Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ookf Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: Your Girl Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I'm going to start out today with saying that I
Speaker 1: have not been doing well this week. If you've been
Speaker 1: following Instagram and Twitter, there are weeks, there are days,
Speaker 1: there are stories where I just find it so difficult
Speaker 1: to wrap my mind around the hatred that exists in
Speaker 1: people's hearts, around this bullshit sense of fear. I feared
Speaker 1: for my life line that white people get to use
Speaker 1: so recklessly as a way to give them license to kill.
Speaker 1: And for the entirety of Monday, my feed began to
Speaker 1: fill with the story of Ralph Yarl and I refused
Speaker 1: to look at it. All I kept seeing was the
Speaker 1: picture of him in band and the picture of him
Speaker 1: with his two little brothers that just kept going, going, going,
Speaker 1: filling my feed, and I just my heart just couldn't
Speaker 1: take it right. It couldn't take it. After the shooting
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, It couldn't take it. After the shooting in
Speaker 1: Tennessee and all of the shootings that have happened in between,
Speaker 1: and the shooting that just happened at the Alabama sweet sixteen,
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to know. And then finally, of course,
Speaker 1: because part of my work is also being on social media,
Speaker 1: I couldn't avoid it. And it's going to be very
Speaker 1: hard for me to make it through this episode and
Speaker 1: not cry, because that's what I've been doing for the
Speaker 1: last few days. And yes, thankfully Ralph is alive by
Speaker 1: virtue of him fleeing on the doorstep of this eighty
Speaker 1: five year old bigot and having to knock on that one,
Speaker 1: not two, but three doors, and then finally on the
Speaker 1: third door, be told as he is bleeding out from
Speaker 1: his head and from his arm, to get down on
Speaker 1: the ground and put his hands up, and then finally
Speaker 1: he passed out. Because even a bleeding, wounded black child
Speaker 1: was still seen as a threat to this white neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And this story has just undone me because I just
Speaker 1: can't imagine the fear that he had. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: the fear that this black child will live with for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life knowing that all he did
Speaker 1: wrong was happen upon the wrong address and ring the doorbell.
Speaker 1: And there are too many stories where where black people
Speaker 1: have had broken down cars and they ask for help
Speaker 1: and they end up dead where they've been in their
Speaker 1: own homes, but a white person stumbled in and shot
Speaker 1: them dead. Where they're playing on the playground with a
Speaker 1: fake gun and are shot dead. But white children who
Speaker 1: were just recently allowed to go to the NRA convention
Speaker 1: and pick up and quote unquote play with real guns.
Speaker 1: That's scene as cute that scene as look at that
Speaker 1: young patriot in training. What I see is a white
Speaker 1: domestic terrorist in training, because when you recognize that you
Speaker 1: live in a country where white boys can pose with
Speaker 1: AR fifteen means handguns, rifles, all of these things, and
Speaker 1: black children can't ask for help, holding no weapon at
Speaker 1: all except living inside of their black skin. Don't come
Speaker 1: out your mouth telling me that this is somebody's free country,
Speaker 1: this is somebody's democratic nation. This nation is bullshit. This
Speaker 1: country is bullshit. It ain't free for nobody except for
Speaker 1: white men and the white women who uphold patriarchy and
Speaker 1: racism right alongside them, even though they have their fucking
Speaker 1: wounds and shackles. This story is like way too many stories.
