just a taste
We’ve heard story after story of the super messed up things the police are doing in response to the protests happening across the country. My new friend Kevin got arrested in the course of a protest in Cincinnati, and what they did to him and some of the other folks who were arrested is pretty terrible. This is their story.
Support the show:
paypal.me/queersplaining
patreon.com/queersplaining
TRANSCRIPT:
Callie: [00:00:00] Big shouts out to Mark, Charlie, Emily and Janet for becoming new patrons this week. Thank you friends. Love you lots. Quick heads up, this episode contains firsthand accounts of police brutality and mistreatment. Please take care of yourself. My name is Callie Wright, and this is Queersplaining. So it seems like every day we’re hearing about new ways the police in different cities are being terrible. You heard one about Cincinnati just a few weeks ago on this very show. That episode was a Chronicle of what happened over the course of a Friday and Saturday.
I had to do work that Sunday, so I couldn’t go out to the protest that happened that day. But my new friend, Kevin did go out that Sunday and he got arrested that night. And he’s here to tell the story of what happened to him and roughly a hundred or so other people that night. Oh, and a quick aside things being what they are not the best idea for us to meet up in person or anything. And, Kevin had his two dogs, Clem and Ursa, and the background. I particularly love that he has a dog named Ursa, but you’ll hear them join the interview a couple of times throughout nothing we could do about that, but, you know, puppies.
Kevin: [00:01:08] It was a Sunday. And I decided to go out to the, protest that day. And just to give a little background, you know, 33. So I’ve been doing protests for a minute. You know, I’ve been doing this for awhile. I protested the Iraq war, you know, I did occupy and when I went to the protest that day, it wasn’t my first protest in this runner protests, but it was really large and really powerful. And I started talking to, to a lot of the people who were, there were a lot younger than me and I hadn’t really talked to them yet. And me, myself and I personally, hadn’t done much talking to generation Z in general.
I felt like I was too much older than them, you know, up to this point in my life to really engage them much. But now we’re all adults. And so I was talking to them during the day at the rally and I was just really impressed with the things that they had to say. They were all really invested. They were all really into it.
And I’ve been to Black Lives Matter protests in the past. And you know, they were much smaller. I mean, this is huge. And when the march during the day ended, I believe it was like, you know, 8:00 PM or 7:00 PM because the, the curfew kept getting moved up hour by hour every day to make it, you know, one hour earlier.
And people were mad about that because, you know, we saw it as a way for them to. To silence, our protests, which were perfectly legal and perfectly peaceful. And so, you know, a number of people during the daytime protest, you know, it was just sort of, I wouldn’t say it was agreed because I hadn’t spoken to anyone about it, but I, you know, I was considering staying out to protest after the curfew, you know, down by the courthouse because.
You know, it, it, it wasn’t fair. The curfew, how they were in implementing it was wrong. And you know, it was a crackdown on our, on our first amendment rights. So, when that peaceful, you know, March during the day ended a number of people just sort of looked around at each other and said, all right, well, let’s go back downtown.
And then we marched back down as a group to the courthouse. There was really no leadership, no one even said anything. We all just kind of turned and went that way. And when we got there, there were already people protesting. And so we just joined the protest in front of the courthouse and, you know, we knew the curfew was approaching.
I was basically expecting to, you know, I’d get written a ticket and sent home. That was kind of the outlook of like, this is a worst case scenario. Either A: they continue to let us protest because they recognize the optics of everything that’s happening in the country right now. Or B: you know, we were trying to give them opportunities.
We were asking them to kneel with us and stuff like that. We were chanting it as, as a crowd. And we were saying, if you kneel, we’ll go home. And none of them kneeled or anything like that, you know, I felt like there were many. Different opportunities to, to diffuse the situation given to the police that they did not take.
And so then 10 minutes before curfew, they started firing on us from behind, essentially to my left because I was facing the police in front of the courthouse and I was live streaming at the time. So I turned to my left and that’s when they started shooting the tear gas. So I was like, right on top of the tear gas, when it you know, went off and I saw. You know, children, there were little children. I mean, I, I personally, again, I have video of this. I personally watched, you know, tear gas out of the eyes of maybe a five year old girl, because they were just, you know, and these were people who were standing significantly behind the main protest, but they were just there watching us, you know, they were watching how the police were going to respond to us and they were all in the zone that the police attacked as far as I could —
What I would say was an indiscriminate use of tear gas on anyone who was generally in the area. And then there was, you know, a moment of what I would say was panic. You know, everybody’s sort of broke in every direction. A lot of people were trying to help each other, clean their eyes out and things like that.
