there on the 2nd came back the 3rd and 4th. But there was nobody to counter protest against because the protesters gave up and went home after one day when they saw the kind of backlash they were facing. And most people, I think, thought that was the end of it. But they didn't really

get it. But people who do this kind of thing more often realize that this was more likely the vibe of the beginning stages of something bigger. A lot of red flags went off when we found out they were protesting at a city council meeting, planning to come back the following week. Oh, that's right. That was the other thing, was the council meeting on the 1st where there was a lot of public comment logged. It seemed to us like this was going to escalate further. But other people tended to feel that it was going to be a quick one and done type thing with how fast the news cycle picks up a new issue. And I think it was probably about a week later or on the council meeting on the 8th. Because by that point, we knew about the planned turf

action on the 15th. That's when it started to click for a lot of people that this was going to become a bigger thing. But I don't think anybody, including us, thought it was going to become an ongoing issue. When I searched Port Townsend on Twitter and saw trending hashtags on a wall of anti-transred or a lot of red flags went off. Since the city council public comments, the YMCA had started receiving threatening phone calls and Jammin had been returning to facility nearly daily with some friends to protest, approaching everybody coming in and out of the pool and talking about how men are allowed in the locker room and bearing signs that misgendered the employee. Julie's group had said they were going to be picketing every day at the pool that

week. They showed up and there were about 100 counter protesters, isn't even really the right word. There was sort of like a little pride parade there. And Olympic Pride had kind of a booth table set up and we're handing out pride flags. And the social justice group from the QUF had a, you know, standing on the side of Love Banner and there were kids blowing bubbles and it was just, it was much more of just kind of a lot of people here. As these initial picket style protests were happening in front of the Y, the head of the Jefferson County Transgender Support Group called some friends and assembled this sort of counter protest to voice their support for the trans employee and the YMCA, which resulted in this gay ass trans rights party massively

overshadowing Julie Jamin and her friends little protest. As she was getting outnumbered in person, Julie took to alternative tactics by getting in touch with media outlets that'll give her a soap box, resulting in a new wave of harassment targeted at the Y. There were about 100 people and it was, I think it was Julie and one or two other people. And people had some conversations with Julie and it sort of seemed like that was going to be the end of it. And the next day the pool was closed and about 50 trans rights supporters showed up and nobody showed up to pick it. And the pool was closed because pool employees were receiving death threats and just so much harassment, they basically couldn't use their phones because the phone lines were jammed and voicemails were

filling up in 15 minutes, things like that. And then the pool ended up staying closed, I think from the third, which was a Wednesday, all the way through that week and the following week. And it was just kind of a safety issue of not wanting to have children present for day camps and patrons there if they were going to be harassed. Right after, I think probably on Monday the first of August, Julie reached out to, there's a local sort of far right blog site called the Port Townsend Free Press. That isn't really a newspaper, a news source at all. It's kind of this one guy, James Garantino's blog. And she reached out to that and he did an article. That first Port Townsend Free Press quote unquote article came out August 2nd and served as a

mouthpiece for Julie's inflammatory version of events coupled with some conservative transphobia. More reputable news outlets and local press didn't really cover the story until it already turned into a vital topic on the right, which means there was over a week where the only documented write-up of the incident was the Port Townsend Free Press blog post. Two days after that piece was published, Andy knows the post millennial posted an article largely pulling directly from the Port Townsend Free Press write-up. And that was just the start. The next day, August 5th, Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire did an article about Julie Gemmend and the danger of men watching little girls undress in the locker room. Later that night, the story was on Laura Ingram's

