Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKP Daily with Me
Speaker 1: your Girl, Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. I
Speaker 1: have been struggling because the dystopian times that we are
Speaker 1: living in they're wild and it is taking everything in
Speaker 1: me not to just follow the breaking news of the
Speaker 1: moment and to really unpack what is underneath the dystopia.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're gonna do today, is try
Speaker 1: and get underneath the mayhem instead of just remaining on
Speaker 1: the surface. We need to be asking ourselves bigger questions
Speaker 1: about this moment, why we're here and how we got here,
Speaker 1: because I feel as if we don't if we don't
Speaker 1: understand truly how we got into this moment where our
Speaker 1: democracy is had hanging on by a thread, we're never
Speaker 1: going to figure out how we fix it. And now,
Speaker 1: when I say fix it, I don't mean as if
Speaker 1: we're going to experience what comes post the fixing, because
Speaker 1: that is going to be for other generations. But what
Speaker 1: I mean by if we don't go back, we're going
Speaker 1: to keep creating the same cycle over and over again.
Speaker 1: I have been trying to figure out how to make
Speaker 1: sense of this current moment that we're in. And what
Speaker 1: I've said before is that I want to get to
Speaker 1: the underneath, right, I don't want to remain on the
Speaker 1: surface following the bouncing ball of fascism and everything that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is saying and doing and who is he,
Speaker 1: who he's appointing to what and where. The fact is
Speaker 1: is that none of that actually matters. I mean it will, right.
Speaker 1: We know the harm that it's going to cause, We
Speaker 1: know the pain that people are going to be in
Speaker 1: that we are all going to collectively experience. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, this is cyclical, right, what
Speaker 1: we are running through and what is happening. And I
Speaker 1: think that right now again what is being experienced through
Speaker 1: this killing, the murder of the United Healthcare CEO, is
Speaker 1: really drawing out the underneath, opening up the wound of
Speaker 1: America that has been ever present. But we just keep
Speaker 1: patching up the wound of inequality, right of economic inequality,
Speaker 1: of racial inequality, of gender inequality. Like what has come
Speaker 1: up in twenty twenty four and what's been coming up
Speaker 1: is the driving force behind the greed right, the hatred
Speaker 1: that has gotten us here. And I continue to say
Speaker 1: that I am so disgusted with the current democratic establishment
Speaker 1: right now, because they seem to not learn anything. And
Speaker 1: so what I realize, and what I keep saying over
Speaker 1: and over again, is that democrats are not going to
Speaker 1: save us. I'm kind of in this space of really
Speaker 1: like unpacking the greed that we are seeing that we
Speaker 1: are all being exposed to and wondering like, how did
Speaker 1: we get to this point where these billionaires are just
Speaker 1: so insatiable right, Like it's never enough, Like they don't
Speaker 1: have enough money, they don't have enough power. And it's
Speaker 1: because capitalism has had us worship them like they were
Speaker 1: the new gods. Right. We have turned our eyes away
Speaker 1: from actual right religion and we have all been worshiping capitalism.
Speaker 1: And so what does that mean? That means that those
Speaker 1: that are at the top of the pyramid, the one percent,
Speaker 1: we've looked at them and admired them and adored them,
Speaker 1: followed their shows and follow their lives and say that
Speaker 1: they're better than us because they have more than us.
Speaker 1: But we've never actually asked ourselves why they have more
Speaker 1: to begin with. But the lie that's been told, the
Speaker 1: lie that's been sold, is that if you have more,
Speaker 1: then you're inherently better. You're inherently smarter than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. We don't look at the people at the
Speaker 1: lower end of the economic pyramid and say, wow, how
Speaker 1: were they able to make a dollar stretched so far
Speaker 1: given that they have so little? That's real ingenuity. How
Speaker 1: you actually turn how you make a dollar grow and
Speaker 1: go when you have so little. But no, we look
Speaker 1: and we glorify those that the top, and we never
Speaker 1: stop and question how they got that fucking money to
Speaker 1: begin with. I remember growing up actually on and I
Speaker 1: will date myself Scrooge McDuck, Right, Scrooge McDuck had this
Speaker 1: huge house in palace, and he had his nephews that
Speaker 1: were living with him, and he had this vault, you know,
Speaker 1: full of gold coins, and in that in that cartoon
Speaker 1: really taught you about capitalism and how money actually works.
