Speaker 1: Good morning, keeps, and welcome to WIKA F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Recording from the Home Bunker, Folks,
Speaker 1: I really struggled with today's show and the decision to
Speaker 1: decide whether or not we were going to spend an
Speaker 1: entire episode talking about Donald Trump and doing exactly what
Speaker 1: I have been lambasting the media for, or if we
Speaker 1: were going to mention Donald Trump and then turn your
Speaker 1: attention to actual, other important news that is happening. So
Speaker 1: I've decided to do the latter because I got to
Speaker 1: tell you that I am so fucking disgusted with the
Speaker 1: mainstream media. I'm so fucking disgusted with all NBC's, CBS,
Speaker 1: fucking MSNBC, CNN. All of them have learned absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: There is no critical analysis that is happening right now.
Speaker 1: I hear people saying, oh my god, this is a
Speaker 1: sad day for the nation. Tell me why. Tell me
Speaker 1: why it's a sad day for the nation for a
Speaker 1: white heterosis, wealthy, privileged, fucking entitled son of a bitch
Speaker 1: to actually face criminal charges. Tell me why that's a
Speaker 1: sad day. I did an entire TikTok yesterday talking about
Speaker 1: what actual sad days in America look like. The murder
Speaker 1: of George Floyd was a sad day. The release of
Speaker 1: George Zimmerman him being found not guilty after murdering a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy named Trey von Martin, that was
Speaker 1: a fucking sad day. The Supreme Court that has been
Speaker 1: weaponized by the Republican Party overturning Roe v. Wade, that
Speaker 1: was a sad day in America. All of the criminalization
Speaker 1: and target of the trans community that is happening. Those
Speaker 1: are sad days in America. New Town, Columbine, Parkland, the
Speaker 1: Pol's nightclub shooting, Uvaldi, the Tennessee School, and so many others.
Speaker 1: Those are sad days in America. A privileged, white, fucking
Speaker 1: hate filled blowhard twice in Peach stupid, stupid man being
Speaker 1: held to account for crimes that he has committed is
Speaker 1: not a sad day in our country. It is one
Speaker 1: where we should rejoice that the justice system is doing
Speaker 1: exactly what it was supposed to do in the first
Speaker 1: fucking place, which has hold all people to account that
Speaker 1: break the law and remind us as a nation that
Speaker 1: we are not yet a Banana republic. When the former
Speaker 1: twice in peace. President of the United States can be
Speaker 1: brought in for an arraignment for over thirty counts of
Speaker 1: charges against him. That is a righteous day in America.
Speaker 1: The covering of Donald Trump's playing on the tarmac, the
Speaker 1: following of his motorcade, that's not news. That is sensationalistic
Speaker 1: bullshit that I for one, decided not to watch my
Speaker 1: What a nicer day you can have when you don't
Speaker 1: spend it plopped down in front of the television to
Speaker 1: listen to people fill airtime. And I say that as
Speaker 1: somebody in the media, you know, NBCCBS and other the
Speaker 1: mainstream news outlets decided to cut their coverage right and
Speaker 1: just turn one hundred percent to Donald Trump. Nobody cut
Speaker 1: their coverage. However, earlier in the week, when the state
Speaker 1: of Tennessee saw the largest walkout of students in its history,
Speaker 1: nobody cut from their regular coverage to show the faces
Speaker 1: of resistance are young children who are fighting for their
Speaker 1: lives because the adults that are in charge refuse to
Speaker 1: do so. Nobody was showing what the Tennessee Republicans in
Speaker 1: the state House were doing by voting out three Democrats
Speaker 1: because they decided to side with their constituents to call
Speaker 1: for gun reform and now have lost their jobs, and
Speaker 1: those constituents in their districts have lost representation. No one
Speaker 1: cut their coverage. Then I am so sick and fucking
Speaker 1: tired of the media in this country. So for those
Speaker 1: of you who support my podcasts here on Patreon, you
Speaker 1: know I appreciate you so very much because you are
Speaker 1: making a choice to resist, a choice to resist the
Speaker 1: ratings war, to resist right the herd, and to carve
Speaker 1: out and find the voices that you can trust and
Speaker 1: you can believe in. Who aren't just following somebody on
Speaker 1: high who was saying, Oh no, this is what we're
Speaker 1: going to cover and this is how we're going to
Speaker 1: cover it. That's not what I do on Woke, if
Speaker 1: it's not what I do on The New Abnormal or
Speaker 1: on Democracy Ish. It is why I've chosen podcasting as
Speaker 1: opposed to going to chase the ever mighty dollar by
Speaker 1: trying to get my face right as an anchor or
Speaker 1: get my own show on TV, because I'd occurred to
Speaker 1: me a long time ago that then they get to
Speaker 1: own you, and they own your voice so that you
Speaker 1: can't call out the bullshit that they do because that's
Speaker 1: who's right in your checks. So no, folks, we will
Speaker 1: cover Donald Trump the way that we cover everything else.
