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Episode 312 of Derate The Hate features Spike Cohen — Libertarian activist, 2020 Vice Presidential candidate, and founder of You Are The Power. This is one of the most important conversations in the show's run, and one of the few times host Wilk Wilkinson found himself genuinely choked up on the mic. That's not a warning. It's a reason to listen.
Spike started a web design company at sixteen years old. After a 2016 MS diagnosis, he sold the business and redirected his focus entirely toward political messaging and grassroots activism. The 2020 Libertarian VP run wasn't about electoral math — it was a listening tour that took him across the country and introduced him to a pattern: families being crushed by local government with no recourse and no spotlight.
What he built in response is You Are The Power — a nonprofit with a deceptively simple model. Find the cases. Vet them thoroughly. Tell the story. Organize the pressure. Demand the change. Their overall win rate is over 90%, and since 2023, it's been perfect.
Matt and Taki Hernandez brought their infant daughter to the hospital. A doctor misread the symptoms of a rare medical condition as signs of abuse. Within hours, DFCS had seized both of their children — including a 3-year-old — and criminal charges were filed. For nearly three years, they fought felony accusations for something that never happened.
You Are The Power stepped in, amplified the case nationally, organized public pressure on Georgia officials, and helped drive the family's eventual reunification. The charges were ultimately dropped after a not-guilty verdict. The experience also led directly to Ridge's Law — Georgia legislation that now requires a second medical opinion before a child abuse determination can be made in cases involving certain medical conditions.
The story of the Hernandez family isn't unusual. It's common. That's what makes it important. Local government agencies with unchecked authority, acting on single opinions, destroying families before any due process runs its course — it happens quietly, constantly, and mostly without consequence.
What Spike Cohen is doing is proving that consequence is possible. Not through rage. Not through tribalism. Through organizing, storytelling, and showing up at the right city council meeting with the right number of people behind you.
This episode is longer than most. It needs to be.
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[00:00:00:00] Wilk Wilkinson: What happens when a parent takes their sick child to the hospital, but instead of going home, is taken out in handcuffs? That's been the reality for multiple families across this country. Not because they did anything wrong. Because a system that's supposed to protect children doesn't always stop to ask questions before it destroys lives. My guest today has made it his mission to fight back one family, one government official, one policy at a time. And he's winning. Stick with me. Welcome back, my friend, to the Derate the Hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson, your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog and those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The Direct to Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross partisan organization working toward civic renewal, this podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America where civic friendship thrives even when we disagree. Each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ. Because friends, it really is about bettering the world one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can debate the hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast, share it with a friend and visit Braver Angels to learn how you can get involved in the movement to bridge the partisan divide. Friends, I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful Derate the Hate episode. So let's get to it. Spike Cohen started a web design business at 16. By 34, he's been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Sold the company and decided to spend whatever energy he had left fighting for something bigger. In 2020, he ran for vice president of the United States on the libertarian ticket. Not to win, as he'll tell you, but to start conversations. He traveled the country, met tens of thousands of Americans, and kept hearing the same thing. Local government was ruining people's lives, and nobody was doing anything about it. So he built something. You Are the Power is a national nonprofit that shows up when a family is falsely accused, when a charity is bullied into silence, when a city council thinks nobody is watching. Their win rate since 2023 is 100%. Spike is a libertarian. But what he's doing isn't partisan. It's personal. This episode is longer than most because the story demands it. You might even need some tissues for this one, but stick with it. You're going to want to hear this. Let's get into it with my friend Spike Cohen. Here we go. Spike Cohen. Welcome to the Derate the Hate podcast. It is good to see you today, brother. How are you?
[00:03:45:22] Spike Cohen: I'm doing well, man. It's good to be on.
[00:03:48:15] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, it's so good to see you again. We've had a few conversations and just excited to bring you to the Derate the Hate listeners. So much of what you've done, so much of what you've done, spike, is, is just inspirational in terms. Well, for me specifically, because I'm one that has been very skeptical of government power for a very long time. And, and somebody also who it takes a lot of pride in the idea of personal accountability, who we are as individuals, the power that the power that we really have as individuals. And so so when you were introduced to me and then I saw the, you know, you are the power organization that you have, you have brought to the world. Spike. It was very exciting for me. So, so let's let's start with your story personally. Sure, sure. I want to know you know more about you, spike, and how, you know, before we even get to the you or the power thing. But let me let's let's bring to the listeners a little bit about you and your story, and then we'll figure out how you got to you or the power.
[00:05:12:17] Spike Cohen: Gosh, I always when people are like, what's your story? I'm like, well, I was born in 1982. I don't know how far back to go I was. So I guess I'll say this, you know, when you reach your 40s. And so it says, tell me your story. It's like, how much time do you have? Because I'm an I'm an elderly man. So, yeah, I was.
[00:05:29:07] Wilk Wilkinson: Very, very specific to how you what I should have been more specific, and I apologize, but.