Speaker 1: It's Elijah's story, it's Trayvon's story, it's Tamers's story, it's
Speaker 1: Ranetia's story, it's Sandra's story, it's Georgia's story, it's you know,
Speaker 1: on and on and on and on and on. You see,
Speaker 1: the sad thing is is that I'm not surprised. What
Speaker 1: I am is weary with grief. My girlfriend the other
Speaker 1: day said to me that I need to quit my job,
Speaker 1: that following the news, being a political analyst, being a
Speaker 1: podcaster is weighing on me way too much, and that
Speaker 1: she is finding me in tears, she is finding me
Speaker 1: too deflated and depressed, moving through sleepless nights, and said,
Speaker 1: I think you need to leave your job, and I
Speaker 1: think that you need to seriously consider it. And I
Speaker 1: will tell you that I was at first just appalled.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm not equating what it is that I do,
Speaker 1: But there are other jobs that are much harder, right,
Speaker 1: much more taxing. Think about anyone who was in the
Speaker 1: medical profession during the height of COVID, and I'm certain,
Speaker 1: obviously we know the numbers that many people did quit
Speaker 1: and leave right because their own lives were on the
Speaker 1: line as they're trying to save other people. But I
Speaker 1: think about one of the doctors in Tennessee who said,
Speaker 1: I'm tired. I'm not a politician, but I can tell
Speaker 1: you that I'm tired of treating bodies riddled with bullets.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of these mass shootings because there are doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses and health practitioners that are leaving their profession
Speaker 1: because of the weight, the exhaustion and the trauma. Right
Speaker 1: there are teachers that are leaving the classroom because of
Speaker 1: the weight, the trauma, and the exhaustion. When I think
Speaker 1: about myself and the last is it fifteen years almost
Speaker 1: in twenty years in policy and politics and media, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't always like this. That's the thing, right, is
Speaker 1: that I can look back and see where everything took
Speaker 1: a fucking nose dive. And you know, I got into
Speaker 1: podcasting in relatively the twenty tens, right because at the time,
Speaker 1: marriage equality was not the law of the land, and
Speaker 1: there were just way too many things that were starting
Speaker 1: to happen. And one of the segments that I used
Speaker 1: to do on my former show, my first podcast, Pallatini,
Speaker 1: was called the you know the new normal? Is this
Speaker 1: the new normal? That was the question that the segment asked.
Speaker 1: All the time, this is twenty tents. You know, we
Speaker 1: had Barack Obama in the White House, we had marriage
Speaker 1: equality was starting to you know, dot the States and
Speaker 1: were pushing for a national you know, marriage equality and recognition,
Speaker 1: and seemingly things felt like they were moving in the
Speaker 1: right direction, but there was still this underlying fear hatred
Speaker 1: of the other. And at the time it was highly
Speaker 1: directed at the queer community, always directed at the black community,
Speaker 1: let me be clear, but it was really directed at
Speaker 1: the queer community in terms of national headlines because of
Speaker 1: the audacity for queer people to say that they wanted
Speaker 1: to be able to marry, that the stories of being
Speaker 1: denied access to a loved one in a hospital, being
Speaker 1: denied you know, the ability to pass your wealth down
Speaker 1: your homes or what have you, being beaten, right, and
Speaker 1: we were juxtaposing that with stories that were coming out
Speaker 1: of African nations and LATINX nations where people were being
Speaker 1: literally criminalized. Fast forward to the whitelash, to Barack Obama
Speaker 1: being Donald Trump, and twenty sixteen to now has been
Speaker 1: a never ending onslaught of racism, anti semitism, anti Asian hate,
Speaker 1: anti blackness, homophobia, transphobia, I mean, you name it, islamophobia, misogyny,
Speaker 1: I mean, you name it and it. There are examples
Speaker 1: from each and every hour of the day. Right there
Speaker 1: is there is not enough coverage right of all of
Speaker 1: the incidents that happen. But boy, when you sit down
Speaker 1: and you start to look at the national headlines and
Speaker 1: the state headlines and city papers and local papers, it
Speaker 1: makes you not want to leave your house because I
Speaker 1: got to tell you that I don't feel safe anywhere. Right.
Speaker 1: I have moments when I am doing my best to
Speaker 1: focus on joy and beauty and you know, being outside
Speaker 1: and being in nature and all of these important things.
