Episode 021: “Don’t Eat Nazi Shit Melons“ (1/2)

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Transcript

Content Warning

JULIA: Hey everyone, this is Julia, Self Evident’s senior producer.

JULIA: Just so you know — this episode has swearing, short descriptions of police brutality, a recording of someone being arrested, and discussions about white nationalist hate groups.

JULIA: Thanks for listening.

Cold Open

CATHY: Hey, it's Cathy! And I'm here with our producer, James.

JAMES: Hey Cathy!

CATHY: OK, so what's this thing you wanted to show me?

JAMES: Uh, okay (chuckles) Let me… let me get this on the internets...

SOUND: James types to bring up the video

JAMES: Hang on, typing it in...

JAMES: This is a video clip from a public meeting held by the Los Angeles Police Commission on June 2nd, 2020.

LAPC moderator: The Secretary of the Commission will call people in the order in which they will appear…

LAPC moderator: ...And we will stay until we hear everybody who has expressed an interest in speaking.

JAMES: This was during the peak of police brutality against protestors — who were themselves rising up all over the country to oppose police brutality against Black Americans .

LAPC moderator: ...following the report of the chief of police, we will take public comment. Chief?

Michael Moore: Sure. Thank you. And...

Michael Moore: This morning, our efforts were to focus … on the tragic death of George Floyd and the aftermath of that, the civil unrest that we're in the midst of…

JAMES: And after the first big wave of protests, the LA Police Commission set up, like, an open mic for Angelenos, which ended up going on for over 7 hours.

Michael Moore: ...And today what I'd like to do is... is listen more than talk.

BEAT

Jeremy Frisch: Hello, can you hear me?

LAPC Moderator: Hi, yes. 

JF: Black lives matter. Defund the police. I find it disgusting that the LAPD are slaughtering peaceful protesters on the street.

JF: I had two friends go to the protest in Beverly Hills a couple of days ago, and the protest was peaceful until the police showed up with their excessive violent force, shooting rubber bullets and throwing tear gas!

JF: IS THIS WHAT YOU THINK OF PROTECTING AND SERVING? CAUSE I THINK IT’S BULLSHIT!

Jeremy Frisch: Fuck you, Michael Moore. I refuse to call you an officer or a chief because you don't deserve those titles. You are a disgrace. Suck my dick and choke on it.

JF: I yield my time. FUCK YOU!

LAPC Moderator: Thank you. Juan Ramirez followed by Ilana...

CATHY: OK! Wow.

MUSIC: A propulsive, simple, 90s-ear hip-hop beat begins

JAMES: (Laughs) So “I Yield my Time” guy has a name, Jeremy Frisch .

JAMES: And this was, like, my top, number one, most favorite moment of 2020, for a couple reasons.

CATHY: Really. You have a favorite moment”? Because… 2020, it’s hard to choose a favorite moment. (Laughs)

JAMES: Oh, my God.

JAMES: Well, you know, in the garbage fire, the moment that I clung to, (laughs) and come back to, is, uh, “I yield my time.”

JAMES: One of the reasons is that when cities and states started going on lockdown, these local public meetings, which used to be done in person and then documented for folks to reference later — all of a sudden they were happening live.

JAMES: Like, online, for anyone to see, from anywhere in the country, who had an internet connection — 

CATHY: Yeah, I think, you know, now that you mention it, looking back... I feel like one of the reasons we saw so many people get involved in politics for the first time was that…

CATHY: During that part of the pandemic, a lot of them had been cooped up at home in their free time, watching all these scenes of police brutality unfold online. And they just couldn’t take it anymore.

JAMES: That actually brings me to the second reason that I still come back and watch this clip, like, once a month: Because it's a reminder.

JAMES: Like, during the summer of 2020, so many people were activated…

JAMES: They had these moments of clarity where they could see what was wrong with our society, recognize that there was a deeper history here, and start looking for ways to show up.