[00:05:35:06] Spike Cohen: More of you doing. You were the power. Okay. No. Fair enough, fair enough. So I, I actually started as a small business owner. So I started my first company Right, right before my 17th birthday, a website design company. And so I've, I've been as anyone who has a small business, you come to really not appreciate the government very quickly because it seems like any time you're trying to do something to, to earn more income, to provide for your family, to create jobs, to for me, it was a B2B business. So I'm working with other businesses to help them be able to prosper. And it seemed like the more I did that, the more the government's beating me up for it, the more regulations, the more taxes, mostly taxes. And I think it seems like I'm being punished for this. Why? You know, it seems like I'm paying a fee for the crime of trying to prosper and to help others prosper as well. And so I kind of, you know, that was kind of in the back of my head, but I didn't really have a, I'd say, a set political ideology. After nine over 11, I kind of fell into the same trap that most people did of of thinking that, you know, that these terrorists just hated us for no particular reason. And, you know, we needed to go and bring democracy to the entire world and show them our peaceful ways, no matter how many countries we had to bomb and destabilize in the process. And as foolish as it sounds now, I believed it 100%. And then, you know, when all of the predictions that, you know, those annoying libertarians like Ron Paul made about what would happen, you know, during the war that we would not be greeted as liberators, that it would turn out that we were brought there on lies and that it would cost, you know, trillions of dollars, not to mention the thousands of American lives lost in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of of innocent civilians over there who were killed. Completely different than now, by the way, this is totally different back then. But when that happened, I thought, well, you know, let me look into what these libertarians believe. And so I ended up becoming a libertarian, kind of stayed with my business and kind of kept focused on that. Then I was diagnosed with MS in 2016. That kind of forced me to take a second look at what my priorities were in life, and I realized I wanted to do something that was more impactful than just, you know, chasing dollar signs until I died. And and so I kind of I retired from the small business stuff that I was involved in. And I started, as most libertarians do, a podcast. And I it was initially just me and my friends just having fun, but eventually it kind of grew into something somewhat successful that ultimately resulted in me running for being asked to run for the nomination to be the Libertarian Party's vice presidential candidate for 2020. I thought, well, that sounds like fun, so I didn't think I'd actually get it. I just thought I'd make some points about what I thought we could be doing better as a party. And so I got involved in that, and I must have made a good, good impression or made some good points because they actually picked me to be their nominee, which is still kind of crazy. And so then I ran for office, ran for vice president in 2020. We got third place. It was a distant third. It wasn't even remotely close, but it was third place. And but I walked away from that, realizing that as I was campaigning, I kept meeting people who said, man, I wish we could do something that was really impactful and help people now and not, you know, every, you know, every four years getting together to lose again and, and or lose valiantly but still lose. And and I kept meeting other people that would come to my events because they needed help. Their city council was doing some terrible thing to them. Their state, state level government was doing some horrible thing to them, and they couldn't fight back on their own. And I thought, well, if we know what needs to be done in these situations and if these people need our help now, there's got to be a way we can help them now and not some distant utopian future where libertarians have started winning every office. And you know, we can fix everything, as I'm sure we will do. And so coming out of the campaign, I thought, well, what can we do about that? And so in 2021 and going into 2022, we, we, we found examples of people who were having their lives ruined by out of control local politicians and policies, people having their property stolen, their homes stolen because the local politicians owned businesses around the property and wanted to, you know, steal it so that they could bulldoze it and build a parking lot so their businesses would be worth more, or people that were wrongfully arrested for things they didn't do, or all sorts of different things like that. And I thought, well, we can use the social media following that. I've built from this campaign, direct some attention, attention on those officials and see what happens. We had a better than even success rate. And I thought, all right, well, that's enough for us to get started. So we officially launched in May of 2022. Since then, we have taken on over 1000 causes. And and we're just getting started. We are poised this year to take on about 1500 causes.
[00:10:25:00] Wilk Wilkinson: That's incredible man. No, that's that is absolutely incredible. And this is where I want this conversation to go, spike. Because, you covered a lot of ground there in a, in a short amount of time. First of all, let me just say the whole idea of of waiting until you have the power to, to make some impactful change, right? You know, I think a lot of people in their personal lives, people that I've spoken with, they're like, well, who am I? I don't have the ability, you know, they don't know what kind of power they have. So a lot of times people just don't even do anything. You know, they they, they don't realize how what their sphere of influence can do, what their own voice can do. Never discount the, the, the amount of power that you actually have as an individual. Because even if, even if it's going out and finding the right people to do something. Yeah, yeah, I think that's I think that's important. I think that's really important. And the fact that, you guys have or you have taken what, what you built and turned it into something that is making and this is the impactful part I want to talk about, because impact, when it comes to saving people from what seems like an insurmountable thing in their, in their life and, and for many people, going back to your business days and the things I mean as a business owner, you quickly find out how much power the government has and how that can be to try and push back.
