Reading · The Southern Punk Project

There have been many times in my life when I’ve felt like someone standing inside a clear, soundproof box in the middle of Times Square, screaming and pounding on the glass, and nobody can hear me.

And I am pretty sure I’m not the only one. I know most of us have experienced that at least once in our lives. You’re standing there, and no matter how loud you scream or how hard you pound, you just can’t seem to get anyone’s attention. I swear to God, that must be how Terry Reintke feels right now. Because that’s her in this video. And I want you to just listen to the warning she gave us back in February of this year.

For context, Terry Reintke is a German member of the European Parliament. And Lord, I can only imagine what was going through her head when she stood up back then and started talking about what she was watching happen in Minneapolis. By then, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both dead, and people were warning each other when federal immigration agents were coming through their neighborhoods. And somehow all of this had gotten so bad that a woman sitting clear over in Germany felt the need to stand up in the European Parliament and say something to us… the American people.

You see, she grew up believing in American democracy. Those are her words. She talked about American soldiers helping defeat fascism in Germany and how that gave her generation the chance to grow up in freedom. And then she said something that broke me because it broke her. She said watching what was happening over here broke her heart. And listen, I don’t know how you hear that coming from a German woman and not stop for a second.

Y’all, she said all of this on February 11th. So more than six months ago. And as I listened to her, I couldn’t help but feel like I showed up late for the party. You know that feeling when everybody else seems to know something and you’re just standing there wondering when the hell somebody was gonna clue you in?

That was me with this video. Because there have been times in my life when I’ve found something out years later and suddenly I’m sitting there going back through things in my head, wondering how in the hell I never saw it.

A prime example of this in my life was my father. You see, my dad became addicted to heroin while he was in Vietnam, and my family kept that from me my entire life. I didn’t find out until his father (my grandfather) was dying, and I was the last phone call he made because he knew if he didn’t tell me then, that secret was going to die with him. And I swear to God, once I knew, there were things about my dad and things I remembered growing up that I looked at completely differently. Why? Because now I knew something that I didn’t know when I was living through them. That type of hindsight brings clarity.

And since Terry Reintke gave this warning six months ago, we now have the luxury of looking back. So now we’re going to go back and hear her words knowing all the things we had no way of knowing then.

And I want to start right where Terry started that day… Minneapolis. Because now, six months later, I’m sitting here finding out there were things happening there that none of us even knew about when she stood up and gave that warning. Federal agents had been going undercover inside lawful meetings with progressive groups, unions and people protesting the immigration crackdown, and some of those meetings were happening in churches, schools and parks. They were monitoring activists, tracking license plates and even going after financial information connected to unions. Hell, we didn’t know any of that either. We were all looking at what was happening in Minneapolis back in February without knowing there was even more going on that we couldn’t see.

And Terry sure as hell didn’t know the Man in Charge was about to bomb the hell out of Iran. She didn’t know all those little schoolgirls in Minab were going to become collateral damage in a war they had no part of. None of us knew that was coming either. When Terry stood up there on February 11, those little girls were still going to school and the war that would take their lives hadn’t even started yet. And now we have the luxury of looking back at that too, knowing something Terry couldn’t possibly have known when she stood there trying to warn us about what she could already see happening in America.

And Terry didn’t know what was about to happen with the power of the presidency either. She stood there talking about checks and balances and limits on presidential power, and two days later the Man in Charge said he was going to require voter ID for the midterms whether Congress passed it or not. Think about that. She had just stood there warning us about the limits of presidential power, and forty-eight hours later the President was saying out loud that he was prepared to do something whether Congress went along with him or not.

And that fight didn’t go away either. Because the Trump administration started demanding voter rolls from states, and when the states started refusing to hand them over, the Justice Department started suing them. And I really don’t know what I expected to find when I started looking into what happened with all of that. But I can tell you it sure as hell wasn’t that by August 7th his administration had already lost twenty-one court cases trying to get those voter rolls. Twenty-one. And that’s when I went back to Terry again because remember what she was talking about in February. She was worried about checks and balances and what happens when there aren’t enough limits on the power of a president. She couldn’t have known there were going to be twenty-one court cases over voter rolls because none of that had happened yet.