Speaker 1: But he ain't getting no special fucking coverage on woke
Speaker 1: AF that's for goddamn sure. The motherfucker was arraigned. Once
Speaker 1: we know the details of said arraignment and the charges
Speaker 1: that are being brought against him, then we will bring
Speaker 1: on our legal experts to do what it is that
Speaker 1: we always do. But no, I'm not going to give
Speaker 1: Donald Trump twenty five thirty minutes of my good goddamn
Speaker 1: life to just pontificate on this white supremis piece of trash.
Speaker 1: And I hope that you all decided to save your
Speaker 1: emotional well being in health and avoid the TV, and
Speaker 1: if you live in New York, avoid the city and
Speaker 1: are staying safe. So coming up next my conversation with
Speaker 1: Joaquin Era, who is the director of the campaign for
Speaker 1: Our Shared Future Action Fund. And in this conversation, Joaquin
Speaker 1: and I discuss school board elections and why they have
Speaker 1: become ground zero for the war against fascism. So that
Speaker 1: conversation and what is happening with our school systems is
Speaker 1: coming up next, folks. I am very happy to welcome
Speaker 1: to Woke a f daily the political director from Campaign
Speaker 1: for Our Shared Future Action Fund, Joaquin Gara. Joaquin, you know,
Speaker 1: we are living at a time that I got to
Speaker 1: tell you, I wasn't expecting to be here. I wasn't
Speaker 1: expecting to be in a place where curriculums are being raised,
Speaker 1: where we're seeing school boards being taken over by radical
Speaker 1: right wing authoritarians, where books are being banned. Don't say gay,
Speaker 1: they don't say Gay bill that it was introduced and
Speaker 1: passed in Florida by Ronda Santis has now been reintroduced
Speaker 1: to go beyond the third grade and go to twelfth grade.
Speaker 1: I just want to give you an opportunity as I
Speaker 1: lay out all of the assaults that we are experiencing,
Speaker 1: whether you are a black, Indigenous person of color, whether
Speaker 1: you're a member of the LGBTQ community, whether you you
Speaker 1: know like art, because apparently we're firing principles now for
Speaker 1: showing for an art teacher showing a picture of Michael
Speaker 1: Angelo's David in a sixth grade class in Tennessee has
Speaker 1: now been fired from a charter school. So talk to
Speaker 1: me about your organization and how you were taking on
Speaker 1: this insidious campaign against freedom in education. Absolutely, Daniel, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me on so my organization, the
Speaker 1: Campaign for Our Shared Future Action Fund. We are the
Speaker 1: sister organization to our C three, the Campaign for Our
Speaker 1: Shared Future, And really we were born out of the
Speaker 1: response that we saw coming up starting in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: really the response to the pandemic as it related to
Speaker 1: public schools and the fact that school shut down, students
Speaker 1: had to learn from home, attend virtual classes. We obviously,
Speaker 1: school systems across the country we're not set up for that.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things that we saw
Speaker 1: was Republicans and the conservative movement take advantage of, you know,
Speaker 1: the pandemic and politicize it. H And one of the
Speaker 1: things that got politicized was not just the response to
Speaker 1: the pandemic masking as you know, the whole vaccination efforts,
Speaker 1: but because students were learning from home and because parents
Speaker 1: had lost whatever semblance of control that they had, the
Speaker 1: conservative movement took advantage of that and started to bring
Speaker 1: all the culture war wedge issues into the fight. And
Speaker 1: we saw that play out in twenty twenty one in
Speaker 1: the Virginia guberdatorial election where Governor Glen Yngkin rode the
Speaker 1: coattails of cultural race theory, which is where we first
Speaker 1: saw it. We saw a little bit of a play
Speaker 1: out in twenty twenty, you know, in the presidential race,
Speaker 1: but then we really saw the actual politicization of it
Speaker 1: in the gibuatorial election that was credited as one of
Speaker 1: the things that helped Glenn young Can win the presidency.
