The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

I was reading Huey’s dissertation for his doctoral called War Against the Black Panther Party: A Study in Oppression in America. And in that, he outlined one COINTELPRO and COINTELPRO systematic attack on the party to the point of Eddie Conway wrote the book called The Greatest Threat Ever, outlining how the federal government systematically targeted anybody, but more specifically members of the Black Panther Party to either isolate them or kill them or send them to prison where they served death of a thousand cuts and then they ultimately die. Talk about once that information came out about COINTELPRO and its involvement in destroying the party, how did that change your views or how did that impact the political landscape as you seen it when it come to organizing and revolutionary ideology?

Billy X Jennings:

It wasn’t till 1970 that people officially found out what COINTELPRO was. We always knew there was some kind of program out there that wiretapped us, how the FBI followed us and set us up for different charges like that. But on a personal basis, COINTELPRO helped me stay out of jail. Now, COINTELPRO is not something they invented for the Black Panther Party. It’s something they always had going on, but they ramped it up three degrees because of the party, how the party came out or how effective the party was. So in 1970, when these young anti-war people broke into this post office in Pennsylvania, it helped me out because at that time, Huey P. Newton was on Nixon’s enemy list. I am Huey P. Newton’s personal aid. So when FBI sees Huey, they see me.

And so I’m a much easier target than Huey. So they started using the draft to gift me, the selective service. Now, this is the same method they used against members of SNCC, another organization that preceded us. They would get the selective service to start sending them letters to have them drafted. And you only got three choices. Either you’re going to leave and go to Canada, you’re going to go underground, or you’re going to jail. Any one of them stopped you from being affected, and that’s what they wanted. They wanted to stop people from being affected so they would hold this selective service thing over their head. So what happened when they did the same thing to me, right? They arrested me when I was with Huey after coming to court. So I went to court for this draft evasion thing. The federal government had three of their attorneys on my case.

And so what happened was this, they wanted to charge me for draft evasion, but my attorney pointed out they wanted all the documents, film, phone, anything connected with Bill Jennings. And they immediately dropped my case on the spot because they were still trying to hide the fact that they had a program called COINTEL PRO and they didn’t want to reveal it because of me.

So they just dropped my case. So I walked away from that whole case because COINTEL PRO was discovered and they didn’t want to dispose all the footage they had of me and Huey together because that’s what they were doing, compiling stuff on Huey. I just happened to be there.

So that’s how COINTEL PRO affected me, but a lot of party members went to jail. Geronimo G Jaga did 27 years. They pulled him off the street. The FBI lied on him. They said he helped kill someone in the LA, but at the same time, the FBI was watching him while he was in Oakland attending meetings. They lied on the brother, just like they did. Maybe about 35 or 40 Panthers went to jail, maybe 35 Panthers were killed through COINTEL PRO. And many like Fred Hampton were victims, minding their own business. The next thing you know, law enforcement has them in their clutches one way or another. So it was not easy being a party member during those times.

Mansa Musa:

And they knew Eddie Conway was at work when this incident happened. They went to where he worked at in the post office and told the people to say that he wasn’t at work. And then they planted a snitch in his cell or they had one of them snitchers come up and say that Eddie said something. They had coerced people to lie against. So to your point, that was their methodology during that time. Like you say, they going to get you through selective service. They’re going to get you through income tax. They’re going to get you any way, shape, form or fashion. But talk about what do you think about this recent group in Philly that call themselves the Black Panther and then switch their name to the Black Lions and they’re doing some organizing. They got a large presence on social media. They can be seen, engaged in mutual and exercising their rights through confrontation with the police.

Basically, their strategy is being more confrontational. Are you familiar with them and what you think about

Billy X Jennings:

Them? Well, I am somewhat familiar with them. I get emails from them, messages. But just recently there was a meeting held in Philadelphia with Panthers, real Panthers, original Panther members and members of the Black Lions. We suggested then that they change their name because our legacy was built on positive direct action in the community. This is our legacy. We can’t have any young group. We don’t even know what you believe. Come and say you’re party members. The Black Panther Party stopped existing in 1982. So you should come up with a name for your own legacy so people can identify you because what you’re doing, we don’t know who you are. COINTELPRO and all that, you might be good at heart, but we don’t know you. Start your own legacy. Start from ground one, change your name because our name is built on our legacy of what we’ve done and we don’t know what you’re going to do.

The Black Panther Party had 14 different medical facilities. Two are still open to this very day, one in Seattle and one in Portland.

Mansa Musa:

You

Billy X Jennings:

Can see Black Party still alive in groups like the Gray Panthers. They took up where the Black Panther Party left off with the senior citizens. The Black Panther Party had a senior escort service. All these different services the party provided, free buses to prison program. And the main purpose for that program was to keep the family unit together

Mansa Musa:

Because

Billy X Jennings:

People have cars, but many of the state prisons are far, far away. You might have a car that’s good for getting around the city, but getting on the freeway, your car might not make it. So we provide these services to keep the family unit together. It’s good that the Black Lives change their name. It’s good they’re doing social work in the community, but they also have to understand that longevity. Dealing with the police is good to have people who deal with the police who the police know they can’t run and rub shot it in our community. I don’t have anything bad about that, but that shouldn’t be your main focus. That should not be what you’re all about. The party blossom out past that, that’s how we started getting community support, breakfast programs, liberation school, providing services for people. That’s how you get people to change their mind, their attitudes about you.

They see what you do through your social

Mansa Musa:

Practice. In that regard, Billy, talk about what would be your message to youth because you got a lot of young people that’s learning about the party. You got a lot of young people that’s through social media becoming informed about it. And what would you tell them when they come up and say, okay, to your point, no, you’re not original member of the Black Panther Party. No, you don’t have the right to say that in terms of and then saying that’s what you are. But what would you tell them when they come up and say, we want to change the condition, social conditions, we want to do it in the same light that the Black Panther Party did it. What would you tell them to do?

Billy X Jennings:

I would tell them the Black Panther Party were operating in the 1960s and we’re in the 2026 era right now. So we can’t go back and keep doing stuff in the past. We had to come up with new ways of doing things, a new attitude of doing things. We set the table for all these social programs to be embraced in the community, but they have to take it from there. They have to take where we started and bring it into their conditions now. And I would say to young people, get with another group that has your same ideology, your same philosophy. If they’re serving the community or working in the community, work with them because we need to unify all our efforts and come together. Educating young people, having political education classes, taking people outside of the community, outside of their environment so they can see the bigger world and see where they fit in.

All those things are things that are doable things, job training, telling people how to write a resume. Those are those small things, but those things that help because we have a lot of hardcore brothers who get out of jail who are not educated in the educational system. They need that kind of nourishment to bring them up. That’s what we should be doing, community service to bring our people up and not run away from the people. The Black Panther Party, when we had social programs, we invited people to come back to work. We provided a place for doctors and nurses to, if you wanted to give back to the community, we have a clinic here. You could donate four to six hours a week to have those facilities there or people in the community or have a community meeting around issues in the community. That’s how you bring interested people together, unifying people.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, that’s a good point because they got what they call the Malcolm X Grassroots Collective. I’m in DC and what they do every second and fourth Wednesday of the month, they have political education class and their political education. They’re not calling themselves some other than what they are organizing, but what they do, they have political education class and then the materials that they use, they using materials that they learned about from the Black Panther Party. But talk about the 60th and what you got planned with some of the things that you’ll be organizing for the 60th.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, that’s a lot. Well, I would say the 60th is what my particular role is, is I’m sponsoring a couple workshops on chapter history. Black Panther Party had over 40 different offices of the Black Panther Party. And there’s a lot of history in these different cities and geographical areas that we don’t know about that only the local people there knew about. So we’re trying to bring that history together so that people in Chicago would know what the people in Portland, Oregon was doing or the people in Seattle will find out who were some of the people that started the party down in Houston, Texas. And some of the programs, Salem, some of the problems the Winston-Salem chapter deal with because they were a chapter of the Black Panther Party that was actually in the South because they had problems that a lot of us didn’t have in California,

So forth. But chapter history, I’m doing some tours of Oakland, like I said, to educate a lot of people who’ve never been there before. A lot of people come to the reunions, they bring their grandkids or their great-grands. They want to show them what they was involved in, how all this thing originated. I have doing tours. I got a couple exhibits at the main library in Oakland about Black Panther Party rank and file. I have an exhibit open October 5th at the Alameda Law Library, which is across the street from the Oakland main library. Oh,

It’s across the street from the Oakland Main Museum. So that exhibit’s going to focus on the impact of the Black Panther Party on the law because of the political prisoners, clientele pro, racism in the police department, all those kind of things. So I got my hands full and on the 18th, which is the last day of the conference, I’m in charge of a day in Bobby Hutton Park. Local hip hop artists, poets, a couple bands will live music and we have speakers come, going to do it like we did back in the 1960s. Treat music, food, a joyful day in the community. Don’t caution that and all you have to do is bring your blanket, sit out and hear some speeches and hear some music and unify in the community.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Thank you, Billy. Thank you. And Billy, we really appreciate you taking your time out to come on and educate our audience about all things the Black Panther Party. More importantly, clearing up a lot of misconcepts about the party, what it stood for, some of the more subtleties of it as opposed to, to your point, a lot of the things that was distorted primarily for the purpose of disassociating it from people, getting people to look at it in a different light. You came on today and educated us on how the party really operated as, like y’all said, the Vanguard intercommunal with us.

Billy X Jennings:

The party’s whole thing is to educate people. I had a young lady who worked in my campaign office when Bobby Seal ran for mayor. She is now the mayor of Oakland. So I know that she knows about the 10 point program and all those things. So the party is about growth and development and stuff like that. The Black Police Officers Association of Oakland was started because of the Black Panther Party, right? Because when they shut up our office on 45th and Grove in September 1968, the Black officers refused to help the white officers who was suspended from their job for shooting at that office. And they started an organization, which is one of the biggest Black organizations in Oakland. But a lot of people don’t know that history, but when we have chapter histories, a lot of this history that happened in those cities come up.

Who were now in charge of state health facilities work at the medical clinic and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of roots where people came from. We just have to talk about it, dig it up and document it for future generations because 17 years ago, when I was 17, I joined the party. Today I talked to people from all over the world. I just got off the phone talking to the New Zealand Panthers who are going to send some representatives out here. They have 15 members that came for our 50th. We have people from all over the world. We have Charlotte O’Neill coming in from Tanzania.

Mansa Musa:

Okay.

Billy X Jennings:

For over 50 years. Charlotte’s going through our libations. She has a film. She travels the world. We have all type of Panthers coming in, so this is going to be a event.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. There you have the bars today. Look, you gave that row out. And we thank you for coming and sharing this information because like you said, at the end of the day, after everything all is said and done, the party was about educating our people about getting them to understand their right to self-determination and how to go about getting self-determination, understanding the contradictions, understanding social conditions, and more importantly, organizing to change conditions. And it’s a tribute to the party. No matter what people say about the party, that is the lasting legacy of the party is educate, educate, educate. Thank you, Billy. We appreciate you. All right. How do you want people to get in touch with you if they want to get in touch with you? They

Billy X Jennings:

Can get in touch with me by going to our website, itsabouttimebpp.com, which there’s a phone number and an address on that website. But for the 60th, you can go to bpp60.org for your latest update information on what’s happening with the 60th.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Kim Kelly:

We are here, Power of the People. First festival sold out immediately. People are excited about it. What kind of power are we bringing? When you’re an artist, you talk about politics. A lot of folks here are not shy about sharing their political opinions. Sure. We’re dealing with fascism. It’s here.

Tom Morello:

Yes.

Kim Kelly:

What can an event like this do? What potential does an event like this do?

Tom Morello:

Yeah. I think the first thing I can do is prove something that I know to be true, which is that courage is contagious. And without even speaking hyperbolically, this is a festival of peace, love, justice, and music. It is a festival of peace in a time where war is celebrated. It is a festival of love and solidarity in a time where hatred and division are rife. It is a festival of justice in a time where injustice is the norm, both on our city streets and abroad. And in a time where artists are censoring themselves or being censored on this stage today, the artists are going to play exactly what they want to play and they’re going to say exactly what they want to say.

Kim Kelly:

Now, for someone who saw this line and was like, “Oh, cool. It’s all my favorite bands, but I don’t really care about politics. I’m not a politics person. Somehow they’ve managed to get to 2026.” What do you want them to take away from this? What’s the ask?

Tom Morello:

Well, first of all, the first thing we have to do is put on a great fucking show and people can enjoy that and take away my experience over the course of doing shows like this and making music. Compelling music with a political message for decades is that people sometimes are drawn to the experience. They’re drawn to the spectacle. They’re drawn to the rock. And then they’re exposed to a different set of ideas than they have been otherwise. Some of them will, and sometimes you’re preaching to the choir. The choir needs preaching to. The choir needs their spines strengthened, steeled, and wind in their sails. Sometimes you’re talking to people who now finally recognize their own anger and their suspicions about what they think about the world reflected back to them. And then sometimes people are just there for a good time. But you know what?

This is one more piece on their chessboard they’re going to have to contend with.

Kim Kelly:

Little Trojan horse situation. Now the artists here, I guess people are kind of coming from all over the place, but clearly there’s not a lot of people on stage who are going to be… They’d probably be happy to play with Macklemore.

Tom Morello:

Some stuff might happen today you might be surprised by on that front.

Kim Kelly:

Why do you think so many big artists are still so scared to speak out for what’s right? They just saw this unfold.

Tom Morello:

Yeah, yeah. I would not say, first of all, I don’t think it’s fair to sort of ghettoize artists as different from any other category of worker. People are scared to speak out as students. They’re scared to speak out as journalists. They’re scared to speak out as carpenters, et cetera, et cetera. Artists also are sometimes afraid to speak out. A concert like this, I got to say that one of the things, the real turning point in booking the show was sometimes it’s hard when you’re making your way through managers. This is a show where people are not being paid money. This is a show where it’s inconvenient. Oh, now you can’t play the DC market because you’ve done this already. But it was the ice murders of Alex Pretty and Renee Good that really turned the tide and artists started calling me and going, “I heard you’re doing a fest.

Can I be involved in some way?” Where I think there was a real feeling that their preconceived notions of stuff they could take for granted, their own safety, their family safety, democracy were really being threatened in a significant way. They’re like, “We want to do what we can with what we’ve got.” The good news is what we’ve got is a lot of great rock and roll, a lot of great hip hop, a lot of great folk music, and a lot of great heavy metal.

Kim Kelly:

Man. Okay. So I was looking through the lineup. I was like, “This is all the bands that Tom likes to hang out with.”

Tom Morello:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You try to

Kim Kelly:

Hang out with your

Tom Morello:

Buddies. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. Over the course of time, these are the people that say yes when you ask them to play a charity show, yes when you ask them to play at the barricades or some sort of protest. So those are the ones that raised their hand. We’re happy and honored to have them here.

Kim Kelly:

And for folks who were maybe a little bit more on the hardcore, heavy metal, a few more decibels. Who’s more familiar with your other work?

Tom Morello:

Sure, sure, sure, sure. Plenty of that today. I mean, don’t worry. Yeah, don’t worry.

Kim Kelly:

I’m here for a reason.

Tom Morello:

For

Kim Kelly:

Folks who are involved in those scenes and maybe didn’t get tickets to this or didn’t speak to them, but they’re still, they’re down. What do you want to see people in the broader music

Tom Morello:

Space? Yeah. Well, first of all, we have a global free live stream that people can watch everywhere right on. It’s not 10 hours of free for you to watch it. You can tune in and out as you choose. But for people in those scenes, again, I wouldn’t get wise. I’d say the people who own and control this world do not deserve to. And the only way that change happens is average ordinary everyday people who have had enough standing up in their place and time. Sometimes music can remind you of that, and that’s what we’re hoping to do on a day like Power of the People. I

Kim Kelly:

Have never felt safer at a concert in my life because there are 40,000 people here who think the same way I do.

Concert goer:

Power to the People. We don’t like Donald Trump. He can kiss my ass and their asses as well. And we love Bruce and we love Tom Morello and we love good music and we’re thrilled to be here.

Tom Morello:

Another thing we’re doing today, which I try to do at my own shows too, is on this day and on this night, creating a little bit of the world that we’d like to one day see. A world of joy and solidarity and celebrating resistance and fun and people from 15 years old to 85 years old, having a communal experience that makes you glad that you’re alive and feel that this is worth fighting for.

Kim Kelly:

Why does it feel important to you as someone who’s been on the left in the progressive world for a long time to focus on joy? Because we don’t always have a lot of fun. Sure. We’re not known

Tom Morello:

For – Lord knows we don’t have a lot of fun. We’ve all been to. Well, I mean every inch of the Power of the People Festival, we’ve emphasized that there are no long dreary speeches. I’ve had to turn away hundreds of dreary speakers, well-intentioned, but dreary speakers. And even the Freedom Village, we’ve tailored it in a way with some incredible local organizations and national organizations. There’s also free ice cream. There’s also Shepherd Fairy DJing. We want that to be a place that feels welcome and awesome and realizing these are the people who are doing the real work, but there’s community in that and it’s a welcome place. And like I said, the reason we concentrate on joy and fun and rock and roll and kick ass music, because that’s the world that we want to make. We want to make it so it can be like that beyond the confines of this concert.

