Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

Football is back and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering. Live sports now and more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions. Must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia. Only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. It's autumn time to get cozy and nothing is cozier than one of Casper's award-winning mattresses. Of course, they've got their most popular mattress. The original hybrid, it's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. You can get a more restful and more soothing night sleep if it's a little warm in your August with the wave hybrid mattress, which provides more support than foam alone. Or upgrade to the wave hybrid snow mattress with snow technology to give you a full night of cooler sleep if you need to try it to believe it, Casper offers free contactless delivery and a risk. Free Hundred night trial. Discover the Casper difference today at casper.com and use code here 100 for $100 off select mattresses that's code HERE 100. Thatcasper.com for $100 off. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try, visitspreaker.com, that's SPREAKER. Dot com get paid to talk about the things you love. 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 going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hi, everyone. This is Shereen and you're listening to it can happen here. It could. I always mess 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. As 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're you have a new podcast called Partition. Explain what that's about. Yes. So partition tells the story of the separation of India and the formation of Pakistan that took place in 1940. 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 specs. They 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. Transfer the power to India and they were gonna 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. Uh, Pakistan? And 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, 1 to 2 million people died. You know, the boundary line actually. Few days after independence happened, so no one knew like what 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's four. 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. And 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. I think the ambiguous. Because it sounds like I'm plugging in, but I'm not. But also go listen to it. I'm gonna square, Shereen. 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 were 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. 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, like where I would even start. And then a couple of months later I saw that iHeartRadio was creating a program called Next up. 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. That 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 it's still like a lot of work and it's a lot of just. Other draining work because you have all these like horrible facts written in like 1 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. 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. Yeah. So she is Sunday, Monday. But just in case, the date is not with the 15th, 15th. So this year it happened to be a Sunday into 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 a 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 Nesseth 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 struck. Scared if 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 disgust. 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. About 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. Is 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. No. I did watch an episode of Doctor Who that talks about partition, and I think there were like aliens or something in there, so they're fascinating. There is something thrown in there about some sci-fi stuff, though. They had to see how Doctor Who handles partition. Yeah, it was actually done really well, really written by us. Yeah, it was written by South Asian person. That's great. And so that was like the first thing that I saw in my research that really. Case like the emotion and 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 there was a sci-fi element, I can't tell you what, what that. Aside, it was actually something that 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 like that one episode, but it I think it in the in my research, it was the first thing where I was. This actually tells a perspective from the people of South Asia. That's good to know. It was ruined by a South Asian person at first. I was like, I'm not even gonna touch that. Yeah. Up next, Steven Moffett writes about apartheid. So I'm curious. Not including, like including some things without 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. Mohammed 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 looks massive looting carnage took place and. How that was like a big catalyst for a 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 were my age and I just turned. 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 from 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 different experiences with partition, whether they live through it, whether they're an oral historian. That 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 it, 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. 3 hours of my life. I'm never going to get back. Terrible, so not great. You know, I love Richard Attenborough. 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. D 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. Up 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 was also Prince Phillips uncle and. She'll goes, ohh, that's the man who gave India away. And I'm like, that's not really what happened, but OK, and that's the only thing that they say, but I do love. Dramas and I do love corgis, which is one of the main reasons I watch the crown. But yeah, wait, sorry Mum, begs the guys who 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. Again, to him and his history, I don't care. I ended up seeing it in the crowd. Yeah. So I just, I really wanted to focus on South Asians and like our story and working through how. , 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 deeper into the podcast with Miss Marvel. I knew it was going to follow up. 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 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 I miss Marvel 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. 480 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 a precedent community, then it's not worth our time. It's kind of like the the mantra that we have. And for me I'm like this show is 6 episodes. But like you know, you need to understand that that is not something they that they can encapsulate in their 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 even more. I'm also very sensitive, and so I would just. I'll take it. You know, there was a 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. We're filled with dead bodies and not people who were 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 nysid. 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. 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. Hellman and TV, like, I programmed 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. And just like all 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. There 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 archival research or just, like, brutal. And yeah, I wanted 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 very emotional person. 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. And that person spoke to me for 2 1/2 hours and I had yet to really listen to his audio. I've just 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 they're highlighting things. 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'd mentioned writing this. And I'm like here it's just like 20 minutes of terror and like an 8 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 particular. In ways, I did want to be myself. And so I try to add a little bit of levity in there. Like there was an artist who that I mentioned her work. Her name is Bertha Chowdhury. She had these really beautiful installations. Of like female body parts, but they ended up getting ruined and transportation and so she digitized them and is and made NFTS. And so me trying to explain what an EFT 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's 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. And breathing and you know, Pritika 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 info. Ama sensitive person. So I'll 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. 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 could 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. I 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 are families especially like immigrant families or people that have been through trauma. That's that's why. That's why. How about this? Because this intergenerational trauma is something that they've kept and barely talked about, if at all. Hmm. 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 yeah, so so yeah, I do. I I think. There are many reasons why your podcast is important, but I think even the chance that someone can like. That. Not in trauma. It 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. 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 I wanted, if I wanted any kind of like actionable thing to happen, it's like that exact thing. Story looking into other people's histories, yeah. Totally well. I. Four, we confirmed. You guess that you're good at talking and this confirmed that. Thank you so much. You were I Babble a lot, so I was like, no. And no, you're the perfect podcast guest. Like, just. But I. I 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. To learn more about the partition and what that means, can you tell the audience where they can find you? And the podcast obviously is where you can find it. But let's I'm going to hand it over to you. Here you go. So partition. On August 15th, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts, especially the iHeartRadio app. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter, Instagram at Nahaz, Twitter at Nahaz's 13, and you can find partition on Twitter at 1940. Addition Podcast on Instagram. Nice. One, yeah. You mentioned a upcoming project you want to do. That's also about like a similar topic. Yeah, what that is, yeah. Something that I really wanted to do and this is another thing that we were kind of talking about of like people not talking about like everything, like in company, encompassing everything in like 1 story. So something very. And it happened in 1971 when E Pakistan became Bangladesh. And a lot of my mom's family is from there. My grandma and a lot of her family currently live there, and it's again very similar to partition, a lot of violence. And that story, to me, deserves its own time and respect. And I remember when I first, like, talked about partition. They're like, oh, you going to talk about this? And I'm like, I'm going to mention it, but it is too. 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. 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 a like here, all the people who died or here's this or here's like this statue of a bird or. That 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 sanctioned thing. It's privately owned and again, with it being in India, there's also a lot of barriers, like it's not a place I can visit. And so that is. I'm actually trying to go to Bangladesh this year and it's been a little bit difficult, I think trying to obtain her visa, but I hope she gets to go soon. I hope I get to go with her. But yeah, that's other stories that I want to tell because. I feel like. Is starting to kind of people are starting to understand that, but I feel like 1971 is just not there at all. 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. Like 75 years, like 50 years. That's not a long time. So it's just, like, really insane when you think about it that way. And. Especially when you think of how ancient these and just how new these places are. So yeah, that's something I would definitely love to tell. I would love for my next project to be on that, but that decision is not up to me. So hopefully, hopefully it'll work out. Yeah, I really hope so too. I do. Really appreciate, and I'm sure everyone else does, to 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. Yeah, that's the show. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager. Risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing. This research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Do you love movies or maybe just Anita? Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mikes movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie. Topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, this is it could happen here and today it's me, James, and I'm joined by and Diego and we are talking about San Diego's lying mayor 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 only introduce yourselves. Explain a little bit about. Of a 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? I am a homeless advocate. I mostly do on the groundwork mutual aid. And then I advocate for them as much as I can, almost city municipalities and just organize that way. Great. And Colleen, you can go next to that's OK. Yeah, my name is Colleen Kusak. 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 over. Second, challenge police and have them declared unconstitutional. McConnell, I'm a advocate for people who are living on sheltered 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'm a founding was a founding member of a local philanthropy group called Funders together to End Homelessness San Diego. I have participated on quite a few initiatives. Let's 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 name list for veterans. Worked on a lot of. Good. COCC continuum of care initiatives, such as how we score projects to get homelessness funding. Uh. Long communicated with. Our endless elected. Yeah, 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. My. On the ground advocacy now where I. Do a lot of encampment support. Work with, of course, unsheltered people, film the police around and campus sweeps and enforcement of. Of laws that target. And continue that till this day. Nice, yeah? You doing a lot of work on this. And then Levi's last but not least. Hi you guys, I'm Levi Jeff Leoni with home full 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 their recovery process just beyond like housing, which is the main thing, we know that. The real estate crisis. And then I also work as a housing navigator downtown. So I work with a caseload of about 200 clients. About 60 or 70 of them I would say have SI. 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 shot. One that they cried 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, but that gets yelled at. But, you know, they think, I'm, 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 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 8000 homeless people in the county, so, you know, and so, yeah, I I have to kind of break down that. It's a good responsibility, I guess, to to break down the system to my clients so that they can understand how broke. Because, uh, you know me being able to teach some patients to get them through the process too. So and, yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. So, yeah, I want to get into how. It's because it consistently, I think, like, every time. Like, I 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 the shelter. Like, and then they'll have this horrible moment of realization when they're like, oh **** like, they're 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 program. And what he's done has been extremely reactionary. And 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. Patient 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 22nd, 2019. Yes, that will be the first to enforce the law against those sheltered around, sheltered who break any law. But I will not use our code to harass and criminalize sick and poor people. That's #1. 