JAMES: And just following that energy led me to another public meeting, in Bloomington, Indiana, on June 15, 2020 .

AA: I am angry about the tone policing that's been happening, telling people that they are reacting emotionally when racism and white supremacy have been longstanding, ongoing issues... 

Bloomington Resident A: Invariably what we see, when you say diversity, is we see 50 shades of white. We see people who are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to accommodate what other white people feel and think...

JadaBee: All of the white voices that are on this committee are not capable of stewarding this town. 

JB: You have done nothing to help this community .

CATHY: OK, what’s this meeting about? I’m guessing the police...

JAMES: Actually, even though this meeting happened in June 2020, it was really just the latest chapter in a fight that had been going over something else...

Lauren McAllister: Because years ago, not months, not weeks, years ago…

MUSIC: Hip-hop beat ends suddenly with an echo

LM: The farmers market board...was made aware that Nazis were selling at the market!

CATHY: What??

MUSIC: Hip-hop beat returns

JAMES: Yeah. That is the sound of over 150 people who were very upset, about the Bloomington City Famer’s Market .

JAMES: And this is a fight that really blew up in 2019, when one of the farmers in the Market was revealed to have ties to a white nationalist organization ... 

JAMES: ...turning the Farmer's Market into a battleground for racial justice and public accountability.

MUSIC fades out

THEME MUSIC begins

Open

CATHY: OK, well, in case you needed any more proof that food and race and politics are all connected…

CATHY: ...This is Self Evident, where we tell Asian America's stories to go beyond being seen.

CATHY: I'm your host Cathy Erway, and to kick off our new season, we have this two-part story from James, and our team.

JAMES: Where we find out what happened when activists tried to get a farmer with ties to a White nationalist hate group kicked out of the market...

JAMES: ...and then, when the elected officials in charge refused to do that, took matters into their own hands.

THEME MUSIC ends

Segment 1

JAMES: If you've never been to Bloomington, Indiana — it's a small city, surrounded by rural towns, and it’s home to a major public university.

MUSIC: A sparse, tense funk beat begins

JAMES: According to Census data from 2019, Bloomington is about 82% white, 4% Black, and 10% Asian — with about a third of that 10% , including Asians from abroad, studying or working at Indiana University .

JAMES: Bloomington's elected officials are mostly White Democrats . The Mayor of Bloomington, John Hamilton, actually ran unopposed in his most recent General Election .

JAMES: But Indiana's state government is dominated by White Republicans .

JAMES: And the state was actually once home to one of the largest branches of the Ku Klux Klan in American history .

JAMES: So over the years, the liberal folks in Bloomington have called their town a "blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup."

JAMES: Abby Ang, who had moved to Bloomington to pursue her PhD , started to dig under the surface of that phrase, after Donald Trump was elected president.

Abby Ang: I think a lot of people, including myself, felt a little bit responsible because we'd taken a lot of stuff for granted. 

AA: And so it was definitely a moment of being jolted out of complacency, and I realized that the world was different than what I had assumed...

AA: ...But It's kind of shocking how quickly when you drive just outside the city limits, you see a Confederate flag.

AA: What goes through my head is, that's not a safe space.

AA: That makes me wonder, like, if I knock on this person's door, what's going to happen to me?

JAMES: Abby also felt marginalized and tokenized as an East Asian woman getting her PhD in English Literature at the University.

AA: I did not find academia a particularly welcoming space, and I still don't. 

AA: There is the sense of fierce competition and the sense that you can't really truly trust other people. And that people are more likely to throw you under the bus...

AA: ...so I wanted to make sure that people found some sense of community and didn't go through what I was going through, and it seemed clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to find that space unless I made it myself...

JAMES: So Abby went hard into political action, volunteering for groups like Indivisible, the National Organization of Women, and the Monroe County Democratic Party .

JAMES: She was just starting to become more of a local leader, when she heard some disturbing news.

