Hello, my name is Michael Vestigo, but right now you can call me Apollo.
>> [LAUGH] I love that.
>> I was hired on the Starbucks on November 2nd 2020 and
I had been with the company for about a year and a half.
Then on April 1st like a bad April fool's day joke.
I was fired from the company for being supposedly violent and threatening.
Tell me does this violent and threatening?
>> [LAUGH] >> The man you saw in the furry
suit is Michael Vestigo, a man who has found his voice and
community with fellow Starbucks organizers.
After he was fired from his job at Starbucks.
Vestigo was fired after his employer found out in Kansas city.
By the way that he was starting to question the working conditions,
the way that the workers were being treated.
And so he started organizing the workers to form a union.
And so once his boss figured out that was going on, he was fired.
And he was also told by the manager that he was let go for
displaying violent and threatening behavior.
Although obviously there's really no evidence that he has engaged
any violent or threatening behavior.
He told Vice quote, I'm not that kind of person at all Vestigo said,
he has social anxiety and in a job review meeting,
he cited trouble standing up for myself as a weakness.
It's my personal belief that they took that and they basically targeted me
because they thought I would just kind of take it lying down, he said.
Now a week later the same Kansas City Starbucks actually won its
unionization vote.
So sorry. And later in April vesting go was invited
by Sharma Surwant to attend a multiday Starbucks Union rally in Seattle.
And he had asked her, is it cool with you if I show up in my furry suit because
it makes him feel more comfortable, he does have that anxiety issue.
And of course they were incredibly welcoming and accepting and
he said, I think one of the things that makes a movement so
beautiful is the fact that we can all be united despite our differences.
I think it's very important to acknowledge that we are very different people, but
we are part of the same machine and we deserve to be treated with respect,
no matter who we are.
To be there fully expressing myself and
speaking up about something that I was just so passionate about and
seeing that garner any amount of attention was an awesome feeling.
It gave me more confidence than I've ever had in my entire life.
And Vestigo also told Vice that he filed a complaint with the NLRB with
the hopes that he'll get his job back soon.
And I wanna give you guys an update on what's going down with Starbucks in just
a moment.
But Jenk, I think that we've been legendary not to my own horn, but we have
been legendary and giving a voice to the furry community and I'm proud of that.
>> Okay, yes, I agree with that.
[LAUGH] I thought you were gonna say were legendary and giving everybody a voice,
I'm like, good I hope so.
But that sounds a bit much.
I hope we do the right thing.
But for the furry community we've been solid.
[LAUGH] You in particular.
Okay, so actually this story has two components,
obviously the union part of the furry part, I'm gonna break both down.
The union part it's easy.
Look guys, you hear any one story, you never know.
Okay, and so could there be a worker who was violent?
Sure of course they could be like you got coworkers,
are they all saying are they all like the greatest workers in the world?
Not necessarily right?
But in this case it's clear for a number of reasons Starbucks has fired.
Now it looks like at least 18 people all across the country for union organizing.
Now those are the allegations, but man, it definitely fits a pattern.
And so it's not just one or two random cases.
So, there are a lot of these cases and their CEO is out there saying 24 7 about
how much the unions are intruders and wrong and you've got to fight them etc.
So, his story that you just heard sounds incredibly
believable given the overall context.
Now to the furry part.
Look, our human bonds are fraying, and a lot of people could disagree with this,
but there's several different ways that you could respond, and
some folks are, are going inward.
And they're worried about interacting with people and
it's not just here in America, I mean we've done a lot of stories in Japan
where this is happening on even bigger scale.
And so whether in one of the ways that you can go inward is,
you become a furry and I'm not saying all furries are like that.
And then obviously tons of pop psychology here, so
I'm gonna ruin my credibility with the furry community a little bit here, right?
But but he's saying in his case like, hey man, I'm shy and
it's hard for me to say things like this, things that are true and
need to be said without this, but in this outfit I feel more comfortable.
And I can say things that are true.
I love that, you know why?
And now here's a trippy thing, I love America, because of what we could be and
what we're supposed to be, which is a country that's free.
So when I see someone doing something that they love, I think that's great.
That's amazing.
Unfortunately, a lot of people in this country,
mainly the right wing look at that and go, they look different.
I don't like different, what a weird thing if you claim you're for freedom and
what you want is everybody to be the same and not be free to be who they are.
And how is the right wing reacting to this fraying of the human bonds, right?
They're reacting by coming together in a cohesive
unit of people that have a very similar identity.
And the reason that they're doing that is because they're afraid,
they're seeking solace in people that look like them and act like them.
And then unfortunately, they're taking it in a super negative direction by
then lashing out at everyone else.
And they have a different way of being anonymous.
They'll go on social media and
they'll attack people with the mask of anonymity that they have there.
So be careful who you're calling out because you're probably doing
something similar but in a much more toxic way than the furries who
are clearly doing it in a, in a benign and oftentimes loving way.
>> Yeah, that's such a great way of putting it because, it's so
hard today to just get by to just ensure that you have what you need,
that your basic needs are met, not just your own basic needs.
But if you have a family to make sure that the basic needs of your family members
are met, like we're all under so much pressure.
You're so right about those social bonds which have broken down over the last
several decades with Covid, I think that Americans became even more atomized.
Which doesn't bode well for mental health, it doesn't bode well for happiness.
And the way that I like to see it is, if I come across a person or
a group of people who have a lifestyle that's different than mine,
a lifestyle that I'm not even familiar with, right?
I wasn't familiar with the furry community until we came across a story about them
several years ago.
And and the way that I like to think about it is okay,
are these people harming anyone?
Is their lifestyle in any way harmful to me to members of my community,
to people in general?
And if it's not why would I care?
Why would I want to hate on them?
Why would I wanna stop them from being who they are?
And I wish that everyone saw everyone else that way, right?
And I think that you know part of the problem especially when it comes to
the hatred that we're seeing toward the trans community.
The overall LGBTQ community is just this, like people are freaked out about it,
they don't understand it.
And it's this knee jerk reaction to hate them,
when in reality everyone just wants to live a happy life.
Everyone wants love, everyone wants friendship, everyone, not everyone but
a lot of people want to have a family.
Why can't we support people who want to live good lives?
That's what am for.
>> Yeah and all of these are of course different communities furry community
LGBTQ community etc.
And I remember when I first came to LA, I lived in West Hollywood and
it's not my first rodeo, I lived on South Beach, I lived in New York etc.
But when I saw this one time I saw this guy who was jogging but
he wasn't jogging, he was prancing.
Now when I say prancing I'm being deliberate with that word,
I've never seen anything like that, he was jumping and skipping and etc and
it seemed like it was a form of exercise.
So I'm doing for several blocks and
it was just the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
I've never seen a human being prance in public like that, right?
And at first I was like whoa wow, I've never seen that.
And then I thought God bless America, that's what America is supposed to be.
>> Hell yeah.