15 What if we chose to take the resources we used to criminalize the homeless and redirect them to building housing instead? What if Todd January 24th, 2019 and he's tagged Michael in this one? Maybe right, but the sad fact is that. Before the PICC that's the point in time count of Unhoused people. It happens all the time. It's unfair to the unsheltered and to SDPD. 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. Yeah, the pictures. So Todd talked a lot about how we don't need to criminalize poverty, how we don't need to criminalise living on the street and then has preceded 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 which had how many. Oh gosh, I. Yeah, a lot of people have seen that, but perhaps one if you would like to describe like exactly like how a sweep goes down, right, like like there's there's a process of posting, sometimes a process of posting notices, but you. This is 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. 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 despite this, what 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. Legal for anybody to exist in public space. So you, me, our mothers, our children, anybody in public space can be ticketed for these violations because they're so overbroad. Planning on a sidewalk. Just being there on a sidewalk. It will be enough to 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. It's like food water. Trash. So everybody with food, water or trash doesn't have to be all three. Just one of them could be. Jected to. Arrested, have their comfort, have their taken to shelter, having their children taken to CPS, and all because the city wants to come after poor people with with ordinances, so. Here's the fun these ordinances can be charged either as misdemeanors or infractions. Mayor Gloria announced the Progressive Ordinance scheme, which means on day one, say Monday of the week, the individual is. On Day 2, 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 station 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 in. The citations, if there are issued to people in midway or downtown San Diego, direct them to appear in Clairemont 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 threatening to take away their property. Court won't allow them to bring their property in with them. The buses won't allow them to to bring their property on the buses. So they have to make a choice, do they? All the remaining property that they have in the world to go to court to defend against the charge that they're really don't have the. The police can cite either as a misdemeanor infraction, but when they cite as an in. Schedule doesn't get. An appointed attorney and nor jury trial, and so the punishment. The issuance of the citation becomes the punishment process. We're 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 their opportunity to defend themselves in court. They're all being dismissed. And so if the city was was serious about believing that these individuals were committing criminal offenses and they wouldn't be dismissing them after. One of them, after they were were issued. So Colleen is talking about the the the laws or the codes that are used to use during enforcement sweeps. Of people out here on the street, so the police go out and you. Codes and municipal codes to write people tickets and eventually take them to jail. That's just one kind of sweet 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 3 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 clean up 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 a particular homeless community so and just. The ringer with all these citations that Colleen went through. Yeah, and and then perhaps, Levi, you're familiar with the system, right? I think maybe the 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? That shelter could 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 housing here on site. And so the clients will typically there's a line out the gate when we get here at 8:00 o'clock in the morning, at 8:00 o'clock in the morning until 9:00 o'clock all I do is shelter offer. 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 8:00 o'clock in the morning, and oftentimes I will get one or two. Some days. I don't get anyone in the shelter. Clock, all of those beds are full and that's what they report back to me as the service provider, right, is, is that 9:00 o'clock in the morning? There's no more shelter beds? And. On top of that. They're saying to 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 ADL's, as they call it, or like an incontinence issue. So there's time. 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 9:00 o'clock the shelter beds are full in the beginning. Saying 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 and on top of that our shelter system. 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 and. Recently I had a client who we had spent like a month and 1/2 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, you know, 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. Bet. 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 clean up or a bad. Call 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 just want if you want to take on like, what this means. Although, you know, they they do it under the guise of we're going to, you know, we're cleaning up the area, but they will drag entire tent. Peoples belongings and put them in the compactor. They won't go through them, they never look. Oftentimes there's medication in their ID's, 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 it's a process and that process sets outreach workers back. So you know you've got an outreach worker who may have got. Them and I D and you know, they've taken their it's called the espadas 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's 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. How? Things that they move 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. Them 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, and like, I remember I was talking to someone downtown a couple of weeks ago and it stopped to give some folks some water and like, I. This is the **** I chose to bring with me. Like, I 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 yet now they're being trashed. Indeed, in 2018, I think 2018, a person was thrown in. It's right, yeah, like inside that tent. Just ******* 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 that 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. And so one of the things that we do in San Diego is that we we have this thing called a point in time count, right? And I think there have been. Yes, you insert the sweeps were increased in certain areas around the point in time count. So as well 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 was 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 RFH states that in any given year there's 30,000 people seeking assistance for homelessness. So. This point in time count, you know, shows one night there is data being collected all year round. 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. Interviews are very personal. You know, it's a, it's it's not necessarily something somebody wants to wake up and answer at 5:00 AM, but we found some people that were, you know. But that's that's the point in time count in a nutshell. Then, like, what's I know that downtown, I think that 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. OK and just. And that's just in downtown San Diego, not the whole county. OK 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 like ratio of average income to property prices anywhere in the country now. Correctly, it's incredibly unaffordable. You know. This has led a unfortunately, but probably pretty predictably, to a number of deaths on our streets, right and four, four last week. Or in a seven day. This all goes just 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 Gloria, who's on there giving a speech in front of a shelter where somebody's remains were taken away a few hours before it, and not mentioning that someone had just passed away in that place. I want to talk. 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? Because he's posting about these new shelter beds. But perhaps you can explain how best that's a. It's a distraction from the problems getting worse. I think that. 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 at getting people into services because many of the services just don't fit people. 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. 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. You know the the check in time and check out time can be difficult for. They'll separate families. So, 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. OK, so you have to go to a Mens shelter and you have to go to a women's shelter. They'll also do that with say a mother has a 16 year old son and she needs to go into a shelter and there's not a family shelter. She cannot take her. A women's shelter with her. He has to go into a men's shelter. 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 place. 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. 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 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, which is is couldn't be farther from the truth. And then they constantly use the narrative that folks are service resistant. Services that are out there are too few and too difficult and just they're not meeting people where they're at and they're just setting people up to fail every time. But another thing I want to get into with the shelter 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. What does it mean and how are those dangerous, especially for medically compromised or older people living on the street? Our shelter system here in San Diego and the City of San Diego is congregate shelter. 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 in. 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, 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 a break and some minor rules most people who leave shelter. Street. 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 in fact. Under Mayor Gloria, I've seen some of the lowest success rates of our system that 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 10s 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. And dime 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 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. Here's the. This. 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. The 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, I've. That he is. San Diego's worst enemy? And and I just can't believe as somebody who supported them supported him in his election. Urge people to vote for him. Now. Hoodwinked I was. I I just can't believe that this guy has been so horrible for our city and and and every indication is that he's going to continue being, he's going to. Continue running the city into the ground. People die on our streets at record numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't 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 lowball it? Didn't he lower the number than than in previous years? Ohh yeah, that was some kind of a. Yeah, made 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 his big stretch was to actually house fewer people. I I don't. I don't even know if he's even getting there. I mean, this guy, this guy's unbelievable. The kind of nonsense. That he is pulling on the citizens of our city. It is unbelieve. Has invested so much in PR. And he's got these folks who who are just good at spinning this, this nonsense to make it sound good and because he gets a lot of media. Big obviously a big pulpit to to to spew this nonsense from. He he's 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 ********. I don't know. I don't know a whole lot of people anymore who think we're, 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. Worthy of reelection. Have a higher office at some point, which is all he seems to care about. Yeah, and can I have some more? So, so he's personally to blame. He has personal involvement of getting rid of 10,000 SRO single rental units that that if we had. Minus our 8000 homeless people, we would not have homelessness. So we could have units that he was required to replace and never replaced them. That's his fault. I call him a monster. I I was. That are criminalized. But he was a Republican. We expected it of him and he didn't tell it promised us 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 room key. Was because the city is in this unique position of owning and operating the nonprofit that runs the Convention Center. So in COVID hit, they were looking at the nonprofit 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 nonprofit would be funded. So that's. And $132 million is what Todd Gloria got the city to to pay out on a settlement on Ash St Ashburn, his boondoggle. He cost us that he can beat City Council to invest all this money to slide donor money to. Like city money to his donors. 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. Would you think it would be important to Google or seek out documents that may inform you of asbestos 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. With the 101 ash St, so they basically had a middleman cistera come in and purchase the property and then lease to own it back to the. At no time was an inspection done, the asbestos was. 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, OK? And if you assume that one years rent is $24,000, right? 202 million / 24,000 dollars is more than 8000 people that this taxpayer money, you know and it's always it's just and it's in a cycle and it's it's not only the cycle there but. 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. So the Ashtree deal, there's plenty to go. It is like historically going to go down. And in San Diego, screw ups for sure. Yeah, it's a giant monument to grift. Go ahead, Killeen, but we don't have any police is also more gaslighting. 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 over blight of of police and we could afford to lay off 2/3 agreed, but instead we just built a childcare Center for them. Yeah, piggy back on that real quick about the police. 1. 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. Events and they rarely get any traffic to these things, and people often wonder why. We cannot expect unsheltered people to trust and accept help. The people that criminalize them, terrorize them, harass them and throw their things away so, you know, adding more police to deal with homelessness, it's just also a waste of money. It caused more trauma to the unsheltered people. Unnecessary. So we're talking about this duality between like what's said and what what what exists on the street, right? And it's it's very apparent. People on the Internet love to be wrong about George Orwell, but. The the one time recently where I felt that like, Oh well, 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 first 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? Framework of this is you have a bunch of liberals in Gloria and Gavin Newsom's ear saying we have to, we have to end homelessness. And the politicians are saying, Oh well, we can't end. Because they're all mentally ill drug users. OK, so that's the first premise that we're working with and they're not 10% or use drugs and of mental illness and a debilitating 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. The house is asked backwards. 