Hey everybody, welcome back to the Bull Work. My name is Sonny Bunch, I'm culture editor at the Bull Work. I'm joined today by my colleague, Adrian, and we've got some special guests here. We've got Ned Brower, famously from the pit. He has been on the show since the beginning and is currently in ice custody somewhere. His character, of course, not Ned himself. Ned is joining us from not the set. He's joining us from a real clinic, right? That's right, yeah, I'm at work today about to see some real patients when we're finished, which is disorienting but exciting and a whole different television, yeah. That's wild. I'm going to pick your brain on this in a second. And Karen, of course, is the founder and director of the Justice Action Center. She's talked to Adrian a bunch about ice and all the immigration stuff that's going on. I'm actually going to kick it over to Adrian right now because really this is his bellywick. Karen, I wanted to just sort of set the stage because of course we see this incredible episode. We know it's touching on stuff that we care about and the work that you've done for so long that I've known you and known of your work. At the same time, I wanted you to set the stage because ice in hospitals is a real thing. Patients being chained to beds. I even read one of the cases of them sort of finding out that ice agents were influencing care, which sounds terrible, by the way. So just sort of like, can you set the stage a little bit for us so we can understand where this episode comes in? Yeah, absolutely. Ice in hospitals and medical settings is a real thing, but did not use to be a real thing. So for 30 years, President Song, both sides of the aisle, including this president and his first term, saw fit to keep in place a policy called essentially sensitive locations. That there are places so sacred that we don't do immigration enforcement there and that's where we worship, where we heal and where we teach, right? K through 12 schools, medical clinics, places of worship. Pretty standard stuff. Leads a lot of the world where you can do immigration enforcement, but it says there are some places we don't go into, but that changed on inauguration day when President Trump got rid of that policy. And since then we have seen ice in and around medical facilities both, like we see on the episode when they're bringing in someone that they have detained who has been injured in the process or someone who is in detention and needs treatment, but also just kind of chilling the atmosphere, right? We've seen more and more of immigration in parking lots or wandering into facilities and asking questions like, how would I find out if a certain person is here, which violates all kind of hip protections and other things? And the deterrence is in fact the point. So that's a little bit of the stage setting, I think we've also seen it's not in one place, right? Yes, it happened in Minnesota, but it's also happened right here in Los Angeles. It's also happening in New York. So these aren't isolated incidents, but what they are is totally outside of the norm of what had happened for 30 years. And then I wanna get your view on this because you are, for folks who don't know, you are a real life nurse, EMT. You have been working in this field for a long time. How have you seen things change? Have you seen things change? Did you bring that to the show? How did that influence your performance here? Well, no, it wasn't my idea to bring that to the show. Obviously, that was like the writer's discussion that happens behind closed doors. Although I was very excited about the script when I saw what I was gonna get to do. And as far as my personal experience, the reality is by the time all this was happening, I was already working on the show pretty full time. So while I've spent several years, I've been a nurse for five and a half years and I did my training at UCLA, working in the public hospital, did some time working at Children's Hospital, L.A. and the E.R., which is also a public hospital. So, but this wasn't really happening. Like Karen mentioned, when I was practicing in the hospital, up to a couple years ago, this wasn't something that we were seeing. So my main experience with this was this outpouring of from healthcare workers and fan letters and letters of appreciation for the storytelling and then hearing all these stories kind of reflected back to me after we shot the scene and after the show came out. And then going down those rabbit holes and reading articles about all these things. Like Karen mentioned, there was an episode at L.A. General Hospital that was covered by USC, the Annenberg Media, talking about exactly what she's saying, where there's like all these violations of HIPAA, which is the sort of privacy act that all healthcare workers take very seriously. And even just like a violation of the Hippocratic oaths that doctors take to do no harm and treat the whole patient. There's a huge psychosynopsial component to healthcare as well. And that's obviously being affected negatively by the instances with AIDS in the hospitals. Karen, I was thinking about this because I've covered immigration for over a decade and there's been times in my life, not so much over the last year, our audience really cares about this stuff. There's been times in my career where I almost want to like shake the audience. Like I want them to care. Like I'm like, how do I make them care and understand how important this is? You do this work. It's your life's work, right? What does it mean to you to see one of the top shows in the country that like literally to me, I think the bread and butter of the show is just like this immense well of empathy and compassion that they have for people that are not like you and make you consider other people, crazy idea, I know. Like what does that mean for you, for the top show in the country to take on this subject matter? It's so important to have what we're seeing every day and the agonizing choices that people are making, being represented in people's living rooms and while they're eating dinner on watching the show on their phone. Because, and the reason is