S6. E15: Justin Barker: Bear Boy
“And then a letter arrived in the mail. It was from a woman who had heard about my work to help zoo animals. She said, ‘there's these two bears living in a cage in the town near my house. It's on a creek that floods every year. It's horrible conditions. I have no idea what to do. Can you help?’
“I don't think she knew that I was a 13-year-old.”
– Justin Barker
Credit: Robin Weir
Justin is an activist, a director, a producer, and the author of Bear Boy, The True Story of a Boy, Two Bears, and the Fight to Be Free. When Justin was 13 years old, he started an organization called Citizens Lobbying for Animals in Zoos. And at 13, he created real change for captive animals, and not long after someone contacted him about two bears living in wretched conditions in Northern California.
Justin spent the next three years fighting to save these bears. Although his book is a young adult novel, it is a book that I think everyone should read. Justin is an example and inspiration of how one person can create an enormous impact. And the fact that that person was 13 years old is all the more compelling.
Find Justin on Bookshop
Read Bear Boy
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Transcript:
Justin: [00:00:15] Then a letter arrived in the mail and it was a woman who had heard about my work to help zoo animals. She said there's these two bears living in a cage in the town near my house, it's on a creek that floods every year. It's horrible conditions. I have no idea what to do and can you help? I don't think she knew that I was 13 years old.
Elizabeth: [00:00:42] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz, this is Species Unite for the months of May, June and July, Species Unite is celebrating plant based eating with vegan nights. All that really means, as we would love for you to cook dinner for your friends or your family or your neighbor and make it vegan. On our website, we have downloadable ghost packs with recipes, tips, information to make your vegan night all the more fun and better. So go to our website Species. Unite.com and download a host pack. You will be entered to win one of six, two hundred and seventy five dollar vegan gift baskets that are filled with all sorts of incredible plant based products. We would love for you to join us in changing the way the world treats animals, and you can do so by becoming a species Unite member for a monthly donation of any size. You'll get all sorts of exclusive benefits, including access to exclusive content, outtakes, bonus episodes, updates and news. Priority access to species unite events. A copy of our annual newsletter and a welcome pack from yours truly. Go to our website Speciesunite.com and click Become a member to join. Today's conversation is with Justin Barker. Justin is an activist, a director, a producer and the author of Bear Boy, The True Story of a Boy, Two Bears and the Fight to Be Free. When Justin was 13 years old, he started an organization called Citizens Lobbying for Animals and Zoos. At 13, he created real change for animals in zoos, and not long after someone contacted him about two bears living in brutal conditions in a California zoo. Justin spent the next three years fighting to save these bears. Even though the book is a young adult book, it is a book that I think everyone should read. Justin is an example and an inspiration of how one person can create enormous impact, and the fact that that person is 13 years old is just all the more compelling. Let's go back because the book takes place while you're in middle school and early high school. But I mean, middle school is really just a terrible time for most people. It just is and the fact that you did something about it, that you just didn't let it run you over which most of us, I think, do. It's just awesome. Can you go back to the beginning? When all this first started and kind of where you were, and for people who haven't read it where your life was when this all started.
Justin: [00:03:52] I grew up in a middle class house. My mom is a nurse and my dad was a social worker. I was always lucky. We never struggled with food or anything like that, but I really struggled. I really struggled as a kid and as a teenager. Because I was always just so different and I was very sensitive, and I think kids really picked up on that and I was fat. There were just these things that kids can really pick up on, and I just struggled with the bullying and the verbal abuse. Junior high was probably the worst. I wasn’t oriented towards sports and maybe I was a little effeminate. You know, as a like, not out queer kid. But like all of these things, there were all these little elements that people would pick up on. It was just rough.
Elizabeth: [00:04:50] Yeah, it was like you had all these targets on your back.
Justin: [00:04:52] Yeah. And it just ends in life. At home wasn't easy, either. My mom and I had a really challenging relationship. So it was kind of like it felt like it was from all angles. School wasn't good. As I wrote in the book, TV was like, really only escape, like the dream of having friends and 90s TV like Nickelodeon.. That was my one time, food and TV were my escape from how rough things were for me. Going into the summer after seventh grade. I lived in Sacramento and it was 110 degrees. It gets really hot there, and I was just rearing to plop myself down in front of the TV. Both of my parents were working and my dad was like, you're not going to watch TV all summer. What are you going to do? And I found a book written by Ingrid Newkirk.
Elizabeth: [00:05:59] What was it called?
