The Raid

Joseph Foreman was not home when officers from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office came to his house.

It was August 2022, and his wife Angie was there with their children, ages 10 and 12, when deputies from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio kicked the door off its frame. They had a warrant to search Foreman’s home for evidence of drug trafficking and kidnapping.

Rifles and handguns drawn, they went through the Foreman residence searching for evidence, flipping through a wad of cash, combing his CD collection, and rifling through his suit pockets. One deputy paused, gun still drawn, apparently distracted by a lemon pound cake sitting on the kitchen counter.

In the end, the officers found no drugs, no kidnapping victims, and no evidence of any crime. Foreman, popularly known as Afroman and best known for his 2000 hit “Because I Got High,” returned to a ransacked house, traumatized children, and missing cash that officials would later say deputies had merely miscounted.

“After they run around my house with guns and kick down my door,” Afroman would later say from the witness stand, “I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, and turn my bad times into a good time.”

That is exactly what he did.

Lemon Pound Cake

With video footage from his home security system and his wife’s cell phone taken during the raid, Foreman put his creative talent to work. Over the following several months, he remixed footage into a series of music videos that spread rapidly across the internet. The catchy “Lemon Pound Cake“ has collected more than 8.2 million views on YouTube.

Foreman’s songs, also released as an album, were not gentle. While he mocked the officers’ failed raid and apparent hunger, he also pointed out how officers attempted to tamper with his security system, allegedly flipping him off while doing so, and asked: “Will you help me repair my door?” Then, he attributed personal, professional, and sexual transgressions to various deputies. He also sold merchandise bearing the officers’ names and images. By his own admission, the attention was good for business. “All the publicity from the officers’ lawsuit on me is running up my numbers,” he later told the court.

Not pleased with the fallout, seven of the deputies — Shawn D. Cooley, Justin Cooley, Michael D. Estep, Shawn D. Grooms, Brian Newland, Lisa Phillips, and Randolph L. Walters, Jr. filed a civil lawsuit against Foreman in March 2023. They claimed defamation and invasion of privacy and sought nearly four million dollars in damages. They said the videos had subjected them to public humiliation, death threats, and professional harassment. Shawn Cooley, the deputy who paused at the cake and has since retired, testified that strangers have mailed him hundreds of pound cakes at work and that he had even been recognized while working cases in other jurisdictions.

“I had one guy come out of a bedroom after me, call me a thief and want to know why I stole Afroman’s money,” Cooley told the court. “It just went from being a nice, quiet community, a job you felt safe in, to a place where you had to look over your shoulder every second.”

Mockery, however, is a legitimate form of justice in the court of public opinion – and the officers doubling down with legal action were about to learn a vital lesson about how unfavorable police violence and coercion can be to the American public.

America Won

The trial opened on March 16, 2026, in West Union, Ohio, and lasted just two and a half days.

Foreman, dressed in an American flag suit and sunglasses, along with his attorney and a variety of amicus supporters, argued that the case at hand was an attempt to silence a citizen’s criticism of public officials, an increasingly well-trodden area of law. This certain type of lawsuit, known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), is designed to target protected First Amendment speech and other activities in an attempt to silence the speaker or punish them for carrying out a basic or essential service that may be related to their job. 40 states and Washington DC currently have anti-SLAPP laws on their books.

Foreman’s actions represent the heart of free speech and peaceful protest: without the ability to speak up and spread a message through the creative medium of your choice, the scales become tipped in favor of those who initiate violence or diminish wealth by force or fraud, especially if they are wearing a badge.

Foreman was outspoken about the issue of theft in testimony, saying that “Police officers shouldn’t be stealing civilians’ money,” but he also pointed out that he was present only to defend himself, rather than instigating despite being wronged, “I use my talent to pay for the damages you brought.” he said, “I didn’t go down here and sue the police department.”

Unlike others who have had the safety of their homes breached by law enforcement, Foreman had the opportunity to defend himself – and he used that stage to bring his message to the masses.

Foreman’s Ohio courtroom became a spectacle that reached across the country, ushering in a Streisand Effect and backfiring spectacularly on the officers seeking to extract millions from his family. The deputies who filed the suit gave Afroman an audience he never could have bought. America looked on as officers watched the music videos in court, shed tears over how the songs had upset them, and stumbled over testimony regarding the harms they alleged.

Getting a verdict didn’t take long. After six hours of deliberation, the jury found in favor of Foreman on every count. Judge Jonathan Hein read the outcome aloud: “In all circumstances, the jury finds in favor of the defendant.”

“I didn’t win, America won.” Foreman told a reporter outside the courthouse following the verdict, “America still has freedom of speech. It’s still for the people by the people.”

Still, the use of the force is always going to have negative results for each of those involved: since the trial, there have been calls for additional scrutiny of the officers involved, the child of one of the officers claims to have been hazed at school as a result of his father’s lawsuit, and Foreman was ordered by the Judge to pay half of the court costs.

Though the officer’s attorney says they will “review the verdict and consider any appropriate next steps,” Foreman has a win in his star spangled pocket. He has repeatedly pointed back to the initiation of force that led to their public embarrassment: “If they hadn’t wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn’t be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs.”

This article was originally published on RespectAmerica.org

“Under siege”

On October 2, 2013, Lyn Ulbricht entered her husband’s home office and found him, “sitting there with his head in his hands.” In front of him was the glowing screen of their home computer showing headlines that would change the course of their life.

Their son, Ross, had been arrested by federal agents on charges which, though they didn’t know it at the time, would soon see him handed two life sentences plus 40 years, in federal prison.

Though much ink has been, and continues to be, spilled about the right or wrong of what led to Ross’ arrest, what is indisputable is the heroically sustained effort put forth by his mother over more than a decade to see her son set free.

“My whole life changed that day.” Lyn told Respect America in an interview, “[It was] so out of the blue, weird. I turn on the TV and George Stephanopoulos was going: ‘They found the culprit. He’s guilty.’ And I’m like, don’t we have trials? Aren’t we innocent until proven guilty? Am I missing something here?”

Lyn and her husband’s lives were quickly turned upside down as they were inundated with hundreds of emails, observed constantly by “trucks with big cameras, taking pictures of our house, [and reporters] knocking on our doors,” all while trying to learn for themselves why their son had been arrested, sort fact from fiction, and come to terms with their new reality. “It’s kind of like when you wake up and you forget what happened at first. I would wake up and then; ‘Oh, Ross has been arrested. What’s going on?’”

Lyn’s first foray into advocacy, soon after the arrest, was an attempt to clear the air, and help organize the frenzy of information. “I got a hold of a friend of his from high school, and I said, ‘I want to put up a page or something saying who Ross is and who Ross isn’t,’ just simple. And he put it up for me.” Lyn shared, “I thought, I have got to speak out for him. There’s no one speaking out for him. And that’s how it all started.”

“It’s just one person signing a piece of paper”

In that first year after the arrest, Lyn set up that brief webpage with help from Ross’s high school friend, worried about her son, and watched the beginning of the long legal process as it began to play out. Most importantly, Lyn says, she prayed; and through that practice, received a clear message:

“I didn’t hear it in my ears. It wasn’t a thought, but it was, ‘He will be free.’ And I get chills just thinking about it now. And I really believe that God was talking to me,” she says, “I got different signals along the way, but I prayed a lot, a lot of people did, but I let that lead me.”

Initially unsure what to do with that message, Lyn says she was set on the path she would pursue for the next decade when she was invited to step outside her comfort zone and speak to a crowd of hundreds about Ross and her own ordeal as a mother.

“[They said] ‘we think we want her to speak for the biggest night, Saturday night.’ I said, ‘Well, okay, God, if this is what you want, I’ll do it’…. And so, once that happened, one thing led to another. That [first] event was PorcFest, the Porcupine Freedom Festival, and they really gave me my voice.”

Lyn’s mainstage New Hampshire speech in the summer of 2014 was the jumping off point for what would become hundreds of speaking engagements, media appearances, and relationship building opportunities that would bring together hundreds of thousands of people in support of freeing her son. Still optimistic in those early days that the courts would provide an escape from prison, Lyn had no way of knowing how vital her growing coalition would become.

As courts upheld Ross’s multiple life sentence, first in May 2017 at the Second Circuit, and then in June 2018 when the Supreme Court denied his petition, the prospects of relief through the courts faded to nothing and the only path remaining was a Presidential Pardon – a challenge Lyn was surprisingly ready to meet head on.

“I thought, well, how hard is this? It’s just one person signing a piece of paper. That’s what it is. That’s what I need. I need that signature on a piece of paper by the President.” Lyn said with a smile, “You know, it’s just the President, but it’s a person. It’s not like I’m trying to lift up an actual mountain and move it over here. It’s doable.”

By the time of the 2017 Supreme Court rejection, Lyn had built a national following and was far from a lone voice. A petition to Free Ross would come to earn more than 600,000 signatures, and Lyn was becoming a beloved and familiar face to many. She was the involved and passionate mother of an imprisoned folk hero, and there was hardly a major media outlet in America that had not run a story of one kind or another about Ross. The voices clamoring for his freedom were only getting louder.

“I do think ideas really matter, and I’m very much for freedom and for people to live their lives unencumbered by a huge government who’s controlling them” Lyn said, “the time when I would say I had the most hope and thought it really was going to happen, or could happen, was when President Trump got up on the stage of Libertarian Convention [in May 2024] and pledged that he would commute Ross’s sentence to time served if he were elected… I really believed he would keep his word, and a lot of people did not believe he would.”

Between that moment, and the eventual election of President Trump to a second term six months later, Lyn recommitted to the playbook that she had been running since she began the campaign to free her son in 2014: “Just keep your eye on the prize… I just knew that I’d never give up. I couldn’t live with myself with him in there, and I knew that. I wasn’t somebody, in the past, who was that good about finishing things. I’m really good at starting things, but I haven’t been one to really take it to the end. But this, this was something I just couldn’t give up.”

In January 2025, Lyn and her family flew to Tucson, Arizona, believing there would be real hope for a commutation immediately following Trump’s second inauguration. They wanted to “meet him and see him come out” if it came to pass. On the morning of January 21st, they visited Ross in prison, and could feel supportive anticipation from the families and inmates who knew the Ulbricht’s were possibly on the verge of being reunited.

“It was so touching, because when we all left early from visiting and all the people that were in there, the inmates and their family, were like, ‘Bye, good luck! We’re so happy for you.’” Lyn shared, “I think of that a lot because I just feel so bad that they’re in there still.”

That evening, Lyn picked up her cellphone to find a missed call from the White House and was asked when she called back if she would like to take a call from the President. She said yes.

“He read me the pardon on the phone. He was so sweet and gracious.” Lyn recalled, “And of course, I’m blubbering a thank you, because I wasn’t expecting a full pardon…I feel like he’s got a heart. I feel like he cared about me and my son and our family…. I know a lot of people don’t feel this way, but my experience of him is as a person who cares… it’s pretty much a miracle that it got to the point where the President of the United States was giving him a pardon, unbelievable. But it took a long time. It was over 11, almost 12 years.”

Around eight that evening, with only their family and a few reporters present in the parking lot, Lyn welcomed her son to his newfound freedom. “He just walked out the door, you know? And it was just surreal, to be honest. It was just amazing. And he’s carrying his plant.”

Mothers Against Cruel Sentencing

With her son now post-release, Lyn is planting seeds of her own, and tending them carefully as she decides in which direction to grow. Foremost in her mind after more than a decade of struggle are the many families she met who are splintered because some of their members are behind bars.

“I, along the way, met so many people who are in horrible situations with their own kids and loved ones, and that’s why now I want to speak out about that more,” Lyn said, “What I’m doing now is not specifically for Ross, but it’s something Ross cares about. It’s the over sentencing in the country that he was part of, that he suffered from, as well as so many others.”

Those “many others” are 194,803 Americans, one in six people in prison, who are serving life sentences. “It’s a crazy stat, we’re 4% of the world’s population, but hold an estimated 40% of the world’s life sentences population,” Lyn shared, “83% of the people in the world who are serving life without parole are here. I can maybe help the situation by talking about the over sentencing in this country, it’s too much.”

To address the problem, Lyn has started a new project called Mothers Against Cruel Sentencing (MACS) where she is seeking a “return to fair and just sentencing” that will improve outcomes for families, children, and communities – while also addressing the billions in costs borne by taxpayers.

“Life without parole is a really terrible thing. Prisons are for keeping us safe from dangerous people who are going to harm us. And I mean harm us, physically, attack us, be violent. It’s very, very expensive. It would have cost at least $2 million to ‘keep us protected from Ross’ for his life.”

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit with a mission to “expose the broader harm of mass criminalization,” the total US government annual expense on public prisons and jails is $80.7 billion, and another $3.9 billion on private prisons and jails.

While the financial burden on nonconsenting taxpayers is staggering, Lyn says she felt called to this mission as a result of seeing the impact on families while moving around the country to be close to her incarcerated son, and sharing in their pain.

“I even ran into one mom, and we knew each other in New York. And then when we were both transferred, her husband and my son, to Colorado,” Lyn said, “She was raising good kids. They were getting good grades and all that stuff. And then when their father was put in prison, everything started falling apart. The impact [that] has on families, on the children, and the harm that it does is extreme. There’s a lot of nonviolent people in prison.”

In that case, Lyn said the husband had stolen two sports jerseys, on sale for less than $100 total at the time, and received a life sentence as a result of a three-strike law, with his previous arrests coming from drug-induced nonviolent crimes. Adding $2 million to our tax bills is a bad deal, and doesn’t make society a whit more just. Around 3% of those serving life sentences are imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.

This kind of result in a court, Lyn says, runs blatantly afoul of the Eighth Amendment’s restriction on cruel and unusual punishment. “That’s kind of obvious, that’s pretty cruel, that’s pretty harsh, and I feel like it goes against our values as a country.”

“It’s hard to turn your back now and say, ‘Yeah, I’m fine. My son’s out, yay,’ and I do feel that way, but not without thinking of them. [I created] Mothers Against Cruel Sentencing [because] it’s the moms who often will stick by their kid in prison. MACS is not just for mothers. We welcome all people to support us… what I realize I can do, that I feel like I can bring to the table, is shining a light on this, talking about it like I am now. People don’t understand this is happening. They don’t think about it, and I understand that. I didn’t either.”

“Eye on the prize”

Lyn is busy starting a new chapter of her own life, and is glad to see her son doing so as well. “Ross has had to heal, that’s what I observe, you know. It’s hard,” she says, “He was in a maximum-security prison for eleven and a half years. It’s really very difficult. He’s been amazing and really great, and so he’s just living a simple life with his wife, and kind of moving around a bit.”

The next step, she says, is building momentum for continued positive change, no matter what obstacles get in the way.

“I’m so grateful, so grateful. It’s hard to complain about anything right now, ever.” When asked about what message she wants more people to understand she said, “Look, I was not anybody. I didn’t have connections… don’t think too that you’re too small to do things. Keep your eye on the prize, and keep going.”

This testimonial was originally published on RespectAmerica.org

When Germantown, Tennessee, officials taped a citation to Alexis Luttrell’s front door, they didn’t realize what they were up against.

When code enforcement attempted to fine Ms. Luttrell with $500-per-day fines for the decorations in her front yard, they found themselves squaring up against a passionate woman with a law degree and experience as a professor in undergraduate mass communication law who was anything but satisfied to sit idle while local officials trampled her First Amendment rights.

