RedHanded - #6 BLM - Elijah McClain

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

In August 2019, 23 year old Elijah McClain was walking home with some ice tea he had bought for his cousin. On the way he was stopped by police; within minutes Elijah was being restrained and placed in a chokehold. Things escalted further when the police had the young man, who by this point was slipping in and out of consciouness, injected with ketamine. Elijah died 3 days later in hospital, this is his story. Black Votes Matter: www.blackvotersmatterfund.org Fair Fight: www.fairfight.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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we've chosen a case that not only highlights the racial injustice faced across the world, but also the injustice faced by people considered to be different. If you know anything about this case, then you don't need me to tell you how utterly heartbreaking it is. Elijah McLean was a 23-year-old young man from Aurora, Colorado in the US. He was a kind, empathetic and wonderfully giving person. Elijah was also incredibly gifted. And as a teenager, he actually taught himself how to play the piano and the violin. And as a testament to just how kind and giving a person he was, during his lunch

breaks, Elijah used to go to his local animal shelter and play music for the animals because he believed that his music calmed the distressed cats and dogs. Since Elijah's tragic death last year in 2019, there have been many reports speculating as to whether Elijah was on the autistic spectrum or whether he wasn't. And although we don't know for sure whether Elijah was on the spectrum, because he's never actually been diagnosed, his family and friends, including his mum, did describe Elijah as different. Elijah's mum chose to homeschool her son to give him all the support he needed, whilst allowing him to be his fiercely independent self. Because, like we said, Elijah was incredibly gifted intellectually, and he was extremely introverted at times and struggled to read

social cues. This meant that Elijah had certain habits that might have made him stand out. For example, he would regularly bow at people as a way of saying thank you. He would dance freely in the street when listening to music that he loved. Elijah was a sweet, kind, beautifully innocent person. Tragically, this was enough to get him killed. Elijah had had a happy childhood growing up in Aurora with his mum and his siblings. And by the age of 23, he was living with his cousin and working as a massage therapist.

Now, to say that Elijah was well-liked by his clients would be a massive understatement. By all accounts, they absolutely loved him for his quirky personality and empathetic nature. On the 24th of August 2019, Elijah was walking home, having just visited the local gas station to pick up some iced tea. CCTV footage of Elijah in the gas station shows him wearing a black open-faced ski mask, something that he wore regularly.

Elijah would often wear this mask because of an underlying health condition. He suffered from circulation problems that meant that he struggled to keep warm. The CCTV footage from the gas station also showed Elijah having a friendly chat with the person behind the counter before turning and bowing to the man in the queue behind him. This man looked a bit taken aback at first, but then he gave Elijah a warm smile. On his way

home, Elijah listened to music and danced how he did when he was really enjoying a song. He was waving his arms in the air as he walked on. A local resident saw Elijah at 10.30pm and felt that what they had seen was somehow suspicious enough to call 911. On the call, the resident explained that Elijah was wearing a ski mask and seemed direct quote sketchy. However, they explicitly said that Elijah could be a good person or a bad person and that he didn't have a weapon, nor did he pose a threat to anyone, including himself.

Then why are you calling 911? What about that situation is an emergency? I don't get that at all. You're calling 911. And it is, it's a direct thing to say that this person said that they thought Elijah looked sketchy. But there's no other reason. In fact, they actually say like, I can't see anything else going on, but I'm going to call 911. Not even the number for like the local police department. The emergency number. What the fuck? Regardless, at 10.34pm, Aurora PD officer Nathan Woodyard spotted Elijah while driving past. He pulled over and jumped out of his car and ordered Elijah to stop. Elijah pulled out his phone to try and turn off the music he had in his headphones, but he carried on walking, slightly confused by the situation he was being thrown into. As he began

trying to talk to Officer Woodard and ask what was happening, he was told by the police officer that he had the right to stop him because Elijah was being, quote, suspicious. Within nine seconds of jumping from his patrol car, Officer Woodard began physically handling Elijah. When Elijah was initially being restrained, he wasn't exactly cooperating, but he certainly wasn't resisting arrest either. And from what we can see from Officer Woodard's body cam footage, Elijah was simply trying to process the situation

and work out what on earth was going on. I think it's safe to say that anyone who suddenly found themselves restrained within seconds of the police pulling up would be confused. But Elijah, like we said, being different in the sense that he perhaps needed a bit longer to read a situation, especially when it involved someone he didn't know,

of course he was resisting. And it's nine seconds. It's nine seconds from the first word being spoken to Elijah being physically manhandled. I think that's like, that's a short enough time for anyone to be confused about what's going on. Absolutely. And the other thing is,

is that the music in Elijah's headphones was really loud. He was trying to turn it off. But I think to this officer, I'm not going to defend what decision this officer took. But I think when Elijah is like sort of in his pockets trying to get his phone out, turn the music off, this officer uses that as an excuse to jump out and restrain this man. It just makes no sense. Of course, it's confusing. And about a minute or two later, two more officers arrived at the scene. Officers Jason Rosenblatt and Randy Rodema.