Kim Kelly:

And to you, what does a successful result look like? Do you want a specific amount of people registered to vote? Do you want a specific amount of people buying stuff from Red Emmos? You got to shout them

Tom Morello:

Out. I think that whether or not the concert’s successful, first of all, let’s hope nobody falls off the stage. Really look at the basics. There’s 17 members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame playing on the stage today. It’s a concert. It is a once in forever lineup. It is a once and forever lineup. So one thing I’m hoping is that people have a fulfilling artistic experience, whether you’re on the stage or you’re off the stage. And then if you’re not careful, you just might learn something. If you’re not careful, you just might be motivated to do something tomorrow. If you’re not careful, you might be motivated to do something more than just vote in three weeks. As my dear departed mom, Mary Morello, who passed away at 102 years old lately, she said, “You got to fight the fascist every which way you can.” She voted at a hundred.

She voted at 102, but she was like, “Voting is just one day and that’s easy enough to do. The real work starts the next day where you begin organizing and acting in concert with like-minded people to create the world that you’d like to one day see.”

Kim Kelly:

She was a union woman, you’re a union man. We’re all union folks here. What would you like to see the labor movement doing right now as we’re dealing with… I mean, I’m getting every email in the world, “Go knock doors, go vote, go vote. Okay, sure.”

Tom Morello:

Yes.

Kim Kelly:

And then what?

Tom Morello:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I think that there still is a lot of hope in the labor movement because the thing that we can do in the labor movement is stop the world. I think that people don’t realize what a powerful, powerful tool solidarity is. And you can create any kind of world you want when people just stop working, when the gears stop, when the university stop, when the carpenters stop, whatever, when the truck drivers stop, all of a sudden your demands really, really matter because you can stop the economy, you can cost shareholders millions and billions of dollars by withholding your labor, a radical labor movement. I still think there’s a room for that to be something that can be very, very important in creating a better world.

Kim Kelly:

So is this Tom Morello officially coming out in favor of the 2028 general strike?

Tom Morello:

Coming out in favor, please. How about the 2026 general strike, the 2027 general strike, the tomorrow afternoon general strike?

Kim Kelly:

No, I got to let you get out of here, get back to rocking, but just mentioning this great local co-op we got here, Red Emmos, what are you reading right now that keeps you excited, keeps you hopeful?

Tom Morello:

That’s a good question. I’ve got two books back at the hotel. One of them is that I’ve been reading with my son. It’s comprehensive, like the ideas of human beings. So from chardism to a narcosyndicalism, et cetera. It’s like a paragraph on each, which we read together and sometimes he’s bored and sometimes he’s more enthusiastic about it, but that’s what I’ve got brought to the hotel with the family now.

Kim Kelly:

Really? All right. I was not fishing for you to mention my book. It’s fine.

Tom Morello:

Yes. Your book features prominently in his library.

Kim Kelly:

Well, thank you so much, Robert.

Tom Morello:

It’s always great to have you. Thank you for your service and I appreciate you. This

Kim Kelly:

Has been Kim Kelly.

Tom Morello:

Tom Morello.

Kim Kelly:

For the Real News Network.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report: Breaking News Edition. As we always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. Now to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.

And today, we will achieve that goal by reporting on a disturbing story that has been growing more and more alarming as it unfolds. I’m talking about the current ordeal of cop watcher Long Island Audit.

As you already know, Long Island Audit, also known as SeanPaul Reyes, has been covering police misconduct for roughly five years. His provocative videos and creative tactics have garnered him millions of subscribers and a huge audience, but it has also attracted the attention of law enforcement, according to SeanPaul. And some of that attention could have significant consequences for him and his family.

This comes on top of a broad demonetization of cop watching and auditing videos. So to unpack what’s happening and the consequences for SeanPaul, we will be speaking to him shortly.

But first, I want to turn to my reporting partner about the importance of the First Amendment and the pushback he encountered from law enforcement during his reporting. Stephen Janis, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:

Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

Well, unfortunately, I dragged you inside to talk about something a little disturbing.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, very, very disturbing. And when I was reading what Sean had sent us about what’s happening to him, I was thinking about some of my own situations. Just recently we were reporting on the firing of the first Black police chief of Pokemoke City, which is a small town on the Eastern Shore. We were investigated as part of a grand jury investigation into an interview we tried to do with one of the witnesses in the case, and they made our lives miserable. But I think the point behind it was that they wanted to prevent us from reporting on this story. The witness had lied, the prosecutors were basically covering up and they didn’t want us to know about it. And the way they intimidated us was impaneling a grand jury and starting to investigate us and lawyers telling me they’re going to show up at your work, they might show up at your house, but they’re going to show up.

And fortunately, the judge in the case though it was absolutely invalid and it never went forward. But we were very much on the verge of it, very least being called in front of a grand jury, which has all sorts of fraud implications. So I really, really have problems with the idea of law enforcement criminalizing speech or dissent. And I think that’s why we need to unpack this in detail and understand what’s really going on here and the implications that go beyond just SeanPaul’s work and his career, but the implications for all people who use the First Amendment as a tool for their reporting or their dissent or anything.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. I think everyone out there needs to care about the First Amendment. You have to exercise your rights or you’re going to miss them when you lose them.

All right, so let’s bring in our guest, Long Island Audit. SeanPaul, thank you so much for joining us.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure to be on with you guys.

Taya Graham:

So first I have to ask you, how are you doing?

SeanPaul Reyes:

I wouldn’t say I’m paranoid, but I’m definitely cautious. I’m definitely vigilant of my surroundings now. My life has definitely changed. My family’s life has definitely changed from this information that has been revealed and just being cautious and obeying the law like normal, just hoping that evil people don’t do evil things.

Taya Graham:

So SeanPaul, you’ve received some pretty disturbing messages. I’m going to put one on the screen and read a little, but I’m just going to say something first. While we can discuss the nature of the threats, we cannot name or disclose any information that would point to a particular person or even hint at a particular agency. And the reason for this is clear. At this point, we cannot confirm this information. And for all we know, it could simply be a way to scare or intimidate you, but we feel that it is noteworthy because of the far-reaching implications if it’s true. However, we also have to abide by our journalistic ethics and not disclose something about a specific person or entity that is so far unproven or that we have not ourselves confirmed. So we’re just going to keep that in mind as we discuss this.

So I’m going to put up the first threat and Cam, if you could put up Long Island Audit JPEG one and then two as I read.

I hope this email finds you well. If I didn’t write this email and something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. At the same time, I’m not a supporter of yours or agree with the tactics you choose to expose police, politicians and the like. I also don’t like or agree with violence. With that said, let me get to the point of my email. SeanPaul, you are in grave danger. Your home is about to be raided sometime soon during the month of September. From what I understand, a search warrant will be approved to search for some investigative paperwork that you illegally got or received. The warrant will be also used to search for communications between you and other cop watchers.

I believe this warrant will be served by [redacted]. You are being investigated for being the leader of an anti-police government terrorist group. You’re probably wondering how I know this. OK, Sean, just even reading that just made my stomach knot up. How did you feel when you received this message? And since you’ve received it, have you learned anything else about what might happen?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Well, this was the second message in a line of messages that I received as far as warnings go. When I read this one, what stood out to me the most was the fact that they’re not even a supporter, allegedly. Again, I don’t know. I can’t confirm who these people are. I can’t confirm that they are who they say they are, rather. The people that they claim to be do exist, but I can’t confirm who they are. I’m working on that now. But these people are terrified and they don’t agree with what’s happening to me. They don’t agree with my tactics, as you heard, but they don’t agree with violence, and they believe that the government is going to be using violence in order to chill my free speech and intimidate me and stop me from asking questions. And that’s always concerning to me, especially because I live with my wife and my two young children who are three and four years old, and it’s definitely something that they didn’t sign up for and it’s not something that should be acceptable under our Constitution, under our First Amendment.

This should not be happening, this kind of threats.

Stephen Janis:

You know, Sean, journalists come into possession of all sorts of documents. What is the nexus of this warrant? What exactly could they be trying to do or trying to get from you or what could they use as fodder to get a judge to approve this? It sounds pretty farfetched to me, but I was just wondering if you had any idea of what they might be trying to do here.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah, Stephen, it is farfetched, and I have no idea. I’ve racked my brain for hours trying to figure out what exactly is this evidence that I illegally obtained, allegedly. I have no idea. Everything that I’ve ever obtained has been legally and through the FOIA process, either through the federal FOIA process or New York State FOIA commissions. It’s always been legally obtained through open records requests. So I have no idea. Again, it’s just concerning to me that this would happen.

And the circumstantial evidence that comes along with it, these emails are that the Suffolk County District Attorney Ray’s Attorney’s office he did in fact subpoena 14 months of my financial records from various social media accounts that have been confirmed to me, Facebook, TikTok, Google. There could be others. They do not have to let you know. The reason why I know that they requested 14 months from those particular social media agencies companies is because the social media companies themselves advised me that they were going to be handing over this information, but there could be bank accounts. My lawyer tells me there could be a myriad of other options of them trying to get financial. And on a violation trespass, which doesn’t even amount to a crime, it’s a violation of law no different than a parking ticket or a speeding ticket, for them to request such substantial information, financial information from me leads me to believe that there’s more going on here than a trespass violation And it’s financial records, RICO, go hand in hand. So it’s definitely something that’s concerning to me and my attorneys and I are watching out for.

Stephen Janis:

Well, just to make a finer point here, I would come into possession of all sorts of documents as a reporter, like homicide records, stuff that wasn’t public, but it was never illegal. You can’t prosecute someone if someone… You could prosecute a person who leaked it possibly, but of course these are state records, so they’re not classified to begin with. But you can’t prosecute someone if someone came to your doorstep and dropped off a bunch of internal records from, say, any police department, that’s not illegal, right? I mean, that’s like First Amendment journalism. I mean, it sounds kind of sketchy.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah, it definitely is sketchy. Again, I’ve only ever obtained documents legally. I haven’t even obtained anything sensitive or anything where the general public wouldn’t have access to them anyway. And like you said, Stephen, if somebody came and dropped something off at my house that was confidential information, not subject to FOIA, as long as it’s not top secret classified, we’re talking about state documents here, I don’t see where the crime would be. But again, that hasn’t even risen to that level. Everything I’ve ever received has been in the course of investigations through open records requests.

And at the end of the day, they know that. I mean, they have to know that. I don’t know what type of case they’re trying to build. I’m not a criminal. I do not engage in RICO, don’t have some criminal enterprise. I’m a law-abiding citizen with a company incorporated in New York state. I pay my taxes. Everything is legitimate about me. So I’m not really worried about the strength of a case that they can bring against me, but you can indict a ham sandwich is that old saying that you can indict a ham sandwich and on a RICO case, that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees. And as I always say on my channel, the process is the punishment. So I wouldn’t put it past them to just do it. We’ve seen it with this federal government already in different instances and the weaponization of the justice system. But to use it, that’s what makes it even more concerning for me is that we’ve seen it happen before. So now I’m not on the list of the friendly people to the administration for my views on ICE, for law enforcement with Lucivillo and my criticism of Suffolk County Police Union. So there’s a lot going on and I know that I’m innocent. I haven’t committed any crimes, but it’s definitely concerning, especially for my wife and my family, my mother, my children. It’s concerning information, especially the violence part of it.

Stephen Janis:

It’s totally understandable. And it’s very scary that they’re going after your financial records, which seem to me completely irrelevant to anything that they’re going to, whatever they’re pursuing. Go ahead, Taya, sorry.

Taya Graham:

No, I was just thinking if you’re guilty, you need one lawyer. If you’re innocent, you need two. Honestly, this is incredibly disturbing.

Now, you did mention that you might have some lawyers. It sounds to me like you might need a team of them. And if you don’t have lawyers, how are you prepared to defend yourself if worst comes to worst and you’re actually are raided?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Well, I do have a New York state attorney already. His name is Jacob Uriel. He is always on retainer for my company and for myself personally for any sort of criminal charges or civil things that are happening, but I would need more than just him. I would hire a team. There’s one thing that I would never do is be facing down the barrel of fraudulent, made-up RICO charges and take that lightly. So I would have to do what I have to do. Again, the process is the punishment. If I got to take out loans and I have to do what I need to do, a home equity line of credit to be able to pay for this legal defense, whatever needs to be done is going to get done. And that’s why I made the video that I did where I spoke about this because at the end of the day, if they have a valid search warrant, I’m not going to stop them.

I’m not violent. They can search my property. Whatever the warrant says they need to search, they can search. I have nothing to hide. I’ve not moved anything from my house since learning this. Nothing has changed about my routines because there’s nothing to change. But the only thing that concerned me was the allegations of using some sort of SWAT team in order to enter my house. And again, more process is the punishment to intimidate me, intimidate my family. And I think that’s a very dangerous, volatile escalation that doesn’t need to happen even if they are investigating some sort of RICO case. And I wanted to make that clear to the public that I’m not a threat to law enforcement. Law enforcement knows that. I’m not engaging in any criminal activity, but I will comply with any court order for a search warrant or anything like that and we can handle it in court.

But to terrify my family with flash bangs and entering in at 3:00 in the morning is just not necessary.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, I’ve watched a ton of your videos. I’ve never seen you engage in violence or even threats. Have you ever, as a cop watcher, threatened to do something violent or acted in any violent way during a cop watch? I mean, is there anything that you’ve ever done? And I’m just asking for the record here to make sure it’s on the record, depending on what happens. Have you ever?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. So in my entire career, I’ve never made any threats of violence or engaged in any acts of violence or even used profanity against law enforcement officers, which is my First Amendment right. I don’t believe that that serves the purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish. And I think the results of my activism and my journalism speak for themselves when police departments till this day continue to invite me to do trainings with them, ride alongs, district attorney’s offices, police departments, all facets of law enforcement want to come together with me and show that they are transparent, that they’re willing to learn, to hear a different perspective, not because I’m some sort of law or legal expert, but because I’m a real life person who has garnered a lot of supporters and I’ve dealt with a lot of police interactions from across the country, from New York to California and everywhere in between.

So I think they value that insight. Until this day, I receive requests to do trainings with law enforcement officers. So if law enforcement agencies though I was some sort of threat or had any sort of violent intent, they wouldn’t be wanting to work with me. So no, my videos speak for themselves, Stephen. I’ve never even cursed. I’ve never even raised my voice. I can defend myself and I can have my little quick witty remarks, I would call them witty remarks. But as far as violence, no, I’ve never engaged in violence and I abhor violence and I always want people to be peaceful because it distracts away from the message of accountability and transparency.

Stephen Janis:

And it’s funny, Sean, we know a lot of cop watchers who curse, but I noticed that you don’t even curse. You keep it pretty friendly. I mean, even in the —

Taya Graham:

Keep it professional.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

SeanPaul Reyes:

There was one time I was doing a cop watch in Connecticut and somebody, an officer, a state trooper had somebody pulled over on the side of the road. This was just recently, a couple weeks ago. And I told him, well, thanks for not spitting in my face. Because of course, Brian Fahey, the former sergeant spit in my face. And he looked confused and he said, well, why would I do that? You’re one of the most polite auditors I’ve ever seen in my life. He was like, you’re a very nice guy. And I’m like, well, there you go. There’s one of them. But again, and there’s a lot of law enforcement officers out there that support me behind the scenes. This is how I get a lot of this information. And again, because they know I’m not anti-law enforcement. I’m anti the apparatus of the police unions, the administration in protecting misconduct by officers, by not having accountability or transparency in these investigations.

Taya Graham:

I’m really glad we put that on the record, but let me just read the next communication you received, once again, with all the identifying information redacted. Quote, “They’ve been doing a lot of digging into your past and your family’s past. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but undercover officers are following you. But that’s not the most alarming thing that they’re doing. They’re currently in talks with the Department of Justice trying to figure out possible federal crimes they can prosecute you with. They’ve come up with a plan to arrest you and prosecute you on a RICO case. When I heard this, I couldn’t believe it. I even said, ‘Do you really believe you can indict him on RICO?’ They laughed and said, ‘Absolutely.’ The goal isn’t even to have you found guilty. They want to make you spend all your money defending yourself and at the same time, make you the national poster child for YouTube domestic terrorists. I know this email may shock you, but I’m telling you, they’re coming after you hard. You have no idea the reach these people have. I hope this email helps you protect yourself against these people.”

OK. Again, let me just get your reaction when you received it and did you think it was legitimate?

SeanPaul Reyes:

So I received that email first before the second one, but my reaction was the same. I receive a lot of shocking emails. I’ve received many death threats. I don’t speak about them all the time because it’s unfortunately a part of society. There are some sick individuals out there who will threaten your children, who will threaten your family members, your own life, and engage in some sort of hateful just vengeance against you. I don’t know what it is, but it’s sick. And I don’t talk about that all the time, but when I’m getting these sorts of emails and they all seem to have common threads: RICO cases, federal cases, poster boy for YouTube domestic terrorism, and they’re coming from separate people, separate email addresses, email addresses that have been created years and years ago. Again, I’ve looked into this a little bit, and we do not know for a fact if these are actually legit or they could be coming from the people just trying to scare me, but it’s definitely intimidating to me and concerning because my family’s at stake here, that I can defend myself and I can hire lawyers and the people have my back, but I would just hate it.