Justin: [00:06:00] Kids can save the animals one hundred and one easy things to do. It was one of these books that was a small little book in which the chapters were short. But the second I opened that book and read about meat. It was the first time in my entire life that I realized that the meat that I was eating was actual animals. This book described what animals go through as they're becoming our food. I went vegetarian that very moment, and I've been vegetarian now vegan ever since I realized that meat was animals.
Elizabeth: [00:06:44] Yeah, that's a shocker. It's one of those things. I think when you realize that it happened to me around the same age and you're as shocked as you are that this is actually real, you're more shocked that you didn't realize this. You're like, How did I not know that chicken was a chicken?
Justin: [00:07:00] Right? I felt embarrassed that I didn't realize what I was eating, and then I was mad at my parents because I thought that they would at least have been honest with me about it. So it was a whole swirling of feelings.
Elizabeth: [00:07:18] I love that a book changed every element of your life.
Justin: [00:07:22] In a massive way.
Elizabeth: [00:07:23] Then you get to the part about zoos and animals. Are you thinking like, this is something I can actually do something about?
Justin: [00:07:32] At the time It was just a very visceral experience when I got to this The chapter about the state of zoo animals, I immediately felt so drawn to their story of getting swooped out of their natural homes, put into captivity, the insanity that it created, the containment. That just instantly resonated with me. That was something that I jumped on immediately. It was like, Oh, this is something, I cannot believe this. There were roots of that, I always didn't love going to the zoo. My parents would take me to like the local SeaWorld and I didn't love that. So there were elements of it that I never liked, but I never fully had the information in front of me the way this book presented it. Once I kind of got the full glimpse of the zoo industry and what it causes and the harm it causes in animals. I became absolutely obsessed. The first thing I did was I said, Yes, dad, I'm not going to watch TV all summer. I want you to take me to the Sacramento Zoo every day. I started doing an investigation at the Sacramento Zoo and it was really, really powerful. I would show up and take notes and like, observe the animals. And so many of the things this book kind of shared about the pacing and all of the zoochosis that is caused when containing animals. I witnessed it firsthand.
Elizabeth: [00:09:09] One thing I found really interesting and really hopeful and compelling was how many adults helped you. I mean, there were a lot of, not so great adults throughout your time there. But you had a lot of people on your side who were kind of pushing you and really like they're treating you much older than 13. You'd show up to do investigations or people would come talk to you as if you could really do something.
Justin: [00:09:37] It was amazing. I have to say, yes, it was adults, but it was women.
Elizabeth: [00:09:49] Right.
Justin: [00:09:50] When I called PETA, it was like the women at PETA, it was women activists in Sacramento. Largely, it was women who helped nourish and encourage me. It's another thing that you kind of just take your story for granted until you write about it.
Elizabeth: [00:10:05] Well, and it really seems like they weren't treating you like a kid, like they really had all this faith in you, that you could create real change.
Justin: [00:10:14] There's always the stumbling blocks and to be able to just call somebody up who's like, I believe in you and have them say, Keep on going even with a thousand no’s. Eventually that turns into the yes that you need, these kinds of things.
Elizabeth: [00:10:30] Did it occur to you at the time? Were you thinking more like, I'm a kid, this probably isn't going to work, or because you had so much support were you thinking like, I can do this?
Elizabeth: [00:10:42] Once the bears came into the picture?
Elizabeth: [00:10:43] Yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:10:45] Once I met Brutus and Ursula and saw how terrible their conditions were. I was so obsessed with them and that they would get out of that cage, and I would do whatever I needed to do to get them out of that cage. There was never a moment that I didn't imagine them getting out of that condition.
Elizabeth: [00:11:02] Talk about when you first saw the bears, what that was like and what it was like to be there and why it gave you so much drive to change it?
Justin: [00:11:14] Right. So I was working in the Sacramento Zoo, and that was an interesting project because I was getting movement. There were things that were happening with the Sacramento Zoo. Changes were happening in a way that I didn't expect to happen. The American Zoo Association, there was this big exposé on animal abuse, and I was like the young kid behind it. So I was just a pest. One day I called the zoo director at the Sacramento Zoo and she threatened to sue me. I was 12 years old and my parents were like, you need to stop what you're doing and all of a sudden, all this like movement. It just completely stopped. There's just a moment in time where I was, like, really struggling, like I love animals, I want to help animals in zoos, and my parents had stopped me from doing the thing I really love and I'm deeply passionate about. Then a letter arrived in the mail and it was a woman who had heard about my work to help zoo animals. She said there's these two bears living in a cage in the town near my house, it's on a creek that floods every year. It's horrible conditions. I have no idea what to do. Can you help? I don't think she knew that I was a 13 year old, she thought I was the zoo version of PETA and focused on zoo animals. Oddly, the second I got that letter, I hadn’t even met the bears and I was like, this is my next project. Then my dad and my mom said, Hey, why don't you go see the bears? They took me to the Bears and these bears were living in this tiny cage that was completely outdated. There was a concrete and metal cage. In the concrete on the outside perimeter inside the cage the bears had worn a thick path from their pacing.