They all initiated physical contact with Elijah almost immediately. Elijah by now was completely terrified and he asked the officers to quote, respect his boundaries and tried to tell them that he was going home. The officers then told Elijah to quote stop tensing up and began trying to move him over to the grass on the edge of the pavement and you know again we don't know if Elijah was on the spectrum or not. Again there's just a lot of speculation about this but his mum does say that these are not things that Elijah would have found comfortable. Not that anyone would have, but particularly for him. And if Elijah was on the spectrum, my cousin who is, I know from that experience that she doesn't like to be touched.

She definitely goes tense if you do that, if you even go in for a hug. And this is not that. This is somebody just randomly grabbing you on the street and manhandling you. And at this point, as they force Elijah to the ground and drag him over to the grass, conveniently, Officer Woodyard's body camera suddenly fell off him. And so you don't really see that clearly what happens from here on out. But we know what happened as the situation escalated significantly as Officer Rodema suddenly shouted, quote, he grabbed your gun, dude. You're at work. Yuck. I fucking hate you, Randy. I'm not like, I'm not a huge fan of the word dude anyway. It's

not something I would ever use. No. But it doesn't seem like a professional term, especially when you're restraining someone. Yeah. And I feel like it's the, do you know what upsets me about that? Is that they're already manhandling Elijah by this point. They've already knocked him to the ground. They've already dragged him over to the grass on the side of the pavement. To say he's grabbed your gun, dude, it sounds like such a casual thing to say when you're in such a heightened situation that you've instigated. It just seems like they're not really taking this that seriously. That's how it comes across to me

with that kind of language. But I don't know, maybe I'm just reading too much into it. And that's just how everyone speaks. It's so far out of our vernacular that it's difficult to know. So he says that, which I'm not going to say again because I don't want to, before all three officers wrestled Elijah to the ground. It is incredibly unclear what happens in the body cam footage, but we will say that going for an officer's gun seems very out of character for someone like Elijah, who's unusually shy and a self-proclaimed pacifist. After Officer Rodema's gun accusation, Elijah was tackled to the ground and one of the officers used a stranglehold on him. Within seconds, Elijah had lost consciousness and Elijah was held like this, restrained even after it was clear he was no longer awake. As more officers

began to arrive, Elijah woke up and footage from their body cams showed the young man struggling to breathe saying I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McLean. That's my house. I was going home. That's what I was doing. Just going home. And then you can hear him saying I'm just different. That's all. I'm so sorry. Why are you attacking me? I don't even kill flies. But despite this, the three officers who had started the assault and those who had arrived later continued to restrain Elijah, who was quickly becoming more and more distressed. Soon, Elijah's condition deteriorated substantially. And at 10.49pm, so six minutes, just six minutes after his first contact with the police, Elijah said his final words. Quote, You are all phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I'm a mood Gemini. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ow, that really hurt.

You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to do that. As Elijah was uttering these last words, he continued to vomit. And the officers told him to stop it. I don't think that I have read out more tragic, heartbreaking final words before. I don't even know what to say because I think if I talk about it, I'm just going to lose it. And that is not what this episode is about. So strangulation and choking can obviously lead to vomiting, to foaming at the mouth and spasming. These officers had placed Elijah in a chokehold and now they were still restraining him. And as he continued to vomit because of the chokehold they had placed him in, they had the nerve to tell him to stop vomiting.

