The first thing I notice when I reach the podium is that I cannot see where the people end. Waterfront Park is packed, and the crowd stretches into streets that were closed hours ago. People are on balconies and rooftops. They lean out of windows with their phones raised. Somewhere beyond all those heads is the San Diego I know, but from up here the city looks like it belongs to somebody else.
For once it looks like it belongs to the people who live in it.
I put my hands on the podium and look out over hundreds of thousands of people who came here because they are pissed the fuck off. I know the feeling. For most of my life that feeling has gotten me thrown out of places. Today it got me a stage.
The wind comes off the bay and lifts the corner of my prepared remarks. I put one hand over the paper, although I doubt I will follow it. Somebody convinced me that a congressional campaign announcement should have a written speech. Apparently after everything that has happened there are still people who think they can get me to stick to a script.
I am trying not to laugh at that when I catch sight of our signs.
The Burn It Down name is everywhere. People have it printed on shirts and painted across homemade banners. When I started the party, plenty of people thought the name alone would kill it. They said nobody serious would get behind something like that. They wanted language that sounded responsible, language that could survive a focus group without making anybody uncomfortable.
I wanted to tear the whole fucking system down and start over. I figured the name ought to say so.
I had spent enough time watching people soften what they believed until nobody could tell what they believed anymore. I was done with that. The people in this crowd were done with it too. They had tried being reasonable. They had voted for the lesser evil until evil was the only thing either party bothered to offer.
Now people who once would have crossed the street to avoid each other are standing shoulder to shoulder. Some used to blame everything on Republicans. Some used to blame everything on Democrats. Eventually their rent went up enough that the argument stopped being interesting. Their children still needed to eat regardless of whose speech sounded better on television.
I never thought I would live to see them unite around anything, much less something I started.
The numbers have gotten so ridiculous that even the people paid to explain us away have stopped trying. Barring something extraordinary, Burn It Down is going to take both houses of Congress and the presidency. At least forty-seven states are expected to put their executive offices and legislatures under our control. Every time somebody says that out loud I remember begging people to help me collect signatures.
In 2014 I ran against Paul Ryan and got my ass handed to me. In 2018 I put real effort into a campaign and learned how thoroughly people could ignore somebody they did not want the public to hear. Back then a little coverage would have felt like a victory. Today there are cameras pointed at me from so many directions that I cannot count them.
I should be thinking about the election. Instead I keep thinking about how much suffering it took to get everybody here.
People like to call something inevitable after it happens. Nobody talks about the years when it looked impossible or the people who died waiting for a change that never reached them. I look at that crowd and know there are people missing from it. Some should have lived long enough to see this.
I shift closer to the microphone. The noise rises, then gradually falls as people realize I am about to speak. I can hear somebody near the front yelling my name. I look toward the voice but cannot pick out a face.
I have spent years wondering what I would say if the whole country finally listened.
I get as far as “Thank you” before four shots ring out.
I never hear my next word.
When I open my eyes, a machine is breathing for me.
There is no memory between the podium and this room. I do not remember falling. I do not remember anybody touching me or an ambulance ride. The crowd is gone, and in its place is a doorway that takes me a while to understand. For a few seconds I think I am looking at a screen.
Then somebody walks past it.
I try to turn my head. Nothing happens. I try again because apparently I think my body is going to respond better if I get annoyed with it. My eyes are aimed toward the door, and that is where they stay.
I cannot feel my chest. I cannot feel my feet either. There is something in my mouth, something much larger than anything that should be there, and I slowly understand that it is a breathing tube. A steady mechanical sound comes from beside me. Air goes in. There is a pause. Air comes out.
I try to take a breath of my own, but I cannot tell whether I manage it.
There are IV lines everywhere I can see. Clear tubing runs down from bags hanging above the bed, and electrical cables disappear beneath the sheet. Some devices I recognize from previous hospital stays. Others might as well be equipment from a fucking spaceship. Whatever happened to me has apparently required the hospital to bring out everything it owns.
Three police officers stand outside the room.
That gets my attention faster than the machines. I have woken up in enough bad situations to know the difference between medical care and medical care under arrest. If they thought I was going somewhere, there would probably be a cuff connecting me to the bed. I cannot feel my wrists, so I cannot be certain, but none of them seem concerned about keeping me inside.
They are watching the hallway.
One is talking about the Padres game. Apparently it came down to the last inning, and somebody nearly blew it. Another officer says he turned it off because he could not take it anymore. The first guy tells him he missed a hell of a finish.
