YAL CONFERENCE CANCELLED: Dallas Says NO To Liberty and YES to Protests | Ep 72
Texas keeps losing its freedom. Elijah sat down Monday with Cliff Maloney, president of Young Americans for Liberty, to discuss the latest move by the city of Dallas. YAL was suppose to host an event in Dallas, called Mobilize 2020, where 1,400 students from across the U.S. learn about activism and principles of liberty. This event had speakers, 100 elected officials, and 250 investors ready to attend. Haven’t we seen big events like John Lewis funeral, Black Lives Matter protests, and riots across the nation? Freedom is being taken away, mainly from conservatives and libertarians. Is it time to show the MSM and the Democrats that we won’t be silent? Looks like not only Dallas doesn’t want conservatives/libertarians. They also don’t want the economic boost that it surely needs.
Amidst COVID-19, there's extreme bias as the funeral for John Lewis could attract celebrities and politicians such as Barack Obama, but try to support any right-wing cause and you'll find yourself canceled.
I have the president here of YAL, the Young Americans for Liberty.
His name is Cliff Maloney.
He joins me as the entire conference to get specifically not only libertarian, right-wings, but constitutional conservatives elected has been canceled, I repeat, canceled by the city of Dallas after already moving from Austin.
Welcome to the show.
I appreciate you guys having me.
Thanks so much.
Yeah, I really wish we were meeting on better terms here, and I want to jump right to the chase.
So you're running this conference, YAL, which is a bunch of young college students specifically to get them ready to vote, to knock on doors.
Talk to me a little bit about what happened here.
What's going on right now as we speak?
Yeah, so we have 1,400 college students that are on their way to Dallas, Texas.
We've got about 100 elected officials.
And we were all set to have a training event to kind of propel us into the general election.
And here's exactly what happened.
So back in June, we were set to do this training event in Austin.
And we decided, you know, the politics of Austin and them kind of deciding that they would play games with us.
We said, you know, we're going to take this to Dallas.
Dallas promises to be pro-business.
Dallas, Texas is seen as kind of this leader, if you will.
And we figured they'd be a little more rational.
Well, we were wrong.
Just about three to four hours ago, we were notified that the city of Dallas was shutting down our event.
The health secretary for the city of Dallas approached the hotel and said, listen, due to safety reasons, we're going to shut down their event.
Now, here's the problem with that.
Dallas has known for months, more than two months, that we were going to do our event.
We agreed to take precautions.
We agreed to take any of the safety measures that they kind of forced upon us.
We agreed to all of it.
And the Omni Hotel and us, we worked hand in hand to make it happen.
They waited until we literally had the stage, the banner, everything set up for events.
Students, elected officials, Christy Noam coming in from South Dakota, Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massey coming in from Kentucky.
They waited until we had everyone coming in to say, you know what, we're going to pull the plug.
And it's just, it's infuriating.
It's so devastating to us as an organization because we have activists who are excited.
They want to get involved.
They want to learn about the ideas.
And here you have the city of Dallas saying, you know, we know we had some lead time, but guess what?
We're shutting you down.
No conversation, no discussion, no dialogue, just tyrants deciding that they get to decide if we can have our event.
You know, unfortunately, it doesn't really shock me the sort of subjugative bias that comes towards events that are right-wing in nature.
And we know that people deny it with plausible deniability.
The censorship is not happening, that the shutdown of right-wing events isn't true.
But we saw that with, of course, the demonization of the shutdown protests, but the praise of the riots for Black Lives Matter, some of which I've covered.
Now, you were in Dallas and you've come here.
A lot of people don't realize that Texas is not as conservative, not as free thinking as some people like to spread.
Dallas is a very liberal city in a lot of ways, one of the epicenters of the recent Black Lives Matter riots.
But you're saying that they're coming at you right now.
And from my understanding, we're in a crisis.
I know that the viewers are going to be shocked to hear that.
We're in an economic crisis.
But from my understanding, this conference was really going to help the city of Dallas financially.
Yeah.
So, look, Young Americans for Liberty, about a year ago, we moved our entire organization to Texas.
Now, no offense to anybody in Texas that believes in the Constitution, but we saw Texas as kind of a new battleground.
And so we moved our organization to Texas thinking, you know, look, this is some conservative bastion, lower taxes.
And we realized really quickly, I mean, we have a problem here in Texas.
We really need to focus on advancing some of these ideas of actually limiting government.
But you're exactly right.
Look, violent protests are happening in the city of Dallas and they go on without any objection.
But a peaceful YAO event where young Americans for Liberty students are coming to town to talk about, not to light things on fire, not to set destruction to the city, but to have a peaceful conversation about the ideas of liberty and the tactics, the tools that we want to use to advance these ideas.
