Dear Skateboarding Industry,
Chris Cole has been re-platformed and it’s your fault.
Men and women alike all saw or heard about Christine Flannigan’s posts disclosing abuse. You knew about her interview with me where she told her story. You knew about Gifted Hater’s breakdown of evidence that followed. You knew about Jamie Thomas’ pathetic, Slap-forum-only “press release” letting Cole go and you knew about Gabriel Summers’ statement on leaving Zero.
You knew that Chris’ own eighteen-year-old son publicly verified Christine’s story.
Yet so many of you with wives and daughters—all of you with mothers, probably rolling your eyes at my words right now, thinking I’m crazy—you all knew, but still said nothing.
What cowards you are. Lacking enough spine to show up for a woman who says she was abused to the point where she convinced herself SHE failed her own family, then attempted suicide as a result.
Why? Because you were worried what some other skate industry losers would think.
Or maybe you were never in solidarity with her to begin with.
The shit you so enthusiastically support instead, is laughable. Your bro’s crappy photo book; your rider’s fake award from the mag with the predator artist and the rapist on the cover every few years; your frighteningly unoriginal product; a tragedy 8,000 miles away—but only because everyone else posted about it too.
You’ve fought infinitely harder for concrete and brick plazas than ethics.
You lack even the most basic of decencies—standing up for a woman who was in your circle for 15 years—at contests, premieres, afterparties, who many of you even knew personally.
You've repeatedly neglected to make the support of abusers shameful and scary enough.
You failed to send the message that abuse won’t be tolerated in skateboarding and that abusers aren’t welcome.
Or are they?
No matter how “successful” you think you might be, you’re all failures when you treat women like this.
James Cole is being welcomed back into the fold and all of you who stayed silent are to blame.
To the men hosting this show, who dickride and profit from a washed-up pro, rather than protect other human beings … you are weak, ignorant traitors. Fuck you too.