For any middle class white woman, there is little worse in today’s world than being branded a ‘Karen’.
Their diva strops, caught on camera, spark cries of outrage and vitriol usually reserved for pedophiles and rapists.
But now these reviled outcasts may have found an unlikely savior.
A crisis management firm, led by 46-year-old Evan Nierman, is riding to their rescue.
And he has started by taking a shot at one of the most infamous cases of ‘Karen shaming’ in America.
Lisa Alexander, the 58-year-old CEO who was labeled a racist after asking a Filipino man whether he owned the San Francisco property he was scrawling Black Lives Matter on in June 2020, is one of dozens of so-called ‘Karens’ Nierman and his firm, Red Banyan, are helping to rebuild their reputations.
Under Nierman’s guidance, Alexander appeared on an episode of Dr. Phil in April, claiming the incident was simply a ‘misunderstanding between neighbors’.
She said she still receives death threats four years on from the notorious incident, with the viral story destroying her life, business and health.
‘I want my life back,’ she pleaded.
Nierman believes this is something all ‘Karens’ deserve.
What’s in a name?
He is wading into a toxic culture war.
The ‘Karen’ meme took off in the wake of the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020.
During a period of heightened racial tensions, the moniker came to describe white women who carried out alleged acts of everyday racism.
Often, this took the form of calling the cops on people of color while making false allegations about their conduct.
There was white investment manager Amy Cooper, who called the police on Christian Cooper, a 57-year-old black birdwatcher who had asked her to leash her dog in New York City’s Central Park.
Miss Cooper falsely alleged that ‘an African American man’ was threatening her.
Alexander’s story fits a similar narrative.
But ‘Karen’ has come to embody a broader range of behaviors.
During the pandemic, the slur was used to describe a vocal minority of middle-aged white women who opposed social distancing.
Most recently, a woman in Willis, Texas, was given the ignominious title after calling a 17-year-old manager at a snow cone stand a ‘b****’ after bullying her for a refund.
Their defining essence is ‘entitlement, selfishness, a desire to complain,’ according to Heather Suzanne Woods, a meme researcher and professor at Kansas State University.
To defend these people is not a popular act.
But, much like a criminal defense attorney, Nierman believes everyone has a right to a fair hearing in the court of public opinion.
Alongside Alexander, he has taken up cases such as that of Erica Erickson, a 41-year-old woman from North Carolina who was hounded out of Puerto Rico after neighbors accused her pet rescue center of animal rights abuse, something she vehemently denies.
Others are documented in his 2023 book, ‘The Cancel Culture Curse’.
Most of Nierman’s clients do not want to speak to the media, scarred by prior experiences.
They prefer that Red Banyan operate privately, rebuilding relations with business partners and neighbors away from the prying eyes of the public.
‘In most cases, these are not people who’ve done these terrible things for which they need to do penance,’ he tells DailyMail.com from his office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
‘These are good people who become the target of attacks. They never really even have the chance to explain themselves before their careers and their reputations are decimated.’
Judging by his clients’ inbox, he has his work cut out.
‘We are watching you racist b****, we will make sure your business will always suffer,’ reads one message sent to Alexander in the wake of her Dr. Phil appearance.
‘Accuse us and we will accuse you. Burn in hell and we will piss on your grave,’ it continues.
‘Lisa, you are one ugly f****** whore,’ screams another. ‘Have you looked in the mirror? You are a seriously ugly ****. How on earth did you ever become the CEO of a skincare company? You filthy, ugly old ****.’
There are enough of these to fill a short novel. As foul as they are, Nierman wants them to be made public in the hope it will make people ‘think twice’ before they decide to resolve disputes by uploading clips on social media, which can quickly gather a narrative of their own.
Again, he is in the minority. According to a 2021 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 58 per cent of U.S. adults believe calling out others on social media will hold them on accountable for their actions, while 38 per cent said it punishes those who don’t deserve it.
Fighting back
Nierman passionately believes Alexander has been unfairly maligned.
The video that led to her downfall shows her and her friend Robert Larkins asking dog walker James Juanillo if he lives in the property he was painting a Black Lives Matter stencil on.
The pair told him he was acting illegally, claimed the home wasn’t his property and that they knew the owner.
Unbeknown to them, Juanillo had been renting the multi million dollar mansion for more than a decade.
The indignant tenant uploaded footage of the exchange to Twitter alongside the caption: ‘A white couple call the police on me, a person of color, for stenciling a #BLM chalk message on my own front retaining wall. ‘Karen’ lies and says she knows that I don’t live in my own house, because she knows the person who lives here. #blacklivesmatter.’
He later added: ‘These are white people weaponizing [sic] their white privilege and casually calling in potentially lethal consequences on an innocent POC [person of color] while they knowingly LIE about their bonafides. Don’t enable white supremacy!’
The clip immediately went viral and Alexander was met with a barrage of abuse.
Denounced as a ‘racist’, she lost business partnerships for her skincare firm LaFace. Larkins, meanwhile, was fired by his investment firm, which released a statement saying that the ‘alleged racism’ was ‘inconsistent with our values’.
The city of San Francisco even introduced the Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies Act – or the CAREN Act – later that year, which criminalized racially motivated emergency calls.
Days after the incident, Alexander issued a public apology, saying that she was sorry she had disrespected Juanillo, and that she should have minded her own business.
But Nierman says the apology was issued ‘under duress’ – and she had nothing to be sorry for.
On the Dr. Phil show, Alexander emphasized several key points.
That she approached Juanillo in a calm and ‘respectful’ manner. That, at first, she did not see he was stenciling ‘Black Lives Matter’ – and that the message was irrelevant to the fact that she thought he was vandalizing someone else’s property.
That when she did see what he was writing, she said: ‘Absolutely, your signs and everything, and that’s good, but this is not the way to do it.’
That she had known the elderly owner for 15 years and had no idea he had been renting the property out to boarders – something Juanillo chose not to mention during their interaction.
Nierman has also taken issue with media reporting of the incident. He points out that articles repeatedly suggested that Juanillo owned the property, rather than rented it, and repeated his claim that Alexander called 911.
Alexander says in fact Larkins called a non-emergency Neighborhood Watch number.
She has also claimed that, following the incident, Juanillo followed them from his home in Pacific Heights for an hour and a half to their apartment in the Marina District, where he hid behind the bushes of the garage next door.
‘Milking it’
Juanillo, for his part, said he was ‘disgusted’ by Alexander’s TV appearance.
He has since been active on X, saying he was boycotting ‘Dr. Phil’.
‘They constructed a narrative that was so contradictory to what actually happened that day,’ he told The San Francisco Chronicle. ‘When you’ve done something wrong, let your apology stand and then improve your life.’
But Nierman has turned his ire back on Juanillo and the ‘Karen shaming’ culture.
‘It’s time to let her move on with her life,’ he says, pointing out that four years after the incident, Juanillo still has the clip pinned to the stop of his feed on X.
‘There must be some reason that he’s chosen to make this the defining moment of his entire life at her expense.
‘He certainly increased his Twitter [now known as X] followers significantly.’
Juanillo has 18,600 followers on X, where he describes himself as an ‘activist’ and ‘social justice warrior’.
His personal website displays the viral video front and center of its home page, which also flogs his services as a speechmaker as well as merchandise depicting the infamous encounter, including a jigsaw puzzle of his Black Lives Matter stencil for $33.50.
Nierman has no time for any of it.
‘There’s a lot of people out there who are irrelevant and enjoy the fact that they get to be a part of the drama,’ he says.
‘It doesn’t seem to matter to them that there’s a real person on the other side, whose life can be completely upended because they’re not willing to forgive or forget.’