And then everybody got really mad. Because, you know, they just tear gas to us and we hadn’t been doing anything. So then we marched North again and we came back together as a group and we continued protesting, you know, we just were marching through the streets chanting and a lot of the population of over the Rhine, especially had come out to see us.
They were out in their cars, they were, you know, honking their horns, supporting us. People were videotaping us, you know, so we got a lot of support from the locals. We made it up to about Central Avenue and then we turned onto Central. And at that point, it was like, there were like cars parked at every intersection who were supporting us and, you know, the police weren’t getting to us because of that, I feel like.
But once we got past that, we came to a point where there was a police blockade set up. So we turned towards Finley market to go around that, because again, we weren’t trying to fight with the police. I mean, every time they saw us, they started shooting at us and they were using the pepper bullets. So basically from that point on, it was the police’s game because they’d already set up a big trap or a couple of traps in the area around Findlay market that they just funneled us into.
And, you know, people were kind of panicking at this point. They were running and there was a couple of police officers who were not firing at us who were saying, go this way and we’ll let you go home, go this way and we’ll let you go home. So we all ran up. This, you know, basically a blind alley that they set us up.
Well, we came out the other end. There were Sheriff’s deputies on our left with bicycles and then a second line of them behind them with guns. And then to our right was what looked to be, you know, the Cincinnati SWAT department in a line with their riot shields and all that. And so the Sheriff’s deputies were telling us that we needed to go towards the SWAT team. And then if we did that, that they would let us go home. And the sh — and the SWAT team was telling us that we had to go towards the Sheriff’s deputies in that if we did that, they would let us go home. And then the people who told us to come up the alley had closed off the alley behind us.
So there was no way out. There’s probably about a hundred of us. There was there must’ve been a news camera around there somewhere. Cause a number of us were arrested on, on the news. But yeah, we were being told, you know, to go in two directions that we cardinally could not because you know, I’ve since found out police officers have to tell you three times to disperse before they can arrest you.
So, you know, they were on both ends. They were meeting that three time allowance. They were telling us three times to disperse in the other direction, which was impossible. So that’s what you call kettling. I know a lot of people are familiar with that now, but it’s a military technique, you know, that you funnel people into a kill zone and then you kill them all.
But in our, you know, in our case, it was used to arrest us all. And, but then we were, you know, once we were all there, we kneeled, we had our hands up. We said, you know, we were chanting hands up. Don’t shoot, let us go home. And we were told by the officers. That if we surrendered peacefully, they would let us go home.
By this point, basically, nobody really believed them, but at the same time, you know, it’s what they were telling us. So we allowed them to zip tie all of us. And then, you know, that’s when they put us on buses and sent us to the justice center. When we arrived at the justice center, I was actually one of the last nine who was arrested.
So I wasn’t put in a bus. I was put in a Paddy wagon, which is a uniquely uncomfortable position if you’ve never been in a Paddy wagon. I mean, there’s just no good way to explain it other than it feels like you’re in a coffin. It’s very uncomfortable. I was only in it a short time though. So that was really good.
Cause I’ve read about, you know, cops in Chicago will leave people in those for 12 hours and. Woof, what a nightmare that would have been, of course what happened was also its own nightmare. But so when we arrived at the justice center, they let us out of the Paddy wagon, which I was thankful for because I am a little bit claustrophobic.
They told us, you know, when you get in here, you just need to listen to the instructions, you know, and you’ll get through this as quickly as possible. So they took us through the gates, like the car gates and. The Sally port is what they call it of the justice center. And we went in there. It’s like a parking lot area, but they’d removed most of the cars.
And they were just lining us up in lines to sit or kneel on the concrete. You either had to sit on your butt or kneel because all of us were still, you know, our hands were zip tied behind our backs. We’d been this way for about an hour at this point, you know, because that’s how long it took for them to arrest all of us and all that.
And transport us here. Only the first, I think it was maybe the first two busloads and my Paddy wagon had been brought in at this point. The rest of the people were left on their buses, some of them for a few hours. But, those of us who were brought in, it was like the first bus load essentially was worked through and processed really fast.