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 that's set up to do. It's not going to ease anything. It's going to set up a situation where if 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 poor. 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 everything, got 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 St A sufficient St services for them and that's. That's just cruel. And so with the whole care court plan, there's like. And that 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. That's to me is it's like, OK, you force them into treatment and then once they get kicked out of treatment, you say, OK, 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 asking 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, calling was talking about how only 10% of our homeless population has a drug. In San Diego County as a whole, 15% of San Diego against have a substance use issue, right? My 10% was debilitating, a debilitating. OK, good to clarify. Instead, 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's anyone making less than $76,000 per year, which is a lot more people than they. If you are low income. Can I talk about bumping just because you put if you're low income? But I have some memes here. I wanted to point some facts on the care court. Care court to address house lessness. $5 million budget zero will go to housing and zero will go to mental health services. That's shocking. 0 to mental health services or housing Care Court will weaponize its unchecked power and worsen the historical violence. Communities and Care Court claims to address mental health, ability, disabilities, but allows a judge to rob anyone they find unfit of autonomy over their health, phone and life. Yeah, and I did remember my thoughts, so. Like the people on medical. There as far as. Like you, we already know fentanyl and everything. Now, even if somebody thinks they're getting coke or 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. Of clients who come and they're like, please, I know, I know. I got to get work this out of my life and I'm I'm going to try can you get me into detox? And we'll spend the whole day, you know and and and there's one and like all these people are competing for. But the detox facility, so if it was like we had the infrastructure set up and we have this awesome mental healthcare and we have these awesome like street Medics and St therapy and we had OK 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 if we had, if we had all those things, if we had a good system that had good substance use treatment, good mental healthcare and housing. We wouldn't have all these folks on the street. Amen. 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 law. 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 to make their own decisions, is what a conservative. 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. That the city attorneys and the people in the house. Uh. 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 probably, 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 I doubt it's legal. I I'm sure it's going to get challenged in court. It it it is such a. A dangerous leap against our civil liberties or civil rights. Uh. That I I just am going to find it incredible if if judges allow this to move forward when it's challenged. Uh. But. Thing is that people need help. They need care, not court. And if we would provide the care? Which are 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 punt 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 a. An indictment. Stop and but care court's not going to fix anything that's and I think it's setting people up for failure. I I've talked to some families who are. Who are really now? These are. Who have? Seriously mentally ill loved ones, whether it's spouses or or children. Umm. Siblings, they 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 care is the focus, but for for unsheltered folks, they're going to be abused and used by this system. Uh, maybe warehoused, who knows? They're going to end up worse off in my opinion, and so? And. Against it as it's written, and certainly fear that the implementation of it is going to be a travesty. That. I I just can't imagine, can't imagine. This so-called liberal state. We try to trample the rights of people like this and. Poor boy, I tell you, it's there's so much dangerous about this that I I mean, we could we could have a. Of this and maybe? And I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about this down the road. Yeah, yeah. Alright, So what I want to do is focus a little bit to finish up here on some solutions. So the things that are a lot of you guys are doing right now to provide people with help, to provide people with the basic. Having a dignified existence and like how the state could do better, right? Like what? What housing first solutions look like, what solutions are informed by evidence, rather just informed by sort of cruelty and the desire to brush your 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 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. Or 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 the. Get mental health services. You know, we need to bolster our our rehab and addiction services. We also need more harm reduction. You know it can take you one to. To detox at McAllister, which is the only detox center in San Diego South of Encinitas and Detox is separate from. So we're living, so you may detox. And then it made me 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 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 empty promises or or use them in some way to to monetize them. It's one of the the biggest things that I've found of importance for me is an on the ground you know outreach worker and doing mutual aid. You know, most of the time these people just don't have water. You know, they're they're thirsty, they're hungry. But poverty looks like. So I, 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 that's great and I think I think we we have to understand that. The homeless service system and I'm going to talk about some of the good things that. It's 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, as Manny 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. And my work, I'm on the street, some part, well, a lot of the everyday, 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 it's child welfare, it's foster care, it's it's. The education system, you know, you can name it, it's it's the healthcare system. All these things are feeding homelessness. It's the, it's the how we've commoditized housing. It's, I mean I can go on and on talking about what's feeding homelessness. It's. Safety Nets. It's the 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's is really getting very costly. Inefficient and ineffective. But we know what solves homelessness. Housing and services. Solve homelessness. And it works. We see when these new quality projects like Zephyr or Trinity Place. These. 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 are. Take care of their own rent totally themselves. There is no free housing. Everybody who gets these 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. Doing better and stay in the housing. These things are being built. They're being built as we speak, but at a snails pace. And that's the things that I fault our elected leadership for is they're nibbling around the edges. So Todd 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 anywhere. Case that we need, they've opened up some mental health crisis centers that are actually walk in centers. They 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, there's it's hard time. 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. Officials have have a lot of fault is they've really not put a priority in 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. Know that. I'm a big believer in 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. That's, you know, he he needs to put, he needs to back up. His his talk with action, just like, you know they're they're expanding some bike lanes and I. Uh, 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 to me. Yeah. So, yeah, I shouldn't be involved in but but they don't seem to be very strategic to me and they. Be very 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. Many efficiently and effectively. But some of the grassroots stuff like, 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 1st. They open that's really more tailored toward people with substance use and mental health needs. It has a great uptake rate and and 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 10. So. These things are very frustrating to folks like myself and Mandy Pauline, the different people that the the people who are actually on the ground working that are trying to get people into. 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 got to be responsive to the persons. 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. ********. When these folks, whether it's the police or the mayor, say that there's 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. Yeah, and we call ********. We call ******** on 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. 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, do. Where? Yes, none of us here on this call except for Levi. Levi works within the system and thank goodness for him and I the last thing I want to say and I. I'm always remiss if I don't remind remember to say this, but I always want to send a shout out. It's not the fault on 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, hate or not, to go out and help people first hand. Do the best with this ****** 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. And hard to help folks and they are helping people. 1 by 1 by 1 and we need the support. We need, we have to have the support of of the Todd Glorias and the Nathan Fletchers of the world and the Gavin Newsoms. To do the right thing and 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 it's pretty good. All of you are out helping people. I see it all the time on your on your social media, where can people find you and how can they support what you're doing, if it's getting people turned to getting people water, that kind of thing to start with. It'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 go fund me and then you know, he'll be like, hey, I got go fund me money. And you know, I meet him and he like loads up my car and off I go. You know, people can can find me on Twitter. Cooper 2. I'm very passionate. So, you know, it's like, be careful what you look at on my feed, you know, I just, I love these people and I I want to see them because they. I want to see them get the help. And one thing that Michael taught me in the very beginning of this because, you know, I started this, Umm, maybe about two or three years ago, one thing that Michael said to me that resonated with me because you. You know, like I call them parades now, which are like liberal marches, you know, yelling at buildings where no ones in and, you know, 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 to. LGBTQ IA, 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, 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 what whatever marginalized group you come from when you become. Overtakes all of them, and there is a huge public hatred for unsheltered people. And it is bipartisan across the board. So we, we all just need to realize that this is, you know, this is a societal failure and a social. And I I hope that, you know, more people would will get up. And and get. Go to the ground and start talking to your unsheltered neighbors. Try to to build a relationship with them. Reach out to their humanity and and 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, this is 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? You know, I thought it was cool commits. So I thought it was really good. You should have a Mandy. Umm. Hi, my name is Colleen Cusack, C USA CK you can Google me and find me. I'm in searchable in the attorney directory. My number 619-8234. And my e-mail address is c.anotherc.usa.ck.policy@gmail.com. Umm. And I'm on Twitter at symbol. Jen which stands for objection. Great. Thank you. Alright, Michael. So I like Mandy. I've just funded my work myself also, except for about. Ohh. Two ago I was out on the street filming some sweeps. Watching the police and the Environmental service workers throw away people's tents and. And I and I. 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 it struck a chord with people, so. I've had people. But I've just had this real outpouring of 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 support encampments that are impacted by the sweeps or or whatever. Or other grassroots people like Mandy who are out there. And I think I raised about $3000 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 $7000. Why aren't we shopping? I use that. Every day I don't wear you the. Uh, 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. Uh, So what I do is is is is help is the buy stuff. I I help other. Need other organizations? I also. Promote vetted go. Fund me of other people on my social media site, so I really would appreciate you following me on Twitter. It's at homelessness. Homelessness STD. On Facebook, it's homelessness news San Diego. On on Instagram, it's the same, and on YouTube it's I think it's homelessness new San Diego on YouTube, I just started a YouTube page. Why? But I just started posting stuff on there. I have a lot of followers. It's a pretty active conversation, especially on Twitter. I get the mayors, people lashing out at me, attacking me because they don't like me calling them out. Forget. I I get haters on there too. I let them voice their opinion. I let the conversation flow, but what I do is you're what? And I I do warn you that especially on Twitter, it's heart wrenching stuff. Underground, I'm seeing people die. I'm seeing horrible stuff, and I'm I'm sharing it with you because I think people deserve to know the truth. The 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. It it it's, but it's also. I also see some amazing stuff. I also see some amazing heartwarming stuff. People helping people. So it's everything. Roller coaster ride, folks. So, you know, just be prepared. And from there you can find my go fund me. But most of all, you can get educated on the issue. Make up your own mind. Uh. The ******** 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 but just just. Just join the conversation. 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. Yep. 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 that, 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 and doing what we can in a very difficult situation, but join the conversation and see what's going on. Thanks, 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 and and safety issues. So, 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 Levi had to jump off to sort out an emergency, but it's. Which on Twitter is at the solution 619 and you can find them there and Levi can help folks if they are in San Diego Access services. So yeah, that's been us today. Please do follow these people. Try 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. Alright. Thank you very much everyone. Appreciate you taking some of your afternoon. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and. There a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888532. 3500. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Do you love movies? Or maybe just in need of some recommendations of what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mikes movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre of what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic. Plus, spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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, shereen's with me. We are talking today about the merchant of death, the Lord of War, Victor boot. So she probably started off by. We're talking about Victor boot. Victor Boots All is 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. Being held by Russia, one being Britney Griner and one being Paul Whelan. So I'm guessing folks are pretty familiar with the Britney Griner situation. If if not, what's the what's the TLDR on that? The TLDR is Britney Griner is a two time Olympic gold medalist, she's a basketball player, and she often plays offseason basketball in Russia, which tells you a lot about. In wages between men and women in professional sport. And unfortunately, when she was travelling 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. Which, yeah, like it's as you as 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. Yeah. I think that's like a controversial statement. They they 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, it's they're all 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. Like and Even so there was a. He was a marine held by Russia. So there's Paul Wheeler. That's the other guy, right? Paul Whelan was a marine. He had a he didn't have a dishonorable discharge. He had what's called a, I think, an other than honorable. He was doing a couple of things. He was embezzling **** 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. 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 coming, but the 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'll sleep it off, deal with you in the morning to 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? Why did you do that? Why? Why would you assault the police, the Russian police. And he was like, what you talking about, bro? And they were like, yeah, you're going to jail. You're a spy. Yeah. Government Biden under Biden swapped him out and the two who are left, well there. There are other people left, obviously, but we swapped out for for the other guy, Trevor Reed. I'm not sure who was traded for Trevor Reed. It's the most like, weird. I mean, nothing is too strange at this point, but like when you. Countries like trading people. Yes. So strange to me. Yeah, he was. He was. He was. When he was in here on drug trafficking charges, I guess. And so they they switch out read, right? But read and Whelan have become close in their captivity, and Reed's been a big advocate for having Whelan released Whelan's kind. Yeah, yeah. You're taking the pit of you think Britney Griner is a drug trafficker. But Whelan does have like 5 different nationalities. I think he's he's got American and he's got Canadian. He might only have 4. 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, but he was bouncing checks. As we're learning this episode, one of the things intelligence agencies tend to like is people who are bouncing. Those of those people are easy to recruit, right? Like, if you're, if you're, if you're trying to buy **** that you can't afford. You might be easier to recruit if you were, if they offer you money, right? So it's. I'm not. No idea whatsoever. I've 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 Greiner and Whelan. That was kind of doing the rumor. Russian source confirmed it last weekend, so that's why we want to talk about Victor Boot today. It's spelled BOUT by the way, if anyone's looking it up. If people are familiar with Victor at all, it. Probably from the Nicolas Cage film Lord of War. Have you seen that, either of you? You know, I subjected Chris to it. Now Chris can't make the podcast, so that's good. Will be Nicolas Cage free in this. It is a pretty epic film. It's a good film. Nicolas Cage play Boo. Yeah. Oh, **** yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, I need to see that. You 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 this 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 so they have an accent. No, he doesn't do Russian. 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 Nicolas Cage. He can't do anything wrong in the so true yeah, yeah, go ghost writer never happened. I don't know what you're talking about. Nope, it's been a race from my memory. So, aside from Nicolas Cage's excellent betrayal, the film is in. And 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 Tijuca. 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. He's clearly told as many background stories as he's met new groups of people when he's moved around. As 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. Was a car mechanic, so he's not like a child of privilege particularly. Uh, 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. Guys, capacity for language is insane. Like, he can go down the shops in like 15 different languages. He can speak fluently in half a dozen uh. He he can, you know, order a sandwich in like 20 languages. Yeah, I want that power. Yep, don't we all it it seems to be like these people who like thrive in in like non state activities in crime and stuff like do you seem to like having a capacity for language? Benefit in that world and you hear back quite a lot later on when he's in prison in Thailand, he learned Sanskrit. Doesn't bother to learn Thai like he doesn't want people to think they can understand what he's saying, but. **** it, I'll learn Sanskrit while I'm here, like I'm running out of options. So yeah, he's got this amazing capacity for language, which probably ends up with him being a spook. It's not we like, we it's not. Look 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 it's unlikely that he was a pay clerk or like the guy who changed the tyres on the aeroplanes. For them to Angola and and when the Soviet Union collapses, Victor is in Angola, right? Or at least he gets to Angola pretty quickly. Uh, not, I think, because it's a 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 with this international arms. Sort of God. And he does that by buying these Antonov planes. A 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 0 morals, he launches his career and like, he's not just selling weapons. He's. American people don't get this. We have this British stereotype of like, the Wheeler dealer, as epitomized by like delboy in a TV series called Only Fools and Horses. But he's like a market trader. He'll buy whatever he thinks he can score. Where everything 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 as this massive international arms dealer, he'll just be like, oh, chicken. 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, uh, with like guns and weapons and killing people. I don't think. I think he's a guy who has absolutely 0. 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's there seems to be no moral angle to his his existence like very quickly after doing that he. Cratic Republic of Congo. He's selling into Liberia in the conflict there. Sierra Leone Rawanda after the genocide. He's there, right? And but he's also like transporting French troops to Rwanda. Will be doing contracts for United States government, for the British Government for most of the Western governments are participate in the the Forever War right and it's very funny actually like if you're in the phase when the. Thing 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 their list, they'll be every year. Right. No one could 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 **** there's like six of them who we are like integrally relying on. And then. And so it's fine. They change their name and then there's like there'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. Uh, around 2000 and. With 911, so 911 is a big win for him. It's his. Yeah. Well, that's the opposite, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. That sound bite. That's the sound bite. Yeah. So he's super tight with Ahmed Shah Massoud. People are. But So 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 Masoud 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, but he talks about him very fondly. He he's he's a big Massoud guy and so. He claims he doesn't trade with the Taliban, and he he. For a long *** time until a crew, his plane and crew are held by the Taliban at 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 boot are doing. The plane. And then they like in sort of like a Michael Caine movie style like Kosh, their guards over the head jump start the plane and just pin it to the end of the runway, take off and fly to freedom. And that's the narrow. Popular until Victor beat was like, Nah, like I know all those people. I just called and 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 a pilot, there's, there was an interview I found on YouTube with one of his pilots as well, where 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 out when landing. We're being shot at. 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. There's a peak of his career in the early 2000. He's got hundreds of employees, he's got 60 aircraft and and he's moved his operation to Sharjah, which is a very sort of conservative emirate. It's A twist. All right, it's right. But it has what's called a free trade zone. So on top of all his other **** he's also not paying import export taxes and. So he's based there, which seems to allow him to operate pretty much without. 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, so 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 of the. Small arms are stored in Ukraine that becomes like the Nexus for the black market, and we think the book is ethnically Ukrainian. And he certainly seems to have just been shovelling weapons out of Ukraine too. Conflicts in 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. That's a that's a fair assumption to make, and by the late 90s, early 2000s, he's selling everywhere. 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 and they, they Interpol go after him in 2002. Like, 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 you. It's not clear if you have jurisdiction, and Central African Republic also, I think had a warrant out for him, but they haven't, I guess, been successful 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 increase. 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. Like they send this writer. To, like, look for Victor Boo to try and find Victor Boo. Yeah. This 2003. And there 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 shipped out of flight. 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. On the job. Yeah. Yeah. And then that to the New York Times. And yeah, in the piece, he drinks carrot juice. He he's vegetarian. He caught himself a scapegoat and a family man. He's what a hero. Everyday Joe's 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 a hand. The home video, right? You're taping this international crime spree the best idea we ever had? Yeah, quirky little dude, but he's not doing crimes in his videos. He just looks like, uh, like, ah. Guy from the office who is just like the most mundane dude and ill fitting suit. He just looks like a salary man who drives like a a regular car and on the weekends like so like go to Buffalo Wild Wings and what sports events like he. Water slide with his like white *** body and pot belly 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. He seems to be like me. Drugs at one point, like it's fascinating and bizarre, and one 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. That let my man go, right? Yeah. So I'm pretty sure he does have children. Yeah, probably more than we know about, but maybe not. Maybe he's your wife guy. Well, I just think it's funny in these home. Like he's. Yeah, like. No one else, no family members. Just to be honest. Slides. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be pretty. Yeah, that would be pretty, pretty entertaining. So 2003, it's the, the article clearly has these two. Like it's named after George Bernard Shaw play called Arms and the man, and it's 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, that 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. To Hegel to how we do foreign policy, right, like we are hosed without people like Victor boot. 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. 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, **** **** Cheney? Or, you know, Lockheed Martin or. That's Raytheon. Hmm. 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, a road passed one of them today, you know, and 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, bored in the Emirates. And they're 28, so. Those where they are now, yeah, but he's a great dad. He's been in. That's sad, yeah. He has a wife to Allah. It's his wife. Just she was she's fat, but younger than him. So also he's really lost weight in jail and he's looking pretty good. And picture of him, but with a 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 Victor here. Yeah, you look at that mustache. Tell me you could say no. And. One of the things he says is 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. I I wonder what he meant by that. Yeah, this guy's a poet. Yeah. He has a way with words, yeah. And yeah, he's got some of these great one liners and which it's people have recently, like, reinterpreted that to be like, does he know some **** about Putin? Which is. Exchange him? 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 hole, just does a whole vibe about it, but moves a person to Brighton Beach. Because I guess American audiences don't know to. Where do you stand is yeah, to Tajikistan, 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 you. Serious. It was at Sundance. Yeah, it's classic. Yeah. I'm pretty sure they you can't tell if you're ******* with me. I know it's all the time and I will believe anything at this point, so I praise you to me. I. 14 film skip screening the Sundance Film Festival? Holy ****. Yep, it's a classic. It's got, it's got some real scenes. I 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 his partner at the time. It's just, yeah, it's good stuff and I would recommend it. And there's pictures of him around, lots of weapons. Obviously. They're about boots. Yeah, it's a goody. It is. Yeah, it is. Very, very busy guy is just a quirky little dude. Like, what is what a little dork does more crimes is a quirky little dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a picture pretending to throw you. What? I mean, it's not like he's just. I don't know. What 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. My life it lounges in like small airports in in like the 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. You'd be like if that man is in. Conductors or, you know, yeah, that worked on his favor. Yeah, yeah. Like he's not, he's not the Joker. Yeah and no he he is a Joker, though. You can see him having some good old japes in in this film so highly 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. Well OK OK, so technically the character Nicolas Cage plays is a fictional illegal arms dealer based on the stories of Victor about and other real life arms dealers and smugglers. I they wanna play it both ways. Yeah. So I've just got to be in the trailer where he's just like eye contact with the camera, hip thrusting and it's wow. OK. Well, thank you for that description. That's alright. That's alright, guys. Cutting edge of journalism here. Yes, that's right. All right. So we should return to to the narrative and not my description of, of Victor beat. 