Good evening, and welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, and I'm pleased you could join us this evening. Whether you're here in the theater with us or joining us on Facebook or YouTube. Before we hear from Congresswoman Jackie Spear, I'd like to tell you about two forthcoming programs here in the McGowan Theater. Tomorrow night at 7, we will host Women in Leadership, The Impact of Women on the U.S. Congress. Guests including Senator Shelley Morcapito, Representative Brenda Lawrence and Representative Debra Lesko will share their insights. This program is part of our series of events connected to the exhibit rightfully hers, American Women in the Vote, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. And on Friday, November 1st, at noon, historian H.W. Brands will tell us about his new book Dreams of El Dorado, A History of the American West, and a book signing will follow that program. To keep informed about these events and other events throughout the year, check our website, archives.gov. You can sign up at the table outside the theater to receive email updates also. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and events. Another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports all of our education and outreach activities. And you can find out more about them at archivesfoundation.org. November 1978 was a harrowing month for residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. In the middle of the month, news broke of an incomprehensible massacre in Guyana. And less than two weeks later, the area reels from the assassination of Mayor George Mosconi and Supervisor Harvey Milk in City Hall. Tonight's guest, Congresswoman Jackie Spear, was part of Congressman Leo Ryan's delegation to Jonestown, which visited the settlement led by Jim Jones, to investigate concerns expressed by family members back in California. As they were about to depart, gunmen opened fire. Jackie Spear opens her book with the chilling words, I was dying. Her survival on that horrific day, she wrote, guided her into the life she was meant to live. For the past 40 years, she has pursued a life in public service and now serves in the United States Congress. In these months leading up to the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, we remember the women who stood up for their rights and beliefs in order to secure women's right to vote. We also honor the women of the present day who continue to speak up for rights and serve the greater public. Congresswoman Jackie Spear represents California's 14th Congressional District in the United States Congress. She serves on the House Armed Services Committee, Chair of the Military Personnel Subcommittee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and most importantly, the Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is my oversight committee, where she serves on subcommittees on environment and government operations. Spear is also Co-Chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus, the Congressional Armenian Caucus, the Bipartisan Task Force to End Sexual Violence and the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. She was named to Newsweek's list of 150 fearless women in the world and one of the Politico 50 most influential people in American politics for bringing the Me Too reckoning to Congress. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Congresswoman Jackie Spear. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming out and a special thank you to David. For those of you who have not actually been through the 19th Amendment display and exhibit here in the archives, I encourage you to do so. It's really quite remarkable what you have put out on display. So thank you very much, David. I am going to start by just reading two passages from the book and then speak briefly to you and then open it up to questions because in my experience, the book has now been out for almost 11 months. I experienced the benefit of just having questions asked as opposed to carrying on and giving a speech. So I was dying. It was just a matter of time. Lying behind a wheel of the airplane bleeding out of the right side of my devastated body, I waited for the rapid shooting to stop, then said my act of contrition, praying by rote for forgiveness. I used what little energy I had left to finish that prayer before the lights went out. But the lights didn't go out and I slowly began to take stock of my situation.  My life would never be the one I had imagined. I'd never get married or become the mother of a boy and a girl or leave the world a better place or gently pass when it was my time to go surrounded by loved ones. Instead, my story was coming to an end on a dusty runway in the humid Guyanese jungle thousands of miles from home. I don't know if it's possible to articulate how urgently aware you become of the fleeting nature of your existence when you're confronted with its end. I lay there for what felt like an eternity. Somehow, through the encroaching darkness of my final thoughts, I saw my 87-year-old grandma, Emma, the tough, marvelous matriarch of my family. All I could think of was, I'm not going to make grandma live through my funeral, not if I could help it. I couldn't bear the vision of her sitting in front of my casket, suffering. If not for my reverence for her, I don't believe I would be alive today. She encouraged me to summon my will to move. Breathing heavily, I dragged my shattered body away from that wheel. Neither my doctors nor I could explain how I physically managed it. But I pulled myself up to my feet and stumbled around to take shelter in the baggage compartment. I survived. Survival against unfathomable odds can make every day that follows swell with a renewed sense of purpose, though not immediately and not for everybody. But with a hindsight of 40 years, I see that my baptism by gunfire guided me into the life I was meant to live, one of public service, one that would ignite the courage to make my voice heard, and one that would carry with it a visceral appreciation for each new day. That sentiment was far from my desperate thoughts at the time. Truth be told, it would have been far easier to have closed the box on Guyana long ago, or to have pushed the memory away into the recesses of my mind. What happened in that jungle was a massacre, a nightmare. Though I survived, something within me did die on that airstrip, be it my innocence or my belief in the natural fairness of life. But I can't deny how radically that nightmare molded