It would be something that I couldn’t even comprehend if my three and four-year-old boys, who actually look up to the police at this point and they see them as heroes, and I don’t want to disillusion them from that at three and four years old and traumatize them. Or even my wife who’s dealt with her own tyranny back in her home country that she fled to come here. She was a patriot in her country. She loved freedom and to see this. I’ve had mass law enforcement officers from Nassau County come to my house before and try and run me off the road. And these are things that have been happening to me, these intimidation tactics, trying to pick you up on a Friday night so you have to spend the weekend in jail, holding you for eight hours on a desk appearance ticket, which should only take like an hour.

These are the kinds of intimidation tactics, scare tactics that I’ve seen that law enforcement will unfortunately engage in to get you to stop talking about what they don’t want you to talk about. They hate the First Amendment. These individuals particularly hate the First Amendment. They don’t like what I do. They don’t like that I make money while doing it and they want to stop that at all costs. I’m going to keep fighting. I’m going to keep speaking truth to power because if I give up, all these people, millions of people have given me a voice, a strong voice, a platform, and if I give up, I feel like I would be letting them down. So I’m going to keep fighting, but I’m going to remain vigilant, and I’m going to continue speaking truth to power, but I have to be careful for my family because that’s where my loyalty lies first.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, this is a horrible thing to contemplate, but have you talked to your family? Have you prepared them at all? Have you told them about these messages, and have you told them what to prepare for? I mean, it’s a horrible question. I hate to ask it, but I know there are real consequences of just even these threats themselves are sort of you having to shoulder the burden. Have you talked to them about it?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. It’s unfortunate that I had to explain to my wife, my sister, my mother, my brother, all of these different things on secure lines, because I don’t know if they’re even listening to my phone at this point, but I had to let them know, and they’re obviously very concerned. And I think the saddest part and the most unfortunate that broke my heart is I had to prepare my children because I didn’t want them… My main job is to protect them from any sort of trauma or any set of issues. And I’m friends with law enforcement officers, so there’s been law enforcement officers that come over my house with their guns and their badges that my children have seen that they’re friendly with. And I told them, Daddy’s friends with the police. You know this, right? Yeah, you work with the police. Well, daddy’s friends with the police and if the police ever come here, it’s because they just want to work with daddy.

Don’t be scared of the police. They’re our friends. Don’t be scared. You’ll be fine. So in case some sort of raid happened or anything like that, I didn’t want my kids to… And that was a hard conversation. I got to tell you, Stephen, it was a hard conversation to have with a three- and four-year-old trying to get them to understand police are good, they’re our friends, and don’t be scared of them that maybe they want to talk to us or come visit how my lawyer visits. Because I have a bunch of friends that are lawyers, police officers, et cetera, and they come and visit and we have a good time and they play with the kids and they bring their kids over and some menace to society I am, apparently. It’s ridiculous what’s going on. Nobody should have to feel this way. And the difference is that when I believe that these law enforcement officers do receive death threats and things like that, because it’s just on both sides, the internet and people are just unhinged and they have a lot of anger, pent up anger built up on both sides.

And I call that out and I make sure in my videos, I say, please be peaceful. Do not engage in this kind of violent rhetoric and threatening rhetoric with law enforcement officers. It’s not productive and it’s going to get you in trouble. It’s going to hurt the movement. They’re going to label us domestic terrorists. They’re already doing that on the federal side. We’ve seen people film the police and DHS agents will say now, hey, congratulations, you’re now on a domestic terrorist list.

So me being the poster boy for domestic terrorism in the United States, according to the federal or state government or whoever, I feel like they could have found somebody better because I work with the police and that will come out once they try and label me that.

But I think what really happens is what’s really going on here, Stephen and Taya, is that they understand that I’m more of a threat to their sort of system than somebody who’s filming outside of a restaurant or whatever the case may be because I’m looking into their finances, $15 million for the PBA. I’m asking the questions about these hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements. I’m speaking at the public meetings, and they see that as a threat. And it’s not a violent threat, it’s just me exercising my rights peacefully. That’s all I’m doing and they don’t like it.

Taya Graham:

I know Stephen has had direct experience with taking a look at the financials of police officers and having the hammer come down on him through his editor.

Stephen Janis:

We were the first publication that published the overtime earnings of the Baltimore City Police Department back in —

Taya Graham:

And they were not pleased.

Stephen Janis:

That was like 2007. We got death threats. They called our office and threatened us and it was scary.

Taya Graham:

Tried to get Stephen fired.

Stephen Janis:

And then the next day they arrested my editor on bogus charges and threw him in jail. So when you touch the money… I’m not saying touch the money.

Taya Graham:

That’s the third rail.

Stephen Janis:

But when you start to expose spending, how much police make and how well they do as per taxpayers, yeah, that’s when things get dicey. Yes.

Taya Graham:

Yes. Yeah. When you start showing the salaries, when you start showing the overtime —

Stephen Janis:

I totally forgot about that.

Taya Graham:

When you start showing take-home cars, that’s when things get really bad. And for the record, his editor was arrested for holding a gun inside of his own home. So that’s a whole other story [crosstalk], maybe sometime we’ll share.

Stephen Janis:

It’s a long story. The charges were eventually dropped. But the point wasn’t, as you point out, not to throw him in jail and convict him of a crime that was not a crime. The point was to scare him and to scare us.

SeanPaul Reyes:

That’s what they do. They’ve done it. They’ve used tactics similar when I rented… The reason why I owned a 14-foot LED billboard truck in the first place is because when I used to rent them for protests, the district attorney’s offices would send subpoenas for felonies for documentation to these billboard truck companies.

Taya Graham:

Oh, wow.

Stephen Janis:

Really?

Taya Graham:

It was done not because they were investigating some sort of felony, not because they cared about the contract or anything like that. It’s because it was used as a tool to intimidate these companies to say, hey, if you rent the billboard truck to Mr. Reyes, you’re going to keep getting subpoenas. We’re going to look into your financials. We’re going to make sure you’re on the up and up. And that’s the whole reason why I bought my own billboard truck so they couldn’t intimidate people. But now they’re just working to intimidate me. They hate the billboard truck, and I get it. Nobody wants a billboard truck in front of their residence, in front of their city hall, in front of their police department. But guess what? It’s my First Amendment right. It’s the only tool that I have for accountability, for transparency, and I’m going to use it to the fullest extent because it’s my right.

You know what? Let me take a look at the RICO statute. I’m going to have —

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, let’s take a look because this RICO thing is very strange.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. And to me, this is very scary. I know this has previously been weaponized against folks in Cop City in Georgia.

Stephen Janis:

Yes, that’s a good point.

Taya Graham:

I also saw it was possibly going to be weaponized against some cop watchers in Texas. I think HBO Matt was part of that crew. So I know the RICO statute can be kind of scary. So we’re going to have Cam put JPEG 4 on the screen. Now, this law is pretty complicated, but the gist of it is, and the most important aspect of it is, is that the idea of a predicate crime, and that’s basically sort of a core component of the law. So I’m just going to go through and read what it means.

So “predicate acts, unlawful predicate acts that can form the basis of a RICO charge include state felony crimes involving acts or threats of murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, obscenity, or dealing in a controlled substance. Predicate acts also include over 100 federal crimes, among them bribery, various forms of fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and trafficking in persons.”

OK, so there’s a lot to unpack here, but I don’t see “using a camera to film public officials” on this list. I mean, how can they turn what you do into any of these crimes?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Well, the way I see it is I’ve seen them turn a traffic sign into notice of a no trespassing sign. I’ve seen them do magic in the criminal justice system. I’ve seen them twist things and come to different conclusions that a rational, logical person wouldn’t do. So I don’t put it past them. I was talking to my lawyer the other day, and this is not… They’re the most evil people ever, these people that are trying to do this, so it’s not like I’m giving them any tips or anything, but they would say, well, he gave me an example. Well, you need a criminal enterprise. They’re going to say that it’s Long Island Audit Inc. that’s generating you this money and your actions, you, by exercising your First Amendment right, you are intimidating elected officials to stop them from carrying out their duties. And it could be as simple as that, money coming in for “intimidation,” what they’re alleging is some sort of intimidation, which is really just First Amendment protected speech, criticizing your government, protesting your government.

And they’ll try and twist that somehow and try and find a crime. And again, you can indict a ham sandwich. So they’re going to be able to do this if they really want to. The question is how long will it take me to get justice and to be able to fight back against this? And that’s their whole game, in my opinion, is the process is the punishment. They didn’t arrest your editor to try and get him to go to prison. They did it to scare him. They did it to make him hire an attorney, make him waste his money. These are why they do these things. And that’s why people that speak truth to power are so important. I’m so grateful and honored to have so many people who have come to my back to support me and help me because this is what they’ll try and do, but the people have my back and I’m going to keep moving forward.

Stephen Janis:

OK. I just want to put a finer point on this. Now, there was something I was thinking about with this whole thing and this whole idea that you’re terrorizing people. If the union president doesn’t come out of that office building, there’s no story. If Brian Fahey doesn’t come out of his house when you knock on the door, just ignores you, none of that ever happens. That’s two that I can think of where if they had just ignored you, it’s all over. There’s no video. There’s no nothing. They participated in this. You weren’t able to, let’s say, walk into someone’s home or office. You knocked on a door in both cases, said, I want to speak to someone, and then they decide to come out and confront you, but they could have just stayed inside their house. It wasn’t like you did anything other than knock.

I’ve watched these videos in great detail. You just knock and ask to speak to someone. That’s not intimidation. That’s not any form of trying to harass or impede or obstruct. It’s asking to speak to someone. That’s a basic First Amendment right. But if they don’t come out and confront you, then there’s nothing that happened. They could easily have neutralized you by simply ignoring you. What do you say to that?

SeanPaul Reyes:

I mean, that’s what happens time and time again. That’s the whole reason that this channel is what it is. The Long Island audit is what it is. It’s the overreaction and the lack of control of their emotions from people in power because they’ve been getting away with it for so long, and then they run into somebody like me with millions of people who support me and millions of people who are going to watch the videos and see it, and they’re going to look bad and their ego gets the best of them in the moment. Even Brian Fahey admitted to the law enforcement officer on the scene that he didn’t handle it right. He knew that after the fact, but at the end of the day, I am just knocking or I’m going somewhere and I’m asking questions and their ego, their lack of control to control their emotions, it just escalates this situation to something criminal.

And then they want to play the victim. And that’s the worst part is that they blame me for their own actions. If I knock on your door and you pull a gun, you spit in my face, somehow I’m the one that was convicted of a crime in that whole scenario. It doesn’t make any sense. The gaslighting is unreal because all I did was knock on the door and then halfway back, making my way back to the public street, a man comes out with a gun, spits in my face. He has no criminal record and I get convicted of a misdemeanor over a private road, dead end, no trespassing sign that apparently means — Dead end no turnaround sign, excuse me.

Stephen Janis:

Think about how those videos would be if they hadn’t come out. It would be just you knocking the door, I guess they’re not here, going out, getting back in your truck and driving off, or police union headquarters, getting back in your truck and driving away. So take those components as they are. There’s nothing illegal or terroristic or anything about knocking on a door and asking to speak to someone.

SeanPaul Reyes:

It’s also not trespassing to walk away from the police union headquarters, but I was charged with it anyway. They will do whatever. HBO Matt, Taya, you brought him up. He was charged with organized crime. These things are ridiculous, but law enforcement agencies, the system itself will try and protect it. And we’ve had law enforcement agents that I’ve spoken to that have told me IA and all these different accountability apparatuses, they’re not for accountability. They’re meant to protect the badge. They’re meant to protect the image of the police officers and let them get away with as much as they possibly can. And it’s unfortunate, and that’s what they do, though.

Taya Graham:

Something I was thinking of when Stephen said if the police officers were just able to deescalate, to handle their emotions, then there wouldn’t be any video. But unfortunately, there are a lot of officers that don’t seem to, let’s say, understand people’s First Amendment rights, which is why there’s so many cop watching and auditor channels. Have you heard anything more about the demonetization of cop watchers and auditors? Have you heard any more about how widespread it is, and have you been able to appeal, and just how are you adapting? Because I believe your channel was demonetized, is that correct?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. So my channel was demonetized on the same day as everyone else. And the police union president Lucavila was actively talking about getting YouTubers demonetized on radio programs. So as far as how widespread it is, it seems to be as widespread as it is because it’s a lot of people. I haven’t talked to every single one of them. I’m very busy. I’m very worried about my life and there’s a lot going on right now, but seems like it’s caught a lot of people in the First Amendment auditing community and including myself. And I have filed an appeal, and the person who responded to my appeal said something very interesting and I actually conferred with other auditors and other YouTube channels who have sent appeals that if they got something similar back, but they’re saying that they’re looking, in short, they’re saying he said that we’re going to look into this. We understand that you’re frustrated. I hope you and your family are safe, SeanPaul.

Stephen Janis:

What?

SeanPaul Reyes:

So I though that was a little strange.

Stephen Janis:

That’s what YouTube said to you?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. YouTube representative when they put in my appeal said, SeanPaul, I hope you and your family are safe.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Stephen Janis:

Woah.

Taya Graham:

That’s very odd.

SeanPaul Reyes:

So I though that was interesting. And no other YouTube channel received some sort of hope you and your family are safe kind of deal. The rest of it was pretty much generic we’re going to look into it, but it was definitely interesting.

Stephen Janis:

So wait, and you talked to other auditors and they didn’t receive that message?

Taya Graham:

They did not receive a similar message of, I hope you and your family are safe.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. Nobody got the hope you and your family are safe except for me out of the people I’ve talked to. So I thought that was definitely interesting given what’s going on. And again, I don’t want people to think people are like, oh, he’s connecting this with this, with this, with this and trying to sell us this. I’m not trying to sell you anything. This is my life. This is my theory based on all of the circumstantial evidence, based on these sources. I’m just trying to put two and two together the best I can. If I have a smoking gun, you guys will be the first to know, but it’s just definitely strange. And I’ve been navigating it. The people have been supporting me over on Patreon and it’s been very successful there. And I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff. I’m uploading a video today.

And if I become funded by the people, directly by the people, I think I can accomplish a lot more. So I’m not deterred. I’m not distracted. I think if I’m completely people-funded by the people who want to see what I do, it takes away all of the fighting for the algorithm, trying to chase the algorithm, making sure a video is not too long, not too short, has the right moments, whatever. It just frees me up. So I’m excited for the new chapter of my life while I will be on probation during this new chapter. So that’s been a lot to get to, to get used to.

Stephen Janis:

On probation?

SeanPaul Reyes:

On probation for one year.

Stephen Janis:

Probation from what?

Taya Graham:

I think this is for the bench trial for allegedly trespassing on the [crosstalk] property.

Stephen Janis:

Why don’t you go to that question because he already answered my question. Yeah, go ahead.

Taya Graham:

I was going to do that.

Stephen Janis:

OK. No.

Taya Graham:

OK. Let me start over then. So actually I’m glad you mentioned the officer, you knocked on the door and the officer came out of the house, held a gun, spit in your face. That, I believe, was your interaction with Connecticut State Trooper Brian Fahey. Now, I believe you were convicted after that bench trial for trespassing, and I think you’ve hired an appellate lawyer. Can you tell me kind of what your next steps are to fight this case?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Sure. Yeah. So I hired one of the best appellate attorneys in the state of Connecticut, John Shorn, and he’s argued hundreds of times in the Connecticut Appellate Court and the Connecticut Supreme Court. He knows what he’s doing. I have full confidence in him. He believes this verdict to be, I guess, I don’t want to say what he actually said. He definitely disagrees with this verdict wholeheartedly, and he’s very opposed to the judge’s logic regarding the private road, dead end, no turnaround sign and how that under the law is somehow sufficient notice and not a vehicle sign. So he’s very passionate about it. I’m grateful to have him on my side. And we’re actually currently right now at this moment trying to get my probation stayed. I was sentenced to 90 days in jail, suspended with one year of probation. And that probation’s being carried out here in Suffolk County where Lou Savillo, the president of the police union, is very influential here in this county.

And I do not want to be on probation here in Suffolk County, but it is what it is. I am. And it’s already affected my life and it’s affecting my job and my journalism. I can’t travel when I want to. I have to ask permission, and I’ve already been told no for a preplanned trip that I had.

Stephen Janis:

Where were you going to go? What happened?

SeanPaul Reyes:

I was actually going to Washington, DC. I was going to go with my attorney and we were going to go over there and just document what’s happening in DC. Haven’t been in DC in a while. He wanted to go to a couple museums. It was more like a personal/business trip, and it was just too short notice for my probation officer and they told me no. So that was unfortunate.

Stephen Janis:

They said, no, you can’t go to Washington DC?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

Really?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. They said, no, you can’t go to Washington, DC.

Stephen Janis:

And what was their reasoning for that?

SeanPaul Reyes:

They said that it didn’t give them enough notice to make some sort of pass or something like that because obviously I didn’t know I was going to be on probation, so I planned this trip and I’ve planned other trips well in advance. And now that I’m on probation, I need some sort of permission from these individuals to be able to do anything about my job. So my attorney, John Shorhorn is actively right now, he filed the notice of appeal today and notice for a stay of probation because his argument is going to be, well, this is going to affect not only him, but his employees, his journalism, his company in a very significant way when we can just put a pause on it. And if we somehow lose, he can always serve the probation later. It doesn’t affect anything. He’s no public safety threat or anything like that.

So we’re trying to get it stayed for now so I can continue to work and do what I need to do.

