This is disabled girls who lift. We are reclaiming what's rightfully ours one podcast at a time. It's Mary Beth Chloe and Marcia bringing you the thoughts and unpopular topics to get you out of that able comfort zone. Hello, welcome to another episode of disabled girls who live. We love you. You're amazing. We're also amazing. And you know, we're amazing. That's why you're here. That makes you amazing too. Anyways, this is Marcia sitting on Seminole Tribe land. I am a black fem wearing my black shirt, my black headphones. I have a black microphone but there is color behind me. It's not everything black. Um I'll let Mary Beth take it from here. Uh What's up? It's Mary Beth sitting in Northern California on o loney land. I'm wearing a brown sweater shirt in my office. That's a total mess right now wearing my black glasses and my black headphones on my black hair. And we're so excited to like finally have guests back on after a little bit of a hiatus from um you know, a third person and it's nice to talk about people other than ourselves.

Uh So Kim, the woman with two first names Kim Kelly. Uh coming to us from Philadelphia on Lenny Linna Land. Um I'm just super glad that we finally have like a chance to talk to you because of this super long book tour you've been on. So she's uh an author, she's the author for Fight like hell, the untold history of American labor. Just an all around bad ass like labor journalist. I see you like out there protesting on the streets for us. Um You know, you, you just have this diverse history of everything, former vice staffer. Like I love that. You've, you've got this, you're like a big fan of heavy metal and then tea and then whiskey and then books. It's like the right energy that we need. Um You're raised on a nature preserve in South Jersey. So there's just so much that we got to talk about.

Um Welcome Kim. Thanks so much for having me. I'm a white lady with long blonde braids, a black long sleeve shirt. It's a purple, get better records logo. I've got some, some shiny purple plugs in today. I've got a bunch of facial piercings. Some tattoos are peeking out and you can see some union posters in the background in my darkened room. And uh yeah, I, I stick out a little bit on the picket line sometimes because I come from the heavy metal world and then I did a little bit of a pivot. Yeah, it turns out uh there there are less satanic go heads and, you know, giant tattoos in, in the labor world. But they still, they still let me in. Uh, what do you know? Yeah, that's, um, I guess there's so many questions but the first thing I want to know about is how are you raised on a nature preserve? What is you raised with wolves? What are we talking about a garden? Are we talking about a cabin? Like what, what am I picturing here? Elephants? I mean, you can even see like there's, you can't see my bear rug. This is a kind of back here. There's so I'm from, uh, this, uh, million acre nature preserve in the middle of South Jersey called the Pine Barrens.

It's this kind of ecological oddity. It's got really strange, like white sand and pygmy pitch pine trees and the water is brown. It's a, it's a very unique place and nobody really knows about it because it's very rural. It's kind of isolated. There's not a lot going on in there. It's pretty sparsely populated and I grew up in the middle of it, a little town called Chatsworth where we had like, we still had dirt roads and there wasn't any trash pickup and cell phone service was a joke. And my parents still have dial up like it's a, you know, people used to tell people, oh, I'm from Jersey. Like, oh, hey, yeah, about a bing, you know, sopranos. Like no No, no, no, no. Like if you just carve out a little piece of Appalachia lop off the mountains and stick it down by the shore. That's like where I'm from. Yeah. That sounds magical though. It was like, it was a magical place to grow up and to be a kid. And then when you get a little older and you're a teenager and you, like, want to go to the mall or wanna go to punk shows and everything's an hour and a half away. It feels a little less magical. Yeah. No, that sounds like the setup for a horror movie right there.

A teenager looking for a punk show. It's hard to ride. I mean, we have the Jersey Devil. We have our own demon out there. There's a lot of like, really weird history out there. It's, it's a special place but, you know, but not everyone feels comfortable going there after dark. Wow, that is interesting. So, how to be basically. Yeah. So, since there's very little like city life, like, what kind of animals do you see out on the preserve? So, at home it's, uh, I mean, there's a lot of white tailed deer. My family all hunt. Um, black bears started coming down, coyotes out there. Coyotes are always trying to kill my dad's chickens, which is a very, a big topic of conversation whenever he calls me. I remember one time when I was little, a mountain lion showed up and kind of terrorized the town for a while. Uh, some guy out in the woods was keeping emos for a while because for a while in the two thousands, they thought you could make money off of emu farms turns out you can't. So, we just let them all loose. So there's all these weird giant birds out the hang out, you know, whipper wills and squirrels.

It's just, it's just like a, the forest just straight up forest. But then 20 minutes down the highway, you're at the Jersey shore. So, it's kind of this weird forgotten place. And that's where I grew up. Wow. Your parents still live. Is it like, protected area then? Yeah, it's actually the, the Pine Lives National Reserve is actually, I think it's the first federally protected wilderness reserve. It was the first something of that nature in the US. And it's, yeah, there, there's always outside groups trying, like, developers trying to build, like, horrible housing or they're always trying to run pipelines through it. But I'm sure there's a lot of local people who are just not having it because it is. And it's on, like, the, this massive aquifer, like some of the purest water in the country. So it's, yeah, it's kind of, it's a very special place and no one really knows that. I'm kind of like, I shouldn't tell people. Yeah, if they show up they're gonna ruin it, they will ruin it. Is, is that where you kind of got that fight like hell of spirit from because it feels like you have to fight some animals to live there and then you have to fight like the right there's grocery stores 30 miles away.

There ain't nothing. Well, my, my family are all, um, it's a very blue collar working class and poor place. My family are all work in construction or we're teachers, we're steel workers. So they're all in unions. And I always knew growing up, like, ok, unions are a good thing. I didn't think it was something I would necessarily get a chance to experience on my own because I've always been a writer and I've always, well, prior to the past six or seven years worked in the music business and I didn't think that was something that really concerned me. Like, oh, that'd be nice. But, you know, there's not like a heavy metal local. 666 I can join. What's that have to do with me? Yeah. And also just being, I had this, this experience of being, um, like, bust into a much wealthier, much more, uh, like, suburban neighborhood in high school because there wasn't a, that, like, where I grew up there were so few kids we all had to go out to the big high school with like, 2000 people and, like, an hour away and just seeing, yeah, like, see, like, going from all the kids I grew up with from when I was four years old to 14, being dropped into this environment where people had like, their both parents didn't work or their dad was a doctor, they had a garage, all these things that were so foreign to me.

That's why I first kind of learned about things like class and about how some people have a whole lot and some people don't have very much at all. And my mother was actually, um she worked in the school cafeteria there. So that was, but she was, she was like the, the cool lunch lady. So it was kind of a different experience than you might expect from like, seeing high school movies. But it was still like that. I definitely was like, oh, I don't feel like I belong here but I'm here. So I guess I'll make the most of it and I guess that's sort of something I carried with me and all the spaces I've been able to access since then because a lot of people that grew up, the way that I did don't end up writing for big media outlets or doing book tours or doing half the things I've been able to do. So it's always in the back of my head. Like, yeah, maybe you don't belong here, but fuck it, you're here. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's a vibe. Well, so how did you get there? How did you get into all these spaces? Because most of these things are like very high key. It's who, you know, situations, right. Heavy metal is really what, what started and saved everything I started.