[00:12:05:07] Spike Cohen: And how much they want to steal from you basically every day. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:09:15] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, you know, I've always considered myself, you know, somewhat of a libertarian, more of a conservative. But but the reality is, one of the big things in my political identity is my, my, my hesitation to surrender too much of my own personal power to the government. I'm very conscious that that the government can easily turn into and has in many ways turned into to something that that has too much power over the individual. And I don't like that. What I want to talk about here with the with with these causes that you've picked up, spike. Yeah. With you are the power because this is going to hit home for a lot of people. And this may scare a lot of people in terms of of how scary it is when the government ends up having too much power. And that's not what I want to do. I don't want to scare people. I think I think it's atrocious what so many people do with, like, this fear and outrage culture that we live in. Yeah. But I think this is important. You you helped a family called the Hernandez family. And one of the big causes or not one of the big, I guess the the one cause that has affected many people, let me phrase it that way, is families who who have a child that that has a condition and they bring that child to the to the doctor. And the doctor says this child is being abused.
[00:13:46:04] Spike Cohen: Yeah, yeah. And so we actually so taking a little bit of a step back at You Are The Power, we protect people against abuse by local and state level government. We use the power of social media to get the official, the specific officials, not just the government but the specific individual people, the human beings that are doing this to these human beings. We get them to stop doing that abuse. And then we, when necessary, we push for legislative changes to ensure that that abuse never happens again. And so up until we found out about the Hernandez family, we had were pretty much we just did local stuff. We'd go after city councils, county councils, county sheriffs and had great, great success rate at that. But we were not taking on state level stuff, at least at that point. Then we heard about the Hernandez family and the Hernandez family. Matt and Taki Hernandez have two daughters, Emma and Aria. Emma is the younger one, Arias the older one. When Emma was still a newborn, just a matter of weeks old, she started having swelling and started acting really fussy, swelling, especially like in her arms and in her legs, and I believe she had some bruising as well behind her ears or something like that. And so they took her, took her to the doctor multiple times and they kept saying, oh, you know, she's young, she's still she's growing quickly. She could be colicky. You know, you're just a concerned parent. These things happen. She'll be fine. Then one time she was really swollen on one of her legs or in both of her legs, and she was even more fussy than usual. And so they took her to Children's Hospital of Atlanta. And they when they took her there to the hospital, they had imaging done, X-rays done of her. And they also had actually, I believe, a CT scan. But they had imaging done of her, and they also did a bunch of blood work. The the imaging showed all sorts of small, tiny fractures in her little bones, in her arms, legs all over her body at various stages of healing. This is consistent with a health condition that's causing her to have these constant fractures that are healing, and then new fractures that are healing and so forth, not synonymous with abuse, which typically looks like these, like, you know, immediate impact areas of major fractures. Also, her bloodwork showed that she had very low vitamin D and a few other things that indicated that she had some kind of either just severe low vitamin D, neonatal rickets, osteogenesis imperfecta, whole host of different things that children can have that caused these fractures. So every bit of evidence showed and there was no sign of any kind of trauma. So there was nothing that would indicate abuse. It was all obviously being caused by chronic health. And so the child abuse pediatrician more on that later accused them of abuse, diagnosed that Emma had been abused. Based on that, the the police and the social workers seized Emma in Aria and they arrested Matt and Taki for felony abuse and as a condition of their bond, they were not allowed to speak. Matt and Taki, the husband and wife, were not allowed to speak to one another, live in the same home, or even be within a certain distance, however many feet or yards of each other. They also weren't even allowed to communicate via a proxy, so not only overnight for the crime of taking their daughter to a hospital, did they lose both of their daughters indefinitely? Not only were they now facing decades in prison, but also indefinitely, they lost each other because not only were they not allowed to live together or talk to each other directly, they weren't even allowed to, like, contact someone and say, hey, can you let Matt know that I'm thinking of him or that I love him? Or, hey, can you tell me how Takis doing? Nothing. They could not communicate in any way, even through a proxy. So they lost their entire family overnight. And the thankfully, one of the foster families who watched the children, Jennifer and Jonathan Williams, they had been foster parents for 13 years. They had been part of that system for a long time, saw many, many children. And these children just didn't seem like the typical abused children. The older one, Aria, who was old enough to speak, she was, I think three years old at the time. She just wanted to know where her mommy and daddy was. When do I get to see my mommy and daddy? Why can't I see my mommy and daddy? When can I go home to my mommy and daddy? I miss my mommy and daddy. I love my mommy and daddy. That's all she wanted to talk about. And she was getting more and more depressed. That's not a kid acting like that. She's being abused.
[00:18:10:07] Wilk Wilkinson: No, no.