The thing that just boggles my mind is that even such a like physical and obvious side effect of their brutality, the fact that this man is throwing up, didn't make them think twice about what they were doing. You know, somebody just saying, oh, I can't breathe, this is happening to me. Those are phrases we've heard time and time again when police are involved with the killing of black people as we've covered in this series but even when he's throwing up they don't stop that doesn't deter them like it's almost like they think he's faking that as well it's bizarre that's exactly what they think they think he's making a scene to get out of it also get out of what get out of walking home get out of what he was hasn't done anything he was

just listening to music walking home wearing a black ski mask because he was cold because he was cold because of an underlying health condition i can't explain to you how i mean i don't need to you guys you guys know as preaching to the choir this is one of the most brutal cases that we have covered because of the sheer nonsensical way in which this even transpired. How this started to where it ended, it makes zero sense apart from the fact that Elijah McLean was a black man wearing a black ski mask. That's it. Who was out at night. I can't give you more of an explanation than that. And I think one of the important things to also say about this case, if you aren't as aware of it as maybe other people are, and if you haven't seen a picture of Elijah, I would say

pause this one second and go onto Google and Google Elijah McLean because you will see that he is not a big man at all. I'd actually say that although he is 23, I would say he looks more like he could be 17, 18, 19. He looks so young to me. And he's got multiple officers holding him down. There are like nine officers on the scene. For what? It's just such an overreaction. It's overreaction isn't even the word. I don't know what the word is. But after Elijah was restrained on the ground for another 10 minutes, he became totally unresponsive. However, he still kept throwing up and foaming from the mouth. Any normal human being at this point, because you don't have to be a doctor, you don't have to be a medic to take a look at this man and see, oh, this isn't gonna end particularly well. Any normal

human being, I feel like would have taken one look at Elijah and known exactly where this was going. Vomiting plus being restrained by multiple men plus blocked airways. How else did these officers think this was going to end? Like what else did they think was going to happen? Obviously the answer is they didn't give a shit and because they knew nothing was going to happen to them. In fact while Elijah was losing consciousness in his own vomit he was told by one officer if you keep around, I'm going to bring my dog out here. To do what? Bite him. Exactly. What, so my police dog can bite you? Is that what police dogs are meant to be used for? And as if these sick dog threats weren't enough for these officers, they discussed injecting Elijah with ketamine because, quote, whatever he had taken had given him incredible strength.

Elijah wasn't incredibly strong. He was 5 foot 6 and weighed 10 stone, which is just 64 kilos for our continental listeners. And Elijah was not on any form of drug. I mean, the thing is, like, at the moment, people are talking about whether, you know, he could have been in a state of, like, delirium, which could have made him more strong or something like this but like

he's five foot six and ten stone being restrained by multiple men i just cannot believe that there is any reason why this conversation about ketamine came up in and of itself to me is very suspicious because he's not even responsive at this time i did wonder do you think possibly that these men know shit we've gone quite far not shit because they like give a shit about poor elijah but shit like we maybe we've we've gone too far because this person is now unconscious one of the side effects of ketamine is memory loss do i mean am i just being too crazy to think, is that a reason why they're even bringing it up? I really don't know why they jumped to that.

Why are drugs involved? I think ketamine, like, yes, although a side effect may be to lose your memory, it's not a sure shot. Yeah. It wouldn't be the only reason it would be used. They're all wearing body cameras. They're not trying to hide what they're saying. If that was the discussion,

I think there would be some evidence that they would have said that. I can't believe they were scared of him. I can't believe they thought he was a threat. That's why I don't understand why the ketamine comes into it at all. Because arguably, if the ketamine hadn't been administered,

Elijah, we're obviously going to go on to discuss this, but Elijah could have survived, which is why this decision to get the drugs involved is something that I really, really don't understand, but I think is super pivotal to this entire story. There were also multiple references to why the officers had put him in a carotid, which is obviously a reference to the carotid chokehold used on Elijah by the officers restraining him.

Doesn't really make sense. But like, none of this makes sense. Yeah. Despite the fact that Elijah would have posed zero threat to any of the men restraining him, or anyone else for that matter, or even himself, by 10.59pm a fire medic had injected Elijah with 500 milligrams of ketamine and loaded him into an ambulance. An investigation by NBC proved that the fire medic who injected Elijah misjudged Elijah's weight significantly. He estimated that Elijah weighed 100 kilos and therefore required a 500

milligrams of ketamine. However, as we already know, Elijah only weighed 64 kilos, which meant his required dose of ketamine would have been around 320 milligrams, not the 500 he was given. I think by sight you can tell the difference between a 100 kilo person and a 64 kilo person. They're not like, oh, maybe he was 70. A hundred kilos. How are you wrong by that much? This person is a medic. in that situation what is the

procedure is this medic do they have to do what the police tell them are they in charge i don't know enough about that to say either way but i would just feel like a medic turning up to this scene seeing a man who's slipping in and out of consciousness but surely medics take an oath to do no harm you see this person in this situation. Okay, fine, you misjudge their weight. But you what? Just go for the full hog and give him 500 milligrams of ketamine. Like, what decision was being made there?