The courts have literally gotten pulled into damn near everything since she gave that speech. And then there were those damn tariffs. Because Trump had used emergency powers to put those sweeping tariffs in place, and eventually the Supreme Court told him the emergency law he used didn’t actually give him the authority to do it. And well, Trump didn’t exactly like that. So he started going after the justices who ruled against him, and the comical part is, two of them were justices he put on the damn Court himself.

And let’s not forget about birthright citizenship because Trump tried to restrict that too. He didn’t win though. On June 30, the Supreme Court squashed that dream and ruled his original order violated the 14th Amendment. But apparently Trump wasn’t ready to let that one go either, because on August 6th he signed two new orders. And surprise surprise now they’re right back in court fighting over it again.

And thank God people are fighting.

Because if you listen to Terry’s message, I mean really listen. She didn’t tell Americans to give up. Oh no, what she told us was to keep resisting, and my God, people have. I mean look at what we’ve watched folks do these last six months. I’ve seen people go out there and fill the streets. They’ve stood toe to toe with federal agents and still pulled out their damn phones because they wanted people to see what was happening. And I don’t know about you, but there is something about that. It tells me the American spirit isn’t going to go quietly. A spirit I don’t think we talk about near enough because these are just regular people. Your neighbors, who decided they weren’t just going to sit there and do nothing.

And look at where the Iran war is now. The drama surrounding the Strait of Hormuz has become part of our daily lives. We’ve watched countries across the region get pulled closer and closer to this thing. And just yesterday, the Man in Charge went on TV and basically told Americans we needed to accept higher gasoline prices because of the war. Then he gave us the cherry on top by saying he wasn’t apologizing for it. That’s what makes watching this all unfold six months later so eerie.

Now mind you, everything that occurred after her speech wasn't handed to us in one big pile. Oh no, it came in slowly. Day after day. Which in my opinion makes what happened that much more insidious. Because what would happens is one thing would go down, then everybody would spend a day, maybe two, talking about it, and then something else would happen while we were still discussing the first thing.

It's overwhelming. The human mind isn’t built to comprehend that much information at once. Especially while still having to get up every morning and continue to live our regular lives.

The bills still have to be paid. Dinner still had to be made. You still had to go to the grocery store and remember the damn milk.

Seriosuly you turn on the television and you hear talk about missiles flying over another country. You’d pick up your phone and boom another court ruling. You can spend half the night trying to understand what the hell is happening with ICE, and then you wake up the next morning and something else has happened in Iran while you were asleep. It just never stops.

So after a while it all starts running together, right? It becomes an uncontrolled blur. And then somebody (like me) sends you a video like this.

You watch a German woman standing in the European Parliament talking about American soldiers helping defeat fascism in her country. You hear her say she grew up believing in American democracy because of what those soldiers helped give people like her.

You listen as she says it breaks her heart to watch what is happening here. And then you realize she didn’t say this last week… she said it six months ago.

That’s what I can’t get over.

Because trust me when I say the German people know exactly what happened in Germany. This woman doesn’t need me or any other American to explain that history to her. Why? Because she grew up with that history. She knows what her country became and what it took to stop it. And she damn sure knows Americans were among the people who came over there and helped do it.

Now let me be clear, she isn’t saying America is Nazi Germany.

What she is saying is that America helped her country. And because we helped, she grew up believing in us. And now she’s worried for us and about us.

I don’t know how much more plain a person could say it.

And do you know what? She didn’t have to say any of this. She could have just kept her mouth shut. Because America isn’t her country. She doesn’t vote here. She could have watched what was happening over here and thought you know what Americans can sort this mess out themselves.

But she didn’t.

She stood up.

She reminded us that Americans were once admired. We were admired for the help we gave the people of her country. And I think she believes we the people are the only ones left to keep fighting for who we should be.