Amanda Porter at WEVV 44: After vandals targeted a synagogue in Carmel, Indiana over the weekend, the act received national attention, and now folks are asking lawmakers to take a stand.

JAMES: In 2018, a young White man named Nolan Brewer painted Nazi flags and iron crosses on the wall of a synagogue north of Indianapolis. And he was actually trying to firebomb the temple with homemade napalm, when law enforcement showed up to apprehend him .

JAMES: When Brewer was interrogated by the FBI, he told them he was also a member of a group called Identity Evropa — an organization designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist hate group .

JAMES: They're also known for spreading a mantra that you might recognize .

MUSIC: Funky beat pauses

Unite the Right Demonstrator: You will not replace us!

Unite the Right Demonstrators: You will not replace us! You will not replace us! You will not replace us! You will not replace us!

MUSIC: Funky beat fade back in

JAMES: All of this coincided with a leak of over 770,000 private chat messages between Identity Evropa members from the previous year and a half. And those chat messages included a lot of racist statements .

JAMES: During that same time period, Identity Evropa had also posted flyers on the doors of non-White faculty at Indiana University .

MUSIC: Funky beat ends

JAMES: And when a District Court document including a transcript from Brewer’s interrogation was leaked, it included a detail about how he got involved with Identity Evropa —  including a face to face meeting with a nice couple for dinner .

AA: He'd met someone named Sarah and Doug...

JAMES: That’s Abby, who was digging into the details.

AA: ...and then accounts from other farmers, started to emerge, saying, “Oh, yeah. We remember these people try to radicalize and recruit members of a farming community. And we've tried to complain about the recruitment efforts to the Bloomington farmer's market before this, saying this really makes us feel unwelcome.”

AA: “And it's always been kind of... We've always felt that we've been dismissed.”

JAMES: A local Black farmer named Lauren McAllister was one of the people who’d been speaking up about this.

LM: January of 2019 was the beginning of the loudest rumors that I had heard about Sarah Dye, and her participation in a white supremacy group.

JAMES: Lauren was in touch with families in the farming community in and around Bloomington.

JAMES: That's how she knew Sarah Dye, who was also known online by the name "Volkmom" — which she would admit to the Bloomington Herald-Times in 2019 .

LM: You gotta remember, like, there are only so many people who are farming.

LM: This was somebody who, if I needed soil, if I needed advice about plants, if I needed weaving tips, it's somebody I would have texted, somebody would have called to ask.

LM: I would have advocated for her small farm.

JAMES: Lauren says that in 2018 and 2019, more than one farmer warned her, in private, to stay away from Sarah and her husband Doug, for her own safety .

LM: I'm hearing from white people, the same story, that like, “Stay come over, we're having dinner.”

LM: And then all of a sudden, the story, the conversation shifts dramatically. And they're saying things like interracial dating is wrong... how the Holocaust wasn't real... how this Identitarian group was not white supremacy.

JAMES: In most reporting about this alleged recruiting effort, these stories are treated as rumors, putting the burden of proof on Lauren.

JAMES: Lauren tried to connect me with the farmers who were telling her about being recruited by Sarah, but they refused to talk to me. Apparently because they didn’t want to be part of any controversy.

JAMES: Anyway, Sarah’s alleged activities as Volkmom — like recording a podcast episode about how homesteading is her white ancestral faith, and that the alt-right is rooted in nature — took place outside the farmer's market.

JAMES: But her visibility as a farmer lined up with efforts by Identity Evropa to change its name to the American Identity Movement , and make their vision of White nationalism more acceptable in mainstream culture.

AA: People would say, “Oh, but her eggplants are really tasty. Like she's got some of the best vegetables.

JAMES: Abby decided to get involved when she realized that most locals in Bloomington weren't hearing the same alarm bells in their heads.

AA: When we think of a white supremacist, we think of the KKK. We think of disenfranchised, young white men in their parents' basements who don't have a job.