I personally know a guy who got out, you know, in the middle of the night who was arrested in our group because he was one of the busload that they processed really fast. But it seems like as soon as they finished that busload, they simply just stopped processing us. So that’s also why. A lot of us had our phones and stuff was because, you know, technically we weren’t under arrest until they started processing us.
We were just detained. So they couldn’t take our phones from us legally before they had officially arrested us. So that’s why there is actually some video and stuff from this, though. They would take our phones away. If they saw us using our phones out there, whether or not that’s legal, they were doing it.
So once we got in there, they were taking our pictures and stuff. It seemed like they were getting ready to process us, but then they just stopped taking people inside. So a lot of people, you know, were begging to use the restroom, like as soon as we came in. A couple of women specifically, and the officers were refusing to let us use the restroom.
And eventually a few of these women said, you know, like I really have to use the restroom. Like I have to use it like now, like I’m going to pee myself and. I personally heard multiple officers say piss yourself, which eventually a few of the women did do. This is probably two or three hours into it. And we’re all outside.
Temperatures are dropping. It got to be about the mid forties that night, which I know doesn’t sound that bad. But it was also very breezy. And when you’re in a tee shirt and you’re in a restrained position, you’re not allowed to move. It does actually get cold very fast, you know? I mean that’s half your body heat and you can’t protect your arms or anything like that because there’s zip tied behind your back.
So for me, the worst part was definitely the cold. And later I realized probably also I was very sick from the tear gas, but at the time, you know, I just did, I wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion or cold or what, but they left us out there. I was out there the entire night and as the night went on, eventually the bus drivers, for example, needed to take the buses back.
So they brought the, some of the other people in off the buses, a few hours after I’d already been put out there with a number of other people who’ve been out there all night as well. So some of the people got like an extra two or three hours on the buses, which were a little bit warmer, but also they weren’t given bathroom breaks or anything like that. People were peeing themselves on the buses, peeing in the buses. And at one point they did bring some of the people from the buses into a lobby inside the building, which is only important to know for later. And the, those people in that lobby, they then brought outside after putting them through the lobby, they brought them outside and put them with the rest of us.
And so most people probably spent six or seven hours outside overnight, but maybe maybe 35% of us spent the entire night outdoors. So I was out there for about 12 hours personally. We saw three shifts of officers who were watching over us. So the first shift was the ones who stopped processing and, you know, I’m.
I’m pretty sure that was just done out of spite, you know, because. A lot of the protesters were actually in very good spirits for people who had just been arrested, you know, they were feeling good about what they done. They didn’t mind the fact that they’d been arrested. They were with their friends, you know, they were making jokes.
And honestly, I think it got under the officer’s skin. So they just decided to stop doing their jobs, which is, you know, if you pay attention to policing issues, a very common issue, when the police don’t get their way, they just stopped doing their jobs. And so then the second shift came in about three or four hours into this and.
We were saying to them, look, people have peed themselves. We haven’t been allowed to use the restroom. We’re freezing. We need, you know, they won’t give us blankets. And so the second shift started taking people to the restroom. They had one officer who would come out and take two people to the restroom at a time.
And the only, I mean, it was nice that we could, at that point, use the restroom. And we also found out that the restroom was only about 10 feet indoors. So there was really no point where they couldn’t take us to that restroom. It was just cruelty that they made people pee themselves out there. I mean, we literally couldn’t have been more than 15 feet from the bathroom when we were outside.
So they started taking people to the bathroom. And the only important part to note about that really, other than that, they let people use the restroom. Was that when you got to use the restroom, they had to move your zip tie from the back to the front. So people actually started going into the restroom, whether or not they needed to just because they wanted to get their zip ties moved from the back to the front.
It was way more comfortable. So over the course of the night, you know, because it took that long to get everyone through there, there was, you know, a hundred of us out there. We got our zip tie switched to the front. Some people got caught slipping their hands out of the zip ties or things like that. And then they were put in metal cuffs, but for the most part, everyone got eventually got their zip ties, moved to the front.
After, you know, six, seven hours of having my hands behind my back. I got mine moved to the front. And so then the second shift, but they wouldn’t, you know, they wouldn’t take us inside. They weren’t processing anybody. I don’t think they processed a single person the entire time. Second shift was out there.
And you know, the thing about the officers is it did not seem to bother almost any of them that they were doing this to us. They actually seem to enjoy themselves. And it, we realized very early on in the process that we were, that the Sally port was the way that all the police officers who were out dealing with, you know, the issues that night were coming in and out of the building.