my perspective and my instincts in how much it has informed the woman I am today. We don't get to choose our formative moments. Very often, adversity and failure shape us more permanently than fortune and success. That has certainly been the case in my life. The major setbacks, and there have been many, have actually propelled me onward, each one reminding me how important it is to stand up again, as difficult as it may be, stronger and more steadfast. Pain heals action. It can introduce a fervor to speak out for those whose voices are not heard. Surviving Jonestown crystallized where I needed to focus my energy. It convinced me that I had a purpose. All I had to do was figure out how to fulfill it. In my life, I have been blessed with extraordinary love and brought to my knees by shattering loss. When I returned from Guyana, I decided that life gives everybody their share of misfortune. Mine had just come early in life and was a pretty extreme dose. I was wrong. Life is not always fair. Life is just whatever you get.  I was on my way to Sacramento to give a speech to the California Bankers Association. My district director, Judy Bloom, was driving us through a torrential downpour when I got a phone call. Jackie, my secretary began in a strange voice, there's been a call from the San Mateo police. Steve's been in an accident. Judy turned the car around immediately to drive back. I called the hospital and they put me through to a friend of Steve's, the same surgeon who had operated on Grandma's gallbladder. What happened? I asked, feeling a slight wave of panic. Jackie, it's not good. You should just get here as soon as you can. I hadn't realized how serious it was until I heard the quiet devastation in his voice. We sped to Mills Hospital in San Mateo, where they left me in the waiting room with no further information. I tried to be patient, but finally I couldn't take it any longer. Let me see him, I demanded. He was in the ICU. They had done everything they could. Though his body was still warm, Steve was brain dead. Steve had been broadsided by a young man who had driven in that downpour, even though he knew his car had faulty brakes. He ran a red light at the intersection of Poplar and San Mateo Drive and plowed right into Steve's car. What was all the more twisted was that this young man worked at an auto parts shop. The details didn't compute. It seemed too senseless, too reckless to be true. Words spread like wildfire among the physicians. It wasn't his hospital, but when he was hit and they were bringing him in, the police had repeated, he's one of our own, he's one of our own. The doctor there was trying to get me to pull the plug immediately, but I just couldn't. The whole scene didn't compute. Nothing made sense. The lights, the tubes, the machines. Everybody was waiting on me. All I could do was nod yes or shake my head no. I was in a genuine state of shock, staring down horrific emotional pain, slipping through it like quicksand with nothing to hold onto and nobody there to guide me through this nightmare. My soulmate was gone and part of me had gone with him. He was being kept alive by artificial means and they were waiting on me to end it. I shut off my heart and tried to figure out what needed to be done. Jackson, I needed to pick up Jackson from kindergarten. I had to call Steve's brother who was in Oregon so he could fly down and pay his respects. I went to pick up Jackson from school and we drove back to the hospital. He was dressed in his little karate uniform. I took his hand and we walked into the ICU together and stood in front of Steve's body the same way that the two of them had come and stood by my bed with the red rose. Jackson, I said quietly, you need to say goodbye to your daddy. He didn't understand what was happening but he kissed him and looked back up at me and then asked if he could go to karate. Of course I told him and a friend took him away. Steve's brother Ken got on the first flight out and made it down a few hours later to say his goodbyes. I called Father Dan who rushed to the hospital to give Steve his last rights. After that, everyone was just standing there, waiting for me to make perhaps the most difficult decision of my life. I kissed my husband goodbye. His lips were warm. Then I nodded to the doctor and walked out of the room. So it's entitled Undaunted because it's a memoir about a life that I have led that's had lots of ups and lots of downs. Certainly, Jonestown was the first moment that was transformational for me but there were many others and certainly the death of my husband when I was pregnant with our second child was indescribably devastating. So the book is really written for young women in particular because I wanted to write a memoir that talked about how you can have all these terrible things happen to you in your life and you can get up again and that you can move forward and you can be productive and you can find happiness again. So that was the purpose for writing the book. I wrote it in particular because last November 18th was the 40th anniversary of that horrible experience in Guyana when 911 people lost their lives as part of the People's Temple and then my boss and mentor, Congressman Leo Ryan, was assassinated along with a number of people who were associated with the press locally and then one defector who we had brought out with us. As I think back on the experience there's a couple of things that kind of stand out for me. One is that our State Department failed us. The State Department in preparation for this trip had basically indicated to us that in fact everything looked great down there. They had made a visit to Jamestown and felt that people were happy there and that the community was vibrant and vital and yet they had already witnessed one member of the People's Temple defect come to the Embassy. The Embassy through the Counselor's Office had helped her return to San Francisco and yet even having debriefed her and heard her story of pain and trauma they chose not to do anything about it. Number one. Number two, this was a cult. It was a cult that was masquerading as a church and oftentimes I think that we have to be somewhat reflective as to whether or not this is a church or not. Even if it was a church it had to comply with the laws and yet in San Francisco the People's Temple became very politically engaged and Jim Jones who was the pastor got very involved with local politics. He helped then George Moscone get elected to mayor and then when there was a recall he