At issue for Germantown officials was a pair of plastic skeletons Luttrell originally purchased in September 2024 to spark joy during a difficult time for her family. They were an eight-foot plastic human skeleton, and a comparably sized plastic dog skeleton.

“My father was in the end stages of cancer, and my [27-year-old] daughter and older sister with an intellectual disability decided to set up the skeletons as a way to take their minds off everything going on. My sister’s intellectual age is about eight to ten years old,” Luttrell told Respect America in an interview. “It was a big project.”

When Halloween had passed, the need for novel levity remained, so they decided to keep the skeletons up. Those skeletons received a series of new decorations to match the changing seasons. First there was election season which saw them holding campaign and issue specific signs, then came Christmas, and a new opportunity to spread cheer. “The first year, the decorations were pretty basic.” Luttrell shared, “The skeleton had a tutu and garland, and then we made a Christmas theme leash for the dog, and kind of gave him some festive extras.”

It was shortly after Christmas, on January 6, that the first complaint, citation, and summons to court appeared, taped to Luttrell’s door, demanding that the family take down the decorations that brought them together in a difficult time, or pay up.

Letter of the Law

“I read the ordinance, and I thought, well, I have them dressed up for Christmas, and the ordinance says you can only put decorations up 45 days before the holiday and have to take them down 30 days after. I reached out to the city and got zero response, and I thought, well, it’s not 30 days after. And then shortly after that, they sent me a citation.”

The Germantown ordinance granted broad powers of interpretation to local officials who could use the statute to punish protected speech they disagree with, or enforce purity standards that limit how private property could be decorated.

“[The ordinance] left it up to one or two people in the city government to say ‘this is not a holiday decoration.’ To them, they had the freedom under that ordinance and how it was executed.” Luttrell said, “It’s really ambiguous. The law just wasn’t super clear… it revolved around someone else’s personal taste and how they felt about it.”

Also frustrating to Alexis was the continued disrespect and lack of communication as she first attempted to resolve the issue with a conversation.

“They actually just taped [the citation] to the door. Both times” she said. On top of not returning her phone calls, “They never knocked, trying to actually give it to me in person. Bit of cowardice on their part, but it is what it is.”

As is so often the case when attempting to coerce, government officials chose to hide behind a paper shield instead of engaging in human-to-human conversation. Good governance doesn’t come from a distant edict, though, and it can’t rightly infringe on property rights or speech.

It quickly became difficult for Germantown officials to ignore Luttrell, as local and national media began to publicize her story. “The New York Times reached out, did a huge story on it, and then reached out to the city, as well as the Today Show online.”

Interestingly, Luttrell says, city officials initially had a lot of “bravado” when speaking with the media. “The city with the media you know, it’s ‘we’ll take care of her,’ you know, ‘we believe in this, and we’re going to fight it.’”

Cameron Ross, Germantown’s Economic and Community Development Director, even went so far as to brag about city officials’ success in bullying “at least nine” others to take down decorations via citation, and doubled down on the cities soon to be eradicated power to unilaterally interpret the meaning of proper yard decorations.

“The resident in question has claimed the skeletons are Christmas decorations, but the City maintains they are Halloween-themed and fall outside the ordinance’s allowances,” Ross said.

Luttrell was the only one cited who didn’t take down the decorations.

Believe in Something

Like all good holiday stories, this one has a happy ending: With the help of the nonprofit law firm, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Alexis brought a lawsuit against Germantown officials, and they caved almost immediately. Not only did they repeal the Holiday Decorations Ordinance, but they also agreed to a $24,999 settlement, the maximum amount allowed to be approved by the mayor and city council, which Ms. Luttrell donated to FIRE.

The lawsuit, filed on February 12, 2025, challenged “officials unfettered discretion to arbitrarily enforce the Holiday Decorations Ordinance according to their own beliefs” and demanded the practice be ended so residents of Germantown can “express holiday cheer however they choose.”

Throughout the legal fight and beyond, Luttrell continued to decorate both skeletons and added additional inflatables and signs that were changed out depending on the month. The settlement agreement, signed on April 28, 2025, ensured city officials are no longer able to levy fines against Luttrell and others for practicing protected speech with yard decorations.

Luttrell also shared a variety of lessons from throughout this process, both positive and negative:

She lamented how city officials refused to take sound advice from attorneys at the nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice who reached out to city officials early in the process offering free guidance on extracting themselves from “a clear violation of the Constitution.” She also expressed regret that her neighbors were put on the hook for not only the final settlement amount, but also the cost of Germantown retaining outside counsel with an unknown price tag, instead of city officials being individually held accountable for their actions.

Luttrell says she has also been touched by numerous conversations with other members of her community who have thanked her for protecting their free speech, and who shared frustration with how the law had been used in the past. From rude and dismissive conversations to escalating fines over dubious use of the law, she says people are happy to see it go by the wayside and is glad to have played a role in making positive change happen.

“It boils down to: one person can make a change if you’re not happy.” Luttrell said, “If we want to see change you’ve got to get out there, reach out, find people, talk to people. It works. I love that.”

This testimonial was first published on RespectAmerica.org

“On April 2, Liberation Day, tariffs hit, and Rebecca, our Chief Financial Officer and CEO, she sat on the couch and cried and said, ‘I think we’re going out of business. We can’t afford this.’”

Speaking to Respect America about her and Rebecca’s small business selling one-of-a-kind clothing for kids and adults, designer Eva St. Clair recounts their fight to navigate the “endlessly changing array of tariffs” that have been implemented in the second Trump administration.

Eva and Rebecca’s company, Princess Awesome & Boy Wonder, was created to “smash stereotypes” with an “intention that all individual human beings deserve to be seen as their true selves and honored for their own unique set of interests.”

That vision is what led them to create vibrantly patterned clothes for children and then expand into new production for adults as well, working with producers from all across the world.

Far from being seen as individuals themselves, however, Eva and Rebecca have been lumped into the collective diminishing of wealth being orchestrated by DC bureaucrats and politicians through “the sudden, arbitrary, back and forth” implementation of global tariffs.

“It diminishes all of us at a very deeply human level, it takes away our individuality.” Eva laments, “It takes away from our creative spirit and from our ability and right to make choices about our own lives. That’s not what our country was founded on.”

Real Costs

First floated during Donald Trump’s campaign as a way to replace income taxes, decision makers in the Trump administration have implemented, rolled back, and then re-levied tariffs which must be paid in order for goods to enter the United States through customs.

“The amount of gray hair I have gotten this year from this… it’s extraordinary how stressful it has been.” Eva says, “every time there’s some new announcement, we have to replan our entire year.”

Part of the back and forth has been the result of judicial rulings, but tariffs have also been delayed or adjusted seemingly on a whim, making it near impossible to effectively forecast revenue and balance a bottom line, especially for small businesses without cash to spare.

“Considering how uncertain everything is, it almost feels like: why should we try to invest or develop anything with anyone?” Eva says, “It’s very disconcerting, and it really puts a damper on just trying to make anything, because it feels like the rug could get pulled back from under you at any time.”

On top of the near constant stress is the measurable financial impact on her business and her bottom line, which negatively impacts her children.

“There’s no way. We can’t both pay ourselves and the tariffs. We can’t.” Eva explains, “China had 145% tariffs on it, That’s more than our entire margin. Nobody’s going to buy a child’s dress for $120. Like, we can’t sell that. No one will come buy it.”

At the time of writing, dresses were selling for $40, but even at that price range, Eva estimates that they have seen a 30% decrease in their business, and is frustrated that money which would otherwise be going to support her family is being sucked into a politicized and non-transparent budget, instead of the urgent day to day needs of her family.

“It drives me mad to think that my money is going to, who knows what?” Eva says, “That’s terrible. I’d much rather have my money and spend it on the education for my children, which is my main expense.”

Stitch. Fix.

Despite a stated goal of these tariffs being a revitalization of American production and protect American workers, Eva says that kind of change simply isn’t possible in the clothing manufacturing industry. In fact, “there are not domestic manufacturers that can produce [their clothes] for competitive prices while meeting the stringent quality standards that Princess Awesome demands.”

They could create a cheaper product, but does that serve Eva’s clients who expect a product that “is meant to last through at least two kids, and preferably three or four kids?”

Should government officials be allowed to pick economic winners and losers? Of course not; but the long and storied history of central planning failures hasn’t been a deterrent. Government officials at the highest levels are improperly playing with the consensual relationship between Princess Awesome, their manufacturing partners, and the clients they serve.

Despite politicians’ idealist hopes, Eva says spinning up clothing manufacturing to meet quality standards in America would also be near impossible, and would require paying exorbitant amounts to the very people the tariffs intend to kneecap.

“If you wanted to make fabric here, you’d have to import the machinery from China first before you can even make the fabric.” Eva explains, pointing out that doing so would also require paying tariffs, “There’s no one in America who knows how to make clothing on an industrial scale anymore.”

Frustration over government official’s intrusion into her business and personal life led Eva and Rebecca to join onto a lawsuit with other small businesses, represented for free by nonprofit law firm, the Pacific Legal Foundation. Their complaint is currently awaiting a ruling for summary judgement.

As tax season approaches, and despite growing tariff revenue, the income tax remains in place.

As Eva sees it, this lawsuit is an opportunity to stand united with her countrymen against bad decision making and further erosion of her bottom line, but it’s also the product of a moral imperative to do the right thing now so the next generation can reap the benefits.

“As citizens, you are supposed to keep your government out of your life.” She says, “Take the opportunity to fight back however you can. You can’t stop everything, but you can stop something. That’s why we sued. This is one thing we can do.”

This testimonial was originally published on RespectAmerica.org

Necessity is the mother of invention, and mothers know better than almost anyone else the value of a good night’s sleep for them and their young children. That was why, after the birth of her second child, Manasi Gangan was anxious to find a solution to her suddenly short supply of restful hours.

“During my second maternity leave, my second son wouldn’t sleep. And the engineer in me was wondering, how come he sleeps only in my arms? What does he receive? So, I started improvising.” Manasi told Respect America in an interview, “I had reached a point where I was looking for a more purposeful way of contributing.” Manasi, an engineer with over a decade of experience in technology and consumer product development, set out to find a solution to her sleepless nights.

Manasi was inspired by neonatal units using improvised positional aids to mimic human touch, sending a signal to the infant that they are safe and secure. Sometimes that’s a latex glove filled with rice, beads, or water rested on an infant and, in other cases, there are medical devices that do much the same thing. And, she was encouraged by a neonatal research study showing the soothing effects of simulated parental touch.

“And that gave the idea of creating a garment, creating a sleepwear that would mimic a parent’s touch.” Manasi says, “And that’s what [our company] Nested Bean is. We started with a flagship product of a swaddle, and then evolved into a line of sleepwear that goes all the way into the second year.”

But before a single item was manufactured, Manasi spent over a year and half carefully designing and developing her product. Manasi undertook extensive voluntary safety testing prior to launch. Following international standards for consumer products and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recommendations for best practices, Manasi sought to have her product designed and manufactured as safely as possible. She shared her early designs and prototypes with safety labs and human factor design experts to evaluate the safety of Nested Bean products. She sought advice from sleep safety experts and safety labs throughout the design, development, and production phases. All of these voluntary steps were to ensure safety and quality, taken at Manasi’s expense, before making her first dollar.

Between 2011 and 2024, Manasi’s company, Nested Bean, became an international brand. Featured in big box stores, local kids’ boutiques, and commonly featured in mom groups on social media, the company grew from one small idea into tens of millions in revenue, selling over 2.5 million units.

“There were many, many steps of validation before we went online with it and started distributing it to retailers. So, [after] years of multiple validations… we don’t have a single complaint that has attributed any harm to our product.” After millions of products sold, Nested Bean has maintained a stellar safety record with no deaths or injuries attributed to its product.

Today, Manasi’s Nested Bean has been decimated – losing 90% of their revenue as a result of “shortcuts” taken by government bureaucrats, a federal commissioner gone “completely rogue,” and a misreading of science by government officials that has yet to be resolved almost three years later.

“They just ruined a company that had been in business for 13 years, almost 15 years, because this has been going on for two and a half years now, without looking at any track record, without bothering to follow process, which is what this whole lawsuit is about. No due process, no documentation, no definition. Just went ahead and put something out there without thinking what impact it’s going to create.”

“An unreasonable risk”

A federal organization called the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has the authority to determine whether a consumer product presents an unreasonable risk of injury. Unlike the Food and Drug Administration that requires safety to be proven before a product goes to market, consumer products do not require proof of safety. Instead, consumer products are generally regulated by the CPSC after an unreasonable risk of injury has been identified. The CPSC has the authority to determine mandatory safety standards, issue a recall, or product ban for consumer products, and exercises that power by creating an administrative rule. But before the CPSC can create an administrative rule it must first identify the degree and nature of risk of injury associated with the product and how the proposed action is reasonably necessary, and is designed, to eliminate or reduce the risk of injury. Typically, this organization is run by five appointed commissioners. These commissioners control everything from deciding if a baby product is safe for use to whether consumers should be allowed to use gas stoves, but the decision to do so must be after a majority of the commission votes in favor of a specific action.

But one former commissioner, Richard Trumka Jr., has a pattern of ignoring the statutory authority of the CPSC, abusing his position of power, and bucking the consensus of the entire commission. In 2022 Commissioner Trumka pushed for greater regulation of gas stoves, but no other commissioner supported it. Despite lacking full commission support, then CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. led a multimedia campaign stating that the CPSC was working to ban gas stoves. The public backlash was so severe the Chairman of the CPSC had to issue a statement denouncing Trumka’s falsehoods.

Then Trumka Jr. turned his attention to attempting to ban weighted infant sleep products. Manasi’s legal complaint reads that Trumka Jr. “made it his personal mission to destroy the industry of weighted infant sleep products…”

In 2023 Trumka pushed the Commission for greater regulation of weighted infant sleep products, but none of the other commissioners supported the proposal. Despite Trumka Jr’s attempt to create mandatory safety standards for these products, his concerns were rejected by his fellow commissioners in a 3-1 vote, one of whom said that rulemaking “at this time [was] premature” because the CPSC did not have the statutorily required data showing an unreasonable risk of harm or a hazard pattern identified with these products. In fact, the CPSC has not even created a definition for what is considered a “weighted” infant sleep product. To date, the term “weighted” is just an industry term.

Trumka wasn’t satisfied with the Commission’s lack of action, so in early 2024 “Commissioner Trumka wrote letters to major retailers and announced publicly that weighted infant sleep products were dangerous and presented an unreasonable risk to consumers.” He then posted these statements all over his official CPSC social media accounts.

Because Trumka issued these statements on official CPSC letterhead, CPSC website, and CPSC social media accounts, retailers interpreted his statements to be an official decision by the entire Commission banning or recalling weighted infant sleep products. Retailers responded to Trumka’s letters by pulling all of Nested Bean’s products within days, even though the other CPSC commissioners disagreed with those statements.

Trumka’s unlawful action against Nested Bean led to a Congressional investigation into Trumka by the House Committee on Small Business.

When challenged for his damaging words, Trumka Jr attempted to claim, and still maintains, that communications on official letterhead, posted on CPSC social media, and on the CPSC website were merely “personal statements.”