Speaker 1: But most days I kind of just want to run
Speaker 1: out of my front door and fucking scream, you know,
Speaker 1: like I want to break. I tweeted yesterday and said,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to call in black like
Speaker 1: I am tired, I am My body hurts, my eyes
Speaker 1: are puffy from the tears that just readily flow down
Speaker 1: my face. You know, I can tell you a story
Speaker 1: of being in my master's program many many years ago
Speaker 1: and talking about the fact that this is when I
Speaker 1: was still married and thinking about having kids, and said
Speaker 1: out loud for the first time that I was terrified
Speaker 1: to give birth to a black boy because I didn't
Speaker 1: know if they were gonna make it, because this country
Speaker 1: sure as hell has made sure that too many black
Speaker 1: boys don't make it. You know, I just saw a
Speaker 1: true historical accounting of the fact that white people used
Speaker 1: to go alligator hunting with black babies. That is a
Speaker 1: true story. The violence and the brutality and the dehumanization
Speaker 1: of just the disregard for fucking life that is embedded,
Speaker 1: ingrained into the core of this country. Why did that
Speaker 1: man shoot through his door at a black child and
Speaker 1: before shooting him said don't come around here again. Because
Speaker 1: he had been taught from the beginning of time that
Speaker 1: black lives do not matter, been force fed through Fox News,
Speaker 1: through policies by Republicans and Democrats, that black people are
Speaker 1: nothing but thugs, welfare queens, lazy, uneducated criminals just looking
Speaker 1: up rob and hurt black white women and white men.
Speaker 1: That's why you have all these bullshit stand your ground laws,
Speaker 1: because once black people were no longer enslaved and it
Speaker 1: wasn't legal for you, do you know, rape and beat
Speaker 1: and terrorize and throw their babies into the marshes to
Speaker 1: go fish for fucking alligators. That once it was like,
Speaker 1: oh oops, our bad maybe they are people after all
Speaker 1: and not just chattel. But just to make sure you
Speaker 1: have the right to shoot a black person on the scene,
Speaker 1: on the spot, that all you gotta do is throw
Speaker 1: up your white hands and say, ah, fear for my life. Oh,
Speaker 1: she's so angry, he's so tall, they're so scary, don't
Speaker 1: you worry. Mainstream media society will wrap their white arms
Speaker 1: around you and say, oh, poor you, You must have
Speaker 1: been threatened. You must have been so scared. You should
Speaker 1: have never had to come face to face with that
Speaker 1: black body. That's why you see that white murderers get
Speaker 1: their full resumes printed out before they're ever called a
Speaker 1: criminal or thug or terrorists. Oh but they liked music,
Speaker 1: they were star volleyball player. Doesn't matter that they took
Speaker 1: out an entire supermarket filled with black people. Doesn't matter
Speaker 1: that they shot up an entire church of black people
Speaker 1: in the midst of prayer, right, because we all know
Speaker 1: that black skin is scarier than an ar fifteen. So
Speaker 1: I find myself weary, weary with grief and wondering whether
Speaker 1: or not my girlfriend is right. Because there are days
Speaker 1: like the past few and weeks like the past, several
Speaker 1: and years like the last seven where all I see
Speaker 1: are things getting worse and rapidly so, and wondering if
Speaker 1: this isn't one of the moments where you're like, do
Speaker 1: I save myself or do you keep fighting for our
Speaker 1: country that doesn't want you, that doesn't see you, that
Speaker 1: doesn't care about you, that doesn't believe you. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but what I do know is that Ralph Yarol shouldn't
Speaker 1: have had to find his way to three different houses
Speaker 1: to get help. He shouldn't be recovering at home from
Speaker 1: a gunshot wound to his head and his arm and
Speaker 1: probably a tragically broken spirit. It just, you know, this
Speaker 1: is America, and this has always been America. America has
Speaker 1: always hated black people because unless we are working in
Speaker 1: servitude to whiteness, we are worthless, we are disposable. And
Speaker 1: some days I'm just tired and all I can muster
Speaker 1: is an exhausted tweet, a weary voiced episode, and just
Speaker 1: I don't know where we're going, folks, And you know,
Speaker 1: and I apologize because this is one of those weeks
Speaker 1: where I hope that by the end I can find
Speaker 1: some hopefulness, that I can find some strength. But today
Speaker 1: all I can think about is all of the ralph
Speaker 1: yars that we don't know about. All I can think
Speaker 1: about is just this blood soaked soil that we call
Speaker 1: a country, even the oceans that we swim in, the
Speaker 1: beaches that we go to, or just marine cemeteries for
Speaker 1: black bodies. So when people ask what can they do,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do something. Call your politicians, organize a
Speaker 1: walk out, run for office, do something. Because black people
Speaker 1: are tired. I'm tired. That is it for me today.
Speaker 1: Dear friends on wokf as always power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.