Speaker 1: Good evening, friends, thank you for joining us this week
Speaker 1: on the nonprofits. Tonight is Monday, January twenty seventh, and
Speaker 1: we have got a lot of interesting articles to cover
Speaker 1: this week. We are going to first go to California,
Speaker 1: where they're unfortunately dealing with the harsh realities of nature
Speaker 1: and many people's lives and livelihoods are at stake, and
Speaker 1: our hearts go out to them. But there's something else
Speaker 1: that we want to talk about going on with California,
Speaker 1: and AJ is going to kick it off.
Speaker 2: That's right, California is burning during one of the most
Speaker 2: destructive and devastating forest flowers in the state's history. There's
Speaker 2: been twelve thousand structors destroyed, tens of thousands of people needs,
Speaker 2: you know, have to move to evacuations. There is a
Speaker 2: twenty seven human lives lost so far, and the impact
Speaker 2: to animal life isn't even measurable at this point. But
Speaker 2: who has time for that, at least not the conservative
Speaker 2: right wing online influencers Charlie Kirk and Christopher Ruffe, both
Speaker 2: of whom have said that, you know, we need to
Speaker 2: look away from the wall burning and point us to
Speaker 2: what they consider the real destruction. Sign language interpreters taken
Speaker 2: over half of the screen during televised emergency announcements. This
Speaker 2: article was from Mother Jones and written by Julian Metel
Speaker 2: on January thirteen, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. AJ. You know, I am
Speaker 1: not so sure how with all of the destruction and
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm being nice, I'm being nice. Not
Speaker 1: so sure. I mean, let's be honest, it's ridiculous all
Speaker 1: the destruction that is that is kind of spreading across California,
Speaker 1: and this religious demagogue has time to demonize sign language interpreters.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? What are your first
Speaker 1: thoughts on targeting another minority group versus talking about the
Speaker 1: real problem.
Speaker 2: I think that it's been clear lately that the conservatives
Speaker 2: have just waged a war against all the things that
Speaker 2: they consider work, you know, with a focus on diversity,
Speaker 2: equity and inclusivity practices. They pushed so much that many
Speaker 2: businesses who had adopted these initiatives have since decided to
Speaker 2: completely drop them because they feel too much pressure, too
Speaker 2: much pressure from their conservatives, and they feel losing profits.
Speaker 2: Every company feels losing profits. But these initiatives are meant
Speaker 2: to support both you know, customers, employers that come from
Speaker 2: marginalized communities, like people from different races, genders, sexual orientations,
Speaker 2: or the sabled people. And they've made so much progress
Speaker 2: at taking away the rights of, for example, transgender people,
Speaker 2: that it makes sense that now they have to find
Speaker 2: a different type of target, anyone who isn't like them,
Speaker 2: and it just so happened to be interpreters. But I
Speaker 2: think that does not absolutely detalgate. I think that deaf
Speaker 2: people is detargent because trust me, there is the people
Speaker 2: that this service benefits who they want to take down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Jonathan, she raises a point that you
Speaker 1: know it maybe the scapegoat, maybe the new boogeyman is
Speaker 1: the ASL interpreters. But yeah, there are certainly second in
Speaker 1: order excuse me, second and third order effects of that.
Speaker 1: Taking that away takes information away from a lot of people.
Speaker 1: How does this relate to the well, the conservatives, the
Speaker 1: right wing movement in this country. I almost said Republicans,
Speaker 1: but you know, I have to remind myself that not
Speaker 1: everybody that makes up the party, granted it's a small number,
Speaker 1: is part of the red wave, if you will, But
Speaker 1: the people are that are part of the red wave,
Speaker 1: you know, have this desire to control information. At least
Speaker 1: in my opinion, I wanted to get your thoughts on that,
Speaker 1: and how does that relate to them making a boogeyman
Speaker 1: out of the A cell interpreters.