Fox News show citing reporting from the post millennial, which of course cited their reporting from the Port Townsend Free Press. And across the country in Washington state, we found perhaps the most maddening story of the week. An 80-year-old grandmother was banned there from her YMCA after demanding that a biological male leave the woman's locker room where little girls were undressing. They then went to play clips of Julie's public comment at the city council meeting, amplifying Julie's ever-changing altered version of events now on the national stage. I think the mainstream actual, you know, real local newspapers didn't pick it up until the 7th or the 10th respectively for the Peninsula Daily News and the Leader. And that gap, when they

amplified it out to the larger right-wing press that's got picked up by Breitbart, it got picked up by The Daily Mail, they kept quoting that original Port Townsend Free Press article, which was very inaccurate in terms of what it described as having happened. And I mean, it was both outright wrong and it also left a bunch of things out, like that the transgender person was a YMCA employee, for instance, or that they were in the locker room because they were supervising children. And I think where it really hit a crescendo on Thursday the 19th, no, earlier, whatever, not Thursday this past week, but the previous Thursday, it was on Tucker Carlson. And that's where I really saw the email volume explode for people from outside the area where

it was like, you know, you're getting 30 emails in five minutes. And they're from, you know, they're from Texas, they're from Tennessee, they're from New Jersey, they're from Australia, they're from the UK, etc. That when it got picked up by Fox News, the reach really got broad. The first time the story was covered on Tucker Carlson tonight, took place on August 11th, in an episode guest hosted by Brian Clemede. YMCA has changed a lot over the years. Now women and young girls at the Y are finding themselves in locker rooms and showers with men who identify as women, but they still have all their genitalia with them. And if you complain to the YMCA about the genitalia and what they're dressed like, you might get yourself banned. It's what

exactly happened to an 80 year old woman in Washington state here to explain, but not actually make excuses for, but explain is our West Coast correspondent, Seattle based radio host, Jason Rance. Jason, set the scene. Yeah, so I mean, here's the scene. Democrats used to stand up for women, but now they can't even define one. And as a result, you have 80 year old Julie Jamon, who said she was banned from a pool and locker room facility that was managed by the Olympic Peninsula YMCA on Port Townsend, Washington. Now she said she was headed into the locker room to shower and she saw something pretty alarming. She explained what happened at this council meeting. Then a clip from the public comments, please. And I will not subject you to

that again. But here is a little bit more of that clip. So a number of residents showed up to support her at this council meeting. But the mayor, his name is David Faber. He was not pleased accusing them of transphobia. Port Townsend is a welcoming community. And hate and discrimination has no place in this community. I listened to you quietly. I'd like you to listen to me quietly. Given the rise in harassment and bigotry, the trans persons have experienced recently. It's essential that we all speak up. The cisgendered people like me speak up in support of our trans community. Now, Jamon says the staff accused her of being discriminatory. The YMCA put out a statement basically saying we're not going to tolerate the bias, discrimination, or

hatred. And of course, in Washington state, the law allows anyone to use a locker room, changing room or bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. So they're basically saying we're doing what we have to do, except of course, protect women who don't want to see this. Unbelievable. That guy should be ashamed of himself behind the mask. In the immediate aftermath of this, did you see it ballooning to this scale or did you think this was just like a one and done traumatic incident? Absolutely not. I really just thought, you know, oh, my days come. I finally had the bad bathroom experience. And I know a lot of people do have that bad experience. Nobody is ready for it to be, you know, to have this much attention

called to just such a small thing. No, I wasn't ready for it to be like this. Because yeah, it's escalated to the point where you're like on international news for these like right wing grifters who are trying to basically get trans people killed. It's really upsetting to have my face and name, you know, sort of be pushed out like that. And it's crazy how that feeling, the sinking feeling when I saw my name and face, I don't even think it was my face at the time, when I saw my name appear on that local pp free press article. And you know, at the time it was a still pretty big impact. And then to have that just keep happening. And it got it gets like kind of depressingly numbing. Yeah, just have it keep intensifying.

I mean, yeah, I've been on hormones for almost a year now. And I've avoided that for kind of reasons like this that it sucks, because I just feel like I feel like this is a very common experience with trans people who are like starting out like you just can't really go anywhere, because you look too weird to go in the men's room. And you're not quite like you don't feel comfortable in the women's room because of stuff like this. And you know, if you're not binary, that is just a whole other issue of like, where the fuck do I go? Like there's there's there's not a lot of options sometimes. But then to have something that's already very stressful, we turned into like a fucking like daily wire New York post info wars shit is like,

