Speaker 1: Welcome to woke f with me Danielle Moody. With the
Speaker 1: first one hundred days of the Biden Harris administration behind us,
Speaker 1: it's time to look forward to the many fights for
Speaker 1: justice that are still ahead of us. One battle that
Speaker 1: grassroots activists have been fighting for almost a decade is
Speaker 1: the battle to renew and restore voting rights after the
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen Shelby County de Holder decision gutted the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. A focal point for
Speaker 1: this struggle is in the state of Georgia, where leaders
Speaker 1: like Stacy Abrahams have been working tirelessly to activate more
Speaker 1: voters and attain proper representation in government. Last month, Georgia's
Speaker 1: state representative part Cannon was arrested and charged with two
Speaker 1: felony counts simply for doing her job and knocking on
Speaker 1: the door of the illegitimate governor, Brian Kemp and demanding
Speaker 1: he not signed away Georgian's rights behind closed doors. Representative
Speaker 1: Canon join me this week on woke af Daily to
Speaker 1: tell her story and talk about the gains that activists
Speaker 1: have made on the ground in Georgia and the many
Speaker 1: obstacles that had yet to be overcome. You can hear
Speaker 1: our full half hour conversation about her experience being arrested
Speaker 1: and charged, why more marginalized people need to be running
Speaker 1: for office in local communities and more by supporting me
Speaker 1: on Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke af for
Speaker 1: right Now. Here's my question to Georgia's state representative part
Speaker 1: Cannon on why and how Georgia became a centerpiece in
Speaker 1: the fight for voting rights in America. What is really
Speaker 1: interesting and maybe this is something that obviously, because you've
Speaker 1: been working in Georgia for a quite some time now,
Speaker 1: that you've seen coming but the rest of the country
Speaker 1: did not. Right, Georgia has become a lightning rod in
Speaker 1: so many different ways because of the hard and tireless
Speaker 1: work of extraordinary activists and politicians like yourself that have
Speaker 1: been due the work to elevate the voices of black
Speaker 1: and brown people that are in that state. You know,
Speaker 1: this piece of legislation that was signed into law by
Speaker 1: Governor Kemp is based on a lie, right, just like
Speaker 1: the over two hundred pieces of legislation that are now
Speaker 1: in over forty states in this country based on a lie.
Speaker 1: And I want to know, where do you think that
Speaker 1: we head now, knowing that we are just, you know,
Speaker 1: months shy of beginning midterm elections in this country where
Speaker 1: there are elections that are happening all the time. We
Speaker 1: know that Governor Kemp is being sued right again for
Speaker 1: the actions that he has taken. But where do you
Speaker 1: see Georgia moving now? As it pertains to voting rights.
Speaker 1: Georgia is already voting in record numbers and voters have
Speaker 1: actually gone through whatever coping mechanisms that they need to
Speaker 1: access the ballot. When we talk about Georgians turning the
Speaker 1: state blue, many times it's talked about as this idea
Speaker 1: happened overnight. It really didn't. Years and years of trauma
Speaker 1: informed practices by voting rights groups saying, Wow, you're having
Speaker 1: some issue with transportation to get to the polling place.
Speaker 1: We will help you with that. Geez, you're thirsty or
Speaker 1: hungry from standing in this six hour line, will provide
Speaker 1: you with some refreshments. Oh wow, you are experiencing COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen and you're trying to figure how to get your
Speaker 1: ballot to you and back in. Who can sign for you?
Speaker 1: Who can help you? Will help you with a hotline.
Speaker 1: So Georgians have already been working towards stopping what they
Speaker 1: have done the GOP, which is caught defying conspiracies. When
Speaker 1: you spotify a conspiracy and you turn it into state law,
Speaker 1: you enact so many different officers who believe that they
Speaker 1: are the protector of the vote to do things that
Speaker 1: will disempower people from voting. There are two pieces of
Speaker 1: Senate Bill two O two that I really want Georgians
Speaker 1: to take in consideration and have a strategy for. The
Speaker 1: first one is now any old person in Georgia can
Speaker 1: put in an unlimited number of petitions to people's voter registrations.
Speaker 1: We saw this in twenty eighteen. We wrote a whole
Speaker 1: movie about it, documentary and screened it. It's called Suppressed
Speaker 1: with Brave New Films. And what we explained there was
Speaker 1: there was this gentleman who lived in a rural community
Speaker 1: and he felt like people with these different last names
Speaker 1: with hyphens in their last names, that they weren't real people.