[00:18:11:08] Spike Cohen: And the younger one, the, the Emma, the one that they're saying was abused. Jennifer could tell that something looked wrong with her. Her head looked like it was swelling or out of proportion. Something seemed wrong. And so she googled the name of the family and immediately found the parents on social media saying we didn't do anything. The evidence shows that, you know, we didn't abuse the kids. Please, we want our kids back. She they contacted defects. The foster family contacted defects, the Division of Family and Children's Services, to say, hey, we don't think that this is we think maybe you made a mistake here. You need to look into this now. Keep in mind they've been foster family for 13 years and defects has such a shortage of foster families that they've lost 5000 children since 2020. They have put children in in hotel blocks of hotel rooms, children, young children, tweens and teens in hotel rooms by themselves. They've put them in in they've locked them in their own offices, the CPS offices, at night when they go home. I mean, they don't know what to do with these kids. They tell this foster family your 13 years of service will no longer be needed. Bring the surrender, the children. We won't. We won't be using your services. Thankfully, they then contacted us and that's when we found out about this family.
[00:19:30:23] Wilk Wilkinson: Oh my God. Now, now this, this kind of thing. And again, this is this, this one is this one is this conversation is tough for me. Not because I've experienced anything like this before and thank God I haven't. And I, I feel for anybody who has. But just placing myself in that, that scenario mentally is so horrifying. You know, for a person like me, I, I literally liberty is is one of the primary things for me. And if if somebody were to try and take away my, my children or my wife and or either, it makes no difference. Yeah. I mean, they. This has got to be a nightmare that's unimaginable to almost any human being that's got any kind of, I don't know, I, I don't even want to think much about it, because it does. It does hurt me so much. And when I, when I saw this story, spike, you know, from the from the link that you sent me, it it definitely hit different. It hit a lot different than, than most of the other things that I've heard about. But then realizing realizing how many families in this country have experienced something like this, you know it. It should give pause to anybody who. You know, kind of I don't know it just when when entities end up having too much power and then you you don't. There's, there's a couple of things that were said in that video link that you sent me, and I want you to kind of expand on them because. Yeah, because this it's something that you said, and it's also a quote from one of the government officials.
[00:21:41:04] Spike Cohen: Yeah.
[00:21:41:15] Wilk Wilkinson: So yeah, let me the one that you said was it wasn't it wasn't that the I'm trying to get this right. It wasn't that they were guilty or innocent until proven guilty. It was they were guilty and till they could prove themselves innocent. But they weren't even allowed to try and prove themselves innocent.
[00:22:05:11] Spike Cohen: Exactly.
[00:22:06:05] Wilk Wilkinson: There. And then I'll get to the next one, because that one scares the live and shit out of me.
[00:22:11:00] Spike Cohen: Yeah. So. Yeah. So when we found out about the cause, we immediately vet it. Anytime we find a cause, we spend. We have a team of vetting team that spends hundreds of hours vetting the causes. We don't want to ever inadvertently help an abuser or, you know, anyone who's done any, actually done anything wrong. You know, if someone's being persecuted, we want to make sure of it. So we vet it. It's even worse than we were told. When their kids were taken from them. They were told because they said you. The doctor says that she's been abused. And they both said, well, she hasn't been abused. We need to get the medical records so we can get a second opinion. They went, what? Medical records. This isn't your child anymore. This. This child is now under the the care of the state of Georgia. You don't get those medical records. Why would you get them? So that's the only thing that could that they could use to try to prove themselves innocent. Now we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. This isn't even guilty until proven innocent. This is guilty with no ability to try to actually have access to the one thing that could prove that your that you're innocent now. So they had to spend tens of thousands of dollars in court to get the kid their kids medical records. They then took it to medical professionals and the medical professionals. Every single expert that looked at this said, there's no abuse here. She has either neonatal rickets or osteogenesis imperfecta, and that's what's causing this. They saw that and they said, Thank God this is all a big misunderstanding. We'll take it to the family court and this will all, you know, this all get wrapped up. That family Court judge refused to allow any of that testimony from the medical experts, any of the medical evidence to be entered. All she allowed was the testimony of that child abuse pediatrician, who did not seem familiar with the case, was not familiar with those conditions, and he said his his evidence was he said yes, statistically, in these kinds of cases, when you see these types of injuries, statistically they tend to be caused by abuse. And when the attorney asked him to cite the source of that abuse, he said, you can look that up on the internet. Based on that stellar testimony, the judge ordered non reunification, which means that they would never see Emma in Aria again, that the they would eventually be placed for adoption and that that that would be the end of them being parents of those children. And then they'd have to wait for any criminal charges that would come. So here's where the good news starts, because this is pretty bad up until this point.
[00:24:40:03] Wilk Wilkinson: That's right. Yeah it is.