Stephen Janis:

Well, what’s preventing them from saying no every time? I mean, is there any process for this or they just can just say no for whatever reason they want?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah, they can say no for whatever reason they want, I guess. I spoke to my attorney. There is a process where I can go to the court and ask them, but that’s going to cost me money for have my attorney argue that and then time and then you get the judicial approval because the judge is the ultimate arbiter of what I can do on probation. But just on a day to day, it’s going to be the probation officer here in Suffolk County. So it’s definitely interesting. They can come into my home. They don’t even need a search warrant anymore. They can come into my home whenever they want with whoever they want. They can search your

Taya Graham:

Car anytime, right?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah. They can search my car anytime they want. They don’t need any warrant or probable cause or anything right now. So I was told in those same emails that you read, I was told that the Lucivillo and these individuals were communicating with the state’s attorney. Again, I don’t know. I don’t have proof of that. I’ve put in FOIA requests. I’m waiting on everything, but I doubt even if I’ll even get anything, if there is anything. But I heard that they were communicating, which my lawyer says wouldn’t be that. If I’m facing a case here in New Suffolk County and I was facing a case, they would communicate and everything like that. Just the though of Brian Fahey and Lucavillo talking on the phone terrifies me. I mean, it is not a good lie. I don’t know what they would want to talk about, but it can’t be good.

I can’t imagine.

Stephen Janis:

What pretext do they need to search your car or go into your house? Is it none? There’s none. None?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah, there’s nothing. Because I am on probation right now for a trespass crime, one of the lowest crimes in the state of Connecticut or anywhere really, nonviolent property crime that again, the circumstances I argue I didn’t commit it, but we’ll see what the appeal does. But even just for that, I have a year, a year. If I didn’t have a family or anything, I might have just chosen to do the 90 days and been done with it then because it’s kind of ridiculous that they’re going to have control over my entire freedom for one year. They can go in my car whenever they want. They can walk up to my door and come inside my house whenever they want. They don’t need warrants and no judicial checks and that’s for a whole year. So it’s going to really affect my work, but I guess I just have to work more from home and focus on the Suffolk County government.

I’m sure they’ll love that. What

Stephen Janis:

Does your appellate lawyer think about the implied consent and the Supreme Court precedent in terms of knock and talks and things like that? Does he think that applies in this case?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah, that’s a great question, Steven. He thinks that it is ridiculous. Again, my lawyer is very grandiose and he speaks a little differently than I do, but he thinks it’s ridiculous that the judge would equate some sort of animosity as evidence of lacking a knowledge for license or privilege. Because the way my attorney sees it, and it’s the same way I see it, is animosity and unfriendliness is something separate from a license or privilege to do something. You could have animosity with anybody, a family member, you could have a bitter fight with a family member. The

Stephen Janis:

Family member comes to

SeanPaul Reyes:

Your door to apologize and they knock on your door to apologize and say, “Hey, I’m sorry, but you’ve never once told that family member they can’t come to your house. Are they trespassing because you had this sort of history of animosity?” To us, to me and my attorney, it doesn’t make really any sense, the license or privilege part, how they connect it with animosity part. And that’s to put to the side with a sign. But yeah, Florida v. Jardines doesn’t mention any animosity, just mentions a customary

Stephen Janis:

License. What you point out is a highly subjective judgment. And to me, that was a very weak piece of legal reasoning. And I’m not a lawyer, but I thought tying those two together in some sort of sequential if then was extremely weak and almost amateurish in the interpretation of the law because what he’s opened up is all sorts of traps within the law itself because it would be very easy to construe, let’s say, a hostile relationship with almost anybody. You could say, “I don’t like my postman. I don’t like Democrats or whatever. I don’t like Republicans, so they shouldn’t have known they shouldn’t come in my house because I had a Trump sign out there.” I mean, the implications of that ruling – That’s

SeanPaul Reyes:

A great point. According to this judge, if you had a Trump sign and you were a Democrat and you were a Democrat looking to knock on that person’s door, you would be committing the crime of criminal trespass. There’s no difference between my case and my case.

Stephen Janis:

And the whole point of the law is to think of consequences of making certain sort of assumptions and in a component of a law. And that what he did is a very, very weak because he didn’t think about these things. There’s so many ways that could be applied in a completely anti-First Amendment or I would say unconstitutional way. Yeah, I

SeanPaul Reyes:

Agree.

Stephen Janis:

I think your appeal is extremely important actually to precedent and

SeanPaul Reyes:

Case law. So does my attorney. He says that the law can’t be interpreted this way. That’s why he’s very passionate about it. He says, “This is not the way the law should have been interpreted and this sets a bad precedent, so we’re going to fix this.” And I have full confidence in him. He is one of the best. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s talking about. And I’m confident that the conviction will be reversed and be issued a judgment of acquittal and that’ll be a great day for me because that would mean I’m no longer on probation.

Taya Graham:

Just to ask, you mentioned what a great lawyer you have. And as far as I know, really good lawyers are pretty expensive. So I’m just curious, you said the phrase, and I think this is so true, the process is the punishment. Well, my question is how expensive is this process and how many steps are there in the state appellate process? Because I’m not familiar with all the steps of it.

SeanPaul Reyes:

So to answer your second question first, you get an automatic appeal right to the appellate court, to a lower appellate court in Connecticut. And then you have the right to ask for an appeal to the Supreme Court of Connecticut, but you don’t have a right. They can deny you. It would depend. But right now we’re working on the first appeal that I have a right to. He’s argued before them hundreds of times. He just got somebody new trial in August. Again, he came highly recommended. I looked into his cases and he is somebody that normally would get between 30 and $50,000 on this sort of appeal on a regular case, depending on how serious it is. He is actually offered, and I told him I was going to be transparent with him with this number and I’ve been transparent with my Patreons over there and he charged me 15,000 for the appeal.

So while that’s a lot of money – He cut

Taya Graham:

It in half.He cut it

SeanPaul Reyes:

In half for you though. A lot of money. Right. Because he finds this case very interesting and he wants to do it himself. So when one of the best wants to do something like this, and I would’ve figured out a way to pay him whatever he asked for that day, but he’s at 15,000 and I was very appreciative for that. And again, because you write the process, the process is the punishment. They don’t have to spend money on these appellate attorneys. They’re already getting paid by the taxpayers to do this. The amount of money this trial costs, everything altogether. Another thing that he said was ridiculous is the four protective orders for a hundred years, criminal protective orders against the entire Fahey family for a hundred years. It’s a property crime, a nonviolent property crime. I never even had any dealings with Sergeant Fahey’s daughter or his son.

They’re adults, but I’ve never met them. I didn’t even know they existed till recently. So for them to have a hundred year order of protection against me is ridiculous, as my lawyer would say. It’s ridiculous.

Taya Graham:

That’s amazing. I’ve never even heard of a 100 year protective order. I have seen body camera video of women literally getting knocked unconscious by men and they can barely get a restraining order. That’s the sad part. And yet you knock on a door and now there’s a hundred year protective order against people that you’ve never actually interacted with. That is just astonishing to me.

Stephen Janis:

Let’s hope there’ll be a headline. Protection order expires for oldest living cop watcher 100 years later.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Yeah, hopefully I can make it that long. You’ll be

Stephen Janis:

A 103-year-old man. I’m

SeanPaul Reyes:

Guessing around 30. It is sad. It is sad that there are people, victims of domestic violence, whether they’re male or female. Correct, male or female. And it’s impossible, almost impossible, very difficult for them to get a criminal protective order, a permanent one for longer than a year. But yet I got 104, 100-year ones. And even police officers, police officers get shot, beat up by individuals and they don’t get protective orders against the people they arrest. That just doesn’t happen that way. But yet I knocked on a door of a police officer and him and his entire family get a hundred-year protective order. We’re fighting against that too. Not that I care because I don’t plan on ever going back to knock on his door, but I know that I no longer have the license or privilege now, not then, but it’s just more abuse of the process.

It’s the system protecting itself, the judge protecting the cops, the state’s attorney protecting the cops. Anybody else would’ve been arrested for felony threatening felony crimes that day for what Brian Fahey did. And he was charged with a very light disorderly conduct charge that was erased from the system. So I’m just going to keep fighting for accountability. We’re going to have depositions are coming up next in the Fahey case for the civil lawsuit and just going to keep moving forward.

Stephen Janis:

So before we go, I have one more question. And I always want to ask you this question because whenever we post a video about you, the passion is unbelievable. You have passionate supporters and very passionate critics. And I just want to give you the opportunity to answer your critics who say, “Well, all he does is harass people for clicks and views and there’s no real substantive part of this work.” What do you say to them and why are they wrong?

SeanPaul Reyes:

Well, again, I would say to them first and foremost, because I know how passionate they can be.

Don’t be so passionate about me. I’m just some guy on the internet. I’m nobody to you, or at least I should be nobody to you. The people’s opinion, your opinion doesn’t really mean much because my opinion, I care about my friends and family’s opinion of me. And I do read the comments and most of them are supportive. But to answer their question about what I’ve accomplished, what have I accomplished? I’ve worked with the police departments. I’ve helped First Amendment auditor, whatever you want to call me. You call me whatever you want. You can’t say that I haven’t worked with the police on a serious level across our country, district attorney’s offices to help bridge that divide. I’ve exposed mayors for engaging in fraudulent misconduct where they’re voting on bills that they’re receiving the money to. I broke that story myself. The FBI is looking into it.

I’ve spoken to the FBI in Florida about that story. It’s a crazy story. I’ve had mayors rip down signs from city halls. There is so much that I… And the most important thing is when I’m out on the street, I never run into these other passionate people, thank God. But I do run into a lot of people as I travel the United States, whether it’s at an airport, a rest stop, wherever it may be. I always tell me, “Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I’ve learned so much from you. I’ve learned how to control my emotions. I’ve learned that I need to step out of a vehicle. I’ve learned that there’s certain things that I have to comply with, other things I don’t.” And that, to me, that has happened dozens of times at this point. And if that only happened once, it would’ve been worth it for me, my five-year career, because if I could teach somebody how to exercise their rights, there’s nothing more important in our country than our constitution and our rights.

So it’s something that, especially now, especially when it’s being tested by the federal state governments, it doesn’t matter. Again, I always tell people this, it’s not left or right, it’s up and down. And the quicker that we, the people, really understand that, the quicker we can come together and stop fighting each other and start really trying to demand accountability and transparency and that laws are passed to benefit the people, not the corporations, not the elites. We’re too busy fighting each other. So I would hope that they would hear me out, come on my side. I would love to debate them. If they want to debate, it would be my honor to do so. I want to bring people together. I don’t want to tear people apart. And if you think I just do it for clicks and views, I’m not even getting paid on YouTube anymore, so I can’t say that.

I mean, that’s a lot. I still post on there, so I’m not doing it for clicks and views on YouTube. But again, I think it’s such a red herring because every single news media outlet is looking for clicks and views because why wouldn’t you want somebody to hear your story?

Taya Graham:

Exactly.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. And you got to get paid for the work. And

SeanPaul Reyes:

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a utopia where everybody gets

Taya Graham:

It.

Stephen Janis:

I know. No.

Taya Graham:

You know what? I’m really going to hold onto what you said. It’s not left or right. It’s up and down. And the sooner that we figure this out, the better our country is going to be. We’re going to be able to work together. I really, I love that so much. That is just the perfect way to end this conversation.

Stephen Janis:

And true. And quite true.

Taya Graham:

It’s so true. That just rang so true with me. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, SeanPaul.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Thank you for being here. No problem. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It’s always a pleasure and I would love to come back on. Yeah,

Taya Graham:

Please. Oh, absolutely. We are going to continue to follow your story and of course request that you keep us informed and updated as much as you can.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Will do. Promise.

Stephen Janis:

Thanks, Sean.

SeanPaul Reyes:

Thank you

Stephen Janis:

Guys.

Taya Graham:

Thank you so much. So Stephen, that was a fascinating – It was. But deeply troubling conversation. And something I just want to point out is how tricky probation can be. There are so many holds that can be put on you. Essentially, the civil rights that you’re used to living with every day are just suspended. Your car can be searched at any time. You can be pulled over for not putting on your turn signal. Next thing you know, your car is being tossed. They can come over to your house and search your house. Also on probation, it can mean urinalysis testing to see if you’ve been drinking alcohol or taking any kind of chemicals or drugs. So basically the civil rights that you’re used to having are just completely gone, let alone the fact that you have to ask permission before you travel and you can just be told no.

Stephen Janis:

They can basically lock Sean down for the duration at this point. I don’t see why they let him go anywhere at this point, given the animosity they have towards him in Suffolk County. So this is very, very concerning. And have

Taya Graham:

You ever heard of a 100-year protective order? No.

Stephen Janis:

Have you

Taya Graham:

Ever heard of

Stephen Janis:

That? No. And I’ve covered a lot of trials and a lot of different types of legal situations. And no, that has never come up in any court process that I have covered as a reporter over the past 23 years.

Taya Graham:

There are absolutely brutal cases

Stephen Janis:

Of

Taya Graham:

Domestic violence where I’ve never seen a protective order like that. And it could have saved the person’s life.

Stephen Janis:

Right. And I think that this shows that there’s a tremendous amount of concern about SeanPaul with the law enforcement that seems to be disproportionate. Although I wonder to a certain extent is the fact that he has some power himself because he has a very big audience and that audience reacts to what he does. And perhaps that’s why they’re fixated upon him, not for any specific reason of what he does, but the audience that he has, which is quite extensive. And I think that’s perhaps why they treat him that way.

Taya Graham:

And I also think when you start investigating money, when you start investigating someone’s pockets, what that overtime looks like, if they’re getting take home cars, if they’re getting any kind of perks, when you start looking at people’s money, that’s when you can get into real trouble with the government.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And just to your point about the role of people who are less than pleased with Sean, that’s actually pretty important. By reacting to him, they actually create the story. And the best way for there not to be a story about you, for there not to be a Long Island audit video about you is to just ignore him, which begs the question, why can’t they do that? Why can’t they just ignore him? I mean, I was just sort of imagining when you were talking about it earlier, what would’ve happened if Lucivillo just never exited the building and confronted SeanPaul? There would simply be nothing for him to post. I

Stephen Janis:

Mean,

Taya Graham:

Stephen, what do you think is going on here?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I was thinking about this a lot while we’re talking to Sean, because that’s really sort of the critical question. What is it about him that’s so threatening? And I think he’s exposing the sort of authoritarian impulses of law enforcement in this country and the power, the power that they actually wield. And they are used to being able to wield that power pretty much unfettered. If I get a $10 million judgment against me, I can still keep my job or I get convicted of a crime, I can still keep my job. The money and the power is extensive and it’s just unaccustomed to being challenged on that level. Most mainstream media organizations generally tend to work with police because they want the tip on the latest crime or the serial killer or something, and that’s very important. But Sean’s doing an aspect of journalism that doesn’t normally get done, which is a sort of accountability.

Even in our town, since I stopped reporting on overtime, there’s not a lot of reporting about police overtime or take home cars. People generally, mainstream media journalists don’t really pay much attention to that. And I think because Sean is challenging that underlying power structure, which starts with resources, government resources and taxpayer money, the pushback has been massive because that’s what really drives all this. I mean, the $1 billion budget or whatever he was talking about for Suffolk County police, or we talked about in the previous show, that’s a lot of power. That’s a lot of power to have that kind of influence. And the police union in Suffolk County, they all are paid by taxpayers not to be police, but to be union officials. That’s a lot of power. The overtime is a lot of power. The very generous pensions, it’s a big, big lucrative system.

And when you start looking under the hood, I think that’s when it gets dicey for reporters. I know it did for me. That’s very true. And I’m sure in some ways, I think that’s one of the reasons Sean is experienced. He is sort of getting underneath a massive source of power that really goes unexamined quite often.

Taya Graham:

And you know what? I think that’s what unfortunately can make cop watchers really annoying to police is when they start looking at budgets, when they start looking at the money, when you start looking into their pockets, that’s when things can get really dicey. And so SeanPaul is just part of our ongoing coverage of the copwatching movement across the country. And we have been reporting on this very colorful and obviously controversial group of YouTube activists for almost seven years. I mean, it’s been an interesting journey documenting this spectrum of disorganized, but potent dissent. It tests us. It provokes us. It measures the health of our First Amendment right. And what it shows is what’s possible when the average citizens pick up their phones and point them at people who are unaccustomed to being watched. Yes, it’s not always pretty. It’s not always comforting, but it is vital to our ongoing dialogue about how to hold power accountable.

And that’s really the point. We might not always like it or the form that it comes in, but that process, keeping power in check is vital. It is vital because we want a government that serves at the consent of the people, not the other way around. Now, if you are interested in Copwatchers or the idea of YouTube activism, you can watch our documentary, I Am But the Mirror, the story of American Copwatching. And we’ll also put a link in the comments where you can watch it for free. It’s free on Fossam. And also, please don’t forget to send your tips and your videos and your story ideas to par@therealnews.com. Of course, you can always reach out to me directly at TeusBaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. We want to thank you for joining us for this very special episode of the Police Accountability Report. And as always, please be safe out there.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. My name is Maximillian Alvarez.