Elizabeth: [00:13:20] Oh my god.
Justin: [00:13:20] No one could get into the cage, so all they did was spray a hose with it, and that water never went away. So then there was this thin layer of allergy that, every time they turned the corner in the cage, they'd slip on it. So they didn't even have a proper place to have their own footing. The cage was just tiny, and they were getting fed monkey food. To add to it, they lived on a creek that flooded every few years, their cage would flood and they would get tranquilized, and there'd be this just like urgent need to get them out of their cage and they'd get relocated.
Elizabeth: [00:14:01] How long have they been there?
Justin: [00:14:03] They've been there for 18 years, they were in that cage for 18 years. I mean, in a lot of ways it felt like their spirit had gone. They would just stare at you and they were just sweet bears.
Elizabeth: [00:14:20] So you thought, I have to do this?
Justin: [00:14:22] At first, I was like, Oh, well, let's improve their food. Let's try to create some quick change. So my original pitch was we got to cover these concrete floors with dirt. So they have earth to lay on.
Elizabeth: [00:14:39] To stop them falling over.
Justin: [00:14:42] Yeah, and we need to improve their food. They need fruit and fish, they don't need monkey food. That was like my very first thing, I called the mayor and I said things have to change. They were not receptive, like the city was not at all receptive. I mean, they basically laughed at me when I made my first call. But weirdly, the weirdest thing was I had the mayor's home phone number, that was the way the city worked. When I called to talk to the mayor they gave me his home phone number. This is the best way to reach him. Over the three years, I couldn't even tell you how many phone calls I made to him. The mayor at some point told me that those bears were born in that cage and they're going to die in that cage. Those words, If I didn't already have the belief I was going to get those bears out of there, that became my rallying call. I am going to prove you wrong. These bears will not die in this cage. Then the rest is history really. It took a lot of time, but eventually the city agreed to release the bears, and then we had to find a place for the bears.
Elizabeth: [00:16:04] That wasn't easy either, right?
Justin: [00:16:05] It's funny because as a young person who didn't believe in zoos, I was calling zoos all over the country and sanctuaries. But I also just thought even another zoo is better than this. I called a lot of zoos. I called sanctuaries. Then, like just by chance, the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary, which is a zoo probably about 20 minutes from the bears. They only rescue animals.
Elizabeth: [00:16:33] That should be the only kind of zoos we have left, if any, they should be rescue places, right?
Justin: [00:16:39] 100%.
Elizabeth: [00:16:40] There's also just a lot of great things in your book. Well, first of all, because it's written in the 90s, like one of the ongoing things with your parents is the phone bill. I remember those days, too. The phone bill was such a big deal. That was like one of the big fights throughout because you were always on the phone calling zoos all over the country and racking up these huge phone bills. Even though your parents were strict and you had many problems with them, they were also amazingly supportive of you. In the sense of driving you to zoos, like on weekends and vacations, and they spent a lot of time, kind of in this battle with you, which I thought was pretty phenomenal.
Justin: [00:17:22] This story happened pre email, pretext and pre like social media. That was a serious battle. Phone bills were a huge battle. My parents were really supportive and I think that it was kind of entertaining for them to see TV cameras showing up to cover the story. To have their coworkers be like, I saw your kid on the news. There was something that was probably pretty fun about that for them. But I think that also because I was like, I'm a bull headed and at the time pretty annoying kid in regards to the things I wanted or the things I had opinions about. The fact that I could focus my bullheadedness towards a cause and not towards my parents, was probably pretty satisfying for them. Like they did support me, they loved what I was doing. I think that they saw me change as a person from a struggling 13 year old and how this project had changed me. So I think that was it. But I certainly think there is an element of them thinking, at least he is not using that sharp tongue that he used to use towards us. There is something that helped him get off the hook in some ways.
Elizabeth: [00:18:47] Well, I'm sure in a lot of ways it got you off yourself, not focusing on your own misery at the time and focusing on somebody else's really transformed you.