[00:24:41:09] Spike Cohen: It only gets bad and then it gets really good. Yeah. And then it briefly gets bad again, but then it gets good. So this all by the way, this all ends on a happy ending for those who are losing it. But you need to know what happened here. Okay. So we did what we do. When we find out about something, we decided to move forward. We created videos and posts, and we put out content on all of our social media to let people know about what happened. And we always this is a part of how we do things. We do things we like to call it people policy principle. So before we get into the policies that need changing or anything like that or the principles behind it, we always focus on the actual people that this is affecting. We don't try to talk over people's head. So we started talking about this family, Matt and Taki and Emma and Aria and what was being done to them and the specific individuals who were doing it to them, the Family Court judge, the Defects Division of Family and Children's Services caseworker, the supervisor for the case worker, Candace Bross, the head of defects. We explicitly said, these are the human beings who are doing it to these human beings. We don't say the government is doing it to the people. We say these specific people, their first names like their first like their actual name. These people who are human beings just like us, are doing it to these people. And instead of just getting people angry, we say, here, go to this page on our site. And it has in just a few clicks, you can send emails to everyone involved. We even have the wording there. You can change the wording, you can add your own whatever you want or you can just leave it as is. You put your name there, you press send. And in basically the time it took me to to explain it, that's how long it will take you to do it. And you just helped us to, to to try to get this, this family reunited. Three things happen. The first thing that happened was tens of thousands of people used our used the contacts we gave and contacted everyone involved. The second thing that happened was suddenly all those officials started capitulating out of nowhere. The for some particular reason, the the judge said, I see no sign of abuse here. I am ordering reunification and I'll let the children go back for good once the criminal charges are dropped. And because that's what she had to, she couldn't give the kids back fully. But but they're now allowed to see them through. They could live with the the aunt and uncle, and they can now see them pretty much whenever they wanted to. There were some rules there. But anyway. The idea is that they'll eventually get the kids back and. Oh, and they're now allowed to live together. We got the criminal court judge to modify their bonds so that they can live together as husband and wife again, and defects. The department there said, yeah, this is we agree there's no sign of abuse here. And and so they close out their case. Here's the third thing that happened. Families came out of the woodwork, not just in Georgia all over the country, so many of them the same story. I brought my kid to the hospital. I was told that I was abusive, I got their medical records. It showed they have a chronic health condition that was causing it, usually allergy and low syndrome. But a bunch of different things can cause it as well. In some cases it was well documented that they had an accident or something like that, but it was obvious that they hadn't been abused. And yet everyone's pretending that it's obvious that they abused them. They're being completely railroaded in court. Then we found out why. So under title 40 of the Social Security Act, the federal government pays state child protective services based on how many people they accuse of abuse, how many children they take and put in the foster care system, how long they can put them in the foster care system for. So they go for the youngest children possible, so they can put them in for as long as they can, up to either 18 or 19, depending on the state, how many of them they end up placing permanently for adoption. And then if those children end up having a lifelong chronic health, mental health or physical health condition, they get the most money. So in other words, the most money you can get from the federal government is if you find a young child who you already know has a chronic health condition, who you can take them from their parents and wrongfully accused them of abuse. And if at any point during this, it turns out that they didn't abuse the kid, no harm, no foul. We give the kids back and we get to keep all the money that we got. And so because of this probably, well, well-intended policy, what's happening is the federal government is paying for a specific metric. And if you subsidize apples, you get more apples. If you subsidize cotton, you get more cotton. They're subsidizing abuse allegations, children's being put into foster care, children being kept in foster care for as long as they possibly can, and children are being placed for adoption. And we're hearing that especially in Georgia, but in other states as well, that leads to quota systems, that leads to people being told, we've seen people who have told us, former defects workers who were told, we were told, either you're going to find this many abused kids each month or you're going to find a new job. And so this is what's happening. This is it is a perfect example of how a well-intended but poorly designed incentive structure creates a perverse incentive which leads to perverse policies, which creates perverse outcomes. In this case, the the trafficking of children away from innocent parents and the tearing apart of literally thousands of families.
[00:29:50:03] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. This this. Well, I'm glad you you brought it full circle because because, yeah. I mean, I think there was probably a lot of listeners right there that were we're we're on the edge. so you are the power not not not a legal representation. This is more of a kind of a kind of a high scale PR campaign that drives change through, through exposure. Am I am I describing that correctly?