Speaker 1: So he would go up to the elections boards meetings
Speaker 1: that really no one else attended, and he would submit
Speaker 1: the number of petitions he could submit for that day
Speaker 1: and next month he would go back and do it again.
Speaker 1: Now that same person is going to have the power
Speaker 1: to be the voter registrations are And you don't even
Speaker 1: know us, you don't know who we are, but we
Speaker 1: know strategy is. So that's the first issue. The second
Speaker 1: is the human rights violations that are codified by criminality.
Speaker 1: You can face a misdemeanor now for helping someone get
Speaker 1: food or water in line. What So, we are trying
Speaker 1: as Georgians to help the country understand that these factions
Speaker 1: and these bills and policies didn't just happen overnight. They
Speaker 1: have been working on these four years. So we want
Speaker 1: other states to go ahead and sure up voter rights,
Speaker 1: even if it's in a small subsection, the criminality section,
Speaker 1: the mail in ballot, the in person voting, the absentee,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, sure up voting rights before conspiracies become codified,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you. And if there is anything that the
Speaker 1: Republican Party has become the master of, it is codifying conspiracies.
Speaker 1: Right now in Arizona, they are doing yet another audit
Speaker 1: on the twenty twenty election that is being overseen by
Speaker 1: oa N News, you know, the Trump News channel. As
Speaker 1: if that is bipartisan or non party. I feel like
Speaker 1: we are living in a parallel universe. One of the
Speaker 1: other things. You know, you started off saying that you
Speaker 1: were the youngest representative to be elected in Georgia, and
Speaker 1: I think that that is extraordinary. I remember when you
Speaker 1: were first running, we were also excited. I mean, as
Speaker 1: a black queer woman like I was just let go,
Speaker 1: girl go. You know, whatever can be done should be done.
Speaker 1: You've written a book entitled The Universal Guide for Running
Speaker 1: for Office at the State level. Why do you still
Speaker 1: believe that folks like us should be running for office
Speaker 1: given all that we're up against. Should we be in
Speaker 1: the streets, should we be in the c suites? Should
Speaker 1: we be in state office? Why do you think it's
Speaker 1: important that we run? All of it? But what I
Speaker 1: will say about this message of running for office is
Speaker 1: the most important piece of it is recognizing that you
Speaker 1: are going to run as you are. So if you
Speaker 1: are a CEO already or you've been working in McDonald's,
Speaker 1: you're going to need to run as you are. You're
Speaker 1: going to have to go back through those photo albums
Speaker 1: and ask your family members, why were we living there,
Speaker 1: what were we doing, who was working where and how
Speaker 1: do we get to this place where half of our
Speaker 1: family didn't vote in this one specific election. There's going
Speaker 1: to have to be a really deep dive that people do,
Speaker 1: and I use the Universal Guide to Running for Office
Speaker 1: to explore that, to help people break it down and
Speaker 1: to make it actionable. I have a whole mess at
Speaker 1: the end of it of affirmation pages where I have
Speaker 1: you and then you affirm yourselves, and you keep that
Speaker 1: going so that as you're out there on the campaign trail,
Speaker 1: you're able to say, I understand legislating uber and lyft
Speaker 1: because I take uber and lyft more differently than maybe
Speaker 1: some of my seventy eight eighty year old colleagues. So
Speaker 1: I am a subject matter expert in this conversation. Or
Speaker 1: if you've been working at McDonald's, you understand food safety guidelines,
Speaker 1: you understand osha, you understand all of these different micro
Speaker 1: situations that make you the perfect to run for office,
Speaker 1: that actually help you see your power in the place.
Speaker 1: Everyone can talk about balancing the state budget, maybe they
Speaker 1: want money for their hospitals, But if you're a black
Speaker 1: woman and you're a healthcare worker in Georgia, you should
Speaker 1: be running for office. You were the number one type
Speaker 1: of person in the clinical settings contracting COVID nineteen during
Speaker 1: this pandemic. So you are a subject matter expert on
Speaker 1: the issues related to COVID nineteen and hospital financing and funding.