like what like, like, it's I mean, like Tucker Carlson, like all of it. It's really, it's disappointing that there's this idea that I, you know, am actively trying to violate people's space. And and it's really frustrating because of how uncomfortable I feel putting myself in that position being in that room. And I don't want to have something like this happen. And I don't, you know, I don't abuse that space, because I'm not some guy trying to prey on people. I'm, I'm just trying to use the bathroom and get changed. And like, do you talk about like, Oh, you know, walking in, penis hanging out, and, and all of these things, but I don't change in the public space, I go into a changing

room. And, you know, I, I understand, you know, that confusion, and I try to subtract myself from the space as much as possible and make it, you know, more comfortable when I'm in a position like that where I'm trying to, you know, sort of entertain a kid who's not happy to be a bathroom buddy. And, and I'm kind of put in that position where I have to talk super vulnerable. And, and I just remember feeling small. And, and I just shrunk when she talked to me like that. And I don't even, the space just got so small, piggybacking off the groomer and growing anti trans attacks we've seen this year. A large swath of right wing influencers and media personalities jumped on this story to drive outrage and push their rhetoric. Here's a brief clip from Newsmax.

They're more than willing to just ignore possible pedophilia happening at the YMCA in the locker room. Well, it's from my point of view, it seems more like some sort of hypnotism. I know the word woke has been put to it. But I have to tell you that all public agencies I'm connected to as a citizen in a very small town, they are all operating with this gender identity. And you've got to wonder what is happening in those most private places that people, particularly women, need to have. We've had you on, we've had you on the show a couple times now and you seem very levelheaded. Yes, very, very levelheaded indeed. By now, the story has been headlined in obviously very mischaracterized and transphobic fashion, but still headlined by the post millennial,

the Daily Wire, Fox News, Daily Mail, Breitbart, Newsmax, InfoWars, New York Post, The Federalist, and the quote unquote feminist news site Redux. As false retellings about what happened in the Olympic Peninsula YMCA went viral on the right, threatening emails and phone calls started pouring into the YMCA, prompting them to shut down the entire facility for over a week, leaving many local families without child care services. Intense harassment and death threats were sent to city officials who voiced support of trans rights and also to the pool manager. In my conversation with Libby Wenstrom from last week, she detailed some of the threats and the impact the harassment has had on the community. A lot more of the ire is now kind of directed at the

city and the mayor and just at the pool director and less at employees. The transgender employee who was attacked in the locker room by Julie Juman is actually no longer why. Other people have left as another undisclosed location just out of concern of trying to get the kids as far away from this whole process as possible. And so that took a little bit of time and juggling to set up and they were so short staffed they were actually calling for volunteers in order to try to keep the child care open this week just because they were already somewhat short staffed and with people leaving it had just been even harder. The why has been open I think all week this week. I think it was open Monday, Tuesday, today's Wednesday. So it has been able to reopen.

They've changed the schedule around. It's now not open Saturdays again and shuffled in. I think some staff are working seven days a week in order to try to keep it open. People are still getting threats. Still getting I got a terrible email last night. I haven't been getting death threats. I've been getting things like you know you're a disgusting fat pig bitch. Why don't you go back to the buffet and you know things like that. It hasn't for me been death threats. The pool director was receiving photographs of her children saying they're next and some pretty explicit threatening messages like I'm coming for you. I know where you are and Mayor Faber has been getting similar things. He got one where somebody was threatening to come to his home and rape his

wife. So these have been pretty horrifying messages. For the most part most of the email has and voicemails have been coming from out of the area. You know they're not they're not local. So it's a little hard to gauge whether these are serious threats but at some of you feel like you have to take it somewhat seriously and that I think has been pretty disruptive both for the Y employees and for the city. As Julie's retelling of the story was going viral across the right wing and turf media resulting in the pool having to temporarily shut down a so-called press conference was scheduled outside of another city council meeting for August 15th by Julie and her allies. There's a local she bills yourself as a sort of radical feminist named Amy Souza who has a

sort of anti-trans blog site and she has really taken this and run with it so I plugged in but not well. She's really taken this and run with it and has I think has been really this kind of driving force behind a lot of this amplification with on to far right media. And Amy Souza held a what she billed as a press conference on the August 15th the night of the most recent city council meeting and showed up with a group of I don't know probably 25 or 30 supporters and there were estimates are between 350 and 400 trans rights folks from town. I mean they were local who had just showed up and most of them were waiting in line to go into the council meeting and you know flying flags and raising banner banners and stuff. But there was some heated shouting and