I am lying here with a machine responsible for my breathing, and these motherfuckers are discussing baseball.
Under other circumstances I would probably join in just to make things awkward. Right now I would settle for moving a finger.
The hallway falls quiet again. I cannot hear another patient. There are no televisions or visitors arguing about where they parked. Even the usual hospital traffic seems absent. The silence makes every electronic beep sound close to my ear, and it lets me hear footsteps long before the two men come into view.
I know both faces.
FBI Special Agent Graham King walks beside Marshal Dennis Coggan. Coggan is also deputized with the FBI and works with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Seeing either of them outside my hospital room would be enough to raise questions. Seeing them together makes me wish I had control of my mouth.
The last time I saw them they were raiding and interrogating me.
They had been executing a warrant out of Florida in the case that eventually helped set this whole movement in motion. The government had tried to silence me to protect Epstein associates. I had beaten the case, but winning in court had not made people understand what happened. For years the media had refused to touch the full story.
Then Netflix made a documentary, and suddenly people wanted to know why they had never heard any of it before.
It covered retaliation that reached back decades. People could finally watch the pieces together instead of hearing one accusation at a time. By then I had gotten used to explaining myself to people who had already decided I was full of shit. Watching strangers get angry on my behalf was a strange adjustment.
Now the two men from that interrogation are walking toward me, and I have no idea why.
They stop well short of the door. Another officer steps into view, which answers the question of whether there are only three out there. This one has stripes on his sleeve. He puts out a hand, and both men stop about twenty feet from my bed.
King introduces himself. Coggan does the same. Their badges come out, but the officer barely moves.
“We cannot let anybody federal near this room,” he says.
I would smile if anything on my face worked.
King asks whether there has been a specific threat.
“There has already been a government hit,” the officer says. “We are not giving anybody a second opportunity.”
For a moment the only sound is the ventilator. I wait for somebody to correct him. Nobody does.
He tells them there were four shots from four different vantage points. None of the shooters had been anywhere near the park. Every bullet hit my chest. Three shooters are in custody, and the fourth is still out there. According to him, all three they caught have provided proof that they were hired by the government.
He does not explain what the proof is. I wish he would. I have spent too much of my life dealing with official claims to accept one without questions, even when it confirms something I suspected. But I heard the shots, and I am looking at enough medical equipment to make his account believable.
I always said they would eventually decide that assassination was the only way to shut me up.
There is no satisfaction in apparently being right. I cannot even swallow. Whatever clever thing I might once have imagined saying about this situation has been replaced by the basic desire to breathe without assistance.
Coggan takes a small step back. King looks toward two chairs against the opposite wall.
“Can we at least sit over there?” he asks.
“Of course you can,” the officer says. “You just cannot come any closer.”
They sit down like men waiting for an appointment. I cannot get over how ordinary it looks. Two familiar faces beneath hospital lights, their knees pointed toward my room, while somebody nearby continues working a shift. Somewhere people are probably watching the footage from the park over and over.
I wonder what the crowd did when I fell. I wonder how many people got hurt trying to get away. I cannot ask, and nobody outside offers an answer.
Several minutes pass. Or maybe they only feel like minutes. Time has gotten unreliable. Sometimes a beep seems to hang there forever, and sometimes I realize I have missed part of a conversation without remembering any silence.
Eventually one of the officers asks the question I have been stuck with since those faces appeared.
“What are you doing here anyway?”
King rubs his hands together and looks toward the floor before he answers.
“We have been watching him since he got to San Diego,” he says. “It has been a wild ride.”
I hear that and immediately wonder what watching means. I want dates and names. I want to know whether he means following the news or something he would rather avoid explaining under oath. Old habits do not disappear just because somebody has put four holes in you.
Coggan says they saw the announcement that I had been shot and came over. He speaks quietly enough that I lose a few words beneath the ventilator.
The officer with the stripes asks whether they knew me well.
“We knew the investigations,” King says. “I am not sure anybody really knew him.”
That is closer to an honest answer than I expected.
They start talking about the campaigns, then about how those campaigns eventually grew into national movements. One officer remembers seeing an old video of me and assuming it was a joke. Another says his brother had volunteered for Burn It Down before he had taken the party seriously himself.
“You can love him or hate him,” Coggan says, “but he believes what he says.”
I have heard worse descriptions of myself from federal agents.
