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Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to okay f Daily with

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Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live in our pot

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Speaker 1: Stream studios here in Times Square. You know, folks, we

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Speaker 1: have finally made it to the end of this god

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Speaker 1: awful fucking week. If you've been following my Instagram at all,

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Speaker 1: you know that I have been going through it. There

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Speaker 1: are some weeks where the weight of our political and

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Speaker 1: cultural discourse can kind of roll off my back right

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Speaker 1: that I moved through and really don't let things affect me.

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Speaker 1: But this week of all weeks has really been trying

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Speaker 1: my spirit and my soul. So on this fuck It Friday,

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty much saying fuck it to every single goddamn thing.

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Speaker 1: Coming up next, dear friends, is going to be my

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Speaker 1: conversation with the author of the book Becoming Abolitionist, Dereka Purnell.

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Speaker 1: I enjoyed this conversation so much, and I hope all

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Speaker 1: of you do too, Folks. I am so excited to

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Speaker 1: welcome to wokaf Daily for it the first time author

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Speaker 1: Dereka Purnell, who is the author of a book whose

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Speaker 1: title I just love, Becoming Abolitionists. Dereka, we have talked

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Speaker 1: about abolition on Woke a f in so many different forms,

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Speaker 1: in so many different ways, about what it means to

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Speaker 1: abolish something, what it means to purge it, right, And

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Speaker 1: I think that in order to purge something, you have

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Speaker 1: to recognize it. You have to recognize it's ills, the troubles,

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Speaker 1: the trauma, the grief that it is bringing. When we

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Speaker 1: talked about abolitionists or slavery, we were, you know, abolishing

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Speaker 1: a system of depravity, of cruelty, of horrifics treatment of

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Speaker 1: human beings. When you wrote this book and you're in

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Speaker 1: the title becoming Abolitionists, what does that mean to you? Oh? Wow,

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Speaker 1: I love this question. I love the foreground and so

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Speaker 1: the one. Thank you so much for having me. I'm

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Speaker 1: very excited about this conversation. I went back and forth

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Speaker 1: on titles. It's very hard trying to figure out which

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Speaker 1: title made the most sense for this book. And the

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Speaker 1: reason why I ultimately landed on Becoming Abolitionists with this

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Speaker 1: plurals it is because to be an abolitionist, I believe

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Speaker 1: it's to always be in the process of the journey

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Speaker 1: and reevaluating what makes the most sense for the future

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Speaker 1: that we want to build, right and so like the

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Speaker 1: reasons why I was an abolitionist when I first started

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Speaker 1: writing the book are very different than some of the

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Speaker 1: things that I have right now. And it's just a

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Speaker 1: allowing yourself to be curious enough to ask questions, to

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Speaker 1: be in a conversation with people, to be wrong sometime,

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Speaker 1: to reflect to say, oh wow, I used to think

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Speaker 1: this about myself. I used to think this about the world.

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Speaker 1: I used to think this about police and prisons. And

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Speaker 1: now with more information, I have new better reasons to

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Speaker 1: not want the police to be here, or I have

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Speaker 1: new better reasons why well, I don't think that we

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Speaker 1: should have prisons in this society. And so in the book,

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Speaker 1: I try to show that journey for me, but also

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Speaker 1: for other people. Right ten twelve years ago, I guess

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Speaker 1: ten years ago, oh my gosh, ten years ago, about

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Speaker 1: ten years ago when George's Immerman killed Treymon and Martin.

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Speaker 1: There are so many of us who were fighting, spending hours, sacrificing,

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Speaker 1: you know, our work, our families, our school to make

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Speaker 1: sure that someone was arrested. That is what we put

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Speaker 1: that energy in. And there are so many of those

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Speaker 1: people who were at the forefront of those movements who

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Speaker 1: now don't even believe in a don't even believe in prisons,

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Speaker 1: don't even believe in police. And I wanted to talk

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Speaker 1: about that because with people critique abolitionists, they'll say something like, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, this isn't realistic. When we tried the realistic thing.

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Speaker 1: We have spent our lives learning about the realistic way

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to hold someone accountabile, accountable. And now that

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Speaker 1: we know that those systems were never intended to actually

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Speaker 1: offer true justice, true accountability, and so we're constantly becoming

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Speaker 1: and examining what kinds of systems that we want to

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Speaker 1: abolish and then what we also want to build. You know,

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Speaker 1: I love that one because I think that the journey

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Speaker 1: that your book lays out is the journey that many

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Speaker 1: of us are on. Right. Where we wanted to believe

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Speaker 1: in a criminal justice system, in a judicial system that

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Speaker 1: was going to see our full humanity, that was going

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Speaker 1: to actually uphold the creed that justice isn't act blind. Right.

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Speaker 1: I think that from two thousand and what was it,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen until now, right, the amount of hashtags,

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Speaker 1: the amount of unarmed black people that have been murdered,

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Speaker 1: the video of nine minutes of George Floyd losing his losing,

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Speaker 1: having the life squeezed out of him, not losing his life,

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Speaker 1: having his life stolen from him. You know, I wanted

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Speaker 1: to believe in the beginning when we saw Trey von

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Speaker 1: Martin to your point that there's no doubt this is

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Speaker 1: a child, right, this was an adult, and so we

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Speaker 1: know that he will be convicted because how could he not.

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Speaker 1: And it was in that moment for me that I

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Speaker 1: just I the faith that I had in our politics,

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Speaker 1: in our government, in our systems began to wane. And

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Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about these different pinpoint

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Speaker 1: pointed moments because you also lay out very clearly where

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Speaker 1: you grew up right the neighborhoods and how they were

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Speaker 1: filled with various forms of violence, whether you're talking about

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Speaker 1: environmental injustice factors or you're talking about actual crime or

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Speaker 1: the lack of jobs and you know, good schools and hopefulness.

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Speaker 1: What are those kind of pinpoint moments that stand out

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Speaker 1: for you over this timeline of moving from believing in

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Speaker 1: the probability that a policing system could work for black

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Speaker 1: people and then understanding that it was never meant to. Yes. Yes,

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Speaker 1: So I would say that early on, rather than saying

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Speaker 1: that I like believe that this system weren't for us.

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Speaker 1: I think now, having read in the book and read

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Speaker 1: it like a thousand times for all the edits, I

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Speaker 1: think it was probably the most accurate thing for me

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Speaker 1: to say is that I had really unexamined ideas about policing. Right,

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Speaker 1: I had unexamined ideas about my own commitments to policing.

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Speaker 1: I just assumed that they were here. I didn't ask

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Speaker 1: where they came from. I didn't ask if we needed them.

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Speaker 1: It was just like, oh, police kind of exist, like

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Speaker 1: male people exist, like fire five or six, like teacher.

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Speaker 1: They're just they're just a part of society. I didn't

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Speaker 1: even have wherewithal I knew that there were problematic police.

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Speaker 1: I knew that there were police with my mom's friends. Right,

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Speaker 1: there was a range of and there sometimes there was

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Speaker 1: an OVERWEP and that a diagram. But you know, I

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Speaker 1: just took for granted their existence. I really had unexamined

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Speaker 1: commitments to these institutions. And so over time, especially when

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Speaker 1: Michael Brown was killed, that was one of the first

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Speaker 1: times I started being pushed to acts. Okay, like what

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Speaker 1: is this thing about like why, why, why is this?

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Speaker 1: Why can't cops just kill someone and kind of go home.

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Speaker 1: It was very It was a very huge political awakening

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Speaker 1: for me and lots of other people. And what I

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Speaker 1: also realized I was doing at that time alongside lots

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Speaker 1: of other people, I was using what white people get,

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Speaker 1: or at least what I perceived white people to receive

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Speaker 1: as justice, as a metric for what I thought we

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Speaker 1: deserved too. So I would say, something happenuntil a white boy,

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Speaker 1: like we already know this black hot would be in

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Speaker 1: jail and we don't even have to guess because Mohammed

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Speaker 1: nor in Minnesota end up killing I think Justine Diamond,

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Speaker 1: the white woman from Australia, he's in prison, right, So

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Speaker 1: we would say, you know, if this was a white person,

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Speaker 1: this is what would happened. This is a white person,

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Speaker 1: this is what would happened. And at some point, by

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Speaker 1: being in a a conversation with other organizers doing more study

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Speaker 1: and doing more research learning about the origins of police

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Speaker 1: I had to be like, Waite, what if this system

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Speaker 1: that we know is racially unjust, what if it's also

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Speaker 1: not working for white people and we're in fighting to

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Speaker 1: get what white people will have. We're fighting that white

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Speaker 1: people think we get, and it's just like what if

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Speaker 1: what if we get what white people get? Well, that

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Speaker 1: then mean that a few of black people would die,

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Speaker 1: And I don't think that's true because white people kill

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Speaker 1: our police all the time. And I just don't want

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Speaker 1: cops to go to prison after they kill us. I

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Speaker 1: don't want the killings to stop. I wanted the violence

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Speaker 1: to stop. And so it just completely disrupted my noses

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Speaker 1: of justice and fairness and equity, and I had to

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Speaker 1: let go of that metric. I had to ask, is

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Speaker 1: it unfair that we don't have it? Yes? But does

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Speaker 1: it mean that it's real justice if we get it?

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Speaker 1: And that answer was not clear to me. You know

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Speaker 1: that is so illuminating because I think that we spend

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Speaker 1: a lot of times comparing comparing ourselves, right, comparing what

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Speaker 1: it is that black people don't have versus what it

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Speaker 1: is that white people have. The fact is is that

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Speaker 1: because we have qualified immunity in this country, because you

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Speaker 1: can just be a cop and you can fear for

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Speaker 1: your life regardless of who is in front of you,

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Speaker 1: kill them and then go home, is in fact the

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Speaker 1: problem right and right now, just you know, just last

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Speaker 1: week we had, after eight months of supposed deliberation and

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Speaker 1: back and forth between you know, a Senator Corey Booker

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Speaker 1: and Senator Tim Scott, they want to come out and

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Speaker 1: be like, Nope, the gap is too large for us

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Speaker 1: to do anything about policing reform. So this moment of

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Speaker 1: George Floyd having his life squeeze out of him for

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Speaker 1: nine minutes that we all watch together, they want to

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Speaker 1: tell us after eight months, well, we just can't do anything,

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Speaker 1: so we stay with the status quo or devolve even

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Speaker 1: worse into the place that we are. What does that

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Speaker 1: feel like? How did that feel to you? Do you

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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying like, after we all witnessed this

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Speaker 1: collectively in the midst of quarantine where we are all

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Speaker 1: glued to our devices, glued to our television, and witnessed

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Speaker 1: this collective horror together, and now eight months later they

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Speaker 1: tell us that what we thought was the spark of

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Speaker 1: something new is now it's just too big to do. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I felt, I think two immediate things. The first

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Speaker 1: thing that I felt was immediately sympathy for George Floyd's family,

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Speaker 1: because you know, Joe Biden had promised them I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: champion police reform. I intend to keep that promise. I

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Speaker 1: got you. We're gonna name this after George Floyd. We're gonna,

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Speaker 1: you know, put you on front stage at the Democratic

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Speaker 1: National Convention. We're gonna rally down. He was doing all

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Speaker 1: of this while also still promising to give more money

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Speaker 1: to police, but he ultimately did. So he's walking this wide.

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Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna achieve real justice and policing that

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Speaker 1: everyone can enjoy, and I'm gonna give more money to

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Speaker 1: the police. Okay. So I felt horrible for George Floyd's

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Speaker 1: family to have that hope. To think that someone you're

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Speaker 1: campaigning for, your trying to get them in office, you're

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Speaker 1: on calls, trying to get policy passed. It hurts to

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Speaker 1: think what that family is going going through right now.

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Speaker 1: The second, the second thing that I felt, how how

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Speaker 1: can I just what's the most honest way to say this.

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Speaker 1: It's not that I was not surprised, It's not that

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Speaker 1: I felt let down, because when the George Floyd Act

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Speaker 1: was initially introduced, I wrote in my column and I

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Speaker 1: completely just I could just completely disagree with everything about

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Speaker 1: that bill. So here we have a policing bill that

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Speaker 1: I argue wouldn't have even saved George Floyd's life, right,

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Speaker 1: you know, Derek Children was called. Police were called because

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Speaker 1: over an alleged use of a counterfeit twenty dollars bill,

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Speaker 1: which is illegal, and if he used it, it is illegal,

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Speaker 1: and cops have a constitutional power to stop people who's

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Speaker 1: using counterfeit money. You can go to jail. Right now,

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Speaker 1: people watch that its just like man over twenty dollars,

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Speaker 1: over twenty dollars. Counterfeit twenty dollars bills are an important

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Speaker 1: currency for people who are economically and exploited. And we're

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Speaker 1: in a recession, job crises, eviction crises. What could have

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Speaker 1: actually helped people like George Floyd, people like my mom,

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Speaker 1: people in our communities was resources, more stimulus, actual money.

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Speaker 1: And so if the couple have just came and arrested

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Speaker 1: George Floyd took in the jail, there would have been

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Speaker 1: no uprisings, no protests, they would have been no like

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Speaker 1: and that's what happens every single day. So when I

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Speaker 1: read this bill, I was just like the way, at

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Speaker 1: the end of the day, what the actual problem was was,

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Speaker 1: you know, people working class people, black people living on

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Speaker 1: twenty dollars counterfeit exchanges. Being police now has become a

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Speaker 1: way to give police more money, to do more training,

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Speaker 1: to restrict chokeholds. Well, what about the poor? Why don't

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Speaker 1: we give them more money to people? Why do we

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Speaker 1: give them more money to police? And at the end

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Speaker 1: of the day, I called it in that piece and

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Speaker 1: I called it in this piece around a couple of

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Speaker 1: days ago. Whenever these reforms get you know, they go

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Speaker 1: on tour. What ultimately happens, Police get more money until

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Speaker 1: the next viral police killing and all the reforms that

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Speaker 1: don't even work get put off to the side, and

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Speaker 1: three people are still killed every day by police. And

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Speaker 1: so it's frustrating that people have to be like, man,

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Speaker 1: I really have hope in this bill. I really have

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Speaker 1: hoping this policy when I didn't have any hope, and

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Speaker 1: it was quite bad, actually right, it was pretty bad.

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Speaker 1: And then it's just like, well, now what now, what

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Speaker 1: do you do? So reform isn't a realistic option, like

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Speaker 1: and now he's saying polyst is not realistic. Reform is

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Speaker 1: not realistic. You know. It's funny because I have been

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Speaker 1: moving myself towards a place where I'm like I don't

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Speaker 1: even want to use the terms reform or reimagine, because

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Speaker 1: you're reimagining something that is broken, right, Like, how do

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Speaker 1: you reform something? How do you reform a leg that's

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Speaker 1: been amputated? You don't, right, Like, you need to create

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Speaker 1: something different. And I think for me that's why abolition

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Speaker 1: in it of itself feels right because it is the

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Speaker 1: most honest thing because if you want to if you

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Speaker 1: want to create a new system, you don't do so

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Speaker 1: off of what is broken, right. You have to abolish

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Speaker 1: is what is present in order to create something new.

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Speaker 1: And I feel like that's that's where the energy needs

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Speaker 1: to be placed, which is that it's not enough to

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Speaker 1: just say, oh, we're gonna reform, we're gonna reimagine, we're

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Speaker 1: going to reassess, and we're gonna do all of these things,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty much playing three card Monte with people's lives.

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Speaker 1: You're just moving the cards around the table and you're

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Speaker 1: not actually doing anything. It's a bullshit magic trick, right,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't produce That doesn't produce anything. When you hear

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Speaker 1: the pushback when people talked about defund the police, right,

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Speaker 1: and folks had said, you know, we should we shouldn't

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Speaker 1: say defund, And to your point, at various points in

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Speaker 1: the book, you're like, you know, if we're not, if

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Speaker 1: we're if we're if we're talking about reallocation of funds,

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Speaker 1: Like then that's the conversation that that's what I have said,

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Speaker 1: if we're if defund the police is really talking about

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Speaker 1: a reallocation of funds to stop having where I sit

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Speaker 1: in New York City a police department that has a

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Speaker 1: budget of six billion dollars, Like when when you know

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Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So it's like, it is that language.

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Speaker 1: Should it be reallocation, should it be defund? Doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: if if we're still again playing three card Monty with

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Speaker 1: our criminal justice and policing systems. Yeah, well I like

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Speaker 1: defund the police for lots of reasons. One reason is

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Speaker 1: because in twenty fourteen, when Black Lives Matter took off

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Speaker 1: as a hashtag, people said black lives matter was divisive,

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Speaker 1: like it's polarizing, all lives matter. I mean a lot

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Speaker 1: of people didn't set that not in good faith. It's like, what,

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Speaker 1: I will be on board with police not killing black people,

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Speaker 1: but you said black lives matter, So I can't. I

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Speaker 1: can't even get it's like, come on, like seriously, So

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Speaker 1: if something's black lives matter, it's polarizing that they just matter,

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Speaker 1: like it's like the floor the bar is so low,

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Speaker 1: like it's so solo. Right. The second thing I noticed

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Speaker 1: around Black Lives Matter is that anyone, once it became

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Speaker 1: more palatable, anyone could kind of say black lives matter

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Speaker 1: and it not really mean anything that much anymore. You

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Speaker 1: could say black lives matter to defund the police. You

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Speaker 1: can say black lives matter to give more funding to

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Speaker 1: the police, and say black communities want this. Sacks Fifth

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Speaker 1: Avenue was saying black lives matter. Everyone was just sort

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Speaker 1: of saying black lives matter. But guess what, Black lives

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Speaker 1: kept dying, right, black people being killed. What's interesting about

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Speaker 1: defund the police is that it's a specific policy demand.

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Speaker 1: It's like, take money away from the police. It's much

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Speaker 1: harder to then just co op something like that. Right.

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying it can't be done, because I've seen

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Speaker 1: it attempt to be done, but it's much difference. It's

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Speaker 1: not as soft as black lives matter, for lack of

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Speaker 1: a better phrase right now, And so that's another thing.

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Speaker 1: The third thing I would say is that any fight

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Speaker 1: towards freedom and justice has always used unpopular language at

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Speaker 1: the time of the fight, and then thirty forty fifty

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Speaker 1: years from now, what do we do? We say, man,

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Speaker 1: I'm so happy that they march for civil rights. Do

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Speaker 1: you know what it was like to say that you

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Speaker 1: were marching for civil rights in nineteen fifties? Civil rights? Oh,

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Speaker 1: you must be a criminal, you're a troublemaker, as if

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Speaker 1: they call MLK. You know, it's to say that you

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Speaker 1: wanted women to be able to vote. It's imagine a

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Speaker 1: man in the early nineteen hundred saying whoa, whoa, whoa.

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Speaker 1: I would be on board with women voting, but I

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Speaker 1: don't like the words suffrage. Like this actually what we're

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Speaker 1: doing when you say if the phrase, it's seriously the barrier.

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Speaker 1: So let's figure out how to explain what the phrase means.

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Speaker 1: But I imagine I would have guessed that the people

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Speaker 1: who actually don't like the phrase most of them, not

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Speaker 1: all of them. I've met a couple of people have

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Speaker 1: really interesting critical arguments and defund the police and abolition right,

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Speaker 1: and they are coming from a socialist analysis. They saying,

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Speaker 1: how do we build a broad basis? People who probably

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Speaker 1: agree with what you're saying, but don't understand what it means.

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Speaker 1: But they are committed to explaining what it means, right,

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Speaker 1: which is different than I would get on board, but

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Speaker 1: I don't like the language. So you gotta let police

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Speaker 1: continue to kill three people a day because of a

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Speaker 1: marketing campaign, Well, help us think about, you know, creative

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Speaker 1: language and creative ways to explain what abolition is. And

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Speaker 1: so part of that is on abolitionists when we say abolition.

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Speaker 1: When I say abolition, I mean we need to dismantle, eradicate,

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Speaker 1: reduce the reasons why people need police, and we need

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Speaker 1: to eradicate the institution of policing, and we need to

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Speaker 1: eradicate the violence in society that make people feel that

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Speaker 1: they need police. It's both at the same time, and

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Speaker 1: it's overtime, right, So that's on us to do that

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Speaker 1: on society what people who don't know what that means.

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Speaker 1: It's also on them to ask questions, to be curious,

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Speaker 1: to critically engage their faith, to read to you know,

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Speaker 1: to ask its. It requires both of that. But if

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Speaker 1: you are not even open to having a conversation because

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Speaker 1: of a term you don't understand, I think that's quite unfortunate,

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Speaker 1: and I think there are a lot of resources out

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Speaker 1: here to learn more about what that means. I appreciate

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Speaker 1: that so very much because I think you know too.

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Speaker 1: One of the lies that we continue to tell in

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Speaker 1: our society with regard to policing is that more police

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Speaker 1: equals more safety. Oh yeah. And the thing that I

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Speaker 1: have been saying on woke f you know, interviews with

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Speaker 1: former police chiefs, interviews with abolitionists, activists like yourself, is

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Speaker 1: the fact that any I grew up in a very

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Speaker 1: white suburb of New York on Long Island, and I

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Speaker 1: will tell you that I never saw police officers ever, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: that was not a part of my data to if

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Speaker 1: I did, maybe they were, you know, driving past on

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Speaker 1: you know, on the main strip. What I did see

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Speaker 1: were clean sidewalks, tree line streets, gated communities, country clubs,

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Speaker 1: and resource centers and libraries and all of these things.

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Speaker 1: And so, you know, one of the questions that another

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Speaker 1: question that I have for you is how do we

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Speaker 1: break that lie that gasolight about the fact that when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about defund the police, that there's this association well, oh,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to be safe, And I'm like some

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Speaker 1: of the safest neighborhoods have no police presence. What are

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Speaker 1: you talking about? What they do have a resources and access?

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Speaker 1: Absolutely yes, So that's and the inverse is also true.

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Speaker 1: Right if you look at where I grew up in

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Speaker 1: Saint Louis, I did not grow up in the community

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Speaker 1: the tree line streets. It was very much, very very

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Speaker 1: much the hood still is the hood. We haven't had

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Speaker 1: a grocery store since two thousand, the year two thousand.

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Speaker 1: Not a grocery store, not a fruit market, not a

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Speaker 1: community garden in sight, no health clinics, no jobs because

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Speaker 1: the Highway ripped apart the most prosperous place where black

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Speaker 1: people were employed by black businesses, ripped all those homes,

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Speaker 1: community businesses gone, so people could commute from the suburbs

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Speaker 1: to downtown Saint Louis to work, right, And so you

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Speaker 1: look at a community like that, we look at Chicago,

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Speaker 1: you look at DC where I'm sitting right now, in

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Speaker 1: Northwest super high rates of like violent crime, also among

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Speaker 1: the highest per capital rates of police And so the

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Speaker 1: police presence also doesn't reduce the violence that people fear.

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Speaker 1: It's just not And every time, like right now, we're

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Speaker 1: experience a murder hike, probably because we're in the pandemic.

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Speaker 1: People are stressed out, there are fewer jobs, there's an

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Speaker 1: eviction crisis that's happening. There's so much precarity that leads

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Speaker 1: people to more vulnerable situations. And when there's a procarity

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Speaker 1: and vulnerability and a pandemic, there's violence. Like we know,

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Speaker 1: the researchers know this, scientists know this. But then you

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Speaker 1: read the New York Times, you read mainstream outlets, and

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Speaker 1: it's like, y'all want to defund the police while there's

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Speaker 1: a murder spike right now, Well, tell me why with

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Speaker 1: a million cops in those places, especially in Chicago, Saint Louis, Detroit, DC,

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Speaker 1: these neighborhoods, there's more police than anywhere else, you have

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Speaker 1: to murder rate is still climbing. It's yeah, so more

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Speaker 1: police doesn't even equate to more safety. What it feels like,

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Speaker 1: it feels like, okay, at least somebody's here to do something,

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Speaker 1: But it's not uns If cops are standing outside of

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Speaker 1: people's homes every night, guarding and stopping violence, that's not

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Speaker 1: what's happening, right, So it's it's yeah, it's the inverse

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Speaker 1: is not you as well. So it's like, well, what

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Speaker 1: actually keeps people safe? You know, resources, strong social networks, education, jobs,

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Speaker 1: you know, pushing back on racism, homophobia, transphobia. You know.

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Speaker 1: The one of the main reasons why people even kill

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Speaker 1: people in the first place is because usually men want

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Speaker 1: to control the sexuality of their partners. That leads to

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Speaker 1: violence because you've been conditioning the patriarchy. Another reason why

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Speaker 1: people end up killing each other is because of petty arguments.

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Speaker 1: Usually it's men something said and assulted, but I have

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Speaker 1: an idea of what a man should be. Police can't

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Speaker 1: stop patriarchy. They can't fix patriarchy, so they can't get

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Speaker 1: to the root problem of solving harm. You know, people

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Speaker 1: join like street games for protection. And then if you

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Speaker 1: arrest people who are carrying a gun on them for

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Speaker 1: protection and because they're no jobs, like none of that

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Speaker 1: stuff is not our communities. And then they go to jail,

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Speaker 1: they come out, they have a record. It's gonna be

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Speaker 1: even hard harder for them to get a job, harder

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Speaker 1: for them to get in school, harder for them to

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Speaker 1: get housing. So they're going to retreat to the place

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Speaker 1: where they feel most safe. It's like how do we

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Speaker 1: support all of those people. How do we fight for

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Speaker 1: broad sweeping changes so that people can be empower and

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Speaker 1: have self determination to work in jobs where they have dignity,

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Speaker 1: right where they have choices, where they have childcare and healthcare,

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Speaker 1: and tuish it like it's all of those answers are there,

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Speaker 1: and it's actually much cheaper to just fund police who

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Speaker 1: primarily recruited from the working class, to police other working

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Speaker 1: class people. It's really really bad. Well, I will say this, Ica,

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Speaker 1: is that I believe that your book is incredibly important

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Speaker 1: and important in this particular moment that we are living in,

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Speaker 1: and I hope that everyone picks up becoming Abolitionists and

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Speaker 1: thinks about that word, thinks about that action and why

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Speaker 1: it matters, and instead of just shrugging off phrases like

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Speaker 1: defund the police, or phrases like black lives matter, phrases

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Speaker 1: like you know, abolition, that you actually begin to understand

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Speaker 1: and unpack why we are saying those things now and

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Speaker 1: why they matter. Dereka Purnell, I wish you the best

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Speaker 1: of success with your book, Becoming Abolitionists, and I hope

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Speaker 1: that you will join us again when you finish your

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Speaker 1: successful tour because I would love to have you back. Yes,

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Speaker 1: please have me. I really enjoy this. Thank you for

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Speaker 1: all of your kindness and your thoughtful question. I really

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Speaker 1: appreciate it. Appreciate you. Thank you. That is it for

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Speaker 1: today's Woke f Daily podcast. To hear more from today's show,

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00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 1: including my full interview with Dereka Purnell, support me on

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00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 1: Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke F. Power to

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Speaker 1: the people and to all the people. Power, get woke,

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00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: and stay woke as fuck.