AA: I've had people come up to me and say, "you know, like she just looks too nice to be a white supremacist," and it don't, you think it's a little bit sexist to go after a woman in that way?"

AA: “Oh, she's a mother with children” ...

AA: They don't see that this is all part of the recruitment thing is have a white supremacist be wholesome and approachable.

AA: And so a lot of my work was trying to tell people that white supremacist organizing is actually really dangerous business. And it's something that we have to take seriously because it could lead to other forms of violence.

Segment 2

JAMES: So Abby picked her battle.

JAMES: In June of 2019, she wrote a letter to the Farmers' Market Advisory Council , co-signed by 230 Bloomington residents.

JAMES: The letter presented research linking Sarah Dye and her husband, Doug Mackey, to Identity Evropa, and asked the Council — and this is a quote from the letter — to “make it clear that hate and intolerance has no place in our town” .

JAMES: Abby thought that removing Sarah from the Market would be a no-brainer.

AA: But, no.

AA: What happened was the Farmer's Market Advisory Council said they didn't have the ability to make decisions about this issue. The mayor said that he condemned white supremacy, but we also need to respect their freedom of speech .

JAMES: That choice by the Council started to reveal other ways that the Market hadn't historically lived up to its mission of being welcoming and inclusive.

JAMES: Here's Lauren McAllister, the farmer we heard from earlier.

LM: So then I dive in deeper and I say, why can't we kick them out? And I find out there, there aren't any provisions. There aren't any safeties for the vendors, there's no protocol, there's no restorative justice, there's not even a punitive measure, except for the point system .

MUSIC: A sparse acoustic jazz trio plays a moody, slightly plaintive shuffle

JAMES: The Market gave points to vendors who had been selling consistently at the market for a long time .

JAMES: The system rewarded those longtime farmers with a preferred choice of where to set up their stands, and the ability to transfer their points to a spin-off of their original business .

LM: This was a great example of inherent white supremacy, because who can collect those points? Who inherited those points? Sarah Dye. Sarah Dye inherited points from her mom, who was also a farmer's market vendor .

JAMES: On the other hand, a farmer who didn’t have generational resources to get started, or a lower-income farmer who couldn’t afford to show up every Saturday morning, would have a harder time getting a leg up on points.

JAMES: This is a system that had been in place since the early 1980s .

LM: So of course they're creating a space for them!

LM: But that's not their job actually. Right? Like their actual job as city officials is to serve everyone in the community. And they make zero strides to do that.

JAMES: The City would hold multiple meetings to hear criticism from the community, including Lauren .

JAMES: But for Lauren, it was just one example of how the Farmers’ Market Advisory Council wasn’t prepared to question their own practices. How they had to be challenged for anything to change.

LM: It's your failure as an employee! It's literally your job and you can't even create programming so that emerging farmers join the farmer's market?

MUSIC: Jazz shuffle ends on a suspenseful note

LM: Why do I pay you? How is this possible, that anyone pays you to be so mediocre?

CATHY: I have to say, I’m not too surprised...

JAMES: Yeah, I was wondering about that, like, what do you think of this, as a food writer?

CATHY: Well, so, when it comes to farming in America — if you, like, look at the data, 95% of what the census calls “farm producers” in the U.S. are white , so —

JAMES: You mean that the vast majority of farm owners are White. Cause I’m assuming the majority of farm workers are not…

CATHY: Right, right, correct. So farm workers are not.

CATHY: And actually though American agriculture as we know it owes so much to slaves, and their descendents, and indigenous people, Latinx people and also Asian American people...

CATHY: ...Like, it’s not a surprise, but, you know, it’s kind of a slap in the face to get these reminders about how much power White Americans have in these really basic systems.

CATHY: But at the same time, it’s like, “Everything’s fair. We play by the same rules.” So...

JAMES: Yeah, meritocracy, you know, (laughs), our favorite subject.