Um, I've been a writer forever. That's like all I, I say is all I've ever been good at. There's some other stuff I can do, but that's my big thing. I picked up a couple of things. I can open a jar of pickles despite having eight fingers. But, um, yeah, I uh was written and I started writing for the county paper when I was a kid like 15. And yeah, it was cute. I would, I remember writing a column about how George W Bush was a warmonger and they let me publish it. I was like, I mean, I've always been like this. Um But yeah, so I was, I was in college or in high school. I was just writing for all these, we call them like web scenes back then, which is like, oh God, I feel like I'm dating myself. I swear, I'm like, not old but I'm not. No, we're the in between aggressively millennial, I guess. But I remember Napster like that kind of vibe. But yeah, I started writing for all these little publications and by the time I was going to apply for college, I had this whole big pack of things I'd written for newspapers and scenes and blogs.

And I got into the music business program at Drexel and I showed up and everyone else there had like, a demo or had done like, uh, like, they've done like music business stuff and I clearly just wanted to be a music journalist but they somehow let me in and I got to do some, uh, some internships. I got involved with college radio, which is really the biggest way I met so many people that I'm still friends with. Um, there is this event called C M J every year where all the college radio kids would go to New York and, and meet and schmooze and all that and meet lots of the promoters and people in the business. So I made a whole lot of friends when I was younger and as I kept writing and kind of forcing my way into bigger publications, I just kind of built up this network and I was always, at that point, I was probably one of the very few young women who was covering heavy metal, at least like in the, the extreme like black metal death Metal Grid core stuff that I was into. And so I got a lot of attention for better and for worse and oh yeah, it was, it's been, it's been a ride.

But um yeah, I, I just kind of kept hustling, kept hustling. Uh when I was in college at the end of it, I started APR company and I started touring with metal bands. I started working for record labels. I just pieced together all these, these things. And I just kind of built a little life around that for a while and I lived in my friend's closet in New York for 400 bucks a month and just was like, I was always broke. So being broke did not phase me. So it just hustled to remain at work. And then I got a job advice and things went a different direction eventually, after I was the heavy metal editor there for a few years. Well, actually I was the heavy metal editor there for like five years. Yeah, but the first when I got hired like two weeks later, um a couple of my coworkers pulled me aside or like, hey, we're thinking about unionizing. What do you think about that? I was like, oh, how sick, cool. What can I do? I wanna do everything and then I kind of did like, obviously I wasn't the only person, but I was very, very, very excited about it. Very investing, ready to put the team on your back.

Every, yeah, every meeting, every committee, every baring session, I was obsessed and um just through kind of being in that media world. Once, you know, some media people, it's easier to meet other ones and being in Brooklyn and all that shit. And I just kind of got to know a whole lot of people and especially in labor world, they're excited to kind of again a younger, it didn't, my gender didn't really matter that much this time. But like a younger person was excited about labor. So people like, oh, what can we do to support you? What can we do to, to spread this? Because labor world, I mean, the working class is incredibly diverse but like the people who work at unions or who have been covering unions for a long time aren't necessary don't necessarily reflect that. So they get excited when someone new is in here. So, yeah, that was my whole life story, you know, like five minutes. But, yeah, I guess hustling and refusing to have all the people that told me I didn't belong there, uh, refusing to listen because there's a lot of places that I've been told I don't belong. But, um, sure.

Yeah. Yeah, we definitely know how that goes. That is nuts. So, you, like, first you're in this high school where you're like, out of place, then you're at the college or you're out of place, then you're writing, you're like, who are you people? But that's fine. And now you're here, why I'm here? And I'm still kind of out of place. But I think, uh, I don't know what it mean, like, uh, what the, what the place is, like, what place I'm supposed to be. So I'm just gonna assume this is where it's supposed to be. It's kind of weird to kind of carve that out too because you have so many parts of yourself that don't really fit into. And I'm honestly, most of us do. Most of the people that we talk to and hang out with her, like multitudes, like just waves of different things and nothing fits. So it's like, kind of hard to figure out when all you handed is like, cute little nuclear families picket fence, you know, like it gets very orderly.

This and this and you're like, well, I like heavy metal and I like tea and I grew up with coyotes. Like, what's good over there? Yeah, it's, it's a vibe but that, it's really how a lot of us live. And then, you know, on top of that you have a visible, like, disability. So I'm sure that probably played into a feeling out of place as well. It's been one of the most interesting things about growing up somewhere so isolated. Like, I, well, not ex that drink. I was with the same 20 kids between 18 and 20 kids from kindergarten to the end of eighth grade. So I just, my entire social world was the same 20 kids. And so by the time it hit first grade, everyone was kind of over the fact that I was a little bit different. It wasn't really something that came up or, like, I, I wasn't made to feel weird or different or anything except when I started going to hot topic. That one was on me. Swearing. Yeah, that was like, that wasn't intentional. But like growing up here with some claws was I didn't really have a choice in the matter. So I think that really helped when I got out into the bigger world because I, I spent so many years and like formative years kind of feeling like, oh, like no big deal, like, whatever, that's just who I am.

Cool. And then I got out there and then the rest of the world was like, oh what is, what is going on here? What, what do you mean? Do you mean my hair or what is it saying? What do you want to know about? Things are tattoos? It, it was kind of funny, I guess it gave me a little bit of armor because having the kind of visibility, visible disability that kind of takes people off guard. It's I think there's some types of like visible disability people like they get at least like, oh you use mobility like they're mentally like their brain has a set up like, oh yeah, like they, they're ready for that and then you show up and you're just like I talk with my hands and I have electro so my hands look different than other people. And it's kind of a rare thing. So people don't know what to do about it because I don't make a big deal of it. It's like this is who I am, who the fuck cares. But, and sometimes I make jokes that I think are funny but make people very uncomfortable. Yeah. Well, no, that's true. Like you're opening the Jar of Pickles joke.

Like somebody would be like, yeah. Yeah, it's a joke. It is a joke because I really suck it up. Yeah, I thought that was talk to your comedy. But yeah, so I, I could see that. I could see somebody being like, oh, I'm just gonna ignore that or like, or like, when I talk about like my, I'm gonna get my, my technical tattoo dimension. I have just enough to say whiskey and when I show people that they're like, oh oh that's, that's, that's cool. Like, yeah, it's cool whiskey without the E or with the E on. Yeah, I've got just enough. So it was meant to be, that's it. Yeah. But yeah, it's been, it's, it's at the point where like, there've always been at least um since I started getting a little like with my teens on, I started getting more piercings and tattoos and like dressing like a metal person. I'm not quite, and I'm just like a lady and people look at those in various ways. So I've never quite been able to tell like, what are people looking at when they look at me?