Underlying Trumka Jr’s vendetta against weighted infant sleep products was reliance on what Manasi’s complaint calls “unsupported product safety determinations regarding weighted infant sleep products” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). The CDC and NIH have a joint campaign to educate the public on ways to prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), titled Safe to Sleep. The Safe to Sleep campaign generally focuses on safe sleep practices based on years of scientific research and findings. Recently the CDC and NIH adopted the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) new position advocating against weighted infant sleep products. The AAP’s position was based on a single study, but that one study did not conclude that weighted infant sleep products were dangerous. Instead it found that weighted infant products may be beneficial. In other words; far from showing harm, there was a human error interpreting the underlying study which Trumka weaponized in his role as a CPSC commissioner.

The CDC and NIH do not have the statutory authority to opine on the safety of consumer products. Furthermore, Manasi clarified why a blanket ruling banning all weighted infant sleep products doesn’t make sense: “They took a study that proved no harm, in fact, [showed a] benefit, and they used it to cause concern, without understanding that our product had a very safe route and an adaptation using only one ounce of weight in a very specific area, with millions sold and no incident. So, it felt like just a hack job without really going through any due process, or so much as an investigation.”

“Personal statement” or not, the effect of Trumka Jr’s letters, statements, and social media campaign were felt almost immediately as retail partners pulled out, forcing the layoff of 93% of Nested Bean’s workforce, all with no attempt by CPSC officials to actually verify the product’s safety.

“Our revenue went down by more than 90%. The effect was almost immediate. He sent letters to retailers [using CPSC channels], and within a day or two the major retailers, Amazon, Target, dropped Nested Bean… It’s devastating to know that your life’s work is being disregarded without so much as a dialogue.”

“unfounded, unsupported caution”

With the help of the nonprofit law firms Pacific Legal Foundation and Liberty Justice Center, Manasi and Nested Bean filed a lawsuit in March 2025 asking for a relatively simple fix:

“It’s asking essentially for them to walk back their actions,” says Manasi’s attorney, Loren Seehase, “They took some very public actions that defamed [Manasi and] Nested Bean… And so we were asking the court to recognize that those actions were unlawful and order the government to retract them.”

Manasi also believes her situation puts a spotlight on a big communication problem and wants to see issues proactively addressed when there are safety concerns.

“Don’t just throw out warnings and words of unfounded, unsupported caution without giving us the opportunity to prove how these products have been designed to be safe,” she says, “Invite us and let’s work towards safety together, because I think we have the same goal.”

Same goal or not, the root problem remains: officials at the CPSC are diminishing wealth by force by taking away Manasi’s ability to provide value to parents who need her product. There is no way for Manasi, or her customers, to opt out of CPSC officials’ coercive practices.

When she spoke with Respect America in November 2025, Manasi’s lawsuit was hanging in limbo pending the end of the federal government shutdown. Despite having no way to advance her cause at the time, Manasi was clear about her hopes for the future:

“My overall message is that I really hope that entrepreneurs or the dreamers don’t stop creating new value, because that’s what I genuinely believe in.”

This testimonial was originally published on RespectAmerica.org

Respect America is a nonprofit with a vitally important mission, and at the helm is President Hannah Henriksen, who took what was once a series of smaller projects and unified them around a single mission: to demonstrate the effects of coercion, theft, and violence on human happiness and inspire people to seek solutions that increase harmony and prosperity.

Changing hearts and minds is a big lift, but the strategies undertaken during the organization’s first year in the public eye have helped make a positive difference while reaching millions of people.

As the organization enters its second year, there is much to be done.

“We took the smaller projects offline, and kind of reimagined what Respect America could be,” Hannah said in an interview, “we’re giving people an opportunity to talk about how coercion has affected them, and showing there’s a way to not have it happen, which is to get rid of the coercion against each other.”

Respect America’s rebirth has been a success, accumulating more than 59,000 total followers and subscribers, and boasting more than 13.3 million impressions of articles and videos. That growing audience and megaphone for good has been, in large part, driven by an intentional shift in strategy away from data, and into emotion.

“There’s a lot of organizations out there writing white papers, and not everyone connects initially to data.” Hannah says, “You need to back yourself up with data, but people like me connect with people. We connect emotionally.”

On the Respect America website, emotion is front and center. The featured stories range from that of imprisoned billionaire Jimmy Lai whose anti-coercion media company in Hong Kong raised the ire of the Chinese Communist Party, to a woman in Colorado who was forced to witness her six year old niece wrongfully handcuffed and laid out on hot asphalt, to victims of medical kidnapping and eminent domain, among many others.

The focus of each testimonial is a human being, a real person who has had their life turned upside down by coercion, theft, or violence. The heart of Respect America, and key to the team’s vision for a better future, is always people.

“The strangers we see out in the world, that’s somebody’s dad, brother, cousin, friend, neighbor… and for the most part, most people wouldn’t personally coerce against another person. We’re trying to bring a personalization to strangers and the choices you make.” Hannah says.

As Respect America’s capabilities grow, so have the organization’s plans for an expanded offering of visual projects to further the emotional appeal and show clearly what truly occurs when Human Respect is disregarded.

Show don’t tell

“The biggest accomplishment would be our launch of Jonny’s film.” Hannah says when asked about highlights of year one, “We obviously put a marketing budget behind it, but we had a million and a half views in the first two months. Our first month was a million views.”

If you haven’t seen it, that film, a feature about Jonny McCoy, shares the story of a South Carolina attorney who was thrown in jail based on a lie by arresting officers that was later disproved by security camera footage. While in prison, McCoy was forced to witness another inmate commit suicide and experienced years of mental struggle in the aftermath. “I was exonerated, but I never got an apology,” Jonny says in the film “and those responsible were never punished.”

The film shows with startling clarity how a single corrupt act can have ripple effects that last years and can wreak havoc on the lives of peaceful people. The film gave Jonny a chance to tell his story to millions, and embodies the driving force of Respect America.

“There’s a need for this in the world. People want to connect with each other. People want to have these conversations, they want to tell their stories,” Hannah explains, “They want to know other people and hear their testimonies, read about the things that are happening, and realize that real people’s lives are being affected.”

The film has also won critical acclaim, being accepted into the Anthem Film Festival, the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema, and the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival, and Hannah has her sights set on building regular features that help people understand both the Principle of Human Respect, and what happens when it is ignored.

“In five years, I would like to be releasing a film like Jonny’s every month.” Hannah says, “That’s going to take more relationships and more people; partnerships with other organizations, partnerships with funders, partnerships with film crews who are doing these things, and partnerships with the actual subjects, more people. That’s the root of everything, is people. I’ve said it so many times, but it’s so true.”

Awareness and Opportunity

The first year of Respect America has also seen the birth of new ideas to increase harmony and prosperity, including highlighting stories where things go right, standing in stark contrast to a media landscape so often focused on humanity’s worst moments.

“This wasn’t originally in our marketing plan.” Hannah explains, “But I have started to look for instances where people are helping each other without being forced.”

A series of videos featured on Respect America platforms, sometimes shared from another social profile and sometimes repackaged with Hannah narrating an explainer video, have been leveraged as a new way to keep the idea of doing good at the top of viewer’s mind. “Once you start thinking about Human Respect, it becomes top of mind. You start seeing it way more. And then the more you see it, the more it perpetuates.”

Ultimately, Respect America’s mission is personal and there is ample room to grow, and that requires challenging the deeply normalized way of life that allows for the Terrible Exception to play out. “We are created and molded in this world where force and coercion feel necessary. We haven’t been given another option. We haven’t seen another way.” Hannah says, “if people are aware of [Human Respect], they will be inspired. It is scientifically proven that the more you see other people helping or the more people help you, the more you’re willing to help others, the more you see it, the more you hear about it, the more top of mind it is, the more you’re willing to do it too.”

Respect America has profiled nearly two dozen people in the past year, and Hannah wants to see that number grow. “Our biggest challenge, I think, is getting the testimonial subjects. It’s finding the stories to be told,” she says, “If you have a story to tell, you can message us on social media or our phone number is on our website. It’s directly to me. I answer it almost every time, and if I don’t answer it, I’ll call back.”

As our interview wraps up, Hannah’s genuine excitement to hear about new stories is evident, and the reason why is quickly made clear as well: “I know I was put on this world to help other people, and I’m really glad I get to do this.” she says, “I’m so grateful every day, and it’s fun. This is the greatest job ever.”

This article first appeared on RespectAmerica.org - you can subscribe to get their emails on their website to get not just the articles I write, but lessons about the Principle of Human Respect, videos, and more.

Sitting in his family’s farmhouse in Cranbury, New Jersey, Andy Henry recalls a town meeting in the 1960’s where local officials attempted to use eminent domain for the purpose of building a road “right through the front of our property.”

“It was obviously an unnecessary road, because the effort was defeated,” he says, “but somebody came up with that idea, and they were just pushing ahead with it.”

He also recalls another local case where a World War I veteran had his land bisected by the highway via eminent domain, cutting off the man’s access to his own fields and forcing a sale.

Andy’s interest in eminent domain isn’t an abstract hobby. He and his brother have been informed by local officials that their property, a 21 acre farm which has been in the family since 1850, is likely to be seized and used to fulfil a state requirement for a certain number of affordable housing units.

“It is a state requirement, for sure. So they are acting in response to a mandate,” Andy says, “It's just a mystery of why they would come here.”

In other words, local officials feel they are being coerced to enact policies by force, distant state legislators have handed down a mandate that ignores the natural end results of theft and violence. Innocent people are being harmed and a family may lose their identity and history

The farm, he says, is a terrible spot for housing - especially affordable housing which is ostensibly intended to help lower income people. Putting housing on what is currently Andy’s farm would isolate them from the town of Cranbury, rather than help newcomers find a home in the community.

“They've been pointed to several other properties that would be more logical,” he says, “We are two miles from the center of town, we're surrounded by warehouses.”

More importantly, though, the farm isn’t for sale. Not only is it currently in use as a hormone-free and chemical-free cow and sheep farm, but it has an incalculable value to their family.

“It's certainly emotional. We love having it as a farm,” he says, “We just love taking care of it… I want to pass this on to my kids. I hope they love it like we do.”

No phone calls, no communication

Andy and his brother have turned down many offers for their land in the past. He said that they routinely received, and turned down, inquiries from land developers offering as much as $30 million. They simply haven’t wanted to sell. What Andy and his brother want, however, hasn’t been part of the discussion for local officials.

“We just got a certified letter in the mail,” Andy recalls, “Basically, it said ‘we have to do this affordable housing. We've identified your place, and one smaller place up the road. If you want to tell us what you think the place is worth, we can work with you. If you don't want to sell, we'll just use eminent domain to take the property.’”

The letter, dated April 21st, was delivered on April 24th, just a few days before the April 28th meeting where city officials read the first ordinance to take the property.

“No phone calls, no communication from them over these last several months when they've been working on this,” Andy says, “It's just right out of the blue, less than five days before they had a first reading.”

That left him and his brother scrambling to raise awareness, find an attorney, and mount a defense against the forceful taking of his family property. If a neighbor were trying to steal the Henry family farm it would be the job of government officials to prevent it. When government agents are doing the taking, they are claiming special permission to steal, and moving quickly to get it done.

According to Andy, town officials are moving ahead with seizing the Henrys’ farm for affordable housing, despite the property being ineligible for that construction under current zoning laws. That could be changed in the future, but the town is running up against a state deadline to move forward.

“Apparently the way it works is they have to submit this plan to the state by June 30th, and we and our lawyer will contest it,” Andy says, “but apparently, at the same time, they get to come out and do an appraisal and tell us what they think it's worth, which I'm pretty confident would be way, way less than what some warehouse developers around here have offered.”

That state deadline, Andy says, continues to push Cranbury officials forward without regard for the wishes of the community. “They haven't slowed down a bit. They're determined to keep pressing on this,” he says, “Recently they came out with a proposal to take only half the property. I think they're calling that a negotiation, but it's certainly not a negotiation at this point.”

We know that theft and violence result in decreased happiness, harmony, and prosperity, but Cranbury government officials and New Jersey State lawmakers are pretending this Principle doesn’t apply to them. They aren't the first to operate under this incorrect assumption.

An uphill battle

The power to take land from unwilling citizens has a strong legal backing. June 2025 marked the 20 year anniversary of Kelo v. New London Connecticut, a Supreme Court decision where the city was given permission to seize Suzette Kelo’s little pink house so pharma giant Pfizer could be part of an economic development project. Kelo’s house was taken and destroyed, but the Pfizer project never came to pass. The land sits mostly empty and undeveloped to this day.

With the ink barely dry on another denial by the Supreme Court to overturn Kelo, Andy is searching for pro-bono legal representation while currently paying out of pocket for an attorney to fight for their land. He is being lawfully robbed, and paying dearly in an expensive fight to prevent it.

There is help coming from other places. The media coverage of town officials’ efforts has gone national. Federal government officials at the Department of Agriculture have reached out saying they are ”exploring every legal option to help,” and Andy says the people of Cranbury have rallied with him, creating campaigns that have raised more than $140,000 for his legal defense, social media posts, and making referrals to support organizations.

Andy has been researching on his own as well, learning about the history of eminent domain and seeing the parallels with his own situation.

“I just can't imagine them actually building housing here. It could be like in the Kelo case,” he laments. “They lost their property, and then [the developers] said we're not actually going to do that. I guess it was Pfizer [that] pulled out, and all those jobs they were supposed to create didn't get created.”

Andy is worried about something similar happening with his family’s farmhouse. “It wouldn't be beyond me to say they changed their minds later and decide, well, we'll build somewhere else. By then we've lost our property, so there's no way to get it back.”

—

Postscript: In a meeting on June 24th 2025, the Cranbury NJ Planning Board moved forward with the plan to take half of the Henry’s farm using eminent domain. “I believe we still have an opportunity to still get another place approved within the next 60 days.” Andy commented via text message, “They could’ve done something in the last four weeks, but they chose not to for some reason.”

This testimonial was originally published with Respect America.

Authors note: You can sign the Change.org petition to save the Henry family farm, here:

https://www.change.org/p/save-the-henry-family-farm-from-eminent-domain

The Sunday Family Picnic

Standing outside answering questions in the >100 degree Tempe, Arizona, sun, Austin Davis is working to keep things cool. He is juggling a federal lawsuit against city leaders, running a nonprofit to help the homeless, and, when Respect America interviewed him, was between planning sessions to make sure cooling centers are available to people without housing.

Austin, at 25 years old, is no stranger to taking heat - but it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, the first two years after launching AZHugs, his nonprofit to support Tempe’s homeless, his work seemed to be a shining example of how good will and compassion could be organized to achieve something special.

Starting in 2020, Austin, then a Freshman at Arizona State University, took on an ambitious project to feed the homeless of Tempe each and every Sunday afternoon. “There was a meal on Tuesday and Friday and Saturday… but not Sunday” he says, “So we decided, okay, let's host the Sunday Family Picnic. And that's what we called it.”

For two years, Austin and a growing group of volunteers offered free food in Tempe Beach Park. He made friends with many in Tempe’s homeless community, and started to become welcome in The River Bottom, an out of the way hub for the homeless, where he bore witness to other challenges his new friends were facing.

“That's when I really made personal connections with a lot of folks.” he says, “That's when I started seeing people overdose. We had friends start to die.”

As his eyes were opened to the harsh reality of being homeless in Tempe, the Sunday Family Picnic was becoming a celebrated institution. Austin had built relationships with larger nonprofits, had been meeting with the mayor and other city officials, and was looking to grow the services AZHugs provided. In March 2022, the weekly meal was recognized with the “Neighborhood Event of the Year” award by the City of Tempe.