Speaker 1: So even though sometimes people get concerned that they might
Speaker 1: not have all the money to finance pain, we talk
Speaker 1: about all the different types of organizations that can help
Speaker 1: you when you're considering running for office, and that at
Speaker 1: a certain point, money doesn't always do it. You know,
Speaker 1: even if you spend five hundred dollars on yard signs,
Speaker 1: yard signs don't vote. They might get your information out
Speaker 1: to a block of voters, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: go to the polls to cast their ballot for you,
Speaker 1: or do that from home. So running for office in
Speaker 1: this digital space, in a highly polarized moment like now,
Speaker 1: we have to use our own stories and just run
Speaker 1: as we are, even if it doesn't pay much as
Speaker 1: it relate to a salary. I always help young people
Speaker 1: understand this, How different would it be if you graduated
Speaker 1: from high school you had no sex education Because we
Speaker 1: are of course a absent and only state, and you
Speaker 1: ran for school board and one you would be able
Speaker 1: to change your comprehensive sexual education policies, therefore helping teenage pregnancy,
Speaker 1: therefore helping community resources all kinds of things. So we
Speaker 1: have to just think differently about who makes up those
Speaker 1: seats and not feel as though they're going to challenge
Speaker 1: us right when it happens. People want to hear the
Speaker 1: truth right now, when people run for office, and the
Speaker 1: season is happening. Qualifying in Georgia is in August, which
Speaker 1: is just three months away, And if I can be
Speaker 1: of help to anyone, please reach out directly. Codifying conspiracies
Speaker 1: has increasingly become the norm in American politics. Just as false,
Speaker 1: racialized accusations of voter fraud increased in the Trump era,
Speaker 1: there was also an increase in scaremongering around immigration, especially
Speaker 1: at the southern border. But this othering of immigrants was
Speaker 1: not new under Trump. It started decades earlier, fed into
Speaker 1: and encouraged by popular white nationalism. This is how a
Speaker 1: man like Joe R. Pio ended up being elected sheriff
Speaker 1: of Maricopa County in Arizona back in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: and keeping that position until finally being voted out in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. If you remember R. Pio was also Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's first presidential pardon after his policies and programs became
Speaker 1: the subject of legal scrutiny. I invited Jude Joffey Block,
Speaker 1: associated Press reporter and co author of the new book
Speaker 1: Driving While Brown Sheriff Joe Arpile Versus the Latino Resistance
Speaker 1: onto Woke af Daily this week to take a deep
Speaker 1: dive into how he gained power, the abuses he carried
Speaker 1: out with that power, and what led to the reckoning
Speaker 1: and ultimate pardon under the Trump presidency. You can hear
Speaker 1: her full breakdown of Arpio's twisted legacy right now on
Speaker 1: my Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke a f.
Speaker 1: I also asked Jude how the wave that finally voted
Speaker 1: out Sheriff Joe ties into Arizona going blue for the
Speaker 1: first time in over a half century. Take a listen.
Speaker 1: Arizona became a really a kind of interesting place right
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, much in the same way as Georgia.
Speaker 1: Arizona for the first time went blue. How do you
Speaker 1: make sense of how something like that could happen in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, but they produce a man like Joe are
Speaker 1: a pie? I mean I guess it's the same question
Speaker 1: of how can this country both give us Barack Obama
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump. I have no idea is the great
Speaker 1: paradox of our times, but humor me, how did how
Speaker 1: did Arizona get to this place? They're actually really connected.
Speaker 1: So the grassroots organizing that starts happening in Arizona, it's
Speaker 1: not just our Pile, but our Pile is a big
Speaker 1: part of it. It's also Arizona's laws that are aimed
Speaker 1: at criminalizing immigrants and that many Latinos also feel like
Speaker 1: cause them to fall under suspicion as well. People will
Speaker 1: remember Senate Bill ten seventy that Arizona passed in twenty
Speaker 1: ten that was mostly gutted by courts, but still some
Speaker 1: parts of art in effect today. So these laws and
Speaker 1: our pio's tactics and rhetoric created a backlash, and so
Speaker 1: there was organizing on the ground that started getting young
Speaker 1: people to register people to vote, canvassing neighborhoods. There's a
Speaker 1: whole generation of people in their twenties who have been
Speaker 1: knocking on doors registering voters since like two, ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 1: and now you know, there seasoned adults and they they're
Speaker 1: pretty savvy at running political campaigns. So what we see
Speaker 1: is this building clout among Latino voters, voters of color,
Speaker 1: voters who didn't used to be engaged, rising each cycle
Speaker 1: after Joe our Pile was defeated because this movement really
Speaker 1: rallied in twenty sixteen to defeat our Pile. Hump was
Speaker 1: elected that cycle and he won in Maricopa County, but
Speaker 1: our Pile lost by thirteen points in Maricopa County that
Speaker 1: year in twenty sixteen, after you know, being in office
Speaker 1: for twenty four years. So the same folks who were
Speaker 1: organizing on the ground continued in twenty eighteen, and they
Speaker 1: continued in twenty twenty, and we've seen a shift, and
Speaker 1: it's there are other factors as well. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of engagement among the indigenous vote in Arizona. There
Speaker 1: were sewn McCain style Republicans who were just attacted with Trump.