Right? Everything is already so unique. Yeah, I was like, which thing? What are we, where are your eyes? I had this one professor once in college. He was one of my favorites uh in this incredibly lighthearted course about uh nuclear apocalypse and film and fiction. And he was my favorite. And at one point he uh he asked me where it was in the context of the conversation. It makes sense. He asked me like, oh, so you, this is your situation with your hands? Is that why you have so many tattoos and Pierson and you have such a unique appearance? I was like, no, no, I don't. Shit. I don't know. Am I actually trying to cause and effect? Yeah. Yeah, I was like, did I think OK, I'm already gonna look different. I may as well lean in or am I trying to distract people was like, oh shit. I don't know. I'm 18. I, I just like Death Metal a lot and I'm being left unsupervised. That's an interesting thought though. But I think you're so right about the fact that you did feel supported in your formative years makes all the difference.

So I think a lot of us, especially the girlies in their thirties are realizing like this is uh a lot of shit from your childhood where you didn't feel loved or you felt ignored or somebody didn't support you in a certain way and like how that shit all shows up in your relationships right now today or how you show up places today, right? Like that is actually a pretty big deal. Yeah, it's because, but, but my family never ever, ever acknowledged or mentioned it which is always kind of funny and I think is probably why I never really, it took me until really, only a few years ago I started being really out there and open and be like, hell, yeah, this is what I looked like. I was, I didn't hide but I didn't, I just kind of like, hope people won't notice for a really, really long time because my family never acknowledged it. I remember hearing when I was really little that when I was born, my dad wanted to sue the hospital because he thought they'd done something to make me come out with the wrong amount of fingers and having that in the back of my head. I was like, oh, I'm not gonna mention it. Oh, I guess I won't keep this to myself and that I even have this thing now.

Like my partner is very, he's a punk. He had like, if you think I look cool, he had like spikes and he's, he's a very much has a look, he's very noticeable. He's very cute. I love it. But sometimes I don't really like drawing attention to myself. And so sometimes when he's all done up, I'm just like, can you just take something cool it down? Like it makes you feel it like freaks me out a little bit when I think people are looking at me because I don't know why they're looking at me and that's one of those residual things. I guess of like, oh, extra layers of like, oh, what, what are you looking at, buddy? But like, really? What are you looking at? Yeah, I think that's what makes it so cool and interesting right now. That's interesting. So you, you didn't have to deal with like outright bullying or, you know, nobody was like, in your face about it but at the same time nobody was like, hey, Kim, you're different and that's cool. Like, they were just like, we're gonna pretend it doesn't really, we're just moving on. Well, well, I got, I started getting bullied really, really well, really, like full and harassed for it really awfully when I was an adult.

Um, when I was in my later twenties when I was working at Vice and I, I wrote about heavy metal. I still do, but that was my main focus of heavy metal and I wrote about it from a very, like, feminist antifascist, anti-racism perspective and wrote a lot about how it sucks that there's so much racism, anti Semitism and every reason you can think of in the metal world. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I've always been like, well, I haven't always been, like, I've learned and grown a lot over the years but that, that's what I was known for and I really didn't like that. And one of the ways that there, there's this one, this one Nazi in Texas who ran a website. Uh, he been a weird life. Any sentence with this one on this one guy who, who run this like shitty shitty metal website. He got kind of obsessed about me because he thought I was trying to ruin metal by making it too safe and woken just, you know, whatever. And he decided he was gonna uh this still like bums me out. He uh he made this Facebook page called Kim Kelly's Hand and he took all these screenshots of videos.

Yeah, that I've done like interviews and videos over the years he found, took all these screenshots, like showing my hands and then also had some cartoons of uh just like crabs and like Lela from fut trauma and all these things. And it got like, I saw it one day and I was like, how is that legal? Is it, is that not a hate crime? And it took, I gotta tell you I was at the time and I was friends with the, the Coms department and I hit them up. I was like, can you like, call your friends, can you do something? And I had a Yeah, I had a bunch of friends who were reporting it and they kept saying, oh, this doesn't violate our community standards. Basically, it was, it would probably still be up if I hadn't had that job and had access to those channels. I remember seeing there was like 600 likes on or something. I was just like, yeah, people really spend their time on some bullshit like this, that, that one, that one I didn't like very much. But even the one thing that was kind of funny is I saw even people that I knew hated me or hated what they thought I was like with comment being like, I don't know, man, this seems a little low.

Like, wow, man, haters rooting for you. You did when the other Nazis are like, maybe just take it down a notch. Yeah, something's up there. So I got enough gross. Yeah, fairly chilled childhood. But then as I got more public and more people knew what I looked like. I had opinions about it. It, it became more of a something that I thought about in ways I hadn't really thought about before. Yeah, that's different. It's like a different kind of culture shock. It's like, oh this is a problem now. Oh OK. This is the one thing you can't criticize my writing. You can't call me ugly. You can't call me this, that and the other. But like, oh, so this is, this is the thing. Yeah, that's a big, that is a big, you know, that makes me think of the screenshot level. Like I remember when the freaking Transformers happened and Megan Fox and people had all of these weird things about her thumb and like they didn't like the way her thumb looked. I just remember thinking how fucking weird it was like people spent energy going through photos, like the same vibes.

And again, these things don't really violate terms of service. They, like you could do that, you know, just be like, look, this, this person's body is a little bit different. Look how bad that is. That's fine. You can get away with that. Yeah. Like that is somehow totally normal to do. It's fucking weird. Absolutely strange behavior. And, like, I don't understand, didn't, didn't that I have a job, a website to run something to do, water his plants. I don't know what Nazi do in their spare time. But Jesus, like, they write weird blogs and run a different Nazi website. Yeah. Did she write angry letters to ship out to people? You have something else to do? I don't know. They don't, that's the thing. That's why they're Nazis. You don't end up like that if you have a healthy social or political or cultural life. This is true. That sucks. I'm sorry, you went through that. But becoming, like, kind of a public figure. Do you find yourself, like, guarding things a little bit more, like privacy, security wise, whatever.

Yeah. Like I started, I, before we went back to Philly, I was super involved in, like, just the, the New York, anarchist, anti fascist world anyway. So, like, security was something that's on my mind anyway. But especially as, like, I suppose I got more eyeballs on my work on Twitter or whatever. More people who I don't know, knew who I was. I, I've gotten much more, like, tried to protect my privacy in ways that I can, like, I have, you know, a secret Instagram and, you know, things like that where, like I put my real life then there's, I don't know. There, there's, it, it's a weird thing. I don't know that I was ever prepared for it and it's not like I'm a fucking Kardashian or something like that, but it is still a level of just eyeballs that I was not anticipated. I'm still not quite sure what to deal with and it does make me anxious about, you know, being hacked or being X or all these things. But uh what do you do, man? Like, I don't know, I have, I'm, I'm locked down as much as I can be on, on various social media networks and all my two factors and all that and I pay for delete me and I have a scary boyfriend and I am so yeah, it, it shows you, it shows you there's so much power in publishing as that's what you do.