put his 2,000 members of his congregation on the streets to walk precincts for him and after the recall was put down Jim Jones wanted to make sure that he was rewarded and so he was first offered the Human Rights Commission and he thought that wasn't good enough and eventually was appointed to the Housing Authority where he became chair. So as stories started to filter out that there were problems in the People's Temple that there was in fact physical abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse, gun running most people looked the other way because it was one a church and two politically connected and so Congressman Ryan got involved in it in particular because he had constituents the outskirts of San Francisco and the suburbs of San Francisco whose young adult children had gotten involved in the People's Temple and they were concerned that their children had gone to Jonestown in the country of Guyana in South America and that they had lost contact with them they didn't think that letters were getting through to them they were concerned about their welfare and so Congressman Ryan as a member of the then International Relations Committee and subcommittee chair of a committee that had oversight over the embassies abroad and protection of American citizens abroad decided to make the trip down there and when it was all said and done of course many people wanted to leave we took the first group out there were another 40 or so members of the People's Temple that wanted to leave and Congressman Ryan actually stayed behind and was going to escort the second airlift out I was on the first airlift and as we were in this dump truck on our way out of Jonestown there was a knifing attempt on Congressman Ryan and so the pavilion kind of we heard this uproar and the truck stopped and moments later Congressman Ryan was walking out in a bloodstained shirt so we got to the airstrip and frankly thought that we had dodged a bullet but what we didn't know was there was a tractor trailer following behind us with seven gunmen on it and they came about and shot us at point like range I was lying on the side of behind a wheel on my side with my head down pretending I was dead and they came and just shot us a point blank range so I was shot five times I still carry two bullets and the prologue kind of gives you a sense of what was going through my mind during those moments immediately after it in terms of writing the book I encourage all of you to write your stories I found that I learned a lot more about myself by writing the book than I knew before it's a great opportunity to leave something to your family and your children but what I found out about myself was something pretty simple and straightforward but I had seen things so differently I was raised in a very blue collar family I was the first in my family to go to college my father was blue collar worker and I went on to college in law school and I thought that I was pretty sophisticated and that I had achieved something my parents had not then as I wrote the book I realized that I was really part and parcel of who they were and that what I am today has everything to do with how they raised me and who they were so with that I think I'll just open it up to questions you have yes thank you so much for being here today I'm a college student here in the Washington DC area and I very much look forward to reading to reading your book what I'm wondering is and also I'm a psychology major in college so I'm particularly interested in I'm particularly interested in the theme of overcoming adversity what I'm wondering is what would you say are some of the most what would you say are some of the most significant ways that your experience at Jonestown has impacted your stand on human rights issues on human rights issues as a member of congress so I would say that the Jonestown experience has informed a lot of my legislation through almost 35 years now it makes I think that experience made me a suspect of certain activities that look to be one thing and are something else I'm always looking for what's what's not seen in terms of human rights generally I would say that that experience helps me realize that people can become subject to mind control that they can be can lose their independence and our responsibility is to make sure that they are acting volitionally which in the case of people's temple they became enslaved we had a resolution that we took up on the house floor today after decades of trying to get it passed and never succeeding and it was a simple resolution that was to recognize the Armenian genocide and the fact that 1.5 million people were exterminated by the Ottoman Empire starting in 1915 and it's important to learn from the lessons of the past there was a big sign in the pavilion at Jonestown that was quoted a quote from I think George Santillana that said for those that do not learn the lessons of the past they're doomed to repeat them and I think we have an obligation to recognize when there's ethnic cleansing going on as there may be going on right now and in Syria or when people are being exterminated because of someone who's gained power that has become mad with it good evening my question is is there like markers or memorial plazas can you talk a little bit about how this incident is memorializing that time and obviously the the lives that were lost during that time period so there is a a park that's named after congressman Ryan in my district there is a there were the bodies so I should say that after we're lying on this airstrip shot some killed over the course of that night we got word that Jim Jones had ordered what we had heard was his ultimate threat it was called the white night trials and he ordered everyone to come to the pavilion and they were given cyanide laced Kool-Aid or injected young people in an infant's with it so the bodies were all lying face down oftentimes parents holding their children and many of them could not be identified so there is a memorial at evergreen cemetery in Oakland for the remains of about four hundred people many of them children and then we just dedicated early this year the what we call the room right off of the house floor that we use informally there's a little snack bar there and we named it in honor of Gabby Giffords and Leo Ryan so that the two members of congress one who was assassinated in the line of duty and one obviously who was shot that survived so those are the ways that they've been memorialized in the state department now foreign service