Austin’s AZHugs was a hot commodity, but it wouldn’t last.

The Big Shift

In 2022, Tempe was in the middle of a debate over professional hockey. City officials and NHL dealmakers were hoping to bring the Arizona Coyotes to Tempe with the construction of a $2.1 billion arena, hotel, and casino complex, $1.9 billion of which would be privately funded.

To bring the project into reality, Tempe’s City Council had voiced unanimous support, four former mayors were publicly in favor, and they went ahead with bulldozing some city-owned land at Rio Salado Parkway and Priest Drive, at the west end of Tempe Town Lake.

Austin says that area is also known as The River Bottom.

Plans to bring the NHL Coyotes to Tempe would be torpedoed by voters in a 2023 referendum, but there were secondary effects of the pre-construction work that sent ripples across the city.

“They displaced everyone from The River Bottom, bulldozed all the trees down so people can't hide. And they tried to build this hockey stadium right there” Austin says, “They'd already displaced people throughout the city. So that's when they started coming after the Picnic, because the visibility of poverty was, I think, affecting their money. That was the big shift.”

Just a few months after being recognized as the Neighborhood Event of the Year, AZHugs received a letter informing them that nonprofits feeding the homeless would now be required to get “special event” permits costing $125 - $3,000, and obtain liability insurance.

Austin and AZHugs jumped through those hoops, planning for the extra weekly expense and submitted their application, but quickly ran into what Austin believes was an unreasonable demand: “The city comes back to us and says: ‘Great job. Now, sorry, you gotta wait 60 days,’” effectively cancelling the Sunday Family Picnic.

“I swear…, they were never going to give us this permit…” Austin says, “We're willing to do whatever you guys need us to do, except stop serving food for 60 days. That's absurd. People will need food today, tomorrow, the next day, and there's more people than ever who are facing poverty right now. That makes no sense. And literally, all we're asking you to do is not arrest us if we feed people.”

Logic wasn’t the driving force behind the coercion in Tempe. In pursuit of one goal, government officials simply dismissed the vital importance of feeding people so paperwork and process could be followed.

Is that the proper role of government?

Austin didn't think it was, so he and AZHugs refused to stop. In response, the City handed him a permit rejection, and began issuing citations on the Sunday Family Picnic.

Austin says this is all part of a bigger picture. Beyond the failed Coyote’s deal, Austin also alleges that city officials were trying to prepare for the “Point in Time” count, where a census of homeless people is taken which impacts federal funding.

“Their goal wasn't, ‘Okay. Let's figure out how to work with this charity to continue the meals,’ it was: ‘We need to take away access to food and water for enough time where we can mass police the poor areas and push people out to neighboring cities so that we can reduce homelessness.’”

Against this backdrop, Austin and AZHugs kept right on feeding people in the park, and city officials started to crack down - hurting more people in the process.

Bans and Pleas

The citations against Austin continued to pile up, he was banned from the parks, then charged with criminal trespassing for ignoring the ban.

“The first time I got arrested was really creepy. They didn't arrest me at the park or during a Picnic. What they did was undercover. Police waited outside my apartment, and they followed me out of my neighborhood, pulled me over for nothing, and then arrested me and handcuffed me and took me to jail.”

Austin Davis has been to jail several times since that July, 2024, encounter, but the first time was especially memorable. His cellmate was a man who had been discharged from a psychiatric ward earlier that same day and was arrested for sleeping at a park bench across the street from the psych facility because he had nowhere else to go.

“That's not an uncommon story,” Austin says. “When I went in front of the judge, both times that I've done that, you have a metal chain around your waist, and your wrists are handcuffed to your waist. I remember just looking at everyone in line, and I knew most of the people there. It was mostly folks from the streets, not criminals, not people who deserve to be in jail, people who were arrested for trespassing or urban camping, or some other non violent, not crime.”

If anyone else was persecuting Tempe residents for nonviolent crimes it would be considered unacceptable, but government officials claimed special permission to do harm. Austin was just the latest in a long line.

By September, Austin had racked up 34 permit violation and trespassing charges. He accepted a plea deal so he could get back to feeding the homeless, but was arrested again in October for violating the terms of his release by entering one of the parks. He is banned from every park and preservation in Tempe, and now works to provide homeless services at bus stops and other locations.

Continuing to provide food and other services, like brokering deals for cooling center access, is just one of the ways Austin is pushing back and continuing to fulfill AZHugs mission. With the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm, he and two others have brought a federal lawsuit against the city of Tempe and City Manager Rosa Inchausti.

“Tempe’s permit scheme has nothing to do with protecting the public; it merely gives government officials unchecked power to shut down activities they disfavor,” the Pacific Legal Foundation’s website reads, “The government doesn’t hold a monopoly on charity. Americans have the constitutional right to pursue their calling without burdensome regulations—including helping those in need.”

Austin is being held back from doing good, and there are hundreds of people suffering short and long term harm because of the Tempe government policies.

The lawsuit seeks to invalidate the permitting statute that city leaders are using to end the Family Sunday Picnic, and ensure services like AZHugs can provide support without interference.

“We need to get this law invalidated, because it's being used to limit how those experiencing homelessness can receive food and water,” Austin says, “if we don't get this law invalidated, it is going to continue and likely get much worse.”

This testimonial was first published with RespectAmerica.org

Sitting in the waiting room at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City with her husband, Sarah Goble was terrified. This October 2, 2024, trip to see a doctor was the second hospital they had visited, and no one had yet been able to explain why her two month old son had been refusing food and had spit up “brick red” on his onesie.

“We were waiting for the results of the CT when three or four people came into the room. They said ‘we've got some really hard news to tell you.’” Sarah recalls, “And my husband and I thought they were about to tell us that our son had cancer or some incurable disease, so it was terrifying. But then they said; ‘we found multiple fractures in your son's body, and we've had to hotline for child abuse.’”

The doctor explained that they were “mandated reporters,” meaning that they are required by law to involve the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) and police when abuse is believed to be a possibility.

In short, the doctors were explaining that their hands were tied. Sarah was about to become part of a coercive system that, little did she know, has been erroneously seizing children and splintering families across the country. The first step, doctors told Sarah, was admitting her baby to the hospital to begin collecting more information.

“I just said, of course. We were like, do whatever you need to do,” Sarah explains, “What I didn't know then, and I know now, is they admit children at that point because they have to start case building. And I think it becomes more about building a case than it does about figuring out what's wrong with the child.”

Initially, Sarah says she tried to partner with the doctors, sharing her own medical history and seeing if they have ruled out various autoimmune disorders.

“A doctor laughed in my face and said, ‘That's not necessary,’ literally laughed in my face.” She says, “They weren't even willing to do any kind of research into what else could be an underlying condition. They made up their mind that there are fractures in this child and that he has [been] abuse[d].”

Is that the treatment you should expect from someone you are paying to take care of your child?

Over the next few days, police officers and DCF officials questioned Sarah, her husband, and Sarah’s nine year old daughter. In short order Sarah’s husband was “kicked out” of the hospital and Sarah says doctors made “snide remarks” that the only reason she was allowed to stay with her son is because she was a breastfeeding mom.

Then on Sunday October 6, the DCF official assigned to their case provided two updates: First, Sarah would need to provide a list of homes where her children could live while DCF agents started sorting through the allegations. Second, she was told that court proceedings would start less than 36 hours later - on Tuesday - leaving her and her husband just one day to find and retain an attorney to represent them.

“I know I'm stupid, and I've gotten a lot of comments about how dumb it was that I didn't have a lawyer at this point, but I didn't know. I've never been in trouble. And so we rushed all of Monday,” she says, “At the end of the day on Monday, we found a lawyer. We met him an hour before we went to court on Tuesday.”

Sarah and her family had officially been forced into an unjust system by the very people they hoped could help in their time of need.

Passing Judgement

“It was the worst day of my entire life,” Sarah recalls, “Within 30 minutes of getting to court, they said both of these children are in danger, and they put them in foster care.”

In some ways, Sarah was lucky in how foster care unfolded. Unlike Matthew Hernandez and others who have been legally barred from seeing their spouse and children while allegations of abuse are being sorted out, Sarah’s kids went into a series of friends' homes before landing back in their own house, where they were watched over by their grandmother.

“Finally, after the third home they were moved through that didn't work out, they let my mom take over as caretaker.” Sarah says, “And we were allowed to be there as long as we were supervised. So my husband and I were there all day, every day, except for the evenings when we had to leave.”

While Sarah and her husband were able to maintain close contact with their young children, a curious development unfolded in court. On April 8, 2024, DCF officials and the DA expressed they were no longer interested in pursuing the case, but the judge wouldn’t dismiss the matter.

“They could not find any signs that my husband or I abused our child. There's nothing there. [The DA said,] ‘We don't want to take this any further. We want to close informally.’”

Sarah says justice has been harder to achieve because of how strongly worded the doctor's abuse report was, and also mentioned how the judge, being an elected official, could pay a steep personal price for letting an alleged abuser walk free. “[The report] makes it sound like my son was in a full body cast in a hospital room, fighting for his life. It sounds terrible the way it was written. However, we have a second opinion now that say most of those fractures that they claimed do not even exist, that it's bone growth on the x-ray that they read wrong”

The result of this logjam has been a holding pattern that has now lasted eight months. “DCF is still holding custody of our children hostage. So, they're with us. They're our responsibility. We're paying all the bills again, but [someone else] hold[s] custody of my children.”

Sarah believes DA and DCF officials didn't pursue her case both because they couldn't prove allegations of abuse, and because of her work to publicize her experience via TikTok, which is how she came into contact with Respect America. “I've had a very active social media. I've had a very active Go Fund Me, both of which point to glaring holes in what they've done," she says, “I do think they know a lawsuit is coming.”

To her more than 12,000 followers and growing, Sarah has shared regular updates about her family's experience under a simple bio: “In 2024 my children were medically kidnapped. This is our story.”

Money in medicine

“I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to a hospital, ever, comfortably.” Sarah explained in a mid-June 2025 interview.

It’s not just because of her one bad experience. Sarah believes there is an incentive problem that starts in the hospitals and winds its way throughout the justice system.

“Every time the hospital team flags child abuse it opens up their ability to bill a federally funded grant that pays for all of the work they're doing.” She explains, “This grant also pays for their training of DCF. It pays for their training of the judges. When you have an incentive for a hospital to find abuse, it's going to be taken advantage of.”

With so many incentives to disrespect the Goble family, it's no wonder the case is not yet resolved.

While doctors and state officials can make big money when child abuse is claimed, the financial toll on Sarah and her family has put them in a hole. “I'm below water here in paying my legal bills… So it's been a lot of added stress, and I haven't had a moment to breathe. Between work and legal, there's no choice.”

As she looks forward to regaining full custody of her children from state officials, she is also planning next steps and hoping to use lawsuits and public awareness to drive change.

“When you have a lot of money attached to decisions like this, it easily clouds the judgment of everyone involved. I feel like they should be nervous and think again before doing this to families. I want to make this a legal case that sets a precedent moving forward that this can't keep happening to families. That is my goal.”

Called to Duty

In August 2024, Rebekah Massie felt called to speak up at a city council meeting in her home of Surprise, Arizona. It wasn’t her first appearance in front of these local lawmakers.

“I was at almost every city council meeting from roughly about the end of February [until the arrest]” she told Respect America in an interview. “It started out as getting sick of my kids being late to school and concern about the safety of my husband commuting to work, so I went to go complain about the roads and try to work with the government.”

Despite her goal of finding collaborative inroads, she quickly earned a reputation as an outspoken advocate against inefficiency and government bloat – which didn’t make her many friends in the ranks of local politicians.

The August 2024 agenda item Massie rose to address included a 4.4% raise for the city attorney – a Mr. Robert W. Wingo – who was reportedly already making a $266,000 salary, and was the second highest paid employee in the city. Rebekah was appalled by the dollar figure, and the tax increases that were funding the city’s growing bureaucracy.

“They're spending way too much money on staff. It's a very top-heavy organization.” She says, “Three months prior, they passed a sales tax increase, and I spoke out against that because of what they were paying people. They're telling me that they can't cut expenses. I'm exasperated. And if I'm showing up in person, and I'm repeatedly showing up in person, I'm almost at the point of desperation.”

Rebekah attended the meeting with her ten-year old daughter, to show her the importance of civil engagement. With attorney Wingo sitting in the front row, just feet away from the podium, Massie began to lay out the various reasons she opposed his raise: outstanding FOIA requests awaiting Wingo’s legal review, his disproportionately high salary compared to other cities, and alleged disregard for Arizona’s revised statutes. She was also disappointed in his failure to bring charges or otherwise work to hold city council member Aly Cline accountable for ripping down flyers Ms. Massie had posted to promote a new mayoral candidate and Massie’s website, which was critical of the Surprise government.

As Massie laid out her arguments, Mayor Skip Hall broke in with comments of his own: “I’ve got to interrupt you here,” he said, then read from a piece of paper he had on the desk in front of him.

Surprise, Arizona, has a rule, he explained, that bans residents from making “complaints against any employee of the City or members of the body” during public comment, and told Massie that she has been warned and should stop “attacking the city attorney personally.”

“This is all factual information,” Massie replied.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mayor Hall.

The verbal sparring briefly continued, focused on the constitutionality of such a ban on speech in a public forum. “Do you want to be escorted out?” Hall asked. “Because that’s what’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen in the future.”

Mayor Hall then ordered the officer on duty, a Mr. Shernicoff, to remove Ms. Massie from the room. Rebekah reminded him that her daughter was present, but Hall remained unmoved. Moments later, Officer Shernicoff grabbed Ms. Massie and forcefully removed her from the room. The city council continued on with business as if nothing had happened. Mayor Hall thought he had successfully squashed dissent. He was unaware that he had ignited a media firestorm that is still burning to this day.

Protect and Serve

In hindsight, Rebekah believes the situation may have been intentionally contrived by Surprise officials tired of facing criticism. She points to the written policy already being in the Mayor’s hand when she rose to speak, the officer called to remove her being someone not ordinarily assigned to work at city council meetings, and the inaction of Mr. Wingo who, she argues, should have known and advised the Council that the policy and retribution for speaking were clear violations of her constitutional rights.

“Honest to God. It's the only logical conclusion that I can come up with,” she says, “it was one thing after another, all perfectly aligned.”

Body camera footage of the event shows Officer Shernicoff’s point of view as he approaches Ms. Massie, attempts to physically restrain her, and eventually places her under arrest in the hallway outside the council chambers as the body moves on with other business.

“You cannot detain me for expressing my First Amendment rights” Massie calls out at one point after allegedly being shoved to the ground. The video shows her being placed in handcuffs anyways, separated from her daughter, and issued a citation for trespassing at the city council meeting.

“There is no framework and no parameter that I can rationalize this and have it follow any logical thought progression,” Massie says. Speaking about the use of force by Surprise officers, “You're not finding Bin Laden in the middle of the desert. I'm not a bad person. I'm somebody who has [peacefully] pointed criticisms of the government for a lot of different reasons.”

Seeking Justice

Surprise, Arizona, officials made quick inroads to close ranks in the days following Massie’s arrest. Chief of Police Benny Pina released a video praising Officer Shernicoff for acting “with absolute speed to carry out the mission as directed that evening,” and Mayor Hall refused to offer further comment to the media.

As video of Rebekah’s arrest spread, near universal condemnation of the city’s policy and officials' actions began to roll in. Eventually the tide turned – leading to the council repealing the criticism policy in September, 2024.