Speaker 1: But it really started in twenty in the spring of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, when Steve Bannon said on his pot
Speaker 1: on one of his episodes of his podcast that the
Speaker 1: path to Republicans returning to power in congresses to school
Speaker 1: board elections. And that's the one side of this story.
Speaker 1: This is a political strategy, and this is not a
Speaker 1: strategy that is anything new. We see this strategy play
Speaker 1: out in every single issue that is politicized and hysteria
Speaker 1: is manufactured. You know, I'm forty seven years old. I
Speaker 1: feel like I've seen many of them from that I
Speaker 1: that I can remember, from the time that I was
Speaker 1: maybe like an early teenager until where I'm at now.
Speaker 1: I remember when Tipper Goore was politicizing rock and roll, remember,
Speaker 1: and well, well, so it started with rock and roll,
Speaker 1: which really started back in the fifties and the forties, right,
Speaker 1: because you had Chuck Berry, right who you know who
Speaker 1: the godfather of rock and roll, and then Elvis Presley
Speaker 1: you know, took it mainstream, right, But you had a
Speaker 1: freak out around that because people were swaying their hips
Speaker 1: and Dan seeing and all of that stuff. So we
Speaker 1: see the thread of that, you know, UM consistently you know,
Speaker 1: being used. It's like, how do you manufacture outrage? How
Speaker 1: do you manufacture history about hysteria around getting people um
Speaker 1: fired up and focused on this manufactured um issue when
Speaker 1: there's real problems still going on here. Right, So the
Speaker 1: flip side of this is that you know, we're in
Speaker 1: a pandemic. You know, should kids be in school without mask?
Speaker 1: That's a legitimate question, you know that that that is
Speaker 1: like that that you know that is like a legitimate question,
Speaker 1: especially for parents to to wrestle with. But we ended
Speaker 1: up having a fight about whether whether or not that
Speaker 1: that fight became politicized between red and blue, right and left,
Speaker 1: and it was not about the issue. And like sa
Speaker 1: Chavis said, the fight is never about grapes or let us.
Speaker 1: It's always about people. And that's like fundamentally what is
Speaker 1: going on here? Now? This fight has evolved even since
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. It's our off of critical race theory
Speaker 1: as the umbrella for for for whatever, right, right, yep,
Speaker 1: Governor just scientists filed a supposed bill that was named
Speaker 1: the Stop Woke Act right in twenty twenty two in Florida.
Speaker 1: That past. One of the other bills that pass in Florida,
Speaker 1: as you know, is that don't say gay bill, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and while critical race theory has you don't
Speaker 1: hear that as much. Uh, it's now all about like
Speaker 1: what is woke funny enough? Right, which they can't seem
Speaker 1: to explain either exactly because they still okay, so we're
Speaker 1: fighting over abstracts, you know, and and how do you
Speaker 1: can't when when when you can't even agree on the
Speaker 1: on what woke is? You know, we're finding about woke
Speaker 1: when at the same time schools are being defunded, at
Speaker 1: the same time when um uh students who are LGBTQ
Speaker 1: UM identifying are being marginalized and bullied. And that's the
Speaker 1: other side of this of this strategy, right. It's like,
Speaker 1: in order to take power, you have to other people.