CATHY: (Laughs) But I mean, like, even if you look at the way the City responded to that letter from Abby, the priority isn’t, “Wow, a lot of our residents feel unsafe from white nationalism," right?

CATHY: It’s instead, “Actually, we have to protect free speech” .

JAMES: Yeah, so the right to free speech really is a red herring, because governments in America have the power to restrict speech on public property...

JAMES: ...and in a practical sense, the Bloomington City Farmer’s Market already had some well established norms. There was a space in the Market called “Information Alley,” which was like this designated area where people were expected to take political conversations.

JAMES: And at the same time it wasn’t like Sarah Dye and her husband were parading around the market with an American Identity Movement banner...

JAMES: ...so the critical question isn’t, "Do you support free speech, do you oppose free speech?”

JAMES: It’s a way tougher question: What do you actually DO when the presence of perfectly nice people in the town square normalizes the activities and the ideology of a White nationalist hate group?

Mid-Roll Promo

AD MUSIC begins

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Segment 3

CATHY: I’m Cathy Erway. This is Self Evident.

CATHY: And our producer James is about to tell us what happened, after grad student Abby Ang and 230 other Bloomington residents wrote to their Farmer’s Market Advisory Council — and realized that the City wasn’t going to remove Sarah Dye’s stand from the market.

AA: After that letter basically got dismissed, it felt like we needed to have a more organized effort in the community to bring attention to these issues of white supremacy.

AA: We realized we needed to draw more explicit links between why this nice white farmer lady is actually more dangerous than she appears.

MUSIC: A mischievous, funky beat begins

JAMES: At this point Abby was really tapping into her skills as a scholar. She was publishing reports on the American Identity Movement , and a mix of Indiana University students and other Bloomington residents started helping her out.

JAMES: As this group grew, Abby gave it a name — "No Space for Hate" .

JAMES: They started handing out fliers next to the main entrance to the market, encouraging shoppers to boycott Sarah’s business .

AA: That's where the shit melon thing came from.

CATHY: The WHAT melon thing?

JAMES: You know (laughs), it’s heirloom variety. You know about fruit, haven't you heard of the shit melons?

CATHY: (Laughs) No, I was not yet aware of the Nazi Shit Melon varietal.

JAMES: (Laughs) So that’s from a social media post by No Space for Hate.

JAMES: It has a drawing of a watermelon and the words "Don't Buy Nazi Shit Melons."   Referring, of course, to Sarah’s farm.

AA: Their field got flooded. And...

AA: ...According to different farming regulations, you're not supposed to sell melons or vegetables from a flooded field because it can have harmful bacteria and other things in it.

AA: So it's, like, okay... If you're looking for a reason to avoid the vegetables, other than for the reason that they are white supremacists, then what if the melons had been soaking in a field that has animal poop in it?

MUSIC: Funk beat ends

JAMES: That was Abby's approach: Make it impossible to think about Sarah without thinking of the word, "Nazi."

AA: American Identity Movement is so good at branding. Because they're trying to give the impression that white supremacy is just another view out of many, and that it's a way to legitimize it.

JAMES: This is why, if you search for the American Identity Movement, you’ll see this talking point come up over and over again, which is they argue that they’re not white nationalists, they’re not white supremacists… They’re “Identitarians.”

CATHY: Mmhmm...

JAMES: And you’ll also find that, generally speaking, white nationalist and right-wing groups often get fixated on this idea that they’re protecting America from Antifa.

CATHY: Ok, sure, there you go.

JAMES: Right, OK, so deep breath, for anyone who hasn’t thought of this for a minute…

MUSIC: Acoustic string quartet begins playing a pointed but meandering tune

JAMES: Antifa, is short for "antifascist.” You’ve probably seen images of Antifa activists at a protest, dressed in black.

JAMES: Mainstream media has often referred to Antifa as if they are an organized group, making it seem like ALL Antifa are violent, while right-wing media has repeatedly painted so-called “black bloc antifa” protestors as a left-wing terrorist organization .