The hits kept coming. In October, 2024, criminal proceedings saw Surprise prosecutors recuse themselves from the case against Massie, citing a conflict of interest. State Judge Gerald Williams then dropped the criminal trespassing charge just a day after hearing arguments, dismissing the case with prejudice and writing: “No branch of any federal, state, or local government in this country should ever attempt to control the content of political speech. In this case, the government did so in a manner that was objectively outrageous.”

Though she has successfully crossed the first hurdles to securing justice, it has not been easy for Rebekah, and there is still more to come.

“It's almost like I’m continually going through the grieving process. At the end of the day, we're all human, and we're all flawed. I needed to get this off my chest, and I needed people to hear it because it's important. I have to essentially put on a brave face, not just for my children, but for everybody.”

Massie has also accepted the help of The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit with a mission to “defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought.” With the help of their legal team, Massie filed a civil lawsuit against the city as an entity, She also filed a lawsuit against Skip Hall for enforcing the Council Criticism policy and directing police to detail Rebekah, and Officer Steven Shernicoff for assault, battery, and intentional or reckless infliction of emotional distress.

“If I'm here and I'm the loudest voice in the room, it's because nobody else is speaking up. I still think that there are some genuinely good human beings within the city government, however, they are good humans who have essentially become corrupted. Free speech still matters in America, and I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have people on my side standing up for our rights with me.”

This testimonial was first published with Respect America

Jasmine Mooney is a former actress who has traveled between the United States and her home in Canada for much of her adult life. She is no stranger to immigration requirements, so when she got a new job in the United States last month, she headed to the San Ysidro Port of Entry to apply for a new visa.

San Ysidro is the busiest entry spot in the nation with an average of 8 million crossings per year. But, unlike those deported for being in the country illegally or those in detention who have committed violent acts – Mooney willingly went to the San Ysidro Port of Entry as a peaceful applicant seeking to follow the process for gaining lawful permission to work in the United States. After having her visa revoked in November of last year over a processing problem and concerns about her employer selling hemp-based products, she chose San Ysidro on advice of counsel. She had no problems when she applied for a visa in that location before.

This time, however, Mooney was forcibly detained, subjected to “inhumane” conditions, and denied the opportunity to peacefully fly home on her own dime by a cadre of federal agents who instead shipped her “in chains” to an out-of-state detention center where she was held for nearly two weeks.

The Black Box

The issue, it seems, was incomplete paperwork. A United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told the Vancouver Sun that Mooney was detained on March 3 “for not having legal documentation to be in the United States,” the very issue she had traveled to San Ysidro to obtain.

Instead of sending her back to Canada (something Mooney offered to pay for herself), allowing her to return home back through Mexico, or providing direction on how to complete the visa paperwork to their satisfaction, agents at San Ysidro chose to escalate the situation, ordering that Jasmine instead be detained.

“I was reapplying for my work visa and with no warning about what was about to happen I was taken by ICE,” Mooney said "They took me, they took all of my luggage. They took my phone, [and forced] my hands against the wall."

She claims there was no communication about why she was being detained. “No one told me anything. Not once,” she said, “Next thing you know, I’m taken. And for two weeks, I haven’t been told anything. Moved in different cells. Sleeping on cement, sleeping in different jail cells. Like, it’s just, nothing makes sense to me and I’m still trying to process the entire situation.”

She was first subjected to three nights in a local detention center then, along with around 30 other detainees, was awoken at 3 AM to be transferred. “They put you in chains,” she said. “That’s when I realized they are onboarding me into a real prison.”

That second location turned out to be the San Luis detention center in Arizona, where Jasmine experienced the life of a detainee. “They are housed together in a single concrete cell with no natural light, fluorescent lights that are never turned off, no mats, no blankets, and limited bathroom facilities.”

“I have never in my life seen anything so inhumane,” she said. “I was put in a cell, and I had to sleep on a mat with no blanket, no pillow, with an aluminum foil wrapped over my body like a dead body for two and a half days.”

On that third day, Mooney was finally given the opportunity to make a phone call and begin the process of extricating herself from American immigration officials.

“I called my best friend. Thank god I remembered her phone number.” Jasmine told NPR, “I was like, you need to call my lawyers. You need to call my family. You need to get a hold of anyone, any of our friends, that can help me in this situation.”

After nearly two weeks in custody, immigration officials arranged for her to be driven to San Diego, where she was put on a flight, which was privately paid for, to Vancouver, Canada, and returned home.

Delegated Waste

Mooney’s situation reflects not just the waves of change in immigration policy under a new administration but also puts a spotlight on the perennial problem of force and theft by government officials. We know that violence and theft result in less happiness, harmony, and prosperity, but government agents “just doing their job” are often given permission and protection under the law when they engage in unjust and disrespectful acts.

The justification for the initial detainment, the prolonged holding, and multiple transfers have been brushed off as being “in accordance with the 'Securing Our Borders' Executive Order dated January 21” by government spokespeople, leaving Jasmine, other visa seekers, and those of us left footing the bill, the taxpayers, with little in the way of clarity.

As Jasmine’s mother pointed out, “It doesn’t make sense to spend taxpayer dollars to continue to detain her when she’s not a criminal,” especially when she peacefully offered to fly herself in the beginning of the issue.

That sentiment was echoed by Leonard D.M. Saunders, Jasmine’s immigration attorney: “Why would they waste their time on a Canadian citizen who is at the border trying to do everything right?”

Should government officials be able to choose to use force when peaceful alternatives are readily available?

The agents on-site at San Ysidro reportedly advised Jasmine that she should have sought to have her visa renewed at a consulate but gave her no opportunity to do so. She is now facing a five-year ban from the United States, which she plans to appeal.

“I love America,” she told the New York Times, “I love my friends there. I love the life I was building there and the opportunities.”

This testimonial was original written for Respect America

Go with the flow

The first time Tom Hamann met Heart Mountain Irrigation District official Randy Watts, it was supposed to be a friendly meeting. Hamann owns 100 acres in Wyoming where, since the mid-1990s, he and his wife Ayda have lived and grown a homestead. “We put a barn out here, of course, and got the horses,” Ayda told Respect America in an interview, “we finally built our house in 2001 and started doing all the improvements, year by year.”

The Heart Mountain Irrigation District was always part of their lives on this property, managing water access and filling water orders that allowed them to grow hay and keep a Red Angus cattle herd. The relationship was straightforward: Hamann paid for his water, and never broke the rules, and district officials kept the water flowing.

Hamann says Watts asked for a meeting shortly after he took over as the manager for the area, and set a difficult tone before they even started saying hello:

“I was going to shake hands, introduce myself, because I had never met him.” Hamann says, “And before I ever get over there, he goes: My name is Randy Watts. He says, I'm going to put a road through here on the other side of the canal. And there's not much you can do about it.”

The introduction had Tom “taken aback,” not just because of the brazen delivery, but also because of the substance of Randy’s claim. The water running through the Hamann’s hundred acres, Lateral 79, was already flanked by a county road providing access to the lateral for maintenance, general operations, or other Irrigation District business.

Tom says Randy told him in that first conversation, “I've got more power than the sheriff, and we're the government, that's it,” and their conversation ended in a stalemate. According to Randy, the agency claimed to have an easement on both sides of the water, giving them all the legal permission they needed.

The Hamann’s quickly contacted their local attorney and made plans to preserve their land via an appeal to Heart Mountain leadership.

Logjam

The Hamann’s appeal to the irrigation district leadership went, in a word, poorly.

“I said, until you let me know why you have to build a road on my property when there's already an existing road that you use to service that canal, you need to stay off, or I'll turn you over to the sheriff, because you have no easement.” Tom says he explained, “You would have thought that I had stepped on the Mary Saint herself when I said, you have no easement.”

Despite irrigation district officials’ indignation, Tom maintains that he and Ayda were certain no such permission existed in any law. They had thoroughly researched before resting their argument on that claim. On advice of their attorney, they had scoured the local courthouse, the county seat, and the state records in Cheyenne. They chased down each successively larger pool of records, sinking hours and days into making sure they wouldn’t lose their case.

“No easement existed,” Tom says.

In the end, however, not being able to prove their claim was shrugged off by the irrigation district. Instead, they claimed it was an “unrecorded easement” and refused to back down.

“The best way to describe Randy Watts is a bully,” Tom says, “[irrigation district officials] they feel that they can do anything on your land that they want to.”

While the battle unfolded in courts, communication with the irrigation district leadership continued – mostly about business as usual. How much water would they be ordering? Any feedback on the District’s service? The things both the Hamann’s and Heart Mountain officials agreed on.

Around two years after that first meeting, however, business went south.

Tom and his neighbor, Bryan, agreed to let irrigation district employees move a concrete bowl that helps irrigate the neighbor’s land, what they initially understood to be a simple task.

As the area manager, it was Randy Watts who showed up to do the job, arriving with heavy equipment and an assistant named Kenny. When they started talking, Randy brought up that Tom would be on the hook for the cost of the project – something Tom says he never agreed to, raising red flags about their intentions with the heavy machinery.

Tom then drove his quad back to the house. “I called the sheriff. I called my attorney, Joey. I said; What do I do?”

In the following minutes, Tom realized he couldn’t keep track of both irrigation district employees as they began using the machines. He called another neighbor, Steve, who came over to stand with Kenny and prevent him from going further.

“I said, I've called the attorney, I've called the sheriff, and we're going to handle this in court. Nobody's going to get fired. I said, just don't. Don't do anything.”

With the neighbor keeping an eye on one machine operator, Tom headed over to where Randy sat in his machine, an 8-foot fence post already ripped out of the ground in front of him, and pleaded with him to hold up until the sheriff arrived.

“So, he shut it down, and he calls. He calls up somebody on the phone. On the phone, the last thing I heard [Randy say] was ‘run the son of a bitch over.’” Back up the road, Tom could see Steve standing in front of Kenny’s machine.

Tom was standing at the fence, hands on the barbed wire, and swung his leg over, planning to “stand in front of the fence so he couldn't tear that post out.”

“As soon as I got halfway across with my leg, I hear the mini-excavator rev up,” Tom says of that moment in 2018, “and out of the corner of my eye, he's swinging the bucket at me.”

An unstoppable broken man

“I'll remember tomorrow that we had a discussion,” Tom says in an April 2025 interview, “but I won't remember your name.”

Ayda Hamann sits next to him at their kitchen table, present to help her husband finish some sentences, gently remind him of key points, and share more about the challenges their family has faced since the assault.

The excavator bucket had “glanced” the side of Tom’s head, causing spinal cord damage and fracturing his third vertebrae.

By the time the Sheriff arrived, Randy and Kenny had done more than $10,000 in property damage.

“I've got three herniated discs on my left side. Okay? I have a left biceps tendon tear, the rotator cuff is torn, the right shoulder biceps torn, and the labrums torn… they found the fracture in my neck. It's on transverse process c3, which is where your vertebral artery comes up on both sides, goes through a little hole, and then goes up into the brain. Well, mine was fractured right across.”

Tom and Ayda are engaged in an ongoing lawsuit with the help of a nonprofit law firm to address the property damage and the underlying legal question of when government agencies can be held accountable, however, by law, Tom isn’t allowed to seek damages from Randy Watts. The irrigation district is claiming “government immunity,” which Tom says is part of their playbook.

“They just turn [Randy] loose, and he goes out and confronts or attacks these people. And then, when somebody stands up to him, all the members of the board and their bulldog, they scramble back over the fence yelling government immunity... So I can't, I can't get any help with any of the medical stuff. The only thing we can get out of it would be whatever it costs to repair our fence and our entryway, plus possibly our lawyer fees.”

Ayda and Tom’s lawsuit claims “inverse condemnation,” which is basically when property owners have to chase down payment for property losses caused by government actions, the reverse of eminent domain.

“When the government takes or damages private property, it must notify the owner and pay just compensation,” reads the law firm's website, “Failure to do so is illegal under the Constitution.”

Tom says he just wants to see a check on this kind of power and will see it through to the end. “I don't know why God put it in front of me,” he explains, “but he did, and I guess he knew that I wouldn't back down.”

This testimonial was first published with Respect America

Violence

When Layla Bush started working as a temp at the Seattle Jewish Federation, her supervisor handed her “a hundred-page book on security at Jewish organizations.”

Not being Jewish, this was Layla’s first introduction to antisemitism, and the Jewish cultural norm of caution.

“I’m like, why would you need that?” she recalls, “That's so crazy that you would need to have this much security.” As she quickly found out, however, responding to possible threats was a regular part of her new job.

In her first few months, Layla says she had multiple situations where she needed to call the police. Incidents ranged from strangers leaving unmarked bags in the lobby to swastikas being painted on the building. She regularly fielded hateful phone calls. “The guy I was dating at the time told me, ‘you're gonna get hurt working there.’ I'm like, ‘You're crazy,’” she says, “You know that the Holocaust happened so long ago?”

Despite interacting with hate as part of her job, Layla enjoyed the work and her organizational skills quickly impressed the full time staff. She was offered a permanent position on the team, and she accepted.

On the afternoon of Friday, July 28, 2006, Layla had plans to go hiking after work. She was in the back room making copies when she heard the door buzzer ring, and the voice of Cheryl Stumbo, one of the employees' 14 year old niece who helped out at the front desk, asking to be let in. It was 4:00 PM.

“A lot of Jewish people go home early on Friday afternoons,” Layla told Respect America in an interview, “so it wasn't all that busy in the office, and I buzzed her in.”

What Layla didn’t know was that Cheryl had a gun to her back, and opening the door also let an armed man named Naveed Afzal Haq into the building.

By the time he surrendered to police at 4:15 PM - Haq had shot and killed one of Layla’s coworkers, a woman named Pamela Waechter, and wounded three others. He shot Layla once, then came back again after shooting the others. “He looked at me,” Layla says, “looked me straight in the eyes from point blank range, and pulled the trigger.”

Waking Up

“There is a moment of intimacy in that moment that is really… it's indescribable,” Layla continues, "because this person is wanting to do deadly violence to you. It's just weird. It's like that realization of how much someone just wants to kill you and do violence to you for really no reason at all.”

After Haq’s surrender, Layla found herself in the back of an ambulance with a lifetime of physical challenges ahead of her, and the beginnings of an awakening that would change the way she sees the world.

The hollow point bullet fired from Haq’s legally obtained handgun “hit just about every organ that it possibly could.” Layla says, “part of the bullet ended up shattering one of my vertebrae and causing nerve damage.”

She spent the next month in the hospital. Multiple attempts to remove her breathing tube failed, a lung infection ensued, and she would later need another surgery to remove the bullet which was leaking lead into Layla’s spinal cord fluid.

“I didn't know what had happened in the aftermath of the shooting, and I was kind of behind everyone else.” Layla says, “everyone else was more conscious for a lot of the things that had happened in the aftermath. That was difficult, not being able to process everything at the same time. Not being able to share in that mourning in the immediate aftermath, in the same way.”

From that tragedy, however, Layla also found a new community. Despite not being Jewish herself, she was offered an outpouring of support.

“I have been fortunate in that the nature of my shooting meant I was at a Jewish organization when I was shot. The Jewish community really has a lot of support mechanisms, what I would call, mutual aid systems to help each other, because they're used to this.”

A former political progressive, Layla expressed how the support she received from the Jewish community opened her mind to a better path:

“There is so much more compassion from this idea of mutual aid and helping your community, as compared to the government, which is kind of obligated to do these things, but they're always suspicious of you. It is always assuming that you're lying and assuming that you're a fraud.”