You would think that we were the most evil people alive.
But that's how the city's painting this.
They treat violent protesters like nothing is wrong, but peaceful activists who want to actually come to the table and have a conversation, they get treated like they are the worst human beings on the face of the earth.
So imagine you're a 19-year-old college student.
You're trying to come to this event, and this is the news you're getting tonight.
You're getting this news that you are not allowed to come and have these conversations, yet violent protesters are permitted to continue to burn the streets.
That's the type of dichotomy that's happening right now in America.
And I hate to say it.
Texas was supposed to be this constitution, freedom-loving state.
And we are realizing very quickly we have a lot of work to do right here in Texas.
And for anybody that doesn't think that, they need to open their eyes.
Once again, violent protesters being allowed to congregate, to come together, to do whatever.
Heck, people have said to me, Cliff, just say that the YAL event, instead of calling it Mobilize 2020, just call it a Black Lives Matter protest.
They've got to let you do your event if you do that.
But that's the America we live in today.
Cliff, no, really, truly, you are correct.
This is a more informal show.
And I like to keep it informal because I think Americans in general are informal.
I think that we're respectful.
I think that we have values, but I think we treat people like we would every day.
We're not elitists.
We're not people who are trying to show off our eloquence or the way that we speak.
I mean, inerrantly, we all are just wanting to see people to be free.
I mean, to be fair, free to protest for Black Lives Matter.
But also, it's a strange thing, free to express conservative ideas, free to come out as yell.
This is a group I'm very familiar with.
And a lot of my listeners probably have heard me speak in conjunction with.
But you guys have been blocked and barred, and you guys followed social distancing rules.
My background, you would not know this, is in molecular biology.
It's in genetic engineering.
It's in epidemiology.
This is what I've studied.
And you guys actually complied with all CDC guidelines.
Can you explain to me a little bit about the process of how you went from an open conference complying with these guidelines in the city to just suddenly, I don't know, having the rug pulled from beneath your feet?
Yeah.
So about a week and a half ago, you know, the city of Dallas was starting to talk with the hotel and they started throwing these egregious, irrational regulations our way.
You know, first it was, hey, listen, we said you could have, you know, a capacity of, let's say, 2,000 in the room in our main ballroom.
They cut it to 1,000.
Now we have 1,400 students coming in.
So all of a sudden, that's a problem.
Well, then a couple of days later, they said, hey, never mind.
It's not 1,000.
It's going to be 500 students.
I mean, they threw these rules about having, you know, instead of 10 people at a round table, it had to be five.
Instead of five, we were going to go to four people six feet apart.
Look, we agreed to give out masks.
We agreed with all their demands.
But it was funny because, you know what I started to realize was it wasn't that they wanted us to agree with their demands.
They wanted to leave the burden of canceling on us.
And we said no.
We continue to push back and say, you know what?
We'll do it.
We'll do whatever you need us to do.
But the event is so valuable to us because it helps us train our students to go out not just on campus in the fall, but to partake in so many of these general elections.
And we know this election cycle is one of the most important in the history of America.
And so these folks, I mean, look, I don't want to call them out, but of course this is politically biased.
Of course, if you're shutting down a peaceful Yal event and letting the violent protests go on, of course there's some political bias.
So we forced them to enact these rules and continue to get deeper and deeper and deeper.
And I guess today they realize, guess what?
These young Americans for Liberty folks, they're going to comply.
They see the value in doing this.
So we need to take the extra step, the egregious step of saying, you know what?
We're just going to cancel the event outright.
So you're spot on.
We went toe-to-toe with them.
The Omni work with us with all these irrational regulations, and we kept agreeing to do it.
And we made them get to the point where they said we are going to cancel as the city of Dallas.
And every option is on the table.
Look, I'm not going to declare right now that we're going to sue these folks, but you better believe.
I'm looking at every single option I can look at because the students, the young people in this country that believe in freedom, that believe in the Constitution, they deserve for us to stand proud.
No longer are conservatives and libertarians and people that love the founding documents and what this country stands for.
We can't be silent.
We've got to be as loud and as proud as ever.
And as we say at YAL, you either believe in liberty in times of crisis or you don't believe in liberty at all.
This is the time for us to stand up and speak out.
Brian, I know that some of the critics who still might be on the air watching this or I call them my blind viewers listening, you know, they wonder, well, you know, hey, we're in a crisis.
This is just another moment, you know, where an organization can't have an event.
But I think it's important to understand that as we try to track this crisis, we look at the fact that not only are we economically impaired, but on the health level, you know, there are guidelines.
And whether you disagree with them or not, in this case, they were being followed.
In fact, they were being almost religiously adhered to because people understand, like Yal does, that if you don't, you will be demonized.
You will be prosecuted.