But then there's also the scary power um behind self publishing. Like anybody can post and write anything that could be not true about you or just like shaming any person, you know, like it's, it's ridiculous how much I have the freedom to share our voices. But also these people have the freedom to harass for doing that Yeah, I am. I'm starting to see more like, um, I don't know, like terms and conditions where they're adding disability or like a list, um, behavior and language to their guidelines. Um, which is like a leisure, you know, but the fact that they didn't have that, how long ago did that happen? 5, 10 years ago that was, I'd say maybe 2018, maybe four years. Yeah, this is fine. Yeah, I mean, if I had, you know, it would still be there. If I didn't happen to have that job.

There's not much you could do. But I mean, you can, you know, not post your location every time you, you share things and you could browse with a VPN like two factor but you can't stop someone from making, taking screenshots of you. You can't stop somebody from like reposting. Like I, I remember one time I got a bunch of followers on my move with Marcia page once because somebody had taken my like foot exercise video and reposted it on their foot fetish page. And then I was getting like D MS like, hey, can you spread your toes? You didn't even get paid for that shit though. It's not Yeah. So it's like those any, any of that can happen. It is, it is very unsettling. Being a visible human online is scary enough when you don't have something going on that gets that some people see as an opening or an issue Yeah. Right. That's part of why I spent so much of my assistance not really acknowledging or mentioning or even kind of hiding like my disability because I just didn't want to hear it. I assumed that any attention I got would be bad because I spent this is before the, the Facebook affair.

But I'm just like, I don't want to stick out any more than I already do even though, like, clearly, like, it's not like I can hide my hands anyway. I don't know what I was thinking. I had a lot of hoodies pockets and a lot of crossed arms. A lot of that. And it was really only when I, um went to Sideshow school that I changed the way I thought about all that. Oh, yes, about that. Yeah, I um, yeah, my other half, he's, he's from Coney Island. Like full on Warriors. Grew up, they were born and raised and I used to go when I lived in New York, I'd go down and see him and one day we went, like, on a little date to the, the Coney Island Sideshow and I was like, oh, this is fucking cool. Like, I didn't know this was still something that existed because I was interested in history and circuit history just as kind of like a, a slight interest. But I never really, like, like, seen it. We went there. I was like, oh, man, this is really cool. One of the performers is actually somebody I grew up with. What? Yeah, he was, he performs under the name Velvet Crayon. His name is Eric. And he's like, yeah, he uses a wheelchair and he does like, all kinds of wild stuff.

He's a musician. He does burlesque. He is, he has grown up. I see that stuck in my head. Like, wow. Like, that's really cool. And he's so, like, he's disabled and he is killing it and people are clapping and like, no one's being shitty and it's like, oh that's really cool. We can like, we can do that. And then um later that summer, I think it was that summer or maybe it was next summer. I, he, he had mentioned something. Oh yeah, I think they have like a sideshow school that people go to. It's like what? That's not real. I googled it and it was, and the next session was starting in like three weeks from then. I was like, oh my God, I believe this is a song and I pitched it around because it cost it was the, the price was like 1500 bucks. So it was a little steep to do it. Um I was like, oh shit, I gotta like write about this so I can subsidize myself and um Vox agreed to run it. So I, I went to the sideshows. It's real casual. Um And there's this moment like the first, like we got in, everyone sat around this table. And um the professor was a, a Adam Relman.

He was going through some of the traditional sideshow hierarchy things, you know, you have your, your natural born freaks at the top, the royalty people who were born different. And then yeah, the second tier um are self-made freaks or tattooed ladies, your lizard men people that altered their bodies on purpose as part of their acts or because they wanted to be different. And at the bottom were the so called working acts. So wallers, fire breathers, people who weren't different but had acquired these skills. And it was this kind of inverted world where like people that were born like me, like we were royalty, we were special. We were like, valued, like we used to be like the stars and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And he came running around, he asked, yeah, dude. Or any of you, would any of you qualify as an actor born? And I was like, he was like, oh, they never had someone who would like a natural born freak be in that sideshow school. That was the first one. Yeah. And they were like, oh, he was, he was waiting for the No.

Yeah. He, he was like, I've never had anyone. Oh, wow. And just like that moment. I was like, oh, this is really cool that I have this unique thing that has this specific kind of historical and cultural legacy attached to it. Like there have been lobster boys and lobster girls throughout history. Couple really famous ones and I could, I can do that. That's part of my history too is someone with this very specific disability and I, um, learned how to breathe fire and hammer nails into my face and walk some glass and swords. He did everything. Oh, wow. Yeah, because now in the side show it's not enough to be born different. You have to also have acts because we don't just exhibit ourselves because just being who you are isn't, it's not a spectacle anymore. It's just like stand there, follow a sword. Damn it. Which is really hard. I'm still not good at it. Uh Yeah, I don't know if I would have been there but I'm happy for you. I know like all things I have my like disability like awakening is like, oh and I'm just like hammering a nail into my nose or like trying not to vomit over a trash can.

Like I'm special but it was a really, it's kind of a magical thing. I started performing a little bit as a Greta, the lobster girl. I did a couple of performances and then COVID hit and I did not go anywhere. But there's so much beauty in like finding the um uh like the love for that spectacle. You know, because so much, so many of us grew up with hatred toward that disability and those types of names like that name could be so cringe for everybody with Troy or anybody with a limb difference. But like, like creating that for yourself is so liberating, right? And so like reclaiming something that I've been like, people have made fun of my cloth or my lobster like things like that over the years. And I was like, you know what? Yeah, I do have lobster. What? Yeah, look at it. It was just such a shift. And after that I was like, oh yeah. No, this rules.

This is fucking cool. And I'm proud of that and I'm proud of myself and I'm just gonna be super out here about it. Like I've got um I wonder if you can see it. I, I have this lobster girl tattoo. Oh my gosh. No, it is huge too. It's amazing. I also have a huge lobster on my ribs. I'm just like, I just, yeah, and I started, that was really the point where I kind of felt a little bit more comfortable identifying like I'm a disabled person, I'm part of the disabled disability. He said it out loud for a long time. I felt like I didn't count like I wasn't disabled enough, which is like a fucked up thing for someone to think about themselves. But I spent my whole life being told, oh, don't worry about, it's not a big deal. It's fine. And I got in this space where it's like, oh no, this is great. Like, it's very, like, this is good and cool and good for you for being out here and doing this. Like, oh, ok. Maybe I do have a space in this world, even if it's through a very strange, uh, pathway one way to get there.

It was all happening at the same time too. That's amazing. That is pretty wild. Um, but that's like, so real though a lot of us go through it. What, what does disabled mean? Am I disabled or am I supposed to say that? Am I allowed to say that? Like um you know, because when you do say it with other able bodied people, you're right. They're like, oh no, no, honey, no, you're not, you're, you're not. No, you're not, honey. Like, oh you're not like really like, I mean, uh would you like to see some of the things I struggle with? Yeah, like you don't define that for me. But yeah, it's a, it's a very black and white thought for people. Um I would love to hear more about the union thing in the book, but I think we will take our quick pause to pay for our anchor hosting service right about now. All right. Well, we're back. I think it's OK to, to care because it, it makes you feel very one dimensional and you're not for people to, to acknowledge all of the things that make you, you, it, it feels weird.