Speaker 1: But the thing that we have not understood truly is that, like,
Speaker 1: there are those that started way ahead of the starting line,
Speaker 1: And so we've been fed the lie that if you
Speaker 1: just work hard enough, you'll be able to catch up
Speaker 1: to those that are wealthy because they inherited that wealth.
Speaker 1: So the lie of capitalism is that all you need
Speaker 1: to do is just work harder and work smarter. And
Speaker 1: those that are the wealthiest, they work the hardest and
Speaker 1: were the smartest. That's the fucking gag. They're not. They
Speaker 1: just inherited their wealth, and then the rest of us
Speaker 1: are forced into the cogs of the machine, believing that
Speaker 1: if we just run faster, if we just do more,
Speaker 1: if we just produce more, then we'll catch up to them.
Speaker 1: So in this moment, we find ourselves reeling from this
Speaker 1: murder because it exposes so very much about all the
Speaker 1: things that are wrong. But we've been fed the lie
Speaker 1: that we were wrong, that if we're not wealthy, that
Speaker 1: if we don't have that security, then it must be
Speaker 1: on us rather than on the system that's keeping us
Speaker 1: stuck and keeping that kind of dollar floating in front
Speaker 1: of our faces that we're chasing after. And so what
Speaker 1: this murder has unearthed is questioning, wait a minute, who
Speaker 1: actually is a murderer, because now there are multiple definitions,
Speaker 1: and who should we really be chastising and questioning right now?
Speaker 1: So I come in today with just my mind super
Speaker 1: heavy and really trying to unpack the amount of lies
Speaker 1: that we have all been fed in There's something about
Speaker 1: getting older that has me really believe that like learning
Speaker 1: never stops because we have to unlearn so much in
Speaker 1: order to get to the truth, which they they the
Speaker 1: big they don't want us to actually see. This is
Speaker 1: why you ban books, This is why you threaten to
Speaker 1: shut down information networks. This is why Elon Musk bought
Speaker 1: Twitter and then destroyed it because the little peons that
Speaker 1: they see us. The people were gathering, right, The people
Speaker 1: were communicating, which means that then we were all of
Speaker 1: a sudden going to realize that we were in each
Speaker 1: other problem. We all had the same enemy. But if
Speaker 1: you break down modes of communication and don't allow people
Speaker 1: to assemble, then they'll readily eat the lies that you're
Speaker 1: feeding them because they'll be nothing to rebuff it. So
Speaker 1: Elon Musk saw Twitter. The billionaire class saw Twitter as
Speaker 1: a problem to be solved because the people are getting
Speaker 1: too ahead of themselves. The people are organizing too much.
Speaker 1: It's really wild when you start to think about it.
Speaker 1: I saw this post and it read you can be
Speaker 1: driven into homelessness by someone like Brian Thompson. Brian Thompson
Speaker 1: being the CEO who was murdered from United Healthcare. You
Speaker 1: can be driven into homelessness by someone like Brian Thompson
Speaker 1: then legally murdered by someone like Daniel Penny, the man
Speaker 1: who killed Jordan Neely, the black homeless man and street performer,
Speaker 1: by putting him in a chokehold and suffocating him to death.
Speaker 1: And he was just acquitted because he was supposedly helping
Speaker 1: the people on the train. He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: while the money that could have saved you is spent
Speaker 1: on murdering children in Gaza. So let me read that again.
Speaker 1: You can be driven into homelessness, bankrupted by a healthcare
Speaker 1: system that profits off of your despair and profits off
Speaker 1: of denying you access to life saving healthcare. Then you
Speaker 1: can be legally murdered by a white vigilante on a train,
Speaker 1: and all the while, the money that you're paying into
Speaker 1: the system is being sent elsewhere to murder women, children,
Speaker 1: and men. Who is the depraved? Humanity is humanity, and
Speaker 1: depravity is depravity. But this struck me. People say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Jordan Neely was threatening other people on the train. YO.
Speaker 1: If you live in New York City, there are lots
Speaker 1: of shit that pop off in the subway station. There
Speaker 1: are lots of things that pop off in the street
Speaker 1: all the time. Tell me why this former military man
Speaker 1: didn't release at some point the chokehold on Jordan Neely.