And that thought brings me straight back to that damn soundproof box and how everything she said seemed to fall on deaf ears. Because she gave us the warning in February, and we may have stopped to listen, but we didn’t listen enough.

And now it’s August.

Six months have gone by since Terry stood up there and said all of this, and we know what happened in those six months because we lived every damn day of them.

So go back and watch her again. Really listen to what she’s saying. Because when she talks about America, she’s talking about the America she grew up believing in. When she talks about Germany, she’s talking about her own damn country and what happened there. And when she talks about the Americans who came over there and helped them, she knows exactly what those people were fighting against.

And then remember the date.

February 11, 2026.

She was already pounding on the glass.

I want to say something before you go because I think this piece is a little different from most of what I write.

This one started with a video.

Just a woman standing in the European Parliament talking about America.

But then I found out when she said it.

February 11.

And suddenly I was sitting there going back through the last six months thinking about everything we’ve watched happen since this woman stood up and tried to warn us.

I think that’s why asking y’all to support the Porch feels a little different underneath this one.

Because this is exactly why Southern Punk exists.

Sometimes something comes across my screen and I just can’t leave it alone.

I want to know who said it. I want to know when they said it. I want to know what was happening when they said it and what happened after. And before I know it, I’m sitting here six hours later with twenty tabs open wondering how the hell one little video turned into all of this.

That happens around here a lot.

I can spend six, eight, sometimes ten hours researching one story. Then I write it, make the video, edit everything that goes with it and put that work across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

And here’s something most people probably don’t know.

Facebook is the ONLY one of those platforms paying me for video views right now, and that only recently started.

TikTok can give one of my videos thousands of views and I make nothing from those views. Same thing on Instagram. Same thing on YouTube. You can watch Southern Punk all day long on those platforms, but unless somebody chooses to subscribe or directly support the Porch, those views don’t pay for the hours that went into making what you just watched.

That’s why I talk about subscriptions.

Not because asking y’all for money is my favorite thing to do. Trust me, I would much rather be sitting here trying to figure out why Scooby-Doo somehow ended up explaining Washington better than half the people who work there.

But Southern Punk is my job now.

And I want to keep doing it this way.

Independent.

No corporation sitting behind me deciding which stories are worth talking about or telling me what I can and cannot say.

Just me, my wife, this slightly ridiculous Porch we’ve built together, and all of you.

When you become a paid subscriber, you’re helping give me the time to do the work that happens before you ever see anything. The hours researching. The writing. The videos. All the rabbit holes I inevitably disappear down because I found one thing that bothered me and couldn’t leave it alone.

You also get a seat on the Porch Council and a voice in what we investigate next.

And as soon as this damn kidney stone passes, I’m giving paid subscribers something new too.

Southern Punk Uncensored.

And y’all already know what that means.

No worrying about what Facebook might flag. No wondering which word TikTok has decided it hates today. No watering something down because one of the platforms might throw a fit.

I’m going to say what I actually want to say.

I’m holding nothing back.

And all of that is less than 34 cents a day.

If you’ve been here for a while and you’ve thought about becoming a paid subscriber, and you’re able to do it, I would love to have you sitting here with us.

Really.

Because every person who chooses to support Southern Punk gives me a little more time to keep digging when something like Terry Reintke’s speech lands in front of me and I realize there’s a whole lot more sitting behind it than what fits inside a video.

And if a paid subscription isn’t something you can do right now, please don’t feel bad about that.

You can share us.

Send this write-up to somebody. Share one of our videos. Tell somebody about the Porch.

Hell, send Terry’s warning to somebody who never heard it back in February.

You can also help keep the Porch light on directly through BMAC whenever you’re able:

https://buymeacoffee.com/southernpunk

It all matters.

Especially to me.

Because Terry stood up six months ago and tried to get people to listen.

And today, somehow, that little piece of video found its way here.

So thank you.

For subscribing.

For sharing.

For reading.

For coming back.

For pulling up a chair and giving me a place where I can take something like this, dig into it until I understand what I’m looking at, and then sit down and talk about it with all of you.

I don’t take any of it for granted. ❤️🪑