because I think that sometimes we forget, right? Immigration and it is my life's work has become this very politicized issue, but really it's people, right? It's people, it's families, it's people like my own mom and what I think the show really captures is people in our country are making agonizing choices every single day, right? Somebody woke up today and was like, my mother is in hospice care. Can I go hold her hand? Yes or no, because I might run into immigration there, right? That's an, to me, and I think actually to everyone in this country, that's an unacceptable choice, right? We have parents who make decisions every day. Can I send my kid to school? Is it safe or is immigration gonna be there? And we've seen those declines and kids showing up for school all over the country. And so to have the pit cover this story in such a clear and human way, I think really calls into, it's a service and it's let us all ask ourselves, are we okay with what's going on? Ned, one of the things you mentioned that I really wanna drill down on here is the reaction by the fans to the show. And I have noticed a reaction to this show unlike any I've seen in a long time on social media. There's a very visceral fandom. There's a very active fandom. People get angry when characters are say, a drug out of the hospital by ICE. That was a, how has, what has the reaction been like that you've seen? Like how have folks reacted to you? What have you mentioned seeing, reading stories, getting sent these stories? How have they kind of helped inform how you see this performance? I think when I first read the script and Noah was the first one to sort of let me know what was going on and kind of hand it over his leather-bound like script that he likes to carry around, sat me down in his chair and stuff. So I think similar to when the show started, when I read the script, I sort of had the intuition that it was gonna be a big moment for the show. And the producers and the writers were kind of telling me as much, I didn't really anticipate like how big of a moment it was gonna be. And that was sort of the same reaction I had to making the pit, when we started episode one, season one. I had a pretty good suspicion that it was gonna be popular and fine in audience, but I don't think any of us really realized how big of an effect that it would have. And it's been just an opportunity of a lifetime, I think for me and everyone working on the show to be able to sort of like turn the mirror back on society and tell these stories in a very accessible and human way and engaging way, but also to just like reflect back to society and some of these issues that we're seeing about or reading about that are just omnipresent in our life. And the reaction's been great, like just a lot of outpouring of love from a lot of people that are working in these hospitals and inner cities and rural hospitals and everywhere. I hear from doctors and nurses and patients and all kinds of people. So it really like warms my heart and has been just like a dream come true. One thing about our audience is they wanna know what they can do. Is there anything that you would just wanna share that you think is important to know before we sort of wrap up? I mean, I would share with folks that it has been debated with all of the ICE abuses that we've seen. It's been debated in Congress, whether there should be legislation to say you cannot do immigration enforcement in kindergartens or hospitals or houses of worship and that hasn't moved forward. So it's always important to register with your elected representatives how you feel. If you're not okay with the kind of ICE excess that we've seen, you should let them know. I would also let folks know that we will be in court next week. We have a case, the Justice Action Center have the case that is trying to bring back the prior policy and say that we have to keep immigration out of our elementary schools, out of our hospitals and out of houses of worship. So those are ways that folks can be involved, but I also think it's the simple acts, right? It's what Ned is describing that health care workers reached out to him and said, thank you for making what we're going through scene. And let your health care workers know that you appreciate them, let your teachers know that you appreciate them and that you want them to do their life's work and not have to worry about where someone was born or what their status is. And I would just add to that, sometimes when the world seems overwhelming and these things seem so act as if asked, like how can I make a difference? I found that it helps me mentally and to think small and think that you can do in your community directly. There's these, Karen was telling me about this amazing thing that's been occurring where there are like these volunteer groups doing essentially like walking carpools. So, you know, there'll be like, you know, people that are that are US citizens walking other people's kids to school so that this parents don't have to go out in public and, you know, endanger themselves and their families. So, you know, checking in on your neighbors and seeing what you can do to help, if it means bringing them groceries or if it means trimming their trees, you know, trees because they're, you know, yard workers can't work or whatever, I think those kind of small things can make a big difference. That's so true. And I just want to thank Karen and Ned for being on the show today. And if folks aren't watching the pit, you gotta go watch the pit. It's on HBO Max. The season's almost done. You can binge, I wouldn't recommend binging a whole season of the pit. It's, there's a lot that happens in every episode. It's definitely a once a week show. That's a good pace at which to watch it. But, you know, there's two seasons they're waiting for if you haven't started yet. So go check it out. And make sure you subscribe to the Bullwork. Go sign up at thebullwork.com, hit the like button on this video and, you know, sign up to read us and listen to us and watch us. We appreciate that as well. Thanks again for being on with us today, Ned and Karen. Thanks for having us. Thank you.