JAMES: Some Antifa folks have engaged in violence, particularly against white nationalists and right-wing groups — like when when local Antifa brawled with alt-right demonstrators at UC Berkeley, or a man in a black hoodie punched alt-right leader Richard Spencer in the head when he was giving an interview .

JAMES: But Antifa hasn’t been linked to anything that we’d think of as a terrorist attack , and they don't really function as an organization with structure or leaders or consistent political goals .

JAMES: All that said, negative portrayals of Antifa are still the norm, so Abby was worried that Bloomington's local Antifa, who were also showing up to the Farmer's Market , would distract people from the issue of white nationalism.

AA: People have an image in their head about antifascists, and the image in their head is people dressed in black bloc. And...

AA: ...It worked to have me in some ways, be the face of No Space for Hate as a woman of color, and as a face that people knew that they could maybe in some ways recognize and trust, versus… someone that they didn't know and were maybe fearful about.

Dina Okamoto: What had become difficult was not actually going to the market... but it actually was talking to neighbors and to friends who just didn't understand.

JAMES: That's Dina Okamoto. She runs the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society at Indiana University in Bloomington .

DO: People were talking about Antifa, how they were the problem.

DO: And I do remember some people in the community saying, "oh, Antifa, they're so scary. They're wearing black."

MUSIC: Acoustic string quartet stops playing

DO: Or "They're not showing their faces," right? Which is kind of ironic, given we've gotten through a worldwide pandemic, and we have to cover our faces.

JAMES: As Abby was demonstrating just outside the market, local Antifa were being more direct, standing as a group in front of Sarah Dye’s stand .

JAMES: Right-wing media started posting stories portraying Sarah as a victim of Antifa — and quote, "Jewish-funded Leftists."

JAMES: Then folks showed up from Indiana’s Three Percenters .

JAMES: That’s a patchwork of anti-government, anti-left-wing activists who have a tendency to form militia groups — some of whom have committed terrorist violence, like bombing a mosque in Minnesota in 2017 .

JAMES: And that was the situation on July 27, 2019. When another Asian American woman from Indiana University decided to force the city's hand .

Segment 4

WFIU Public Radio Broadcast: Police arrested an Indiana university professor at the city's farmer's market Saturday , after she held a sign outside a booth owned by vendors with alleged ties to white supremacy.

WFIU Public Radio Broadcast: WFIU's Adam Pinsker tells us why the professor's attorney says the case was mishandled.

JAMES: The professor that WFIU was talking about here is Cara Caddoo. She’s a scholar specializing in film, mass media, race, and African American history .

JAMES: I spoke with Cara about this. She didn’t want to be recorded for this story.

JAMES: But Dina, who we just heard from, is also a friend of Cara's , and she was at the market to document the entire thing.

MUSIC: An electric blues band begins playing an insistent four-on-the-floor beat

DO: We said, "All right, let's do this!"

DO: And we said that we would all meet... and Cara was going to bring a sign…

SOUND: People mill around the Farmers’ Market on July 27 as Cara Caddoo holds up a protest sign

JAMES: The protest was designed to force the city to show who they'd protect and who'd they'd punish in the name of free speech at the Farmer's Market.

JAMES: Here's Dina, talking me through the video that she took that day.

DO: She knew that it could only be one or two people and probably would be most effective if it was one, because if it was more than one person than it would be considered a gathering.

DO: So that was deliberate. That was definitely deliberate. 

DO: We just approached Sarah Dye's vendor stand, and Cara just started raising her sign and kind of slowly walking back and forth in front of Sarah's area.

JAMES: Cara's sign was a white piece of paper that read:

JAMES: "Schooner Creek Farm is operated by members of IDENTITY EVROPA*, a WHITE NATIONALIST HATE GROUP."

JAMES: And then below that, the sign had a few bullet points under it about Identity Evropa:

JAMES: That they had “mentored Jewish Synagogue Vandal Nolan Brewer”

JAMES: That they had “posted white supremacist flyers on the office doors of faculty at Indiana University.”