one person got arrested for shoving. There weren't any charges filed. I did confirm that with the sheriff's office that with the courts that no charges got filed out of that which is contrary to the story they've been putting out that there were assault charges filed. That's not true. I believe there were about 300 people that came out to confront less than 20 people coming to try and bring Hayden to our community. And it feels like that really inspired a lot of the different networks to get connected. Our personal little networks are incredibly white. Most of us are trans of summer guard and we were reached out to by a local BIPOC community that we've had some crossover with but not a lot. But since this happened just the interconnectivity with that

group has just exploded. After the press conference protest footage of the event went viral spawning another new wave of right-wing media outrage. Clips from the quote-unquote feminist Redux magazine Twitter account show Julie trying to give a speech while being drowned out by chance in support of trans people and at one point someone running behind Julie to rip down a separate jet flag put up by one of the turfs. And a side note in some much less viral footage we can see turfs trying to rip pride flags out of the hands of people who are counter-protesting. Conservative coverage of the protest painted a pearl-clutching picture of scary trans people assaulting women. A few days after the press conference,

Julie Jamin herself made an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Julie Jamin is one of them. She's 80 years old. She's now been banned from stepping inside a YMCA. Why? Because she dared to object when a male employee was assigned to watch little girls remove their bathing suits in the bathroom in a women's locker room. So this week a few dozen people joined Jamin to protest the YMCA. Some of the protesters including her were assaulted by lunatics men dressed as women. Here's some of the footage from that on Monday. Screaming at her. Julie Jamin is the woman, the brave woman who just saw that video. She joins us tonight. Julie, thanks so much. We are grateful that you are joining us. Why at this stage in

your life are you taking it upon yourself to speak up against this in the face of what we just saw? I was in the shower and I saw that man in that women's suit and I saw him watching little girls. You can't not act when you see that going on. You must do something. So and bless you for doing that. That's exactly right. Your moral sense is clear. I have no idea what your background is but you have a very clear sense of right and wrong and I wish more people had it. So you tried to explain that in the video we just played and rather than listen to you people screamed at you and then appeared to come at you. Have you noticed there's no conversation about this? It was a mob of hundreds of people that came streaming into this permitted

gathering and they kettled us. I think that's what you'd call it. They pushed, shoved, they knocked women to the ground. These are the men and the supporters of men that apparently the YMCA and the city want to allow into the women's dressing and shower area. I object. And you at the age of 80 were banned by the YMCA. It's hard to even believe this is real because you were taking a shower and there was a man in there and they banned you not him. Tell us if that's true A and B what YMCA is this? Yes, that's correct. I told that guy to get out of the shower and then a staff member came around the corner and I said to her get him out of here and she said that's discrimination. You're out of here for life and I'm calling the cops.

Can you tell us what YMCA, where did this happen? This happens in Port Townsend that's on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. It's just it's I hope they are punished for the way that they treated you and I appreciate your bravery and your forthrightness. I do too. We did try and get the police to come help us. They were standing across the street. Whoops. And they were told by a directive to stand down. They did not come to help us. I hope they rot. Julie Juman, thank you for all you've done. I appreciate it. Good to see you tonight. Throughout all the media spectacle, I feel like the actual original victim of this

harassment has kind of been forgotten despite them being the current face of the transgender menace. In my conversation with Clementine, we talked about what it's like to be turned into this sort of outrage symbol. I've watched the three hours of public testimony a few nights ago, which was, I was on so much caffeine. Is that the first, is that the meeting that happened right after the incident or the Monday meeting from the 15th? Both. I did both in one night. That's a lot of footage. Yeah. And one of the more shocking things was just how mischaracterized the incident was. And two, just like how much blatant misgendering there was. And like talking about you not as like an actual person, but as almost this like evil archetype in people's minds. It's so dehumanizing