officers take courses in resiliency obviously they need them a lot now but you obviously didn't have resiliency training and yet you summoned up from within you was it courage whatever it was resiliency to keep going on and I'm I bought the book and I know I'm going to read about it but maybe you could just give us a little sneak preview of what that resiliency what was it inside you been able to you particularly after the death of your husband which is so devastating how do you keep going so it's a good question and yet the book is is hopefully an effort to inspire people to to live through trauma and and recover from them I must say that after my husband died so he was an ER doc at the county hospital and ER physicians tend to be living in the moment so he had let our life his life insurance laps because we had just bought our dream house and had sold our other house and so when he died on top of losing my soulmate I was now a single parent with one small child and a child still unborn and I was three months from personal bankruptcy so it was very very dark and because I had had two miscarriages before one at 17 weeks I was at bed rest for a good part of the pregnancy so I would say the three things that I talk about that helped me get through these many traumas were what I call the three F's family friends and faith but I will also say that there were days that I did not want to get up and when I was on bed rest at one point I just I didn't want to live I told myself that I could stay in bed but I had promised myself I would get up the following day and so I did that there was another I recall this in the book as well my parents came to visit me and my father was quite dramatic if you can envision that and he came into my bedroom and said how are you doing and I said dad I just feel so blue I just I don't know that I miss Steve so much I don't know that I can bring this baby into the world I I just I just don't know if I have the will to live and he turned to me and said Jackie it's been three months since Steve died get over it it's kind of funny to hear those words said more recently but and I was stunned by it I told him to get out of my room and I didn't talk to him for two weeks but the message was something that I I did later appreciate I had to move on I had a five-year-old son and I had a soon-to-be-born child and I had to summon the courage to to move on so so much for a post traumatic stress disorder I guess they didn't let you have that but thank you very much did Jim Jones give your group the impression that anyone who wanted to leave could leave with your group and how did you manage to survive that first night maybe you could tell us about your evacuation okay so when I when we got there I mean imagine you're in a dump truck driving through a jungle as you would imagine a jungle to look like foliage everywhere and then you get to a point where all of a sudden you see corn growing and other produce you think wow this is pretty amazing and then you see the sign that says this is a agricultural project and labeled it as the people's temple jones town you drive in and were greeted by Jim Jones and his wife and Debbie Blakey who was the young woman who had escaped and gone to the embassy and sought refuge we subsequently interviewed her when she was back in San Francisco and one of the things I remember her saying was that he died his sideburns so the first thing I did try and verify her story was to see if his sideburns were died and sure enough they were he was not the charismatic leader that had captured the hearts and minds of people over the decades he he seemed he seemed somewhat he seemed like it was under some influence whether it was drugs or something else he had you know sweat on his brow and then we you know we took the tour around the the compound and it was impressive you saw lots of cabins and a daycare center and a clinic and then this huge pavilion and then that night congressman ryan I sat at a kind of wooden table and and bench that allowed us to meet independently with many of the constituents and I had this folder full of letters to be able to hand over to these young people and they were entertaining us and there was dancing and music going on and the end of the night you might have seen these these snippets on TV congressman ryan got up and said gosh it looks like everyone's really happy here the place kind of exploded in kind of applause and screaming and yelling was there was an artificiality to it but it was it went on for some period of time and then afterwards Don Harris who was the embassy reporter who was on the trip came over to us and handed us a note that had two people's names on it so it was only then that we knew that people wanted to leave and so the next morning I went to the cabin of the young woman and Mr. and congressman Ryan went to the the cabin of the young man we got their belongings and brought them up and as soon as that happened more and more people wanted to leave and Jim Jones was saying I don't know why you're you know I don't know why they want to leave but if they want to leave they can leave and then a family wanted to leave with the grandmother and the father and mother and the children and so then it started snowballing and then there was got very tense and I have this one vision that hounds me haunts me I should say of a father and mother with a probably three-year-old child and they were pulling on the child's arms one wanting to stay one wanting to go and I was I was very alarmed by it and I went to the two attorneys that were representing the people's temple at the time Charles Gary and Mark Lane some of you who are old enough to know Mark Lane was one of the conspiracy theories theorists after John F. Kennedy died and there was a book that he wrote so he was an attorney who was representing Jim Jones as well and so I had gone to them and said you need to assist these families because there's child endangerment that's occurring here so eventually you know we left and went to the air air strip and once I was shot congressman Ryan fell and I was running to the side of the plane first I didn't know what the gunshots were because I was loading passengers onto the two planes and there was a little guy in each child that had scampered onto the plane I'm trying to coax him out because we didn't have enough seats as it was and so when I turned around and congressman Ryan had been shot and then started to fall and I ran under the plane and hid behind one of the wheels so after I was shot