Speaker 3: Well, and in my thoughts about it, they have to
Speaker 3: have some way of keeping people from being compassionate or
Speaker 3: empathetic to a Hollywood, a democratic stronghold. They cannot allow
Speaker 3: any positive information about the more liberal people in our
Speaker 3: society because that is a direct assault on their philosophy
Speaker 3: of life. They are couching all of their activities on
Speaker 3: defeating an enemy, you know, and they've demonize entire segments
Speaker 3: of our population so that they can fight an enemy
Speaker 3: and that will get people to unite under their banner
Speaker 3: to fight a destructive enemy. But they're picking on people
Speaker 3: who can't normally have no political power and can't fight back,
Speaker 3: and this is something that is cowardly. It's really cowardly
Speaker 3: to pick on a sign language interpreter. These people study
Speaker 3: for years to be able to be to emote and
Speaker 3: get people to understand all of what's being said and
Speaker 3: how it's being said, voice inflections, the underlying meaning of
Speaker 3: words that you cannot get from a printed page. You
Speaker 3: need that. It's part of a deaf person's grammar. You
Speaker 3: can't do without it if you really want to understand
Speaker 3: what's being said. I only took one sign language course.
Speaker 3: My instructor was completely deaf, and the only day we
Speaker 3: had an interpreter was the first day. I didn't learn
Speaker 3: all that much in the two or three months I
Speaker 3: was there. I'm not real talented at it, but it
Speaker 3: made it perfectly clear when he was talking to a
Speaker 3: student halfway across the park from the front of the
Speaker 3: classroom about something that needed to be said in the class.
Speaker 3: It was quite amazing that the amount of emotion that
Speaker 3: can be transmitted. I didn't get to interact with a
Speaker 3: lot of deaf people at that point, but I did
Speaker 3: live across the street from a deaf individual recently, and
Speaker 3: we managed expert lip reader. But that wasn't really you know,
Speaker 3: I had to ask her how to say certain things
Speaker 3: because I didn't think that they were expressing enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was never very good at using the expressions on
Speaker 3: my face to communicate information.
Speaker 1: But you know, that is a good point you raised.
Speaker 1: Because I don't think and granted people who are deaf
Speaker 1: have to navigate the world in far different ways than
Speaker 1: the rest of us do. Now, I couldn't imagine not
Speaker 1: living with one of my senses, or excuse me, living
Speaker 1: without one of my senses. I couldn't even imagine not
Speaker 1: having an appendage or having, you know, something debilitative, really
Speaker 1: affecting the way I live. But to not have one
Speaker 1: of your sensory information abilities is incredibly it must be
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult to navigate life. But people people do it,
Speaker 1: and I think that we can relate in a sense
Speaker 1: to the way they receive information, because just because we
Speaker 1: have all of our senses, we still I mean, look
Speaker 1: at me right now, we still have our facial expressions
Speaker 1: and and things like that that we communicate with. I
Speaker 1: think that taking away the ability for those for for
Speaker 1: deaf people to receive information, as minimal as it may
Speaker 1: be compared to the rest of us, UH, is a
Speaker 1: way to control information, just like the two of you
Speaker 1: have said. But it's also a very fascist, uh, a
Speaker 1: very fascist character characteristic if you if you will, I mean,
Speaker 1: let's look at the most famous yeah, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: let's look at the most famous fascist movement in all
Speaker 1: of history, World War Two. The Holocaust right Germany, Uh,
Speaker 1: disabled people were targeted, and now we see that happening
Speaker 1: from the religious right, who can be characterized a lot
Speaker 1: of their policies as fascist, and it is dehumanizing in
Speaker 1: a way. And we have seen that over and over
Speaker 1: again from this uh, this right movement, just dehumanizing everybody
Speaker 1: that stands in their way. And Jonathan, I think you
Speaker 1: up a great point about about the Hollywood factor. I
Speaker 1: haven't even I hadn't even thought about that, But the
Speaker 1: type of information that people pick up from from TV, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that can have a devastating effect if it's transmitted.
Speaker 3: You're trying to demonize not just disabled people, which is
Speaker 3: an actual tenet of the American neo Nazis is to
Speaker 3: get rid of all the disabled people and that. But
Speaker 3: one of the things that they they're doing is they
Speaker 3: are basically targeting everybody who isn't them. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: but they do it through these means, these these groups,
Speaker 3: and then they can keep they'll they'll move to another group.