Justin: [00:18:56] I mean, that's what the whole book is about. That's what helped me realize that the more that we are helping others, we're helping ourselves and. The mission of the book is to help inspire young people to be active. But also to realize like, wow, we're not so in our heads. If we're not so wrapped up in our anxiety or the things that we struggle with, and we're really thinking more about the people, the animals, the world outside of us. The more that we can widen that view and focus our energy on those things, that's when the inside struggles start dissipating.
Elizabeth: [00:19:41] It's beautiful to watch it happen throughout the book because you really do transform. You seem really happy later and free. It's a nice metaphor for your freedom, and the bears freedom happening kind of simultaneously, not freedom, but out of there at least.
Justin: [00:20:00] Right. I always struggle with the title because ‘the fight to be free’ is like, those bears are never free until they are dead. Not in a place with cages, like those barriers are never free. But my hope was that at least like the compassion and love that they got in the end. The actions I took to help them actually freed me.
Elizabeth: [00:20:27] What was it like when they moved and you saw them in the new spot?
Justin: [00:20:31] It took them a little bit of time to like ease into their world. It was the first time they'd put their feet on grass or dirt. That was kind of overwhelming for them, but in the days and the ensuing days, as they got used to it. Brutus and Ursula would dive into this warm spa that they had, it was a big pool that both of them could fit in. It was like a warm waterfall. So they loved that, they would chase fish in there and they would just forage and lounge on the Earth. They only lived about four years in that place, and they really struggled for years on concrete and the lack of food. They were just neglected their whole lives. They had some serious neurological issues and their bodies kind of deteriorated in that cage. But it was amazing because Brutus and Ursula became very relaxed with their keepers at the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary. But Ursula would let massage therapists come in and give her massages, and there was an acupuncturist because she had some sort of like disc issues and the acupuncturist would actually go and give her acupuncture. The Trust, they both were very trusting. But Ursula proved to be the most trusting bear and her ability to just like after just how horrible humans treated her for her entire life.
Elizabeth: [00:22:15] For 20 years, right?
Justin: [00:22:20] Yeah, to let somebody in and touch her and rotate her legs and like poke her with pins. The gentleness that she shows. I never experienced that firsthand,I wasn't ever in the cage with her. But the stories I heard were really touching, like, Wow, these fierce animals that people think of as really gentle, really gentle.
Elizabeth: [00:22:50] It makes it all the more devastating. It's heartbreaking. It was so heartbreaking that they died. Within a few years or four years after, but at least they didn't die in Rosedale. I mean, at least they had some good years.
Justin: [00:23:11] Yeah, at least they got to experience the kindness of humans for those years.
Elizabeth: [00:23:18] So after three years you raised two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is an enormous amount of money for anyone to raise, but especially a kid. Like I was saying before, your life frees up quite a bit. The bears get moved, but will you talk about what happened to your life and the synchronicity of it all.
Justin: [00:23:39] Yeah. As I was working towards helping the bears like I was inching towards, like seeing myself and building confidence. Interestingly, in the middle of the project, my parents were moving to Costa Rica. It was like the worst news I'd ever gotten, because it's like, how dare you take me away from this project? Like I found this thing that I'm deeply passionate about and you're going to yank me away from it. But interestingly, leaving the confines of the suburbs of California to move to Costa Rica. That opened my world, in a way that I don't think anything else can travel and just like getting out of your own situation, I think was the major shift that happened in me. I ended up working at an animal rescue sanctuary in Costa Rica, and I'd get on a bus for an hour and a half there and an hour and a half back. It was like the first time in my life that I wasn't around my parents. So that really helped me build my confidence, that journey and that traveling really helped me build my confidence. It was only six months, but when I came back to my high school, it was like I was like a different person. I had been gone from all the kind of B.S. that school is and that is when I really began to live life and feel like myself. I started finding friends in a way, I came out, I was honest with myself about my sexuality and started being honest with other people about that. That was a really, really huge shift in my life. I've really never looked back
Elizabeth: [00:25:32] When I was 12, my parents ruined my life. We moved to Germany and we'd lived in the suburbs in Virginia my whole life before that, which I thought was like the best thing on Earth. But because of that, I've lived all over the world. I've traveled constantly. I don't know if I would have had the same kind of openness. To just show up in the middle of nowhere or openness to moving anywhere. I might still be in Virginia. Who knows? For me that forced me out of my comfort zone. Then opened me to incredible new worlds that absolutely changed who I was as a person for the rest of my life. I think especially at that age, like when you were 13 or 14 when you moved to Costa Rica. There's something that happens when you realize, Oh, wait a minute, there's a whole world. You realize like, this is not it. It's not just this little tiny world you've been living in your whole life, that there's amazing things happening all over the planet.