Yeah. Yeah. It, it even, even now when most people know me for my labor stuff, like, I spent most of my life in heavy metal world and this labor thing is new. I did not spring fully formed from like a page of labor notes. Like I've done a whole bunch of other shit. It's cool. I don't know. But was that when you started to becoming in front of the camera more like you needed a lot more interviews? Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. I think one of the reasons I got more visibility like as a human is because it really um really started popping off in early 2021 2020 maybe 2020. Shit. What are the two early or not very early? Like pre like E is like OK. Yeah. Yeah. 2020 for sure. Right. Oh God. But yeah, I started doing some video stuff. Um There was this a warehouse in Best for Alabama that was shoot I forgot about that was the time frame. They're still out here too, but I went down there for this outlet. More perfect union that was launching and it was like a video thing and I did a whole bunch of videos that got a bunch of attention.

So I was like the first person there doing video coverage and it was like a big story and I got my little face in there and so I think that kind of was the beginning of people kind of knowing more what I look like what I sound like and all that because the metal world, like, the metal world is vast and global. But it's still compared to, you know, metal people and people who have jobs so much bigger. Us different. Yeah. And even I think I have my hands in my pockets all the time because it was cold. Oh, yeah. All people see on Twitter is just my braids and my, my sparkly as face. So who knows what's going on under there? That's interesting. And the big shift to cover these things. Did that come with you becoming a part of a union movement? Were you like, oh, let me look into this. Yeah, it's very much like that came first because I was working at Vice Heavy Metal editor. Um and we organized with the Writers Guild of America East. Uh I'm still, I'm actually in my third term on the council there.

So I'm like in there watching the sausage get made. It's very ugly. But I got super involved in organizing with the union and organizing my coworkers and it kind of became my whole little world for a while. And I was already also involved in like various political organizing stuff in the New York, anarchist, anti fascist world. And this was like 2015 2016 when a whole lot of people were paying a whole lot of attention to politics for very valid and terrifying reasons. And so I just found myself going to so many fewer medal shows and so many more union meetings or actions or this that and the other that it just kind of took over all my attention. And, uh and that started to reflect itself in my writing. My dating job was still writing about having me on the internet, which is great. I miss it, but I was also feeling kind of penned in and I was trying to find ways to bring that into it. I was writing and I was freelancing a lot of the time because one of the reasons we unionize advice is that they were paying us like shit. So I was already freelancing. Yeah, I was already freelancing to make up some extra money.

Anyway, I started pitching labor related stories around uh specifically the teen vogue and I've written a couple of things for them previously to that about just like prison, industrial complex things. And I pitched them, uh I pitched them some labor stuff and it worked and people clicked on it and the editors and I got along and they just, we just kind of built a good relationship and all of a sudden was a place that ran labor coverage and that's an even younger audience. That's amazing. And it's so funny because I think, I think at least my time in the metal world has directly impacted the way that I'm able to write for broader audiences in labor and political and workers' rights world because I spent such a long time writing about this very willfully obscure, complex pretty for, for a lot of people unappealing music for mainstream audiences. Like trying to explain to an N PR audience why black metal is cool or why someone on Brooklyn Vegan should care about the new cannibal corpse record.

Like you learn how to break things down and make them more accessible and, and put some excitement and passion into it. And that's the approach I took with talking about labor unions, which for a lot of people are just kind of this concept of like, oh that's, I think my dad was in the, you be like, I don't know what that is like. No, no, no. This is very cool. Very. Here's why it's awesome. And I'm gonna explain it in a way that doesn't seem like I'm not talking down to you. I just wanna make sure that you get it going on. Yeah. Like if I had come from the metal world and had that experience, I wouldn't be good at this. I don't know. That makes sense. And I would say definitely is like Children of immigrants. We don't know anything about that shit. No, everything in America is get a job, you get money, you get problems so much of your rights as a worker you don't like stop to think about because your focus is on making that dollar feeding your kids whatever, you know, until it actually starts affecting you, then it's like, oh, shit, I broke my leg on, on the job or it's a very specific industries too, right?

Like if you're saying that you're talking like factory manufacturing stuff, right? There's this idea, especially in the US up until I think pretty recently that unions were only, uh, only really available, only really mattered to certain types of workers. Like the factory guys, the like the Rust Belt dude in the hard hat dudes, like my dad, construction worker, hard had bad political opinions which, and it's never just been that. That's I wrote a whole book about it. It's what I talk about the time. But, but even now, like some of the most uh like f and animated sectors we're seeing unitize right now are in retail and in academia and in the media and, and I love it. I'm seeing the Starbucks stuff going. I'm like, I'm seeing the Amazon thing. I'm like, go workers like younger people, black and brown people, queer friends workers. Like it's like the, the forefront of the movement right now is being led by people who have always been here, but very seldom got recognized for their or their presence.

And it's like, really not like you weren't like, it's not like, oh you work at Starbucks like you shouldn't deserve to be paid fairly, you know, type shit. Like, oh get another go to school and get a better job, like, oh, you just flip burgers at mcdonald's or you, you work in an office and you do a white, a white collar, quote unquote job. So you're fine. Like, yeah, if you have a boss, you're probably getting exploited. So you should do something about it and you're allowed to do something about it. And I, I, I'd like to see it more in health care because that part always confuses me because like, my mom was a nurse, they had a union. But then I hear about how doctors are treated and I'm like, I guess y'all don't have one because that sounds like these people will be working 20 so 27 hour shifts and shit. Like, but this isn't adding up. Yeah, it's interesting, I don't even know as much about the health care world. I know that it's like a huge sector for union, like union workers, especially in nurses. But yeah, doctors, I don't know, I don't know if their position in the, the work chart or the hierarchy is such that they don't have access to unions.

But even if you can't, even if you don't have the ability to officially unionize, you can still pull together with your coworkers and make demands and go on strike or protest. Like, so there are some workers who are left out of labor laws who don't have the legal ability to organize, but there's always ways to get around it. Right. Like to get a little creative and the thing. Right. Yeah. Well, they, I mean, they had a union but they, I think about things like, um, incarcerated workers who do not legally have the right to unionize. Thanks to the 1977 Jones versus North Carolina prisoners, labor union. They don't have that right. But they're still organizing and they're still striking. There was a big strike in Alabama last month. Uh, one of the stories in my book, I interviewed one of my best friends who was incarcerated Rikers during the pandemic and he and some of the guys at his dorm, they led a strike because they needed P PE and soap and these basic uh basic uh protective measures that they weren't. So they had a, they had a hunger strike like there are, there are so many different ways to organize and to fight for what you deserve.