your mind does kind of interesting things to try and get you to cope with your circumstances I looked down at my body and I had a bone shooting out of my right arm and my whole right leg was blown up with the left side of my body was still you know intact so you know I I go through the process of trying to understand what's actually happening and then over the course of the I so I dragged my body to this compartment baggage compartment and how I did it I have no idea and then someone shoved me into it and then eventually I was taken out in place on the side of the airstrip unfortunately on an anthill but I tell people you don't sweat the small stuff when you're dying and then eventually they there was a tent at the airstrip that was used by two local army officials that I guess would guard the the airstrip and they moved me and two other people that were seriously entered into the tent where we spent the night and I just had the sense that I was going to survive I had no reason to believe I was going to survive but I had the sense I was going to survive so it wasn't until five a.m. the next morning that they had secured the airstrip so during that night everyone who had survived had gone into this little town and they were staying in a bar there and one of the producer for NBC and one of the reporters would come out from time to time and bring Guyanese rum for me to get a slig of it's a hundred fifty proof Guyanese rum so that's that's how I got through the night yes you said that earlier that you looked at other situations like this after jones town of what are some of the scenarios he would look for what were some of the details that would help you figure out what was going on well I guess what the experience in jones town did for me was that it made me less afraid to take on issues so I can give you an exam I mean I serve on the military I service chair the military personnel subcommittee but I've served on armed services for a number of years and I've taken on an issue of sexual assault in the military and it's been a really tough battle but I have had the sense to be able to keep at it because I know that there are those who are sweeping under the rug a lot of conduct that is gross and illegal when I was in the state legislature I took on the prison guards union and everyone sort of looked at me like why are you doing that because they were very powerful they were big contributors to campaigns but I had an oversight role and we had a hotline and all the calls that came into that hotline were about the prison system and how it was of being used and abused so I guess the experience is just empowered me in a way that I might not have been had I not look deaf in the eye and survive thank you it's kind of a follow-on to the last question you started tonight by reading passages that describe what can only be called the situations of great personal devastation and yet many of us in this room we know you for your public service and to come out of that whole of personal devastation to actually be productive in the public sphere it's a big jump and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that intersection how you found it to go out in society instead of just taking care of your kids and it would have been enough to have said okay I'm gonna have this baby and take care of my kids right so how you made that jump well there was a lot of soul-searching after sieve died as to what I should do but I also needed to work to provide for the children and at least this was a job that I loved and knew I could continue to do the irony was that shortly thereafter term limits passed in California so I was I was out of a job and shortly thereafter but I think that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life being a Guyana survivor I had a responsibility to raise these children and I had public policy was what I loved so when I was term limited out of the state assembly I went to work for a software game company and a nonprofit that provided services to the developmentally disabled and then was in a position two years later to run for the state senate and get elected and then I ran for lieutenant governor and lost I love telling young people that this is what a three-time loser looks like because I lost for student body president in high school I came home after Guyana and ran for the unexpired term of congressman Ryan and lost and then I ran for lieutenant governor of California in 2006 and lost but losing has always been the first step to succeeding in my life so I just learned that that pattern and have been willing to take the plunge so to speak and go for for what I believe is right I keep a a paperweight on my desk that reads what would you do if you knew you could not fail because the truth of the matter is we are often paralyzed because we're afraid to fail and if you can break that feeling and just pursue it you find out that you're you're capable of things that you never thought you could do if someone told me that I'd be shot and what would I think would happen I would I've told them I would just you know curl up into a ball and that would be the end of my life but we have resilience that we don't know is stored there until we're tested ask you to speak a little bit more about your public service before you became a congresswoman and also I'm in awe of your resilience and I would guess that some of that stems back to childhood and and to you know something that was strengthened within your family so if you can just speak on those two things I'd appreciate it well then you're never going to read the book there's a there's a fair amount in the book of my early childhood that will make you laugh but you know I had a real tough cookie of a mom that you know had us do crazy things like go sell cacti in the neighborhood why I don't know and we we didn't really want for much but we didn't have a lot and we I wanted to be a girl scout my mom said that we couldn't afford the uniform and I wanted ballet lessons and I couldn't have ballet lessons ironically when I came here as a staffer to congressman Ryan in seventy seven I finally took ballet lessons I was twenty two years twenty three twenty four years old so but the one thing my parents did give us were judo lessons so I guess I I learned from an early age that you had to defend yourself in terms of my legislation I spent a lot of time on issues in the state legislature around consumer protection women's reproductive health violence against women and a lot of that work is continued here in