in a really bad way, let alone all of the misgendering stuff. It was wild, watching this person after person completely mindlessly create this villain in their own heads and then just attached it on to an actual human being who's like, your privacy has actually been violated. Like your private information, your pictures, names is going all over these like neo-fascist news sites. And people are framing this as like safety and privacy. And like, if you want to look at what's actually going on, it's so different. And there's such a disconnect between watching all of that public testimony and looking at all of, you know, the right wing press of this incident. And I know it's very depressive framing. It's really clear and disappointing when you're the

subject of it, because I know what happened in that space. And, you know, there were people to witness what happened. And we worked to get our reports out quickly, but it just didn't, you know, it didn't matter because of how dedicated this woman was to getting her side or whatever. I mean, in reality, it just feels like she was dedicated to hurting. I don't know what her motivation was, but it's the blatantly false side of the story that really hurts because accusations that I was standing there watching, I think they go anywhere from like two to five kids is their number. I was watching the Tucker Carlson, and I think I saw that number five watching five kids undress when that's just not what happened. I was standing there with one kid who was fully clothed, chatting

while we waited for another kid to come out of the bathroom. And it's just wrong. It's misinformation. And it's not about, you know, it's not even about pushing an agenda. It's about people's livelihood. And it's really damaging to have my privacy violated like that. You know, straight up, that's what it is. It almost feels like you're just like this sacrificial archetype that they're boogeyman. Yeah, it's like they're not even they're not even like interested in you as a person really. They're interested in you on this, this, this, this, this like idea and put to project you onto this whole other idea, which is so fucked up because you're an actual person. Like, yeah, well, and, and you can see

in the comments and stuff on some of these that it's pretty, you know, I won't try to dig into like the ugly, the ugly and the bad of Twitter. But like, I've seen people say that I'm like a fully bearded man or like, I'll be paralleled as a lumberjack. And it's like, or I mean, and not that you know, your appearances matter. It's about how you feel. But it's kind of, you know, interesting to see how I'm, I'm painted in such a weird and twisted light. Despite going viral in the right wing and turf news sphere, local sentiment in the Port Townsend area has been widely in support of trans rights and not very pleased that their town has been upended for over a month due to one woman's personal prejudice and discomfort.

I've lived in Port Townsend for 24 and a half years. And in talking to people over the last couple of weeks, I would say nearly universally the local sentiment is why is this such a big deal? Like, it's basically somebody got startled in a locker room, made kind of a jerk of herself, and is now trying to blow this into some kind of international incident. And, you know, here's this little tiny town at the edge of the continent. And we're like, why? Why? Why is this the most important thing? You know, why did, you know, dozens of families not have childcare for 10 days? Why did, you know, the YMCA employees have to not get paid? Why did, you know, the, the, the impact of this has been so outsize relative to the actual, what actually happened?

The person who started the initial incident with the trans employee, it's, it's kind of funny in a way that, yes, she's gotten out her message to the whole community, but it's spread as a result of the organizing against her and against the group of people that she's bringing into the area. And it's gotten to a point where just random community members that we don't have any direct connection to are recognizing her and knowing why she's a known person and are just kicking her out of their businesses on site. It's like the backlash against that incident is really spreading really well. And we're getting this really good organic network building throughout the community. Earlier in August, before the big press conference thing, various BIPOC and queer

collectives and affinity groups started networking. And a solidarity meeting was set up to figure out how to take care of each other as the far right spotlight on the town grows. Myself and one other person went and maybe a couple others who I didn't know, but the two of us were the main ones who were more directly involved with the queer community side of responding to what was going on. And it was really great. Like they just were like, we want to support you. We want to help take care of you. What can we do? And then for the action on the 15th, when we were talking about, here's the kind of response that we're wanting from the whole community. But here's some of these background needs because none of them were

experienced enough with protesting to feel comfortable going out on the front lines and doing stuff. They went about a quarter mile away and set up a community picnic. And I don't think people took nearly enough advantage of it because the planning happened so last minute, but they did a great job of setting up in solidarity and in support. And we're really looking forward to working with them more. We spent the last few years running small group basic medical classes and workshops and really making connections like within our community. And having this come about and having everyone come up to one place and see each other and going, oh, we know you and I know you.