Layla’s experience is consistent with the Principle of Human Respect. Voluntary support brings about stronger community, uplifting the Good, True, and Beautiful - while the use of force or violence diminishes happiness, harmony, and prosperity

“[Government treats you like] something to be manipulated or used or just in a way that isn't human, And whenever that happens, it just hurts part of your soul. It really does”

The Seattle Jewish Federation shooting was directly attributable to a lack of human respect, both in the shooter’s actions, and his justification for taking them.

Layla recalled her shooter standing in front of her ranting about the then unfolding 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah. That conflict had led Haq to search “something Jewish” online. The Seattle Jewish Federation he attacked was the first search result.

“The source of this violence was war thousands of miles away from where we are,” Layla said, “When America makes a choice, when our country makes a choice to engage in a non-peaceful manner, by selling bombs to people, by helping them in killing, that has an impact on all of us in America.”

Consent is Compassion

A young woman when the shooting occurred, Layla now sees herself as a fundamentally different person. “So much of my perspective on life has been shaped by this event, the shooting that happened.” she explains, “I was 23.”

While her understanding of collective blame, the danger of treating people as part of a group rather than as individuals, and the use of violence have each become part of her personality - she has also had to reconcile these awakenings with the necessity of using the American medical system to lead a fulfilling life.

“When it comes to the psychological impact, the medical system has been far more intrusive than the shooting. The shooting is over. I don't have to experience that again, but the medical system, I have to continue to engage with.” Layla told Respect America, “That has also increased my frustration about the way the medical system works, and how, in a lot of ways, consent and compassion are not really part of the formula.”

This, like violent foreign intervention, she says, is the result of government intrusion and well intentioned efforts to help people that instead end up violating consent.

“I live in Washington State, near Seattle. It is very, very blue here, and I try to explain to a lot of my friends that the government has this idea of helping, but it is not actually compassionate.”

To avoid the arduous requirements around opioid drug prescriptions, Layla pays out of pocket for medications. If she took government “help,” she would have to jump through legally required hoops like mandated drug testing and frequent doctors visits. Layla knows what she needs to stay active, and can work with her doctors independent from bureaucratic overreach. Not everyone in her community of those who suffer from chronic pain are so lucky:

“I've met those people through my journey and hearing their stories of how the state tries to control what they can do with their bodies,” she says, “how vulnerable it makes them feel, and they just can't get the treatment that they feel they need.”

Layla knows that mutual aid and voluntary cooperation are better options, because she has seen them firsthand - and she speaks confidently about the failures of government efforts to help.

“The whole system is structured in a way that is designed to dehumanize you and designed to make you feel small and irrelevant, and that is very different from the human connection that you get from other people. Being able to compare those two side by side, from the Jewish community and then the government, it's so black and white.”

This testimonial was first published on RespectAmerica.org

A sham council

On May 23, 2024, the Mayor of Longview Texas, Kristen Ishihara, took to the City Council microphone and proposed “Action Item A,” a new law banning sleeping outside on private property.

Ishihara told those in attendance that she personally asked the City Council to take up the action item, taking responsibility for its inception.

“We have no intention of targeting a particular nonprofit,” she said, “but all the citizen comments have indicated that we are talking about One Love, who had individuals sleeping on their porch.”

One Love Longview, a multi-service nonprofit providing “meals, showers, refuge, healthcare, and more” to people in need, allowed homeless individuals to use their privately owned porch as a safe haven for sleep outside of One Love’s business hours.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Longview city government asking for record of “all the citizen comments” yielded a single email from a local business owner located more than a mile away from Longview’s facility, and this note with no attributed author:

Despite Ishihara’s statement that Action Item A did not have a particular target, the Council openly discussed how the new law would only impact One Love Longview. Mayor Ishihara went as far as to say that her proposal had been built to achieve that exact end:

“What I’ve asked to be brought forward tonight for discussion and consideration on behalf of the council is what I believe is tailored narrowly enough to apply to that situation, which would eliminate the ability to sleep, camp essentially, on private property,” she said.

Sitting among the public in attendance was Amanda Veasy, the founder of One Love Longview and a dedicated provider of services to the homeless community. “It’s the reason I was born, my life's work, to be with this population,” she told Respect America in an interview. “My staff, my volunteers, we spend more time at work than we do at home… [Action Item A] was a personal stab.”

“Action Item A” was just the latest move in what Amanda says was a prolonged campaign by local officials and well connected community members to target her nonprofit - an effort that would eventually erode their financial health and force them to cease operating at their facility on McCann Road.

“The Worst of the Worst”

Gregg County, TX has a population of around 124,000 people, roughly 83,000 of them live in the City of Longview. Official estimates say that Gregg County has 197 homeless people, but Amanda says One Love served more than 1,000 individuals last year, and that the real number of homeless people in the area is orders of magnitude higher than official “snapshot” estimates.

The clear need for services was the reason Amanda started One Love in the first place. The organization was launched in 2020 to augment the services offered by the city and other providers, and she credits city officials for their initial support of the new resource. Amanda says that Mayor Ishihara, then a city council member, even helped draft the paperwork to launch One Love. Amanda once considered Ishihara a friend and worked on her campaigns.

Now, though, Amanda says that friends of One Love are hard to come by. Shortly after the organization moved into a new location on McCann Road, just north of Route 80, business owners around her started complaining.

Doug McKinney is the president of Jack’s Air Conditioning & Heating Inc, which is just 0.2 miles south of One Love. In a body cam video from March 7, 2024, McKinney can be heard telling police officers “I don’t want to look at that crap” and asking “do you want this crap in your city?” as he pressures police to remove individuals from One Love’s Property. “We can’t let them win.”

“I don’t want them there either,” the officer responds. “We’ll have the last laugh,” another officer chimes in.

Amanda alleges that the city of Longview is home to an intermingling of politics and friendship that steps over a line. City Council member Steve Pirtle (District 6) is also featured in the body cam video. He is the one who called police as an advocate for McKinney, and tells officers to “run off the transients that are sleeping on the front porch at this location.” He calls the One Love service recipients, “the worst of the worst.”

Pirtle also addressed the controversy surrounding his direct involvement against One Love in the May 23 meeting, saying, “I still stand behind what I said on that tape” and restated his belief that One Love clients were “the worst of the worst.”

Is this a respectful way for public officials to discuss their constituents?

Arrested for Existing

Clashes with local officials extend beyond debate in city council meetings, and evidence suggests that local police have devoted an unusual amount of resources to harassing One Love service recipients. Amanda says this is particularly problematic as the people her organization has served lack any other option.

“One of the persons who got up and spoke [at the May meeting] was sleeping on my porch because she was not eligible to stay at a local shelter because she had active cancer and had a colostomy bag” Amanda shared, “they could not take her because she was too much of a liability to allow her to sleep there.”

The data also seems to back up Amanda’s complaint of a targeted campaign and escalated punitive measures.

According to police records compiled by nonprofit You Are The Power, between February 23, 2024, and May 24, 2024, Longview police officers arrested One Love clients 80 times. Their crimes included Biking on the Sidewalk, Walking on the Wrong Side of the Road, Walking Against Traffic, Failure to Use a Crosswalk, Camping/Sleeping, Jaywalking, and Riding a Bicycle on the Wrong Side of the Road.

Most recently, on February 9, 2025, Sergeant Chip Koepke of the Longview police pepper sprayed and arrested a service recipient on One Love’s property. The use of force happened just 20 seconds after Koepke pulled into the One Love parking lot. According to the linked facebook post, official records regarding when the use of force occurred were incorrectly documented, no deescalation tactics were used, and the documents that have been made available via FOIA request are heavily redacted.

Sgt. Koepke resigned from the Longview Police Department just a few days later. He appears to be eligible to receive his full pension at taxpayer expense.

Without a home

The campaign against One Love has been successful, insofar as undermining a local service, shifting the service costs to an involuntary model, and harassing homeless people can be considered a success.

As city officials continued to pressure One Love employees and service recipients, allegations of a multi-faceted retaliation campaign have also surfaced.

In one case, Lesha Kidd-Brooks, who had served as Longview’s health manager for 12 years, was forced to resign after issuing One Love a food permit. Though city officials say the resignation followed “communication with both her supervisors and her staff,” about her choice to issue the food permit, Kidd-Brooks disputes this being the truth. In an interview with Respect America, Amanda also noted that Kidd-Brooks was offered resignation or termination shortly after granting One Love a food permit, and that their food permit was revoked on the same day Kidd-Brooks was forced to resign.

In a separate incident, Amanda says a local real estate agent did a collection of items to support One Love and then received threatening calls to “stay away and not support [One Love]” She says this has happened to other donors as well, leading some to withdraw public or financial support.

One Love does not take state or federal grant money both because it is money taken from others involuntarily, and because government money has strings attached that would limit their ability to provide compassionate care and needed resources.

“I think it's such a tragedy that we could pretend that our government wants to do the right thing,” she says, “They give you money, and it's not really giving you money, it's this trade off of: we give you this money, and then we get to tell you how you can help people, and that I cannot wrap my brain around. You don't get to tell people how they can help other people. You’re not there! That is all a problem.”

All of this, the permit barriers, police interference, and barrage of legal action, amounts to an opportunity for government officials to impose new costs on the Longview community.

At the May meeting, Council members and the mayor pledged taxpayer revenue to create a new program doing the same work One Love had been doing since opening, shifting the source of help from a voluntary organization to a new involuntary cost center.

“I have no intention of stopping any of our nonprofits from servicing our homeless population,” Mayor Ishihara stated before asking for a motion on Action Item A.

The ban passed, 4-2, and One Love was legally prohibited from providing services to Longview’s homeless population.

Instead, Councilman Steve “worst of the worst” Pirtle will have a role in deciding what help these people receive.

Financial woes have since forced One Love to give up their McCann Road rental property. As Amanda and her team have been packing up the space, preparing to instead offer decentralized services in partnership with various churches, they have maintained their commitment to helping the homeless population that relies on One Love by intentionally violating city ordinances and undertaking a peaceful act of civil disobedience:

“The city still doesn't have an overnight warming center for the folks who are not eligible at the shelters.” She says, “We are now packing up one side of our building and have opened the other side back up. What are we supposed to do, leave humans sitting outside freezing because we need to pack? I could not wrap my mind around doing that.”

This testimonial was originally published with Respect America

The Doctor is in

If something doesn't change, Heather Lewis is facing fines or jail time. Her crime, according to California State Officials, is continuing to go by Doctor Heather Lewis in the three clinics where she serves patients.

Heather is, in fact, a Doctor. She graduated from Aspen University with a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree and earned that title at the culmination of more than 15 years of education. She holds an associate degree, bachelor's degree, and two master's degrees as well.

California Officials, however, say that being a Doctor is not enough to use the title. According to the state’s Medical Practice Act, it is a crime for any healthcare professional, other than licensed physicians or surgeons, to call themselves “doctor” or “Dr.” on signs, business cards, letterhead, or in ads. Anyone caught violating this prohibition faces fines and loss of license.

Despite the risk, Heather is upbeat as she describes her predicament: “If I'm arrested, please come get me. While I look good in orange, I don't want to wear it forever,” she says.

Her legal team at the Pacific Legal Foundation lays out the reason why Heather’s situation needs court intervention: “The government cannot hijack a commonly used word and reserve it for a narrow range of preferred jobs. Nor can the state police the use of truthful language to limit career opportunities.”

Should Heather have to correct each patient who calls her Doctor Heather? Should she be required to make her accomplishments lesser to appease California lawmakers? Should policymakers have the power to threaten and punish Doctors of Nursing Practice for truthfully stating their degrees and accolades? 

Of course not.

Heather’s degrees took a long time to earn, and she isn’t giving up her title without a fight.

Earning it

Doctor Lewis is the first person in her family to have a college degree, and in her own life the odds at one time seemed stacked against her rise into the highest degrees of nursing. “I come from a background where my grandmother was pregnant at 16, my mother was pregnant at 16. I had my first baby at 16, too,” Heather told Respect America in an interview.

It was not until after becoming a parent that Heather started her higher education journey and, as she puts it “I went, ah! there's this whole other life out here that I didn't even know about!”

Between 1993 and 2002, Heather dedicated herself to both her education and her other responsibilities. “I went nights, I took one class at a time, and then once I got into it full time, I switched to working weekends only so I could attend nursing school all day.”

Never one to slack, and with her kids a few years older, she then took on a more advanced challenge: 

“Then I thought, well, heck, now I'm into my 40’s, maybe I should start working on something for retirement. So I went back and I got my master's degree in nursing education, thinking, okay, when I can't nurse anymore, I'll have a backup plan. I'll teach.”

For her, losing the title of doctor is a slap in the face, both because of her own journey and the message it sends to young people who overcome trying circumstances.

“I did it. I made all of my accomplishments. I didn't do it by 50 like I wanted to, but shortly thereafter, and I think it sets a precedent for my kids and for others that grew up like me.”

Working with at-risk youths and low-income families, Heather believes her Doctoral achievement is key to inspiring others, “I go, let me tell you my story. I was a 16-year-old mom, you can do it. It's slow and tedious, but you can do it.”

California officials, however, are trying to put an end to that inspiring narrative. Despite the use of the title Doctor not hurting patients in any way, California officials are using taxpayer time and dollars to manufacture a new class of criminal.

If Heather continues to use her earned title, she will first be fined. If she continues refusing to cooperate, the California Medical Practice Act will be enforced by an arms-bearing agent who will forcibly take her to prison.

Is that a reasonable consequence for someone truthfully using a title that they earned?

Realignment

While putting in full-time hours across three clinics, Doctor Lewis, along with two others, is embroiled in a lawsuit against the Medical Board of California, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office, and the Board of Registered Nursing to push back against the bureaucrats seeking to define and limit their use of language. 

Sarah Erny, another individual bringing a lawsuit to protect her ability to use the title “Doctor,” has already been fined $19,750 and left California in the rearview as a result, instead having to continue her practice in Washington.

Heather, however, is staying put in California and says there is much work to be done that is well worth her time and energy.

“It's not like we could just pack up,” she says, “I mean, I guess we could, but it wouldn't be fun... even in the California Association of Nurse Practitioners, we're still chipping away at full practice authority.”

In other words, Heather is working to hold space for nurses present and future so the industry can be less bogged down with administrative interference, and focus on the job of helping people. “The California Medical Board is trying to make an example of NP's to put us in our place no matter what we've done to help our patients.” she says, “‘Doctor’ does not harm our patients.”

Punishing Heather with fines or jail would only serve to exacerbate the state's medical services shortage. According to the American Hospital Association, “Almost a quarter of California's nearly 40 million residents live in areas that lack sufficient primary care providers, and the state needs to add 500,000 new professionals to ensure their access to care.”

Heather is standing up against a behemoth. The Medical Board of California has a budget of more than $70 million, 71% of which (>$41 million) is spent on Enforcement Operations and Legal & Hearing Services.

Still, Heather is particularly optimistic that there is a broad coalition standing behind her. This lawsuit can fix the title problem for not just DNP degrees, but also dentists, veterinarians, and educators who the Medical Practice Act also impacts. 

“You have to fight or we're never going to get anywhere.” Heather says, “It's about each little thing that we chip away at in the system to make it better in the long run”

Preventative Measures

Doctor Jacqueline Palmer is not excited to be involved in a lawsuit.