Like, I struggle to see how this person could have done what they did. It seems baffling. If you don't know, ketamine is a strong anesthetic. It's often associated with horse tranquilization. To give someone 180 milligrams more than their weight dictates they can handle, especially when someone is already choking on their own vomit, is hard to fathom. By 11.07pm, officers at the scene were told that Elijah McLean no longer had a pulse. So he was resuscitated and rushed to hospital, but was declared brain dead three days later. A day after that, officers Woodard,

Rosenblatt and Rodema were put on paid leave. Paid leave, by the way. Shortly afterwards, District Attorney Dave Young found that none of the three officers had committed any criminal acts and no charges were filed. Who's surprised? Anyone? The police coroner ruled Elijah's death as undetermined, stating that an allergy to ketamine, an asthma attack, or maybe the chokehold that had been used maybe led to his death. We've also seen this again and again, medical officers ruling that the cause of death is undetermined in a case when, I think you said this, Hannah, in a previous episode, where they almost make it sound like, oh, that person was just gonna die anyway. And like, we don't really know what happened.

Every single stage of this is them just escalating it further and further and further against a man who posed no threat. And then they kill him. And then the medical expert, the medical officer turns around and says, oh, we don't know. We don't know what actually caused his death. He could have died just walking home from the shop with his iced tea. Had no one interfered. That's almost what it feels like they're saying. It's just so bizarre to me because I'm no medical expert, but I'm going to hazard a guess and say that being given an overdose of a powerful sedative whilst you're being held

down and restrained as you throw up is probably the reason that Elijah died. I know that the medical officer is saying I can't pinpoint exactly the reason but like isn't it a combination of all of these things? Were it not for him being physically assaulted by these police officers Elijah McLean would not be dead. So I don't understand why the death would be ruled as undetermined. That's the thing that, and maybe I'm missing some like, I don't know, some like nuance to this because I feel very emotional about it, but I feel like why is it undetermined? I cannot fathom that. It makes no sense to me. And like we said, basically the chokehold that was used on Elijah is what knocked him unconscious.

This is almost most certainly what caused the vomiting. And the officer said that Elijah McLean kept struggling. Like we said, some of this was probably him tensing because he would have been exceedingly uncomfortable at being touched, possibly. But also the struggling that these officers said that they felt could also have been the spasms because we know he was spasming and this was also probably caused by the chokehold so they choke him he starts vomiting and starts spasming and then they say that he's resisting and struggling but in fact he's spasming because of the chokehold so then they inject the ketamine and the ketamine I think

is just the final blow I don't know whether he would have survived or not regardless but it's just a series of events that these officers enact upon Elijah in an incredibly aggressive way with no reason with no way I can fathom that they would have genuinely felt or reasonably felt that he was a real threat. That's the thing at the heart of it for me. And to say that maybe it was an allergic reaction to the ketamine or an asthma attack. Maybe he just had an asthma attack. Maybe, we don't know, maybe he just had an asthma attack and died. I don't know. They act like there is no way they could have predicted that their actions could have led to a death.

If this was, and again, I think you said this, Hannah, in another episode we did, where if this was a civilian that had killed another civilian like this, are we saying that in a court of law that they would have been like, oh, they couldn't have possibly reasonably known that this could have led to death. Can we even imagine? It is amazing how many people spontaneously develop life-threatening asthma when they are being choked to death by police officers. And you know, you pump someone, you give someone an overdose of ketamine,

maybe they're just allergic to ketamine. I mean, I don't know. Of course, after these hideous decisions were made, more or less to ignore Elijah's death and his entire existence, protests erupted in Aurora. And in June 2020, a petition was signed by almost one million people calling for an impartial investigation into McLean's death. Aurora's city management responded by saying that the investigation had already been reopened under the direction of a man named Eric Drago.

But this announcement did little to ease anyone's fear or anger when it emerged that Eric Drago was himself a former state police officer. Hardly. Impartial. Definitely got no skin in the game. No, definitely not the police investigating the police for crimes committed by the police.