Speaker 1: You have to like dehumanize them. You have to, and
Speaker 1: the way that you do that is by creating this
Speaker 1: manufactured outrage and hysteria around issues that you know, nobody
Speaker 1: knew what the heck critical race theory was except for
Speaker 1: the academics who who taught it, who were learned and
Speaker 1: steeped in it, and had an intellectual analysis around that,
Speaker 1: and certainly reasonable people could have a debate over is
Speaker 1: like what is critical race theory? But when it gets
Speaker 1: politicized and uses a political issue to other to divide
Speaker 1: and conquer, that's where we're at today. I mean, what
Speaker 1: you have laid out is just this what you've referred
Speaker 1: to as a pattern of manufactured outrage right over the
Speaker 1: fact that the reality is our country's demographics are shifting.
Speaker 1: The reality is is that, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: what we've seen implemented in schools is to cater to
Speaker 1: a diversified base of students, to a diversified population. We
Speaker 1: have different issues that young people are facing today than
Speaker 1: they were twenty years ago, or thirty years ago, or
Speaker 1: forty or fifty years ago. And the reality that because Democrats,
Speaker 1: in my humble opinion, did not have a response to
Speaker 1: Glenn Junkin's entrance into the quote unquote culture wars, turning
Speaker 1: critical race theory something that was never taught in K
Speaker 1: through twelve, wasn't ever taught in college. It was a
Speaker 1: post secondary right field of study. Right, turn that into
Speaker 1: a quote unquote parental choice issue, and Democrats didn't have
Speaker 1: a response to that. Now you've seen it morph into
Speaker 1: this christo fascist state that Ronda Santis is leading in
Speaker 1: Florida that we've seen in Texas, Texas being the state
Speaker 1: where you are, which is the largest manufacturer of guess
Speaker 1: what textbooks for public schools, that's right, right, that have
Speaker 1: basically turned the story of enslaved people into a unpaid internship,
Speaker 1: right that you know, we should all just kind of
Speaker 1: speed bump over as we're talking about America, So talk
Speaker 1: to us about what your organization is tasked with doing.
Speaker 1: So absolutely I want to since you since you mentioned
Speaker 1: that I live in Texas and just the structural role
Speaker 1: that Texas plays, and I would also say Florida since
Speaker 1: it is one of the largest states in the country
Speaker 1: as well. We purchase a lot of textbooks. But as
Speaker 1: a Texan, two things that I want to share very quickly,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get to your question about what
Speaker 1: we do. This really exemplifies what what we're fighting about here.
Speaker 1: When you were a seventh grader in Texas, you take
Speaker 1: Texas history, right, as a Mexican American seventh grader in
Speaker 1: deep South Texas, we're learning about the Alamo. We're learning
Speaker 1: Texas history, the Formation history, we get to the Alamo, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: this happens in every school district, in every seventh grade
Speaker 1: Texas history class in Texas, but we watched one of
Speaker 1: the Alamo movies and it was the John Wayne version
Speaker 1: of the Alamo. So it was a very glorified version
Speaker 1: of the Alamo, of the Battle of the Alamo. You know,
Speaker 1: John Wayne, and you know was the hero, David Crockett,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone, all of the main characters you know about
Speaker 1: the Alamo. I think as a seventh grader, you know,
Speaker 1: after watching that, you know, I had like this moment
Speaker 1: in the middle of it where wait a minute, I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be charing the fact that these Texans are
Speaker 1: killing Mexicans and I wait a minute, I'm Mexican America.
Speaker 1: So it was like the formation of just like wait,
Speaker 1: what going on here? And and and as a seventh grader,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure you know what necessarily to do with that? Right?
Speaker 1: And I think that part of this goes to the age,
Speaker 1: to the age appropriateness of like, how do you teach slavery?