Speaker 1: There were suburban women who turned against Trump. And then
Speaker 1: there were California implant transplants who had moved to Arizona
Speaker 1: and started to vote in a more democratic way. But
Speaker 1: this movement and the engagement of young people, the engagement
Speaker 1: of more voters of color, and the kind of on
Speaker 1: the ground work what you hear from people who were
Speaker 1: involved in that. They say, once people saw we could
Speaker 1: defeat Joe Arpaio in twenty sixteen, that opened their eyes
Speaker 1: that their vote mattered, that elections matter, and that they
Speaker 1: could actually defeat Trump. And so there is a direct
Speaker 1: connection between this whole saga of what everyone lived through
Speaker 1: under Maricopa County under Joe our pile, with the politics
Speaker 1: of Arizona today. Where do you think that we go
Speaker 1: from here? This is a huge, nightmarish legacy that our
Speaker 1: pile has. We have, you know, children that still need
Speaker 1: to be united with their families. We have detention centers
Speaker 1: across this country that are still overflowing with undocumented people.
Speaker 1: We have an immigration crisis where we can't seem to
Speaker 1: no administration, Obama, not Bush, not Clinton, has been able
Speaker 1: to not Trump has been able to do anything about
Speaker 1: how we create a humane right immigration system. Where do
Speaker 1: you think that we go from here? And what do
Speaker 1: you think this administration, the Biden Harris team will do
Speaker 1: in the coming months and coming years. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a great question. I think. I mean, what we
Speaker 1: hope to do in the book is lay the groundwork,
Speaker 1: so that if somebody wanted to be caught up on
Speaker 1: k where the immigration reform debate started in sort of
Speaker 1: modern history in the last few decades, where it started
Speaker 1: and where it is today. We tried to give that
Speaker 1: context in the book to catch people up to this moment.
Speaker 1: And we have President Biden who's made a campaign promise
Speaker 1: to tackle immigration reform, which is something that has been
Speaker 1: really impossible for anyone to do for quite some time.
Speaker 1: And I think what I see in Arizona is that
Speaker 1: there are newly engaged voters and people who have been
Speaker 1: involved in the political process and have been inspired to
Speaker 1: be involved, and are have been on the side of
Speaker 1: helping Democrats get elected. If Democrats continue to not be
Speaker 1: able to deliver on immigration reform, I do wonder what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, you know, to the same political factors
Speaker 1: that are a play right now. If this goal of
Speaker 1: immigration reform seems like it's never going to happen, it
Speaker 1: could kind of change the calculus of how the politics
Speaker 1: are working out on the ground. And so I think
Speaker 1: that's something that will be interesting to watch because certainly
Speaker 1: what's happening at the border does make it politically a
Speaker 1: lot more complicated for the Biden administration to move forward.
Speaker 1: And I think that we're seeing already how the issue
Speaker 1: of what's happening at the border is being politicized. That
Speaker 1: there's rhetoric around a lot of rhetoric around fear and
Speaker 1: criminality and threats to Americans as part of the larger
Speaker 1: conversation that we're seeing about what's going on. And that
Speaker 1: same rhetoric kind of was something we saw in Arizona
Speaker 1: at the height of that enforcement. The equation of immigrants
Speaker 1: with criminality has deep consequences for the kinds of politics
Speaker 1: and policies that step forward from that. The myriad of
Speaker 1: problems that we are facing today go back decades to
Speaker 1: the right wing, white nationalist conspiracies that have been codified
Speaker 1: into law. We need to call out these policies for
Speaker 1: what they are, racist laws created by and for racist Americans.
Speaker 1: We can do better, and we need to do better,
Speaker 1: or else America's lost to the worst among us. I
Speaker 1: tell you every week that it is important not to
Speaker 1: give up hope, but hope is not enough without a fight.
Speaker 1: Wherever you are in this vascination, get connected with your
Speaker 1: community and get to work organizing for a better tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The more of us there are, the harder it is
Speaker 1: for them to say no, to say things can't change,
Speaker 1: to say that this is the way it has always been,
Speaker 1: it hasn't and it doesn't have to be. As always,
Speaker 1: follow me on Patreon to get the latest from me
Speaker 1: every single weekday at patreon dot com slash woke AF
Speaker 1: Until next time, Power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.