Speaker 1: Why is it acceptable for us to commit murder in
Speaker 1: broad daylight but only when we can say, oh, I
Speaker 1: feared for my life. It's the same refrain, folks, that
Speaker 1: police officers and vigilantes have used in order to kill
Speaker 1: black people. That is my truth. I live in New York.
Speaker 1: There are people that are on these streets because of
Speaker 1: the mental health care system has failed them. So what
Speaker 1: this piece is saying right here, it's this system failed
Speaker 1: Jordan Neely, which had him on a train begging people
Speaker 1: for help, begging for a dollar. He was sick, and
Speaker 1: so then that day it's okay for murder to be
Speaker 1: committed and then use it as a ruse and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I was trying to help other passengers on the train.
Speaker 1: George Zimmerman too, said that he feared for his life
Speaker 1: when he killed sixteen year old Trayvon Martin. You can
Speaker 1: have your opinions, but we we literally have got to
Speaker 1: dig deeper and really understand the root of the root
Speaker 1: of what is happening here, what we are allowing ourselves
Speaker 1: to think of as normal. So the killing of a
Speaker 1: wealthy CEO, that's wrong. But the killing of Jordan Neely,
Speaker 1: that's okay. Our humanity is being tested right now. Our
Speaker 1: humanity is being tested by what it is that we
Speaker 1: allow to sit okay on our spirits. Those young people
Speaker 1: on the college campuses last year were being told that
Speaker 1: they were radical, they were Antifa, they were this and
Speaker 1: the other thing. Why because they care about what they
Speaker 1: are seeing come across their social media platforms. And what
Speaker 1: politicians were telling them is that no, no, it's okay
Speaker 1: to see bits and pieces of babies that have been
Speaker 1: blown apart. It's okay to bomb hospitals and universities, and
Speaker 1: that somehow calling out this massive destruction and murder somehow
Speaker 1: makes them the villains. That's extraordinarily insane. But we make
Speaker 1: we continue to make these little compromises. This system, this
Speaker 1: killing machine, this system, it continues to have us make
Speaker 1: these compromises. And in the meantime, folks, we are compromising ourselves,
Speaker 1: our humanity, and our values, and it is destroying us.
Speaker 1: It is destroying us. Elon Muss is now worth four
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars, four hundred billion dollars, and this is
Speaker 1: being celebrated as opposed to being questioned, no person should
Speaker 1: be worth as much as a fucking country. While there
Speaker 1: are people that are going hungry, while there are people
Speaker 1: that are on housed, while there are people that can't
Speaker 1: afford medication. And yet this is our new deity Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and this billionaire fucking oligarch class because they extract
Speaker 1: from us and then we turn around and then worship
Speaker 1: their wealth. Folks, Come on, come on, we have got
Speaker 1: to see the writing that is on the wall here.
Speaker 1: Reality TV. Let me go off on a tangent for
Speaker 1: a minute. Reality TV started where it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at these look at these poor SAPs, look at
Speaker 1: these folks, look at these people eating eyeballs, or look
Speaker 1: at these people living in trailer parks or what have you.
Speaker 1: And reality TV made us feel good about ourselves because
Speaker 1: we were not them. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it flipped the script and we went back to, you know,
Speaker 1: the lifestyle of the rich and famous, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, now we're watching the Real Housewives of This
Speaker 1: and the Kardashians and blah blah blah and Super Sweet sixteen.
Speaker 1: That and everything right was about materialism. How much can
Speaker 1: you amass? How much can you flaunch, so much so
Speaker 1: that several of those real housewives would end up bankrupt
Speaker 1: or in jail because everything was smoking, mirrors and a lie.
Speaker 1: But they knew that if they could trick the public
Speaker 1: into thinking that they were wealthy, because we worship wealth,
Speaker 1: then they would be able to trade on their brands,
Speaker 1: because we've been programmed into worshiping wealth because wealth is
Speaker 1: somehow equated with intelligence, with brilliance, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: being a really good fucking scammer or being able to
Speaker 1: turn your millions into billions. You know, I harken back
Speaker 1: to the film, the movie Wall Street, remember the original
Speaker 1: Wall Street, Gordon Gecko and greed is good. We were
Speaker 1: all fed that. That's how people said, whatever happened to
Speaker 1: the hippies, they turned into yuppies. They like nice things,
Speaker 1: and so you feed on that and you give more
Speaker 1: and more and more, and then you realize people aren'tsatiable.