congress as well I've also worked on a number of issues that are trying to I I guess what always moves me is is fairness is this fair and there's kind of this barometer inside me that if I'm very offended by something that is fair that I want to take up that issue it's my outrage meters I get outraged a lot lately yes by the part of your speech where you mentioned that the embassy staff in Guiana interviewed the female defector and it seems like they essentially ignored her story maybe thought she was being hysterical or emotional or something to that effect and I was wondering if you think that if the defector was a male and had the same story if this tragedy could have been avoided and perhaps if it if it occurred in two thousand nineteen and the same situation happened where a female defector told her story do you think the same thing would have happened so I think in that particular set of circumstances there was and I'm speculating an overriding decision to not rock the boat because Jim Jones had a very close relationship with the prime minister of Guyana at the time whose name was Burnham and there was also bauxite that was being exported from Guyana into the United States so I think there was a political and economic interest that over road their sense of urgency into trying to really investigate the people's temple there's also something very peculiar that I've never gotten to the bottom of the ambassador was set to to testify in the international relations committee some months later and then on the morning of the hearing he was pulled the hearing was pulled and there never was a hearing and I don't know what transpired that and I haven't pursued it but maybe in the archives will find something his name was Burke is kind of piggybacking a little bit off the last question but you mentioned earlier in your talk the quote sort of that I'm paraphrasing you know we learned history in order to repeat in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and you know with the benefit of hindsight and then your you know very personal experience in Guyana what would you say are the you know lessons that we should be learning both from you know jones town as a whole but also sort of the political circumstances in the assassination of congressman ryan in particular I think the overriding lesson is that nobody's above the law churches aren't above the law residents are above the law and in this case jim jones the people's temple got a pass because they were quote a religion and you know I've seen it in the catholic church how is it for decades pedophilia was allowed to persist and nothing was done about it until journalists undertook an investigation so I think the lesson is that everyone has to play by the same rules and the laws are there for a reason and no matter who you are you cannot violate the law I noticed that the end of the book you speak about your work on the equal rights amendment and I just thought you might want to say I mean you might want to tell us about what your projection and that's a fearless fight thank you so much for okay so the equal rights amendment has been introduced every years every two years since nineteen twenty three Alice Paul was the architect of that and it has never passed now it passed at one point in nineteen seventy two I believe and it passed both houses of congress that then went to the states and thirty five states passed it now there had been for some of some reason a deadline placed in the resolution for the equal rights amendment and it was fast approaching so congress decided that they would take up a resolution to amend it and extend it for three years and I was working for congressman Ryan at the time and I had written this I thought important brief to convince him that this was legal and that we should that he should support the extension of it and he was not making up his mind so I'm sitting it's the one time I remember sitting in the gallery of the house watching him on the floor and he wasn't voting and I was sitting there thinking if he doesn't vote for this I have to resign and at the last minute he voted for it and it was extended for three years but there weren't any additional states that passed it so you fast forward some years ago when justice Scalia was still alive he was asked the question does the constitution require discrimination based on sex and he said no but the constitution also doesn't prohibit discrimination based on sex and it is unthinkable that in this day and age that in our constitution we have not yet passed them and amendment to state that discrimination based on sex is prohibited but that is the status of things I'm carrying a resolution hjr 38 that would strike the deadline in that 1972 bill and so doing it would create the opportunity for the additional three states and two have Nevada and Illinois have passed it so we're now at 37 and there's a likelihood that next year depending on what happens in the election in November in Virginia that Virginia could in fact pass it as well and that would take us to 38 and then the archivist would be in a position to make it law so we'll see what happens but there are so many cases that come up because we don't have this prohibition specifically in the constitution or one of the amendments I mean we've kind of bootstrapped it through the 14th amendment that never really covers it so I enjoy telling the story of Debbie young who worked for UPS for 10 years and then she got pregnant she went to her supervisor and said I'm pregnant he said well you better go see your physician find out what kind of accommodations we have to make so she came back says I just can't lift more than 20 pounds and he said that's that's a liability we can't possibly have you continue to work here during that time so she was put on unpaid leave and lost her health insurance during that time now she ends up filing a lawsuit and in discovery guess what they found out that men at UPS who had heart attacks or diabetes and who needed to be accommodated by not lifting more than 20 pounds were in fact accommodated so it goes all the way to the Supreme Court it ended up getting remanded and settled out but the issue was not only do you have to establish that there was discrimination which there clearly was you have to establish that they intended to discriminate against it wasn't Debbie young her name was Peggy and so until we had this prohibition in the Constitution as one of the amendments there's always going to be this issue around establishing intent okay I'm getting so I guess I guess we're going to bring this to an end I will end with my very favorite quotation it's anonymous but it speaks to my life life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention in arriving in a well-preserved body rather to be totally worn out totally used up martini in one hand chocolate in the other screaming woohoo what a ride thank you