Jules Taylor:

And I’m Jules Taylor.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And today we are going to Terlingua in West Texas, right on the US-Mexico border and right next to Big Bend National Park. As the Texas Tribune reports, “Since President Trump returned to office in January of 2025, his administration has renewed efforts to erect border barriers in parts of the US-Mexico border that don’t currently have any. That includes the Big Bend region in far West Texas, home to the Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park, both of which the Trump administration has targeted for border security infrastructure. Historically, the region has recorded the fewest illegal crossings along the entire Southwest border, but the Trump administration has awarded billions of dollars worth of contracts to build some form of infrastructure to deter illegal border crossings, while telling concerned West Texas residents that they will not build a border wall or fence in the national park.

Local residents, environmentalists, and a bipartisan group of elected officials, including sheriffs and county judges, have still asked the administration to stop all construction.”

Jules Taylor:

According to the website of the community advocacy group, No Big Bend Wall, 2.1 billion in contracts have already been awarded for wall construction in Presidio and Hudspeth counties. Over 500 private landowners stand to lose access to the Rio Grande due to the proposed border wall. Construction is planned for Texas gems, including Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park, and the Department of Homeland Security is waiving 31 federal laws, including National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Native American Graves Protection and Reparations Act, and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So to talk about what the hell is happening on the US-Mexico border, we are really grateful to be joined on the show today by a panel of folks who are on the front lines of this story and who are joining us from in or near Terlingua, Texas. Thank you all so much for joining us. Please introduce yourselves to our listeners.

Yolanda Alvarado:

I’m Yolanda Alvarado. I’m a fifth generation cattle rancher and the regional director for Conserve Big Bend: No Big Bend Wall.

Crystal Allbright:

Hi, I’m Crystal Allbright. I live in Terlingua, Texas. I’ve lived here 36 years. My husband and I own a bicycle shop and have outdoor gear as well as art. We’ve operated the river for 29 years, but we’ve phased that out for now. I’ve visited the area since I was a young child and love it very much.

Sara Ryza:

I’m Sara Ryza and I have the Desert Air Motel in Sanderson, Texas. It’s a renovated 1960 motel in Sanderson, which is a gateway town into Big Bend. So while the national park and the state park are kind of the anchor places that bring people into the region, they’re going through gateway towns to the region and into the park. And so a big part of this area is tourism and there are a lot of independently owned small businesses that are concerned about what all of this is going to do in the short and long term for tourism.

Scott Whitener:

My name’s Scott Whitener. I was a former superintendent on the Big Bend Ranch State Park along the river corridor located along the river road, which is just along the Rio Grande and covered about 50,000 acres of the front country of the state park side. I have been going to the Big Bend for 30 years. My wife fell in love with me there, I think, to check and see if that’s still true. But I currently live in Marfa, which is in Presidio County. I also am a property owner in three of the six counties in the affected area in the Big Bend sector. And yeah, this is near and dear to my heart, my family’s heart, and it will remain that way.

Sharron Reed Gavin:

My name is Sharron Reed Gavin and I also live in Terlingua with my husband. We moved there in 2013 full-time. We had both loved the Big Bend independently of knowing one another. My first time to go there, and this is before most of y’all were born, but was 1976 and went with some friends with the canoe and we wanted to do the river. And there weren’t such things as desert sports really at the time, but we found some good folks like Crystal and her husband who would help us get down to the river and go on it for a while. But I have six grandchildren and that’s why this is so important to me, also for my neighbors and all that love the Big Bend. There’s not a lot being done to save it by our elected officials, but I think all of our voices matter.

All of these people are working so hard at their real jobs and on top of it, especially what Yolanda and Sarah are doing with No Big Bend Wall. It’s just all of these people are doing full-time jobs and doing a full-time job with no Big Bend wall, and I just appreciate them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and we genuinely appreciate all of you for being here and talking to us about this. I’m just incredibly sorry that you and your community are going through this, that our country is going through this. It’s like every week it’s another horror show, but I really want to zero in on what you were just talking about, Sharon. I’ve never had the pleasure of going to see Big Bend or being in this part of the country. I really hope to correct that soon. But this is, from what I’ve seen, one of the most just beautiful places on God’s green earth. But for those of us who are not from there and for folks who are listening who have never been there, I want to ask if y’all can describe what our listeners can’t see for themselves. Tell us more about this area and what it’s like to live and work there.

Yolanda Alvarado:

Yeah, so I’m not directly near Big Bend National Park. My family ranches in the Big Bend region and that starts from Hudspeth County and it goes all the way to Valverde County. But we have ranches in Hudspeth and Presidio and near Jeff Davis. And we’ve been out here for hundreds of years and it’s really just quite desolate. You could see four hundreds of miles just desert and no one around. It’s a really serene environment and it’s also really harsh to be in the desert. It’s filled with rural communities. No communities are huge out here. We have very few ambulances, small schools. My children go to a school with 35 students from kindergarten to high school. So it’s just a really small time, small town, rural environment. And we throw on tourism and people going to the National Park and passing through these small areas. So even though we are small in size or small landowners, it still feels big.

It still feels connected to the rest of America because we still have all these visitors and people coming through.

Sara Ryza:

It also feels like time slows down here. You can relax and it’s kind of the call of the desert. You wouldn’t expect that you would love it so much if you weren’t originally thought of yourself as a desert person, but it’s also, it’s very gritty. There’s a grit to the people that live and work here and a lot of the business owners have several businesses. We also have a liquor store and also we’re part of this bigger region, but we’re also our own little communities. And in Sanderson, it’s Terrell County that’s getting vehicle barriers going through our county, which is only 20 miles to the border to the river, but that’s all private land. So we’re connected geographically to the river where we are, but also to the region through the tourism. It’s all really interconnected.

Crystal Allbright:

Yeah, I agree with both Yolanda and Sarah. It’s very remote and fairly isolated, but we all are connected. In the national park, I like to describe it as three biomes. There’s the mountains, the Chisos mountains, and then there’s the open expanse of the desert, and then there’s the river corridor that connects us all. So if you start at Yolanda’s Ranch and drive the Chispa Road all the way through Presidio and to Terlingua and then up through Alpine and then Marfa, you can make a big loop. You can do Fort Davis and Sanderson. And so we’re all connected. This has brought us together in so many ways from learning about each other’s businesses and lives as well as participating in the community meetings, whether it’s a town hall or a commissioner’s meeting or a groundwater meeting. We’re all working together to learn ways that we can delay the construction, which we prefer to call destruction of this area that we love.

Scott Whitener:

We all have to continue agreeing with each other because everybody else before me said it way better than I think I will. But at the same time, a few days ago I put it into perspective. I looked at all the population in all of our six counties that are affected right now in the Big Bend sector, and there’s like 23,000 people. You know how many square miles there is in those six counties? 23,000 square miles. Think about that. That’s a one person per square mile. Could you imagine being anywhere that allows you to have that type of expanse? We are all connected by this region, honestly. We all know what each other are doing because we love it out here. We love one another and it’s trampling on our freedoms, it’s trampling on what we love, and this government overreach is, it’s destroying our way of life, but we’re not going to let it.

And I’ll continue to say that, but at the same time, it’s made this community bigger, better, stronger. And I can’t say enough about the people, the place, the sunrises, the sunsets, the mountains, the open expanse, the plains. This is a special place, and if you haven’t been down here, you don’t have to come because like Austin used to say, “Hey, come for the fun, but don’t move here, please.” We do love the visitors. We love having people down here, but you live out here for a reason and we share this place with one another because it’s not any of ours, but it sure is ours to share.

Sharron Reed Gavin:

And the only thing I would add to that is you asked what it would look like to people who haven’t been here and everybody’s kind of hit that nail on the head, but it really is something that you can’t understand until you see it in person. And my favorite other place in the world is the north rim of the Grand Canyon, and I promise they have nothing on us, absolutely nothing. But we also, the beauty is here, but there’s archeological sites, there’s historical sites. They’re not paying any mind to those. They even started working on one of those sites and were interrupted. Yolanda, I can’t remember if it was by you or somebody else out near you, but the scale of the destruction and the history and the things that we absolutely cannot replace, it’s mind-boggling. And then everybody said this too about how we are all working together and we may be different and love our isolation, but boy, you step on this anthill and you’ve got a lot to contend with.

The thing that makes me feel really good about it though is this group isn’t going away. These people across the country who have banded together to fight this wall, they’re here to stay. They’re here to stay and the people are going to make their voices heard, and I think just at the end of the day, get this to stop.

Scott Whitener:

I don’t work for the state park system anymore, which is why I can be on this podcast and talk as much shit as I want. Pardon my French. But I actually work for an animal rescue. We rescue dogs out of shelters one tail at a time. We cover an area about the size of South Carolina, even bigger than our six sexers. So we save a lot of shelter animals and abandoned animals, and probably that’s what 40 to 50 to 60 hours of my week is. And then the other waking hours is fighting this.

Crystal Allbright:

I said earlier that my husband and I have a bicycle shop and we worked in the river outfitting business. We work six to seven days a week all day long. And again, using that time, especially when people come through the shop, we have displays about what’s going on in the area and we encourage people to voice their opinions about what’s going on and contact representatives. We use our space to show photographs of some of the destruction as well as to help raise money for these organizations that are working so hard to stay on top of what’s going on.

Yolanda Alvarado:

Yeah. I’m a cattle rancher, as I mentioned. I manage all my family’s ranches, and so I work every day outside in the desert. I work with mother nature. I work with the animals with droughts, with floods, the rain, any type of environmental issue you can think of a hundred and plus degrees outside or freezing outside. So my everyday working life and what it has been for the past almost 10 years has just been me and the desert, me and the animals, and that is my job. And carrying my family’s legacy, it has been my responsibility to be a steward of the land and continue that and teach my children how to take care and live out here, take care of the desert, the ranches and the animals, what it means, what you can use the plants for. So yeah, that’s basically what I do all day.

And then now I am fighting the border wall as the regional director, spending a lot of my time behind a computer now, but here we are.

Sharron Reed Gavin:

Yeah, I’ll say one thing. None of these folks work nine to five. I mean, I’m retired and that’s very fortunate because I have some more time to help on the no wall fight, but none of these people work nine to five. I can’t even imagine the number of miles that Yolanda drives or Scott used to do when he was with the state park or Crystal on their river trips. It’s mind-boggling. I do know where Crystal lives, and you have to love it out here to drive from where she lives into Terrlingo. It may be like seven miles, but it can take you up to 30, 40 minutes. So these people are working before and after work and during the working hours.

Jules Taylor:

National borders everywhere in the world are deeply political constructs with complicated histories, and the US-Mexico border is no different. I mean, it’s been a political talking point our entire lives. Can you talk to us about what it’s like to live somewhere that is so regularly charged by political narrative and policy battles and tell us why that’s different now?

Yolanda Alvarado:

Well, historically, the river down here in this part in the Big Bend sector, it’s been so isolated and desolate that we don’t have many crossings here, as you mentioned. So for many years up until almost recently, and still actually today, the communities on the river are on both sides. So you see Presidio and Ohinaga sharing a river, you see Bokias, we are one community. So politically, not until the first border wall came through, it wasn’t something that we even thought about for us and my family and the ranchers because we’ve always just been safe out there. We’ve been alone and we’ve been one community with the other side of the border that was Pilates, Mexico. And it wasn’t until, I guess, Bush, he built a fail billion dollar wall that’s actually on my aunt’s property. And that’s when we started seeing, for us anyways, in this region, it being more politically charged.

And even then at that time, I don’t believe anyone looked at the Big Bend region close to the National Park and said, “We need a wall here.” So I personally felt a little separated from what was going on in other places. I mean, me and my family never thought in a hundred years they would try to put a wall where we are because it just doesn’t make sense at all. It’s like you go down there, I even took the border patrol agents, the head director, infrastructure project directors of the Border Wall Project, and they said, “Yolanda, I see what you’re talking about because that’s how ridiculous it looks in person when you get off of a map.” We did see when Kersey Nome was a Homeland Security Director, we started seeing Stryker military vehicles, the army lining the border. Still today, I’m passed by Army people.

Our border’s completely militarized now. So it was a very isolated, safe place. And now I have to worry about running into a Stryker military vehicle hitting me on the way to the ranch. And most of the time I find them napping in their trucks because it’s so quiet and they don’t have anything to do. I see them on just, there’s actually a weightlifting area where they’re bored and they’re lifting weights because there’s no emergency on the border, yet our military’s deployed in our own homes, in our own backyards, filling up all the hotel rooms in these small rural communities already causing damage to tourism. So it’s been interesting watching it in real time. I was sitting on our back porch less than half a mile from Mexico on the Rio Grande reading that we were in a state of emergency and within the week we had military driving in and showing up at our property.

I even had military personnel drive through our gate in the middle of the night because they were just messing around, driving really fast. So it’s been a really interesting experience watching it in real time, not on the news saying like, “Oh, we have an emergency. Oh, there’s the military. Now we’re getting a wall.” It’s been really crazy and at the very least, such a disturbance to our peace or what was peaceful.

Scott Whitener:

This should make every taxpayer mad, and I’m only going to put it into perspective. I won’t put names under the bus. I live in Marfa, which everybody poo-poos Marfa just because it’s fun to do it anyway, and I get it. We’re a little art community, everybody’s a little bougie, whatever. I live in an old train warehouse, which it’s fun. Anyway, but I go down the street and I have the US military staying at a place that costs $285 a night minimum, and they’ve been staying there full-time since February of 2026. They use the pool, they use the weight room, all the things that people in this community can’t afford to use. Our US military is occupying that hotel and they’re not paying hotel taxes, they’re not helping the community, and they’re showing up to the pool and drinking at the bars. And it’s like, what are they defending?

And when we ask them, “What are you doing here?” They said, “We’re here to help this place. We’re here to defend you guys.” And I’m like, “Defend me from what? Art critics?” I mean, certainly it should make any taxpayer mad of what’s being wasted down here. These guys cruise around all day, all night and do nothing. And I’m not dogging the military, I’m dogging the decision. And it’s going on all over this region and it’s despicable.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, it’s going on all over the country, right? I go to Washington DC this week and there are a bunch of board national guardsmen just walking around. It’s like, what the hell are we doing?

Yolanda Alvarado:

Really an insult on, I think, our military service also. My sister’s in the Air Force, and I mean, it’s insulting to even separate them from their families, deploy them in the United States, separate them from their families. They’re off on a mission, but it’s really there’s no mission down here. There’s nothing going on. But yeah, millions and millions, if not billions of our taxpayer dollars are going towards this. So I’m glad you said that, Scott.

Sara Ryza:

Yeah. It feels like an upside down world where before it was like, yeah, we’re safe. We didn’t even think about our safety, but people that don’t live here, that don’t work here, they’re talking about how it’s a scary place. We have to put up physical barriers. And so it’s created a narrative that is not what reality was. And now in addition to people thinking that we need a wall, well, now people think that, well, if they needed a wall, then it probably wasn’t safe. So why am I going to visit there? There’s so many other national parks, so many other places that people could go on a trip, and it’s really messing up our tourism and the economy that drives on the tourism. And while contractors coming in, the military coming in, that’s not an investment in our communities and in this long-term economic development.

Anybody that thinks that might be good that it could bring in money to our towns or to our county, that’s just a very shortsighted view and it hurts us in the long run.

Sharron Reed Gavin:

And when you were talking about being politically charged, I mean, it all goes back to the false pretense that we need a wall because of the border crisis down here. It’s all bogus. There is no border crisis. The border crisis right now are the construction workers or as Crystal said, the destruction workers. But yeah, I think that’s really important. This isn’t needed. It’s all about our president rewarding the people that are funding him for his political office, and it’s not doing this community any good whatsoever. It’s harming it significantly. One of our Texas state senators has a bill called the Fed Act, which is supposed to protect landowners specifically in West Texas from federal overreach, yet he hasn’t said a word about the overreach that’s happening here. So yeah, I better stop because it really makes me mad.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I mean, I was going to ask y’all to, let’s get more mad, right? Because I mean, Jules and I have also been talking to fellow Texans who are dealing with data centers in their damn backyards now, all over the place. It feels like local control is just being ripped away and people are just having, whether it’s a border wall, whether it’s a data center or some other polluting piece of crap in their community, we get no say in it and they’re just steamrolling everybody. Because I wanted to sort of ask y’all, if you could speak to the non-Texans who are listening to this, right? We all know that there’s a, speaking of narratives, there’s a narrative in this country that makes a lot of people assume that Texans would be for this, that Texans would be shooting their guns into the air and say, “Yeah, let’s build a big border wall.” What do you want to say to people who think that about you?

Sharron Reed Gavin:

Come down and see for yourself. It’s nothing like the narrative that you’re hearing. Nothing at all.

Yolanda Alvarado:

Yeah. I mean, the data center border wall is so correlated. It’s the same fight that everybody’s been starting to fight across the country. So the only difference is that say it’s Boise, Idaho, and the only difference is the president saying there’s only rapists and murderers coming to Boise, Idaho. We need a wall around it and not a data center. It’s the same correlation. So we were just painted this black. We were already painted black, and that’s why people are not really opening their eyes to the issue, but it is exactly like you said, it’s just like having a data center show up in your community and taking your natural resources, jobs, all of the above. So to speak to the greater America, one thing I’ve been saying is that they declared a national emergency to waive laws to do this project. Who’s to say they’re not going to do it in Boise, Idaho?

