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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.
Welcome to Dick It Up and Here, a podcast about things falling apart and putting it back together again. I'm Mia Wong, I'm with Garrison and it is my singular honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, doctor Julia Serrano. She is the author of many books, excluded Making Feminist and queer movements more Inclusive, Sex Stop, How Society Sexualizes us, and how we can fight back Outspoken, a Decade of transgender activism and Transfeminism, and most famously Whipping Girl, a
new edition of which is coming out in March. Doctor Serrano, welcome to the show.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm really really I'm really happy you can join us. So, okay, Whipping Girl, I think is really one of quietly the most influential books of the twenty first century, to the extent that in kind of classic trans woman fashion, I don't think. I don't think people realize that the ideas that it introduced have an origin. So for people who haven't read the book, and you should, this book is great.
I guarantee you have seen its influence. If you've ever heard someone like who's not trans referred to as sis, like, that's that's from this book. The concept of misgendering is also from this book. The word trans misogyny like also from this book. And this I think gets at something from the twenty fifteen second edition preface that you wrote, which is something I've been wondering about, is what is it like to sort of experience writing a book and have it just ripple across society like this.
Yeah, it's uh.
I was very much hoping and you know, as I was writing it, I was hoping that I thought that it would resonate with a lot of trans female and trans feminine people and I hope trans communities more generally, and the book this is something that a lot of times people who pick up the book now, in like the twenty twenties don't necessarily realize is that nobody was reading anything about trans people outside of feminists and LGBTQ plus communities, and so I was basically just speaking to
those groups, and I thought it would resonate with some people. But yeah, definitely, it kind of went out into the world and did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't necessarily expecting. And I'm very glad that the book has kind of touched a lot of people's lives and changed, you know.
Kind of societal.
Understanding and quote unquote discourses about trans people.
So yeah, it it must be kind of bizarre, like being twenty years ago writing about you know, caniche term like cis and now the richest man in the world thinks it's like the most evil word.
Yeah, it's quite bizarre, and I do want to definitely kind of clear this up, but I kind of make this clear in the preface. So I didn't invet like sis versus trans like a that's like a prefix that has existed a long time. Yeah, and uh, I've since seen other people like point out, oh, this person was using it in nineteen ninety something, or some German writer like coined cis vestism or something like back a million
years ago. So what I will say is that when I when I put out the book, I was inspired by Emi.
Koyama, who was and is an awesome.
Activist intersex activists, who who's written a lot of really influential trans related essays over the years. And it was from her blog that was the first time I saw SIS and trans and the idea of SIS sexism.
And at the time, it was while I was.
Writing the book, and it really I was like, oh my god, this is kind of the overall idea. I was talking about all these different facets of basically double standards between trans and non trans people, and so I kind of grabbed on to it, and I was really worried about it actually because nobody, almost nobody was using those terms. It was very niche at the time, and
so the book popularized that language. And so now it is kind of funny every once in a while seeing yes overreactions by SIS people to the idea of SIS being a slur or whatever. So yeah, and so yeah, so that's definitely something that is kind of is the one thing I one thing I did coin in the book that has kind of also taken a life on its own is trans misogyny.
So that is something that kind of originated with.
This book and particularly a chap book that I wrote in two thousand and five that some of.
Those essays became chapters of the book.
And yeah, and so there are other ideas that kind of are out there, Like I think it was one of the first I think it was the first book to talk about like the idea of sis privilege. Misgendering as an idea was out there, but I kind of dove into it a little bit deeper. So yeah, so there are definitely things I was doing at the time that I didn't know whether they'd be to abstract or how they'd be taken up.
And so, yes, it's been very interesting.
Yeah, I wanted to talk about misgendering a bit because I think it's become this word that just means not saying someone's pronouns correctly. And I think that's at the very best, like an incredibly reductionist and of simplified version of the analysis that you were presenting. So I guess
I have two questions here. One, can you briefly sort of talk about what you were trying to get at when you sort of did your analysis of the process of gendering, And two, what do you think about the way that it's kind of become flattened into this I don't know, kind of weirdly narrow thing in modern discourse.
Sure, and a lot of the misgendering definitely dovetails with the idea of passing, and a lot of my kind of diving into it in a particular way came from critiques that I had and other trans people had as well, but I kind of, you know, put them together in a particularly in the Dismantling I think it's dismantling sexual Privileged chapter where I kind of go through all these steps that lead to miss gendering, because I think people talk about trans people passing and also the people will
talk about other marginalized groups passing is whatever dominant majority group. The term obviously had long been used with regards to people of color passing as white and in kind of white racist you know, us and other societies. So it's an old term, and a big problem with it is that it makes it sound like we're doing something active, that trans people are actively trying to deceive other people.
With huge scare quotes around the word deceive.
And I really wanted to highlight to people that actually all of us very unconsciously and very compulsively gender every single person we meet, or at least that's how we're socialized to be. And you know, you can work towards getting you know, overcoming that, but I wanted to really highlight the fact that we see people, we automatically gender them, and that puts people who do not quite who your presumptions are wrong about. It puts us in difficult situations.
It's a double bind where do you reveal what you supposedly really are or do you just allow people to read you that way? And it works out very differently, for instance, between trans and say CIS gay people, because when CIS gay people talk about passing as straight. Their passing is something that they know that they are not, Whereas for a lot of trans people, people read me as a woman and I understand myself to be a woman.
There's it's a very different dynamic because it's not like I'm not hiding anything, but people are presuming what I'm really passing as is I'm passing a CIS gender and people are assuming I'm sis gender when the trans is the thing that I might need to or feel like I need to clear up, or other people might put pressure on me to either tell them that I'm trans
or be accused of deceiving them. So that's a little bit of kind of how I was approaching it when I started working on that idea and really stressing the idea of you can't understand miss gendering unless you understand that we make assumptions all the time, we gender people very actively, and you know, so trans people are often just reacting to that and dealing with that double bind.
Yeah, and this is something that I think is interestingly discussed in the book about like kind of this this issue with some with some of the sort of prevailing gender theories, which thought of which to think about sort
of like femininity and gender is pure performance. But you know, and this is I think, like the argument that you were making that I think is really interesting is that something that I think is is very obvious to trans people is that so much of gender is how people perceive you and how you know and stuff that like you don't have any control over. It's how people sort of gender you. It's how people like construct a gender around you in ways that you don't really have control over.
M yeah, and that was a big thing. So in kind of I was writing the book in the mid two thousands, and so the nineteen ninety is when Judith Butler publishes Gender Trouble, which Butler never said all genders performance are all genders drag, Yeah, but that is, but that those are like slogans or sound bites that other people took from their book, right, and they were very
popular at the time. There's also there's a famous sociological article about doing gender, and so people were very focused on the way in which we create gender by doing it particular ways, and a lot of the slogans within trans communities were sort of like, oh, well, you know, I just have to do my gender differently, like more transgressively, and that will like tear down all of gender. And I felt that there was you know, that is an
aspect of things. And most of us, whether trans or cists, most of us have had the experience of maybe trying to perform our genders in a particular way in order to like, you know, not you know, in order in order to get by in the world, in order to not be harassed by other people.
So we've all had that experience. So while that's true, there's.
The other partner of that dance, and that's perception, and we're all perceiving people very actively, and we're like projecting our ideas and meanings onto them. And I felt like that was being under discussed at the time, and that was not only a huge part of Whipping Girl, but that's become a part of a lot of my other books, like including my most recent book, sext Up, How Society
Sexualizes us and how we can fight back. One way that I would describe that book is it's talking about sex and sexuality not from what people do, but from how we perceive and interpret sex and sexuality, because there are a lot of unconscious ideas, often really horrible ideas, really hierarchical ideas that are kind of built into the way we view the world. And interrogating that and so yeah, that was a very big part of both of The Been Girl and then my writings since then.
Yeah, I think I think that is something where things have gotten better in terms of in terms of how we think about gender, which I don't know, like things aren't perfect, but it definitely it definitely improved things.
A lot agreed We're going.
To take an ad break, and when we come back, we're talking trans misogyny. We're back. Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to sort of talk about was I think, in like exactly the opposite process that happened to misgendering, trans misogyny has become a lot more expansive than your original sort of kind of narrow conception of it. And I think this has been changing a lot, especially in
the last about half decade or so. So I was wondering what you think about the way that this concept has kind of taken on a life of its own in recent years and what it's been doing since.
Yeah.
So I feel like trans misogyny that there are a lot of different dialogues and discourses about it coming, like people coming from different perspectives with it, and some people feeling like the world is doing things that I never
suggested it was doing. It's kind of hard to know like where to actually come in on this, But for me, when I was first writing about it, I was first just noticing that a lot of the quote unquote transphobia that I was facing when people know as a trans woman was actually a lot of it was just misogyny, and a lot of it targeted like kind of my femininity rather than my transness, and so I wanted to write about that, and kind of the way that I framed it in the book was, which I think is
a really useful kind of model for thinking about it, is that there most of the types of sexism that feminists have described over the many years fall into two sort of camps, one of them being oppositional sexism, which is the idea that men and women are kind of perfectly opposite, mutually exclusive sexes that have different interests and attributes and desires, and so a lot of transphobia and homophobia are kind of like built into this idea that
men and women are completely distinct. And then the other one is traditional sexism, which is the idea that femalists and femininity are less legitimate than malness and masculinity. And a lot of cis feminists have kind of viewed all of that as just sexism, right, But when you break it down like that, it makes it clear that the double bind that a lot of feminists have talked about is actually kind of these two different forms of sexism.
So if assis woman acts appropriately femininely so appropriate with scare quotes. If a SIS woman acts femininely, she'll be seen as appropriate, but she'll be dismissed because femininity is dismissed in our culture. So that's the way that she'll be delegitimized. Whereas if she acts in ways that are coded as masculine, if she acts assertive or aggressive, then people will malign her for being kind of a barrant
or deviant. Right, and so oppositional sexism helps keep traditional sexism in place because you can say that maln is and masculinity are superior, but that only works if you can also make a clear distinction between you know, those people and people are female and feminine. And so I
think this plays out differently. And I want to be really clear about this because some people have interpreted trans misogyny to mean that transmeild trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, which is something I've never said, and obviously the fact that oppositional sexism is a form of sexism, and obviously
transmeild transmasculine people experience that. But also depending upon how you're viewed by other people, I feel like the same double pind that affects this woman affects transmeild trans masculine people differently, where there's this tendency, like in a lot of anti trans discourses to dismiss transmasculine, especially transmasculine youth as being merely girls quote unquote who are like, you know, misled or seduced by gender ideology, right, And there's a
lot of real anti feminine and anti misogynistic ideas in there in addition to the fact that it misgenders.
Transmeld transmasculine people.
Then if trans mail trans masculine people, when when they experience transphobia, there's often you know, like they're scene as deviant for kind of breaking that role, but often the maleness or their masculinity themselves are not, you know, denigrated in the same way because being male, being masculine are seen as good in our culture. It's just that if you trans male, trans masculine, it's like, well, you're quote
unquote just a woman, so you can't do it. So I think it plays out in this very you know, complex way for a lot of trans mail trans masculine people, I think for trans female and transfeminine people, because our crossing of oppositional sexism also involves us kind of moving towards the female, towards the feminine, that there's kind of those two forces intersect in a way so that it's
like exacerbated. And some of the ways I talk about this in Women Girl is that, well, we live in a world where masculinity is seen as natural and femininity is seen as artificial, and since trans people are also seen as artificial compared to sis gender people, a lot
of times we're viewed as doubly artificial. Furthermore, the idea that women are seen as sex objects whereas men aren't seen as sex objects often are transitions or gender transgressions towards a female towards a feminine are presumed to be driven by sexual motives that can play out in all
sorts of ways. Whether this is the idea that we're like hypersexual or promiscuous, or that we want to be sexualized by other people, or you can see it a lot with the kind of the transgender predator is often coded as like a man who either has some kind of fetish or perversion or is just literally deceiving people to get into women's restrooms to do something horrific. So those are some of the ways that it plays out.
I feel that sometimes people view it in a cut or dried way that either they'll assume that trans misogyny means that trans montal, trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, which again is not what that's about. Or sometimes people will like try to make really clear distinctions. There's kind of language like trans misogyny affected versus trans misogyny exempt.
Are the terms yeah.
TME and TMA, which are not terms I've used and which or that I didn't coin them.
They're not in the book.
And I think that when I first saw that language, and I've seen people use it in a way that appreciates the fact that some people are non binary, so it's a non identity based a way.
Sometimes this can play out in a really cut or dried sort of manner that.
You know, sometimes you know, whether it's intended this way or not, it can make it seem that, like, you know, just boiling down a really complex experience, people's complex experiences with different types of sexism into some people are privileged and some people are marginalized, which I think is a more general problem that happens kind of throughout all social justice movements, so yeah.
And trans people are not alien to having complex experiences be boiled down to three and four letter acronyms, so.
Yeah.
I mean I.
Did this in Twitter form, so it was like a thread, so like now people can't access threads unless you.
Have an account with Twitter. And it's from a couple of years ago.
But one of the things that I talked about was I wrote this essay about ten years ago about how CIS and trans is kind of a useful Those are useful terms, but sometimes people fall in between CIS and trans, and sometimes they can be used in a way to talk about different double standards, like CIS people are treated one way, trans people are treated another.
But sometimes it can be used in.