As Henry gets the carry, he's to the 50, to the 45, to the 40, to the 30, to the 20, to the 10, to the 5, to the end zone. Wow. Derek Henry to the house, 53 yards. Touchdown Titans. He's over 200. He's over 1,500. And he is the baddest man in NRG Stadium today.


Good day and welcome back to the Asperger's Growth YouTube channel with your host, Mr Thomas Henley of course. Today we're going to be talking about Autistic Inertia. Autistic hyper-focusing ability that we are all very, very well aware of for both negative and positive purposes. Yeah, I made a post recently on my Instagram page, Asperger's Growth, where I talked about autistic hyper-focus. I don't eat, I don't drink, just focus. And that's a very powerful sentence because that pretty much describes a lot of the ways that I navigate through life. Difficulty of day-to-day activities, whether it be a good thing that I want or something that I don't want. I don't tend to have a lot of control over what I focus on, just in general. As some really bad effects on me in terms of my executive functioning, it can make it very difficult for me to transition from one activity to another activity.  On the flip side of things, if I get really hyper-focused on work, I tend to go through the entire day just not stopping, just keep going. I try to step away from doing videos, I try to step away from work, and I'm instantly on my phone doing something else productive wise, something related to that. It's a very difficult thing to try and explain. The idea and the concept of autistic inertia is basically describing a state where you can't stop a task. If you've started a task, you've got into it, you've got into the flow state, and you cannot stop for the life of you. Likewise, on the other side of things, perhaps you'll find it really hard to restart what you're doing after being distracted. So if you're working, you got distracted by a little notification on your phone, you start chatting to your friends, it's really hard to get back into that work mode. This is autistic inertia. So look, the idea that you can laser focus in on a task for hours and hours and hours at a time, it's undoubtedly a useful thing when applied well. The positives, perhaps you've got higher productivity, faster learning, she being attentive and you're taking information in, and also you're in a flow state, so it helps a lot of anxiety through the counteracting of the default mode network, which is kind of the existence of your brain where it's just kind of processing thoughts and chucking things out and in and not really getting anywhere, just baseline. That can cause a lot of anxiety and focusing in on something, getting into a task, doing something tends to help a lot with that. Focuses your brain, you're not thinking about random stuff all the time. So there are some positives, but let's take a second to look at the negatives. The negatives, you can imagine. Forgetting self care, eating, sleeping, showering, peeing, all of this stuff, if you are in a hyper focus hole, it's gonna be really difficult to break out of just even for a minute or two to go and do one of these things. You can also get burnt out very, very quickly if your inertia continues day to day to day to day.  It consumes ATP, the energy system of the body, just slight your muscles and you need to rest it and that's why it can often lead to a burnout if you continue to let this ball rolling. You also quite often don't get to choose what. You can sort of force yourself and you can make yourself get into a state of inertia, but it sometimes just random things just catch your attention and it's really difficult to stop thinking about. Really difficult to stop doing stuff around this certain topic. I think the best way to describe this is to give you two examples. The first example is me at work doing my videos, doing all my gym stuff. I have a very, very packed schedule and I often don't tend to leave myself a lot of space to transition, to move from one thing to another and so there's been times where I've perhaps been editing my documentary during Covid where I will get up and I will start work at about 10am and I will finish at about 3am and this isn't something that I'm forcing myself to do. I just can't help it. I just continue and continue and I'm like oh well I'm already in the role, I'm already in the flow state so I'll just continue and then it gets to about midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am. Still haven't eaten, still haven't drunk, see I haven't even gone to the toilet or showered or done any of that stuff but I'm still at it. You could say that this is probably good if it was had to be out the next day, you know that would be a really, really great thing to just be able to work on it constantly but for most people, day to day life, most of the time doing that is not healthy. You have to have a variety of things in your life, rest, socialising, things of that nature, eating of course, taking care of bodily functions, important things to do. Let's go on to the second example. I recently downloaded Skyrim, well not recently but in this story recently. And I really like it and I was watching YouTube videos and it kind of got to the point I was playing an hour and the next day it was been 2 hours and 3 hours and then suddenly I was spending, I woke up and I was already in my bed and my bed is also a TV so I popped the TV up, fired up the Xbox, got onto Skyrim, got to about 4am that day and I just couldn't break myself away from it and it caused me a lot of anxiety but I just couldn't stop myself from doing it. I had to complete a certain goal. It was not a very good situation for me and there's been times like that where I've latched on and hyper-focused on something that's not perhaps very good for me and that I just keep doing it and it's very hard to stop that inertia. I think I believe that this idea of autistic inertia is based on probably three concepts that you're very aware of. One being routine. We tend to in our modern day have a routine for productivity, for work, for doing things, for perhaps work related things but we don't really have one for rest. Another