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 it again, we do this **** all the time, right? And so. To understand his arrest, you got to first understand this guy, Andrew Smulian 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. Delivering shipments of stuff and then doing a little bit. Spying on the side. Spying on the side. Yeah, yeah, it's smooth. Who's to bug us? Hasn't found themselves doing a little spot on the side? Yeah, everyone has their side hustles. Better side spying for the. Doing in the apartheid era, but probably we certainly in the military in the apartheid era. Yikes. Yeah, stimuli is not not a man with morals, I don't think, as we'll find out. So Simonian has fallen on hard times by 2000 and. 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 at that point, slowly it's contacted by. Generals, right. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC, right. Left wing Marxist guerrilla group that have been fighting in the jungles for I think one of the world's longest insurgencies for decades. These **** generals are like, hey smulian, come and meet us in a tiki bar in kurasawa and we will have a chat smoothly and really 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 arms deal. I mean, movies are right about that stuff going down and taking bars. Yep, that's that's the one thing that was. 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. This is 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, yeah, 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 DACM is like, Yep, those are our people and gives them a ton of money. Citizenship. Families, I believe, and turns them right, asked 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 fact that word? Yeah. FARC fuerzas armadas. OK. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, like sorry, FARC. FARC, I might have got the. 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. A global conflict. Understander slash dork. They're very nice people, some of them, actually. They've started a microbrewery now. And yeah, they have a microbrewery. Anything you say, *******. I will send you a. Brewery I'm like scared by Robert. You just tells me all these crazy things that are not true and I believe I'm not light. Robert, I'm a man of the trees I'm going to. I will drop it in the chat like, yeah, they they definitely have started a microbrewery. It's such a weird little doubts. That's what I'm saying. OK, actually, the person who runs a microbrewery is a woman. Oh, good. Good for her. We love feminism. We love a girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gilberts the fact we're very committed to gender equality. They had women there in their in their military. Yeah, yeah. We'll do an episode of Robert and I want to go to their microbrewery. It's it's one of my 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 Monzer Al Casa, who's a Syrian arms dealer. They've done the same. We're too far generals we would like to buy these weapons. And in the discussion the. White **** 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 this really is 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. OK, just getting weird. But then smulian. For he is goes OK so my guy is Victor boot VIKTORBOUT. Oh my God that is. That is a poor move on Spoolies part. So smelly drops him. Organize a meeting. Right the two generals quote UN quote generals and Victor in a hotel in Bangkok and. That is where the 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 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 5000 AK. Also some surface to air missiles and look writing it on the hotel notepad. Anything? Yeah, like normally this isn't like the DA rolled a yakuza arms dealer recently and they had to explain. He was talking about cake and ice cream. He meant like surface to air missiles. Same for me, actually. Yeah, I'm just gonna head down to the to the cake shop. That guy ****** ** by sending a selfie of him. Weapon to the Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's a good picture. I'll send you that picture because he does look like an international super villain and he has blue aviators, I think. Like, my gosh, some people know they're playing the part. You know what I mean? Yeah, you gotta lean in. And he leans in. But so about is in this in this room, but 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 were like, Victor. No, it's it's over. And 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. And then he I think he says the game is up. He has some like bond villain, like line. Well, of course. Is he the poet? What did I say? Yeah, that's true. 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, Shareed, just to like, like, hey, I yes, quote. In podcast at this is Red dot to describe a gunshot. Come on. On his gravestone. He was the poet. Nothing else? Yeah, just poet had no other kings I was aware of what sliding past and so. They arrest him, right? They hold him in. Fights extradition. He's like, I'm just a businessman. I don't know what you're talking about. I just wanted to tell 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 and nearly every. Terrorism case like this, right? Like the recent O 9A 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. In the like, you know, you're trying someone like seven years after 9/11, 6 years after 911 in New York, around the anniversary of what happened of of 911, right? So people are pretty and then you're like, and this dude sold weapons to the top. He moved gold out of Afghanistan for al Qaeda, and so he's pretty screwed. Hence cancel culture strikes again. Yeah, the work mob came for Victor and his wife says outside the court, which I thought was into. They're trying Nicolas Cage, not my husband. Oh **** that's yeah. That's actually a really interesting statement in terms of like, media perceptions of people. Yeah. That they do not go after this guy until. And then Victor and then what's it called? The Nicolas Cage movie? Lord of war. Yeah. And then you can't separate. I don't think the like, look, he he's a ***** ** **** but like, he did make a movie about himself though. Else. Got that? They really said 2014, like seven years after he'd gone down. OK. I didn't look at the date the yeah, yeah. No, sorry. I was like, that's why. We we different up until just this second. Ah yes, my mistake. No, that's understanding the Sundance Film. Seven years later, Torious Victor boot. It would have been amazing if he'd made himself tomatoes. Yeah, get that up with our listenership. We could get it up to the 90s, I reckon. And that give it the thumbs up. So I think they probably did right like in in organizations like the DEA and 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. Right. I have very little federal law enforcement understanding, but it it strikes me that they kind of they had their DEA agent in charge of his arrest on ABC I think or on 60 minutes or something the guy talks about himself. Point on there to be weird. One of the babies. It it 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 did entrap him in the same way, actually, but it's it's not such a big thing. So. Book goes to jail. Uh, he's been in jail about 12 years now, and now the Biden administration seems to. Or at least know that he's like worth offering. And they offered him in trade for Snowden, apparently. And Russia didn't take that. Yeah, I think it's probably they see more value in Snowden. But the yeah, they they seem to have offered him again in the 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 Pokémon cards. Yeah, or like literally like the NBA, like the the thing that, yeah, pretty greater works for. It's like you're literally creating like a fantasy team or whatever the **** of. Of prisoners and or people that you want, like hostages, yeah. It's interesting to see, like, Russia's 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. Like, 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 he doesn't have something on right, so it's possible. I guess he's kind of served his purpose. Switch was just like, you know, we can find you anywhere. We can come after you. Anywhere we can arrest you. I don't want to be like, like pro arms dealer on on the podcast, but like all the park on James Pletely different on Mike James is going to say that we're not, we're not technically pro arms dealing. This is not not a pro Arm stealing podcast, technically. Yeah, that would be a good place for an ad pivot, wouldn't it? But do you know who is pro Abstein? Yeah. Yeah. Based on I don't know how long we have left. So. And 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. You know, it's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're considering and funny. Yeah. Yep. And kind and and not pro arms dealer and most importantly. Yeah. 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 affair? Yeah, yeah. Woke judge. No, because again, when they're meeting him, they're like, we want to kill America. Go to Skype is a high enough magnification so we can see they're Americans. There's some specific dialogue about the sniper scopes to like to add, to ensure. And they're trying to get surface to air missiles as well, right. And surface to air missiles are one of the harder things to acquire on the international arms market. And so he he's going to supply those and they claim going to shoot down American airliners and do a terrorism. Yeah, that'll definitely get them mad. Yeah, that well, but he only says that because the two DNA plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think the dude would have gotten eyelid either way. I mean, typical Fed behavior, right? Like. Yeah, they walked in there in their cool flannel shirts and hey, who's the? Bra. Could do 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. Like it? 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 *********** of leaving Afghanistan. So we'd have dumped a lot more weapons onto the market. And So what you're saying is there's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get your resume ready, listeners. Yeah, you know, learn those languages. That's what I'm saying. Go to these. Applicants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds great. Put on your resume. No one will call you on it. It'll be fine. It's OK to lie about Sanskrit. Unless you're, I guess, going to theological college. But yeah, he's learned Sanskrit. He's learned a bunch of other languages in prison. He's probably writing poems in there, right? 100%. Yeah. He's probably dropping a book is what he'll do. Come out, he'll drop a book. Honestly, I'm not. I wouldn't be surprised by that. If that was true, he 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. Hey, based on what the quotes are that he's given so far, I'm sure he has really good writing. So. Yep. Who knows? No one knows. We don't know how much money he has. No one seems. It's 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 pieced out hanging out in jail and maybe now will be going back to Russia to live in this Dutcher and just right. So it's all day. Hmm. We can dream. We sure can, yeah, if they offered him for Snowden already and now they're offering him again like this. Either the only like quote UN quote good Russian Russian hostage, like worth worthy Russian hostage or they. In my head, I feel like they're trying to make a big statement like Britney Griner is so important to us. This man. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Yeah. I hope. I mean, look, what's happening to her is disgusting, right? And every day she spends 100. Yeah. ******* abhorrent. And so, like, yeah, you hope that that they. I think, yeah, I think he's. There's no real. I don't know. It doesn't really serve the interests 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 I don't know. I I don't understand the motivations of world leaders, but hopefully we get some updates. I don't know. Hopefully Britney Griner doesn't have to. Don't get in what I'm sure is a pretty terrible Russian prison for having a vape pen, because that is ********. 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 it on Twitter or Raccoon Liberation Front. Black Flag injuries Matt 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. Uh and even thinks that he ran into Victor boot in a bar in Somaliland once and because if we discussed you would not know that this dude was an arms dealer. Uh. Unfortunately 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, Shereen Garrison? No, I think, I think that does it for us today. So just Google Victor bootcut. Yeah. Enjoy your weekend. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter. Bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly gambling problem call 188853230. 500. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on tick tock. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. You love movies or maybe just Anita? Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mike's movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre of what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic. I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie. Topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, hi. This is this is a good happen here. It's this. This isn't my episode, this is actually Chris. But I guess, I guess we're starting a Chris. How you doing today? You know, I'm running on very little sleep and a lot of bubble tea and bubble tea. I mean, canned bubble tea. This is the good ****. This is really this. Yeah, I mean. In in terms of it being bubble, tea is kind of OK 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 ****. That's why I live. That's why I lived that bang life, baby. We would not, we would not get any of my scripted episodes done without bang. Yeah, I drink. Rip it. Colonialism. It really is. Huh. So Speaking of colonialism, actually I I don't have a colonialism tie into this. But what I do have is. A bunch of people attacking a Children's Hospital. Huh? So on August 30th, 2022, police in Boston were called to investigate a bomb threat against. Hospital. As parents waited outside in abject terror for their children who were still trapped in the building, police bomb squads 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, OK, how 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 hour? Children's Hospital, they take care. They they do health care for children. Like what? So the answer to why is this happening is basically the rights new media strategy. Drive it all once again is Chaya Reichek, who is better known as libs of Tik T.O.K. And yeah, yeah, enemy of the pod, recurring character on the pod. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's, she's, 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 go? Don't worry, he's bigger. Bigger character. Yeah, the walls will appear. The Washington Post editorial page. That one always. God, you know, I, I, I could I could write it. 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 ******* Twitter account. Whereas and, you know, OK, last scene sicking rabid mobs of reactionaries on teachers, schools, drag Queens and random children on the Internet for the crime of being queer or supporting queer queer kids in any way. Yeah. Not the last time we're going to talk about her, unless like miraculously she's destroyed in the next like 3 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 rechecks, talking. Pseudo pseudo intellectual Babble stuff to sell to a wider audience. I mean the strategy like functionally is not is like it's literally the same thing Alex Jones does. It's like, OK, so you you miss read a headline, right? Or someone puts a video in front of you that you haven't? You lie about what it says. And then you you like invent 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 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 were pronoun pins. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So so on on August 11th, lives at Tik T.O.K posted a tweet that said, quote, Boston Children's Hospital at Boston Children's is now offering, quote, gender reaffirming hysterectomies for young girls. And so there's a video attachment, right? Yeah, the video, young girls video does not say anything about this, right. The video is literally just an explanation of what a hysterectomy is. And you know, but but this this like goes viral like literally 3 hours later, Matt Walsh, a man who once said and on video and. Take my kids consent all the time. I tweeted quote, he said that that's all video. I I am not selectively editing this. He just said that. So yeah, he he, he tweeted. 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. So he's he's been increasingly trying to do like this moral like superiority, war and be like I of course we should. I'm not a morally compromised degenerate and that that's kind of this style 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. Talking about it 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 works been boosted by JK Rowling. He describes himself as a theocratic fascist, kind of jokingly, just completely accurate. There's no substantive difference between what he believes and like. What the *******. People believe so, like, no or the OR. Yeah. Like he's wanting to organize rallies outside of, like, trans health clinics to, like, destroy trans research. What does? Huh? I yeah, where we say that never happened in human history before anyway. Yes, wolf. Wolf. I also want to mention this. OK, so as bad as was a woman as he made an even, he's actually create something even worse than this. Which is like maybe history's most *** **** children's book I Johnny the Walrus. Like just unbelievably transphobic ***** ** **** thing that he made. Like I don't think a single child has ever read willingly the daily wires kind of pushed to. Like children's media creation has been kind of wacky. It's awful. Like I 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 like, make something, but you have to make something like a child will. Ohh, literally, just like you don't you don't need to. You have to sell it to parents. Well, yeah, sure. Big right. It's not about the actual kid. It's about their parents. Like the actual children will be extremely unhappy about this. Yeah. But like, you know, OK yeah, you could, you can you can you you you can sell. Pictures of a walrus to the debris. 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. Kids can sense man I is on, I go on. By August 15th, Matt Walsh is on his 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. Why? In which Robert Evans occasionally appears on true. So you can send 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 changed the mind. By three words. I mean, I still remember like a decade ago when Matt Walsh was like a niche but growing figure and 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 tried like doing like, more like modern spins on some, on some more kind of classic evangelical, evangelical topics. And then as I was. Magical 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 in my in me. Stages of being Christian, we're like, ohh, 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 you used to kind of be the cool kid on the block and. There's there and then we're like, Oh no, he is like, he's doing some weird ****. Yeah, and and that weird ****. So, like, OK, so he goes on his show and he starts screaming about how a cube puberty blockers are chemical 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 as you if 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 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 I don't want him to argue that I'm quoting him. I violate my kids consent all the time that no he he claims to. Forcing his kids to clean their room. But we'll that has some interesting word choices, huh? You know? OK, and and and and obviously for like the the beauty puberty blocker thing we've talked on the show before, they're trying to frame this as like if you take if your kid gets on puberty. Permanently sterile which just isn't true that that's just false like that that 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 and. As they were on it and this is because the drugs also used to treat terminal illnesses. So the it's like for like a specific like heart condition or like or 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. As of there, because of their like condition that drug is treating them for. So they try to use that false statistic to then make it like kids are dying on this puberty blocker, which is again, is not true. It's it's all blatantly false things. Yeah, we're going to get into more of the ******** they get into a second. Yeah, it's it's a it's a time. He's, he's doing it. They've really, they've really started leaning into this one and screwing about like hospitals mutilating children because, you know, this is it's an incredibly sort of lurid image and it's like, OK, so he's just like literally what he's describing is just a hysterectomy, right? Which is like a thing that it's 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 a 16 years old. There's certain conditions for like 17 year olds usually to start the process. If they want that down the line get consult like, it's yeah, the thing's 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 isn't a thing that happens like they're not doing. That surgery on like 15 year olds that that just like that just yeah that happens. There is possibly been like like like literally a couple like literally like 3 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 gate capped. Like I I've been trying to get top surgery and they're 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 whose 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, like I OK, you know, OK. The the product of all of this ******** is like, you know, all the sort of dramatic coming for your kids. **** succession. Just like absolute obsession with making sure that people with uteruses can, like, you can force them to have kids later down the line. Yeah, the product of this is Matt. Matt. And starts yelling about how this needs to be stopped. And then, like coyly suggests, maybe we should start with Boston Children's Hospital. Like, that same day, Boston Children Hospital is delis with death threats. Now media Matters goes after him. And Matt Walsh makes a bunch of tweets about how he's been. Context and the death threats aren't his fault, but like, you know, OK, the context is him yelling. Well, somebody rid us of this meddlesome 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 write, check, making this like fake tweet within within a week it's on Gateway. The caller is on the blaze, on the daily wires on Fox News. It's, you know, it's hit the entire ecosystem. The problem? OK, let's try to write, check, like very quickly, realize this is going viral. Just keeps screaming about it, keeps reading about, keeps tweeting about it. But she has this problem, which is that everything she's saying is. That 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 ******** and like, the hospital itself has to issue a statement being like, hey, we don't actually. Had to change their website to make it clear that 17 year olds don't actually get the surgeries. You can just get that. Nobody ever has. Like they've never done this like this. Well, you know, this is kind of a problem for the propaganda wing because like, try to write check is like a ******* hack. Gonna convince anyone who, like isn't already convinced that, like, trans people are evil and that like, you know, OK at this point, I think an earlier in 2021 and 2022, I think she may have been able to graph 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'll 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 our lovely and very, very. Friends. Friendly sponsors. Every single one of them Chevron. What other sponsors do we have? I have no idea. Washington State Patrol watch. That's right. Highway Patrol blue. Well, we can't we can't say that. Yeah, we got. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of of. 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 how you can post about it. All right, so we're, we're, we're, we're back. We revealed the. Try to write check is that she's a hack and she can't convince anyone. Doesn't convince. And this is where a bunch of people who are not actually any smarter than try to write check, but like can write more fancy swinging to gear, yeah? And I'm, I'm, I'm gonna walk through some of the arguments they're using so you can. Like even the quote UN quote more research **** is, once you actually look at the stuff, they're sitting in these like very official looking threads. So for example, on August 17th, Wesley Yang, who was a hack pundit who I admittedly I must applaud him for doing more in his life trying to combat the stereotype. More than any other person ever born has did did a, did a dread attempting to defend lives of tick tocks like you know thing about Boston Children's Hospital giving a hysterectomies and. OK, so it starts with him going all right. All right. So we're going to work for this, right? He's like, OK. Gender surgery. And they think, I wonder what that means. Why it means they gave like three people mastectomies, right? And then she's done. So who? Under what conditions? Like apparently, apparently. They 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 that they that they do do genitals or. He admits that they don't. It's never had them. Yeah. Also the document says they could do it, but they they never have. This document but I misread and don't understand the difference between consultation and getting it a surgery clown and a hack who destroyed his entire brain for money in like 2015. I I would be interested in seeing, you know, if 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 I what? What percentage of these people like ******* 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, if, if. 15 year old is too young to quote, UN quote, mutilate their bodies. I 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 it ignore the concept of circumcision. Anyway, let's continue, you know, OK, yeah, it's great. So, so. OK. So and here's the last thing is he does, he starts ranting about other clinics who've done mastectomy. So, like, let's take this piece by piece. So first of all, again, no transduced under 18. Is get. Like at this hospital, it has never happened. It will never happen. I think 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 they they found several studies, all of which are sitting with each other, and the beginning one starts with. I heard some stories about this. This is going great. I love this. It's like, like, OK, so like the like the some there are some trans men who have got mastectomies, like when they were technically a minor, right? But like, OK, I like again, depending on the age of medical consent in the state and depending on what other. There is another treatment options were available after years of therapy and consultations and and also we should mention this actually SIS SIS girls get mastectomies like all the ******* time. This is like this is a regular procedure that. 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 the the OK what was the simplest way to explain it like surgical removal of the uterus, right, yeah, well. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's it's mostly the. So it's sort of 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're 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 resly Yang and? Who is redirect? Focus on gender affirming mastectomies because again, they don't have any evidence 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 is secretly been giving these things out. Even though you just said like 3 treats before, they've never done one. They've never actually done a hysterectomy. It's incredible stuff, right? Like this. I need to point this out. Like what, Wesley Yang? Like that there was a period. Is you get an understanding of like, people who weren't around in 2010 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 sort of like, like great revolutionary, like thinker. Of the new 21st century. And here he is doing this ******** because absolute *** **** clown, I hate him. Yeah, OK, so, but moving on to other stuff, like, but The thing is, like, this doesn't matter. Like the fact that everything they're saying is a lie and is ******** like doesn't matter to them. Is like they need to sort of like visceral emotional pull of the sort of like they're mutilating children, **** 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's it's starts to move, right? The story spreads to to the Donald, which is like the rehosting of the old Archesh 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 Dees 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. If five of people sending death threats to a Children's Hospital and finally a platform does something so Facebook bans lives up tick tock for one day. And then yeah. Worked. We didn't know. You know, OK, but they used that time to reflect, right? And to think about what they've done. Yeah, yeah, they're their change was we need to post more about this. And so, you know, we should be like, like the social media companies are never actually. Talk because loser Tik T.O.K, especially with Twitter loser Tik T.O.K is good for Twitter in the same way that Trump was like you know, like it's presence, it brings traffic. They generate, 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 and which Twitter especially like they like with Trump gone, right. They they had they had to ban Trump for political reasons because he, you know, tried to overthrow the government. But like you know what? Trump gone like Twitter. Twitter is like a just a declining. Like social media? It sure is, and you know. So 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 played 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, OK. Yeah. OK. So like they, they the, the, the way this sort of thing works, right, is that they get all these users and engagement from the right, starting like a campaign against Children's Hospital. Then they 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 they do temporary. I, I've, I've right wing people because that that gives you like good liberal media attention and then you know and that 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 Iowa censored arc like we've seen. This is Jordan. 15 times. So those are tick tock. On the 25th they August 25th they start targeting another Children's Hospital. And this this is 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 they bring their website down like the same stuff is happening and Twitter finally locks lives of tick tock off of their account for a week. Now, partially what's happening here was like there's pressure by friend. Guest Alejandro Carballo, who's been doing like a lot of great work, like documenting and like documenting what livestock be doing and like sparring with them and try a right chick like, keeps misgendering her because Chai is a ******* enormous ***** ** **** who should be flushed down. Ship belongs. Unfortunately, like, well, OK. So some of the some of the like dozens of tweets that that I live with chalk made about children's hospitals and take it down, a lot of them are still up. And, you know, probably. Let's get right. Still banned off Twitter, but like, you know what's gonna happen is gonna be like a wave of like, good liberal media press, and then there's gonna be the next wave of the conservative outrage over censorship in cancer culture stuff. And then she'll be back in a sub stack post. Our right chick said quote. Now more than ever, right? 