So in my opinion, we were left out there. As, you know, both the teach us quote unquote, a lesson, but also as a morale booster to all these officers who were mad that they have to work overtime because they all were coming in and out of the building and waving at us and laughing at us. And I only saw one officer the entire night, in my opinion, who looked like what she was doing was bothering her.
And, you know, she was the first one who got them to start taking us to the restroom. And she spoke to us like we were people, which is frankly, not something I was encountering with the other officers. Most of them were ignoring us outright if not just being cruel to us, cursing at us and things like that.
So it was an uncomfortable night. And then the third shift came in about the time the sun was coming up. So most of us have been out here the entire night and we refused to continue sitting at that point because you know, a lot of us were very cold. I was concerned that my core temperature was getting too low.
So at some point we all just said, we’re standing as one. We all stood up. They threatened us with mace for a moment, but then we just kind of exploded. And I think they realized that, you know, that would have been a really bad idea. And from that point on, we were allowed to stand up and I mean, it was just a necessity.
I mean, we absolutely had to stand so that we could get our circulation moving better. And when the third shift finally came in, I personally knew one of the officers who was guarding us at that point. And I approached him and said, look, I don’t know if you remember me, but you know, they’ve left us out here all night.
We haven’t had any blankets or anything to eat or water when he said, hang on, I’ll take care of that. So he did go inside. And he got them to bring us breakfast. And that probably came out around, let’s say 9:00 AM. And that’s when they brought water out. And that was literally the first time we’d had water.
They had teargassed us at 9:00 PM the night before. And then left us out the entire night, 12 hours before they gave us water about 9:00 AM. So the police are claiming that that’s a lie that we’re saying, but because they have a picture of the water that they set out for us in the morning. But you’ll notice that the picture is from the morning.
It’s very clearly the next day, you know, the sun’s up and that’s why they don’t have pictures of it from before then, because that’s when they brought it out. So, you know, we went 12 hours with no water, no food, no blankets. And you know, as far as I could tell, it was just for the officer’s enjoyment or the flip, the flip answer is, you know, the first.
The first crew gave up processing us. The second crew came in and said, we’re not doing crew one’s job. And then the third crew ended up having to bat clean up.
Callie: [00:20:47] It’s just like neither of those explanations are good.
Kevin: [00:20:50] Yeah, exactly. I mean, those are like, if that’s how a McDonald’s functioned, I would expect you to get new McDonald’s employees, you know?
So I know that was probably a long winded and not very elegant way of going through that. There was so much more, Oh, there was, Oh, I forgot. I didn’t even mention a young woman had a seizure at one point. How did I skip over that? At one point in the night, one of the women who had, who had, you know, urinated on herself and was still sitting in it because they wouldn’t let her move had a seizure.
You know, and she vomited and she wasn’t breathing as far as we could tell, you know, she was like turning blue. We were shouting at the officers, like do something, do something. And at first they were ignoring us because, you know, like I said, that was what most of them were doing. But then they realized there was a real issue and they brought out the nurse and she had to do chest compressions to revive her.
And I mean, personally, I know I’m not a, you know, I’m not a medical doctor or anything, but like, You were either dead or very close to dead. If someone is doing chest compressions on you. And so they took her in and we were all like, wow, thank God. At least they took her inside. And then they brought her back out about 45 minutes later and they left her out there with us for the rest of the night.
It was unbelievable. But, yeah. Let me tell you, the, the nurse at the justice center is a very cruel person. She was shit. She was just as mean, if not more mean than the officers were.
Callie: [00:22:24] Like, how so? Like, what did you see that made you think that?
Kevin: [00:22:27] Well, she was like, she came out a few times over the evening when she was, you know, when they had people who they were worried might need to go to the hospital.
A few of which did end up going to the hospital. They would bring her out to be the person to be like, yes, this person’s blood pressure is messed up or whatever. And each time she would come out to do somebody’s blood pressure or something like that, especially young women would see her and. Thank, you know, she’s a medical professional and all that.
And especially the young women who are wearing very little, like, so essentially the people who were freezing, you know, I mean, they were, they were in like a miniskirt and a, an, a tube top, you know, for the entire night and, you know, nobody had extra clothes to give them. We were in tee shirts and jeans, you know, nobody was dressed right to be left out all night in this, and they were asking her like, Hey, can I get a shirt, like a tee shirt, anything? And the quote from her was like, Oh, you know, I’m a nurse. I don’t work at the gap. You know, I think that was the, I think that was what she said to that girls who were really cold. And you know what I mean?