“It’s not comfortable. I’m not gung ho, let's do this,” she says, “As much as I’d love to be, that's not the reality of it.”

Frankly, there are better things she would rather be doing. But, like several others who have earned a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, Palmer is bringing a lawsuit because she is afraid she will be punished for truthfully identifying as “Doctor Palmer.” 

Her legal action is a necessity to protect her reputation, her livelihood, and the nursing profession generally from unwelcome intrusion.

That intrusion comes at the hands of California state officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, the President of the Medical Board of California Kristina Lawson, and the Executive Officer of the California Board of Registered Nursing Loretta Melby. 

Each of these individuals is acting to enforce the California Medical Practice Act and its strict limitation on who gets to use the title “Doctor.”

Doctor Palmer's attorneys at the Pacific Legal Foundation are helping her make the claim that “The government cannot appropriate a commonly used title and reserve it for a narrow range of preferred, well-connected jobs.” In short: the law currently only allows that title for physicians and surgeons.

Palmer laughs at the idea that government officials are protecting citizens from fraud, or that some DNPs are playing doctor to patients detriment. “I think there's confusion that we want to be seen as physicians. Absolutely not,” she says, “If I wanted to be seen as a physician I would have went to school to become a physician. I wanted to be a nurse. I love that first.”

As Doctor Palmer fights against the multi-billion dollar tax-funded machine of California law, she stands to be punished for rightfully laying claim to one of the highest accolades in the nursing profession.

In the words of Albert Einstein: “Bureaucracy is the death of any achievement.”

Professional

Since learning about California’s prohibition for DNPs, Palmer stopped signing her name as “Dr. Palmer, FNP,” has asked others in her clinic to not refer to her as a Doctor, and has hung up her clinician's jacket which bears her title, embroidered, on the breast. 

These are measures she has taken out of fear of being punished.

“I’m trying to think of a nice, professional way to say this,” said Palmer when asked why she believes California officials are so insistent on regulating the use of language, “I don’t know. Not when you have other medical or nonmedical professionals who use the term doctor and it's not an issue. They would have to answer that question because they're the ones fighting it, not me.”

“It's disheartening to be honest,” she continues, “You have people who are honorary doctors, who have contributed nothing to the medical field, who could not diagnose and treat if their life depended on it - and they are allowed to be called doctors, and we’re not… it's degrading.”

The three officials who are being sued are following orders from the state’s legislature and - on the taxpayer dime -  have sought to dismiss the case against them, arguing that Palmer and others lack standing, that the case is not ripe, and that they do not state a claim.

US District Judge Jesus G. Bernal, however, did not find that argument compelling. In a September 2023 court order, Bernal recognized that Palmer “has a ‘concrete plan’ to violate the law because she was violating the law and can readily resume doing so.” He denied the motion to dismiss Palmer’s case, allowing her lawsuit to continue.

Bonta, Lawson, and Melby may be “just doing their jobs,” but Agency Delegation is no excuse for coercive action, and Palmer believes these individuals are improperly treating her patients like they are incapable of distinguishing between a nurse and a doctor.

“I think our patients are intelligent enough to know the difference between a physician and a nurse practitioner. The DNP has nothing to do with either one.”

A space of her own

Doctor Palmer isn’t sitting around waiting for this legal matter to be resolved before taking the next steps to advance her career and continue serving patients. When she spoke with Respect America, she had recently quit her hospital network job and was working on starting her own practice.

“I know it's something that my patients need, and I feel like I can offer them more in an independent setting than working for somebody else.” she says.

Even once she has her own clinic up and running, California officials will be breathing down her neck, perhaps ready to levy a fine similar to the almost $20,000 they took from Sara Earny, another nurse with a DNP who used the title of Doctor. While she continues to provide compassionate care, Palmer is even legally obligated to dismiss her own accomplishments if a patient uses the title she earned.

“It’s shameful. You feel like it's a stab to the heart. I’ll tell patients ‘You cannot call me that in the state of California, that’s illegal’, and they’re like, ‘I don't care, you're my doctor.’”

The dynamic created by the prohibitive law and threat against her is a drag on her otherwise cheery disposition. 

“It now makes it uncomfortable to be called that. It no longer feels like a badge of honor for my hard work. It feels like I’m doing something wrong.”

Lawmakers have no business putting this burden on Doctor Palmer, or anyone else.

As the legal process continues its slow roll, Palmer describes herself as “hoping for the best.” In the meantime, she is firm in her belief that government officials should not be in the business of restricting truthful speech.

 “‘Doctor’ does not belong to physicians... It's so much more than just a title. It's getting the respect that we deserve and we've earned rightfully.”

This testimonial was first published on RespectAmerica.org

When Matthew Hernandez brought his daughter to the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta to have her leg looked at, he never imagined that the visit would result in his family being splintered.

Matthew, his wife Wilairat, and their two kids, Emma and Arya, had gone to the hospital at their pediatrician’s recommendation to get a closer look at Emma’s leg, which couldn’t be diagnosed without an x-ray. Later that day the hospital called police and the Georgia Department of Children and Families (DFCS), alleging parental abuse.

Matthew and Wilairat allege that police who arrived interrogated Wilairat without reading her rights or providing a needed interpreter, then removed both of Matthew’s children and forbade him and his wife from seeing each other until an allegation of child abuse could be sorted out. Matthew says doctors “decided what the story was and ran with it,” and denies that any abuse occurred.

When he spoke with Respect America, more than two years after the hospital visit, Emma and Arya were still not home, and the allegations of DFCS bungling the situation had continued to pile up.

Matthew says that state officials have lied, abused their power, made outlandish legal arguments, and acted against the best interest of these young children - and that the battle has cost his family the chance at a secure financial future.

Mandated reporters, abuses of power

In Georgia, certain professions are required to make a report if they have “reasonable cause to believe that suspected child abuse has occurred.” These professions include physicians, hospital or medical personnel, dentists, podiatrists, and teachers, among others.

Matthew says doctors have pressure put on them “to protect their medical license,” but that it also leads to over reporting and, subsequently, intense scrutiny of families from state officials with every incentive to find wrongdoing.

Though mandated reporting is a process created with the best of intentions, involving state officials is far from a guarantee of safety. Department of Children and Families employees in states across the country have been found to have neglected, exploited, raped, lost, and trafficked the children they were charged with protecting, among many other abuses.

Georgia DFCS officials appear to be willing to use force to protect their monopoly and cash flow, even going so far as to punish those who step out of line. In the fact-checking process, Respect America also spoke with Jennifer Williams, one of the temporary foster parents for Arya and Emma. Shortly after testifying to her belief that Arya and Emma were not abused, DFCS revoked her foster care license of 13 years in what she described as an act of retaliation.

Aside from Jennifer’s testimony in October, Matthew describes June to December of 2023 as having few rays of hope. He learned that the breastmilk Wilairat had been diligently pumping and providing to state officials never made it to his youngest daughter. Without parental consent, Arya was switched to a manufactured formula, and the breastmilk had presumably been dumped down the drain. He was angry and powerless. “It’s all blurred into one big depressing moment,” Matthew says.

On top of their continued persecution of the Hernandez family, state officials aren’t meeting their obligations. Matthew and his attorney keep waiting for a DFCS case plan to offer some transparency, which is supposed to be delivered within 30 days. Matthew says it didn’t materialize for more than seven months after the children were taken from him, further contributing to his stress during this time.

The one bright spot is the four hours a week Matthew is allowed to spend with his daughters. A mere 2% of his increasingly complicated and expensive life.

By the end of 2023, Matthew was running out of money, having racked up $100,000 in out-of-pocket costs and credit card debt fighting to reunite with his wife and kids. Bail, criminal and family court attorneys, medical experts, and the continued cost of living were piling up.

The dreams the Hernandez family was working toward before the hospital visit have been relegated to a distant dream. “Our goal, before all this happened, was to save money to get a house in a good school district,” Matthew says, “that’s impossible for us now. We’ll never own a house in this country.”

Cash Court

Throughout this separation, the slow wheels of justice begin to turn. Winning feels impossible. Matthew struggles with anxiety and depression as he paces around the wood-paneled house filled with unused children’s toys and his wife’s belongings. In the Georgia heat, he sweats, cries, and sits in long periods of silence, contemplating whether justice is being served.

The state attorneys and DFCS have a clear and stated goal: they have moved Emma and Arya from a series of temporary foster families to a “foster to adopt” home where state officials hope to permanently separate Matthew and his wife from their children. The girls have multiple relatives who have volunteered to open their homes in Chicago and Myrtle Beach, but Matthew says DFCS told Matthew an Interstate Compact on Placement of Children (ICPC) wasn’t possible.

“They tried to terminate our parental rights twice… they just said, ‘we’re not going to do a damn thing to reach out to these families, we’re going to put [the kids] in a foster to adopt family right now… its insanity, and it continues.”

Georgia juvenile court suffers from an evidentiary structural problem that contributed to Matthew’s uphill battle. According to State Code 15-11-210 (2020) “The court may consider any evidence, including hearsay evidence, that the court finds to be relevant, reliable, and necessary to determine the needs of a child adjudicated as a dependent child and the most appropriate disposition.”

In other words, the taxpayer-funded DFCS staff, legal officials, and advocates against reunification are given a wide berth to use evidence that would be inadmissible in most other courtrooms. “Because hearsay is allowed in juvenile court, it's very frustrating that they abuse the fact that they can say things without having evidence, and it's allowed,” Matthew says.

Though beyond the scope of this article, there are also open questions about the financial incentives for doctors, judges, Guardians ad Litem (GALs), and Georgia, in the form of federal money and payouts, to create and prolong cases. According to Ryan Ralston, the Southeast Regional Organizer for You Are the Power, a nonprofit group working to help reunite the Hernandez family, Georgia received $150 million in federal funding related to adoption services in 2023.

Matthew says the nature of the system should be questioned, as agency has been improperly delegated with ruinous results: “It was surreal and very scary, and ridiculous…all I could think about was, what state is this? What country is this that you have two parents with no criminal history at all who bring their child to the hospital on their own, just to be treated like monsters?”

The Next Chapter

Amid the stress and uncertainty, though, something positive happens. There is a small break in the barrier that has been constructed between Matthew and his family by errant doctors, law enforcement officials just following orders, and a cumbersome judicial system.

“The first breath of fresh air we really got was when the juvenile judge denied the non-reunification plan,” Matthew says, “basically, she had heard so much testimony about the strong bond I have with my daughter Arya that she couldn’t do it [continue with DFCS’s foster to adopt plan].”

In other words, a clearer path to reunification started to emerge, with real concrete steps to success. Then, in April 2024, Matthew and his wife were reunited, ending 10 months of separation and allowing them to launch a united front against the DFCS custody of their children.

“It was great to know we were at least going to get the chance to fight to get our girls back.” Matthew says, “If DFCS had their way, they weren’t even going to get us that opportunity.”

Though there are still unresolved legal matters to handle, not the least of which are the criminal allegations of abuse, the process of bringing the family back together has begun. “We don’t really have a timeline.” Matthew says, “We don’t know when this whole nightmare ends, to be honest.”

Now on a path toward reunification, Matthew has an eye toward making sure his is one of the last stories of its kind. He believes that Child Protective Services needs to exist in some form to catch the “monsters out there,” but wants to see hospitals and other mandated reporters exercise caution: “We hope to raise awareness.” he says, “We hope these hospitals realize that when parents come in with children, you should do your jobs, run the actual tests, do your due diligence before you rip apart a happy family.”

For now, Matthew’s most important step is the next one. When he spoke with Respect America, he and his wife were just hours removed from the court ruling that got Emma and Arya out of foster care. “Today is a big win for us, because DFCS has closed their case, and the girls are going to go back with their aunt and uncle.”

His house is only half full, and that is the way Matthew is viewing life's proverbial glass. As the interview concludes, Matthew looks at the camera and despite the sweat, the evident stress, and the acknowledgment of a long road ahead - his voice has an upbeat energy as he considers the load that has been lifted from their shoulders, “For the first time in a long time,” he says, “we can get some sleep.”

This testimonial was first published on RespectAmerica.org

Jonny be good

Jonny McCoy is a good friend. 

That’s why, in October 2009, when he got a late-night call from a lawyer buddy asking to be picked up at a bar - Jonny got out of bed, got dressed, and made the drive from his home to downtown bar Red Hot Tomatoes in Columbia, South Carolina. At the time, he was an insurance lawyer, a patriot, and by all measures an upstanding citizen with a sense of duty to his community. Having come from a home where conflict was the norm, he knew the value of stability. A little drive to help a friend was par for the course in Jonny’s life, and he was happy to help.

As Jonny stepped out of the bar after making sure his friend's tab was settled, he saw that in those few minutes, his inebriated friend had dug himself a deeper hole. Jonny didn't know why, but his friend was in the process of being arrested on the sidewalk. “I saw three police officers taking him to the ground… I could hear him suffering. I wasn't entirely sure what my friend had done wrong,” Jonny says, “but as an attorney, I knew he needed my help.”

Again willing to step in and offer support, Jonny approached and asked arresting officers John K. Passmore, James Heywood, and Amanda H. Long to which precinct they would be taking his friend. “Boy,” Jonny says, “they didn’t like that. The look on their face wasn't concern… they were pissed that I said I was an attorney and I was questioning them.” 

The security camera footage shows less than 20 seconds between Jonny approaching police, with his hands up, and when, in response to his single question, officers put Jonny in handcuffs on the charge of interfering with an arrest, and took him to jail.

The next two days would fundamentally alter the trajectory of his life.

Wrongly Caged

"The police officers didn't turn in my paperwork,” Jonny says, “so I was shifted to a general holding cell in general population."

For two days, Jonny sat in jail and questioned his long-held belief in the justice system. “I thought the world made sense… I trusted the government and I respected the police.” he says, “I believed that as long as I followed the law and did the right thing, nothing too bad could ever happen to me.”

Yet there he sat. Court proceedings would later vindicate him - but he was caged nonetheless.

His incarceration ran afoul of the code he had sworn to uphold as an attorney. “I never broke the law, and eventually video evidence proved that in court, it clearly contradicted what the police wrote in the report about the incident, but they stuck to the false story anyway.”

The officer's behavior didn’t add up when compared to Jonny’s worldview, but he was starting to see that wearing a badge meant some people were getting a pass to do horrible things.

“We know that coercion is wrong, and anything that's wrong for ordinary citizens to do to each other, like kidnapping someone for asking a question, is just as wrong when the police do it. Yet we let it happen all the time.”

On his second night in jail, while Jonny was struggling to make sense of his situation, he was subjected to an even greater horror. Locked in close proximity, Jonny was forced to bear witness as another inmate, a man named Olin Taylor, hung himself, committing suicide right in front of him.

“It was hours that this dude lay in front of our cell. Hours.” Jonny says, visibly emotional, “I don't know how to explain it, really, but when you are restrained in a cinderblock room and the only window is pointing to a dead guy who took his life… I started banging my head against the wall… I lost it. That was it. That was the end of the person I was before.”

Though the city would eventually settle with Jonny over his wrongful arrest, there was a greater price to pay. He had mental struggles he kept quiet, worried it would get in the way of his career; “I was afraid that the BAR would find out. I was afraid my clients would find out. So I kept it in until I attempted suicide.”

That rock bottom was the result of PTSD, drug use, and anxiety that pushed him to a breaking point. "I've come to terms with the fact that it was an attempted suicide, but in reality, I really just wanted to go to sleep forever," he said. "I just didn't want to feel any pain any more."