[00:30:16:09] Spike Cohen: That's a big part of what we do. So we don't do the legal representation representation directly. But here's what we do. We gather all of the facts. We have a team now that includes medical professionals. And we don't just do family reunification. We do any time that someone is being harmed by out of control local and statewide government officials. That's our bag. People's homes being stolen, people being wrongfully charged with things, and yes, people that are having their children taken from them and many other examples. But what we do is we build all that. We basically build a timeline of what happened. We build a medical narrative. We build a a criminal history narrative, we build the whole thing. And we have doctors and attorneys and legal professionals and and law enforcement professionals and, and all these people are volunteering to build this for us. And so now we have this information and we put out the social media content. We get public pressure applied directly to these officials. Now if it has to go to court, which in these cases it often has to go to a family court, sometimes has to go to criminal court. Recently we help people where it actually went to court martial because she was an active duty in the Navy and we won. We are now five for five in criminal cases, including court marshals. But in any of those cases, we bring it to the attorneys. And now they don't have to do discovery anymore because we just gave them everything they needed, everything they didn't even know they needed because we've already done all the very rarely do they have to get anything else besides what we give them. We also will help with the support of the cost if we can, if we're able to raise costs for, you know, medical expert witnesses to come in for, the lack of a better word, the props, like the blowing up of x rays and stuff that they'll use during the trial and stuff like that, help to pay for the attorneys out of pocket expenses and all of that. So we provide a lot of support, including the social media part of it. Now, the news would this just keeps getting better, because not only were we able to end that part of the nightmare for the Hernandez family, but we started reuniting all these other families as well in Florida, in Georgia, in Tennessee, in, gosh, where else? In Iowa and Indiana, in Colorado, all sorts all over the Union that we're doing this, and it just keeps expanding. And if you talk to people that have been in this space, they're only used to losing. This is where the new kid on the block and we just keep winning. And it's usually like, if you win once in 20 years, it's a big victory and we just keep winning. Then out of nowhere, we got contacted by the by the head of defects, Candace Bros. And she said, tell me how bad this is. And so we shared it with her. We shared like how bad it was in her state. And she said, basically, that's not what I'm being told. I mean, we contacted her. We stayed in contact with her. This is all behind the scenes. So this isn't a politician saying, oh, you know, I'm going to get to the bottom of it. She's not saying anything publicly. She's talking with us and figuring out what's going on. And she said what needs to happen. So we gave her a laundry list. This is what needs to happen when kids are taken from parents. When they're accused of abuse, they need to have immediate access to the medical records, and they need to be able to be told that they have a right to a second opinion, and they need to be able to get that second opinion. And it needs to be respected in the family courts and defects, needs to respect it. If someone who's not being paid to tell them that their abuser says there's no evidence for abuse here, that should probably be enough to close out the case. The people that are accusing them of abuse, they need to know who the specific person is. That person needs to actually attest to the fact that they reviewed the kid's medical records ahead of time. It's nuts that it wasn't already that way. So we gave her this laundry list. She immediately made it policy. She again, not publicly. She put out a memo to everyone involved and said, this is the new policy. We went public with it, saying, this is now the new policy. And then she went public and said, and not just in the Children's Hospital of Atlanta, every corner of the state. This is the new policy. So because we had people contact her respectfully and because we sought legitimate reconciliation with her and to try to actually fix this problem, not make her an enemy, not run her out of town, but say, listen, you're a human being. These are human beings. You know, this is wrong. Let's do the right thing. She actually, not only did she help us to, not only did she implement that as policy, she helped us to get that actually passed as a law. They named it Ridges Law after a child who was kept from his parents for three years on similar situation, and we helped to get them reunited as well. We got ridges law passed unanimously and signed into law last May. That has now led to a domino effect we had recently. Patterson's law, which is a very similar law in Florida, was just passed in both chambers, and we were expecting governor DeSantis to sign it any day now. We've had lawmakers reach out to us in Kentucky, West Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire and other states that are I'm if I think I already said West Virginia, about having similar laws passed in those states as well. This past week, there was a bill that was going to basically allow for foster children to be put indefinitely in juvenile detention if the judge just thinks they need it. There didn't need to be an accusation of a crime. They didn't need to be accused of having a behavioral problem. All it needed was a state employee to say, this kid needs to be put in in juvenile detention, however long we want. And and the judge would just have to say, yes, I agree. And that's all they needed. And we killed that effort last week. So all of that started with this family. Now there's there's yet one last thing. And that's the criminal case for the Hernandez family. So we at this point we're like yeah, this this. If there's no way they're going to go forward with a criminal trial. At that point, we were already three for three in cases. In one of the trials, the jury was actually laughing at the state's witnesses because they were being made to look so foolish. We thought, there's no way they're going to move forward with this trial. They announced they were moving forward with the trial in Forsyth County. And we thought, all right, well, we'll just we'll beat them there, too, because they you know, the evidence shows that, that they didn't do anything wrong. And unlike in family court, there's a burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and so forth. And there's no way they're going to get this. Well, we didn't know was that the judge was going to openly railroad them. And so he wouldn't allow the jury to see any, wouldn't allow them to see any of the medical expert testimony, wouldn't allow them to hear that both the family court and defects had already closed out their case due to no evidence of abuse. They weren't allowed to hear that the cop who arrested them didn't think they did anything wrong. They weren't even allowed to hear that Emma and Aria loved and missed their parents when they were gone from them, and at one point, he said, the well-being and safety of these children is not the is not the priority of this court. All that jury was allowed to hear was the. All they were allowed to see was the X-ray showing the fractures and the opinion of that child abuse pediatrician who said yes, the statistically that was all they were allowed to hear.
[00:36:57:15] Wilk Wilkinson: My gosh.