JAMES: And that they had “recently rebranded to the American Identity Movement” .

DO: She's one person. She's carrying a sign. She's not creating a disturbance.

JAMES: But she was surprised by how aggressively she was treated by the men who had shown up to support Sarah Dye.

MUSIC: Blues arrangement strips down to hand claps and hand percussion

JAMES: Cara told me that they were flashing white power hand signs.

JAMES: That as she was walking back and forth in front of the farm stand with her sign, some of them would forcefully bump into her and physically intimidate her.

JAMES: Local media would later report that some of those men were also armed .

MUSIC: Drums and guitar return

DO: And there was a presence of Antifa folks there...

DO: They were kind of on the outskirts, watching, making sure that that thing was going to happen. I guess I felt safe with them there…

JAMES: So the Antifa folks were basically standing guard near Cara. But they were also talking directly to Three Percenters.

Male Antifa Activist: You do know the organization they’re affiliated with, right?

DO: The Three Percenter's saying, "I just get upset when people are being intimidated."

DO: And then the Antifa guy says, "Well, this woman is not really intimidating anyone with her sign."

DO: The Antifa guy was really trying to have a productive conversation about this.

JAMES: Then the cops approached Cara.

DO: ...they approach her, they tell her, you know, she needs to leave and she says, “No, I'm not going to leave.”

MUSIC: Blues riff ends

DO: And then they, I think after that they took, you know, 10 or 15 minutes to figure out, “Okay, she's not going to leave… What are we going to do? Right? Are we going to forcibly remove her? Are we going to just let her be out here with her sign?”

DO: And then it took them a little while...to say, “You know, we've talked to parks and rec. They don't want you here. You're violating their policy.”

DO: “You either need to move or you need to leave the premises or we're going to arrest you.

Female Police Officer in video recording: Which means the Parks Department does not want you here. So are you willing to leave? Otherwise you are going to be subject to being arrested.

Cara Caddoo in video recording: I’m not willing to leave.

Male voice in video recording: Miss, what’s your name?

CC in video recording: Cara Caddoo.

Male Protestor in video recording: Free speech!

DO: They did say, you know, “We can walk you out of here or we can carry you out of here.”

DO: And they said, you know... “Can you walk?”

JAMES: The police put Cara in handcuffs. Then, seven officers escorted her to a car, trailed by a group of angry protestors .

Group of Protestors in video recording: Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!

Male Protestor A in video recording: ...police arrest a person for fucking holding a sign in public space...

Male Protestor B in video recording: And y’all wonder why everybody hates fucking cops!

Male Protestor A in video recording: Yeah, right?

MUSIC: Somber, sparse, bluesy tune begins

DO: I was very concerned about my friend. 

DO: And about... you know, the larger problems that this represented, right? 

DO: The larger problem of arresting a protester instead of really trying to think about the systemic problem and what Sarah Dye represented.

Male Protestor A in video recording: So what about the human barricade of the old white men that were like blocking off... Why didn't they get arrested?

DO in video recording: Because they didn't have a fucking sign.

Male Protestor A in video recording: ‘Cause they didn't have a sign?

MUSIC: Bluesy tune strips down to percussion

Segment 5

Mayor John Hamilton: We want our farmer’s market back.

JAMES: After the arrest, John Hamilton, the Mayor of Bloomington, shut down the City Farmer's Market for two weeks .

JAMES: In a press conference, Mayor Hamilton railed against Indiana's lack of gun control laws, and also against President Trump.

JAMES: But when it came to whether his administration would change its stance on restricting protest inside the market, the Mayor refused to change the city's position .

JAMES: He didn't kick Sarah Dye out of the market .

JAMES: Instead, he basically said, rules are rules...

JAMES: ...and also, here’s a clarified, updated set of very detailed rules about where you can have signs and where you can’t have signs .