By June the 25th, 2020, more than three million people had signed the petition with the general feeling that Eric Draigle investigation would lead to yet another cover-up and simply favour the police. Yeah, Eric, if they Google you, they're not going to find out that you're a police officer, are they? Change your Wikipedia page before you start the job

and come in the back door. No one will ever know. And so, finally, a special prosecutor was assigned to the case and an executive order was signed asking for the Attorney General to investigate and potentially prosecute the officers involved. But of course this story only got more and more sick. In July 2020 the Aurora Police Department found themselves once again in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. When pictures emerged of three of their officers posing by a memorial for Elijah, the three officers, Erica Marrero, Jaron Jones and Kyle Dittrich. Say their names. Fucking

absolutely. Here, rewind for the 15 second thing and listen again and go look at these fucking hideous dickhead pictures. Basically, these three go to the memorial for Elijah and take photos of themselves smiling. And that's not it. In one of the pictures, one of the officers has got the other in a chokehold while all of them laugh. What's wrong with these people? I don't know. I just, this is a year after. This is a year later.

And they're police. You've sat and thought about it. You've seen the protests. You've seen the upset. You've seen the inquiry. You've seen everything that's happened. You've seen Elijah's family crying on the news. But no, this seems like an A-OK thing to do.

Dude, I am baffled. And it doesn't end there, because the reason that these pictures emerged is because they sent these pictures to their pal, Officer Jason Rosenblatt. And if you remember that name, it was, of course, because he was one of the officers who had been at the scene and involved in Elijah's, and I'm going to call it murder, in Elijah's murder. And he replied, ha ha. By this point, Jason Rosenblatt had been fired. So he sat at home texting back, ha ha. I mean, did these people take this picture and send it to him to cheer him up?

Because he'd been fired? What is this? Send him a fucking muffin basket. Oh, yes. Sorry you're sad you lost your job because you murdered someone. Lol, lol, lol. Wow. The photo was also sent to Officer Woodyard,

who, if you remember, was the first officer on the scene who was the one who had actually stopped Elijah that day. Woodyard claims that he deleted the pictures immediately and said that he was, quote, extremely disturbed. So what justice has been done? Rosenblatt was fired, as we know, in July 2020, an entire year after Elijah was killed. However, officers Rodema and Woodyard still remain at Aurora PD, but they have been moved to non-public facing roles for their own safety. You couldn't make it up. Of those officers in the photos, officers Marrero and Dietrich, they were eventually fired and Jaron Jones resigned. These officers were set to appeal their dismissals in December 2020, but this has been rescheduled to 2021. Over 40,000 people signed a petition to prevent them returning to work.

Just the idea that people with such a lack of empathy could be reinstated into roles as a community police officer feels like that's not the right thing to do. The police are there to control us. The police are there to do whatever the fuck they want. They are protected by the police unions. They are protected by the legal system. They act with impunity. We have seen it time and time and time again.

That's it. Other things that we have seen time and time again over the course of these episodes is that justice here for Elijah McClain was non-existent. Yet again, the police, the unions, the medics, the medical officers, whoever else was involved with this, have all colluded to cover up a murder, disregard the death of an innocent black man, and stick together to protect their power, their positions, and their privilege. They do this despite overwhelming evidence of barbaric treatment towards Elijah that directly resulted in his death.

And they do this despite the protests, the petitions and the pleas from the public. And that's because they hold black victims, black families and the entire public in total contempt. Elijah's family have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit to force the city of Aurora paramedics and police department to take accountability for the loss of a beautiful soul. And to be clear, a civil lawsuit is not a criminal one. If they win it, which obviously we sincerely hope that they do, they might be awarded some money, but nobody will go to prison. Yeah, it'll be the same as with the Breonna Taylor case

because they've won the civil lawsuit and her family have been awarded money. But no one's been held accountable for what actually happened. No one's gone to jail for the fact that Breonna Taylor was in her house and got shot to death by the police for no reason. That's not going to happen. And I'm not saying that in a defeatist way in that we shouldn't continue to strive for that to happen and scream about it and yell about it and do everything. I'm just saying that's not what's happened. Another reason Elijah's family have chosen to undertake in this civil lawsuit is to send a message that, quote, racism and brutality have no place in American law enforcement.