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, begins. Yeah, I mean, like, I kind of stuff like, this is all always been a grift. Like, this is like her fourth attempt. Like, she's been trying her fourth attempt. Yeah, to like, she's been trying to become a viral Twitter personality for years. She just found the one. She finally found something that worked. And that's. Beating conservatives into being mad at her. Yeah, 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, they specifically want specific targets too. And like, yeah, imagine this. Like, OK, like, right. Chick, like is an actual human ***** ** ****. Like, her ideology is bad, but like, it is the 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. This is why, like, Matt Walsh and is. Dimensions, like all of these people, spend all of their time staring at metrics and looking at their ******* viewer data, looking at the anti trends data. The anti trans documentary is paywalled behind. Plus you hit new studies. Yeah, it's like it's funny because all of these people, like, ran constantly. And there's, there's, there's like increasingly anti-Semitic versions of it about how like the trans activist, the trans lobby, or like funded by billionaires, like every single one of these people. Made by ******* George Soros, presumably. Why all all? Supposedly we're all getting paid by by George Soros. In reality, it's it's the rights all getting paid by. What am I blanking the guys name the the ******* fox guy teal. No. They are. They are now getting people. They are too mature. But, but but yeah, like the guy from the ******* media guy I own. No, the Murdoch. Yeah. They're all, they're all getting paid by just like their rabid base of like, yeah, dealerships think they're working class because they have a 4F-150 and like, yeah, it sucks. So true. About 900,000 subscribers to this daily wire to daily wire, plus the hit new streaming service. That's correct. That's why I say hey then they give me such a catchy name. But yeah, that's a **** ton of money for someone. 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. And pulled the Star Wars to Ben Shapiro. She was gonna have her own Star Wars show terror on the Prairie. It's amazing. ******* contribute it like that. That's the ohhh God. Like Ohh the Hunter Biden trailer. Yeah yeah. There's this trailer for a 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 is in it. And man. Killer. It looks like if this was directed by a smart person, this could be an amazing comedy like this. Like, yeah, 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 gonna be boring because look, look, conservatives are getting good at comedy. The left is worried, the left is getting very scared. Like the other driver. The moment I knew that Glenn Greenwald had like like he wasn't just purely grifting, had like actually falling down the rabbit hole was what he spent like ******* like 2 years pretending that literally anyone on Earth gave a **** about Hunter Biden. And also here, yeah, he's been simping for for lips of Tik T.O.K. For yeah, yeah, ohh, of course yeah yeah. This is all, all, all, all leading up to his incredibly hardball interview with Alex Jones. Great. Great stuff. Got him. Incredible journalism. Just ah God, I love it here. Yeah so it it all sucks. And the other like the other big problem here right is like, OK, on the one hand like all these people are just doing this to make money. But the problem is that and and I cannot emphasize this enough, it is easier to get the material. Bomb that it is to get gender affirming surgery and this is a real ******* 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. 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 1/2 before another guy tried to derail a train to ram a Navy medical ship. There was also the stabby lady, the lady who dragged all the knives on board the hospital ship. Yeah, like, it's just like, OK, like if they're allowed to keep doing this **** like people are going to die. And this isn't to say, like, they can't be beat, especially IRL. Numbers of these people in total are actually pretty small, because, like, the number of people who actually rabidly care about this stuff is like a vanishingly small minority of the US. And you know, and and and IRL. That works for us, because. These people suck. Everyone hates them. Communities will come out to like to try to. Communities will come out to confront and defeat them. But this is, you know, this is the this is the the ecosystem, the media ecosystem of the modern right. It works is spreading conspiracy theories, inciting 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 ******* like transgender clowns are well, make a wish foundation or something. Like we're gonna be talking about another instant, another instance like this in tomorrow's episode. It's great. It's it's good. It's not good at all that that is. That is very bad. Yeah. Yeah. If you do want to be mad about forced hysterectomy. That Immigration Services has forced hysterectomies on people in their custody. It's a good thing to be mad about. Yeah, it's it's it's a good time on that we have here on this earth. Denton hospital. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bed. Mgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now and more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888. 532-3500. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. You love movies or maybe just Anita? Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mike's movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie. Topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Warning for some pretty intense transphobia and misgendering. 80 year old Julie Juman was permanently banned from her local YMCA after demanding that a transgender worker leave the women's locker room. Diamond said that she was trying to protect little girls from a biological man and a women's swimsuit who was watching them undress. So this week, a few dozen people joined Jamaan to protest the YMCA. Some of the protesters, including her, were assaulted by lunatics, men dressed as women. OK, first of all, that granny rocks. But when pressed, Port Townsend, WA police said that Mr Mrs Jaymon 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 their 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 inappropriately and you're, you're 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 pretty wonderful. Profit for Big pharma and medical systems, it's and what's happening to children becomes even more disastrous. And and you were protecting the kids. You you were protecting the kids. I I mean, they should have a responsibility to do that. The Young Men's Christian 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 Jamin 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 Gemmen 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 Julies highly publicized version of events, which we'll get into in a bit. But first we're going to 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 a. Swimming with the kids. And me and the other childcare workers, uh, you know, use 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 kid, the kids got changed and 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 wives 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. 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 Jemond was showering nearby in a curtained off stall across the locker room. I was waiting outside of the bathroom stall with the kid being the buddy making small talk when Julie Jamaan 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 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. Now. 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've 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 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 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 and 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 ******* 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 have 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 Jemond that she needed to leave and suspended her membership for violating the Wise 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, UN quote. 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 transit spectacle. Clarified that Julie has had quote several incidents where she has repeatedly violated the wise 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. UN quote. After Julie was banned from the pool on a Monday August 1st, she started showing up outside the facility with anti trans signs and lead 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. State your name and where you live for the record. Peninsula and 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 new cultural 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 why 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 sheriff's 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. Thank you. Thank you. So just a few notes about that. The 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. Should 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, UN quote. 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's Libby wennstrom. I'm an elected city Councilor 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 Mackens, 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 Diamond 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 these Council agenda. We 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 UH-30 Ish people showed up at 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 of the things said were pretty shocking. And you know, to the to the tune of the, you know, all transgender people were pedophiles or that, you know, this was a rape happening and some 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, you know, this was ballooning out of proportion, which now seems kind of funny given how much more bullets out of proportion 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 Diamond has 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. Their YMCA employees, well, you should change your policy. While 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 to 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 second drew a much larger counter protest. And then a lot of the same people who were there on the second 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 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 and 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 you know 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 on the Council meeting on the eighth 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 trans rhetoric, a lot of red flags went off. Since the City Council public comments, the YMCA had started receiving threatening phone calls, and Jamin 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 gonna be picketing every day at the pool that week. That they showed up and there were about 100 counter counter protesters isn't even really the right word. People that were there was sort of like a little pride parade there and Olympic pride had a kind of a booth table set up and we're handing out pride flags and all the social justice group from the UFC had a you know standing on the side of love banner and there were kids blowing bubbles and and it was just it was much more of it just kind of a lot of people here as these initial. Picket style protests were happening in front of the why. 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 *** Trans Rights Party massively overshadowing Julie Jammin 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 soapbox, resulting in a new wave of harassment targeted at the Y. There were about 100 people and it was, I think it was Julian, 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. So and then the pool ended up staying closed, I think from the third, which was a Wednesday, all the way through that weekend 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 1st 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 or a news source at all. It's it's kind of this this one guy, James Tarantino's blog and she reached out to that and he did an article that first. Port Townsend Free Press quote UN quote article came out to 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 had 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 Jemond 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 madding story of the week. On 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 Julia's public comment at the City Council meeting, amplifying julies. Ever changing altered version of events now on the national stage, I think the the mainstream actual you know, real local newspapers didn't pick it up until the 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. This got picked up by Breitbart, it got picked up by the Daily Mail. They kept quoting that original portions of Free Press article which was very inaccurate about it 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 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 we're 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 e-mail volume explode for plate people from outside the area where it was like, you know, getting 30 emails in 5 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, etcetera. 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 Kilmeade. 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 their genitalia and with their dress 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 Jamaan, who said she was banned from a pool and locker room facility that was managed by the Olympic Peninsula YMCA on Port Townsend, WA. Now she says 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 plays, and I will not subject you to that again, but here is a little bit more of that clip. The 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. Townsend is a welcoming community and hate and discrimination has no place in this community. I listen to you quietly. I would like you to listen to me quietly now. Absolutely. Given the rise in harassment and bigotry the trans persons have experienced recently, it's essential that we all speak up that cisgendered people like me speak out in support of our trans community. Najman 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 the 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 is just like a one and done traumatic incident? Absolutely not. I I really just thought, you know? Ohh my my days calm. I finally had the bad bathroom experience and and I know a lot of people do have that bad experience. Nobody. Nobody is ready for it. To be. You know to have this much attention called to just such a small thing. No, because I wasn't ready for it to be like this. 