Like a sort of reverse discourse way where it's like, you know, SIS people of all the privilege, trans people of none of the privilege, and it can be used to kind of create this strict dichotomy that ends up excluding and invisibilizing some people's experiences. And I feel the same thing as happening with TMME and TMA. So I don't think that those terms need to necessarily be like, I don't think there's anything bad about those terms per se in and of themselves, but I think sometimes they
can be used in ways. And part of why I reference this the SYS and trans essay that I wrote many years ago. It appears in my book Outspoken. I forget the complete title right now, which is but the reason why I bring that up is so sometimes what happens is that when people learn about SIS sexism, SIS people might be like, oh, I face the sexism right. If I'm a woman and I don't shave my legs,
I'm facing se sexism. And so then trans people say, yeah, but it kind of plays out differently for us, And so sometimes in order to stop people from kind of making those claims, which I think it is true that you know, a woman not shaving their legs, or if a man decides to put on a dress one day, regardless of whether they're SIS or trans, they could experience sis sexism or transphobia, but it plays out differently for
people who are actually members of that marginalized group. And then so then the marginalized group makes a distinction even sharper, and it just kind of becomes this uh, escalating situation where the language and kind of battles over it become even more intense in a recent piece, one of the most recent pieces, if you go to like my medium site where my essays as we are now is, it talks about the trans mass versus trans discourse in terms of what I call the cultural feminist doom loop, where
the doom loop refers to kind of these ideas where everyone like both sides are trying to talk about the reason why their experiences are legitimate, and then that seems as though the other sides are not legitimate, and then that kind of cascades in a way that ends up not being very productive but takes up.
A lot of energy on places like Twitter.
Yeah, and I think I think that's something we've still seen about one trillion times, variety of toxic ways. But what isn't toxic is the new third edition of Whipping Girl coming out in March with you can ask your local bookstore or pre order now. And Yeah join us tomorrow for our discussion with doctor Serrano of the Anatomy.
Of Moral Panics.
This has been a could happen here. Trans people are great, welcome to it could happen here. I'm your host, Mia Long. I am happy to be here once again with Garrison Davis and doctor Julius Serrano, the author of, among many other works, a new edition of Whipping Girl coming out in March, so kind of pivoting a bit. One of the really bleak aspects of being trans in a hostile world is that we've we've effectively been forced to become
experts in the architects of our own extermination. And I think that's a lot of what kind of the new afterward to the upcoming twenty twenty four to thirty edition
of Whipping Girl is about. So, I guess I wanted to ask, what do you see as the biggest shifts in sort of the struggle for transliberation beat between the end of the sort of Mitchfest like fighting overrom Mitchfest era that you wrote like Dream, which you sort of wrote the second the forward, the preface of the second edition, and then the stuff that's happening now is the sort of third edition is coming out.
Sure, I think a huge aspect of transactivism from my perspective of like first coming to trans communities in the nineties, a lot of nineties and Zero's era transactivism was overcoming basically people's ignorance, their lack of awareness about trans people and so and this is one of the things that you know, Whipping Girl, for example, there are a lot of bad ideas about trans people that had been circling, lating for a long time, especially with the culmination of
Janis Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire the late nineteen seventies nineteen seventy nine, I think, and that influenced a lot of people that say, places like Mishfest that had trans women exclusion policies. And I felt like during the nineties through the Zeros, we were constantly making gains that was largely due to people learning more about us and then
recognizing basically shared goals, shared things in common. I think that trans people are marginalized because of you know, mainstream assumptions about sex, gender sexuality, and those assumptions also hurt LGBTQIA plus people more broadly, they hurt you know, in a sexist world, they hurt you know, cis women, you know, all women, all people who move through the world perceived as female feminine.
So we all have this kind of shared thing that we're working.
Towards, and I feel like that was where a lot of the progress was happening. And I think what really changed in the mid two thousand tens, especially two year twenty fifteen, which is literally the year after the so called tipping point time age declaring the transgender dipping point was when it was the beginning of what I would describe as organized anti transactivism, where it wasn't just that people didn't like us or they detested us, but it
was where there was actual coordination between different groups. In the afterward, I describe there's the social conservatives and far right who have always been anti LGBTQ plus who took an even more intense focus on trans people.
There were groups that at.
The time that I wrote Whipping Girl, the term turf wasn't around, of the term gender critical wasn't around. Now we would call them gender critical or trans exclusionary feminists. They've become kind of a part of that, and both those groups working together.
In a lot of ways on policies.
I think one of the things that the average person might not know, if you're not like really in kind of highly aware of trans communities and issues, is that probably behind the scenes, the anti transparent movement has probably made more of an impact than any other group, and they are very much like the anti vax parent movement, where it's a lot of people who are from their standpoint, they're just concerned about their children, they want what's best
for their children, but they actively seek out and often get involved in you know, websites, social media forums and sometimes actual activist campaigns that buy into a lot of ideas that of children being indoctrinated into gender ideology or being infected by social contagion. And there's all this pseudoscience
that rose out of that. So I would say that that was the main difference, that there's this organized campaign, and this campaign has just grown and grown and grown to the point now where it's just this astoundingly large moral panic that the types of things that like thirty percent of people in our country believe about trans people is abhorrent.
But that's kind of how it played out.
Yeah, I mean, there's there's been a lot of a lot of very common, weird pseudoscience myths that sort of came out of that. I wanted to talk a little bit about quote unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria because that's
been all over the place. Me There's like a New York Times article talking about it, like two weeks ago, and it's I don't know, really been a fiasco, especially given how unbelievably tenuous the stuff they sort of faked or not as say fake, like unbelievably tenuous to like quote unquote study they did that got retracted.
Was Yeah, and this is something that I actually saw developing firsthand and then did research on in twenty nineteen.
So let me frame this.
I'll tell like my personal a short version of my oral history of this.
So it was around.
Twenty seventeen that I first heard the idea of children, you know, becoming trans because of social contagion. And it just seemed to come out of the blue. And it's like, what, you know, it's gender identity is not contagious. If it was, like, you know, trans people would have infected way more than like the less than one percent of us that actually exists.
Not a very effective contagious go yees rising like no, like yes, yeah, exactly.
It's like, once you start looking at it, it seems kind of ridiculous. A lot of it was because well, you know, you know, my kid was hanging around a transpersoner started watching videos on YouTube, and now they're trans.
It's like, yeah, well, maybe they.
Were hanging out with that trans friend and watching the YouTube videos because they are trans and they just hadn't come out yet, or they're just they're still figuring.
It out anyway. So in twenty eighteen.
Is when the Lisa Littmann paper on rapid on set gender dysphoria came out, and I wrote this essay at the time talking about all the things wrong with it. And then in twenty nineteen, I'm like, where did these ideas come from? And I should say that rap it onset gender dysphoria is basically transgender social contagion wrapped up in a medical sounding diagnosis.
Okay, so if you read.
The initial descriptions of transgender social contagion and the description of rapid onset gender dysphoria, they're basically the same. It's that kids are infecting one another. But the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria was meant to describe this quick infection of transness that supposedly was happening, and
sowenty nineteen, I basically did a deep dive. I'm not an investigative reporter, but that's kind of what I did into like, where the origin of this was, And basically all of this kind of came down to the website Fourth Wave Now, which often worked in coordination with two
other anti transparent websites. So Fourth Wave Now is an anti transparent website, arguably the very first one that came out, and a parent posted the idea that her child was like being infected by transgender social contagion, and it's almost
definitely clear. Now I will leave a little caveat even though I think the evidence is pretty strong that that was Lisa Marciano, who's anti trans therapist, who's very very involved in anti transactivism right now, Okay, so and like all everything points to that being her, and she also seems to have in some capacity worked with Lisa Littman. So basically the first paper about rapet on sitt gender distory that came out was not Lisa Littman's, it was
actually Lisa Marchiano's, which came out twenty seventeen. So it basically kind of grew from these anti transparent websites it really quickly within six months. Not only was Lisa Littman doing her survey, Lisa Littman being someone who has no experience in trans health ever before then just decides to go in and only survey parents from an ant from three anti transparent websites, and it gets taken very seriously
just because the media fan the flames. A lot of these groups were very excited to have something that seemed to be a case study on their side. The paper was heavily critiqued when it came out. There are now and I described this in an all nine SI have it's free if you google my name, and all the
evidence against social contagion it's in there. There are now ten papers that have tested the idea of rap it on at gender dysphoria and or social contagion and found evidence that contradicts the hypothesis.
So it's still being.
Talked about that Pamela Paul. It was an alped that looked like an article in the New York Times. It's not the first time Pamela Paul and or the New York Times has done this. They've seemed to have a particular acts to grind against trans people and putting out specious articles suggesting that gender firming care, especially for trans youth, is bad, when actually all the evidence points to the opposite.
So yeah, that's a brief discussion of rapid ons at genders, for which I think is the most popular of these kind of pseudoscientific ideas, But there are definitely others that are like about like four or five others that I could get into, and I do get into in the Afterword and in some of my other writings.
But yeah, and.
You know, I don't use the word pseudoscientific lightly. Basically, there's like science, which is where different research groups try to answer a particular question and if they all get similar answers, then that becomes okay, well, that seems to be established. Now let's work from there and ask more
questions and do more studies. Junk science is when you do kind of a crappy study that doesn't really interrogate all the possibilities, that either doesn't use controls or you know, only looks at you know, a bias sampling size or a bias sample or small sample sizes, and comes to a conclusion that.
It wants to come to. That's junk science.
And then pseudoscience is when multiple independent groups all find something different to what you're saying, but you keep touting the thing you're saying is science. And that's definitely where our gd is right now. Same thing with one of these ideas that I talked about way back early and Whipping Girl, and I've written other, you know, both academic papers and online essays about this concept of autoginophilia, which is this really old theory that just like it's kind
of like this zombie. It doesn't matter how many groups find evidence to the contrary. It jibes with what basically certain you know, gender disaffirming practitioners, practitioners and researchers and anti transactivists. It jobs with what they want to say, so it just kind of continues to be out there.
So yeah, yeah, I mean something that Garrison we were talking about before, this is the extent to which the extent to which the rapid Onset Gender is for you study is almost exactly the same study as the first anti vax study like it has it has almost exactly the same It's the same thing where you find a group of people who think their kid has autism because they were got vaccinated, or you find a group of people who think their kids are trans because social contagion
or something, and then you asked them about it, and then you report the results of the study and it's like, well, now and you report the results of you asking the people the thing that they believe, and now it's a study, and it's it's I don't know, it drives me insane the extent to which he is literally exactly the same thing.
Yeah, I mean that was something.
So I didn't know this until h Bomber guy, who's Auber who does really good investigations and video essays, and I saw his autism and so this is something that you know. I remember, I'm old enough to remember the Wakefield paper being in the news, and then you've heard lots of people debunking it, and then it's officially retracted and basically all you know, the scientific field has settled
that it's like vaccines do not cause autism. A lot of that is just like a coincidence of the time that you first start noticing that children maybe autistic is
like right around the time after they've had vaccinations. But but yeah, it wasn't the h Balmber guy video that he talks about that the Wakefield study is a study of parents, not the children, a study of the parents, and the parents already had were already suspicious of the vaccines, and so they said Oh, well, it happened right after they had these vaccines, just like rapido ont sat genders
for it happens. Oh, it happened right after. You know, one of my child's peer, their cheer peers came out as trans.
It's like, yeah, maybe they're connected. Maybe that's why they're good friends.
You know, most of my friends, you know, like when I go out and stuff like that, you know, a huge chunk of my friends, way higher than the average person, are trans people. And it's not because any of us infected each other. It's just that you have that thing in common. You also, really importantly, when you're part of a stigmatized group, being around other people who won't stigmatize you often because they're part of that same group, that can be really freeing and really supportive.
So yeah, yeah, Sy, we need to take another AD break, but when we come back there will be more. I don't know. I'm really kind of blowing the AD pivots on this one. I'm very sorry, and we are back, so I guess speaking of moral panics.
Speaking of social contagions.
Yes, moral panics are always very socially contagious.
Yeah, it's really truly, really truly, they have described their own ideology and they've projected it out to everyone else. H So, one of the things that you talk about both in the Afterword and in sext Up is about the relationship between stigma and contagion and how it's this powerful, incredibly powerful force for moobilizing moral panics. Can you explain sort of how that works?
Sure?
Yeah, so, And this was something that when I was first working on sex Up, it wasn't kind of my idea. I didn't think I was going to write about the concept of stigma that much, but it really ended up being very central the more kind.
Of research I did into it.
And so I think most of us are familiar with the idea of stigma in terms of like feeling embarrassment or being made to feel lesser than other people because of some aspect of your person, right, And there is that aspect of it that's often called like felt stigma. But then there's the way that other people view stigma, right, And so you know, people weren't necessarily stigmatized in that way themselves, they might view people who are stigmatized in
particular ways. And one aspect of stigma that I learned a lot of this from psychologists. I think it's Paul Rosen, I know the last name is Rosin, and also Carol Nemerov, and they both worked together and they had other colleagues who worked on this. But a lot of this comes from this really unconscious idea of contagion that seems to be it's like pan cultural. It's just kind of a way that people tend to view the world kind of like a lot of people and a lot of cultures
have essentialist views. Contagion is sort of along those lines. It's often described as a type of magical thinking. And the idea is if something in your mind has this contagion, if you get too close to it or you interact with it, it can like permanently corrupt or taint you.
And so it has this kind of contagious like property in people's minds, and so people often view groups who are stigmatized, especially groups that are highly stigmatized, as essentially contagious, where that stigma that they have could rub off on you.
If you get to close to them.
And so this happens like when I was really young, the idea of like if you were friends with the trans person. A lot of times people or even someone who is gay back then people be like, oh, so what are you? You must be gay too, right, It's almost as if that stigma would then like kind of migrate to you. And that's a lot of why stigmatized groups face a lot of ostracization in society. And so so this idea of contagion has been around. I think groups who are lesser stigmatized one of the ways that
that plays out is they're viewed as less contagious. So, you know, when I was really young, the idea of if you had a trans person in your life, people would really question you. Whereas by the time I came out, you could have a trans friend and that would be fine. It wouldn't necessarily be contagious, unless, of course, you were interested in them, and then that stigma would If you
were like attracted to them, then there's that stigma. And I think that stigma plays a lot into kind of dynamics of and I write about this and sex stuff that the whole idea of like fetishes and chasers and
all that. That's basically all the stigma that contagent stuff playing out in different ways anyway, So I also think that and I write about and sextup I think people view sex and stigma as really closely intertwined, such that I think people view the average person views heterosexual sex as a stigma contamination act, where the males the corrupting force and it's the woman who is corrupted by sex,
which is why you know virgins are pure. But then once a woman has sex, she's like, you know, she's become contaminated or tainted, and she has a lot of sex, then people view her as like ruined, right, So that idea is bell in there, and I think this combination of viewing sex and stigma is kind of intertwined leads to this sexual predator, the sexual predator stereotype that we're seeing play out in really strong ways with trans people
right now. But actually, if you look throughout history, like a lot of marginalized groups like deal in different ways with the sexual predator trope.
And so.
I think this really clearly plays out with the kind of what I call the groomer explosion that started in twenty twenty two, where you know, people were accusing trans people being groomors before then, but it really exploded in
twenty twenty two. And if you listen to what people are saying that they're using the word groomer, which sounds like a sexual predator thing, Like there's a real thing of grooming children that sexual abusers do, but they're using it against trans people in a way that has nothing
to do with that. But what they're talking about is corrupting, you know, so their children who are presumed to be sisgender and who often I think this is why a lot of these anti trans discourses continue to paint like trans children as being girls, right like, because then it kind of plays into these feelings of like, you know,
transgender people are the adult men corrupting young girls. It plays into a lot of people's view like messed up, messed up heteronormative views of sex and fears of you know, sexual abuse, child abuse being a very real thing that people greatly misinterpret it so that the people who are the usual perpetrators, which are usually you know, by and large, straight men who are like adults who are close or
sometimes even family members of the child in question. But like when they say grooming, they just mean corrupting or contaminating. And I think that both grooming and social contagion, I think both of these basically play off of this stigma contamination idea. Right, the kids are pure, but then transgenders like a type of coudies that if one kid becomes trans, then they spread it to the other kids. And so yeah, so I feel like it plays a really big role
not only moral panics, which amosol. Moral panics are there's some kind of corrupting force that is often attacking otherwise pure and innocent children. Sometimes it's technology, right, and so people will be like, oh, we have to ban you know, social media apps, you know, because it's hurting the children. Or it could be transgender people who are the things
we need to ban because they're corrupting the children. But I definitely think that both these ideas of stigma and contagion play a big role in the way in which moral panics, why they resonate with a lot of people, even though they don't make any rational sense if you just think about them kind of.
From a very realistic, yeah, practical point of view.
And we have to go to ads, but we'll be back in a second, and we're back.
This is something that you mentioned briefly in the afterward, and that's something that we've reported on, is how a lot of this groomer thing that started in twenty twenty two, and a whole bunch of this kind of modern wave of transphobia is mirroring a lot of the anti gay stuff from like the eighties that was pushed forward by a lot of like evangelicals meant into just like mainstream
conservatism and specifically how it functions as this. Yeah, this is sort of like moral panic and even social contagion. The way homosexuality was treated as this thing and this sort of social contingent aspect is so common now. I mean, even the way we've already alluded to Musk, even the way he mentions like the woke mind virus is exactly this thing and as it really is like moral panics
and stuff. Right, this was kind of predated by the critical race theory debacle, which then got you know, turned into the groomer thing, and now exactly and now it's even changed again. And these moral panics can have like devastating results in terms of pushing forward legislation that outlasts the actual moral panic. But the actual things themselves are
very short lived. They don't seem to have very much like staying power as as as like cultural moments, they move on so quickly, Like no one talks about critical race theory anymore. You don't even hear this sort of groomer rhetoric as often as you did two years ago, and it's being replaced by new versions. And yeah, like Mia said, the DEEI thing is the current current thing that is wrecking American society if you ask about maybe
one third of population. But yeah, how do you feel about like the life cycle of these morals and how they relate to like the social contagion aspect.
Yeah, yeah, no, And I agree with what you're also all the things you're citing that, Like, I think these are all different variations of kind of the same idea.
And I do really appreciate the idea of the woke mind virus as being kind of like the perfect like the exemplar of this and that you know, people were, you know, people were complaining about, you know, stuff being woke for a while, and you know it is usually it's often coded as something that's woke is like anti racist, or you know, is something like it's very much associated, you know, infused with like when people complain about wocism, a lot of times they're like they're racist or there
or at the very least. They have fears about kind of the corruption of pure whiteness being corrupted by increasing you know, people of color and and you know, like making game in society. Right, But the woke mind virus, because no one could really explain what woke is because then it keeps shifting and it refers to trans people or critical race theory, et cetera. Yeah, and the woke mind virus is like perfect because that's how they think.
It all works, Like it's just this thing that infects people, specially children.
And the way in which there is a recent thing just today, I think it was Ackerman, the billionaire has been involved in a lot of this DII stuff, complaining about his child being infected in college with Marxism, and Elon Musk had similar issues with his trans daughter like becoming pro marx or anti capitalists, and so they just assume that, like, no, my child was pure, but now they're infected. It's like, well, maybe there are other ideas
out there that are better than your idea. Yeah, and maybe that's.
All it is.
But yeah, so I think in all of these cases, yes, I think that there's this idea of a contagion or corruption. Often involving children, and it is. Yeah, a lot of the moral panic, a lot of the literature, like the social sciences literature, all moral panics. They often describe them as fleeting. You know, this one, the anti trans one,
isn't fleeting enough right now from my perspective. But people will tend to kind of move on, like the Satanic panic of the eighties, you know, like that was a really big deal and then all of a sudden it was just gone and no one ever talked about it again. I think the difference here is that a lot of these moral panics are really tied together with what's happening in the country more generally, with anti democratic and authoritative, you know, views coming from you know, particularly the right
wing of the country. You know, like one of the to major political parties is really pushing a lot of just generally across the board. You know, they're against feminism, they're you know, against people of color, against LGBTQ plus people, and I think it's all wrapped up into the same thing. I think that while individual parts of the moral panic may go away, they may talk about critical race theory for a bit and then shift to trans people being groomers then shift to DEI but I think a lot
of this is they're all intertwined. And actually, I think that's like the last couple of paragraphs of the afterward, I talk about that as a potentially good thing, because even though it's been a horring time to be a trans person, with all the anti trans legislation and all the anti trans news stories, all the pushes back on gender firm and care, despite all that, I think the good thing is that I think there are clear sides here, and I think, well, this wasn't true early on in
the anti trans backlash in the like late twenty tens. I think most people realize now that all these things are tied together from like kind of you know, the right wing perspective in this country is just against all these things. You know, they want a white, Christian, straight minority of people running everything about this country, and so I think the rest of us really need to recognize that and work together to defeat that.
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's a pretty good place to end on. Do Let's you have anything else that you wanted to make sure you get in.
No, I mean I feel like we touched we covered a bunch of the book past, present, and hopefully future being better than the present right now.
Hopefully hopefully hopefully.
Yes.
So okay, where can people find a the new additional Whipping Girl and be you and your work on the internet and or other places?
Sure? Yeah, so the book should be available.
So it's available for pre order right now, so you can do that through like, you know, online places. I often suggest people go to the Seal Press, my publisher, because they give lots.
Of options there.
But you can also go to your local independent bookstore and say, hey, I'd like the pre order this book and they will do that for you. So the book will be available everywhere and should be in stores starting in March. As for me, my website Juliuserando dot com, particularly if you go to the writings page there, I have like literally links to everything I've written online over the years, so it's kind of a clearinghouse of free
writings of mine. There are also links to my books there, and then if you're looking for me on social media, I'm at Julius Serrano on most platforms that I'm at.
I don't know how much stronger I can possibly recommend reading Whipping Girl. It had I don't know it had an enormous impact on me when I first read it, and yeah, it will it will. It will do good things for you if you read it too.
Yeah, and it's all still incredibly relevant. Like I was breezing through like fifty pages just to refresh my memory this morning, and I'm like, oh wow, so many of the like intercommunity trans discourses that are constantly happening have already been addressed, like twenty years ago, so many of like I all the time I spend trying to write about like trans misogyny of like, oh I I forgot, this is already like all like written down, Like I
spent so long writing about the Daily Wire movie and like, oh this is hardly all this work has already been done.
I can just like stop.
Oh man, Yeah, cannot cannot recommend enough.
Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for coming on.
Yeah, thank you all for the kind words. Yeah, thank you for having me, and uh it was great and thanks for all you do too.
Oh, thank you.
Welcome back to it could happen here, your favorite podcast for a daily dose of dystopia. I am once again you're a guest host, Molly Conger. Today I'm talking to a good friend of mine in one of the brilliant minds behind the melting of Charlottesville's Robert E. Lee statue, Doctor Julane Schmidt, is going to tell us a little bit about the history of the statue, from its planning and placement to its current state, melted into ingots in
an undisclosed location. I'm joined today by doctor Julane Schmidt, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, the director of the Memory Project at the University of Virginia's Karsh Institute of Democracy, and a steering committee member at the Swords in da Plowshare's project. As both a scholar and an activist, doctor Schmidt has been a leading voice in the Charlottesville community for racial justice and against
the Confederate monuments that once stood here. The Swords into Plasher's project announced back in October that they had successfully dismantled and melted down the bronze statue of Robert E. Lee that once loomed over the Market Street Park and downtown Charlottesville. Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about the past, present, and future of that hunk of bronze.
Thanks for having me Mollie, it's great to great to talk with you about this.
I don't think i've called you Professor Schmidt since two thousand and eight, when I took one of your classes.
It's been a while. It's been a while. Yeah, yeah. Now we just call each other comrades, you know, because we're out there on the streets and in city council and you know, doing the things.
So before we get to the final fate of that melted bronze, I want to ground this in the history of that particular object. Right, This isn't just any Confederate monument. This is the statue that made Charlottesville household name, the statue that brought unite the right here, the statue that killed someone. It's a statue that had history in that park for a century before it came down, and before
it was removed. You led some really incredible walking tours of the downtown parks to try to tell the story of the way those statues existed in those spaces for generations, why they were there, what they meant, what impact they had on the landscape and the people in the community. I think I went on about a dozen of those walking tours, and I learned something new every single time.
So can you talk a little bit about the political atmosphere in nineteen twenty four when that statue first went up.
Yeah, well it should, you know, just kind of to back up a little bit, like the history of Charlottesville, Virginia. At around the time of the Civil War, over half of the population of the local population was enslaved in Charlottesville and surrounding Albmarle County, and black people were actually the majority of the population of Charlottesville until about eighteen ninety and then it has been on this steady decline
you know, since then. So to think about it, if you look at the history of reconstruction in charlott Pottsville, black people came out and registered to vote and got politically organized very quickly in the eighteen sixties already and were very influential in electing a black delegate from Charlottesville
to go to the Constitutional Convention. This is when in order to rejoin the Union, all of the former Confederate states had to get their state constitutions up to snuff, and so Virginia, as did the other former Confederate states, you know, had a constitutional convention. In our delegate from Charlottesville was James T. S.
Taylor.
He was a black man from Charlottesville. He'd been in the United States Colored Troops, and he had a coalition had coalesced around him of some progressive whites or savvy whites, you know that through their lot with him and former enslaved people and went and you know, and represented us and put you know, Charlottesville in the mix for starting a new state constitution in Virginia, for finally getting public schools.
You know, that's one thing that we can think, you know, all those reconstruction governments around the South, you know, forgetting us those public schools that we wouldn't have otherwise had that we didn't have before.
You know.
So I say all that backdrop that if you read the historical sources of the time during reconstruction and post reconstruction in Charlottesville, the white elites were quite upset with the state of affairs that had emerged after the Civil War in which formerly enslaved people were in leadership competitian
political leadership, you know. And so when you look at the history of you know, then finally as as the new you know, there was a reconstruction era constitution that started all those wonderful things such as you know, public schools, you know, and voting rights for black men, you know.
But then as the Neil Confederates or their Confederate sympathizers start to get the upper hand again at the end of reconstruction, and in Virginia that's you know, more or less in the in the eighteen eighties, you know, and then there's this steady imposition of Jim Crow, you know, that's going into you know, in Richmond they put in their giant General Lee statue in eighteen ninety, you know there, and then in nineteen oh two there's finally there was
this final push that pushed black people out of political office in Virginia, and in nineteen oh two, a new Jim Crow state Constitution was put into effect in nineteen oh two. And so you have to when you think about all of these statues being installed, we have to see it as this it's really resentment politics, you know, that's come about. That is if you look at these speeches that are delivered at the installation ceremonies of these statues.
And this is where I'm getting to our General Lee statue in Charlottesville specifically with this, you go back and look at those at the occasion for the day and these these installation ceremonies, they were a time for the neo Confederate organizations, the hosting organizations in our case, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the United Confederate Veterans, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Okay, we're the hosts you know for this event. And this is a two or
three day occasion. So there's like delegations coming in from all over the state, you know, and you know there's this build up you know, in the days ahead, you know, leading up to the installation. This was in May of nineteen twenty four, you know, so you see, oh, this delegation has arrived from Roanoak and now the governor is coming in and now this and now you know, and so you know, the town is just a twitter. You know that this that they are hosting the statewide reunion
of the United Confederate Veterans. And there hardly are anymore at this time. They're you know, quite elderly at this point. So there, you know, there's why this you know, uh celebration, and this is also an annual meeting of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And so the fact that little Charlottesville is hosting a statewide reunion, you know, of the state wide of all the chapters you know, of these neo
Confederate veterans is a big deal. And then and then you know they're doing this, you know, and within this context is when the unveiling of this statue is occurring, you see. And so it's this, it's this whole build up of kind of lost cause nostalgia, which which is occurring. And in the speeches at the Lee statue unveiling ceremony, it's very instructive to listen to what is being said.
You know.
You have, of course, you know, kind of local dignitaries and statewide you know dignitaries are there. The the national Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is there. He gives a speech. He was also a clansman, you know. You know, so this says something there that you know, nineteen twenties Charlottesville, you know, elites were not averse to rubbing shoulders with a known klansman, you know, who had
been invited to give a speech. You know, other invited guests one was a minister who was a graduate of the University of Virginia, and it was you know, just kind of revealing, you know what he said in his in his speech, you know, when he was talking about he said that that the days of reconstruction were worse than war.
You know.
You know, so this right exactly, Yeah, does beg the question, and that yeah, goes without saying, of course, that this is you know, almost exclusively a white audience and you know, the white school kids. School has been canceled for the day, the university as classes you know, canceled for the day, and you know, the businesses are closed. I mean, this is just you know, quite the community event that's going on.
So yeah, so reconstruction was worse than or you know, we're celebrating today, you know, the you know, the spirit of lead, the regeneration, you know, of our values, and you know, there's just a lot of of conversation in these in these inaugurations, ceremonies, you know, for the unveiling of these statues that harken to rebirth and regeneration and and you know, and also you know kind of recalling you know, the days of old, you know, and the
and the values. You know of our veterans, you know who are now you know of course in dwindling number,
you know, these Confederate veterans who are there. And so this and as I said, there's been this whole build up you know, for days and days, you know, I mean, of course for the planning committee, this has been going on for weeks and months, you know, the fundraising and you know, reserving you know blocks you know at the hotels and you know, and all guest houses and all this kind of thing, you know, banquet halls, et cetera.
You know. But it's it's also revealing that this installation ceremony for the statue, it is book ended with clan activity and uptick in clan activity before and after the installation ceremony. And why while we don't have well we do know, but you know one one clansman who you know, the the Commander Lee, no relation to the General Lee. But uh but the president and sons sons of the
Confederate Veterans, you know. But but to just see all of this uptick in lost cause nostalgia and then these these acts of intimidation of you know, clan rallies, clan posters that were you know, put flyers around town, you know, uh, and this sort of thing. It just it they're the atmosphere of intimidation. You know that this must have been
for black residents you know of the time. Uh, you know, it just it really gives you pause, you know, just just seeing how public space was commandeered, you know by these people, these Neil Confederates, you know, to kind of relive what they considered, you know, kind of the glory days you know, of the nation, you know, and the kind of values to which they want to return, you know,
and this sort of thing. So yeah, so this is going on, you know in the nineteen twenties, as you know, Charlottesville is you know, locked into Jim Crow by then, you know, and we're twenty two years into that Jim Crow State Constitution. You know, this is the mail u you know, in which in which this is taking place.
Now.
Of course, Black people have their own institutions, you know that they've founded, namely churches, the Jefferson School, African American what's now the African American Heritage Center, but the Jefferson School, which was a school for black children, and the founding of the High School of a Black High School. So this was you know, the the black community had its own nodes of organizational strength, you know, and goings on that were happening even as you know, there were these
pressures going on with the consolidation of Jim Crow. Should also mention that, you know, at this at around the same time in the spring of nineteen twenty four was the passage of the Virginia Racial Integrity Act. And this was the kind of the codification of the so called one Drop Rule, which designated anyone with a perceived ad mixture of African American or Native American ancestry to be designated as colored, you know, and kind of bifurcating the
population of Virginia into two categories, white or colored. And so this is also occurring, you know, in nineteen twenty four.
There's a very you know, there's very much of a legal you know, kind of strengthening, you know of in terms of the tools that are being used to separate the races quote unquote you know, and what we're seeing then in the parks, you know, in our public spaces were you know, kind of designating what we're well not public spaces, I mean, they were you know, kind of designated you know, almost shrine like you know as white spaces, you know, and that this is it's a kind of
broadcasting of who's in charge, is what's going on?
Right?
I think you know today the sons of Confederate Veterans very much separate themselves from the clan, right, there were a heritage organization. We're not the clan, but you were talking about this sort of clan activity leading up to the unveiling of the statue, and its actually just looking back this morning at some of the archival newspapers from
that week. And so when the day the statue was placed, you know, a few weeks before the unveiling, it was still covered, it was shrouded, you know, it's leading up to the big day. So that in the front page of the Daily Progress the day that the statue was put in the park, that little snippet appears in the
newspaper right next to a headline about cross burning. These things are happening on at the same time, right, And there was a big clan march through town that week, and I think one of the it's easy to forget that these historical moments were experienced by people whose words that we still have, like people who were living in
this moment. I think one of one moment in your historical tour that really has stuck with me all these years is an anecdote about John West, who is for the listener as a man who was born into slavery and this era was one of the largest black landowners in the area, was a successful businessman. And when the clan marched by that week, you know, they're wearing their hoods, you don't know who they are. It's you know, it's mysterious,
it's intimidating. But he knew who every single clansman was because he was their barber, and he recognized their shoes. And that just feels so intimate to me, right that he's he's looking at the shoes of these men that he knows, and then tomorrow they're going to come in for a shaven a haircut and he has to say, you know, yes, sir, thank you, sir.
That's right, that's right. And so if you can just imagine, like,
you know, and here you know John West. You know, so here's one of the most you know, influential Black residents of Charlottesville at that time, and he has to live Yeah, in this you know that there's this this atmosphere of intimidation that you that, yeah, his clients are coming in, you know, they're coming in every ten days or fourteen days to get a get a trim, get a you know, touch up, you know here and there, and yeah, and and he knows that these you know
that that these are you know, the folks who are kind of maintaining you know that this this public order, you know that is so uh you know that you know,
you better not step out of line. And so just to have one's public space, you know, be demarcated, you know, in such a demonstrative way, you know, in a monumental you know literally yeah exactly is it really illustrates what's going on, you know, and even in you know, relationships like that, you know that are so like you know, intimate a barber and a client, you know, and knowing you know, what your clients are up to, you know, and how you better stay in line.
You know.
It's scary.
That's what that statue was here right for almost a century, So skipping ahead that century right when the statue finally came down in twenty twenty one, so not too long ago, right, So the city solicited proposals for what was to be done with it. Right, A lot of cities put them into storage or moved them to battlefields or museums didn't want them. People say, well, why can't it go to a music museums didn't want it, right.
Yeah, So because of my I get pulled in on a lot of different statue statue related consultations, let's put it that way. And I was on the George Rogers Clark Committee at the University of Virginia when the university was trying to decide what to do with a very hideous I called it the Genocide Trophy. It was a statue of the George Rogers Clark, the conqueror of the Northwest. It literally said that on the facade, you know. And
so we were in consultation with native tribes. We were contacting the various tribal nations who suffered the onslaught of
the so called Northwest Campaign. So these tribes that are in what is now Illinois and Ohio, et cetera, you know, and just asking them, you know, would you like to kind of weigh in, you know, on this, and you know, really sad, genocide is a real thing some folks who are just no longer there, you know, or you know were you know, became such a remnant, you know, as they were so decimated that you know, they kind of you know morphed into you know, other tribes others were
you know, went on you know, later on to you know, to uh, Oklahoma or other places. You know, just dispersal, you know, really was you know. You know, so we're in this you know, kind of year long process trying to figure out what to do with UVa's own statue there, you know, also a gift of Paul Goodlow McIntyre, you know, the same donor who gave the least statue to the city, gave this s. George Rogers Clark statue to the university.
And so in doing that committee work, we made appointments with all the big players, all the you know, and here we are, We're from the University of Virginia, you know, and we've got this you know, big big monument here, you know, the Smithsonian, the you know, and you know we talked to not about this one, but in another instance, talk to you know, the Civil War Museum's battlefields, you know, I mean, we contacted all the responsible you know, the
folks who are going to curate this in a responsible way, you know, because you know that's it is a monumental work of art. You know, it has stood here for a century. It does have historical value of a sort, you know. And I mean and you know, and as someone who has you know, teaches history and research's history, that's my that's my inclination. My initial inclination is, oh, yeah, well we should preserve I mean, that's you know, kind of where I go to. But the problem is it's
a very practical one. This is a material object that is taking up space, literal and figurative space in the world.
It's six six thousand pounds.
Yeah, yeah, the very materiality of it. It is taking up space, and you you have to figure out what space is it going to inhabit. This is a very practical question. If it's not in your park anymore, where's it going to be. We contacted all these museums, you know, and in several you know, different consultations I've been a part of where we've been trying to get rid of statues. Nobody wants them, nobody responsible wants them. And you know, and even if they did have an inclination to want
to just the expense of it. You know, who wants to reinforce their floors to put a you know, century old, you know, artistically not exemplary, you know, monument in it, you know, and then care for I mean, museums have very limited budgets. They're nonprofit organizations. Why should they be
expending all this energy? I love the My my colleague Aaron Thompson from John Jay College and Cuney, you know, she's an art crime professor, and she said, you know, she talked with somebody at the Smithsonian who said something to the effect that, you know, we're not America's attic for racist art. You know, that's that's not our role. It's like, you know, it kind of does throw back the responsibility to individual communities too. It's like, you know, you have a part to play in this.
You know.
And so anyway, yeah, so we tried to do the responsible thing. We contacted all the responsible actors out there. They don't want them, and so then the question becomes, Okay, the city also doesn't want it sitting on its back lot for forever in perpetuity. You know, they've got things going, you know, they've got equipment there, They've got things that you know, this shouldn't be sitting there.
Where is it going to go?
Again? This is the material object that exists in the world. It is a problem, you know, like what physical space is it going to occupy? We're just such brute practicality here, and I don't think people quite get what it means to deal with this. And the only people who want it are the very people who shouldn't have it, you know, who want to take this object that's caused us so much pain and to make a shrine out of it, you know, that would continue to attract bad actors, you know,
and that it would you know. And I'm a religious studies scholar, so when I use I don't use the word ran lightly. I know what kinds of activities you know, uh, these engender you know, and the sorts of emotions that are you know evoked, you know, in the ceremonies around you know, objects that are that are held to be sacred. You know that that attract you know, kind of devotees, you know, and so you really have to think about what does it mean to be a responsible ethical actor?
You know.
It's like now we're we're in grown up world now, it's like, okay, exactly want you know, it's like there is a material object, where are we going to put it? It's like have an adjunct car, what do you do with it? You just let it sit in your driveway and make your neighbors mad at you.
Right, And these Confederate statues are sort of the the the junk cars of the Lost Cause, right, because they're not rare, right, like, you know, especially right after Unite the Right, a bunch of cities, all of a sudden, we're like, we got to get rid of these things. And so suddenly the market is flooded with Confederate statues. Where are you going to put them?
That's right at that and that is the question. And they are And I've used this this metaphor before, the the metaphor of toxic waste. You know, it's not responsible to say, oh, we want to get rid of our toxic trash here and then ship it down the road to the next town and say, okay, well we're done
with that. That's not responsible to make that next town have to deal, you know, or maybe there maybe there were some people in that town that wanted it, you know, but that's not fair to the other people to have to breathe in that air and it brings that water that's that's poisoned by this. That's not that's not being responsible, you know what I mean. So it really is an ethical question, you know, what what space these toxic objects are going to inhabit. And so we were unable to
find any responsible actors who would take this on. And so then it kind of it's like, well, I guess it's kind of on us. We have to you know, like the Smithsonian. It's like, we're not the attic for your racist trash.
You know.
It's like it's really it's it's on us. It's on communities to figure this out, you know. And if there isn't, uh, you know, some sort of organization that can responsibly curate this, you know, and care for it, then you know, we really need to think about it. And in the case of this Lee statue, of Charlottesville's Lee statue, you know, there are about I think there are about sixteen monuments of Lee, like kind of equestrian monuments of this sort,
you know, in the country. I can say with confidence that all of the others are of better quality. In Charlottesville.
That's it's such an important point, right because this is, you know, an important historical piece of art. And that's true of some of them. Some of them are legitimate pieces of but this one is not.
No.
I mean, it was like he was smuggling hams in his sleeves.
Oh well yeah, so yeah, it's it's terrible. It's really a case The Lee statue from Charlottesville is really a case of too many chefs spoiled the soup. You know, they the guy, you know, they the original sculptor, Schradie, you know, was commissioned to do this, this this work, and he got behind on the commission because he was finishing another another work of his, which is generally regarded as his magnum opus, which is a monument to General Grant.
I just love that. It's just sorry you got to wait and working on my best piece.
Ready finished a beautiful statue of Grant.
And then he died, And then he died. He died, and and supposedly it might be apocryphal. I kind of like this tale that supposedly when he's on his deathbed TRD, he's on his death bending and he's still thinking about that unfinished lead. Probably he's like, oh, mind the you know, mind the cloth, you know, keep.
It damp, you know, keeps the plaster wet, right.
Yes, keep the plaster. He'd made a maquette, he'd made a model, play model of the Lee statue for Charlottesville for that next commission, the unfinished commission. And he dies and so now it's like, well, you know, this is a problem, you know, for for the philanthropist and the community or the community leaders of Charlesville who wanted this Lee statue. So they find they find a ringer, you know,
this young guy, you know, Leolntelly. Interesting, you know, Italian immigrant in the twenties, which is kind of interesting, you know when you think about, you know, all the hate that was being.
Whipped before it towns were white, right, that was.
Before Italians were white. But he was, yeah, kind of direct from Italy and from a sculpting background. So maybe they made a little exception for him, I don't know. Anyway, so this young guy, you know, Leo Lintell, he takes over and you know, he probably need a little more practice.
I don't know.
It just didn't turn out well.
It went to the Lego tail on traveler like a chunky No.
It's just yeah, there was.
We had a sculptor from around here who himself works in bronze and dusk monumental work, and he kind of just kind of came and looked at it and he was just you know, just everything's out of proportion. The gauntlets on the glove are too thick, you know, the sword is too long, the tail is too fat, I mean in his head. Yeah, that Lee's head on top of his shoulders. It just looks like, you know, kind of like almost like Transformer toy or something. I mean,
it's just really weird, you know, proportions. It's just it just really was not very well executed because apparently the maquette, the model that had been made, just was completely destroyed. The model, the original model by Schrady, was completely turned to dust, and so Lintelly, the successor sculptor, had to work from the drawings that that that remained, you know, and you know, it just didn't didn't really go very well.
And here's the thing that even the Boosters at the time, that is, you know, the folks that were planning the in for the installation of the leaf statue in the nineteen twenties themselves did not think it was very well executed. We have diary entries from the Master of Ceremonies of the installation ceremony, RTW Duke's and he says, he writes in it's like day or two before the installation, he says, went on a walk, you know tonight, you know, went by the park, you know, saw the Lea statue.
I do not like it me either.
This is the guy who's please damn see this unveiling ceremony in you know, the next day or two.
How embarrassing.
Yeah, and there's op eds even, you know. Also they're saying like wow, you know, that just doesn't look good at all, you know. So and these are the these are the support these are the Neo Confederates, the one it there. And they've they've noticed that too many cooks
spoiled the soup, you know. And then apparently the murmurs were sufficient that one of the speakers at the installation ceremony, I can harken back to that, you know, at the Lee installation ceremony, you know, I guess felt compelled to address the complaints that were apparently circulating. And he said, you know, I'm talking about the proportionality problem that I mentioned before, that just so many it's just very disjointed, you know, so many parts of the of the monument
are out of proportion to other parts. And so this speaker at the installation ceremony said, you know, there are those who say that the pedestal you know, upon which the Lee statue is, you know, is set, is too small, But I say the world itself is too small a pedestal for general Lee.
Just like oh yeah, good say it's it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean the whole thing, the plinth was too small, the statue was too large for that tiny park. It just it was never a good spot for him.
It was never a good spot. So anyway, all that is to say, it's a very it's a very poor work of art, just just an aesthetic.
I mean.
And I'm not one that wants to remove, you know, kind of any moral considerations from aesthetic. There are some people philosophers who want to parse that out and this sort of thing. But even if you believe you could do that, which I do not, you know, it's just really a not It's like having a high school art project. A C I give it a c it's a high school art project.
That it's not worth saving, right, No, Like even if it had not been this sort of lightning rod in our community, right that, even if this were a you know, a beautiful piece of art that was worth saving, I
don't know, I don't know. There's there's two separate concerns, right, Like, it's not beautiful enough to put into a museum regardless, but then also preserving this object in any capacity just allows it to sort of continue to be this lightning rod, like you know, for it's sort of asking about, well, what's the problem with recontextualization. Why can't you just put it somewhere else? And I think that's sort of a
broader conversation about these statues in general. But for our statue, for that Robert E. Lee statue, right that it had become sort of a pilgrimage site for vigilanti violence.
Oh yeah, And I don't know that like just out for the listeners in radio land, just for folks out there listening that even after the twenty seventeen Unite the Right rally, this statue stood for another four years in our part while we had to wrestle through legal issues legislative and judicial entanglements that prevented Charlottesville from removing that statue even after the Unite the Right rally, and during that time, that four year interim. It's crazy to think
about it, Huh. For ye that for four years after Unite the Riot, it was still there.
Like this statue made everyone else realize they needed to get rid of theirs. But because of state law and these lawsuits, we were still stuck with ours.
Charlottesville was still stuck with it. And there were and these you know, different groups, some of the same constituencies that had attended Unite the Right continued to come and make their pilgrimages to the Lee statue and to antagonize community members by putting up their propaganda near the statues and even uh you know, going to the fourth you know, the the crash site on Fourth Street where a neo Nazi drove his car you know, into a crowd of
of Charlottesville counter protesters and killed community member Heather Hire. These these uh fascists you know, who would make their pilgrimage to Charlottesville, would make sure and still do upon occasion, uh go to Fourth Street and put up their propaganda there. As well as if to kind of further antagonize the community out of sight of our trauma, you know, And so it was very clear that this statue would just wherever it would be, it would continue to be a
beacon for these people. And so really it was just kind of a question of responsibility. Knowing this, knowing that no responsible historical or artistic institution has the capacity or desire to take it in, what does one do with it? And that it's not an exemplary piece of art. There are fifteen other monuments that are of better quality of lee.
We're not going to forget him, you know, if this particular specimen goes missing, and the way we see it, we're doing the art world a favor because as I've said, it was really you know, not a very good, well
executed piece of art. So, you know, with in considering all of that, you know, in seeing in prior removals, for instance, the Johnny reb the Courthouse Confederate soldier statue was removed, and there was kind of no plan in place about where it would go, and so it ended up, you know, getting sent to a battlefield that is maintained by a group of Confederate leading folks that seemed to
favor kind of lost cause interpretations of the war. So we'd seen that happen already the year before in twenty twenty, that when there isn't a plan, it's one thing to remove it, but then where does it go? Again, this is a physical object that exists in space, in physical space, where is this material object going to go? If you don't have a plan, then bad things can happen.
The least resistance the past, the least resistance is just if someone says I will pay to move this, and the city is paying to store it, then that's an easy answer and you can't let that.
Many take it, right, And so that that went. So when the County Aldmarle County removed the Johnny reb statue, the Confederate soldier statue from in front of the courthouse, and I think that was September of twenty twenty, and we saw how quickly that got sent to this battle field that is, you know, maintained by these you know, kind of lost cause type folks. That's when Andrea Douglas and I and Andrea Douglas is the director of the
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center here in Charlottesville. We said, you know, we still do not have the legal authority to remove Charlottesville's Lee statue, but we anticipated that that perhaps, you know, in the in the coming year, we might I said, we need to start making plans now about what can have, what where the statue should go after its removal, because otherwise, the same thing that happened to this Johnny reb to this Confederate Soldier statue just kind
of getting sent down the road, you know, to whatever entity organization that wants it, the same thing's going to happen. And we need to have a plan in place in order to kind of capture that so that so that it doesn't just kind of continue to circulate to do harm.
So that was our motivation. So we kind of, you know, in September of twenty twenty, that's when we really you know, put the pedal to the metal on starting the planning of this, you know, and we and mind you, we did not even get permission until I think it was April the first of twenty twenty one, when finally the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of the City of Charlottesville in our efforts to remove the lea statue.
You know.
So this was you know, six seven months before we even knew if we if we could do this, but we said, let's start making plans. And so we started having these kinds of conversations you know, with battlefields, with museums, with foundries, you know, just you know, just learning, you know, kind of the nuts and bolts, you know, what are the possibilities here? And it turns out it's very complicated.
Right, So, I know there'd been sort of jokes around that it was going back over some of the public discourse over the years that we've been sort of joking as a community for years like why don't we just melt it? Why don't we just melt it?
Yeah?
But when did that become a real idea? Like when did it? When did that sort of coalesce into something that felt possible?
I think, you know, in September twenty twenty, I think when the Johnny reb statue was removed and it went on, you know to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefield Foundation, you know, and they have this horrible plaque that they're putting up that talks about how these men died for Virginia, you know, and It's like they died for thirty eight percent of Virginian's were enslaved at that time, So how are you saying that they died for Virginia. Also, this is from
Alba Marle County. The majority of people here were enslaved. So did how did the people supposedly represented by this statue die for Virginia fight for Virginia?
You know what I mean?
So we just like that was so disturbing, you know, in September of twenty twenty, when that happened, that's that's really when I just really started working in Earnest, you know, calling foundries.
So the idea was always melting.
I mean, it wasn't until then because see this is funny. When this whole controversy started in twenty sixteen, when Ziona Bryant brought up her petition, you know, to consider removing these statues. The position of the activist then was just move the statue. Go back and look right at the signs and at the T shirts and it says hashtag move the statue. We just wanted it move. Just take it from the Central Park and put it out in McIntyre Park where there's more space. Don't have it downtown.
I mean that was kind of like that was the edgy, you know, and then they should have taken the opportunity back then.
See right, exactly that was the opening bid, and you should have took it.
You know.
Just these that offers not on the table anymore.
Yeah, exactly that that.
That would have been good. It would be in Martin mctre part on the outskirts of town. So and so, you know, when the when you know, the city appointed this Blue Ribbon Commission on Race Memorials in Public Spaces to have a series of public meetings to hear from community members what they wanted to have happened with the statues. Should they be removed, should you know, what should happen?
And you know, and this Blue Ribbon Commission, you know, hands their final report to city council, you know, and then city council takes a vote, you know, Charlottesville City Council in February of twenty seventeen, and surprising many people, not some of us who were in the know, but one of the council members said, yes, I would like to propose a resolution to remove the lead, not just move it, not just recontextualize it, because that's you know,
if you go back and read that report, it's actually fairly there's a couple of different suggests like well you could move it, or you could just do this, and you know, and city council woman, you know, Christian Zaka, said, I would you know, make a motion to have it removed completely, you know. So it's like, whoa, Okay, we're
you know, we're making steps, you know. So it was it was about, you know, it was getting from move from move the statue to remove the statue, as in take it away, you know, And then it really wasn't
until after all the strife, you know. I mean, I think there were some people all along who's you know, would say tongue and she go, oh, we should just melt it down, you know, or you know, she'd you know, but but the thought it was just so you know, talk about there's much talk of overton windows these days.
You know, but they're just they're just.
When that was being said, it was always in a kind of jocular manner like oh, of course that could never be but or we should melt it down. It was this kind of offhand right, It wasn't serious because how could that ever be, right, I mean that right, Really that was behind. But what it takes is somebody taking that seriously and like going through the practical steps of what would that look like? And so that's what
I started doing in September twenty twenty. It's like, I keep hearing people say that they want it melted down.
What would that look like?
What do you like physically do that?
How would this happen? I'm a humanities person. This was breaking my brain learning about alloys and you know, compositions.
Here it becomes an engineering problem.
It really did. Yeah, and I did. I consulted with you know, metallurgist engineers, you know, folks at various foundries you know, to to you know, consulting and say, well, you have to do this, you have to you know, consider that. I mean so yeah, it was really in the fall of twenty twenty when you know, kind of in Earnest started having conversations, you know, with with foundrymen and with engineers, with folks that work in bronze casting, you know. But most of the time people didn't want
to talk to us. Right when they found out, oh you want to do something with this with the staff, Oh no, they just you know, they were they didn't want to be involved in any controversy, or we would get someone who was on board with it, Yes, we're going to do it. And then for instance, you know, the company got sold and the new owners were like want nothing to do with it, you know, or they won't call us back anymore, or no, or you know,
I mean just things just kept coming up. So it was hard to find anyone who would just engage in
a serious way about the questions. And then even when you could, it was kind of like, you know, you'd get somebody for a little bit, and then it was like, you know, like the fisher, It's like the fish would swim away, you know, kind of I don't know it just you know, So it was it was a lot of different conversations with a lot of different people, you know, along the way to figure out like what are the you know, literal and figurative nuts and bolts of doing this.
You know, I learned a lot, you know about standard width of trailers eight and a half feet did you know that?
Yeah?
Eight half feet yep, right right, you know, and you know fifty three feet long, and you know, and you know, kind of what kind of what's the hauling capacity, what's the payload? You know, how do you balance the load? You know, what is duneage? I mean you're just like all these things, you know that that just the very practical steps that one has to take to melt a statue.
And so it seems like, you know, the conclusion that you reached was this object can't keep existing because the fact that it does exist will always be a problem. So that this is the decision was made that it needed to be destroyed. But what was sort of the process of thinking through what do we do with it now?
Right?
Like, what is this sort of the vision behind not just yeah, you know, taking the statue down and putting up a different piece of public art, but a different piece of p look art that is physically repurposed. Right that you've you've remediated this material, right right?
Yeah, well we we prefer the word transformed, you know, to to destroyed or or I mean it is it is, you know, definitely, it is you know kind of morphing the material is taking the materials, you know, these raw materials and you know, transforming them into kind of usable you know, kind of ingots, brick sized, you know, pieces of bronze. So that they can be made into something new. It's not that we hate art. We want art, right.
You know doctor Douglas's her background is in art, right.
Yes, doctor Douglas is an art historian, exact. I mean, we are the two most unlikely people to be in charge of such a project. I mean, I'm a religious study scholar. It's like I've spent years of my life, you know, studying you know, how people, you know, make make sacred values, and specifically how they gather around material objects that they regard.
I don't think that's unlikely at all, right, that this was an object of veneration for a very harmful cause.
I mean I seventeen years, you know, researching a book about a very beloved four hundred year old effigy of the Virgin Mary in Cuba. You can see my book up here. Well, there's a Cuban fly. This right here is my book.
I'm going over too far.
Yeah, I see the Virgin Mary back there.
Yeah. Anyway, so I yeah, so that's that's my book up here. Yeah, right here, this is my book, Kachita's Streets. I mean, if somebody, oh, and you know, and this has happened before. There have been folks, you know iconoclass. If somebody went and destroyed her image there in that shrine in Cuba, I would be obsensed. I would just I would be beside myself. I mean it'd be like somebody killed you know, a family member. I mean, be on the next plane to get you know, you have
to console people. I mean a four hundred year old you know, it would just be terrible. You know, it doesn't have all the hate wrapped into it that these you know, statues do in this sort of thing. So what I'm saying is I understand that people have very tender feelings toward these material objects that they have had experiences around them that have bound them together. Religiare you know the binding that's the original you know root Latin root of religion. You know, it is to bind, you know.
I get that. And so yeah, I'm not a reflexive iconoclast. You know, I'm a Catholic. I'm a you know, I'm also a you know, participate in these African inspired religious practices and stuff that you know that put a lot of you know, emphasis upon you know, sacred material objects. So I am kind of I mean, it is kind of weird that me I would be involved in this, and that, you know, and doctor Douglas, you know, but it's precisely because we know the power of these things,
and the we're eyewitnesses to what happened here. You know that we know the power of it, and so how to be responsible for it, and so to take something like that that was so harmful and to be able to use its materials to transform them and to make something that's meaningful and beautiful and that expresses our community's values and that includes people rather than kind of sets people apart, you know, or kind of you know, symbolizing moments in our history where you know, over half the
local population was completely debased, you know. To be able to take the material that that was part of that and transform it into something else, it's just it's just seemed like it just has so much potential, you know. And and and then the name of the project is Swords into Plowshares, which comes from a verse from the off at Isaiah that they shall turn their swords into plowshares,
they shall turn their their spears into pruning hooks. So we'll take these implements of destruction and of violence, and we will transform them into instruments of of to cultivate you know, sustenance you know, uh, you know, you know, nutrients you know, for a community. I mean it just you know, to just to just really transform it, you know, from from something so ugly you know, into something beautiful, you know. And we just thought, you know, let's let's
take the chance. Let's try and do this. Let's do something that's never been done before, because none of these statues have ever been like I don't think ever completely the Confederate ones anyway, have ever been completely destroyed, you know, like this. Most of them are just in storage somewhere. And we said, let's let's take this chance to transform.
Let's be responsible first of all, and not send our talks waist down the road to another community, and let's try to do something transformative, you know, for our community. And maybe this can also move the needle, you know, in a national and international conversation about art and the reparative values you know, potential reparative values of art you know, and community building, you know, and so in our you know,
we're the swords into Plowsher's project. We're hoping to put out a request for proposals, you know, to artists this year in twenty twenty four, which is the one hundredth
anniversary of when the Least statue was installed. You know, ideally, you know, fingers crossed, if you know, it would be wonderful if we could have a completed statue in twenty twenty seven, which would be the ten year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally, you know, to to you know, to have something else to give back to our community. You know, that's a blasting value that, you know, and
for us, it's important that we write our narrative. There were people who attacked us, you know, who tried to kind of imprint on us, you know, some sort of narrative about what we were about. And it also kind of you know, reverberated in a you know, national and international way. And we're really taking control of the narrative here. We're saying, you know, we we are going to say
who we are and we're going to express that. You know, and we do value art, you know, we want it to be an art that reflects our values.
Right.
I think this is a recognition that art does have power. It had the power to harm, It had the power to to bring great harm to this community. But it was you know, that art was harming people just by existing in that space, even before you unite the right. And now those same materials have hopefully the power to bring some repair. Yeah, So it wasn't it wasn't just the practical you know, I think you were saying. It started out a sort of a practical question is what
do you do with this large object? And so the practical answer is you reduce its size, you melt it down, You remove it, and you melt it down. But it's not just practical, right, there is there is incredible symbolic value in using that material, that metal, right. I think in some of the articles you all talked about as it was melting there were impurities in the metal. So as this statue is being melted down, the impurities are being extracted from it. It's being purified, and now it
can be repurposed. That's really beautiful, Yeah it is.
Yeah, the slag getting pulled off the top and just yeah, just it was incredible, you know, to see for sure.
And so at this stage you guys are soliciting community input. I think there's a sort of a community survey out about sort of what parks people frequent, how they're using the parks, how they're engaging with the parks, and you said this year there'll be a request for proposals for artists to sort of put forth their vision for this bronze, right.
And this is it's nice because this is all coinciding with the city if Charlotteville has for some time wanted to do a renovation of of its downtown park. So this and this has been a long time coming that there are you know, sedated, you know, all of this drama with the with the statues, but it's just really a nice opportunity to just kind of for the community to just kind of take stock. It's like, Okay, we're you know, we're whatever, you know, going on seven years
out from Unite the Right. You know, we're eight years out from you know, Zionist initial petition. You know, you know this this statue has been you know taken away, it has been melted, and it just feels like a literal and figurative clearing of the land. You know, it just feels like, you know, people have asked, you know sometimes it's like oh, there's you know, all that empty space at the parks, and I was like, yeah, isn't
it nice. It's just kind of like I mean to just kind of I think it's nice to just have just push the pause button for you know, in terms of things that are there for several years, and just kind of allow our our minds to open, you know, just like the the space itself and to just imagine what that space can look like. I think it's really instructive and I wish more communities could have the opportunity
to do this. Actually, yes, but you know, for instance, taking that survey you know that that community members in Charlottesville are doing now about you know, yeah, how do you know? Where where do you what parks you go to, what activities do you engage in there? What do you like you know, what would you like to see more of?
You know, this sort of thing.
It's it's great to you know, to consider this. You know that this is something that has been you know, America's uh uh you know, the United States is uh, you know, public parks has you know, been something that
you know, since the nineteenth century. Is something that's that's been a real gem, you know in some of our our public spaces, you know, in some of our cities, and you know, and this is something to you know, to celebrate, and it's it's nice to be able to kind of take stock to really, you know, think about how public spaces can express our professed values, you know.
Instead of sort of reacting to hate, like taking a moment to envision not our reaction to or you know, what we don't want, but think about what we do want in that space exactly what would what would serve our community? And I think that's sort of where the project is now, right, just sort of envisioning a positive future rather than trying to remediate a negative past.
And it's so nice because I felt like we were fighting, fighting, fighting for so many years. You know, we're in court, or we're protesting, or we're going to lobby at the General Assembly or now we're going to city council. I mean there was just you know all, you know, so fraught, and so now it's just so free to like, oh, to be able to imagine, you know, and to be thinking forward, yeah, and constructively creatively. That's a great feeling.
So how can people sort of keep up with sorts into plow Shares, stay up to date on the project and its progress, and more importantly, how can they support sorts into plow Shares.
Yeah, so you can visit Sipseville dot com. That's s I P C v I L l E dot com. So sip Cville that's Swords into Plowshires Ceville. And we have occasional updates there with news stories about what we're doing and upcoming meetings which will be happening at the Jefferson School, uh, where we'll be you know, kind of presenting results of of you know, surveys that we've done, you know, and uh and also visiting speakers who will be coming to talk about, you know, what what does
art mean in public spaces? You know, So we'll be able to kind of you know, talk with uh, you know, some experts that have come in, you know, to advise us on you know, how to think about about what we want in our in our in our parks going forward.
And can people make donations to s I P on the website, Yes, on the website, there is a portal right there on Sipseyville dot com.
Definitely welcome that as well.
And those donations go towards for the the ultimate creation of this piece of art. Correct, right, It is not cheap to work with that much.
More it is not.
Yeah, so we're we're you know, putting together you know, fun to pay the artists, you know, for the commissioning the artists.
You know.
We're also applying for you know, grants from foundations and this sort of thing too. But of course there are other expenses associated with uh, you know, processing materials and yeah and all that.
So yeah, so that is s I P C V I L L E dot com slash donate to make sure that that artist gets paid. Absolutely well, Juliane, thank you so much for joining us today and looking forward to seeing our our new beautiful piece of art, hopefully by twenty twenty seven.
Yeah, yeah, it's great. Well, thank you for your interest, Mollie, and thank you to all the listeners and supporters out there. Means a lot to us that you know, your interest in us and your support appreciate it.
I think we all love those photos of Lee's melting face.
It is icon I gotta say, it's iconic, you know. I yeah, we'll always have that, have that memory.
Thank you so much.
All right, A welcome back to It could Happen Here a podcast where the host Robert Evans, one of the hosts has recently recovered from a terrible, terrible sickness by by engaging in some fascinating experiments with thera flu, largely using a friend's diabetic needles, just shooting it straight into the veins My co host today, Garrison Davis, have you ever ever shot flew medication into your veins?
Garrison, No, I've only shot one thing into my veins.
Well, speaking of shooting, today's episode of It Could Happen Here is about a shooting. And before you are like, oh man, I don't really have it in me to listen to a horrible story about people dying today, don't worry. Nobody gets shot in this story.
Thank God, miraculously no one gets shot, Like against.
All odds, it's stunning that nobody got shot. This is the tale of a police officer fucking up, not worse than any cop has ever fucked up, because again he didn't kill anybody, but fucking up in a way that's like more baffling and incompetent than I think I've ever seen before. It's probably the most embarrassing and certainly the most embarrassing, and not even really malevolent, just like outrageously incompetent, but I'm gonna let you take over from here, Garrison.
So, yeah, we are going to be talking about in acorn involved shooting today, happened, that happened in Florida.
Finally we know what the A and A cab stands for. That's right.
So we're gonna we're gonna play some clips here, but I think it's important to set the scene so you kind of understand what you're hearing. So this cop walks up to his patrol car, there is a suspect locked in the back.
Sunny day, Houston suburbs, big houses, wide streets.
Yeah, now something happens as the cop is about to open up the door. He then dives onto the ground, does two like action roles, double barrel rolls, and then starts shooting at the car and starts yelling to another officer who's in the area. And I think we'll just we'll just play the rest here.
Yeah.
The first clips about thirty seconds long, and then I just have a few shorter clips kind of that have kind of stitched together that just just to get a sense of like what he's saying and what he's communicating after he opens fire on this patrol vehicle.
So here is here? Is that audio far Jeff Jukes, Burt Chuck's burd.
You know.
Oh, I'm that, I'm here.
What I've done? He has the car?
Now you shot the car.
Oh, I'm I'm good. I'm feel weird, but I'm good. I might have hit my best. Okay, it might hit my best.
I don't know.
I'm not.
Okay, I don't know.
I I like it.
Jess me, I got you remote to me, Jesse, come back, mark.
You right back, dude, my head.
Let's get further back, further back to the back.
All right.
So that was a lot of gunfire. Again, it is shocking that no one died because it's not immediately evident if you just watched the video. But there is somebody who's trapped in the back of that car, and there's multiple officers shooting at the car.
And here's the thing, the guy. The distance the guy is shooting from. God from when I watched the video last I would estimate maybe about twenty yards, probably even shorter than that, maybe sure, maybe more like fifteen. It's medium to maybe medium long range for a handgun. For a full size handgun like that, I'd say it's about medium range. So a competent shooter should be able to hit a target about the size of a human torso at that distance with most of the but he is
not that. When I say competent, that is somebody who is bracing themselves and who has two hands on the gun. He is shooting like a character in an action movie. And I cannot imagine. So a lot of those rounds did not even hit the truck. I imagine they went flying into a neighborhood where we can hear children playing yes, Yes.
So the.
Officer who encountered this acorn, which we will get to in a sec was named Deputy Jesse Hernandez. He been a cop for almost two years, and we'll learn more about his background as we as we continue on with this little story. The second officer, well not officer, but a sergeant of this Sheriff's department named Beth Roberts, and she's been a cop since two thousand and eight, so she has a little bit more experience under her belt.
So let's kind of explain what happened here. So there was a series of calls that happened earlier in the day about a vehicle who was kind of driving erratically around a nearby neighborhood honking its horn kind of just like making a lot of sounds at like three am. The suspect was described as a black mail in his late twenties. And then a few hours later, a separate call was made by someone talking about how her boyfriend has been refusing to return her vehicle and has been
sending her threatening text messages. So this caused police to go to this girlfriend's house. She showed some of these threatening text messages and they were talking with this woman when her boyfriend approached the scene. So the suspect approached the police in front of his girlfriend's house. Deputy Hernandez himself did a pat down to search for weapons and observed a more thorough search once the suspect was handcuffed.
The missing car was located a few miles away, and Hernandez was on his way back to the car to do a tertiary search of the suspect, who is currently locked in the backseat with handcuffs. And then as Deputy Hernandez passed the passenger side door in acorn fell onto the roof of his car, which is barely barely audible in it. The bodycam video that we have access to.
So you would not notice it were you not listening for it.
No, no, So.
Three days later, Deputy Hernandez was interviewed by two investigators as a part of the Office of Professional Standards investigation into this incident of discharge gunfire and this this interview in this report is probably one of the most telling things about how police psychology operates.
And wow, okay, so.
I'm gonna read through a few quotes here from Deputy Hernandez. He talks about how, quote, I'm about to reach for the door handle and simultaneously I hear to at the time what I believe would be a suppressed weapon off to the side. I definitely heard this noise about the same time I felt an impact on my right side, like an upper torso area. I feel the impact. My legs just give out. I don't know where I'm hit.
I think I'm hit. I'm struck. I roll back. I rolled to the briving like he's the hard boiled detective and a novel.
I rolled to the back of the car. Now I'm stuck in the street, and I knew where the fire, where the shots came from, I or I believed where they came from. It was right there as I'm reaching for that door handle. So I'm laying behind the car. I'm yelling shots fire, shots fired, shots fired. I returned fire once I could get cover behind another vehicle that
was parked in the driveway there. So when asked to describe what he felt, because he's not just claiming that he heard a sound, he's claiming he felt like he got hit.
Yeah, he felt an impact. He felt an impact and his legs went out from underneath him. Yes, which again in the video, he clearly does a double barrel roll. He doesn't. That is not I have seen people get hit and drop. They did not do double barrel rolls like a little action stow.
Yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, he says, quote, it felt like an impact to my upper torso around here, and he motions up to his right shoulder on the right side. It was like a sound impact, like almost that quick. I guess I just loved hit the phrase it was like a sound impact.
Yeah, I think he's saying. I think what he's saying from reading it is that like we're missing some of the body language that he was going to It was like sound and then like moving his hands to get sound impact, hearing the sound, and then he got impact. I think he was actually trying to which is not like them, which is actually not in person. Probably very awkward, but yeah, it does. It comes across weird and so
more more funny than sound impact. For again, any corn that's falling on a roof, we have quote, my legs weren't working the way I wanted them to be working. I think I yelled at one point to Sergeant Roberts. I think I might have been hitting.
The leg or something along those lines, because I was struggling to get cover. I think at one point I reached up to touch my head. I think I still had the sound in my head. I wasn't sure if I had been hidden the head. I was getting a funny tingling around all sides of my body, and I think some of that money just been adrenaline. Putting together the fact that what I just heard and the impact that I felt. I've never been shot before, so I don't know what that's like or you know, unquote great
oh man, So he is. He's unsure if you would be able to notice if he got shot in the head or not, which is kind of interesting. I mean, I'm sure he could get grazed, but like, come on, buddy, yeah.
Yeah, I mean it's one thing. It is true that like you can be hit like an armor and not be sure if you've gotten a hit because it didn't penetrate. But you would also not mistake a corn shrapnel hitting you reasonably for a bullet Like That's simply not a mistake a reasonable person is going to make.
So the investigator asked him, like if there was any other sense that there could have been gunfire, like if you saw any like shattered glass coming from the car, and Hernandez said no. When asked why he decided to stop firing, Hernandez said that he stopped firing once he emptied his clip, moved to cover behind it nearby Tesla end quote, didn't observe any rounds coming back at me.
Just just great, because why there's the.
Hernandez claim that he was never able to see the suspect while in the patrol car.
And Hernandez remained behind.
Cover till other deputies arrived and was rushed to a hospital, where only then he was informed that he did not, in fact to get shot.
It's amazing he made it all the way to a hospital. So you had a lot of chances. You had a lot of chances to not fuck that up.
Man.
As soon as the other cops arrive on the seat, he's like, I don't know, I just I just feel so weird.
Yeah, buddy, you you had an adrenaline drop because you panicked, Like that is why you feel weird.
Like a lot always this like mirrors the police fentanel things, how they can like talk the themselves into feeling into like feeling symptoms.
Yes, but all right, So.
Hernandoz hadn't been a cop for very long. He had He had no prior law enforcement experience before joining this Florida Sheriff's department, but he did attend to West Point and served as a Special Forces Infantry officers in the Army for ten years. So one could maybe assume that the deputy's outrageous behavior was the result of some kind of PTSD.
From serving as Special Forces. But maybe maybe I could kind of explain some of what's going on here. I had multiple people when I posted this on Twitter, be like, oh, this is maybe people with like PTSD shouldn't be.
Cops, And I had to be like no, no, no, Well, see the funny thing about that is that he never actually served in combat.
No, this guy flew a fucking desk, yeah, which like you need that in a war. But like this, this man did not have any combat trauma that caused him to react this way.
You know, like I I've had I've had PTSD. You know, I've certainly gotten like I can get really jumpy with certain sounds.
Yeah, that is not that six months Carriod where fireworks made us all very unhappy.
Yeah, or like keys dropping was the big one for me because it sounded like a tear guest canister rolling on his bottles.
But you know when in the many times that I had bottles fall near me and set me off, or that fireworks went off near me and set me off, I was often carrying a gun and what I never did was empty it vaguely in the direction of a car. So he never saw combat.
He did claim that he was aware of what suppressed gunfire sounded like, and he affirmed that the noise he herd reminded him of suppressed gunfire.
I'm sorry, bro, what the fuck?
Under questioning Herd, Eda said that he did not perceive any other sounds, visuals, or physical indicators. Of gunfire besides the initial tapping sound and his upper torso feeling. In the interview, he was asked why he decided to fall onto the pavement, and he said, I'm not sure if it was adrenaline or just what, but the numbness of my legs and realizing, Okay, I'm going to be on the ground, but also realizing the windows are right there, you know, I'm I need to be on the ground anyway,
so I'm not exposed. So yeah, and that that just kind of led to my legs just kind of gave out on me. Fascinating. He then was asked to explain the two action roles he performed on the road, and her dad replied.
Uh rnx. At the same time, what was I supposed to do? Pretty much?
He said, uh the rolling kind of reaction to what was going on and realizing like, my legs are not working the way I need them to work right now, but I can roll over to the next vehicle. So that's kind of where I was trying to get to unquote sure, okay, okay, bro. So after his little action roles, this is where he started yelling shots fired and he emptied his clip into the car. And told the sergeant that shots were coming from this vehicle, and she began
firing in the vehicle as well. At what point Hernandez tried to move off to the side because he was concerned about being shot by the other cop. He says, when I was done engaging the vehicle, I was trying to get off to the side over there because I was worried about possibly having possibly me being in her line of fire.
Now sure, this is this is the first reasonable threat that he has expressed. I would also be concerned about them shooting me in that instance.
Yes, So, after Hernandez's initial explanation of events, the investigator showed him video stills of an acorn coming into frame and bouncing off the roof of his car. I'm just going to read directly from the from the report, quote, Deputy Hernandez asked acorn. Investigator Hogan answered acorn, I'm quote amazing, amazing, an amazing sentence.
This is.
This is so perfectly how you would like script it in a really good police procedural comedy, Like if you had some A game writers on the team, and it's it's gonna take some really good you'd need like the wire quality actors to pull those lines off. Bunk and Bunk could have pulled them off right, Like.
There's two more lines I want I want to get to before before we take an out of break here. When asked if the sound he heard could have been an acorn instead of suppressed gunfire, the deputy answered, quote, I'm not gonna say no, because I mean, that's but what ten second pause and speaking. What I heard three second pause and speaking sounded almost like twelve second pause and speaking in credit. But I heard sounded what I think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof
of the car. But there's obviously an acorn hitting the roof of a.
Car unquote amazing. Uh.
The investigator then had to ask her, ed, does if he was in general familiar with the sound of acorns, which must be so embarrassed?
That is that is that is a low point in your career, that is Hernetta said that he was.
He was then asked if the sound could have been what led him to believe the car theft suspect shot him, to which the deputy answered, it could be seven second pause and speaking, but I don't think so, but it.
Could be uncorked.
Great so then Hernandez's lawyer said that they could maybe watch the video again and see if see if the acorn striking matches the time that he says that he heard the sound, And then they deliberated for a little bit, and ultimately Hernandez refused to watch the video a s second time once he was told it was an acorn's I mean, yeah, come on, what's there to do?
Understandable? No, that's that's that's going to really do some damage to your self esteem right there.
Less than a month later, just a few days before a second interview was scheduled, he quit the job.
So you know what first decision he's made them, I mean yeah, like, what what else can you do? At this point? This story starts with a bad cop, but it ends with a good one.
Like imagine returning to work and everyone's gonna call you like the acorn guy, like you can't, you can't.
It's just an anytime there's like a there's like a fucking acorn tree anywhere near you get like you okay, man, okay, do you need to take him?
Take it?
Did you call this hit.
There?
Watch Out? Watch Out one hundred, one hundred times a day guys would be getting on his radio being like I just saw an acorn. Dispatch.
You can get on a possible acorn, uh negative negative, that is a pine cone.
No need for assistance, just some gunfire. We're good, We're good, not an acorn repete. We're safe. See is safe? No acords insight.
All right, let's let's take an out of break and we will return to hear about Sergeant Robber recollection of events. Welcome back to Acorn Cop streaming now on the Discovery Channel. Two cops, one acorn. No survive, Actually no, thankfully everyone survived. This would be much less funny.
We would not be laughing about this now. There is some permanent psychological damage done to the guy who was shot at but not shot and that is unjust and sad, yet not enough that we are not willing folks. You have a right to laugh at something like this, you know, even if there are some consequences to it. That's just keeping yourself sane in this world.
So, Sergeant Roberts was a member of the shaf's department for fifteen years. She has a bachelor's degree in criminology from the Florida State University.
So that's cool.
She's been teaching at the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission for ten years. So I think one thing that led to some of them thinking it could have been suppressed gunfire is that in the threatening messages that the suspect had shown to or had sent to his girlfriend, included was a close up picture of this dark kind of gray cylinder pressed up against the center of the dash in his car. Less than two inches of the cylinder were visible. No parts of a firearm could be seen.
But they believed that this was a suppressor, and the victim said that he owned a suppressor. So I think that that is one thing that happened in the interview kind of or in the like exchange leading up to this incident. But no one got any confirmation that he had a gun on him. Again, he was searched two times. There was no gun found on him. It is possible to like hide a gun on you, It is much more difficult to hide a gun with a suppressor like that. Is that is a pretty a pretty big object.
They are larger like it. Basically doubles are more than doubles the link of the firearm, and it also does so in such a way that makes it difficult to carry in a concealed fashion.
So when Sergeant Roberts was collecting an affidavit about the stolen car, she said that she heard quote some type of noise and shortly thereafter Jesse, who's Hernandez screaming? Shots fired?
Quote.
It was loud enough that it got my attention and made me think we're about to have a fight with a prisoner or the suspect. Either he's escaped somehow and Jesse's in a tussle with him. I can't tell you exactly what it was, but it made me look and then immediately heard Deputy Hernandez screaming. Shots fired.
So Sergeant Roberts ran out into the street. Quote.
I saw that Hernandez was down. He had his gun point to the back of his patrol car. I was drawing my pistol and my magazine that was in my meg pouch. Somehow flew out again. Amazing police work.
These guys, incredible stuff. That's someone who never practiced.
Yeah, at which point I thought there was a malfunk. I thought that I dropped the magazine. Somehow I hit the meg release on my firearm and that that was the magazine that fell out. Turns out it wasn't. It was the one from my meg pouch. Uh huh, at which point I think I fired. So you just have magazines flying you freak out and start pulling your trigger.
Yeah, I will say that last part extremely common experience. Police officers are not well trained, and most of them in terms of combat stuff, and most of them do not shoot regularly. When the FBI's done studies of like people who kill police officers, and they nearly always train way more often than the police officers they kill trained.
It's very Most cops are not putting one hundred and fifty rounds a month downrange, and like, I fire three hundred rounds a month in training, and I'm not particularly good. That's what I consider like minimum level of competence. And so it is extremely common in police shootings for the officer to say I don't know how many I fired,
or I fired two shots and they fired seventeen. That happens fun Oftentimes, even more than that, people will reload and not realize that they reloaded and emptied the second magazine because in an actual violent situation, and it is for that lady, I will say that she just knows that her partner is emptying his firearm. Yeah, so for her, she's this is less unreasonable, right, It is more complicated for Sergeant Roberts. But I think it also points to
some of the inherent problems with policing. Oh good god.
Yes, and the way police are trained, Like the how quickly it was for her to start firing at a suspect who's locked inside of a patrol car, who she knows has been searched multiple times, and.
Who she has not seen shooting.
Yeah, she she has not seen any gunfire, she's not seen any evidence of that, she's heard one man screaming. And how quickly they decide to use lethal force is I think very notable.
Quote.
I fired at the vehicle because I saw Deputy Hernandez down on the ground and he tells me that shots are fired and he's hit, and it scared the hell out of me. I thought I was watching him be killed, which is Yeah, it's to like how they are trained to constantly be in fear for their lives, their fellow officers' lives. Quote, it was the patrol car that was where the threat was coming from. I'm thinking we've we missed the gun in the pack down. Somehow he shot Jesse from the
car and Jesse's down shots are being fired. I couldn't tell you exactly where they were coming from, but I fired because of my concern.
On grit and you get. This is a thing that does not get represented in fiction. People don't like to talk about it. This happens with soldiers too. I have a friend who was shot in the leg by a fifty cow by one of our fifty cows one of his guy's guns, because they were told anyone from this building over that you see on the thermal scope is an enemy. They saw him on the thermal scope and they lit him up. It was just a series of
bad calls being made and nobody checking to confirm. Because you're in an actual chaotic, dangerous situation, checking to confirm is there actually a threat in that area? They're just shooting, you know. It's people panic all the time. It's one of the problems with sending people with gun into neighborhoods like this is part of why the way we do policing is such a bad idea, because there's no way to train out all of this. You can train out
acorn guy, maybe maybe, but they didn't. But you cannot train out people panicking and doing things with guns that can never be taken back.
Well. And one other aspect is like Hernandez starts firing his gun very shortly after he's yelling shots fired. Like getting that linear cause of events can be tricky because like you are hearing gunfire at the same time you were hearing him yell shots fired because he is shooting.
And Roberts said that she wasn't sure if she or Hernandez even shot first, Like all of your memory in these instances can get really kind of blurry, like like all of these like high stress scenarios, it actually can be hard to remember the exact manner of oh, yes, easily, yes, she said quote I'm seeing him on the ground yelling shots fired.
I'm hit. I'm hit.
I thought I thought I saw a deputy get murdered. I was close enough to see his facial expression that was fear, anxiety, it was it was horrible. I'm seeing him kind of trip fall, stumble something behind the vehicle. At some point he's able to kind of post up, but he was stumbling, crawling on the ground. I don't know how to explain it. He wasn't standing up straight, he was not in a tactical position. He was off as momentum, he was off balance, he was standing behind
that car. It did not look like he was in control of himself.
Yeah, no, yeah, that's like what she is saying. I'm not going to say this is like a good response, But it makes sense to me that she reacted the way she'd most people would write, which is why most people should not be given firearms and legal immunity to do whatever with them, right, But most people would have reacted in a why broadly similar manner without training, you know, without training and experience.
Now, there's one way that she describes his kind of like weird stumbling on the ground quote. The auditory tone in his voice was terror. The best way to describe it was like watching a baby to raft trying to walk for the first time, trying to.
Get the out of the road. That is that is going to echo in his mind until the day he dies. So maybe dressed stumbling learning to walk for the first time. Do you know what else is learning to walk? I don't know.
That doesn't really now, do you know what else could perceive acorns as a threat to business.
Oh yeah, we I mean, the one thing all of our sponsors agree on is that acorns and all trees should be eliminated in the interest of better profit margins. So dangerous kill the natural world, live free. I want to know one other thing as I'm talking about, like why they I'm not surprised they reacted this way, and what it says to me about like how I think. Like I think that a group of moderately competent civilians with concealed firearms would have responded better than both officers
in this situation. Large not for the reason that they're more smarter or better trained, because they probably aren't, but because they go through the world carrying a gun knowing that if anything they do with that gun, they're legally accountable for every shot fired they're accountable for, which is a different mind state than what police are trained to do, which is the instant you feel endangered, you should draw and be prepared to shoot or shoot immediately, because nothing
matters more than you getting home, and you have qualified immunity on your side, right.
Yeah, which allows you to interpret a very quiet tapping sound as a lethal threat to your life. Now, Sergeant Roberts said, that she did observe Hernandez move himself into kind of a kneeling shooting stance on his left knee with his right foot planted in front, but still quote, it seemed like his motor functions were not off running properly from what I saw. He told me again, shots her fire. He's completely out in the open. No one would think that's a good place to take a knee
to tactically fire. So he was still trying to respond in some way, but still very very baby draft coated.
It seems yeah, yeah, I mean, that seems like a constant thing for this fella.
So.
Roberts also admitted that she did not ever see the suspect. She could not see inside the patrol car and she couldn't hear anything coming from that area. Quote, if there would have been something going on in that vehicle, I don't know if I necessarily would have heard it. Was I hearing or seeing the windows be blasted out. No, I couldn't see the right side of the vehicle. But based on the circumstances, I'm thinking that somehow he shot Jesse from the back and it had struck him some
way somehow. I don't know if the individual's gotten out of the car and it's on the other side, you know, like he's escaped somehow. I couldn't see if the door was wide open. I don't know if he's gotten out and they've had a little tussle. Is he's shooting from the back of the car. All these things are going through my head, but the main thing is that he's in the back of the car. He's got a gun, and we missed it, and somehow he shot Deputy her.
Now so she also couldn't remember who shot first, but she denied the notion that she started shooting because she thought Hernandez fired his gun first. She was confident in her her own use of gunfire before before she could tell that Jesse was firing.
Yeah, interesting quote.
The threat was someone had shot him. We had an armed suspect in the back of the vehicle. Jesse was shot. I'm watching him, you know, fumble on the road. How do I give him more time? How do I draw the attention to me? How do I save him? I thought I was watching him get murdered. The tone in his voice, look on his face, the physical reactions. I'm thinking we missed the gun and this is it. How
do I get to Jesse to save him. She she talks about how she quote couldn't let him be shot again again, as all of this is like so confident that that that this has happened, and they're so confident in their own use of force. She was also concerned that if the suspect got away, other people's lives could be in danger, like his girlfriend who was nearby and the friend who was talking to police about their domestic issue. Quote, there was a threat in the back of the patrol car.
I had a deputy that was on the ground that was still a threat to Jesse's life. I needed to provide him some sort of cover or bring the attention to me. I'm watching him die. I've got to do something. I've got to do something. There's that just like overall constantly throughout this interview with the Professional Standards Investigation, she's just constantly saying how she thought that this man was gonna die. That's why she responded the way she did.
Like she talks about how she can't render aid if there's still a threat, she has to like get regain control the situation.
All of those are reasonable things to say, Yeah, all of those are reasonable things to say in a real gun fight.
Yes, it's just a little bit less less valid with the en shiting incident. Is an acorn falling on a roof? Yes, and you're shooting directly at a man who's your own big car been searched two times and is wrapped inside, who has handcuffs on.
Like.
So, Yeah, After both cops spared off this large valley of bullets, they both repositioned behind cover, called in more backup, and Roberts tended to manage the situation and the other individuals in the area and eventually check in on Deputy Hernandez. Quote, the threat was still a threat until we were able to remove him from the car. Again, they're not viewing him as a person, They're viewing him as a threat. Like that is that is like he's no longer like a human being.
He is he is a threat. That is what he represents.
Now.
Yeah, well, and that is that is how they're trained to talk. And that is, by the way, like in a court of law, how you should talk, right, you don't. You would not say, if you were involved in the legal defensive shooting, I shot to kill. You would say I shot to stop the threat. That is like how people are trained, because that's what plays best in the court.
Yeah.
No, she all of her interview is very polished. She is, she likes very she's she's been a caught for fifteen years, like she is. She knows what she's saying here.
Yes, she's been coached before. Yeah, she's she's aware.
So after they were able to get to cover, she called in more resources. Quote, that's when we were able to treat it as more of a barricaded armed suspect situation. This poor dude, Yeah, like what do you do?
Like you're hanging in the back of the car like everywhere, like like it seems like this guy is guilty of having a little bit of having an emotional breakdown with his partner and doing things he should not have done, none of which the penalty for is getting shot at while strapped into a car.
Yeah, he stole his girlfriend's car, He sent her threatening messages. He was described as being abassive in the past. Yeah, there's bad things, but that doesn't mean you can get executed by police because they hurt an a chord Like, No, that is.
Not that is not what our society has deemed the punishment for those options for those behaviors should be so.
Roberts closed this interview by saying, quote, I don't think there's anything funny about it. It just went from zero to one hundred within the drop of a hat. I know we talk about it all the time, but when it does, it does. And she's talking about how, like how fast the situation escalates, like from a very standard interaction towards you're now multiple people are shooting, like this is it happens so quickly. It went from the zeer to one hundred within the drop of the hat.
Yeah, that's that is what happens with shootings.
She knew that Hernandez was prior military and when in training Hernandez was training on her shift, she described him as quote a very squared away person, somebody that if they tell you something, you don't question it. I wanted Jesse on my shift. When I observed him in high stressful situations, he reacted appropriately. He wasn't afraid to respond and he's I think that last part is certainly true. He was not afraid to respond well.
And this is why, again, when the response for a lot of people when I would talk about this to them is suspecting it had something to do with his military training that he responded this way. Soldiers aren't trained this way. Again, this is soldiers contrained in the field. But soldiers are generally trained to not air on the side of opening fire blindly because war crimes are a thing they're concerned about and they have a sense of professional pride against Again, not to say that they do
not kill innocent people. They do all the time, because that's what war is. But this is not the way. So this is police training. This guy's bias towards reacting this way is the result of police training, not special forces training.
She kind of reaffirmed her trust in Hernandez as a person who was like reliable, saying when they were on night shift during training, quote, he acted appropriately, He did not lose control of his emotions. I have a lot of respect for him. Actually, when he tells you something, it's not something like are you sure you know he'd tell you something and that's what's happening, or that's what happened. I don't think there's anything malicious about what he did.
I'm not mad at him.
I'm not upset about it because I truly believe that he thought that's what was happening, unquote, which is again, it just I'd be pissed you almost, Like I don't know if I was tricked into almost killing someone.
I don't understand this reaction. Like it's this thin blue line shit, right, Yeah, they have to group together so so hard. Yeah, it's it's and it's like this guy got you into a situation where you could have shot a child, Like I would never forgive someone who put me in that position for no good reason, right, Like, it's why that's such such an insane response to me.
So she has to keep affirming that he has like a good judgment, and it's it's so bizarre.
No, he doesn't, like he very clearly doesn't. You'll watch the video. It'd be one thing if like they were under fire and he shot and his bullet went wide and hit a civilian and it's no, that's like absolutely, it's just a horrible accident. But like his judgment wasn't bad. It was just a terrible situation. This is so different, like and that she's still going to bat for him, says everything about cop cops, cop brain.
Yeah, there's a few lines that I want to read before we close. Out here that are in the conclusion of the of the report can't wait. They describe her and his legs as quote, stopped working correctly. I think it's just a really funny way to phrase it.
I would describe his brain that way.
But yeah, his legs weren't responding as he intended. But there was no evidence to support anything impacted Deputy Hernandez. No defects are found on his uniform or his blistering vests support the impact Hernandez. It's response was not objectively reasonable, so they they ruled that Hernandez's response was not objectively reasonable, that it was not appropriate.
Positively surprised about that, but they.
Found Sergeant Roberts's response as being reasonable because she believed Hernandez has been shot because of his tone of voice, his stumbling, attempts to move and stand up, and it's apparent quote lack of control over his body.
Yeah, I would not call it. I wouldn't say her response is reasonable. I would say her response is what I would expect most people to do.
No, or it is reasonable in terms of how police procedure operates, like she followed the correct protocols for interacting as a police officer.
Yeah, I don't believe under the laws she would have been found liable by any court.
No, they said, quote Robert's found out Hernandez to be a reliable depity that she could trust. She had no reason to doubt what Hernandez had been telling her. She described the auditory tone of Hernandez's voice as terror, the look on his face as being quote consistent with being in feary. I love that kind of cop speak, consistent with being in fear.
Yeah, he looked scared. Yeah, amazing. I I do want to go over one thing before we come out, because this is again something I've been asked by people, and you know, maybe this is actionable. If you ever found yourself handcuffed in the back of a police car and they start shooting at you, you should know how this guy survived because reading the interview with him, he was like, as soon as I realized they were shooting at me, I like flung myself down sideways and laid flat. I
think in front of the seat. He might have been on the seat. I would get in front of the seat if you can. But the reason he survived is that handguns number one, police carry hollow points in their handguns. Which is a bullet that has a hole in the slug the thing that goes into somebody. And the reason why you make a hollow point is that a hollow point expands immediately upon impact, so it doesn't penetrate as well. It will not go through armor, and it will not
go through objects very well. But when it hits meat, it expands and so instead of going through a body, it stops and it imparts all of the force from the bullet into that body, so it is better at stopping people. But what that means is when someone is shooting at something like a car and shooting into the back of a car and you have that whole reinforced trunk and backseat of a police car to go through those nine millimeters, rounds are unlikely to penetrate very far.
So if you are laying down in front of the seat or flat on the seat, your odds of not getting hit are pretty good. Like he had, I'm not surprised he survived having done what he did. You know, if you're sitting up and you've got body parts that are like view of the windows, you're very likely to get hit. But because he did what he did, he essentially saved his own life, is what it's my interpretation of what I've read.
Yeah, no, I mean it's it's it is a terrifying scenario that there was. There was an instant recently of this officer who made his first ever arrest. He had two suspects locked in the back and he got distracted about driving. He drove his car off the road into a lake, and both of.
The suspects drowned. Jesus fucking Christ.
Like this is this is like all these things point towards just inherent problems with the policing system.
Cops bad, avoid at all costs.
It's terrifying, Like it's it is like these people can just act like this can kidnap, people can do all these things and face basically no repercussions at least turn ind as is no longer a cop, which is good, but like that doesn't fix any of the underlying problems with training that cause people to react like this in the face of a squirrel armed with an AI corn being the most dangerous thing that you can encounter.
Yeah, it's very bad police work. Avoid cops.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much pretty much. So, Yeah, that is that is what we have to say on the acorn involved shooting.
Yeah, great stuff.
Watch out for acorns, Watch out for droops. Also dangerous. They can fall off a tree. Yeah, pine cones can sometimes be lethal.
Oh they call those the widow makers.
Eyes on the sky, folks, You never know.
All right, bye, Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
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