Mayor John Hamilton: The rule that we have prohibits political signs in certain areas of the market. You can think that's a bad idea. You can think it's a good idea.

Mayor John Hamilton: Just realize that whatever our rule is, it applies to everybody and every message and every content .

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CATHY: So, James.

JAMES: Yeah.

CATHY: It really creeps me out that white nationalists seem to be operating in this, like, hush-hush way... but they also seem to be so successful at normalizing their ideology, anyway.

CATHY: And then, the Mayor and the City are so caught up in having a rule against signs, but it’s like, what about the actual danger of white nationalists?

JAMES: Yeah, right, you gotta remember, this whole fight started when people learned that a young man in their community had been recruited by white nationalists, and then he tried to firebomb a synagogue, so...

JAMES: Those recruiting conversations were happening, they’re likely still happening, online, in people’s homes… uh, yeah, that’s scary to imagine.

CATHY: Yeah…

JAMES: And it’s also a tough problem. There’s honestly no easy answer on how to respond to this rise in white nationalism and reactionary politics, like as a matter of public policy.

CATHY: Yeah, I mean, sure, it’s a tough problem, but for the mayor and city officials to kind of throw up their hands and say it’s beyond their power to solve... I mean, that just denies the power that elected officials do have.

CATHY: For White people in power, this is supposed to be a time to do things that aren’t the status quo. Even if that makes them uncomfortable.

JAMES: Mmhm.

CATHY: So in Bloomington, the Mayor was denouncing white nationalism, the alt-right, whatever you want to call them…

CATHY: But it seems like the city just decided to, y’know, declare themselves to be, like, a neutral party.

JAMES: Yeah, the Mayor said that the city’s top priority was to protect public safety , but I think their top priority, in their actions, was to protect the farmers’ market shopping experience —

CATHY: But then even to do that, it’s like they’re... policing free speech in a public space? And, you know, even free speech against hate. So...

CATHY: I hate that!

CATHY: (Laughs) Can I say that? Am I allowed? I don’t know...

JAMES: Whoa whoa whoa, calm down, calm — calm down, Cathy. I gotta… (“breaks character” and laughs) lemme check the, uh... Self Evident advisory council rulebook...

CATHY: OK, well, while you’re doing that, I have one more question.

JAMES: OK.

CATHY: So a lot of these protests at the farmers’ market seemed to be organized by Abby Ang, and No Space for Hate. And then there was Antifa...

CATHY: But Cara Caddoo, the woman who got arrested, was she a part of either of these groups?

JAMES: Uh, no, actually, she wasn’t.

CATHY: OK so lemme guess… the next thing that happened, after the arrest, was that everyone in town banded together to shut down white nationalism in Bloomington for good.

CATHY: Right?

JAMES: Uh, not exactly.

CATHY: OK...

JAMES: To explain why… we’re gonna need another episode.

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CREDITS

CATHY: This episode was produced by James Boo.

JAMES: We were edited by Julia Shu and fact checked by Harsha Nahata.

CATHY: Sound mix by Timothy Lou Ly. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. And our theme music is by Dorian Love.

JAMES: Big thanks to everyone from Bloomington who spoke with us for this episode. That’s Abby Ang, Cara Caddoo, Dina Okamoto, Ellen Wu, JadaBee, Kayte Young, Lauren McAllister, and Leslie Brinson.

CATHY: Self Evident is a Studiotobe production. Our Executive producer is Ken Ikeda.

JAMES: This episode was made with support from PRX and the Google Podcasts Creator Program.

CATHY: And of course, our listener community. Which you can join at self evident show dot com slash participate.

JAMES: Full show notes, links to local reporting from Bloomington journalists, and a transcript of this episode are available at self evident show dot com.

JAMES: You can follow us on the socials: @selfevidentshow.

CATHY: I'm Cathy Erway. Thanks for listening, and see you soon for part two!

CATHY: Until then, keep sharing Asian America's stories.

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