The lawsuit alleges that Elijah McLean was unlawfully stopped on the street in August 2019 and that officers later tried to justify their aggressive treatment by filing an assault charge against Elijah and making notes in their police reports suggesting that he was in a gang. At the time of recording the city of Aurora is trying to get the court to dismiss this lawsuit because of course they don't want any accountability. We'll revisit this case when we know more about it and what the final outcome is but if there is one thing we've learned this year, is that the wheels of justice move very slowly when the life of a black person is taken at the hands of the police. And let's be clear, the oppression and mistreatment

of black people is not something restricted to America. You'll have seen in our BLM series this year that we have gone all over the world from the cases that we've covered including of Miss Du, Sheku Bayo and Darren Cumberbatch. It's an issue that stretches globally. It's also important to note that during the research for our BLM episodes we also came across similar stories from many non-English speaking countries too. The research was just harder there because of the source material not being easily translatable. But there were so many, such as the case of Eugene Obero, who died while being detained by police in Norway in 2006, after he complained that his welfare payment had not come through. Or the

case of a youth worker called Theo, who was tackled to the ground by French police in 2017 and horrendously had a baton pushed so far up his rectum that he suffered severe internal bleeding. Theo was just walking home with his friends and had no previous criminal records. Not that even if he had a previous criminal record that anything of that sort would be justifiable. Ever, of course not. But while the issue of police brutality towards black people is a global issue, the support for the BLM campaign has been a global one too. This year in 2020, we saw protests everywhere,

from Japan to Brazil, stretching across every single continent following the murder of George Floyd. And support has continued throughout the year across social media, television, music and sport. Just this month, the players of football teams PSG and Istanbul Basik Sahir walked off the pitch after less than 15 minutes of play after a match official was heard using a racial slur. An official, not a spectator. However, like we saw with the case of Ms Du, a signature here and a royal commission there doesn't make real change happen. Ms Du died as one of over 400 indigenous Australians who were

killed in police care after a royal commission was signed about indigenous deaths in custody. What makes real change is keeping the injustice faced by black people in our communities at the front of our minds and not allowing ourselves to have the fight for the BLM movement to be pacified by meaningless signatures and statements. Black people still face an astronomically higher chance of dying in police custody wherever they're from. And the man who woke up in the White House this morning still thinks that white supremacists can be, quote, good people. And 49% of America still voted for him. And Elijah McLean, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd all still have no justice.

And this is the thing, I think you're so right about the idea that we can't be pacified by small gestures that may be presented to us from the government or from corporations or whatever. It's got to be about real change because I think there was a tweet, I can't remember who it was who tweeted this, but I saw it being shared on social media, that one of the most worrying things about, say, Biden and Harris winning this election is that people might start to feel comfortable. People might start to feel like, oh, well, Trump's gone now. The man who outwardly, vocally supports white supremacists is gone now. So we can relax, job done. Don't get me wrong, it was obviously the best thing ever that Trump is no longer the president of the United States.

But the bureaucrats, the legislation, the ways in which institutionally black people are being oppressed across that country, across the world, don't just change because the president changes. Those things still exist. So there is a lot more work to do. So don't feel comfortable just because Biden won. And that 49% haven't gone anywhere. Precisely. And the structural, deeply entrenched institutional problems that exist are still there. That brings to an end the BLM series that we wanted to put out over 2020. We're not going to be pushing this from our minds though, absolutely not. Hannah and I are going to be thinking about other ways in which we can

continue to tell stories like this that are so incredibly important into 2021 and for as long as Red Handed exists exists which is hopefully forever so yeah thank you so much for listening for supporting this series for sharing it as virulently as you all have done and uh yeah i think um one of the best things i can say is just keep paying attention and also give your money to the places that are going to have the biggest impact so hannah and i earlier this year, we donated to Black Votes Matter, and it's a fantastic organization. There's also an organization called Fair Fight.

I absolutely fundamentally believe, yes, protests are super, super, super important, but also voting has to happen in the U.S. election this year. Georgia flipped from a Republican state to a Democratic state because of the work of black organizers, grassroots back organizers. It was not because of the Democratic Party. It was because of these organizers, like Fair Fight and like Black Votes Matter. So we are super proud to support them. We'll continue to do so. We'll leave the link if you guys want to do so in the episode description and on our website. Stay aware. Keep reading, keep asking, keep discussing. White people, you have to do your bit too.

It is not for your friends of colour to explain things to you. You have to educate yourself. It's all out there. Go and read it. That's it, guys. We'll see you. We'll see you soon. Bye.

We'll see you we'll see you soon bye we'll see you soon you Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led

to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions

surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.