Speaker 1: The more they have, the more they want. It wasn't
Speaker 1: enough to just have a mansion. Now you need all
Speaker 1: of these MC mansions. It wasn't enough to fly first class.
Speaker 1: Now you have a PJ, you have a private jet.
Speaker 1: Everything is about more and more and more, and so
Speaker 1: then you get here this piece that was in The
Speaker 1: Hill back in September, the Hill dot com billionaires started
Speaker 1: a class war. Americans must fight back. Let me say this,
Speaker 1: This is what the author writes. Wealth is not a
Speaker 1: moral failing, and Americans have long revered the entrepreneurial spirit
Speaker 1: that animates small business owners to build a modest fortune
Speaker 1: for themselves and their families. But a growing class of
Speaker 1: malignant oligarchs has initiated a campaign to exert unchallenged control
Speaker 1: over our democratic institutions and our economy. The war has
Speaker 1: already started, and the billionaires have a significant head start.
Speaker 1: He goes on to say, like a camp, sir, billionaire
Speaker 1: control is metastasizing in every facet of America's socio political
Speaker 1: and socioeconomic system. They control newspapers, television stations, and every
Speaker 1: major social media platform. Last year, we learned the extent
Speaker 1: of oligarchical control over our judiciary when it was revealed
Speaker 1: that a handful of billionaires were showering Supreme Court justices
Speaker 1: with lavish vacations and obscenely inappropriate gifts. And folks, what
Speaker 1: happened after the big reveal of how Clarence Thomas has
Speaker 1: a sugar daddy. How Justice Alido has a sugar dad.
Speaker 1: What happened not a goddamn thing. So we know that,
Speaker 1: for instance, Peter Thiel, multi billionaire right wing fascists, bought JD.
Speaker 1: Vance and installed him in the Senate. We know that
Speaker 1: Chief Justice John Roberts allowed for with the decision and
Speaker 1: Citizens United, an influx of overwhelming amount of money that
Speaker 1: now in order to run for office it costs a
Speaker 1: billion dollars plus. And now these people who have amassed
Speaker 1: as well, it's not enough for them to have money,
Speaker 1: money of like a small nation. No, now they want
Speaker 1: our democracy, they want everything. They want the justice system,
Speaker 1: they want Congress, they want the presidency, and with this
Speaker 1: incoming regime they have it all. And so when we
Speaker 1: sit back and we look at how we are continuing
Speaker 1: to be lied to, bamboozled, hustled out of our little
Speaker 1: bit of resource that we're trying to hold together like
Speaker 1: a bunch of squirrels, as they are fucking shaking the trees.
Speaker 1: And their goal is to continue to pit us against
Speaker 1: one another so that we remain fighting over the scraps
Speaker 1: and the artificial scarcity that they create. But now in
Speaker 1: order to ensure that we don't protest, that we don't
Speaker 1: rise up. They have the government too, folks. It is
Speaker 1: if Elon paid ninety percent taxes, he'd still have forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Is that not sick? I don't know if
Speaker 1: those exact numbers are right, but the fact is is
Speaker 1: that if he actually did fucking right and paid taxes,
Speaker 1: he'd still be a multi billionaire. His eleven fucking kids
Speaker 1: would still be taken care of, as well as their
Speaker 1: grandkids and their grandkids and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: But they're insatiable and there is never never enough. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: how did Donald Trump get into office this time lying
Speaker 1: to people about the economy, telling them that he alone
Speaker 1: can fix it? And then oh, well, last today is
Speaker 1: he's ringing in the bell for the stock exchange. What
Speaker 1: did he say, folks, Ooh, it's going to be very
Speaker 1: hard to lower grocery prices, the very thing that he
Speaker 1: told folks that he was going to do. But now
Speaker 1: he says, ooh, not going to be able to do that, right, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: And the post says, oh, maga got played. Everybody did
Speaker 1: who thought that Donald Trump was actually going to make
Speaker 1: good on any of his words? Donald Trump has said
Speaker 1: to everyone while he was running for a president that
Speaker 1: he was not interested in helping anyone, but it was
Speaker 1: okay because we all hate the same people. I tell
Speaker 1: you that it's a dark place. It's a dark place
Speaker 1: that we're in, But I often say that we've been
Speaker 1: here before. These are conversations that have been had, and
Speaker 1: so I want to bring up. This is an excerpt
Speaker 1: from a piece that Frederick Douglas wrote for The Northern Star,
Speaker 1: and he said this, let me give you a word
Speaker 1: of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the
Speaker 1: progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made
Speaker 1: to her August claims have been born of earnest struggle.
Speaker 1: If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those
Speaker 1: who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are
Speaker 1: men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want
Speaker 1: rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without
Speaker 1: the roar of its mighty waters. The struggle may be
Speaker 1: a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
Speaker 1: or it may both moral and physical, but it must
Speaker 1: be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never
Speaker 1: has and it never will find out just what a
Speaker 1: people will submit to, And you have found out the
Speaker 1: exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed
Speaker 1: upon them. And these will continue till they are resisted
Speaker 1: with either words or blows, or with both. The limits
Speaker 1: of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom
Speaker 1: they oppress. In the light of these ideas, negroes will
Speaker 1: be hunted in the north and held and flogged at
Speaker 1: in the south, so long as they submit to those
Speaker 1: devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical.
Speaker 1: Men may not get all they pay for in this world,
Speaker 1: but they must certainly pay for all they get. If
Speaker 1: we ever get free from the oppression and wrongs heaped
Speaker 1: upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must
Speaker 1: do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if
Speaker 1: need be, by our lives and the lives of others.
Speaker 1: This is Frederick Douglas y'all completely different time, completely different century,
Speaker 1: and yet offering the same truth. Greed right. But if
Speaker 1: you can have people locked up in struggle, if you
Speaker 1: can figure out the social engineering and just how to oppress,
Speaker 1: and what they will take, and if you give them
Speaker 1: a little bit of scraps, if you give white people
Speaker 1: a little bit more then black people, then oh, they'll
Speaker 1: continue to go along with the get along the oppression
Speaker 1: and the racism because they think that they are within
Speaker 1: reach of Elon Musk, They're in within reach of Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: just one lottery ticket away, one wish away, and so
Speaker 1: they continue to give the people their oppressors the power
Speaker 1: to step on their necks. This is why I say
Speaker 1: that this moment is not calling for us to follow
Speaker 1: the bouncing ball and all the distractions that this second
Speaker 1: Trump regime are going to usher in. It is asking
Speaker 1: us folks to dig deeper to get to the actual
Speaker 1: truth of the matter. I am not saying that wealth
Speaker 1: is bad. I am saying that greed is I am
Speaker 1: saying that being celebrated for your thievery is the problem
Speaker 1: that worshiping wealth. While most Americans can barely pull together
Speaker 1: emergency funding, an emergency saving not because they don't work hard,
Speaker 1: but because the system has been rigged for them to
Speaker 1: remain on an absolute fucking hamster wheel. And so long
Speaker 1: as you keep running and just trying to keep your
Speaker 1: head above water, you don't have time to really question
Speaker 1: and on earth and dig down into how you got
Speaker 1: into that situation in the first place, because all of
Speaker 1: the messages are telling you that you are the problem
Speaker 1: and not the system, because the system is too big
Speaker 1: to fix. We are in a time of a great reveal.
Speaker 1: And there was at one time a young rapper and
Speaker 1: also a poet who offered up a lot of hard
Speaker 1: truths about America that folks didn't want to hear. And
Speaker 1: arguably there are courses taught about his critique and a
Speaker 1: now on America, and that is Tupac Shakur. And I
Speaker 1: want to offer one of the most famous lines, got
Speaker 1: money for war, but can't be the poor. Tupac Shakur,
Speaker 1: a child of a black panther, offered a deep critique
Speaker 1: on America using rap music. Rap music be nothing more
Speaker 1: than poetry put two intense beats about the human experience.
Speaker 1: Tupac talks about the fact that how can we live
Speaker 1: in a society where there are billionaires, where somebody can
Speaker 1: be worth And at the time of this right he
Speaker 1: was talking about like forty billion dollars. I just showed
Speaker 1: you four hundred billion dollars somebody being worth, and he's saying,
Speaker 1: how is it that we can live in a society
Speaker 1: where somebody can have forty billion dollars and people are
Speaker 1: on hous that you can walk past people that are
Speaker 1: begging on the street that have nothing, and you have
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars in your pocket and you throw them
Speaker 1: twenty five cents, And yet you want to judge how
Speaker 1: they're spending that money. He said, if you want to
Speaker 1: drink it, drink it. If you want to shoot it up,
Speaker 1: shoot it up. What you do is your business. But
Speaker 1: we would all have more if we thought in the collective,
Speaker 1: if we thought about actually what it is that it
Speaker 1: means to be part of a whole, and not find
Speaker 1: ourselves thinking that we are better right because we have
Speaker 1: a little bit more money than the person that is begging. Folks,
Speaker 1: it is just one emergency. We are just one emergency,
Speaker 1: one disaster, one tragedy away from having our handout and
Speaker 1: relying on the kindness of strangers. That's the situation that
Speaker 1: the insatiable greed of the one percent has put America in.
Speaker 1: And now they are getting ready to take control and
Speaker 1: power over everything, and if we do not stand united
Speaker 1: in this moment, in this time, they will succeed. But
Speaker 1: as we continue to say that no one right can
Speaker 1: make you inferior without your fucking consent. So we cannot
Speaker 1: fall for folks the lie that tells us that somehow,
Speaker 1: because we have a little bit more than the person
Speaker 1: next to us, that somehow we are better. We're not.
Speaker 1: And things are going to get harder because they're purposefully
Speaker 1: being constructed in that way, because a desperate people and
Speaker 1: an ignorant people are a malleable people. A desperate people
Speaker 1: and an ignorant people are a malleable people because you
Speaker 1: do not have the energy to withstand their blows, so
Speaker 1: you cower in defense before they even raise their hands.
Speaker 1: So we have to decide in this moment how we
Speaker 1: are going to respond, What are we going to do,
Speaker 1: What are we going to allow? They already have a
Speaker 1: head start, They have the courts, they bought them, they
Speaker 1: bought this president. But they don't have all of us,
Speaker 1: and I would argue that they don't even have half
Speaker 1: of us. So how we move forward, how we move forward,
Speaker 1: is going to determine whether or not America succeeds, whether
Speaker 1: or not we're able to actually hold on for dear life.
Speaker 1: And frankly, let's be real, whether or not the scraps
Speaker 1: that we are holding onto are even worth it because
Speaker 1: we need radical change. We don't need incremental progress anymore,
Speaker 1: because everything that we have fed been fed has been
Speaker 1: a fucking lie. And the work here, the work left,
Speaker 1: is too unpack it and deliver that message to those
Speaker 1: that have buried their heads in the sand. I do
Speaker 1: want to read you this poem. And she wrote it
Speaker 1: about Tupac. She wrote it about this messenger and his
Speaker 1: critique of America. All Eyes on You by Nikki Giovanni
Speaker 1: for Tupac Shakur, nineteen seventy one to nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: As I tossed and turned, unable to achieve sleep, unable
Speaker 1: to control anxiety, unable to comprehend why Tupac is not
Speaker 1: with us. If those who lived by the sword died
Speaker 1: by the sword, there would be no white men on earth.
Speaker 1: If those who lived on hatred died on hatred, there
Speaker 1: would be no KKK. If those who lived by lies
Speaker 1: and died by lies, there would be nobody on Wall Street,
Speaker 1: in executive suites, in academic offices, instructing the young. Don't
Speaker 1: tell me he got what he deserved. He deserved a
Speaker 1: chariot and the accolades of a grateful people. He deserved
Speaker 1: his life. It is as clear as a mountain stream,
Speaker 1: as defining as a lightning strike, as terrifying as sun
Speaker 1: to vampires. Tupac told the truth. There were those who
Speaker 1: called it dirty, gangsta rap, inciting. There were those who
Speaker 1: never wanted to be angry at the conditions, but angry
Speaker 1: at the messenger who reported, your kitchen has roaches, your
Speaker 1: toilet is overflowing, your basement has so much water, the
Speaker 1: rats are in the living room. Your house is in disorder.
Speaker 1: And Tupac told you about it. What a beautiful boy,
Speaker 1: graceful carriage, melodic voice, sharp wit, intellectual breath. What a
Speaker 1: beautiful boy to lose? That is one of her most
Speaker 1: just poignant in the moment critique on America. You see,
Speaker 1: the powerful always go after the messengers. They try and
Speaker 1: make examples of them, They try and silence them. They
Speaker 1: call them traders, they call them terrorists, they call them liars,
Speaker 1: They try and slander them for doing nothing more than
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Because the truth really will set us free.
Speaker 1: Knowledge really is power. It is the ability to think,
Speaker 1: to ask questions and what the powers that be. What
Speaker 1: they don't want now, for certain, is for you to
Speaker 1: be questioning. You just need to go along with the
Speaker 1: get along. You just need to live in the age
Speaker 1: of cover your own ass. You need to be the
Speaker 1: Christopher Ray that resigns in advance. You need to be
Speaker 1: the Joe Biden that says welcome back. You need to
Speaker 1: be the Representative Clyburne that says, oh, but give him
Speaker 1: a pardon so we can have a clean slate. This
Speaker 1: place will never be clean because it was born out
Speaker 1: of blood and violence and torture and lies. So the
Speaker 1: way to fight back is by uncovering the truth. The
Speaker 1: way to fight back is to sharpen your intellect, is
Speaker 1: to be able to critique and to share what you learn.
Speaker 1: That's how you fight back. I say, start a book club,
Speaker 1: start a band book club. My call to action today,
Speaker 1: dear friends, as I close out, is this. I'm in
Speaker 1: the midst of rereading James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time,
Speaker 1: and I have to tell you it is a short read,
Speaker 1: small read, but it is so dense, so rich, so brutal,
Speaker 1: and so my call to action is to pick up Baldwin,
Speaker 1: pick up Nikki Giovanni's work. Their words use them as food,
Speaker 1: as fuel, as nourishment. We are heading into extraordinarily dark times,
Speaker 1: and we need to be as full of the truth
Speaker 1: using our ancestors, these ancestors, these thought leaders, these guides,
Speaker 1: these spiritual torches, these lights as our guides. So what
Speaker 1: I say today, my call to action is to read.
Speaker 1: Read the words of those who you were never taught about.
Speaker 1: Go down a rabbit hole and wrap yourself in the
Speaker 1: words of Nikki Giovanni. She blew my mind away at sixteen.
Speaker 1: It was the same with Baldwin. It was the same
Speaker 1: with Frederick Douglas. But ask yourself why the big the
Speaker 1: greatest revolutionaries you don't know about but stumble on, ask
Speaker 1: them why they give you the sanitized versions of these people.
Speaker 1: It's okay to recite Martin Luther King, but we ignore
Speaker 1: Malcolm X. It's okay for them to want to lift
Speaker 1: up the Confederacy as their history and deny us the
Speaker 1: black panthers that actually brought literacy programs in free food
Speaker 1: and medicine to the black community when the white government
Speaker 1: was denying black people care. They have made librarians the
Speaker 1: most dangerous people on the planet. Right now, arm yourself
Speaker 1: with the truth, open your mind, find yourself into a bookstore, say,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for Nikki Giovanni, I'm looking for Baldwin, I'm
Speaker 1: looking for Tony Morrison. I'm looking for people whose names
Speaker 1: I don't even know why, because you are on a search.
Speaker 1: You're on a hunt for the truth, because you're tired
Speaker 1: of being lied to. So wild books are still with us,
Speaker 1: and while as Erica Baidu says, it's still legal to think,
Speaker 1: fill yourself with as much truth as you possibly can
Speaker 1: because you are going to be inundated with lies. And
Speaker 1: we need to ground ourselves because the tsunami of fuckery
Speaker 1: that is headed our way will have us wondering which
Speaker 1: way is up and which way is down. Our knowledge
Speaker 1: is our power. That is it for me today, dear
Speaker 1: friends on Woke af AS always, power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.