And labor law in this country has not kept up with the way that work has evolved and the way that society has evolved. But that doesn't mean that, you know, I mean, fuck it. Well, I think if the law that says you can't do something, I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, we, we love following rules when the rules make sense. That's the thing. It's good to know that they're like any group of, any company can get together. Like you, you all have the power to shut it down, you know, just get it to get together, get the ears of whoever's above and, like, make change and not fear, like getting fired because that's always the biggest thing, right? You need everybody on board everybody else. That's the thing. The thing that I always like to emphasize is, and whenever I talk to anybody about this stuff is that there are more of us than there are of them. They need to, they need us. Yeah. I mean, look at what happened with Twitter. They fired everyone and now it's just going to hell in a hand basket.

A couple of rich guys who think they're smart cannot run every, we've seen that very clearly seriously. And it's so funny because going back to the health care thing is like as somebody that's working in these places, like I, I can't do it because nobody would ever everyone go oh get fired. I'm like, yo, they need you. Like if you weren't here freaking changing these bed sheets or you know, prescribing this medication, they would not be making their billions. So like if everybody was just like, yo, fuck this, we're out, what are they gonna do? Getting down? They're not getting down in the coal mines, they're emptying out the bed, the bed pens, they're not getting on the factory floor, they're not going down there and coding their way into whatever Twitter is trying to do. Yeah, I think it's like that, that power dynamic. People really do feel that. So much and like, yeah, it's not always pretty, I'm sure there are risks that you are taking. So, and it's hard for groups too.

Like you mentioned, like sex work and how people who are already like, dehumanized they seen as like that's all illegal work anyway, don't give a fuck about the human. And um the fact that that type of work is still happening um every day, you know, it's just so important. Yeah, it's, I mean, I'm, I'm following uh it's interesting to talk about sex work. I was just on a panel with a bunch of folks here in Philly that work in Kensington with um folks who are involved in the street economies there. And I was telling them about how I've been covering this union drive by strippers in North Hollywood at a Star Garden topless club and how it's really exciting. It's gonna have a really big impact on the industry once they win and they're like, yeah, that's really cool. But we also want to emphasize like that is kind of a privileged stance in the realm of sex work to be able to unionize, to be able to be public, to be able to take those steps because so many people who do work in the sex world industry like sex work industry, like their labor is criminalized.

Some of their very identities are criminalized. Like they've had to find like I have a whole chapter in, in my book about sex work and so much of it, like, that's a community of workers that has never had an equal shot when it comes to being protected as workers under the law. So there's so many different ways they've organized and had to, to protect themselves and their work and their labor inside and outside the law. Like it's, you know, there's no one way to be a worker in this country and they're all valid except cops except gaps. It's wild with the sex work too because even like the way that it's criminalized or like who do they punish and who do they put away and stop. Like it's not the people that are abusive and exploiting. It's not the sex traffickers. Like no, it's people just trying to go do their goddamn job because that's what works for them or they don't have a better option or whatever other reason they might have. It's literally just a job right.

Clock in, clock out. It should be being safe enough to just clock in and clock out. It's just all the, the stigma and the mis misinformation and lack of understanding and just being in this puritan as country that we exist within. Guess a lot of workers have been not in that specific way, but a lot of workers have been impacted by the idea that some jobs just aren't good, they're not valid, they're not worthwhile. And by that token, the people that do them aren't good. Or valid or worthwhile. I mean, that's something I've seen throughout history in this country. We see it right now in this very second and it's, it's labor history is, it can be so depressing but it can be like, they're definitely, when I was writing this book, I definitely was, like, had many times sitting on that little couch there, just like, oh, this is terrible. But there's so many wins and triumphant moments and small victories and phenomenal people that it's, I guess it is what we make of it. Right. That's what it's always been.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Like you need a soap box now. Uh, well, I don't know. I don't know what I mean. Since you study the actual history, I don't know if it's just access internet or what or whatever. But it is there more of a workers' movement, like, going on right now. We're in this moment that I think, I think there's a lot of different factors kind of coming into play the pandemic being a massive one of them. Yeah, a huge one. Um, especially in the past couple of years, like, as the pandemic has pandemic and still not gone away. We, we've seen the way that people kind of understand the value of their lives and their labor shift because there's that this couple months earlier on right where we were all talking about essential work and essential workers and banging pots and pans and putting up signs and some people got raises or hazard pay temporarily. Yeah. And then that all went away and all those workers who were very, who knew full well, like the labor we do keeps this whole fucking thing going.

It was very obvious at that point they had to go back to work and they went back into the jaws of the beast and were abandoned. But at that point, they're like, oh, so none of this, nothing happens without us. Interesting. And I think we saw a bunch of high profile strikes kick off that year, whether it was John Deere or Kellogg's. We saw there's a bunch of stuff with the economy that is not really my forte, but like, you have to ask somebody nerdier than me about that. But I think that the job market tighten, there was more opportunities for people to find jobs and to leave for a hot minute. The government helped us for a second by having that increased unemployment and giving out the stimmy, some people had a little bit of wiggle room to figure out what they wanted to do. And we've seen the younger generation who come of age in this moment and enter the workforce kind of have a different view than I think maybe people our age and people older than us have where they, they're like the post Bernie generation, right? Like, oh, uh, we are much more willing to kind of go to the go to the mat for issues that people older than us think aren't part of the whole union movement.

Like besides wages, besides basic workplace conditions, we also see younger workers fighting for racial justice, for trans rights, for reproductive rights, for disability rights, for all of the the aspects that make up workers, various identities. Just understanding like we're not just one thing, right? Like you're not just a power lifter. I'm not just a writer. We're so many, we're so much more than what our boss sees on a balance sheet. And I think that is driving a lot of the, the younger people that we're seeing organized places like Starbucks or Amazon or R E I or in the cannabis industry or the strippers in North Hollywood. Like, understanding that it's bigger than it's bigger than your paycheck. And it's, this is a way that we can actually force some of the change that we so desperately need because Lord knows all the other traditional or available venues are not working. Yeah, this is it. It's the money. Yeah. Hit him in the wallet that this is it. This is the moment. Yeah, I loved seeing that there was just so much more energy on, like, challenging the status quo before we were just so used to showing up and, you know, doing what we had to do and now we're questioning everything.

Yeah. Right. It's pretty nuts. It's pretty nuts. Even my, like, I have, I have some employees and like some of the shit they say I'm like, we don't do that over here. Calm down like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm just not feeling good today and you know, is it ok if you need me to like, calm down, stay home, like we understand like the work is always gonna be here. What are they gonna say? Like, relax like it, but it's nuts because that's, that's the way, that's what we're used to. We're used to being treated like machines, honestly. Right. That's what, that's something that stuck with me when I went down to Alabama to talk to those Amazon workers that first time to see these folks who are middle age, they're dealing with health issues now because of working in these backbreaking 12 hour days. Just kind of look at me and say we are not robots, we're not machines, we're human beings and our bodies are breaking down like that. Is that just how can you watch that and not feel like either I need to be down there fighting with them or oh shit, I'm doing something wrong.