It was obviously it was truly, was a medical issue, you know, how cold they were, but. You know, I mean, she works there, so she’s one of them, which is something to remember, you know, about med– you know, medical staff at the justice center. Hey, stop. It’s too much, Clem.
Callie: [00:23:56] Talk to me about the conversations you were having with folks throughout the night. Cause I’m like, did they let you talk to each other and stuff?
Kevin: [00:24:03] Well, I mean, there wasn’t really much they could do to stop us from talking to each other.
I mean, they tried, but we just kind of ignored them. The conversations were interesting because like I said, I was sort of the old man at the protest. I was definitely one of the older people who got arrested. I wouldn’t say I was the oldest person who got arrested, but I was one of the older people who got arrested.
And I was talking to a lot of these gen Z-ers, let’s call them. And I was saying, you know, like you guys are like, you seem ecstatic to be out here to be arrested, you know, for this cause. And they’re like, well, you know, there’s, there’s two ways to look at it. One is that it is a really good cause. And, you know, this is history like we’re participating in history.
And then the flip side of it is that, you know, our generation knows. That their futures have been stolen to pay for things like these out of control, militarized police departments, and wars overseas. And, you know, and there’s all these things that we could be doing here at home with all that money. And they’re just so aware of it.
It just seems like there’s never been a point when they were politically aware when they weren’t aware. That all these things that are going on are so wrong, which is interesting to me because you know, it really took me time to figure that stuff out. You know, I’m pretty far left for, for my generation, but at the same time, I had to learn a lot at an older age than they are now to get to where I am and these people who I keep wanting to call them kids, but they’re not kids they’re in their twenties and I’m just an old man.
But you know, these, these gen Z-ers are just very aware of being sold out by politicians, to defense companies and all that. And there are, they’re just like, “What are they going to take from us? Are they going to take our debt?” That was one of my favorite quotes. They’re like, yeah. I mean, if they put me in prison, there’s nothing that they can take from me.
But my debt, I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. And they’re not wrong, you know? I mean, once. Once you take everything from people, you give them the ability to be very radical in their actions. And that’s something that, you know, the, the upper classes should be considering right now.
Callie: [00:26:31] So I’m wondering how you feel because if memory serves, it was literally the Monday morning after this happened that the Hamilton County sheriff actually knelt with the protestors. How did you feel about that?
Kevin: [00:26:42] Yes! That was the day after. And that was 100% him trying to play cleanup. I mean, that was, that’s how I felt about it.
It was that he’d heard what had happened in the justice center the night before. And he said, okay, Oh, shit. I’d better kneel, which he did. And then, you know, they, and then the next day they were all kneeling, you know, and many of those people who were kneeling were probably officers who laughed at us when we were, you know, tied up in the justice center then the night before.
So, you know, that’s pretty much how I feel about cops kneeling at this point personally, but you know, I’m slightly embittered on the topic.
Callie: [00:27:19] Well, so, so talk to me about getting out. What time did they eventually let you go? Like, what did that process look like?
Kevin: [00:27:24] Well, I was let into the building to start the process of being, of actually being arrested and all that at about 11:30 AM the next day after my arrest and at around noon, my bond was paid and then they let me out at 6:30 PM, which is like, On the long end of how long it might take you to get out after your bond is paid.
We were told that because most of us didn’t have criminal records that supposedly that made it take longer. But–
Callie: [00:28:06] How does that work?
Kevin: [00:28:08] Well, because there’s so many different since we, since we’ve never been put into the criminal database, there’s a bunch of different, you know, organizations and whatever.
They have to ping things off of to make sure you are who you’re saying you, who you are and blah, blah, blah.
Callie: [00:28:22] I gotcha.
Kevin: [00:28:23] So if, if I’d already had a criminal record, they would have been, they would have just been able to tack that on the list, you know, but you know, it takes more time to set up a Facebook than it does to just, you know, drop a comment.
Callie: [00:28:36] Makes sense.
Kevin: [00:28:37] But yeah, they, you know, so, but the bond thing again, you know, it’s, it’s kinda up to them. Sure. I paid my bond at noon. So on the low end, usually it’s going to take you like an hour and a half to two hours to get out after you paid your bond. But I guess on the high end, it can take up to six hours.