[00:36:58:07] Spike Cohen: But what they also saw, besides the incredible attorney Katherine Bernard, who made the judge look like a fool in front of them and, and and it was very odd, she made it very obvious what was happening without going past a line like it was every time he would dismiss them because they weren't allowed to hear from this next witness, or hear what was about to be asked. She was making it very clear the fix was in, but what they also saw was that you were the Power and Vision Baptist Church, the Hernandez family's church. They packed the court every single day with people who were who were there in support of of the Hernandez family. And there was no way for them to know that, except because the judge said that no one was allowed to say anything. We weren't allowed to wear shirts that had messages about the Hernandez family. They weren't even allowed to make facial expressions, which is actually impossible. You're always making a facial expression. But anyway. But they all were the same color every day, and they would all wear a different color, same color as what Matt and Tucky were wearing. And then suddenly some of the jury members started wearing the same color that day. Which is weird, because the only way they could do that is if they had gone online and seen what the color was for that day. Anyway, I have no way.
[00:38:08:16] Wilk Wilkinson: No no.
[00:38:08:23] Spike Cohen: No no no. Just incredible coincidence. Anyway, so they voted not guilty on all charges and they were they were found not guilty. Two days later. I'm in church with them at Vision Baptist. I went there, first of all, to just worship. Praise God that this happened. And also to think that church family for doing what they are called to do. Be doers of the word. Not just not just sayers and thinkers of it. They were there. They were so supportive. Picnics every single day for everyone involved. Just so praying day and night for them. They were just incredible. So I went there to thank them into worship, and it hadn't hit me at that point, but it hit me then. I'm watching this family worshiping together. They were in the front row and you know, they're singing, you know, it's a Baptist church and they're singing the praise and worship music before the sermon. And I'm seeing the two kids in there, their parents there, and one of them's holding one of the one of the daughters. And it hit me there that had you were the power going to try to not. I'm going to try to see it always gets had we not gotten involved. Their children would have almost certainly been placed for adoption. They would have more than likely had to take some terrible plea deal and get maybe 1520 years in prison each, or even ten years, let's say 15 years. We really don't know, thank God. But they would have taken some plea deal so that they didn't do 40 years. The kids would have grown up being told that they were abused by their parents. And the best case scenario would have been that when Matt and Taki got out, they could have reconnected themselves and then find their daughters, who at this point would be in their teens and try to try to tell them that, like, we didn't abuse you. That's not what happened. Like, here's the evidence, like, here's like we didn't do anything and then maybe try to have some connection now that they're in their teens, 20s and, and and instead what happened is that they were worshiping Jesus and not facing any of that. And a few days later, the because the the criminal trial had found them not guilty. A few days later, those kids were back in the home once the family court judge signed off on it. I think it was like the following week or the week after those kids were back home where they belonged, and just a few weeks later, they were here in Myrtle Beach. They came in town to see see loved ones who were here vacationing. And, and we got to go out and have dinner together. And I keep in touch with them. They got to spend the holidays together. They're living together as a family. One of the first things they got to do when they went home, their oldest, Aria, said, can we go to Walmart? And one of her favorite things that they used to do was just go to Walmart shopping and, you know, they're in the cart together and, and all that. And they hadn't gotten to do that for at that point like two years.
[00:40:52:05] Wilk Wilkinson: Oh my gosh.
[00:40:53:03] Spike Cohen: That's what happens when instead of looking at the Leviathan government and saying, oh, we can't fight City Hall, there's nothing we can do. If instead we get over ourselves and say, no, we can actually do whatever God empowers us to do by working together, holding people accountable, demanding they do the right thing, giving them an opportunity to repent and do the right thing and reconcile and join us in doing the right thing and just keep pushing forward until we get the right thing. We've done it for the Hernandez family. We've done it for the Clark family. We've done it for the for the Tim's family. We've done it for the Sullivan family. We've done it for so many other families and many more to come. We've passed policies to make sure that countless families in the future never have to face this nightmare. And we're just getting started.
[00:41:40:02] Wilk Wilkinson: this is something. And I'm taking a number of things away from this, that, that I want to make sure that the listeners are taken away from this, too, because, you know, one of the big things that I talk about a lot on here is, is my work with braver angels and, and what courageous citizenship is. And, you know, it's courageous citizenship and and our lives, what we can do as individuals is always going to start with us as an individual. And a lot of times that means not just discounting the power that you have. I wanted to that's why I brought it up at the beginning of this conversation. And then the next thing is, don't be afraid to reach out and find. Find the if you if you're not the fighter, find the fighter that that you need. Yeah. And you made a huge, important, hugely important point just a second ago. And that's that. You know, don't just assume that you can't fight to City Hall. And don't just assume that power that you're going up against is bigger than what you can handle, because the organization that you've put together here, spike, you are the power starts with, well, it obviously started with you, but it also takes a lot of courage from a lot of people to stand up and just not accept what they're told that they've got to accept.