side to that is the transitions. Transitioning from one thing to another. Very, very difficult, very hard sometimes. It can cause us a lot of anxiety as kids. It can cause a lot of anxiety as adults, especially if our mental health is bad. And the last thing, let me just check. Look, I'm not perfect. It could be hyper-focusing, getting in that flow state, that autistic flow state, that dialed in laser-focused, just absolute monstrosity of a productivity work machine or a gaming work machine. All of those things combined lead us to becoming this very specialized creature which we really, when done right and when organized properly, we're at absolute powerhouse. If not, and we sort of miss certain things and we don't take into consideration things like transition time, processing time, scheduling routines for rest and play and good things, then it can be a bad thing and it can be really toxic for us and it can cause us a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, a lot of difficulty maintaining ourselves as far as eating and sleeping and drinking enough. So there's a lot of things good and bad on this side. But what are my tips to help you in this situation? What's going to be some good tips that you can take away from this? Number one, set up a routine that includes both work and rest. This will help you limit your focus time to specific times. Naturally, slowing down your inertia through repetition, through routine, you know, you see that, I don't know, you might get a sense for the light outside, it might get dark or light at a certain time and you can be like, okay, right, now I need to start winding down, start adjusting things. Having that routine really does help because it stops you from getting into those day-long hyper-focusing binge streaks. I'm spitting on that lately. I hope you can't see it on the camera because it's absolutely gross. So that's the first one. Very good thing to do. The next one would be incorporate some smarter transitions. Do you find it difficult to move from one task to another, even if it's from work to rest? Maybe what you need is something to help you in that transition. Maybe you need a reason to switch. One really weird way that I'm currently sort of managing my transitions is I'm playing an idle game on my phone. It doesn't require a lot of attention and there are a lot of ads that you can sort of click on.  Pop on my phone, sort of put it on during the end, you know, around the end of work. Right, okay, there's an ad opportunity. Press the ad. And then I've got 30 seconds to do nothing. And then we're like, all right, that might as well just go and lay down or something. And you can do that in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be that gaming example. It could be watching a YouTube video and just putting it on in the background or listening to a podcast in order to get down and cook yourself some tea or, you know, anything of that nature. I'd really consider different ways that you can try and get around this.  For me, the sweet spot, if it's been the entire day that I've been working, transition times probably about an hour. If it's just one thing to another within work, perhaps maybe five or 10 minutes. It's very variable each time to each time, but making sure the routine and the transitions are in check. Very good thing to do. The last thing that I wanted to highlight is that once you notice your anxiety rising, make sure that that is a cue in your brain to stop, to have a break. This is really important because this can stop you from getting into those hyper-focusing streaks and having, you know, not eating and all your cortisol rising and you're getting very anxious and having a meltdown or a shutdown or getting overloaded or burnt out. Try and find ways to notice when your anxiety is rising. For me, I feel it in my legs. I feel it instantly in my legs. And I know that. And it's been, you know, I've been doing that for a long time. So it's very easy for me to know when my anxiety is rising compared to most autistic people. And then, you know, this is all down to Alexify me having a play into this. You know, it's harder for us to notice and categorize anxiety rising up and sort of attaching it to external things that are happening to us in the moment. And so being aware of these physical, behavioral, cognitive signs that we're going towards a state of anxiety or burnout, notice them, write them down, characterize them. You don't need to write them down if you don't want to. Just help. And next time that they happen, take note of them and say, all right, okay, I'm getting a bit anxious. Am I being productive? Am I in a rut? And there's nothing that I can do. And I should probably take a break and approach it next day. Might be really, really difficult the first time you do it. But after a while, you will get the hang of it. And it will have absolutely massive effects for your overall productivity in general. You won't have these nasty burnouts. You will have this these awful transition times that just eat into your sleep. You know, things of that nature, eat into your your time relaxing to your time socializing, all of that stuff, noticing that stuff and stopping very good cue to keep in mind and try and develop. So that does it for the tips that I wanted to give you. I hope that you found this this video interesting. And you've got something from it. Please let me know down below. What are you struggling at the moment in terms of breaking away from a task in terms of autistic inertia? What what thing is really taking up your focus at the moment? And you really don't want it to or maybe you do. I want to hear about it. So stick it down in the comments. And of course, if you want to see some more stuff by me, if you want to keep up to date with the work that I'm doing that's not video related, my public speaking, my work in the media, go over to my Instagram page, Asperger's growth. And you can find all of that juicy stuff over there. Also, if you want to hire me for modeling, for public speaking, anything of that nature, if you want me to be on your podcast or do an interview, or you want to be on my podcast, please head over to my website, Thomas Henley.co.uk. There's a place in there, you can send me a message or an email. And I'll try and get on it as soon as I can. Although, sometimes pretty slowly, depending on my executive functioning, indeed. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in another Asperger's growth video, autism topics. See you later, folks.