You could even be sued for bringing people's lives into jeopardy.
So they applied.
But even though they applied and they abided by these laws, they were still censored, absolutely demonized, ostracized from the public conversation to a point of cancellation.
And that's where we bring up this contradiction.
You know, as the president of Yala of an organization, when you see like the funerals of George Floyd or of John Lewis publicly state sanctioned events without social distancing, sure, wearing masks, but in many ways avoiding this.
Do you have any gut feeling?
I know you've mentioned it, but that this is an absolute political discriminatory attack when if the politics align, you can have your event.
It's 100% a politically biased decision.
I mean, here's the reality.
The city of Dallas just turned down about a million dollars in revenue because they decided that YAL was too risky to let them come in because of the impact we're going to have on the general election in 2020.
And like you said, look, all these funerals for people like George Floyd, these events that they're hosting, the protests, we are not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to go to them.
We're just asking for a level playing field.
I'd love to stand toe-to-toe and support some of these people that are calling for equality.
But I'm not given that opportunity because I don't fit the narrative.
Okay, our student activists at Young Americans for Liberty, they don't fit the narrative.
Why?
Because we believe in freedom.
We believe in being a victor, not a victim.
We believe in challenging government and saying that individuals in their community can provide for so much more than trying to rely on a government or some government bureaucracy to solve all of our problems.
But that's what higher ed, that's what the college system is teaching these days, that every single time you have a problem, you need to turn to government.
And so when we present a different message to Young Americans for Liberty, when we present a different message that says, look, we are asking for the ability to go out and create.
We're not looking to rely on government.
We're not looking for socialism or collectivism.
We don't fit in.
So if you're asking me if it's politically biased, of course it's politically biased.
Once again, if people can go to these funerals and these events and these violent protests with no type of obstruction, with not getting shut down, without people even asking questions, yet when we try to have 1,400 students come in for a peaceful event, a training event, an educational event, where we're going to comply, we're going to wear the masks, we're going to socially distant, they shut us down.
Excuse my French, but that is complete horseshit, if you ask me.
No, that's not even French.
In fact, I'm trying to be more cordial with you because you're a nonprofit.
This show is called slightly offensive.
And to be honest, I don't even care what people say because the most offensive thing is the censorship that's going on.
But let me ask you this.
Well, what is going to happen with this conference after all of this money's spent, vendors paid?
I mean, what happens now?
So we're looking at potential action we can take against the city of Dallas, but I want to tell you one thing that they just did that they didn't realize they did.
They poked the bear, right?
They have lit a fire in the belly of all of our activists across the country.
We have door knocking deployments from October 1st through November 3rd, so roughly 30 to 33 days.
I'm going to deploy activists across the country to support constitution-loving candidates and get them into office.
We run what we call Operation Win at the Door.
And so you might think, you know, look, it's all about this conference and it's all about, you know, whether we won or we lost with the city of Dallas.
But the reality is this is about empowering and energizing and taking this youth army that we've built.
And I got to tell you, I've gotten more texts, more emails.
We're getting so much social media traction right now because people are saying this is just not right.
It's not right what the city of Dallas is doing.
And so our activists are ready to get out there.
We're going to flood the entire nation to turn out the vote up and down the ballot for our candidates.
And I got to say, look, it's kind of exciting.
I mean, sometimes you're looking for people to really push you and see the pendulum swing.
They have pushed us here in the city of Dallas.
And we're about to go out there and we're going to make a lot of noise for the principles of liberty.
You know what?
Thank you so much, Cliff.
I really appreciate you, President of YAL, Young Americans for Liberty.
If people want to find your organization, support you right now and reach out.
Where can they find you?
Head on over to yaliberty.org.
We're always looking for candidates to endorse investors and most important students to get involved and really make a difference.
Yaliberty.org.
All right, guys, you heard it here on slightly offensive on Blaze TV.
Your liberties are under attack.
But most importantly, people are on the front lines like Yal.
That's why it's more important than ever to support us at blazetv.com/slash slightly offensive, using my code Elijah to continue to fight against censorship.
But it's not just media companies that are being censored, it's activist groups, including nonprofits that are just coming together to try to give a voice to the American public.
So, check out YAL online at the website given in the links in the description and continue to support those who support you as we fight together in these last days in many ways against the globalists and one-world governments, including, and you might think that sounds conspiratorial, but it's not.
People that don't care about you, they don't care about your country, they don't care about your constitutional liberties, they care about themselves, their money, and their transnational corporations.
But you don't.
You care about your family, your friends, your church, your schools, and of course, the people that you love the most.
My name is Elijah Schaefer, signing off here with Cliff Maloney, the president of YAL.
Have a great rest of the day.
As always, and may God bless the United States of America.