Speaker 1: Slavery happened, it was real, right. Connect that to what
Speaker 1: the fight at the Alamo about the Texas Revolution some people,
Speaker 1: you know, the Texas Revolution was fundamentally about two things.
Speaker 1: That the two sides of it. The side that doesn't
Speaker 1: get talked about as much as that it was about slavery.
Speaker 1: The Texans that were moving to the people that were
Speaker 1: moving to Texas while Texas was still under Mexican control.
Speaker 1: It was it was Texas then was part of Mexico,
Speaker 1: you know, forbade slavery. And you had all of these
Speaker 1: people moving to Texas that were coming from the South,
Speaker 1: you know who were who were farmers and establishing you know,
Speaker 1: their own farms, some established major farms, plantations, cotton growing
Speaker 1: all the crops, right, and what at those plantations and
Speaker 1: what did those forms depend on labor? And where did
Speaker 1: that labor come from? Slaves? So that's like one side
Speaker 1: of it, right, So to take it one step further.
Speaker 1: Juneteenth another Texas, another thing that happened in Texas. If
Speaker 1: you know the history about Juneteenth, Juneteenth is about the
Speaker 1: celebration when African Americans in Texas found out two years
Speaker 1: later that they were free after President Lincoln signed the
Speaker 1: Emancipation Proclamation. Why did it take so long? Why did
Speaker 1: it take two whole years? Why did it take a general,
Speaker 1: a US Army general, having to step foot on Galveston
Speaker 1: Island on June nineteenth, eighteen sixty eight. If I'm not
Speaker 1: mistaken to proclaim that black folks were free, why because
Speaker 1: the farmers needed that labor, right, yeah, So it's complicated,
Speaker 1: right like, and I don't mean like it's complicated, like
Speaker 1: you know, but like, history is full of nuance. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, what the Campaign for
Speaker 1: Our Shared Future is set up to do is to
Speaker 1: create the space for how do we have, um, how
Speaker 1: do we have a full and accurate teaching of what
Speaker 1: actually happened in this country, like our history as it
Speaker 1: relates to slavery. How do you teach, you know, what
Speaker 1: happened in World War Two as it related to like
Speaker 1: the Holocaust in Germany? Right Like, now, these are complicated,
Speaker 1: you know, subjects, and certainly you can distill them down
Speaker 1: to a right and wrong, and that certainly is true.
Speaker 1: But there is a part of this that is like
Speaker 1: you have to like you have to pull apart all
Speaker 1: the different threads to get a full and complete picture
Speaker 1: of them and only once and one side wants to
Speaker 1: only tell their version of it. And history history history
Speaker 1: does not work that way. Right. Certainly, you have, um,
Speaker 1: you have history being told from the from the side
Speaker 1: of who won a war or who has power? Right,
Speaker 1: But then you have other voices you know as part
Speaker 1: of that, you know that don't get told. And that's
Speaker 1: fundamentally that is what we are organized to set up
Speaker 1: and do. How do you for school boards, for state
Speaker 1: legislatures to create the space for the full and accurate
Speaker 1: telling of history at an age appropriate level. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you teach the horrors of the Holocaust or
Speaker 1: slavery to a first grader, right, I don't know that. Right.
Speaker 1: That's why there we have experts, That's why we have academics.
Speaker 1: We have people who study these things and not politicians,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Well, that's the point. And so what we
Speaker 1: have is the reaction and to bring it back to
Speaker 1: you know what I said at the very beginning, Danielle.
Speaker 1: It's like when my father came and took away my
Speaker 1: cassette tape collection of rock music. It was because of
Speaker 1: the satanic panic, right, And it's just like you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like I look back on and then you
Speaker 1: said earlier, and then there was the are on gangster
Speaker 1: ap that's absolutely right also, and it just keeps coming
Speaker 1: over and then it goes from the cultural issues like
Speaker 1: music and it morphs into the like the political issues
Speaker 1: where people's dignities is stripped away from them, right, the
Speaker 1: fact that black folks and white folks can't get married
Speaker 1: in Virginia. Yeah, you know, it took a US Supreme
Speaker 1: Court case for that to happen. So it's like we
Speaker 1: see this play out over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And essentially what we do at the Campaign for our
Speaker 1: Shared Future Action Fund is that we use school board
Speaker 1: elections as a strategy to endorse pro equity education candidates,
Speaker 1: especially those who are running against anti equity candidates. And
Speaker 1: we you know, we assess races, we send out a
Speaker 1: candidate questionnaire, we endorse candidates who meet our standards, and
Speaker 1: then essentially we run independent expenditure campaigns to support their candidacies,
Speaker 1: to make sure that voters know that school board elections matter.
Speaker 1: You know that it may be the lowest, it may
Speaker 1: be the election at the bottom of the ballot in
Speaker 1: some places, like in an even year election. Last year
Speaker 1: we had school board elections in a number of places
Speaker 1: like Florida, Michigan, Arizona. But you know, and some people
Speaker 1: just don't vote the whole ballot, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: people just vote president or governor the executive offices and
Speaker 1: then do you have ballot drop off. So we've we've
Speaker 1: worked to educate voters around the issues here, give them
Speaker 1: the information that they need so that they can make
Speaker 1: an informed choice and vote for the candidates who are
Speaker 1: for who are not for banning books, who are not
Speaker 1: for censoring classroom discussion. Let me ask you this question,
Speaker 1: go ahead, how do you engage people, yeah, Joaquin, who
Speaker 1: don't have children right in the school this year, Because
Speaker 1: to me, that is part of the problem is like
Speaker 1: the people who are doing the voting are either people
Speaker 1: whose children have age out or don't have kids at all,
Speaker 1: so they're like, this doesn't affect me. So how do
Speaker 1: you make the case that this actually affects everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, it really comes down to organizing, right,
Speaker 1: So for us, it is all about how are we
Speaker 1: working with and through other organizations on the ground that
Speaker 1: are organizing around public education UM and supporting complimenting the
Speaker 1: work that they do by providing them resources, whether it
Speaker 1: be messaging, pulling and pulling and research that uh to
Speaker 1: to contribute to having you know, good conversations and moving
Speaker 1: people off of fighting over the definition of a word
Speaker 1: or an acronym and talking about do you want me
Speaker 1: to do? You know, talking about like what's really a
Speaker 1: stake as it relates to people who don't have children.
Speaker 1: I am one of those people. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: have children. But you know why it's important to me, Danielle,
Speaker 1: because of exactly what I told you earlier about Like
Speaker 1: I was a seventh grader and I had to take
Speaker 1: Texas history right as and and and as I learned
Speaker 1: and as I went the public education system K through twelve,
Speaker 1: you learn about juneteenth also, and you're only taught one
Speaker 1: side of it. You're only taught like a very sanitized
Speaker 1: version of what something was really about. Right now, it's
Speaker 1: a cumbent upon me it's a cumbent upon parents to
Speaker 1: um supplement the supplement, right, you know, asking questions. And
Speaker 1: part of like what we're dealing with here is like,
Speaker 1: you know what conservative what the what the conservative movement
Speaker 1: continues to like perpetuate is like just like this absolutism
Speaker 1: where there's only a right answer only they have like
Speaker 1: the answer, and what is that? That's authoritarianism. And that's
Speaker 1: why public education is incredibly important because we need, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to give students, teachers, students, parents the tools
Speaker 1: that they need to be able to um become a UM,
Speaker 1: you know, to essentially become a well rounded student. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's not just the school's job. It's not just the
Speaker 1: teacher's job, right parents have a role to playing this also.
