🗂 When Eloise Asked: Where Are the 54 Screenshots?

Balancing Archival Structure and Narrative Urgency in the Fight for Medical Justice

This week, I received some feedback through a colleague who shared a few of our IVLC blog posts with a friend. That friend—Eloise—had a pointed question:

“Where are the 54 screenshots mentioned in the ‘New Mexico Peppers’ blog? Is that the sum total of the Progress Reports directory? I see the post, but where are the actual files?”

It’s a fair question—if you think this is about folders.
But what if it’s really about fire?

Let’s get into it.

🧭 What We’re Actually Doing

The IVLC blog series isn’t just a digital scrapbook. It’s a living, breathing public history project designed to mobilize, not just archive.

Yes, every document cited is real. Yes, we’ve transcribed, scanned, and preserved thousands of pages of historical material—most of which are sitting right there in the Project 50 archive. But our blog work isn’t just about creating a hyperlinked bibliography. It’s about surfacing a buried record and weaponizing it for truth.

We’re not building a museum. We’re building momentum. And that requires a different kind of scaffolding.

📁 What "The Archive" Can’t Always Do

Archival systems are notoriously finicky. Links break. Labels shift. File trees get too dense or too shallow. Even dedicated scholars can get lost in the maze. And while that’s being refined—and should be—those of us working the frontline of narrative translation can’t afford to wait.

What we’ve done is create a dual system:

• Project 50 holds the full archive.

• IVLC blog brings those documents to life in real time, with context, analysis, and direct calls for accountability.

We don’t hide our sources—we highlight them. We annotate them. We interpret them with precision and urgency. Our goal is not to satisfy every academic query with a perfect citation map—it’s to ignite public reckoning and policy change.

🧨 What the Critique Reveals (and Misses)

The critique—at its core—is about validity. Eloise asked whether these blogs are “valid” without linking back to every primary document.

That question matters. But it also misses the forest for the files.

The real issue isn’t whether there’s a link to all 54 screenshots.
The real issue is whether the federal government has acted on what those screenshots prove.

This isn’t just a data project. It’s a federal indictment in progress.

The Lynn Pierson files. The 30+ state wave. The buried reports. The NIDA chokehold. The VA silence. The FOIAs that turned over suppressed truths. These aren’t footnotes—they’re evidence. If you’re not reading that, screenshots won’t save you.

🔄 Transparency Without Apology

We will continue to reference Project 50 where it serves the reader.
We will also continue pushing out these breakdowns in a style that speaks across silos—to veterans, researchers, journalists, patients, and legislators alike.

You want to find the originals? Great—go to Project 50. That’s why we preserved them.
You want to understand what they mean? That’s why we wrote the blog.

And let’s be real: if screenshots were all it took to compel federal action, the Compassionate IND Program would’ve been restored before I was born.

🚀 What Happens Now

We will keep building.
We’ll burn through the rest of the archive if we have to.
And we’ll keep calling bullshit on bureaucratic delay, academic gatekeeping, and federal inertia.

This is public history with a mission.
It’s a mandate, not a memory project.

—

📣 If you’re a scholar, check the archive. If you’re a policymaker, read the words. If you’re a citizen, ask what’s taken so long.
We’re not here to please the structure.
We’re here to expose the system.

Stay tuned. More fire to come.

—
Ricardo André Pereyda San Nicolás
International Veterans Leadership Committee