Like how like, like all these billionaire types, it's, you know, back in, back in the day, like in the 18 hundreds that I read about all these great big strikes that happened, the, the railroad barons and oligarchs. They were not people that regular folks had access to. You can maybe write a letter, but good luck Jeff Bezos is out here on Twitter. He is sitting around all day. We can tell them what they think. I think a little bit of that mystique is broken down too. Like, oh, I can go on there and tell somebody with a billion dollars to go fuck himself. We didn't always be able to do that and you get shot or arrested. Right. That's another thing. And it depends on the country you're in because back in the Philippines, you absolutely cannot. You know, that's true. That's true. On the country in this country it's a little safer to strike into union because back in the day, like during the mine wars in West Virginia, like the, in the early 19 hundreds, like they would send in armed guards to shoot the miners who just wanted to, to organize a union.

Like there's a very long history of that of cops and private detectives and pinkertons murdering and intimidating and generally getting in the way of people organizing. Some say they don't still do it, but it's a little less blatant now. So, progress. Yeah. Now it's like behind closed doors, intimidation type stuff. But even that, like with Twitter, like the Starbucks one, like I remember seeing the, the person that was running like literally like live tweeting like, oh I'm in here right now. My manager is telling me that, that I have to do this. Oh, my manager is searching through the file folder that I just passed like literally like live fucking live tweet. You know, like you can't, you can't hide that shit anymore. The visibility I think is so empowering for people like, oh and also like not just to put it all on Twitter but just being like the social media in general like, oh we can, we can get, we don't have to wait for the New York Times to show up. We can get, we don't have to beg NBC to cover our story. Like have it twisted around into what works.

Yeah. There's people on tiktok with the entire exposes freaking stories. They're just ready to rip. It's a really cool time to be the person that writes about this stuff. Like I can barely keep up, but it's literally my job to every day. There's something new and I, I learned more too that like all of these corporations already have surveillance on their employees, right. Constantly checking to see if they're sneaking in fries at the mcdonald's or pocketing some change from the cashier. Like that's been happening forever. Now the surveillance is turned around on the employers and which is nuts, right? It's beautiful. It's so good. I mean, they're doing the real illegal shit eating fries on their luxury. Like now it's like over 100 years ago in 1911, the Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire that came about because the bosses of that, of the immigrant women and Children who worked there they would always lock the doors, make sure nobody was stealing fabrics, uh, fabric scraps, little pieces of cotton.

Well, same thing as a fucking French fry. Right? And 100 and 46 people died. They burned to death. And now we're at this point where, like you said, the watch it. Like people, they might be trying to surveil us about those scraps of fabric or those French fries or that, you know, a little extra latte now, but we can see them and we can show everyone else what they're doing and I really don't like that. No. Big fix. Big Fix. Yeah, that is grand. Um, I do have one more question for you before we wrap up. I think we're like around an hour. I by now, um, I, I want to know more about this baby lifting because if you, if you're a heavy metal, like I feel like you should have been, I feel like you should have been in, this is what happened, right. I spent so much time on the road when I was younger. Like, I, I really need to start going to the gym regularly in like 2018 or so and I would go with my best friend to bar classes which are brutal in a very different way.

It is a good one. No, thanks. You know, that they have no business being that hard doing that. But really, I've always been interested in lifting because that's like, what I'm drawn to, I'm like, I'm built like a Soviet propaganda poster already. Like, I feel like I should be. It's like, that's my destiny. But having, like, you know, unbalanced arms and different fingers, it's like, this seems like this could be a little dicey. I don't know. It's one of those things that I, I wish I could do. Like, I always wanted to be a boxer. I don't know about all that. There's there various things that I would love to do. But I don't know if I have the right equipment but I went to, um, kind of on a whim. There's this Barbell gym here called Collective Strength here in. Yes, I love them. Yeah. And I would, I followed them on in, like, oh, they're really cool. That looks nice. And I saw a year or so ago they were doing, um, beginner, like, like workshops, like Barbell beginner workshops and I looked at it, I was like, huh, maybe I can try it.

And I went to a couple of them, I went to a bench and I went to squats and I didn't do, I did not go to, I was like, uh, I know my limits. I don't think I'm, I'm set up for that one quite yet, so I didn't know about trap bars yet. But, um, yeah, I just started, I went to a couple of those. I started going to Collective Strength is going by myself. And doing my little, my little squats and trying to do my little benching and it was so fucking fun and I felt so cool and strong and powerful, especially because I, I like have different equipment than everybody else. I'm like, yo, I can do this. That is the most, it just feels really, really cool that I thought I'd never be able to do this awesome thing. But it turns out I can, and now I've been, I finally stopped traveling for this damn book tour and I'm back to my, my little gym. I go to a gym close to my house now and there's a trainer that I work with sometimes and she's, we're just trying to figure out what works, like what kind of adaptive things work, what kind of standard things, work of trial and error. Yeah, because it's like when you have such a specific deal, it's like, not only is it something that the trainer has never seen before, she's like, oh, like, I'm not sure what, what to Google one hand, but sort of not lifting?

Like, that's how I found you guys because so much of the adapted lifting stuff I found it seems geared a lot of it towards, like veterans and amputees, like, which is sick but not my specific deal. Like, I've got some fingers, there's just not as many as one might expect. So I'm still trying to figure it out, but it's kind of this this project, like a personal project, I guess. Like, I don't think I'll ever be like, a competitor but I don't need to be, I'm very competitive in everything else I do when I get, get that covered. Yeah. And it's like, it makes my brain turn off because it's just, like, I just had to pick things up, do it. Right. Put it down. It's the nice, it's so, it's amazing that bench was, like also a good and easy lift for you at first because I don't know, I couldn't imagine like even, you know, our friend Chloe who was on here, bench was really hard for her in the beginning. Now, she's benching more than two plates with, with two fingers, you know, like I have to figure out what she does because I figured out like I can do it but I can, the, the, the frustrating thing for me is that like, I, I, I know I could get, I know I can lift hip things.

It's just grip and balance. That's the issue and that's where it starts getting uh like frustrating. Like that's when I start feeling like I wish I just had it five ft just for like an hour. You can have it back just here. That's when you hit the road block. Like, fuck what I gotta deal with this. Yeah. Like I found like we started playing with the trap bar. Oh OK. This I think I can, I can work with this. I found like a, yeah, I found like a, this little claw, like, cook thing. I found, um, you, like, wrap around your wrist and they go, that's kind of what my uses. Yeah, I think, I think I might have saw it on one of your videos but, like, oh, ok. I'm gonna try that. But it's, it's kind of funny to, to feel your way out through these things in like a commercial gym. Like every, I think everyone may at some point probably has that thought of, oh my God, people looking at me, it was my thing. Definitely looking at you. Yeah. And I think with my thing going back to that, like I do not necessarily wish to be perceived.

I'm like, oh, no, I know they're gonna look at me because I'm gonna whip out something they haven't seen before and that's fine. I understand. But like, just, just do not perceive me. I would like to be left alone to figure that out. So I don't know what, especially in the beginning. What has your experience been with that? Like, figuring it all out? I mean, it, it took years and it's been almost nine or 10 years of that, um, constant trial and error. Like when you find your one equipment, like I use the Howlin hook, which has the Helen hook or the Harbinger hook that has the hook attached to the strap, um, it's gonna fall apart after a few months because of the heavy weight. So you like it by twice. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah. And other people who I know, um, uh, use, you know, other types of straps where it's still, it doesn't get in the way of the fingers that they do have because I have zero, like long fingers, you know. Um, and that works for grip and, um, like, I guess it just any type of mobility.