And from different communities coming together, we've really been able to do and able those folks to come together to start building more of a unified front. I want to reiterate that with all the media spectacle, it's important to not lose sight of the original target of all of this hate and transphobia. The physical and mental effect of such a massive wave of bigoted harassment and doxing can take a substantial toll. I had to stop going into work at a certain point because I couldn't do it. I woke up in the morning and I looked in the mirror and I just broke it down because it was too much to keep going and to keep trying to bring that bright energy to work.

And a lot of doubt is that's what I've been experiencing is a lot of you see so many people trying to divulge your character in a negative way. And it's toxic and it can kind of seep through and make your life toxic. And that's why I just had to stop looking because it hurt too much. And it's putting me in this limbo. I don't feel like I've gotten a break for a month. I feel like I've just been tired. And it's like a purgatory rest. I feel like I'm in purgatory. You know, has there been any kind of like support on the community level that has been helpful? Yeah. Yeah. I've been definitely grateful and blessed to have the community response be really astounding and supportive. Yeah. I've been given the opportunity to be so much more connected

with my local queer community as well as my local community period. There were a lot of supportive voices that made it a little bit easier to ignore the darker side of this. And Elephant in the Room, the GoFundMe, I don't know how I would feel if there wasn't something rigid and like a rock to lean on like the GoFundMe to be able to have something helpful to look forward to and think that I can be me and that I can afford being me. I don't know how I would navigate the storm without something like that in the distance. It's been overwhelming. And I've just been waiting for it to end. And it looks like it's finally slowing down, but the support makes it easier. And the support is a kind of attention

that really helps right now because it's strikingly easy to feel bad, to feel just dissociated when your life is kind of thrust into a different lens and what felt like a day, what kind of was just a day or a week. This month has felt like longer than my entire summer break. The situation in Port Townsend is not over yet. In a bit, we'll talk about the upcoming anti-trans rally on September 3rd. And there is this kind of absurd irony that's not uncommon when digging into these types of issues, that the types of talking points common among reactionaries and all the complaints around violations of privacy just end up actually being enacted by the people who push these moral panics.

So things have just continued to escalate and escalate. My understanding, and I wasn't there for this, is that yesterday, which was the 24th, Amy Souza, I'm not sure if Julie Juman was there or not, because of course Julie Juman's been banned from the pool, showed up at the pool with a film crew and was trying to push their way into the locker room when patrons were there using the locker room, trying to film inside the locker room and got asked to leave. So it's still continuing to escalate. One of the things that I've been noticing a lot, and it's something that for those of us who are more involved, this is kind of a you don't say moment. And it's the people who are coming in and making accusations and making a tax against the community are

very much doing the exact thing that they're making accusations of. There was an issue the other day of the people who planned and hosted the protest at the council meeting, going into the Y with a camera crew and demanding to film the locker rooms while people were using them. There's lots of accusations that have been thrown that we bust in people from Portland and in reality, the main aggressors who were there on the 15th in their group did come from Vancouver area. Or were flown in from Texas. Or were flown in from Texas, yeah. Like this was 300 people who live within 20 minutes of poor towns and showed up because they care. And they had to fly people from as far as Pennsylvania to post an hour long press conference with 20

people. And so we're seeing that a lot, recurring the person organizing this upcoming action is also lives in Vancouver area and is inviting people from all over to come up and start fights here and try to get video of confrontations going. And everybody up here wants to just be left alone and live in peace. But they also want to show up. And they're kind of getting an opportunity to show up in the most low effort way it's it's in your own town, you might as well show up. I remember a few weeks ago, there was this headline from a Federalist think piece that went a bit viral for being a big yikes, almost mirroring the fascist framing of blood libel. If you replace quote the Transgenders with quote the Jews, you'll see what I mean. The headline reads quote,

the transgender movement is not just intolerant, it's barbaric and violent, and it's coming for your children unquote. Almost exclusively, its sources are Twitter accounts like libs of TikTok and a few random terfs. And this is what we mean when we talk about how things that seem like they should just be insignificant Twitter bullshit actually do affect the world off of social media. This is how entire conversations on the validity of people's existence get formed and directed now. The last section of the Federalist story is about the Boston Children's Hospital. And if you listened to yesterday's episode of It Could Happen Here, you can guess the kind of disinformation the article pedals. And many readers, many of whom are not on Twitter,

will take whatever it says at face value. Same thing for libs of TikTok stuff being boosted on Fox News. The majority of the Federalist think piece though is about Port Townsend and everything stemming out of the YMCA incident. And the whole article is as terrifying and fascistic as its headline. I remember seeing the Federalist article headline and just being like, oh, here's another another piece doing the same thing. And I didn't realize it was about like this specific incident until much later. And though, yeah, it's the kind of it kind of does play into the idea that like, we know these things happen, you just don't expect them to happen like right where you are until it's until it's until it's going on. Yeah,

I've spent years screaming at a wall telling people that this is coming and really hope that all of my preparation had been for nothing. And it's happening in my hometown now and getting national media attention, everything from Ben Shapiro to Info Wars to interviews on Tucker. Back during the Trump presidency, we were pretty much just gun nerds and had started a small little gun club. And we're inviting our friends and our local queer community out to to learn about that. And it went really quickly from that to people having more of an interest in the medical suffer teaching specifically, stop the bleed. And so after the Trump presidency was over, a lot of people dropped off. And just the majority of the people that stuck around happened to be

trans. But we continued offering these classes. We were hosting ones out here about de-escalation, about stop the bleed. We're hosting naloxone stuff. I think with there being such limited options for direct actions in the area, a lot of people were kind of naturally tending towards how can we better support our friends who live in areas that are doing direct actions. And we started getting a lot more interest in those kinds of support roles, the medical training, the de-escalation, even things like emergency preparedness and food security. Yeah. But because of that, we've just spent the last few years running these just small group, like one to four people, basically workshops on all these different subjects and built

somewhat of a connection with the community and a bit of respect. So when this happened, we actually had that to draw on. And we could really help enable people to organize themselves and create some form of unity. So it's not small groups of people coming in without a plan, but a large group of people showing up all at once that we're not directly involved in any sort of leadership of is just naturally organically happened, but have really spent the last few years just feeling like kook screaming at a wall until this happened in our small town and completely unexpectedly. And now we're actually somewhat useful. Before we close out, we do need to talk about the upcoming anti-trans rally planned for the

afternoon of Saturday, September 3rd at Pope Marine Park. Organizers are explicitly tied to the Proud Boys. And this rally is one of the most clear examples of how TERFs, self-described feminists, or people just looking out for biological women's rights, are perfectly willing to ally with fascists, if it means hurting trans and queer people. The rally is billed as, quote, a rally for decency. Stand up against men in women's public pool locker rooms and tell the city of Port Townsend to let Julie swim, unquote. Yeah, the guy who runs Common Sense Court Conservatives, a man named Robert, I always mess up his name, Zerfling, I think it is Zerfing, Z-E-R-F-I-N-G,

who's associated in some way with the Proud Boys and is associated with Roger Stone. He runs this blog called Common Sense Conservative. He is organizing something that's being billed as, quote, rally for decency, unquote, to be here in Port Townsend on the Labor Day Weekend Saturday, which is the 3rd. And it's unclear whether this is going to be a large event or a small one. They have not, as of yesterday, pulled a permit for that. And there's some questions about, you know, if you're planning a large event, what's that going to unfold like? Port Townsend is a tourist community. And at this time of year, we've got a lot of people in town over Labor Day Weekend. So a large Proud Boy rally is kind of, you know,

it doesn't feel very comfortable. Is this kind of the first kind of big instant where you've had these types of like, you know, more kind of experienced activists on like the anti-trans side or on, you know, affiliated with Proud Boys or whatever kind of come in and try to make this problem inside the town? We've had little bits and pieces of stuff. The Proud Boys or something kind of connected had a kind of truck drive-through parade rally in 2020, sort of just prior to the election that kind of drove through town and, you know, with a bunch of big trucks. And I think some people were open carrying and it was mostly a bunch of noise. But it hasn't, this is a very

liberal community. And it hasn't really hit us. This is also just for context. This is a town of 10,000 people. And it's the biggest town for, you know, 50 miles in any direction. So it's not, you know, it isn't like 10,000 people. That's a suburb. This is the big town. This is the county seat. So it's, we've been kind of insulated from a lot of things. You know, we had, you know, we definitely had some Black Lives Matter protests. We definitely had, you know, we had a big Women's March in 2017 and 2018. But we haven't seen the kind of explosive clashing protests that, you know, Seattle or Portland have. The far right is planning to mobilize people from around the Pacific Northwest,