Even now, with a vastly improved mindset in the years since attempting to take his life in 2018, the impact of those 48 hours is part of his daily life.

“I can't find peace, and I'm constantly afraid. I'm even scared to drive a car, panicked that I'll be pulled over and abducted again. It's exhausting.”

The arresting officers, meanwhile, seem to have faced no accountability. Jonny remembers that “I was exonerated, but I never got an apology, and those responsible were never punished.” City officials went to bat for these officers, even after they caused prosecutors to drop their case against McCoy by refusing to testify and said they would simply invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Their police incident report accused McCoy of grabbing an officer and getting in their faces, a claim easily disproven by the video of the event. Local news station WACH Fox 57 reported that “Nearly a year after the State Law Enforcement Division announced an investigation into the City of Columbia Police Department over allegations of officer misconduct (during the McCoy case), SLED and the FBI both tell WACH Fox News there is no record that an investigation ever took place.”

According to information obtained via Freedom of Information Act request, Passmore separated from the department in 2011, Heywood in 2017, and Long (now Branham) left in 2015 as a Sergeant. Request for salary and pension information was not provided by the city of Columbia in time for publication, but Elizabeth Williams from the Office of the City Attorney wrote, “I only noticed one (1) record indicating a Sustained policy violation, which was for Passmore from 2007,” indicating that none of these officers were reprimanded for their actions in 2009 and there is no reason to believe they are not receiving or eligible for taxpayer funded pensions.

So, what can be done differently in the justice system?

“When you have an unregulated group of individuals who know there are no consequences and that they can always inflict more pain on you physically or emotionally than you could on them it makes it so it's not about being bad apples.” Jonny says, “It's about the fact that we only hire f*****g apples and we don’t allow other kinds of fruit into the basket. What that means is these police officers are all government employees. They all go through the same training course, the same preparation, and then they are sent out. Something is amiss here with the preparation, with the education, with the plight of a person becoming a police officer. Something is amiss.”

White Flag

Jonny McCoy is still a good friend. In the aftermath of injustice, lies, and bearing witness to hardship, Jonny has emerged with a new view on life and a mission to improve his community that starts with Human Respect.

He explains Human Respect by saying:, “I don't necessarily mean we're kind to each other. We might be, but more importantly, we recognize that hurting each other would reduce our mutual happiness, harmony and prosperity.”

This naturally occurring Principle is one of the cornerstones of Jonny’s current career as the Founder and CEO of WhiteFlag, an anonymous peer-to-peer mental health support app.

“I found a new calling helping people who have suffered from injustice and corruption like I have. What I'm doing now can't change what happened to me or take away my anxiety, but I'm hopeful that it can prevent someone else from experiencing the same things in the future.”

Despite building a growing community of support, Jonny admits he is “a totally different person than the man he used to be.” The impact of his experience still raises questions as he sees the same bad behaviors from police officers and so-called public servants exercising improper Agency Delegation.

“We all know that a badge is not a free pass for immorality, and I think most police officers know it too. Even the individuals who unlawfully arrested me probably practice Human Respect when they're not in uniform, just like the rest of us. I hope that by sharing my story with you, we can get everyone to adopt a Human Respect mentality in all areas of their lives”

In the evening of Monday December 23, 2024, a man named Hobert Buttery was arrested in Kentucky, and confessed to stealing a “little baseboard heater” and a Stihl weed eater from a property belonging to Laurel County Judge Executive David Westerfield.

Buttery allegedly told the police officers that he had pawned the space heater, but they could find the Stihl weed eater at a house on Vanzant road, in the town of Lily.

In response, a warrant was issued, and just a few hours after Buttery’s 7:34 PM arrest, an armed group of at least five London Kentucky police officers went to recover the stolen property.

“They went to the wrong address,” says Buttrey.

Footage from a neighbor’s security camera shows that at 11:50:24 PM officers surrounded a house at 511 Vanzant Road and declared themselves as police. At 11:51:32 PM, five shots rang out and an innocent man in his early sixties named Douglass Harless was shot and killed in his home.

Buttrey reportedly formerly lived at 515 Vanzant, but says he never gave the police a house number. “The way they done it, everything’s wrong.” says Buttrey, “They didn’t have any reason to go to that man's house.”

Though officers did not have body cameras, review of released audio discussion between officers on the scene and Dispatch shows they state “489 Vanzant Road” at least five times while they stood on Harless’s property, 250 yards away from their intended target, at house number 511. The numbers were prominently displayed on the same porch from which the yet unnamed officer shot and killed Harless.

In a release posted to Facebook, London police say that Harless “produced a firearm and pointed it at officers,” but that coverall statement kind of misses the point.

Upon having your front door assaulted by strangers, would you not seek to protect yourself or your family? Similar to the case of Bryan Malinowski, the officers killed the home's occupant less than a minute after making their presence known, and did not attempt any peaceful communication.

In this case, a phone call or other peaceful outreach would have clarified the incorrect address and given Harless a chance to respond.

Through footage caught by the neighbors security camera, we are able to see officers approaching the house and hear the five shots. Instead of immediately reporting to dispatch that shots were fired, when matching the video timestamps with the timestamps of the Dispatch audio, we see that the officers held a brief conference in the driveway before calling in.

According to Buttery, the aggressive response and the killing should not have unfolded as it did. “It never would’ve come to that if it wasn’t whose stuff it was,” he told the local news station, WKYT, in an interview while in prison.

While courts have ruled (repeatedly) that police officers have no obligation to protect you, the Blue Wall of Silence is one way of expressing the insular protective culture Buttery is alleging led to this killing.

This sentiment is echoed by civil rights attorney John H. Bryon who called attention to the driveway conference in a video analysis. “Then after the shooting, the officers apparently have not called it in.” he says as the footage plays, “They instead, sort of, regroup and they have this, sort of, huddle in this poor guys yard, as if to get their facts straight before they even call dispatch.”

Further supporting the idea that swift and careless action was taken because of Westerfield’s involvement, Evidence has come to light showing the relationship between law enforcement officers and the Judge Executive appears to be cozy.

In a leaked phone call between an Officer Hale and David Westerfield that appears to have happened after the killing, on December 24, the Laurel County Judge Executive directs police officers to go to his property to recover additional lawn equipment that belongs to his nephew. He also instructs Officer Hale to remove a homeless individual allegedly living on his property there. If they don’t, Westerfield says he will take matters into his own hands, which he does not want to do because he “…might do something unethical.”

Instead of challenging the threat against the citizens he has sworn to protect and serve, Officer Hale responds: “I know one thing, I’ll take care of you.”

While the truth of Buttery’s allegation and Bryon’s analysis is yet to be fully realized, the raid and killing were certainly shoddy and aggressive police work, and a clear example of disregard for Human Respect. Officers are not granted special leave to initiate violence, even to protect the interests of fellow law enforcement officials or, in this case, their family members.

As stated under “Values” on the homepage of the London, Kentucky Police Department website: “The London City Police Department will always treat everyone with the utmost respect and will make every effort to preserve the dignity of all members of society.”

They are falling short of those ideals.

As of publication, police have still not released the warrant or said what address was on it.

TOWN CRIER

The London City and Kentucky State Police have not fulfilled Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) requests for the search warrant or other missing information made by Respect America and other outlets. These documents would hopefully lead to clarity on three points:

1. Who signed the warrant?
   
   This may clarify how the chain of command authorized the raid and help dismiss or confirm allegations of overzealous police activity as it relates to the involvement of Mr. Westerfield.

2. How did officers end up at 511 Vanzant, and why were they looking for 489 Vanzant in the first place? Where did the address information go bad, and by whose hand?
   
   Some news outlets have reported that the addresses may be incorrectly labeled in the county Dispatch mapping system.
   

3. What happened on the porch and within the house during those few seconds leading up to Harless’s death?

These are just three of the many questions being asked by local residents, with little in the way of answers thus far. London Mayor Randall Weddle said that he is not releasing information, a request made by the Kentucky State Police (KSP) as they conduct an investigation.

That isn’t a good enough answer for anyone. Local reporters and members of the community have protested, held a “March for Justice,” and attempted to get answers from city council members. On January 6, 2025, a city council meeting saw more than an hour of questions and comments from the public in attendance.

“I want to speak to everyone here…” one resident said, “[Harless] gets a knock on the door and then just gets shot. If that were you, would you get up with a gun? Yeah. So every one of us would get shot, right? And by city police that have no business in the county.”

Local officials appear clueless, with Fox56 reporting locally that the city council members learned about the event along with the public and had to file their own FOIA requests (which were also unsuccessful). “All I can say is we found out by either Facebook or the news, and we should have found out differently than that,” Justin Young, a city council member, said.

Some members of the city council even shared with WYMT News that they were not even aware that London police officers had stopped using body-worn cameras. That policy went into effect in March 2023, at the direction of London Police Chief Chuck Johnson who cited broken cameras, the acquisition of their provider rendering the technology obsolete, and a $30,000 price tag to replace them.

Although there were no body cameras, that does not mean the only footage of the December 23 event is the neighbors security footage. According to the Lexington Herald Leader, the Kentucky State Police also recovered a light bulb security camera from Harless’s front porch. They report that, “Official records say the camera was functioning and believed to have captured interactions between Harless and the officers.”

We can expect more information, but that does little for the deceased and may offer little comfort to the living.

Accountability for police officers who engage in heinous acts is hard to come by. Accountability for errant judges is even more rare. The still unidentified officer who shot Douglass Harless is on administrative leave and the identity of the warrant signing judge is still under wraps. While Mr. Harless is laid to rest by his surviving daughter and grandson, members of the London community, among others, are left with little information.

“How did it lead to this? I know that's what everybody else is asking too.” Buttrey said, handcuffs jangling in front of the camera while being interviewed by WDRB news, “It should have never led to this. A stolen weed eater should not lead up to a man being killed. I don't care where you're at or what's going on. That shouldn't happen.”

This testimonial was originally published on www.RespectAmerica.org

John and Johnny

John Wilson is proud of his son’s accomplishments, and there is a lot to be proud of.

A gifted swimmer, Johnny Wilson became the youngest person to swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco at age nine. His swimming career soon expanded into water polo where he started on the 2012 Stanford club team and won first place in the National Junior Olympics, Classic Division. He was also selected for the US Olympic Development Program – twice. On top of that, he graduated high school with a 3.8 weighted GPA and scored in the 93rd percentile on the ACT.

John had a big smile on his face as he talked about Johnny in an interview with Respect America: “My son was gifted. His swim time in high school was better than Johnny Weissmuller’s gold medal time in the Olympics. He was great in the water, and he worked hard. He studied hard, too, and volunteered, and had jobs.  He worked his tail off. We never even dreamed of cheating on anything. He earned everything.”

So, in 2019, when he was arrested by FBI agents while getting off a plane in Houston, John Wilson, a proud dad and rags-to-riches success story, thought it was a case of mistaken identity.

Agents told John he was under arrest for “honest services fraud,” a phrase neither he nor the arresting FBI agents could define at the time, and put in federal prison where the nature of his charges was finally made clear. The Wilson family had been swept up in what would become known as the Varsity Blues Scandal. Despite Johnny’s exceptional athletic and academic record, Wilson stood accused of bribery, conspiracy, and fraud via donations to get their kids into the University of Southern California, Harvard, and Stanford universities.

“Perhaps the most frightening part of this story is the fact that the [prosecutors representing the] government had overwhelming evidence from day one that I was innocent the entire time.” John says, “What they didn’t count on was me fighting back, and there was no way in hell I would ever confess to crimes I didn’t commit.”

Home Court Advantage

The past five years since John’s arrest have not been easy for the Wilson family, in large part because of their unique role in getting a favorable venue for prosecutors. John was the only Massachusetts resident included in the Varsity Blues sweep-up, so, John says, “the Boston prosecutors knew there would be media attention for this high profile case and they wanted that for their own careers. After they falsely charged me, they tacked on 180 years of potential prison time, four times more than anyone else, all to try to get me to plead guilty.”

Quote from Verrill attorney David G. Lazarus: https://www.law360.com/articles/1510869

John alleges Boston prosecutors “used me for venue” and that this is a practice that has spanned three cycles of leadership in the Boston Attorney General’s office. He says the prosecutors were “ruthless in terms of the day-to-day things” and John expressed frustration about some of the tactics during the proceedings, including sharing non-case-related emails with the legal community, which included swimsuit-clad pictures of his then teenage daughters from a family vacation.

“It’s not only perverted, it’s creepy.” John says, “All that just to put pressure on us?” 

Despite the pressure, however, John refused to take a plea deal, and that alone is no small feat.

Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions in the United States, and there is a question of whether this runs afoul of the 6th Amendment, which guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial.

In John’s case, he says he had the three things you need to overcome this kind of pressure: “I had the financial resources, the support group around me, my friends and family, and the grit from my upbringing. I’m a fighter.”

John says his fortunate circumstances made the difference but takes issue with the practice of plea bargain pressure generally. Most people can’t afford to spend the $10 million he did to mount a legal defense, so many give government prosecutors easy “wins” by taking a plea.

When plea bargain pressure tactics failed, John says that prosecutors had to go with their backup plan. “When they realized it would have to go to trial, they were able to handpick a judge.”

“Judge shopping,” like plea bargaining, is a relatively common practice that makes headlines, such as in the Varsity Blues saga, with accusations coming from both parents and prosecutors. In John’s situation, the various Varsity Blues cases were spread across a number of judges, but prosecutors were then able to amend the docket to consolidate the cases under a single conspiracy, landing the case in front of “their preferred, highly supportive judge.”

This result, John argues, was an unfair trial. “That judge just overruled all of my evidence during the trial. It was insane. My lawyers had never seen anything like that. When a prosecutor gets to pick their own judge, like they did here, they basically have no check and balance. They have absolute power. So they can run off the rails.”

The case centered on academic and athletic ability, but “the prosecutors improperly blocked my daughters’ actual ACT scores, my son’s world record, and his certified swim times from being shown to the jury,” John says. “The judge ruled in [prosecutors] favor 98.3% of the time. They blocked my evidence 660 times in a three-week trial.”

The chicanery that took place throughout John Wilson’s legal proceedings inspired not only a Wall Street Journal op-ed from the renowned attorney and co-Founder of FIRE Harvey Silverglate but also an amicus (friend of the court) brief cosigned by eleven former United States Attorneys that read, in part: “JOHN WILSON DID NOT RECEIVE A FAIR TRIAL.”

Picking up the pieces

All but one of his convictions were overturned by the Appeals Court, leaving just “a residual tax conviction for deducting my donations to USC in 2014,” John says, “even though I overpaid my taxes that year by more than the disputed donation amount, which ultimately resulted in a fine and probation.”

The impact continues to this day.

“It’s been hell, especially for my kids. I want to correct the record for my children. I want the world to know my children were innocent, they were highly qualified on their own merit, and I will spend every last breath defending that. As a father, I want to stand up for their honor, their reputations, and their futures. What was done to me and my family should never happen to anyone.”

He wants to see changes to how high-profile cases are reviewed (independently and with a higher degree of scrutiny) but believes there is a deeper rot as the result of perverse incentives for prosecutors: “Instead of seeking the truth—whether it led them to my guilt or innocence—and doing the honorable thing at each step in this process, what the prosecutors did was hide or block any exculpatory evidence from both the trial and the public.”

This testimonial was originally published on RespectAmerica.org