Justin: [00:26:33] Really powerful. I mean, and I really believe traveling helps with that.
Elizabeth: [00:26:36] Well, and I say it because the reason it made me think of me, is because later at the end of the book, when you write a little bit about your life post bears that you went to university in London and then lived in London and lived in Australia. I was thinking, I wonder if Costa Rica is why you moved many places, because the seeds were planted when you were in Costa Rica.
Justin: [00:26:58] Absolutely. To go out and explore that early, be in the world, go to school somewhere else. I was so ready to get out of California and get away from my parents and like what a better place than London, the center of the world where the Spice Girls are hanging out.
Elizabeth: [00:27:21] Talk about Post Bears, London and beyond and what kind of where your life path has taken you since then.
Justin: [00:27:29] Sure. One of the things I have that still lives with me today. The media played a massive role in this story and the bears relocation. It was so powerful to have the barons behind the National Morning Show, or be in a magazine and see the thousands of people that would respond to that. I was like, whoa, this media thing is amazing, the change, the way that I was able to spread a message, to question zoos and give compassion to animals. There's a story of Brutus, and Ursula was really powerful to me. So I ended up studying communications and filmmaking. I ended up in London and I started an internship at CBS News there London bureau, and my start date was September 11th, 2001. In speaking of lining things up, I had this vision, I was going to be a TV reporter and like my investigative reports on TV, was going to create change in the world. All it took was seeing how national news covers what was then like the war against Afghanistan? It was really fascinating because at the CBS bureau in London, you have probably twenty five to thirty monitors of all the different TV networks across the world. To just compare what the Americans were seeing versus what the Japanese were seeing. It was a really powerful image to be able to see how dumbed down our news is. The fact that it's like the images of coming back from war so sanitized and that that experience of seeing the coverage of Afghanistan, I was like, I can't do news. I can't do TV news. Done with that. I ended up studying documentary filmmaking. That's partly why I started writing the book. I had to figure out how my professional life as a filmmaker and storyteller intersects with my life and why I'm here on this planet and that I have landed into helping animals and transitioning the zoo industry and really like opening people's eyes to the horrors of the zoo industry. This is why I'm here.
Elizabeth: [00:30:13] It's true, because documentaries used to fight SeaWorld and all those places like Blackfish, right? What did the Cove do, those kinds of documentaries? They affect the masses. Their documentaries create massive change.
Justin: [00:30:30] Massive change. We're only a documentary away from really massive change in the American zoo industry. I spent the last two years fighting the San Francisco Zoo to get records released because San Francisco Zoo is like one of the worst zoos, definitely on the West Coast, maybe in the US. Horrible zoo and corrupt management. I've been battling to release documents because I've always wanted to use this zoo as an example of how it only takes like highlighting one zoo to really reveal it all. The zoo two years ago should have handed all these documents to me, but have been fighting it. They just found out that the zoo is in violation of city and state laws and also in violation of their contract with the city. It's taken two years to get to that place, and they're still fighting us, the zoos still refusing to release documents. So that's kind of been my battle right now. Once those documents are released my hope is that it will start a chain reaction and we can start to do a documentary in this space.
Elizabeth: [00:31:46] I hope you do. I think one of the things that keeps a lot of people from making a move. Is. They don't feel like they can make a difference. The last three lines in your book for people to ask themselves is what is important to you? Who will you stand up for and how will you make the world a better place? And I kind of feel like everyone should ask themselves that on the regular. We have a lot more power than we think we do and your book was just such an enormous, beautiful example of that. So I want to thank you for putting it out in the world. I want to thank you for doing all that work and sharing so much of who you are in the book, too, because I think that's really one of the reasons it's so impactful. I want to thank you for coming today.
Justin: [00:32:38] Well, thank you for having me. Nice to have this conversation.
Elizabeth: [00:32:51] To learn more about Justin and to read Bearboy, go to our website SpeciesUnite.com. We will have links to everything. While you're there, click Become a member and join us. Become a member and get all sorts of wonderful membership benefits and join our Species Unite family. We'd love to have you. We are on Facebook and Instagram at @SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare minute and could do us a favor, please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Natalie Martin, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santina Polky, our intern, Talia Fine and Anna Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day!
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