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. Yeah, and you're. I don't know. It's really, it's really upsetting to have my face. And and name you know sort of be pushed out like that and it. It's crazy how that feeling that the sinking feeling when I saw my my name and I don't even think it was my face at the time when I saw my name appear on that local PD Free Press article. And you know at the time it was still pretty big impact. And then to have that just keep happening and it 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 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 the women's room because of stuff like this. And, you know, if you're not binary, then if it's a whole other issue of like, where the **** do you 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 ******* like, daily wire New York Post. Infowars **** is like. Like what? Like like it's. You mean like Tucker Carlson? Like all of it? It's really. It's disappointing that. There's this idea that I, you know, am 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 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 and get changed and. And like, talk about like, oh, you know, walking in, penis hanging out and and all of these things. But I don't change. And 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 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'd 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 is 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, we've had you on, we've had you on the show a couple of Times Now. And you seem very level headed. Yes, very, very level headed indeed. By now the story has been headlined and and obviously very mischaracterized and transphobic fashion, but still headlined by the post millennial, the Daily Wire, Fox News, Daily Mail, Breitbart, Newsmax, Infowars, the New York Post, the Federalist, and the quote UN quote 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 childcare 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 Wennstrom 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, you know, attacked in the locker room by. Really, jamon is actually no longer. Why other people have left is another undisclosed location, just out of concern of trying to get the kids as far away from this whole process as possible. And and so that took a little bit of time and juggling just set up and they were so short staffed they were actually calling for volunteers in order to try to keep the childcare open this week just because they were already somewhat short staffed and with people leaving. They've just been even harder on 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 they've changed the schedule around it's now not open Saturdays again and. 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 e-mail last night. I haven't been getting death threats. I've been getting things like, you know, you're a disgusting fat pig *****. 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 Shaber has been getting similar things. He got one where somebody was threatening to come to his home and rape his wife. Uh, so it there's been pretty horrifying messages, for the most part. Most of the e-mail has on The Voice mails 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 yet some of you feel like you have to take it somewhat seriously. And that, I think, has been pretty disruptive, both for the why employees and for the city, as Julie's retelling of the story was going viral across 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 builds herself as a sort of radical feminist. They made me Sousa, 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 taking this and run with it and has I think has been really this kind of driving force between behind a lot of this amplification with on to far right media. And Amy Sousa held a which she built 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 3:50 and 400. Trans rights folks from town, I mean that they were local who had just showed up and and most of them were waiting in line to go into the Council meeting and, you know, flying flags and and raising blanet banners and stuff. But there was some heated shouting and one person got arrested for shoving. There weren't any charge charges filed. I did confirm that with the Sheriff's Office. That with the courts that that not no charges got filed out of that, which is contrary to the story they've been putting out that like 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 hate into 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 are trans of summer guard. And we were reached out to by a local bipac community that we we've had some crossover with, but not a lot. But since this happened, just the interconnectivity with 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 UN quote Feminist Redux magazine Twitter account show. Julie's 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 suffragette 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. So conservative coverage of the protest painted a Pearl clutching picture of scary trans people. Assaulting women a few days after the press conference, Julie Jam and herself made an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Julie German is one of them. She's 80 years old. She's now been banned from stepping inside a WYMCAY because she dared to object when a male employee was assigned to watch little girls remove their bathing suits in the bathroom in the women's locker room. So this week, a few dozen people joined Jaman 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. You may have read some version of my personal experience, a naked old lady in the women shower room and when I saw that day. You can. Screaming at her. Julie Sherman is the woman, the brave woman just on 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 I and and bless you for doing that. That's exactly right. You're you're moral sense is just as clear. I I 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? There was 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. What could tell us if that's true? A&B. What YMCA is this? Yes, that's correct. I 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 I hope they are punished for the way that they treated you, and I appreciate your bravery and your forthrightness. I 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. Julian. 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, like, I've I I watched the three hours of. Public testimony a few nights ago, which was I was on, I was, I was on so much caffeine. Still, they would like to start 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 day. Yeah, it was. Footage, yeah. And one of the more shocking things was just how how how one, 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. Like it's so dehumanizing in a really bad way, let alone all of like the like. Misgendering stuff like it's it was 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 like your privacy is actually been violated. Like you're like, like, you're like like private information. Your pictures, names, is going all over these like, like Neo Fascist news sites and like. With something you know, people are framing this as like, you know, 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 the right wing Press of this incident. And, you know, it's, 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, uh, 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. Be getting her side or whatever. I mean, in reality it 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 they go anywhere from like two to five kids. It's their number. I was watching the Tucker Carlson and I think I saw that #5 watching 5 kids undress. Uhm, 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 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, 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. It is so ****** ** because you're an actual person. Like, yeah, well, and and you can see and the comments and stuff on some of these that it's pretty, you know, I 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 appearance is better. It's 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. Let him for 1000, for 24 1/2 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 this? 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? Why did you know the the the impact of this has been so outsized relative to the. Actually, 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. You 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 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 Bipac and queer collectives and affinity groups started to 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. Are the main ones who are more directly involved with the queer community side of. Responding to what was going on. And it was really great. Like they just like, we want to support you, we want to, you know, help take care of you, what can we do and then for the action on the 15th when we were talking about. You know, like, here's 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 1/4 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 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 enable those folks to come together to. We'll 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 I woke up in the morning and I looked in the mirror and. And I just broke 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, you know, 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 I don't feel like I've gotten a break for a month. I feel like I've just been tired. And. Like a purgatory rust. 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. I've been definitely grateful and blessed to have the community response be really astounding and 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. 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 Go fund me. I don't know how I would feel if there wasn't, you know, something rigid and like a rock to lean on. Like the GO fund me to be able to have something hopeful to look forward to and think that I can, you know, 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 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 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. And so things have just continued to kind of 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 Jaman was there or not. Personally, diamonds were 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 locker room, trying to film inside the locker room and got asked to leave. So it's 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 attacks 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 why 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 Port Townsend showed up because they care. And they had to fly people from as far as Pennsylvania to host an hour long press conference with 20 people. And so we're 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 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. UN quote. Almost exclusively its sources are Twitter accounts, like libs of Tik T.O.K and a few random turfs. And this is what we mean when we talk about how things that seem like they should just be insignificant Twitter ******** 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 petals, and many readers, many of whom are not on Twitter, will take whatever it says at face value. Same thing for libs of tick tock 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 Oh 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. I 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, you know, Ben Shapiro to Infowars 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 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 sufferer 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 deescalation, about stop the bleed out, we're hosting naloxone stuff. 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 deescalation. Even things like emergency preparedness and food security. Yeah, but because of that, we've just spent the last few years running these just a small group, like one to four people, basically workshops on all these different subjects and built somewhat of a connection with the community, 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 were not directly involved in any sort of leadership of it's just naturally, organically happened, but have really spent the last few years just feeling like kooks, screaming at a wall. Umm. 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 turfs self-described feminists, or people just looking out for biological women's rights are perfectly willing to ally. The 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, UN quote. Yeah, the guy who runs common sense court conservatives, a man named Robert. Always mess up his name. Zerfing. I think it is. Zerfing ZRF ING. Who's associated in somewhere with a 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, UN quote, to be here in Port Townsend on the Labor Day weekend, Saturday, which is the third. 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, what's that going to unfold? Like poor chances are tourist community and right 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, is kind of, you know, it doesn't feel very comfortable because it's kind of the first kind of big instant where you've had these types of like you know, more kind of experienced activists unlike 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. 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, 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. Is a town of 10,000 people and 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, 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 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 three Percenter affiliated networks. One of the leaders of the Washington State 3 Percenter militia, Eric Rd has stated that he will be present and is encouraging his followers to join him saying on Telegram 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. 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 failed to answer the call to something so simple as don't stare at little girls when they take off their clothes. UN quote. 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, I'll match to Antifa, UN quote, which I don't even know what that means. The grammar on that is very confusing. Another telegram post from A3 Percenter account reads quote calling. All Patriots, all proud boys, all three percenters, all lone wolves. We roll out to Port Townsend on September 3rd. Hope to see you there. We got proud boys and three pers rolling in from all over UN quote the 3%. Our crew is also planning a pre and post rally BBQ 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. In a large group of our our local trans community and our intent is to 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 the community, the local community, the broader Washington community, all the people who have just. Showing so much support for us. And it makes me feel like there is, 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 go fund me. The Go fund me. Is sort of a general transition fund for me. I originally made it. Specifically for two surgeries, I lowballed the amount greatly because I felt like if I asked for too much, I wouldn't get anything and and I still got nothing for a long time. At some point when the articles were coming out, one of the Nationals used one of the national articles used my GO fund me as a source to find out more about me, but that got my go fund me 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 to help that I. It was never something on my mind, the GO fund me it 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 or more hopeful, but now, now, so I talked about the GO fund me. It was originally for two specific surgeries and I lowballed 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. Uh, finding out that things cost more. Than I thought, but you know, 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's video or or daily wire article or whatever the big thing that would pop up otherwise is. But, Umm, yeah, I it's called Clementines Transition fund. It's on go fund me. You can find the transition go fund me at gofundme.com/SRS for Clem. And that link will be. In the description or you can just search clementines 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. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now. It really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history. Without all the stress, while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try visitspreaker.com that's spreaker.com get paid to talk about the things you love. My name is Alex Fumero, and I host the new podcast more than a movie American Me, a film directed by. And starring Edward James Olmos, I'll be diving into the behind the scenes controversy, including an alleged backlash from the Mexican mafia. Several people who worked on the movie have been murdered. I don't want to speak about why would people be murdered for being in a movie. Listen to more than a movie American me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal. Tater. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts.