Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with
Speaker 1: me your girl Daniel Moodie recording from the Home Bunker. Folks.
Speaker 1: You know, I know that all of us have been
Speaker 1: experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions over the last several days
Speaker 1: since the election. And for me, I'm up and then
Speaker 1: I'm down, and then I'm up again, and then I'm
Speaker 1: like on my couch in the dark, eating popcorn, just
Speaker 1: staring into an abyss. And I think that what it
Speaker 1: is is that I am in this place of just
Speaker 1: deep disappointment and who I believe that I'm America had
Speaker 1: the possibility to be. I was never under any illusion
Speaker 1: that America was this beautiful land of opportunity where streets
Speaker 1: are paved with gold and everyone has all obstacles removed
Speaker 1: and you know, can live the life of their choosing.
Speaker 1: But America on the spectrum of freeness, provided a sense
Speaker 1: of freeness for even the most marginalized people, right. And
Speaker 1: you know, we're under no false ideas about what the
Speaker 1: experience in America is for black people. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you can lose your life at a routine traffic
Speaker 1: stop because of a trigger happy, white, delusional law enforcement officer.
Speaker 1: We're under no false ideas about the treatment that trans
Speaker 1: people receiving this country, where I just saw the other
Speaker 1: day that a woman who was misgendered by a man
Speaker 1: in Texas, murdered by him was just given a free
Speaker 1: pass because the victim was trans. So I'm under no
Speaker 1: illusions about the work that America has needed to do
Speaker 1: on itself to actually live up to its ideals. But
Speaker 1: the disappointment comes when we experience an absolute reversal of
Speaker 1: fortune of progress, and that's the moment that we're in now.
Speaker 1: I think that it's really important for us to understand
Speaker 1: that when folks say, oh, we've seen worse before, Oh
Speaker 1: we'll get through it, the fact is that sure there
Speaker 1: have been worse moments, but understand that everybody did not
Speaker 1: make it through. We're still discovering in this country mass
Speaker 1: graves of enslaved black people or free black people who
Speaker 1: were killed by white mobs. We're still discovering the Native
Speaker 1: American children who were stolen, kidnapped from their families, their tribes,
Speaker 1: sent into sexually abused educational environments, and were also killed.
Speaker 1: And we're still discovering those graves. America in so many
Speaker 1: ways is in fact a cemetery. And so while we
Speaker 1: can look and say that there have been darker times,
Speaker 1: you also have to understand that everybody didn't make it
Speaker 1: to the other side, that there were countless lives that
Speaker 1: were lost. And so I think that where I find
Speaker 1: myself when I get into moments of despair and grief
Speaker 1: is knowing that we're all not going to make it
Speaker 1: through Trump's regime, that millions of lives will be lost,
Speaker 1: millions of people will be traumatized, will lose their homes,
Speaker 1: their lives, their livelihood in this new regime that centers whiteness,
Speaker 1: centers patriarchy at the expense of everything else. And so
Speaker 1: what I feel is important in this moment for us
Speaker 1: to remember and not just to acquiesce, is that we
Speaker 1: can grieve. We can have moments and days of deep sadness.
Speaker 1: We just can't stay there. You know. This is why
Speaker 1: I talk about community being so important and people needing
Speaker 1: to find the that they can lean on so that
Speaker 1: we're all not down at the same time that when
Speaker 1: you're down, there are other people that will be there
Speaker 1: to comfort you and to show you the light once again.
Speaker 1: And then when they are down, you can be the
Speaker 1: one that is the lantern that shows them the light.
Speaker 1: Because a part of where we are is also recognizing
Speaker 1: that we cannot just acquiesce. And I know, and I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to myself as much as I'm speaking to all
Speaker 1: of you, that we can't just resign ourselves to what
Speaker 1: will be, That we still have agency, we still have
Speaker 1: a story to write. You know, I was reading this
Speaker 1: piece at Talking Points Memo and I posted it on
Speaker 1: my YouTube page on Friday, and the title reads, the
Speaker 1: most pernicious anticipatory obedience hides in plain sight. And you
Speaker 1: know what was written here, and what I want to
Speaker 1: say to all of you is that it is fair
Speaker 1: to be overwhelmed, but we cannot just be obedient. This
Speaker 1: is a moment for good trouble. As John Lewis once said,
Speaker 1: here's what he writes in this piece. During harrowing times,
Speaker 1: some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It's not
Speaker 1: a one way progress. Almost everyone has their moments, but
Speaker 1: there's a particular kind of militant dumerism afoot at the moment.
Speaker 1: Any discussions of next steps in the battle against trump
Speaker 1: Ism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or
Speaker 1: strategies are met with a chorus of don't you get it,
Speaker 1: don't you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin,
Speaker 1: or don't you know? Rules don't matter to Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: And this is the point, right is to have us
Speaker 1: believe that we have nothing left to do. They go
Speaker 1: on to say, in a sense, it's a dialogue genetically
Speaker 1: related to what I called competitive hyperbole two days ago.
Speaker 1: Strategies for the future, or even the assumption that there
Speaker 1: will be a future, get shouted down as a hopeless
Speaker 1: naivete and at least within the stream of conversation, which
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not saying is dominant, but it is there.
Speaker 1: It leads to the same escalating declarations of dystopia and totalism.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that Donald Trump could push the American
Speaker 1: public into dictatorship or, more plausibly, the kind of soft
Speaker 1: autocracy or broken democracy we know today in places like
Speaker 1: Russia or Hungary or Turkey? Sure? Is it likely? I
Speaker 1: don't know any way of putting odds to such a thing,
Speaker 1: But what I know is that it's not easy. There's
Speaker 1: Congress and the courts, and even when they're compliant, the
Speaker 1: process is still difficult, time consuming, and hard to pull off.
Speaker 1: There's also the double level government of federalism, in which
Speaker 1: a great deal of the machinery of government remains in
Speaker 1: other hands. That's more difficulty and time consuming obstacles, and
Speaker 1: it's the work of an opposition to make it as
Speaker 1: hard and time consuming as possible, to make the consequences
Speaker 1: as visible as possible. I really appreciated this piece in
Speaker 1: Talking Points memo, and like I said, I've posted it,
Speaker 1: but you do need a subscription to read the entire thing.
Speaker 1: But I pulled out those two pieces from it because
Speaker 1: I think that it's important. We cannot just make this
Speaker 1: easy for Donald Trump and his clown cabinet to instill
Speaker 1: the type of militant power that they want to hold
Speaker 1: over all of us. Now, to me, the resistance does
Speaker 1: not look like pussy hats and women's marches and the like,
Speaker 1: and then you go home and you feel really good
Speaker 1: about the march that you did, but you actually do
Speaker 1: nothing to follow up with that. It does look like
Speaker 1: providing resources if you have them, to abortion clinics, to
Speaker 1: reproductive justice spaces, to transgender equity spaces, to organizations and
Speaker 1: nonprofits that are working in this really dangerous time. To
Speaker 1: protect the most marginalized. It looks like sharing articles and
Speaker 1: resources that direct people towards independent media so that they
Speaker 1: can cut the cord from cable news, which has been complicit. Right,
Speaker 1: it looks like figuring out what resistance looks like. And
Speaker 1: if for you, that looks like holding on to your joy,
Speaker 1: going dancing, gardening, doing what brings your soul peace, If
Speaker 1: your resistance looks like that, then that is resistance. Because
Speaker 1: the goal that they have for all of us is
Speaker 1: to be downtrodden, hopeless, depressed, angsty, angry, sad, demoralized. We're
Speaker 1: malleable if we do the work of beating ourselves down
Speaker 1: and then by the time that they approach us, we're
Speaker 1: already putting our hands out to put the cuffs on.
Speaker 1: You have to think, in this moment, what does my
Speaker 1: resistance look like? How do I want to show up
Speaker 1: in this moment? And if in fact our days are numbered,
Speaker 1: how do I want to be remembered. I remember being
Speaker 1: young and learning about the civil rights era and always
Speaker 1: wondering who would I have been right As the bus
Speaker 1: boycotts were happening, as segregation was raging, as police were
Speaker 1: beating and brutalizing and killing black people, and as they
Speaker 1: were fighting back, you know, non violently and sometimes exercising
Speaker 1: their Second Amendment right as the Black Panthers did. Who
Speaker 1: would I be? And now I know? I'm the storyteller,
Speaker 1: the narrator, the person that is offering up their analysis
Speaker 1: and clear vision of where we are and where I
Speaker 1: would love to see us be. I'm the person that
Speaker 1: is producing political content for those that are willing and
Speaker 1: want to know the truth, because story, narrative, truth is
Speaker 1: how we battle against the lies, the grift, and the deceit.
Speaker 1: The people that are being placed in positions of power
Speaker 1: in our government are criminals. They're liars, their abusers, they're repugnant,
Speaker 1: they're deplorable, and so we do not need to consume
Speaker 1: their bullshit. We need to fortify ourselves and find the
Speaker 1: avenues of light, of hope, and of truth that will
Speaker 1: keep us afloat during the tsunami. I'm not gonna lie
Speaker 1: to you and tell you like, oh, you know, it
Speaker 1: won't be as bad, it'll be like twenty sixteen. No,
Speaker 1: it's going to be worse than people could ever possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: It's why I went horse for the entire election. Cycle
Speaker 1: trying to get people to see what was at stake,
Speaker 1: and seven percent of Democrats decided to stay home. Portions
Speaker 1: of Democrats decided to throw their vote to Jill Stein,
Speaker 1: but the majority of white people that are totally fine
Speaker 1: with racism and misogyny came out in droves. So sure
Speaker 1: as the numbers are tallied in we realize that the
Speaker 1: margins were slim, which means to me, we could have won,
Speaker 1: but something went awry. Some people were not reached, or
Speaker 1: some just thought that, you know, oh, it's all bluster,
Speaker 1: but we'll make it through. And now folks are recognizing
Speaker 1: to some extent, but it'll get worse. The buyer's remorse
Speaker 1: that they have Oh I didn't realize. I thought everybody
Speaker 1: was doing their own fucking research. So what we have
Speaker 1: to continue to do is to fortify ourselves, build real
Speaker 1: life community in real life and online. That's not about
Speaker 1: creating a bubble, It's about creating a net and network
Speaker 1: of safety. I also incur people if you have the
Speaker 1: ability to think about genuinely, if things become untenable in
Speaker 1: the United States, what your exit strategy is. Knowing that
Speaker 1: not everybody is going to be able to leave but
Speaker 1: those people that can should start thinking about what it
Speaker 1: looks like and preparing so that you are not caught
Speaker 1: off guard but instead ready to go. We need to
Speaker 1: be working in a both and mindset, both figuring out
Speaker 1: what our resistance looks like in these uncharted times and
Speaker 1: uncharted waters, and what an exit strategy looks like, because,
Speaker 1: as I say, all of us will not make it
Speaker 1: the same way that all of us did not make
Speaker 1: it through the global health pandemic. A million Americans lost
Speaker 1: their lives, the same way that all that came through
Speaker 1: the Middle Passage did not make it. Yes, of course
Speaker 1: there are a darker time times that we have seen
Speaker 1: in our history, but we have to be very real
Speaker 1: about the moment that we're in and recognize if this
Speaker 1: is it, what do we leave behind for folks to know,
Speaker 1: to remember and to pick up the baton where we
Speaker 1: leave it. So my message is we have to resist.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying that to you as much as I
Speaker 1: say to myself, because There'll be some days that I
Speaker 1: turn on this microphone and I've had it, I'm exhausted,
Speaker 1: I've got nothing left to give, And then I'll go
Speaker 1: through the comments sections and I'll see on Blue Sky
Speaker 1: and in on Instagram, people sending messages of encouragement that
Speaker 1: refuel me and give me the strength to turn on
Speaker 1: the mic and do the work once more. But it
Speaker 1: is all of our jobs. There's not enough to just
Speaker 1: cut off family members, particularly those of you that are
Speaker 1: white who are like, oh my sister's a Trump, Are
Speaker 1: my dad's a Trump? Or and this amon and that one,
Speaker 1: and just cut them out because again they're not listening
Speaker 1: to me. But maybe if over these holidays that are approaching,
Speaker 1: you actually have conversations and ask them why why did
Speaker 1: you vote for him? What does it signify to you?
Speaker 1: What are you hoping is the result? And listen, we
Speaker 1: need to get back to a place of conversation. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we are going to agree, and particularly
Speaker 1: when the decisions that other people make determine whether or
Speaker 1: not people are treated with dignity and respect and have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to access the American dream. No, that's not
Speaker 1: up for debate. But I know that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: coming into office hoping to further divide this country furthers
Speaker 1: so resentment and hate and anger, and so if we
Speaker 1: are not trying to be the bridge in our own
Speaker 1: families in our own circles. Then he's going to continue
Speaker 1: to win and trump Ism will never go away. Pick
Speaker 1: your path, choose who you're going to be in this moment,
Speaker 1: and do it. Because if we band together, we build community,
Speaker 1: we build safety, we just may have a chance to
Speaker 1: make it through. That is it for me today. Dear friends,
Speaker 1: on woke ath as always power to the people and
Speaker 1: to all the people. Power. Get woke and stay woke
Speaker 1: as fuck.