[00:43:11:12] Spike Cohen: Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:12:13] Wilk Wilkinson: And there's a lot of things here. And here's what I here's what I like the most about this. And I like about what you're what you're doing. I mean, there's so much about what you're doing that I that I like, but the reality is this, you know, you're not doing this for fame or fortune. You guys at You Are the power or a 501 C3. Yeah. You're bringing together the resources needed for people who might not otherwise ever get to see their kids again, stay in their home b b b with their wife. This kind of thing. And the fact that we live in a world where injustice is often more prevalent in certain situations like this, then, than what real justice is. Not to say that that there aren't a lot of abuse kids out there, and there isn't a lot of horrible things happening. Yeah, but but the idea and there was another line in and I know we've gone way over our time, but it's my we can go as long as we need to. There was a line also in, in the video that that you sent me and they said, well, we would rather take a few kids away from them, from parents who didn't do anything wrong, then leave a child with a parent who was abusing them. And. That that is, I mean, I like I said, this is this is one of those things, spike, where, you know, to punish. Punish people who have never done anything wrong because you're not sure of the right way of doing something that is happening far too often in too many situations. And people need to have the courage, and there needs to be more organizations out there, not people looking to make fame or fortune, but people that are looking to better the world in which we live. People who have the courage to stand up and say, no, we are not going to just accept this because you say we have to. Exactly the horrific nature of somebody saying, I'm going to take your kid away because this might be the case, and we don't want to take the chance that it's not that is that is not acceptable and it's not something anybody should accept. So God bless you, brother, for what you're doing.
[00:45:48:20] Spike Cohen: Well, thank you. Thank you. And I would I would be remiss to not mention if anyone who's watching this, if you're going through anything like this and and not just specifically like this, if your life is being, you know, ruined or threatened, your life, your livelihood, your family, your small business, anything like that is being threatened by out of control local and state level politicians, policies and forces and so forth. Go to your the power net slash help and if there's anything that we can do to help, we will. I can never promise that we can take a case on or that we can help. I can only promise that if there's anything we can do to help, that we will. And to put this in perspective, in the last three years, we've taken on over a thousand causes. We've lost once we have an incredible success record. So if there's anything we can do to help you, we absolutely will. If you would like to be a part of this, go to you or the power net, and you can become a member and be a part of the tip of the spear of of being involved in this on a day to day basis. If you are in a position to give our causes on average can cost anywhere between $5,000 all the way up to $25,000 per cause, depending on how many resources we have to put into it, how long it goes on and so forth. And if you think about it, the kind of causes we take on, that's a deal. But 25 grand, still 25 grand. And so if you are in a position to be able to give, you can go to you or the power net donate whatever way that you choose to be a part of this, whether it's in getting our help with something that that you need help with, whether it's in helping others who need help, whether it's in giving what you can, you are getting us that much closer to helping another family, another individual, another person, and any story we had chosen. We chose the Hernandez family and the family reunification to talk about this. Any of the stories of the causes that we've dealt with have been similar situations where someone, someone's way of living, was being threatened. Right now, we're in the process of stopping a road project in Indiana that no one wants. That's destroying multiple, nearly 200 year old farming villages. No one wants it. It's going to cost way more. It runs parallel to other roads that already exist. It's really just a pay off for for the right people that are in office and you know, that help get them into office. And it just happens to destroy thousands of people's lives in the process. We're going to stop that. Any of the things that we work on is us restoring people's lives who never should have had them threatened to begin with by focusing on the people doing it to them, and instead of saying, we're going to destroy you, we're going to come after you. Instead of saying, listen, we both know this is the wrong thing. We're not going anywhere. This is only going to get louder and stronger until it continues. We'd rather that you join us in doing the right thing. And when you do, will. Thank you. We're actually doing what Jesus says love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. We go directly to them and say, listen, let's reconcile this. We you know, it shouldn't be this way. Let's do the right thing. And that might sound pie in the sky or utopian or whatever. I'd probably think the same thing if I weren't doing it every day. We've lost once. So the proof is in the pudding. Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:04:17] Wilk Wilkinson: No, that's absolutely right. This is where this is. This is the way. This is the way courageous citizens can find real solutions. And and I mean, there's a lot of ways that we can do it. We're we're doing it every day at Braver Angels. But you guys are doing it in your own way at you are the power. You know, individuals doing great things to help other individuals and appreciate you, man. I appreciate what you're doing.
[00:49:28:19] Spike Cohen: You, man. Thank you.
[00:49:29:21] Wilk Wilkinson: Look forward to look forward to a lot more conversations and and hearing more about the great things that you guys are doing over there. Spike Cohen, thank you so much. All your information will be in the show notes for people to find you and keep doing what you're doing, brother.
[00:49:44:07] Spike Cohen: Appreciate it. I will do it, man. Thank you and God bless.
[00:49:48:02] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate The Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together. So please take a moment to visit Braver Angels and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divide. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be. With that, my friend. I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
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