I owe you an update, and an apology for going quiet, because I have spent most of the last month out on the road and I kept waiting until I got home to sit down and tell you everything I saw.
We premiered Uncancellable in Washington, DC
On July 1, Palladium Pictures premiered Uncancellable and three other incredible incubator films in Washington, DC, and it was one of the proudest nights I have had in a very long time. The film follows Maud Maron through her run for Manhattan District Attorney, and what makes her worth an entire documentary is that she said the things everyone else was too afraid to say, out loud and on the record, with her own name attached to every word of it.
Palladium Pictures runs an incubator that Michael and Thomas Pack launched only a couple of years ago, and I was lucky enough to be one of four fellows in the second round, alongside four more filmmakers who came through the year before us. Every film that comes out of this program was made by someone who decided that staying quiet simply was not an option, and I would encourage you to watch all of them when you get the chance: Palladium Pictures.
Then I hit the road
From DC I just kept going, and over the course of a single month through America’s 250th birthday I traveled through ten states: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Maryland, Texas, and Louisiana.
I wanted to take the temperature on the ground for myself, and what I came away with is that this country is far more post-partisan than the headlines would ever have you believe. Every time I sat down and talked with someone directly, as one person to another instead of as two political labels, I found that I could actually reach them, and you can do the very same thing as long as you are willing to meet people where they are and look for the things you already share. That common ground has not gone anywhere, but the moment you steer a conversation into politics it sinks like a stone, so my honest advice is to stay off the politics and stay on everything else you have in common.
And then there were the flags. I saw American flags flying on lawns in every single state I drove through, and to me that says people still have real confidence in this country even now, which is about as good a sign as I could have hoped to find.
A conversation in New Orleans
This past weekend I took a tour of the Pharmacy Museum in New Orleans, which I would recommend to just about anyone, because the guide was genuinely gifted and knew the history of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy in that city cold.
The trouble was that he told the entire story through an anti-American lens, and it was impossible to miss. He spoke about the Native Americans, the French, the Spanish, and the Haitians with warmth, or at the very least with a neutral hand, but the moment he arrived at the Americans, the Protestants who had come over from England, they suddenly became guilty and somehow beyond saving. While he mentioned in passing that they had brought real values with them, things like punctuality and precision, and he still could not bring himself to give them a shred of credit for any of it.
So I waited until the tour was over and I went and talked to him. I told him that I had come to this country as an immigrant from a totalitarian communist regime, and that I live here now right alongside him, and that while this place is far from perfect it is still one of the very best places on the whole Earth to live. I have seen the alternative with my own eyes and heard about it my entire life in my parents’ stories, and I told him plainly that America is his friend, and that she deserves quite a bit more love than he had been giving her all afternoon.
I said every bit of this gently, because if I had come at him hot he would have shut the door on me and that would have been the end of it. Instead he reached out and took my hand in both of his and told me, “Thank you for bringing another perspective to the conversation.”
That single exchange is the whole reason I keep making these films, and it is the reason I am asking you to speak up too, because free speech is not some passive thing that takes care of itself while you go about your day.
You cannot take it for granted and you cannot leave it to somebody else, you have to actually get out there and practice it.
Maud Maron exemplifies it in Uncancellable, and our doctors, parents, kids, teachers, all exemplify it in 15 DAYS, too- so many chose to use their voices at the exact moment when keeping silent would have been the far easier road.
15 DAYS packed the room in Dallas
On Wednesday July 15th, the Freedom Foundation’s Dallas Teachers Summit screened 15 DAYS —there was not a seat left anywhere in the house. People stood shoulder to shoulder along the back wall, and no one left before the film was over.
What really stayed with me was what happened afterward, when teacher after teacher came up to tell me that they had known all along that the closures were wrong and had felt completely powerless to do anything to stop them. That is exactly why I keep saying what I say, and it confirmed something I have believed for a long time now, which is that the unions do not speak for teachers and should be abolished.
You can watch or screen 15 DAYS here: 15daysfilm.com.
James Lindsay/ New Discourses joined us for the screening and had this to say:
Required reading: Brandon Showalter’s article
Brandon Showalter of the Christian Post has spent ten years covering the gender beat, and his latest piece names the whole pattern so precisely, from the flat denial that anything is happening at all, to the quiet admission that it is only happening to a few people, all the way to the accusation that you are the strange one for caring about it in the first place.
It is a hard thing to read, which means you should read it anyway.
Those of us who’ve been doing the hard work exposing the madness against an impenetrable mainstream media blockade can all tell you what it’s like to learn about all the horrors, only to be gaslit with flat denials like “that’s not happening.” Then you show concrete proof, and it becomes “well, it’s only a few people,” and then maybe “why are you so obsessed with this small, strange issue?” The whole world is under a reality-denying spell, shrouded in pink and blue flags, and people are programmed with dismissive talking points if anyone suggests that something’s wrong.
You can read the full piece here: “What I Learned After 10 Years of Covering the Trans Madness”.
Assorted interviews you may have missed…
I have been doing a lot of media- this was a highlight! I joined Armstrong Williams on his show, and if you want to skip straight to my segment it begins at 25:13: watch the interview.
And I sat down for a longer conversation with the inimitable interview genius Steven Shalowitz, which you can watch in full here: watch the interview.
Support the work
Stephanie’s book is up for preorder right now, and I hope you will grab yourself a copy, because I Was a Girl Who Wanted to Be a Boy by Stephanie Edmonds is exactly the kind of honest and brave book that parents need sitting on their shelves: restorechildhood.com/preorder.
Our t-shirts sold out completely in Dallas, so we went ahead and restocked them, and every single purchase you make supports Restore Childhood and supports free speech, which has been our core mission from the very beginning: restorechildhood.com/store.
So that is where I have been and what I have been up to all this time, and I want to thank you for reading this far and, even more than that, for using your own voice out there in the world.
No one is coming to save our kids but us.
Natalya
If any of this moved you, please share it, and send it along to just one parent, one teacher, or one friend who you think needs to hear it today.
Keep this work going
Restore Childhood runs on reader support, and none of what you just read, the films, the reporting, the miles on the road, happens without it. If this work matters to you, please upgrade to a paid subscription and help me keep it going: restorechildhood.substack.com/upgrade.