pulling from folks in Oregon and Idaho, and are expecting anywhere between 50 to 100 people to show up on the anti-trans side, especially people from Proud Boy and 3%er affiliated networks. One of the leaders of the Washington State 3%er militia, Eric Rode, has stated that he will be present and is encouraging his followers to join him, saying on Telegram, quote, quote, I don't care if five of you show up or 50 of you show up. I will always march against men staring at girls as young as 11 pulling off their swim trunks. It would be pretty cool if people could cancel their plans and show up to stand against child molesters. God said, if you even look back, I'll turn you into a pillar of salt. I wouldn't have looked back, but I never fail to

answer the call to something so simple as don't stare at little girls when they take off their clothes, unquote. He then goes on to do some unhinged rambling about federal observation and his commitment to God and country. But he ends that post by saying, quote, when I get threatened by Antifa, all match to Antifa, unquote, which I don't even know what that means. The grammar on that is very confusing. Another Telegram post from a 3%er account reads, quote, calling all patriots, all proud boys, all 3%ers, all lone wolves. We roll out to Port Townsend on September 3rd. Hope to see you there. We got proud boys and 3%ers rolling in from all over, unquote. The 3%er crew is also planning a pre and post rally barbecue party

on Friday and Saturday night at Whidbey Island, which sounds like an awful time. That sounds like a horrible party. Our major concerns going forward is if protesters keep coming out here, that the right wing will get more footage that they can spin, bringing more attention on this, bringing more harm to the trans community across the country, that the right wing will attack someone locally around here, or that all of this spun footage will inspire someone from outside of the area or someone just sitting in the woods who will come and cause serious harm to a large group of our local trans community. And our intent is to be there to have some sort of response via medical or otherwise. Trying to think of how to say this. I've lived here on and off

most of my life and had started working towards transitioning, but due to the national political situation, specifically when the former president temporarily got rid of trans protections and medical, cancelled all that, changed my medical records back, and have been presenting as a cis white dude since then, specifically because of the amount of privilege that gives me. And having a trans partner who is working on their transition in this town while this is happening is hitting home to a level that I was completely unprepared for, and the emotional impact that all of this has been having on me, and the fact that it's not just here, but that this is getting national attention, is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around. And I'm just really

thankful for all of the networks that we've built and all of the community, the local community, the broader Washington community, all the people who have just shown so much support for us. And it makes me feel like there is a future where we can just be left in peace. And that is the story of what's been happening in Port Townsend over the course of the past month, and what could happen in the next few days. I'm going to close this episode with Clementine, discussing the details of her GoFundMe. The GoFundMe is sort of a general transition fund for me. I originally made it specifically for two surgeries. I lobald the amount greatly because I felt like if I asked for too much, I wouldn't get anything, and I still got nothing for a

long time. At some point when the articles were coming out, one of the national articles used my GoFundMe as a source to find out more about me, but that got my GoFundMe out there. And a lot of different people started picking up on it and spreading it. I actually didn't do much at all to help that. It was never something on my mind, the GoFundMe. It just happened, and I looked at it one day and I thought, that's strange. I have more donations than last time I checked, and it was pretty empowering to see that or more hopeful. But now, so I talked about the GoFundMe was originally for two specific surgeries, and I lobald the amount. I later revised. Actually, it took me a couple times and a lot of consideration because I didn't want to feel

like I was cheating the people that were being gracious to me, which I'm not trying to be. But yeah, finding out that things cost more than I thought, but it's way better than it was before. And to find it, I mean, I'm pretty sure it's the first thing that comes up when you look up my name now, which is better than Fox News' video or a Daily Wire article or whatever the big thing that would pop up otherwise is. But yeah, it's called Clementine's Transition Fund. It's on GoFundMe. You can find the transition GoFundMe at gofundme.com slash SRS for Clem. And that link will be in the description, or you can just search Clementine's Transition Fund on your search engine of choice. See you on the other side.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.