And for most of the protestors I spoke to, it took like seven hours.
Callie: [00:29:03] Wow.
Kevin: [00:29:04] So, yeah, I got out at 6:30 PM and then my court date was set for Tuesday at 9:00 AM. This was so I was let out at Monday 6:30 PM with a dead cell phone. And I was supposed to be to court with a lawyer at 9:00 AM the next day.
Luckily the lawyers of Cincinnati turned out real hard for that because they all recognized that, you know, our rights were being violated as protestors. And so. Pretty much when we all showed up to court in the morning, there was just a number of lawyers who were waiting there, either public defenders or lawyers who, who were working pro bono, who were just taking all of our cases as we walked up.
Callie: [00:29:48] And how did that go? Like, did the, did a, a trial actually happened or like what, what actually ended up going down with that?
Kevin: [00:29:53] So what happened with that was they’re working on a group defense for all of us. All the lawyers are working on it together. And so they just asked for a continuation that day. so my next court date is sometime at the end of next month and I might not even have to be at that one yet.
So I would just say that my overall, you know, long take on this now is that obviously what was done to us. That night was wrong, but also, you know, people are mostly hearing about it because a lot of us who they arrested that night have incredible levels of privilege myself included, you know, just to start with, you know, I’m a cisgendered white male, that’s a lot of privilege.
That’s a lot of capital to spend and based mostly on that, I’ve been able to get it so that the city council people know my name. I’ve had people talking to me about running for city council, you know, and it’s, I’m not an impressive character by any means, but at the same time, you know, it’s about spending your privilege correctly.
You know, you gotta spend your privilege like it’s money. And as cruel as what the police did to, to us was, you know, it’s just a little taste of the system that black people have been going through for hundreds of years. You know, like, yes, it’s wrong, what they did to us that one night and that’s its own story, but you know, they did this to us just because we were speaking out because we recognize that how they treat black people is wrong, you know, and they could do this to a single individual any night of the week, anytime ever, you know, And off — pin any crime on them.
Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, who knows, how many of the people who say they never committed the crimes that, you know, they’re accused of in prison really did not commit those crimes. That’s something that’s really stuck with me. Cause I’m just, you know, I’m also the kind of person who’s always been philosophically.
This has been my outlook that the police are. Out of control and their budgets and all that. But let me tell you experiencing it is really definitely something new and different and puts a very strong perspective on it. Because yeah, it just seemed like cruelty for cruelty sake. It was every part of it was intentionally dehumanizing and yeah, that was just, that was my take is just how purposeful they were in dehumanizing us because that, you know, and that’s an important. I think it’s an important psychological note, both as someone who experienced it and from their outlook, because they have to dehumanize us because if they look at us as people, they wouldn’t be able to do the things they do on a regular basis to us.
Callie: [00:32:56] I heard a talk once that talked about how our stories are stories about power, who has it, who doesn’t. How it’s used there’s attention in the kind of storytelling that I normally do on the show here. Most episodes are one person’s story or a few people’s story. I do try to fit them into the larger context of the systems we live in.
But it’s always done through that one story’s lens or that few people’s stories lens. There’s a risk in doing it this way. Right. It’s easy to start to see these as individual stories remarkable in their own, right. But not necessarily connected to a larger system. And it’s important to remember that these stories are pieces of a whole. What Kevin and the rest of those folks went through that night wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t an aberration. It was simply a small taste of what police and jails and prisons have been doing to people, especially black people. For hundreds of years, I tell individual stories because I think they’re powerful ways that we can connect with one another and they can be a powerful way to enter the conversation about these bigger systems.
I just think it’s really important that we remember that all of these stories do exist in a larger context. The stories that I talk about on the show are just pieces of a tapestry that weaves together the lives of the people our systems are designed to oppress it’s important that we don’t forget that.
Thanks to Kevin for sharing his story. And thank you, my friend for listening. If you want to help keep this thing going, help keep Celes and Wedge and I housed and the bills paid you can go to patreon.com/queersplaining. Consider a per episode donation to support the show. Every little bit helps. I appreciate it, and I love you. Before I go. I want you to know that if you’re lost, you’re hurting, you’re scared, if you feel like no one cares and no one understands you need to know there’s a community out here that loves you cares for you, knows that you’re capable of amazing things and that you are worthy of love.
If you’re struggling, please, don’t be afraid to reach out. Until next time friend, my name is Callie Wright and this is Queersplaining.