Speaker 3: Eventually after they've sufficiently beaten down the disabled people. They'll
Speaker 3: move to you know, somebody else. They'll move to Italians,
Speaker 3: or they'll move to somebody they can they can beat
Speaker 3: up and don't have a lot of power.
Speaker 1: AJ, you had a point, and you were about to
Speaker 1: chime in forgive me, but you had a point on uh,
Speaker 1: people being dehumanized, and I wanted to to get you
Speaker 1: to expand on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly the point that I was going to make.
Speaker 2: What Jonathan was saying is correct. Like the way that
Speaker 2: they do this is by the humanizing entire groups of
Speaker 2: people in order for their listeners or their supporters to
Speaker 2: then be okay with whatever they you know, they suggest
Speaker 2: that they're after so, but what they don't understand. There
Speaker 2: is the same language. As Jonathan also pointed out, it's
Speaker 2: a full language. There is is not English, Okay, It's
Speaker 2: its own unique language. It has centered structure, it has
Speaker 2: visual cues, like you can have the same hand shapes
Speaker 2: for many different signs, but you place them in different
Speaker 2: positions and you make different faces and it means completely
Speaker 2: different things. It's like written versus spoken English, right, and
Speaker 2: you can miss a lot of context when you send
Speaker 2: the text message versus when you speak to somebody in person.
Speaker 2: So if I were to I've learned some time language
Speaker 2: because as you all know, I'm also that so if
Speaker 2: I say something like if I say something like, you're
Speaker 2: not going to know what I'm saying. But if I
Speaker 2: say I hate you, then you're going to know by
Speaker 2: my face. Even if I didn't say it, or if
Speaker 2: I didn't make them mouth movements, you will know that
Speaker 2: I'm like saying something, you know, kind of like mean
Speaker 2: or like I'm having an emotional response, right, And that
Speaker 2: part I would have to say was one of the
Speaker 2: things that bothered me the most about this article. It
Speaker 2: wasn't even like the call to stop sign language from
Speaker 2: being used, but rather one of the quotes that Christopher
Speaker 2: Rouffo said in response to the Los Angeles County Emergency
Speaker 2: Management News conferences. He said, no wild in no wild human,
Speaker 2: justticulators are necessary. Now, I know that that word is
Speaker 2: not inherently negative, but in this context, he was kind
Speaker 2: of saying that that sign language, that people who you
Speaker 2: said language are wild, and then the clarifies, He clarifies
Speaker 2: by saying human. They had a disgusting feel to it,
Speaker 2: like maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but like it seemed
Speaker 2: like he was trying to save that balistic Well, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think you're interpreting it wrong because by him calling them,
Speaker 1: by him calling them wild, it goes to show you
Speaker 1: that he doesn't understand what is going on. And for
Speaker 1: anybody that wants to control the media or control the
Speaker 1: narrative to not understand the message that's being transported, this
Speaker 1: can be incredibly threatening in my opinion, And I think
Speaker 1: that is the reason you have Charlie Kirk labeling asl
Speaker 1: interpreters as woke, because it's akin to him not knowing
Speaker 1: what's going on and him fearing what he doesn't understand.
Speaker 1: And that right there, I think is what leads to
Speaker 1: a fascist, a fascist kind of ideology. And Jonathan I
Speaker 1: wanted to see you know when I said fascism, you
Speaker 1: know you you kind of perked up a little bit. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, how does this help the right wing agenda
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 3: I think what it does is, again they're just trying
Speaker 3: to get their not just their base, but people sitting
Speaker 3: on the fence to hate the same things they hate,
Speaker 3: so they can form a tribe, a tribe that is
Speaker 3: external to the tribe of being a United States citizen,
Speaker 3: but it's still within the group. So the Venn diagram
Speaker 3: would have a little circle of fascists in here that
Speaker 3: they can use. It only takes a third of the
Speaker 3: people in most cases historically to take over a government.
Speaker 3: So you know, they're trying to put themselves in power,
Speaker 3: so they can stay in power, and they can dictate
Speaker 3: to us exactly what we have to do and have
Speaker 3: us as little serfs and feudal slaves in order to
Speaker 3: make them wealthy and to fight their wars for them.
Speaker 3: As they go on marching trying to get the rest
Speaker 3: of the world to agree with them, even though they
Speaker 3: know they are totally wrong, and how they're anticipating things.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that bothers me is that
Speaker 3: what they don't understand well, they actually understand it all
Speaker 3: too well, is people aren't born with any persuasion. They
Speaker 3: are educable, and so as they educate or program people
Speaker 3: to be like them, you don't get rid of this
Speaker 3: kind of evil.
Speaker 4: And it's so astonishing.
Speaker 1: It's so astonishing that this is happening in my lifetime,
Speaker 1: something that I never thought, something I never thought would
Speaker 1: have happened. You know, I have a funny story, and
Speaker 1: I don't mean to digress for a bit, but this relates.
Speaker 1: I gave a lecture a couple of weeks ago For
Speaker 1: those of you who aren't familiar, I'm an adjunct professor
Speaker 1: of National security studies. What are the schools I'm partnered with.
Speaker 1: I gave a lecture on presidential powers, and I gave
Speaker 1: this ridiculous example to remain objective right to not say
Speaker 1: anything that would be controversial, I said, let's just say,
Speaker 1: for example, the United States went to war with Canada,
Speaker 1: and people chuckled, and I thought it was ridiculous. That's
Speaker 1: the only reason I said it. And then lo and behold,
Speaker 1: we're in We're in this fight where we're slinging shots
Speaker 1: back and forth with Canada. Uh, for reasons I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get into. And I just can't believe that
Speaker 1: we're in the spot that we're in, to the point
Speaker 1: that we have religious clergy members, if you will, ignoring
Speaker 1: a wildfire, ignoring the fact that their God is not
Speaker 1: showing up to do anything, and instead attacking sign language interpreters.
Speaker 1: It is we are living in a circus. It's absolutely
Speaker 1: mind blowing. And you know what, AJ, you know, forgive me,
Speaker 1: I forgot that you were that you were deaf, and
Speaker 1: and I, you know, forgive me, I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: mention that and I actually I actually mentioned that we
Speaker 1: all could could you know, we had our capabilities. But
Speaker 1: you know, what was your thought? How personally did this
Speaker 1: strike you when you first read this article?
Speaker 2: I was I was quite shocked. I think it's just
Speaker 2: a sort of a distraction, you know, and it cut
Speaker 2: me off guard because as someone who has depended on
Speaker 2: that type of communication, you know, I haven't always had
Speaker 2: my cochlear implants, so I either depended on the captions
Speaker 2: very often, or somebody telling me, Like if I was
Speaker 2: out and you know, I couldn't hear somebody out there
Speaker 2: talking to me, I don't or a wait dress or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, I will have to turn to somebody in
Speaker 2: my family and be like, hey, what did they say?
Speaker 2: Even that the person's right, they're in front of me.
Speaker 2: So for me to hear somebody saying hey, you know,
Speaker 2: like whether you hear this or not doesn't matter, was
Speaker 2: like shocking. I'm gonna say though, that this is actually dangerous.
Speaker 2: This isn't just about being fascist or the humanizing people.
Speaker 2: It's about putting people's lives at risk. There's about three
Speaker 2: million people deaf people in California. About a million of
Speaker 2: them live in the Los Angeles area, which is where
Speaker 2: all the fires are happening right now. But this is
Speaker 2: just one state. The United States has about eleven million
Speaker 2: deaf people and forty five million people who have some
Speaker 2: degree of hearing lass. So this is a major number.
Speaker 2: It's not just a few people that are listening to
Speaker 2: these emergency response communications that could potentially save their lives
Speaker 2: in those type of situations like a fire, a hurricane, tornadoes,
Speaker 2: like you need to move quickly, and so it's just
Speaker 2: it's incredibly frustrating because there's just so many implications to this,
Speaker 2: requests of removing American sent language interpreters from emergency announcements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this, yeah, this leaves this leaves people incredibly vulnerable.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The thing that is shocking to me, I think, and
Speaker 1: you know, at this point in my life, very few
Speaker 1: things shocked me anymore. But you know, this idea that
Speaker 1: they have, you know, the right wing, the super conservative,
Speaker 1: uh maybe somewhat fascist right wing movement, It thrives on
Speaker 1: demonizing or dehumanizing people, attacking people, making them vulnerable. And
Speaker 1: we all said in the beginning of the show, you know,
Speaker 1: they've moved to minorities, and then they moved to the LGBTQ,
Speaker 1: and then when they've done that, you know, they move
Speaker 1: on to somebody else. I almost feel like they're not
Speaker 1: succeeding because the LGBTQ movement is not succumbing to them.
Speaker 1: It's not succumbing to this movement. People are are stronger,
Speaker 1: people are more vocal, and I almost wonder why did
Speaker 1: they move on to the ASL. I mean, they still
Speaker 1: haven't conquered the people they set out to conquer originally.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, you know, these people have no
Speaker 1: the the ASL community has no track record of having
Speaker 1: to defend themselves. It's such an easy target and it's
Speaker 1: so cheap. And so, Jonathan, I wanted to pivot back
Speaker 1: to you and kind of get your your final remarks
Speaker 1: on this topic. You know, I know that you you
Speaker 1: kind of came up with the idea of them having
Speaker 1: an imaginary boogeyman. But where do we go from here?
Speaker 1: Debuted by the way, my friend.
Speaker 3: Pulling a problem here. They've always had somebody to fight,
Speaker 3: you know, we had Communism to fight before that, we
Speaker 3: had Nazism to fight before that, we had the Spanish
Speaker 3: American War. There's always been somebody to focus their anger
Speaker 3: on rather than focus on improving the United States. And
Speaker 3: the only other thing I would say is you think
Speaker 3: that it's different from when you were younger. I'm thirty
Speaker 3: years older than you. Yeah. When I was a kid,
Speaker 3: we still said the Pledge of Allegiance in class and
Speaker 3: meant it. You know, of course we were ducking under
Speaker 3: our desks for nuclear drills, but it was like a
Speaker 3: whole different world. This world, to me, is dystopian as hell.
Speaker 3: It is absolutely ridiculous that these people would have the
Speaker 3: gall to go after ASL interpreters when half a state.
Speaker 4: Is burning down. Yeah, that is like the most absolutely
Speaker 4: evil thing to do. And I think they do that
Speaker 4: to desensitize people to the evil they do.
Speaker 1: Yep, So yeah, I would agree there. This is a distraction.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about this right now. There's so
Speaker 1: many other things that we could be talking about that
Speaker 1: are just a disaster, right, but we're talking about this,
Speaker 1: and rightfully so these people shouldn't be targeted. But you know,
Speaker 1: distraction after distraction, we keep getting faced with the most
Speaker 1: just asinine views and attempts. And I want to leave
Speaker 1: it there, but uh not without giving aj about a
Speaker 1: minute or so to close us out. So what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts, aj.
Speaker 2: I think empathy. Empathy is what we need. You know,
Speaker 2: earlier you mentioned about living without one of your senses
Speaker 2: and what that feels like. And I know what that
Speaker 2: feels like. Every single day I wake up and I
Speaker 2: you know, I got a bed, and I take off
Speaker 2: my implant and I'm completely tough, and I put it
Speaker 2: on in the morning, and it's like an influx of sounds,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming, and
Speaker 2: it's like getting used to that and then back to
Speaker 2: taking it off when I have to do something that
Speaker 2: you know, requires me to take it off. And it's
Speaker 2: like if people were to put themselves in my shoes
Speaker 2: for a moment, maybe they wouldn't think about these things.
Speaker 2: I take the way that I communicate with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, when these religious and fascist demagogues
Speaker 1: are up on their high horse, they are far away
Speaker 1: from people who face the ailments and face the real
Speaker 1: challenges in life that we all face. To a certain degree,
Speaker 1: they can remove themselves from the needy and from the
Speaker 1: people that need support, need and demonize them instead. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're looking at. And you know what their religion,
Speaker 1: their god it's not helping. It's just a tool for control.
Speaker 1: It's a tool for dehumanization, demonization, and it really gets
Speaker 1: us nowhere. And we've got a lot of things like
Speaker 1: that to talk about