Speaker 1: So part of it is it's like that this is
Speaker 1: where the organizing comes into place. And if you're only
Speaker 1: talking about the if you're if you're fighting over what
Speaker 1: CRT is, if you're fighting over what LGBTQ is right,
Speaker 1: and you're making that so incredibly scary. As a parent,
Speaker 1: I don't know this, but I have parents. As someone
Speaker 1: who has parents, I know that when my father took
Speaker 1: away my cassette tape collection of rock music. It really
Speaker 1: came from a place of wanting to protect me. He
Speaker 1: may not like, he may not have had those words
Speaker 1: to to to explain that to me, right, but I
Speaker 1: know that's where it was coming from now, right. And
Speaker 1: that's what parents do. They protect their children. They they
Speaker 1: do whatever they can to set them up for success
Speaker 1: so that the next generation so that they can be
Speaker 1: more successful than they were. Right. And that's the that
Speaker 1: is the you know, that is what is being exploited here. Fear.
Speaker 1: It always comes down to fear. How do you make
Speaker 1: people afraid of other people, whether it be by race,
Speaker 1: whether it be by the country that they come from.
Speaker 1: It's always sphere, yeah, one hundred percent. And I you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to remind folks just to echo what
Speaker 1: you said, Joaquin, which is that, regardless of whether or
Speaker 1: not you have kids that are in the school um
Speaker 1: districts wherever you live, the school board, the schools have
Speaker 1: always been ground zero for equity and justice. Right. It
Speaker 1: is was the desegregation of schools that catapulted, you know,
Speaker 1: a movement right and brought us to the place that
Speaker 1: we are today. And so that the act, the fact
Speaker 1: that we would not then teach right about that process
Speaker 1: that this country went through to get to desegregation, right
Speaker 1: to get to a place of appeared equity is absolutely insane.
Speaker 1: UM waking. I appreciate the work that you're doing so much.
Speaker 1: Please tell the listeners how they can get involved a
Speaker 1: totally UM. Please go to Campaign for Our Shared Future
Speaker 1: dot org and um uh you know to to learn
Speaker 1: more about like the work that we do UM the
Speaker 1: website for our website, UH you can be found there,
Speaker 1: you can, it's linked there. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about the work that we do both on the C three,
Speaker 1: the education side, and then on the C four you know,
Speaker 1: on the action fund side where we do work around
Speaker 1: electoral elections. And then Danielle, can I share just one
Speaker 1: more anecdote? Do we have time? I don't want to, Okay,
Speaker 1: So in terms of connecting this back to like movement
Speaker 1: especially um uh to you know the work that organizers
Speaker 1: do around UM fighting for justice if you will. Right.
Speaker 1: Last year, the last scored election that we endorsed in
Speaker 1: was an East Baton Rusual, Louisiana. We endorsed there was
Speaker 1: there was there were there was a five there were
Speaker 1: there were five candidates running in runoff elections or the
Speaker 1: general election, you know, for for Louisiana and UH in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: they have partners in school board elections, so you had
Speaker 1: people that are running as Republicans and Democrats. When we
Speaker 1: were when I was assessing the races, there was only
Speaker 1: one race where the Republican running UM had a track
Speaker 1: record of saying of having a track record of being
Speaker 1: anti equity and really saying some really insensitive things as
Speaker 1: they're related to race UM. And this was the only
Speaker 1: rate race that we endorsed in. We endorsed Katie Kennison
Speaker 1: who won and beat a ten year incumbent and this
Speaker 1: ten year incumbent UH. I want to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to Gary Chambers who ran for US Senate in
Speaker 1: Louisiana last year because Gary Chambers, after George Floyd was murdered, right,
Speaker 1: Gary Chambers and other people in East Baton Rouge were
Speaker 1: calling for the school district, for the East Bandon School
Speaker 1: District to change the name of schools Robert E. Lee
Speaker 1: High School, you know, to take down statues, you know,
Speaker 1: and this school board member, you know, this is where
Speaker 1: you know, she had just like a history of being
Speaker 1: just incredibly insensitive saying some really problematic, you know, racist, adjacent,
Speaker 1: you know type things. Right. But we would not have defeated,
Speaker 1: We would not have been part of defeating this tenure
Speaker 1: incumbent if it not had been for the work of
Speaker 1: Gary Chambers and the organizers, the people on the ground
Speaker 1: and East Baton Rouge who were calling that school board
Speaker 1: member to be held accountable. They were calling for her resignation,
Speaker 1: they were calling on her to step down. She did not,
Speaker 1: She did not wipe because she was running in a
Speaker 1: very very conservative Republican district. Now, the good people of
Speaker 1: East Beaton Rouge and District eight decided, you know what,
Speaker 1: enough's enough, We're going to vote that person out and
Speaker 1: they elected Katie Kennison to the school board. Now we
Speaker 1: didn't we were the only organization to endorse in that race.