Who’s to say they’re not going to say, “Oh, we see this emergency here. Let’s deploy the army and build and do whatever we want to these Americans. Forget American sovereignty, forget whatever existed.” It’s disgusting, the overreach. So I think everyone in America should be upset about what they’re doing to abuse this power to take advantage of American citizens, Texans. It’s not right.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Weren’t we raised to hate this stuff? Didn’t we all learn in school that this is exactly the kind of thing that as good red-blooded Americans we should despise and fight against? And you got ICE agents in unmarked vehicles wearing masks, driving all over people’s property, being peaceful protestors. I mean, just the violation of rights and property and everything, it’s mind-boggling.

Sara Ryza:

Right. In Terrell County, there’s a $2.6 billion contract over the Big Bend five project, which bans all of Terrell County, some of Brewster, some of Valverde. It’s not the 30-foot wall. It’s four and six-foot tall steel bollards that’s the vehicle barrier system to stop vehicles from crossing. This is on the other side of canyons, the river, the wild and scenic river right there. It’s canyons. And so they’re putting this vehicle barrier up saying it’s to stop vehicles, but vehicles aren’t crossing and people can go under it. So it’s not stopping people. It just doesn’t make sense and it’s a waste of taxpayer money and it just does not make any sense. But it’s back to this narrative that if somebody says that we need it, then I guess half the country’s going to believe it.

Crystal Allbright:

Just my take on it is my life here has spent a lot of time on the river and never had a bad experience. Usually people were hungry, starving, needed water, but just the thought of losing access to our river, the river we share with Mexico, it is appalling to me that we wouldn’t have access. We want border security, but we were already secure before. And a lot of that was because there’s several villages along the river. Prior to nine eleven, it was an open border and you could go across and have lunch at the villages and people would share news about what was going on. If there was something bad going on, we would learn from the people that lived there. And then after nine eleven, the border was shut and then we were cut off from our friends. We still get together once a year on Mother’s Day and we go to the river and bands play on each side.

They take turns, a band in Mexico and a band in the United States and they take turns playing and the families come together and we eat, we sing, we laugh, we dance, and we get to do that one day a year. And to have the idea that they’re going to come in with whether it’s vehicle barriers or walls, it just cuts us off more from friends and family that live in Mexico. I just agree with the sheriffs and the border patrol that can talk to us that they’re doing a good job already and that just more the technology that they can use to detect people crossing and being able to get to them, they could use more drones and maybe a helicopter that sure doesn’t cost $7.46 billion, which is how much they’re trying to spend on 517 miles of riverfront in Texas. And just the whole idea of landowners along the river, farmers, ranchers losing access to the water, again, we’re all saying it doesn’t make sense and we think we’re pretty logical people.

So I just want them to slow down, think about what they’re doing and start believing in the rule of law again.

Yolanda Alvarado:

Yeah. Speaking on the border security we have, as a rancher, I got a new four-wheeler. I was chasing cows near the border in the middle of nowhere. And border patrol knows me. They know my truck, they know pretty much what I do, but this was new to them. They were there within 10, 15 minutes, found me in the middle of nowhere and was like, “Oh, it’s just you, Yolanda. All right, have a good day.” That is a response time already. And I was going really fast on that four-wheeler. So just the idea of them being able to come in and take land away from landowners to ruin this entire region when we already have a very secure border. I mean, if you look at CBP, the Customs and Border Patrol Instagram right now, they just posted a video that says the border is secure. Even they’re admitting it at this point.

It’s comical, but they’re getting away with this at a national level because again, for me, and I’ve said this from the beginning, I’m very vocal about it. I think it’s a very racist agenda. It’s very anti-Latino. It’s very anti-brown. That’s why we can see ICE getting away with kidnapping people, murdering them in the street because they’ve pushed this anti-Latino narrative for a long time now since Clinton era, Bush did it and even Obama did it and it’s getting worse and worse. So people are turning a blind eye to it and it’s really frustrating because just as Crystal described, it’s not what it seems like here. We are communities, we are families, we are one on the river, and it’s really deserving to watch in real time of how people are being treated just for this agenda. And honestly, in the very end, it’s just so people can make some money at top.

It’s for these large contract deals. It’s to sell beds to detention centers. It’s all of the above. And we are just a byproduct of this huge anti-Latino showboat.

Sharron Reed Gavin:

Sometimes people will ask if they haven’t been down here on some of these chats and all, is it safe down there? Do you feel safe down there? I said, “We feel perfectly safe. We haven’t locked our door in 13 years. We don’t even know where the key is.” But then I also say, “I feel a lot safer here than I do going to Dallas or I do going to DC or some other place. This place is safe.” And if you took the amount, and Yolanda, you can probably correct me, but somebody did a calculation of the amount they’re paying, the seven however many billion dollars versus the number of people who have crossed, it comes out to something like $500,000 a person or $50,000 a person. I’m not a mathematician, but it’s ridiculous that that’s where our taxpayers’ money is going.

Yolanda Alvarado:

Yeah, it’s definitely the higher number. I believe it’s more over a million a person per apprehension, but it is $14 million a mile to build this border wall in our region. That’s our taxpayer dollar. So my family’s property, we’re going to have, I believe, a new fence, a 30-foot bollard wall that’s costing taxpayers. On our property alone, rough math, almost a hundred million dollars just on our property. That’s our new fence. So the cows aren’t going to go to Mexico anymore, but it is actually ridiculous what is happening and how much money’s being spent.

Sara Ryza:

Isn’t it 17 million per mile, right? Is that right? I think that’s the number, 17 million per mile. And the entire county budget for Terrell County is less, just less than 2.5 million for the entire year for the entire county, but they’re spending 17 million per mile.

Jules Taylor:

The last time I was there in Terlingua, I realized that water is scarce as a resource. It’s something that y’all could use more of. Sometimes power would go out or power did not seem like it was necessarily in all places. So when y’all talk about these huge numbers going on in terms of… I just think about how better that could be used within your communities to make better the lives of the people who choose to live there. And instead it goes to this godawful cause that helps no one hurts everyone who lives there and is completely unnecessary and ridiculous. And if you just were to look at the landscape of where they are intending to place it, like you mentioned, Yolanda, it doesn’t make sense, like vehicle barriers on the other sides of canyons. I mean, it just all sounds like a giant shit show, and I’m sorry that everyone’s having to live through this and deal with it.

And in terms of how the community of Terlingua is, man, I remember being there last year, there’s the Boathouse and there’s a Starlight Theater and there’s DB’s Rustic Iron. And I was reading somewhere in the Texas Tribune, there are actual signs that all these businesses have put up where if you are working with the contractors, we don’t want your business here, please take it elsewhere and you’re not welcome. And I just think it’s incredible the way that the businesses and the people who live out there have sort of been galvanized by this entire ordeal. As a wrap up question here, where do things stand now, like upcoming events? What can people, listeners do to get involved and what’s the current status now? Because I understand that the actual construction was paused and I think I remember reading today the pause ceased or something. Can we get an update on where things stand at this point and how listeners can help?

Sara Ryza:

It’s really easy to get mad and it’s nonsense, but the way that we’ve come together has been really great. We’re stronger than we thought we ever needed to be. We didn’t know we were going to need to be this strong, but the businesses, there’s a business network, we come together, we’ve talked about all of this. And the thing that has helped us, I know you want an update on the construction, but what we’re working on is fighting for tourism. That’s helped kind of shift the narrative because yes, we’re fighting against the wall and all of that, but we’re also fighting for something. Crystal reminds us all the time we’re fighting for what we love. The businesses are fighting for tourism. So the thing that people can do is to keep coming, keep coming to Big Bend, support the local businesses, come to the parks, even watch what’s going on if construction resumes.

But there’s a big tourism campaign called Big Love for Big Bend that reminds people that when you come to Big Bend, you’re supporting these businesses and these independently owned restaurants, gas station, grocery stores, motels. So that’s in addition to writing representatives and a lot of other things that they can do, a really huge thing would be to keep visiting Big Bend.

Yolanda Alvarado:

We just took a trip to Washington DC. We talked to lawmakers. We were trying to wrap our minds around what are they saying? What are they doing? And the biggest thing that stuck out was all of them have said they’ve received phone calls, they’ve heard from their constituents, and it’s huge no matter where you are outside of Texas to keep calling your representatives and let them know that putting a wall or any infrastructure in Big Bend will hurt you as well and it’s not needed and that’s not where you want to spend your taxpayer dollars. And we’re working on some bills and things there to hopefully halt that. And on top of that, our coalition, Conserve Big Bend, we started a landowner coalition and we have almost over half of the landowners on the border in our coalition who is against the wall. And we just filed a lawsuit a couple weeks ago against the federal government.

So it’s landowners versus DHS and we’re taking it all the way to the top. It was filed in DC and we’re hoping to see another TRO there and hopefully we can halt construction. We are challenging the waivers, letting them know that they can’t just come in and claim a national security and take away all of our rights. So yeah, aside from other small events we’re working on, that and donating to all the people who are working hard, it’s not just No Big Bend Wall, but there’s so many people in Terlingua all over. Anyone who even shares an Instagram post or Facebook post and talks about what is happening helps us. This is all really good and really helpful.

Crystal Allbright:

There’s another hearing tomorrow in El Paso. So some of the people originally scheduled for this podcast are in El Paso with the lawyers getting ready for that tomorrow and hopefully that will pause it again. We have not seen construction resume, but there are people watching for that. I think they’re just still waiting, but they’re still not talking to us. That’s been a big thing. The lack of transparency has been really aggravating. If they would just talk to us and we could give them ideas on alternatives for what’s going on, that would help. In Terlingua from February, we started having rallies on Saturdays and this Saturday is our 32nd rally. People come from all over and join us. We’ve had people from New York and California and Florida, Atlanta, all over Texas come and join us. And then in the big cities on Sundays like Houston, Dallas, they’re having rallies there as well.

So the moment they started bulldozing at Santa Elena Canyon, finally the news broke out to a bigger audience, even though we had been chipping away at that for six months. So more people are aware, but we just keep spreading the word.

Scott Whitener:

Yeah. And being able to attend the ones in Terlingua are at the rally at the Y is always special. That kicked it all off. And the bigger point here, and that was amazing, and what’s happened after that has been even more amazing. But if you’re talking about how can people help right now, not only attending those rallies at the Y, but what we’ve been doing, and everybody on this call and everybody’s in El Paso, I talked about how big this area is. The people on this call and the other people, our constituents out here have been driving to county meetings, city councils, groundwater meetings. You go to every single one of those, and I think every American should be paying attention to what’s going on down here. I know people are objecting to AI data centers, but looking at the gas, paying $4.50 a gallon, we’ve got people that are retirees thriving on social security, people that are part-time workers, part-time, anything, seasonal workers, because this is all tourism.

People are showing up to these county meetings and holding the people we put in office, holding them to account to do what we ask them to do because it’s bullshit. I’m sorry, you can bleep that one out. I mean, it’s bullshit. I keep saying it. It’s

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, man. Go for it. Let it fly.

Scott Whitener:

It’s bullshit that they keep going and they’re not listening to… We have the county commissioners probably scared to object to anything when we show up with 150 people that drove from all over the place. Like last week, I mean, we are calling people out that have been sitting in a La-Z-Boy enjoying their county judge position, their commissioner position, their city council mayor, people that just thought this was going to be easy and they can just check the box and say, “Hey, yeah, y’all go ahead and we’re just going to go bulldozer here because nobody lives out here because like I said, 23,000 square miles with 23,000 people.” Oh yeah, this isn’t like a city full of liberal dims or something that are going to object to everything. It’s us and we’re pissed and we’re going to keep showing up. And that’s what everybody, not only in the state of Texas, but definitely in the Big Bend region is doing it on their own.

And they’re out and my wife’s in El Paso, which is two and a half hours away right now. People in Terlingue in El Paso right now, which is five hours for them. People just need to show up and I think the gig is up. I mean, I’m done. I mean, I’m done with this crap.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. Before we go, I do want to give you an update on this story that occurred after we recorded the conversation that you just heard. As Martha Piskowski reported on October 6th in Mother Jones, “Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone granted a preliminary injunction Friday to halt construction on the border wall in Texas’s expansive Big Bend sector, including the national and state parks. Cardone read a brief order from the bench after hearing more than four hours of testimony from conservation groups and residents of the Big Bend region, known internationally for its dark night skies, abundant biodiversity, and rugged river canyons. Cardone said that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in at least one of their claims and to suffer irreparable harm if construction continues. Her ruling stops border barrier construction in the entire Big Bend sector until the federal government complies with all applicable laws.

The ruling applies to all of Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and the border along the Rio Grande in the rest of the sector. The injunction will remain in place while the court considers the lawsuit, which was filed in April.” So the struggle is still very much not over, but that is huge news and that is a huge win. I want to thank our guests in and around Terlingua, Texas, near Big Bend National Park, Yolanda Alvarado, Crystal Albright, Sarah Riza, Scott Whitener, and Sharon Reed Gavin. And if you want to learn more about what our guests are doing out there in West Texas and you want to connect with them, please use the links that we provided in the show notes for this episode. And Jules, I actually wanted to ask if you could give our listeners the scoop on an event that is happening in Terlingua this month that you are a part of.

Jules Taylor:

Yes. This month from October 15th to 18th, I will be taking part in the TerrLingua Music Bash. I believe there’s about 40 different artists spread across half a dozen or so venues, which are different businesses there in Big Bend. It’s all a benefit for school that’s out there. I mean, it’s all a really good cause. My friend John Whipple puts it on and it’s all free admission. So if you’re anywhere near TerrLingua on the 15th through the 18th, come hang out. There’s also a Day of the Dead costume parade that we’re going to do, which is also really super cool. But yeah, I can’t wait to be back out in Big Bend. I can’t wait to be back out in Terrlingua. It’s just a fantastic place and you can’t really describe how wonderful it is until you go there and then you’re just kind of at a loss for words.

When folks say you have to be there yourself to experience it and it has nothing on the north side of the Grand Canyon, I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been there. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon too. This Big Bend is where I want to go every October for this music bash, and this will be my second year going.”

Maximillian Alvarez:

You heard it here first, folks. Our Texas co-hosts and guests say Grand Canyon ain’t shit. So thank you so, so much again to all of our incredible guests, and thank you to Jules for helping us put this incredible panel together. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring about this. We do this work for you, but we cannot do it without you. Working People is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by the great Jules Taylor and is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. We will see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle across the US and around the world.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Check out our great podcasts like Under the Shadow and the Mark Steiner Show, and connect with us on social media and get updates on our reporting there and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez.

Jules Taylor:

And I’m Jules Taylor.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to the edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, which started in Oakland in 1966. Today, I’m honored to be joined by Billy Jennings, AKA Billy X, well-known archivist in Oakland, member of the Black Panther Party, a photographer who runs the official Black Panther Party alumni website called It’s About Time. Thank you for joining me, Billy.

Billy X Jennings:

Hey, thanks for having me again. Good morning to everyone.

Mansa Musa:

And as we talked earlier, I was in different spaces and hoping I had met you while I was in Oakland. So this would more or less be like a reunion, but this is my first time meeting you. I’m really honored. I heard a lot about you. I know a lot about your work, and it’s an honor to be able to interview you about the party and some of the things and some of your experiences.

Billy X Jennings:

Okay.

Mansa Musa:

Please introduce yourself to our audience, who you are and how you came to be involved in the Black Panther Party.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, my name is Billy X. Jennings. I’m a member of the Black Panther Party. I joined in 1968 when I was 17 years old. And I came about joining the party because I’m from a historical town in Alabama in the South where most original members came from the South and migrated to California. So I came from a place called Hopson City, Alabama. And the tradition there, Hobson City have had the right to vote since 1890. And we were one of the only black municipal cities, little towns that could vote and had that right to do that. And so I came from a very strong area that had embedded that kind of thought into my mind. And when I traveled to California and I saw the Black Panther Party on TV for the first time in 1967 when they went to Sacramento, California, it blew my mind.

I was in high school at the time and I immediately changed our social… We had a social club called the Buccaneers. I changed it to the Panthers the next day. I didn’t know anything about the party with just that symbolism and how they stood up to the police and read their demands and so forth. It made a change happen in me. And it wasn’t until I graduated from high school, I decided to move to Oakland. And when I moved to Oakland, it was during the time that Huey knew the trial had just started and I was going to a college that’s two blocks away from where Huey was going on trial at the courthouse. And when the trial started, we would hear them saying Free Huey off the preg, free Huey. And I went over there one day and I was reading a book simultaneously at the same time called The Audible Malcolm X.

So what I read, I had read in the book already, but I heard Bobby Steele speak at a rally for Huey and they were saying the same thing. So it got me really interested in the party. And so I started going to the rallies to Free Huey. I met some Panthers and then they said their Panther office was going to open in my area. And when it did, I went down and joined, became a Panther in training and I’ve been working with the party ever since.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And take us back to the party’s founding because you came in two years after its founding. And also you came in to your own observation and to what we know to be a fact, you came in at a point where they had just started to become on the radar of the feds, but more importantly, they was definitely on the radar of the Oakland police, LA police. And so talk about what was it like to be able to be in that space and ultimately find yourself in a position to be the bodyguard for Huey Newton once he got out.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, my process started at the very beginning. In 1968, there was a certain method the party employed. Before you became a Panther, you had to become a Panther in training, which requires six to eight week training. They give you a list of books that has about 35 different books, about books by Franc Fanon, Mao Saintong, Che Guevara, Pruma, and other revolutionaries to read. And you had to attend political education class on a weekly basis. Panthers at that time was required to read two hours a day. A Panther had to secure and have what we call technical equipment. Technical equipment was a firearm of some type, because at that time I joined the Black Panther Party, it was called Black Panther Party for self-defense. Later on, we dropped off the self-defense, but at that particular time, the party was engaged into patrolling

Police officers in the community, observing them and making sure they don’t beat and brutalize people. So the first six weeks is reading and studying and learning the rules of the Black Panther Party. And then you’re given a section. The city is divided into different sections. I worked in the section four in East Oakland. Section four had a section leader. They had a geographical area that they were responsible for. And so I was in section four. At that very beginning when I first started, we were theorizing about the breakfast program. It hadn’t came about, but we were still looking for geographical locations to have these breakfast programs in the future. So we did that. And every Panther is required to sell the Black Panther Party newspaper, which is the voice of the party. And at that time, the party was growing tremendously by leaps and bounds.

We had people flying into California from Kansas City, Chicago, New York, all to get this education. Before you can open up a chapter of the Black Panther Party or a branch of the Black Panther Party, you have to come to Oakland first and get educated. And you have to meet the leadership. The leadership has to eyeball you and find out your level of consciousness, what type of person you are before you can go back and represent the party. So this whole process was going on. People were flocking to the party. The party got so big that in 1969, we had put a stop on membership and we call that particular part of the party’s history the purge because the party had grown… I mean, the party was attractive. I mean, black coats, leather coats, I mean sunglasses and Afros at the same time. So this was a big thing for our culture.

At the same time, our culture level was rising even in music. James Brown had a record out in 1968 that elevated people’s social conscience, I’m Black and I’m proud. It moved people from the level of being a Negro, because that’s what the newspapers and that other people was referring us to. But in our community, we’re referring to ourselves as Black or African. And when James Brown came out with Black and I’m Proud, you could never go back to ever saying he was a Negro no more. There was different progress being made, but James Brown couldn’t sing no song like that. It wasn’t for groups like the Black Panther Party. Groups like The Shot Light Can’t Sing got to give more power to the

Mansa Musa:

People

Billy X Jennings:

Like the Black Panther Party, paving the way to educate people to lift up their consciousness. And so my role in the party, I came up as a Panther in training. I became a officer of the day, which is the person who runs the office. And from there I was transferred to central headquarters. Now, my name came about because my captain at that time was a legendary Panther called Robert Bay. Robert Bay ran the East Oakland office. Robert Bay was also an age of the central committee. And when Huey Newton got out of jail in 1970, the central committee made Robert Bay his permanent bodyguard and assistant. Now, I worked in that capacity as well after Huey got out of jail, mostly going to… I went to court with Huey on a daily basis because he was let out on appeal. He wasn’t just let out.

He had to go back to court and defend himself. And so my job became that. And also at the same time, I became to the Newton family. Mr. Newton, Mrs. Newton, I lived three or four blocks from them. I would walk over their house around the corner, mow their lawn. I’d be taken to the pharmacy, driving to doctors because they’re old people and they don’t drive so much. So that became my responsibility and me and Huey’s relationship grew behind that. So we had good personal relationship.

I worked central headquarters. Working at central headquarters was key to who I am today because I know Panthers from everywhere because every Panther had to call the central headquarters on a weekly basis or if the office gets ready or they need lawyer resources and stuff like that, I pick up the phone, write on the messages or tell them what they need to know. So I know Panthers from almost all the chapters and branches. And so I worked that group for a while. Then I was drafted into Bobby Seal’s campaign when he ran for mayor of open. I ran Bobby Seal’s campaign office in East Oakland. And it was an organizing event on the highest level the parties had ever been. I mean, the party is known for organizing, but to go into electorial politics and do what we did for a first time basis, it changed over.

Even though Bobby lost that election, it changed openly because it opened up so many doors. Part of his job was to kick down doors because we were the Vanguard. We had lead to struggle and there’s other people who follow behind us. I mean, our life was constantly in threat because we were on the front line, police department, clientele pro, all those things aimed at members of the Black Panther Party. So not only did we have the burden of dealing with the system, we had to deal with the authorities as well.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about, and you’re familiar with Eddie Conway, right? And so Eddie Conway, when he got locked up, he organized a chapter for the Black Panther Party in the prison, which I became a part of. And everything you outlined, as you was talking, I was reflecting on, we had to read at least two albums. We had every aspect of the thing that you outlined as what the party was doing, Eddie had us doing the same thing. We had political education classes, we had military classes, we had first aid classes. All our class was structured around an environment that we was in, and our technic class was finding a hole to get out of prison by any means necessary. So we had that type of mentality. So Billy, as an archivist, you have a lot of distortions in terms of the images that’s being projected of the party and it’s been dubbed Panther Porn, and just to note that it’s images that’s being perpetuated by the federal government, it’s images that’s become more idolization of the party versus the images as an archivist.

What would you say is the most positive or how would you characterize the imagery of the party as from an archivist in terms of educating people and raising their conscience? I see you with a shotgun. I know you in Sacramento. I know why you in Sacramento and I know why you coming out like that. That’s a good thing. But then I turn around, I see somebody standing on the corner. They got a picture of somebody standing on the corner with their mug broke and they got a bandela on and it had nothing to do with organizing, had nothing to do with raising people’s conscience. It’s got more to do with projecting the image of a thug, for lack of a better word. Talk about that if you can.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, the party was vilified on the highest level from the government who lied on us continuously to the media that used disinformation to scare people. The big image they had was, oh, these Negroes, they have guns. They’re angry. They hate white people. That’s their basic pitch on everything. Let it be Republican New Africa or any Black group, they paint them as very threatening group. And because we had guns, I mean, there was nothing… It wasn’t against the law in California to have guns, to have them in public long as they was not loaded, which we knew that. So the images they printed of the Black Panther Party was to vilify us and to scare white people and to frighten Black people. So it was all a part of their method to control who we were. They were trying to identify who we were. We could only define that.

We defined our own selves. And so that’s why we started a Panther newspaper in 1967 to get our voices and views out. So even though we had Time, Newsweek, Life Magazine, the Black Panther Party was cranking out close to 250 to 300,000 copies of papers per week into the community to combat this disinformation about the Black Panther Party. The 10 point program outlines what the Black Panther Party was all about, what we stood for.

Only on one aspect, which is 0.97, we talk about defending ourselves with guns. Other

Than that, we’re talking about social change in all levels, in education, housing and so forth. That was a threat to them because they did not want anyone to rocking the boat and we are rocking the boat. We are waking people up from their deep sleep. I mean, we’re telling people to read. We’re showing people what books to read. We are the Vanguard. People are following us. They didn’t want that. We had people in the white community, they wanted to join in with us. We had people from the Latino community, they want to join with us. You had people from around the world reading the 10 point program and looking at the positive aspect of the Black Panther Party. And that’s how we get the New Zealand Panthers and the Panthers from Africa and Panthers from India and the UK because of our social programs, how we was dealing with the oppressor here.

And so they follow those same examples there. They started social program, they started demanding and fighting for their rights. And that’s what the oppressor hates. They hate for people to wake up. And we were waking up big time in the 60s with the music, the culture, the back to Africa, who we are. How could you be a Negro in 1970 after all has been presented before you? So those things have changed. The party was a part of that change, that

Mansa Musa:

Consciousness. Talk about, because to your point, I remember reading the paper and when United Farm Workers, the party was one of the first papers to one, educate people on what their issues were, two, organize the boycott certain wines that they was taking and exploiting their labor and not giving them equal pay. So talk about the party’s social contribution to raising people’s concept, but more importantly, the elasticity of it, because can you see some of the influences today? Oh,

Billy X Jennings:

Definitely. Definitely. I can see the influences of the Rainbow Coalition. And that was something that Fred Hampton talked about. I could see the coalition building of the Black Panther Party. We’re working with the Brown Beret, the Young Lords, the Young Patriots. We’re working with the welfare rights groups. We’re working with the BSU, the Black Student Unions on campus. We’re working with prison groups. There was a number of prison groups throughout the country that started Black Panther Party off in San Quentin, in Algeria, Raway and other prisons because the ideology of the Black Panther Party was strong. What we were talking about, there was backbone to it. Everything we did was dialectic materialism, right? We were dialectic people. We looked at things from all sides. We just didn’t look at things in one side. Black Panther Party was an international group from the very start. Dewey and Bobby were international.

You can look at our reading list, those 35 books that come from Fanon, that’s from Africa, Mao Zeitang from China. So there was all kind of influences in the party. And so it was a big job just working to educate and organize people on all levels. Because in our community, action speaks. People learn in various ways, but in our community, people relate to action. They see something, they learn from it. Just like the breakfast program. We started the breakfast program in California and within two weeks it was a national program because people said, “Hey, we can do that here. This is how they did it. We can do it here.” The party set examples that people could follow in every aspect. We were on the forefront of fighting racism on all levels.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and today we are in Fort Worth, Texas, and we’re talking about a fellow worker named James. As Maven Navarro recently reported in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “After leaving Oklahoma, James Gardner built a life for himself in Fort Worth. Now he could lose it all. When Gardner walks into doctor’s offices to receive treatment for his terminal liver failure, he has to ask staff to remove all the air fresheners for his skin condition. Gardner has multiple chemical sensitivity, which he says was caused by his time as a concrete specialist working with two-part epoxy resin. The illness causes him to break out anytime he gets around chemicals, air fresheners, perfumes, cleaning supplies, and paint spark allergy flare-ups that can last for 10 days.

Concrete work is known to cause health problems. Cement plants can also cause respiratory or cardiovascular issues according to the Environmental Protection Agency. James Quigg first met Gardner in high school in Oklahoma where he was given the nickname NDN after enduring bullying for being Native American and kids calling him Indian. A few of Gardner’s friends started calling him NDN or Indian, and it stuck. Now, Quig started a GoFundMe to help prevent Gardner from losing his house. As he is unable to work and has faced challenges receiving disability, Gardner was denied disability the first two times he applied for it. It wasn’t until his third application that he was approved because of his internal organs shutting down.” So to talk about all of this, I am truly grateful to have James Indian Gardner himself and James Quigg, who they have given me permission to call them “NDN” and “Quigg,” friends since high school, both here on the show with us today.

Thank you guys so much for being here. It is really, really great to be connecting with y’all. And my God, I wish we were connecting under less horrifying circumstances and I’m so sorry that you’re going through all of this. And NDN, as much as you’re comfortable, I want us to make sure that we focus a good chunk of time today talking about what you’re going through now, where things stand now and what people listening can do to help. But we’ve got 50 minutes here and I really want listeners to get to know you and your lives more, your friendship and all the things that make you, you, not just these horrible people and jobs and systems that have done all this unforgivable damage to you. So NDN, start us off. Tell us the story of you and what brought you to Fort Worth. And then Quigq, hop in and tell us your story and how it intertwines with Indians.

James “NDN” Gardner:

I’ll start with a nickname “NDN” and then I’ll go from there. So as you were saying, back in school, kids were making fun of me and bullying me, and my principal called us into the office in my freshman year, said, “You guys can’t call him an Indian anymore. You’re being racist.” And one of my friends stood and said, “We’re not calling him Indian. We’re calling him letter N, letter D, letter N.” And he says, “Well, I can’t do anything about that.” And it just stuck and I’ve always enjoyed it. A lot of people are like, “He’s not just a Indian, he’s the Indian. There’s only one of them running around.” As far as career goes, I am third generation doing precast concrete with the passion. I’ve always enjoyed doing concrete. I’ve loved it. Being able to take the raw elements of earth and forging it into something that’s going to last and help the world is phenomenal to me.

I relocated down here to Fort Worth to actually do the McKinley Stadium, which is my third stadium to be a part of. Years ago, I was working for a company that dealt with a very strong epoxy resin and only 4% of the people that are exposed directly to it will develop an allergy to it. And with the company, it’s easier for them just to pay you off than it is to change their safety protocols, which shouldn’t be the way, but it’s cheaper for them that way. And over time, my symptoms and my condition got worse and worse and worse because it just doesn’t stop once you’re out of the environment of that specific thing. I remember one time they laid a new asphalt in front of my house here on the road and I broke out for a week because of the adhesive and the tar and the asphalt and I couldn’t avoid it because I was in my own home.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So I have so many questions about that specifically because I don’t know if you guys know about it, but on this show specifically, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews with working people who have been exposed to toxic chemicals from work, from industrial disasters near their homes, all this kind of stuff that poor and working people are being exposed to daily. I mean, I was just filming in South Baltimore last night where residents just like you guys, but here in Baltimore are fighting trash incinerators that are blasting toxic chemicals into the lungs of their children. So this is definitely something that we’ve talked a lot about on the show, but I do want to talk about what that looked like for you, Indian, on a day-to-day working level. But before we get there, I want to go deeper into some of the lore here. Take me back to where you guys were in high school where you first met.

Quigg, who was this guy in high school when you met? And NDN, same question about Quigg.

James Quigg:

So Indian is a grade above me. So I came in as a freshman. He was already an established sophomore. He had a cool car. It was painted. He had some lady. Did it have a female on the hood and it had the universe? I mean, you couldn’t miss this car.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You had a low rider?

James “NDN” Gardner:

No, actually, it was a 91 Chevy Cavalier and anytime I’d get bored, we would just re-spray paint it. It was all animal print once. Once it was all hippied out, make love, not war. Even at one point I gave all the kids an art paint pens and we just wrote quotes over the entire car. People would stand there and read it for hours. It was just something to do. So

James Quigg:

You’d see this car. I’d see the car around before I was even in high school. So then you see, oh, this is the cool guy with the cool car. And then he’s always hanging out in the courtyard and he’s always got this group of girls because he’s just very didn’t try very hard, I guess. And honestly, I don’t think we liked each other necessarily in the beginning. It was just he had this girls that I was trying to hang out with, talk to, and he just didn’t really like the new guy, the new skinny white dude that was hanging around.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You got to earn your keep, baby.

James Quigg:

It took a couple years.

James “NDN” Gardner:

He really had to. And most of these girls I’ve been friends with for years, so I was very protective of them because they were my friends. And here’s this scrawny kid coming in trying to ask them all different kinds of things and get involved. I’m like, “Hey, hey, you don’t need to be around here right now.” But eventually he warmed over to me and I warmed over to him.

James Quigg:

Yeah, I was saying hope I was best friends with his cousin for a couple years. Then probably what, sophomore, not sophomore, junior, senior year, we started maybe hanging out a little bit more. You invited me to your house.

James “NDN” Gardner:

I had a house that most people weren’t allowed to. I was very young and I lived on my own, so it was just me and this trailer house at 16 years old. So a lot of parents didn’t even allow their kids over to my place. And they spray painted up too in the walls.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I don’t think my parents wouldn’t allow that either, but that would be exactly the house we’d all want to go to. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, can I ask how you ended up having your own kind of place when you were 16?

James “NDN” Gardner:

My parents separated and it was a choice of either do I go live with my dad or do I go live with my mom? And I was already working full-time at the time, and I bought a trailer house on state auction and moved into it. And it was just simpler that way. My mother ended up moving back in with me a few years later, but it was just more convenient. So like I said, I already had the income coming in.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What were you doing back then for work?

James “NDN” Gardner:

Back then? Well, my first job was working for the Department of Wildlife through a program called ATEC, which was American Indian Education Training Association. They took Native Americans and put them at federal buildings and gave them summer jobs. So that got me experience. Pretty much I was doing property management, mowing the yard, stuff like that, but I got to do a lot of really cool stuff with them because I was, “Hey, let’s grab him and take him with us to go do this fish survey or let’s go explore the bat caves and do a survey out there.” And so it was very fun as a youth to have that. And then I went straight from that to Home Depot, working at Home Depot as a pro associate.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So paint a picture for me. When you guys were back there in Oklahoma, are we talking kind of small town Oklahoma, medium town, city? Yeah, paint a picture for me.

James “NDN” Gardner:

So Bethany, Oklahoma at that point was the very edge of Oklahoma City. So it’s pretty much small town. I knew all the police officers, they all knew me, not because I was in trouble, just because there wasn’t a lot of us running around. And of course it was the late ’90s, early 2000s, so we were always getting into some sort of trouble as we all did back in that time.

James Quigg:

Oklahoma is a pretty small, big town. I think less than a million people in the whole city, probably less than that now, but I mean it takes what, 10 minutes or less to get down into the heart of Bricktown, downtown Oklahoma City. I mean, it still is small town, but it’s trying to be bigger than it really is.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, I come from Southern California, the land of endless lights and sprawl from the beach to the mountains. So everything feels small town to me to some extent. But to be honest, I kind of got a lot of love for the small and medium-sized towns in the country. I don’t think I gave them enough credit when I was younger, but the older I get and go visit more, the more fascinating they are. But I wanted to ask in that vein, we’re talking about Oklahoma. I guess we’re talking in the colonial project of the United States of America, so everything is ironic, but living in a state named Oklahoma and going to a school where you make fun of Native American kids feels so ironic and ridiculous that I don’t even know what to do with myself. But was that normal Indian? I mean, what was the kind of ratio?

Were there a lot of indigenous kids going to school there?

James “NDN” Gardner:

No. No, there wasn’t. In high school, there was maybe five of us altogether. I mean, there’s not a lot of us left. It’s sad to say. I was fortunate enough to run into… I mean, we just kind of all clicked together because, oh yeah, you’re native too. Cool. What tribe? What’s your family line? But the whole reason why we were in Oklahoma City is that my father was one of the Native Americans you hear about in the past being adopted off the res for a very low amount of money. And then he was adopted with four other siblings, all native from different tribes raised by a white man in the city. So yeah, there just wasn’t a lot that made it to the inner city area at that time. They all stayed out near the reservations, near the small towns like Carnegie and Adarko. So being inside the city, yeah, there wasn’t a lot of us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I take it from the origin story of your nickname that it wasn’t a very kind place to Native kids like you?

James “NDN” Gardner:

Oh, no, no, no. I remember once I was 14 walking down the street and the cops pulled me over because they had an APP put out on a Native American with long hair. I just happened to be a Native American with long hair. And they picked me up and took me down to the police station, which was just three blocks from my house. I wasn’t the person they were looking for. The person they were looking for had robbed a gas station and he was in his late 20s and I was 14. We stood out, so you either knew who we were or it’s just the way it was.

James Quigg:

It’s true. And what they only taught us in school about Native American culture is just an annual field trip we take to the Cowboy Hall of Fame and they’d show us the statues and talk about the Trail of Tears.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:

But there’s a lot to this story that I identify with in certain ways. I don’t know what that’s like Indian, but I know what it’s like to be a bald, scary looking Mexican dude in America. I’ll take looking like Quigg over looking like us on a normal day if I don’t want to get stopped by the cops. But that’s all the more reason why it just fills my heart when I hear stories of comradery and lifesaving solidarity, even among kids who are standing up for a friend. Tell me more about that, both of you, the stepping in to sort of reclaim the name and to say this is not how we’re going to do things. This guy’s our friend, not our enemy.

James “NDN” Gardner:

Oh yeah. I mean, Quig is my white guy. I always joke with people like, “I got my white guy. He’s right here. I’m safe. I don’t need a card. I got a whole person.” And I mean, he’s always had my back. Once we really connected and I realized that this is somebody that I needed to be part of my life and everything he’s done for me over the years, I can’t live up to. I try.

James Quigg:

I seriously doubt that, brother. I have computer smarts and I can do techie stuff, but this guy is the dude if you need any help. I mean, I’ll go back to last year, we had a leak in my daughter’s bathroom and it was coming down in the guest bathroom and I was like, “I don’t know what the hell to do, man. It’s just coming down.” And he just hopped in his car and he brought all his tools because he’s just that guy. And so he came and he helped me change the drywall. And as he’s doing this and helping me with all the stepping outside because I got to spray some kills on the wood, I mean, he’s getting hives, he’s getting blisters. I’m feeling incredibly guilty and he’s like, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get it done.” But he’s just that kind of guy and it’s been like that anytime I’ve needed him.

He’s just always there. And it’s not just me, it’s everybody. He’s helped damn near everybody that we know, either with a place to stay, help fixing their car, mowing a yard. It doesn’t matter. He’s a helper, he’s a doer, and that’s just something I’ve always admired from him.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and it’s genuinely beautiful to hear you guys say that, right? Because first and foremost, I’m thinking just as three men in the country today, we don’t say this enough to each other and we don’t allow ourselves to be that for each other. And so I just wanted to kind of honor the beautiful friendship that you guys have, having each other’s backs for this long is a marvelous thing. And I’ll be honest with all of you listening, Quig reached out to me about Indian’s story and told me about it, and that’s how it got on my radar. So these guys have been together for years and they’re still looking out for each other, and I think the world will be a better place if we all do a little more of that for each other. And Quig, even you telling that story reminds me that we’ve still got so much to talk about here, Indian, about your working life and the conditions and chemicals that you were exposed to that are now collapsing your health and your quality of life.

So that’s normally what we talk about on this show is I talk to workers and I say, “Tell me about your working life.What does it look like on the job?

For people who’ve never worked in this line of work, what does it entail?” Can you kind of take us a little bit on that journey and then tell us about the kind of work hazards that you were exposed to?

James “NDN” Gardner:

Yeah. The company where I was working for made burial vaults and the poncho that they used went on the liners of the burial vaults to seal it to the concrete so it maintain a watertight sealness for 50 to 100 years. That’s what they were concerned about. The people working in there that were alive being exposed to a hazardous chemical to keep somebody that’s going to go in the ground from being exposed to the elements of the ground was more important to them than the people actually doing the job because there was other things that could have been used that was more efficient but cost more money.

And after my initial exposure with this company, I was still passionate about concrete. I still wanted to do concrete, but I had to relearn what companies I could work for, where I could work at, and how I could do it because now I got to change everything. I can’t be around anything that has sold chemicals. I’ve got to be in open environments. And one of the things, I was also a journeyman iron worker because every now and then you get tired of staring at gray when you do concrete long enough. And back to the whole having lung and breathing respiratory issues, as a journeyman iron worker, I was working on the Devon Tower, which is the tallest building in Oklahoma City, and I was going from the ground up a thousand feet every day, and I had developed acute altitude sickness from just working on the outside of the building every day.

But a lot of that was contributed because they did a long biopsy on me to test me for silicosis, which is from concrete dust. And I did have some concrete dust built up in my lungs at the time. And that’s just because not wearing enough protection when you should wear protection because old school concrete guys just get the job done, which I got no problem getting a job done, but it should be done safely, effectively, and efficiently, not the other direction around, efficiently and safety being one of the last concerns. So after no longer working for the company that caused my initial, and I didn’t realize how bad I was going to get over the years, because initially it was just adhesives in general. Then it got where I couldn’t even put a bandaid on without breaking out from the adhesives as I am now.

I actually have to order special medical stuff when I do get a cut so I can seal myself and not have a reaction to it for a long period of time.

James Quigg:

He has to take his own adhesives to the ER when he’s got to go to the ER because of his terminal liver failure, otherwise he’ll break out from that.

James “NDN” Gardner:

Yeah. Even going in for a procedure, they put an EKG machine on me. I’m going to break out from every point where the EKG machine is.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Jesus, man.

James “NDN” Gardner:

Even the tape on my fingers or to monitor my heart rate and my breathing will make me break out. So I travel with my own medical stuff now. It

Maximillian Alvarez:

Sounds like hell.

James “NDN” Gardner:

It is. It made me a shut in for quite a while because going to Walmart, going to the grocery store, luckily there’s DoorDash and things like that now where I don’t have to get out and get exposed. But again, like I said, it made me change how I worked in concrete. I went to places that had super structures that worked outside, still making beautiful things with concrete, but eventually the skin allergy, the multiple chemical sensitivity just overtook everything. I did work for a trailer company for a little while working three days a week because they knew my skin issue, they knew my thing. So I would go there whenever they needed something welded or something wired that they couldn’t figure out. But again, now I’m going to this place to work on a trailer and that trailer might’ve had paint in it. It might’ve had construction debris.

I can’t even walk into a Home Depot or a Walmart or Lowe’s. Fast food restaurants get me pretty good too. And as much as I love old people, they’re a little heavy with that perfume.That’s

Maximillian Alvarez:

Putting it mildly, man. And yeah, I’m sure so many of us don’t even realize all the spaces that we walk into where those irritants are, but if you start breaking out in hives the second that you’re exposed to it, you start realizing that actually there are a lot of places you can’t go. And that is just something that I think so many of us don’t have to think about. But when you’re in your position and you have to think about it, it must be just genuinely overwhelming at times.

James “NDN” Gardner:

T-Mobile has their own scent of air freshener. So when you open a T-Mobile store door, it puts a little spray into the air for a sensory thing. I understand how that can be with marketing. Oh, this is what T-Mobile smells like. I’m getting a new phone. And I didn’t know that till they rolled out with that and I went into a T-Mobile and next thing I know I’m being sprayed and now I’m breaking out in hives and I’ve got a leak.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Jesus, man. So as we sort of get to the situation that you’re dealing with now, I’ve heard from you a number of things already. We’re talking silicosis, we’re talking exposure to epoxy resin generating a chronic skin sensitivity, right? I mean the altitude sickness that you developed on the job. I guess if you had to sort of sum it up, if you could, what conditions do you have now that came from working in this country, from being exposed to things or repetitive actions to things? I guess I wanted to try to collect all that for listeners and ask what is the kind of sum total of all the crap that you’re dealing with from all the jobs that you’ve worked?

James “NDN” Gardner:

If the MSDS is laid out and has its certain rules and regulations, if the company will abide by the MSDS correctly, I would’ve never been overexposed.

James Quigg:

What’s the MSDS?

James “NDN” Gardner:

Material safety data sheets. It tells you about the hazardous of the chemicals, what you’re supposed to be wearing and be doing to you’re not hurt by it and it doesn’t affect you. And most companies, yeah, we’ve got an MSDS. It’s in a book on the wall over there. You can go look at it if you want to. And then they tell you to go to work. And I was guilty of doing that to people too. I’m like, “Well, yeah, the MSDS is over there, but just put this little mask on.” In reality, they needed a respirator instead of just a dust mask and went on with the day to get the day done. Things have changed a lot now than how bad it used to be when me starting off in the industry of concrete and everything else, because again, it was you’d stand in a cloud of dust grinding and just put on some safety glasses and hold your breath.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and let’s talk about when these health conditions started piling up and to the point that you needed disability checks and then had to navigate this Kafka-esque system that doesn’t work to try to get the aid that you need to live. Tell us more about the kind of crisis that you’re in now and all the people who are supposed to be helping you right now but aren’t.

James “NDN” Gardner:

Yeah. I mean, even going to the social security office to file for disability, I would sit there breaking out because I’m waiting for long periods of time in the line in a room full of people with chemicals on. So it became I have no choice. I have to go do this. I’ve got to go file this paperwork and I filed the paperwork and I wait and I wait and I wait. And then, “Well, we want to send you to this doctor.” Well, I call the doctor’s office. I’m like, “Listen, I can’t just go in there and they don’t abide by those rules.” They’re like, “No, you’ve got to come in, you’ve got to wait, you’ve got to go through this.” Even now, I’ve got some doctors that really help me with my situation and make sure the days that I’m scheduled, that nobody’s wearing perfume and that it’s going to be a nice, clean environment for me.

And then I have other doctors that could care less, but I’ve got to go through them because the social security’s telling me, “Well, you need to go to this guy and get tested for this.” I mean, they just did an allergy test on me, and part of the allergy test, the bonding agent in the allergy test is an adhesive. So I tested positive for everything, even though I told them I’m an adhesive and yeah, it just has to be on my skin for a few minutes to test me for allergies. Well, that’s still an adhesive on my skin for a few minutes. And I ended up having to get an epishot in the middle of the test, which now became an inclisive test.

James Quigg:

And I do want to clarify that Fort Worth Star Telegram’s article, I don’t believe he’s been approved for disability yet.

James “NDN” Gardner:

No. No, I haven’t been approved yet, but since we’ve gotten the articles, they’ve started reaching out to me more instead of me having to wait and call them. So now we’re actually communicating back and forth for the first time, but I’ve been denied twice.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So the situation, as I understand it, please correct me if I’m wrong, is that you now, because of what you’ve been exposed to over the course of your working life, are no longer able to work and you are disabled by those things you were exposed to, but you have received no money from the disability office. Your life is in limbo right now.

James “NDN” Gardner:

Yes, I am in limbo. And the first two times I was denied because they did not recognize multiple chemical sensitivity as a disability until the past five years. And I’ve been dealing with it for 10 years now. So it wasn’t recognized as a disability. Now they’re starting to, “Well, what do we have to do to prove that this is a disability?” And because of my skin always having to fight these battles and me being on experimental drugs, trying to overcome with it, and part of being native is that most drugs aren’t made for a 40-year-old Native American guy. They’re made for a 40-year-old white man who has years and years of antibodies built up in the systems where if I get a flu shot, I’m ending up with walking pneumonia, where if Quigley got a flu shot, he’s just fine the next day because it’s more developed.

So my body started shutting down because of it’s trying to fight all the time, always battling, always battling my skin, always fighting, led to me having internal organ failure. I go in for another surgery on Monday, which will be my 10th surgery this year alone because my body’s just shutting down.

But yeah, I’m just in limbo. But now, so I was able to refile for social security with the internal organ failure and the liver failure and the terminal diagnostics now. So it’s not even really taking the multiple chemical sensitivity into effect with my disability. That’s just added to it now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I guarantee that there are going to be folks that I know who are going to listen to this and they’re going to reach out and they’re going to say, “You’re damn right it’s a disability. They have it. A lot of the residents I was talking about who have been exposed to these chemicals, now they are so hypersensitive to these chemicals and they bioaccumulate and they make them feel worse and their kids are getting sick or staying sick or they haven’t been not sick for years at this point. And it’s just this kind of hell that they’re living through. And I can’t help but think of all the other workers like you who are exposed to this stuff. I mean, in the year 2026, black lung is on the rise in this country. There are men our age dying from coal mining or other forms of silicosis because of the stuff they’re inhaling, the lack of PPE they’re getting, just this whole system of grinding people down to dust and subjecting our bodies to the most toxic conditions just to make a buck.

And it’s so systemic, but it impacts us in so many different ways. And I kind of wanted to just ask you guys about that.What does this all say about the daily realities that working people are going through in this country? And especially if you’re disabled or indigenous or both?

James Quigg:

Well, I’ll say that invisible disabilities are easily ignored. That is one thing that Andy and I both have in common. You look at both of us on a normal day, you don’t see a disability. You don’t see a multiple chemical sensitivity in him. You don’t see type one diabetes in me. So it’s easy, kind of out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people, except for the people that have to deal with it day in, day out when they wake up to when they go to bed.

James “NDN” Gardner:

I feel like in a way I was robbed because I always wanted to provide for my family. I always wanted to work hard and make a living. And because I was working hard and making a living and the companies that I worked for ignored safety protocols, I can no longer do what I want to do for my family and be there for my family the way I should have been allowed to. And a lot of working people, that’s all we want to do is make ends meet, survive and enjoy life and enjoy the little things. And to not be able to do that now because a company wanted to make more money isn’t justified.

James Quigg:

I mean, it’s true. America is built on the backs of people like Indian and a lot of people just use them as stepping stones to get to the future.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think that was beautifully and powerfully and put and it’s so depressingly true. I mean, Jesus, we just passed the 25th anniversary of nine eleven and we’re learning about all the things that not just first responders, but people all over New York were exposed to and lied to about for years later. This is unacceptable at every single level and we can’t keep accepting it. We’ve got to do something about it and we got to start by taking care of each other. And I wanted to bring us there for the final turn here because I know I can’t keep you guys for much longer, but I wanted to ask where things currently stand. I mean, you guys already gave us an important update from the Fort Worth Star Telegram that apparently Indian still hasn’t received anything from the disability office and he was denied two times before that anyway until his organs started shutting down.

Then he got some movement, but where does that leave Indian now? Where does that leave your family now? And what are folks doing in response? What can folks listening do to help?

James “NDN” Gardner:

Right. I mean, to back it down, sage up, pray to whoever will listen.

James Quigg:

Yeah. We’re kind of waiting to see what disability says. Hopefully he gets an approval and he’ll get some sort of back money so that he can get caught up with his bills because the bills haven’t stopped. The mortgage hasn’t stopped. They’re still trying to foreclose as far as I know because he’s terminal. They’re trying to get at least the ability for him to stay in his home and not be evicted. But that doesn’t solve a problem. That just pushes it down the road and it leaves it for his kids when Indian’s no longer here to help. But as far as what’s keeping him afloat has been this GoFundMe the last month or so, just from the kindness of strangers. Indian spent his life helping anybody and everybody. That doesn’t mean that those people are in positions to be able to help financially or monetarily in any way.

Indian’s always been that person to support others.

It’s just there’s nobody there maybe outside of myself that’s able to help him in that sense. And so we were sitting around his cousin, my other best friend and his mother on his birthday, what, six weeks ago, something like that, sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how do we stop this foreclosure? What can we do? Can we get a loan? Can we try to refinance? Can we refinance his mom’s house? Can I afford to purchase the home on my own? And realistically, none of us, we couldn’t do any of that. So I went home frustrated that we had to do this on his birthday, kind of cried about it a little bit and said, “Fuck it, I’m going to do this. I’m going to make a GoFundMe. I’m going to tell my friend’s story the best that I can and see if people are willing to respond.” Just try to show the world the kind person and generous person he’s always been and hopefully karma will come back tenfold on him.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Indian, I want to give you the last word here and it can really be anything that you want, but I guess if you could know that you’re speaking to fellow workers around the country who listen to this show, who work in industries like this and industries that unlike this, if you could talk to those folks who are working jobs like this now or folks out there who could help, what would you just want to leave them with?

James “NDN” Gardner:

My family’s got a motto. If someone needs help, you help. You don’t ever respect anything in return. Whether it’s an old lady crossing the street, somebody on the side of the road with a flat tire, any situation. Somebody needs you to help them push a car or you notice your neighbor’s grass is too tall and you know he hasn’t been feeling well the last few weeks. Nothing’s going to cost you but time. Time is all we have for each other and let’s enjoy it and spend it and help everybody together. We’re all in this together. This is one world, one life. We’re all part of this. We’re all part of this.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests, James Indian Gardner and James Quigg. You can get in touch with them and keep up to date with Indian story by using the links that we’ve included in the show notes for this episode. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring about this. We do this work for you, but we can’t do it without you. So thank you. Working People is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by the great Jules Taylor and is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle across the US and around the world.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel and check out our other great podcasts like Under the Shadow and the Battle for Free Speech and connect with us on social media and get updates on our reporting there and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.