The answer lives in this podcast
This American Life · Ira Glass
Why did Pasadena city council member Rick Cole post the military exercise location on Instagram despite being explicitly told not to?
Rick Cole received a text from the Pasadena police chief at 5:24 p.m. — just six minutes before a public announcement — stating that military exercises would take place at St. Luke's Hospital but instructing officials not to reveal the location. Cole instructed his assistant to post the location on Instagram anyway, telling her simply: "The people deserve to know where this is happening."
When Cole's assistant pushed back, noting that officials had been "very sternly" told to withhold the location, Cole held firm. His assistant posted the name of the hospital. Speaking with host Ira Glass on This American Life, Cole summed up his reasoning with characteristic directness: defying the instruction was simply consistent with how he had always lived his life. There was no hesitation, no internal debate — just a conviction that residents had a right to know what was happening in their own neighborhood.
The episode puts the scale of that moment in sharp relief: Cole's videos informing the public about the military exercise ultimately reached nearly 8 million people. A text message sent six minutes before a public announcement, carrying a restriction that one local official chose to ignore, set off a wave of public awareness that the military itself had clearly not planned for.
"I couldn't help but notice that nobody in the military seemed to care how everyday citizens were experiencing all this."
— This American Life, episode 894: "I Couldn't Help but Notice"
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