Speaker 1: Nobody touched this race. Right. But you know, when you
Speaker 1: provide people with the information, when you look at it
Speaker 1: from the state and you present it in a way
Speaker 1: that is non where you where you ship away the
Speaker 1: fear and you really talk about like what's really like
Speaker 1: at stake here as it relates to um setting children
Speaker 1: up for success and asking them, you know, questions that
Speaker 1: are legitimate questions and ask them to make a choice.
Speaker 1: People will make the right decision. That's our hope, right,
Speaker 1: and and that's one of the reasons why I do
Speaker 1: the work that I do, especially you know, at the
Speaker 1: campaign for Our Shared Future actually fun because we didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't think that we were going to win. You know,
Speaker 1: this was both candidates really didn't have a campaign operation
Speaker 1: and weren't spending you know, thousands of dollars like in
Speaker 1: their race. It was a it was a fifty, it
Speaker 1: was a it was a toin cost race, right, But
Speaker 1: we decided to put um, We decided to put some
Speaker 1: put a stake in the ground here because this is
Speaker 1: exactly why we exist. We had a candidate who was
Speaker 1: pro pro equity running, it gets a candidate who is
Speaker 1: anti equity, and that's exactly why we exist. I'm proud
Speaker 1: that we were that we were able to have a
Speaker 1: small part in Katie Kennison's victory, But that victory would
Speaker 1: not have been possible if it would not have been
Speaker 1: for the work that Gary Chambers and his um UM
Speaker 1: and his fellow organizers and the people in the community
Speaker 1: had not started two years earlier. So that's how all
Speaker 1: of this is connected, right, it doesn't. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's exactly to paraphrase I think everybody Butcher's mlk's quote
Speaker 1: about um uh pushing the arc of justice so that
Speaker 1: it bends, you know, towards justice. Yeah, and and that's
Speaker 1: exactly you know that that is that is the reason
Speaker 1: why we exist. Um And the last thing that I'll
Speaker 1: say is that you know, it's school board elections, especially
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, Danielle Um. You don't have any
Speaker 1: other elections, with the exception of local races in most states. Virginia,
Speaker 1: Louisiana's gonna uh. Louisiana, Kentucky and Virginia are are a
Speaker 1: handful of states that have that have other elections up
Speaker 1: the ballot. But for the most part the country in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, it's about scholard and city council elections. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's even more important that we do our the
Speaker 1: work that we do and other organizations because it's not
Speaker 1: just us. There's a whole bunch of other organizations besides
Speaker 1: us that are working to elect pro equity candidates to
Speaker 1: make sure that school boards don't get flipped by these
Speaker 1: reactionary anti equity candidates and forces and bring the culture
Speaker 1: wars to schools where it doesn't they don't need to
Speaker 1: be Yeah, waquin Gara, thank you so much for making
Speaker 1: the time for wokey F and also all of the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing. Folks, do make sure to check
Speaker 1: out Campaign for Our Shared Future and check out the
Speaker 1: work that the Action Fund is doing. It is a
Speaker 1: way for you to get involved, and i'd encourage all
Speaker 1: your listeners also to go to the stuff to your
Speaker 1: website and to become a Patreon sponsor as well. You're
Speaker 1: very welcome. Thanks for all the work. J Janielle really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the conversation and thanks for having me on. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you. That is it for me today on woke F.
Speaker 1: As always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fun