Um And yeah, and it's, it's, it's amazing like how unique everyone's body is and you can kind of figure your way around that and finding that first, like, great gym to show you that you can do it. Yeah, I think was, yeah, that's like best story you could have started with in lifting. Yeah, because it's gonna be trial and error no matter what. But as long as you find a place where you feel safe and you're like, well, I can make mistakes here and I, I can't fuck it up and like, nobody's gonna make me feel like a shit, then you'll be all right. Yeah, that's the biggest part. My nature is so like, if I'm not good at something right away, I'm like, hm, I'm used to the things that I do I'm good at because I've done them for like one of those like, oh, the things I'm good at, I'm good at and starting a new thing is kind of scary. So I'm like, don't get frustrated and get mad and give up. Just do, just be bad at it. It's just do the thing, just do the thing. That's all. Do it horribly, do it shitty, whatever.

Do the thing. If you have us on Instagram or find us on Instagram, I'm sure on one of our um story highlights we have like all the tools that we've used like Marc Marcy used I use and then Chloe I think was like the Rex grip or Rex's strap or she uses a specific like strip because there's different wrist straps, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's different. Yeah, it's like just figuring out the different equipment that already exists for anybody and then trying that out and be like, all right, this, if this doesn't work. All right. And so what exists that's created just for somebody with a disability and then trying that like even just wrist straps, there's regular wrist straps, there's figure eights, there's the rec strap that uses like, oh the figure eight, that's literally three different kinds of wrist straps. And we're, that's only one and it's not even meant for us, right? Yeah. So you could try all of those three and then be like, all right, that doesn't work. Now, what else? Like it's wild, like a notebook looking like an Excel sheet. Like, dude, I'm so glad I found what you all are doing.

It's not only is it this intimidating because you're trying to learn the same thing. Like, it's intimidating being the only person, you know, who has to deal with this. Yeah. So, it's like, kind of sometimes makes you feel like a, like a little kid again where I'm like, oh, no, I'm different and it's not fun. Yeah, it's so isolating for sure. Yeah. But it's also, like, well, I know there's more people out there like that and I've met some people, like, like in the collective strength world. Like, I know that I'm not all by myself this time and it feels it's still a little daunting. But you know what, even if I'm not supposed to be here, I'm here, do the thing and recognizing that that is so common, like being the first to try out something in your field, like, like, you know, having a trainer or a coach who has never seen anyone like you and is, you know, willing to learn with you and willing to find those tools, which is amazing. Yeah. Really? All we need to start with. Yeah, like we're, we're helping.

I'm like, I wish you knew this. But also like, why would you, I suppose like, it's not like when you're a little bit on the rare side, it's like, well, I guess I can't expect you to know exactly what to do with this specific setup because I don't and I am that so fair enough. Fair. That's fair. That's lovely. I think, um, there's still so many things that I could ask about, like, whiskey things and tea things. Um, you know, tons of other stuff. Yeah. So, I, I think we're gonna have to, we didn't even, I mean, yeah, I guess we did talk about your book. Um, but if you could just real quick talk about where your book is. What's the name and how people can get if they want to learn more about the work stuff, labor stuff. Yeah. The work stuff and it's, it's coming out on paperback in the spring and the summer so we can just talk more about it. Um, but yeah, my book is called Fight like hell, The untold History of American Labor. It came out, um, right before May Day, about six months ago this year. So 2022 on one signal and you can find it kind of everywhere.

Like it's, it's on Amazon but like Blue Amazon, it very, very much a fan of people getting it from independent bookstores or from the library or b it from your friends. I don't really care if just if you steal it, steal it from Barnes and Noble. Yeah. They hate when I say things like that, but I love it. They'll be all right. They'll be ok. They won't even notice this sandwich. Sister will be fine. But, um, yeah, it's, it's out there in the world. Um, I'm gonna be doing a paperback version but I think some, some, well, I gonna fix a couple type of and add some new stuff. And I'm also, this is kind of cool. Uh, hasn't really been announced yet, but I'm working on a young readers edition for kids, like 10 and up. So you're working on this in the next couple of months. Yeah, basically just picking out some of the, the most fun people in the book and just kind of, oh, we better have a banned book on the list. Yes. Yes. Queen. But to get added to that list quick. I love it. Oh, yeah. They're gonna love me down in Texas. Yeah. That's the next, the next thing and then, yeah, just keep writing stuff and talking to people about it and writing more articles and going to the gym.

Yeah, I love the so funny. Yeah. Come back to us next year. We got to catch up and see where you're at. Um, if anyone wants to find and follow you, where can they do that in a non creepy, totally supportive way? Um, I feel like I'm going to be on Twitter till the wheels fall off. So, I'm at Grim Kim there. My old college radio DJ name. That's nice. Yeah, it's, I think people see it now are like, what does that mean? Like, if, you know, is she like a spooky girly or something, I don't get it. Yeah, close enough. I used to have a radio show and everything called Dawn of The Apocalypse. But, um, yeah, on Twitter I have an Instagram. I mean, it's just Kim Kelly, writer, like, writer. Um, if you Google me, who knows what's gonna come up? I've been out here for a while but hopefully some good stuff and, um, yeah, I haven't figured out, take that yet. Maybe someday. Yeah. I mean, it's not a bad. I, I could actually send you something if you want to, like, figure it out. Although I'm in like a different industry but I think the tips will help because I wrote shit that as an elder millennial trying to learn the app, I had talked to like some younger people as successful and I like took notes and shit.

So I'll send you it because that as a platform for like the shit that you're doing people would eat that up. I think it like I could see you on there like with the screen shot and like your head in the car just like talking through shit. Yeah. Yeah. Twitter is, you know, just as, just as fun, just not without the multimedia I think, right? It's, it's hard, it's hard to learn new things and buttons and like, oh what do I click? Oh my God. I feel like I missed entire like Snapchat. Who knows? I feel like none of my 30 four years I don't really understand. It's OK. I'm not on tiktok either, but I can see how you can be very successful on there. Yes. But yeah, I'm, I'm around, I'm pretty easy to find and I have a public email address just in case you need me. But I'll make you guys look a little bit harder to find that one. If you really mean it, you'll find it. Yeah. All right, lovely. Thank you so much. Fantastic. This is really fun. Thank you so much for hanging out and talking to me and also for giving me tips in the back of my head. I was like, I hope they tell me some cool things.

Go to the gym after this and be like, well, so they just told me that and I just sent you some videos too. Hell, yeah. All right, disabled girls out. Thanks for listening to disabled girls who lift. We appreciate all of your support and everyone who's taken the time to show us some love. Don't forget to subscribe, rate or write a review of our channel. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify player, F M Google Podcasts and more. You can also find us on Instagram at disabled girls who lift.