King brings up the interrogation. He says I had seemed more interested in arguing about what the government was doing than worrying about what could happen to me. Coggan remembers that I did not seem impressed by how serious they told me the situation was. Anytime the government moves on speech crimes while ignoring proof of child trafficking and 9 figure scams its serious. Not because of justice but because of the lack of it.
I was aware that it was serious. I had simply learned a long time before meeting them that being scared did not necessarily change what happened next. Sometimes it only made you easier to handle. They had their questions, and I had mine. Mine did not become less important because they had badges.
“Most people in that situation want the conversation over,” King says. “He wanted us to answer him.”
The officer nearest the door gives a short laugh. I cannot see his face clearly enough to know whether he finds that admirable or irritating. With me it has usually depended on whether somebody was on the receiving end.
They talk about the false terrorism charges and the false cyberstalking charges. Hearing those words spoken that plainly is almost enough to make me forget where I am. I spent years trying to get people to understand the difference between being charged with something and actually doing it. Apparently a hospital hallway after an assassination attempt is where the distinction finally becomes easy to discuss.
Coggan says that every time they thought I was finished, I came back with a bigger audience.
“He got more aggressive too,” King says.
Of course I did. People kept trying to destroy my life, then acting surprised when I had something unpleasant to say about it. I was supposed to emerge from each case grateful that they had not managed to bury me. Gratitude was never the feeling I had available.
One of the cops says he cannot imagine doing half of what I did in public. He mentions the swearing and the way I seemed willing to say exactly what everybody around me wanted left unsaid. He sounds almost embarrassed on my behalf.
I want to tell him the embarrassment wears off.
King says there was a style to it that nobody else could probably copy. Coggan agrees. The officer with the stripes says he is not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, and a small laugh moves through the group.
For a second they sound like people talking about an asshole they all know.
I prefer that to the careful voices people use around somebody they expect to die.
Then one officer says he honestly thought nothing could stop me. Coggan looks toward the room before answering.
“I guess bullets can stop anybody,” he says.
I try again to move my hand.
Nothing happens.
I want to interrupt them. I want to make one crude remark so they will quit discussing me in the past tense. I am still here, and I can hear them, and I have an unreasonable amount of shit left to do. But the machine takes another breath for me, and the conversation continues without my permission.
King leans back in his chair.
“After all these years, that is the part we never had,” he says. “We had investigations and records. We never really had the backstory. What created Jeremy NoFucks Ryan?”
I think, no shit.
They knew where to find a charge. They knew how to put a name into a database and get addresses back. None of that told them what it had felt like to live in those places before anybody thought I was worth watching. A record could tell them what medication somebody prescribed. It could not tell them what being inside my head was like when I took it. The answers and records they want don't exist. My whole childhood and my early adulthood I was literally invisible to society. Compound that with the infancy of the internet and even computers and you get a situation without records. No trail. Thats just how it goes when you fit a group society only cares about when scoring points at a dinner table. In Detroit half the people who died never even had a death record. You need to be processed for that. They just cease to exist never a trail they even existed.
Then there was the period when I first came back to Madison. I was in an invisible class but Madison is too small to not at least record anecdotes on the invisible if they ever manage to become visible. There were things nobody wrote down. There were things written down by people who had every reason to leave out their own part. If you built your understanding of me from those records, you were going to start with somebody else’s explanation and spend the rest of your time wondering why I did not fit it.
The officer with the stripes looks through the doorway.
“There must be a hell of a story behind whatever created him,” he says.
I want to tell him he has no idea.
A machine changes its tone before I can finish the thought. Another alarm answers it. The men in the hallway turn toward my room, and a nurse moves past them so quickly that I barely register her face.
She looks at the monitor and yells, “Code Blue!”
Footsteps come from farther down the hall. Someone reaches across me. The doorway disappears behind bodies, and a voice close to my head says something I cannot hold on to.
I try to stay with it, but the room is already getting harder to recognize. The alarms seem farther away although I know the machines have not moved.
I am no longer thinking about the podium. The faces outside my room slip away too. Other faces come back, faces I have not seen in years, and places I thought I had managed to leave behind. My whole life arrives at once before it begins to pull me backward through it.
I go back past the investigations and the campaigns, past the name those men were trying to explain.
Before any of them knew who I was there was my origins. And they explained exactly how I became what I did. The story with no trail because it involved someone in a class that doesn't include trails or at least didn't back then. That is where my mind takes me. And while I know it probably won't happen, for the first time in my life, at the likely end, I wish it would have been told...