Speaker 1: This episode is sponsored by FX's Fleischman Is in Trouble,
Speaker 1: starring Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Lizzie Kaplan, and Adam Brodie.
Speaker 1: The strama tells the story of recently divorced Toby Fleischmann,
Speaker 1: who dies into the world of at based dating with
Speaker 1: the kind of success he never had in his youth.
Speaker 1: Then his ex wife disappears, leaving him with their two
Speaker 1: children and no hint of her return effectus. Fleischman Is
Speaker 1: in Trouble, streaming November seventeenth only on Hulu. Greetings and
Speaker 1: welcome to Woke f with me Danielle Moodye. This past week,
Speaker 1: we saw a major shift in American politics with the
Speaker 1: long awaited inauguration of President Joe Biden. But we still
Speaker 1: have a long road ahead of us to get to
Speaker 1: a place of justice and equality in this country. One
Speaker 1: path we need to take in pursuit of justice is
Speaker 1: the impeachment trial of the former twice impeached President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday's episode of Woke a F Daily, which you
Speaker 1: can hear right now at patreon dot com slash woke AF,
Speaker 1: I had the honor and privilege of speaking with one
Speaker 1: of our nation's impeachment managers. Congresswoman Stacy Plaskett about her
Speaker 1: role in impeachment and why Trump needs to be convicted
Speaker 1: even after leaving office. I have to tell you I've
Speaker 1: really thrown myself into work, and the work that I'm
Speaker 1: doing I think is so incredibly important as an impeachment manager.
Speaker 1: And Jamie Raskin's words, I saw him on Cable News
Speaker 1: yesterday when he said he lost his son in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and he'll be damned if he loses his country
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. You know, I have had the
Speaker 1: good fortune of also speaking with Representative Raskin and to
Speaker 1: think about how committed, you know, you have to be
Speaker 1: to this country, to the constitution, to this democracy, to
Speaker 1: be able to push through the unspeakable trauma of losing
Speaker 1: a child to now working so desperately not to lose
Speaker 1: a country. Can you talk to us about what it
Speaker 1: is like to be an impeachment manager, what has come
Speaker 1: up for you as a representative but also as you know,
Speaker 1: just a believer in democracy, a believer in institution. Right, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, my legal career began in the Bronx District
Speaker 1: Attorney's office, which is kind of a trial by fireplace.
Speaker 1: You're given a week of training and then you're sent
Speaker 1: assigned to a courtroom and giving a stack of cases.
Speaker 1: And you know, people pride themselves there on being very
Speaker 1: fast paced, my core, weekend, core, complaint room, the whole bit.
Speaker 1: And so I kind of took this the same way
Speaker 1: of just throwing myself into it. But one of maybe
Speaker 1: the things that as well comes as a bronch district
Speaker 1: attorney is being very i have to say, unemotional about
Speaker 1: criminal trial and just getting to the facts and to justice.
Speaker 1: And I've really tried to be this way in working
Speaker 1: through how we are going to present this case. Is
Speaker 1: not getting caught up in the emotion of what we
Speaker 1: all experience, but how do we prove the elements of
Speaker 1: the crime place on January and leading up to January sixth, Right,
Speaker 1: because January sixth was the fulfillment of a conspiracy or
Speaker 1: throw this government. Insurrection doesn't occur at the beginning of
Speaker 1: an individual's time and office. It occurs at the end.
Speaker 1: And this is classic to what our founding fathers anticipated
Speaker 1: when they were drafting the Constitution and discussed impeachment while
Speaker 1: an impeachment was going on in England while they were
Speaker 1: having the conversation about putting impeachment, because impeachment is two parts. One,
Speaker 1: it is removing that individual from the clear and present
Speaker 1: danger that they present, but it is also preventing that
Speaker 1: individual or individuals from ever being able again to do that.
Speaker 1: It's qualification of the person from being able to run
Speaker 1: for office, from receiving the trappings of what we give
Speaker 1: those individuals who were our former presidents. That doesn't just
Speaker 1: include the tax player, social Security, retirement pay staff and
Speaker 1: the others. It includes briefings. Right say, right, do we
Speaker 1: want this individual to continue to have access to the
Speaker 1: leavers of power knowing what he will do to retain
Speaker 1: power for himself. Those are the reasons that we are
Speaker 1: having in this drib. Tell me what is different between
Speaker 1: the one article that we are looking at right now,
Speaker 1: which is incitement and insurrection, correct, versus what we were
Speaker 1: looking at in twenty nineteen, which was obstruction of justice? Right?
Speaker 1: What are the what are the what are the impeachment
Speaker 1: one point zero and now impeaching two point zero? Right?
Speaker 1: Two point zero is always bigger better. The differences is
Speaker 1: that we've all seen the crime. M hmm. The difference
Speaker 1: is that not only were we all witnesses, but that
Speaker 1: the jurors were actually victims of the crime. That is
Speaker 1: going to be the difference in how this is presented,
Speaker 1: And the issue is now for these senators. If they
Speaker 1: are able as victims and continuing ongoing victims, as they
Speaker 1: are threatened right by this president and by those conspirators
Speaker 1: who were with them with him, are they able to
Speaker 1: transcend that or to be protected from that, to be
Speaker 1: able to render a verdict? Our nation's future is at stake.
Speaker 1: Are we going to hold a white supremacist demagogue accountable
Speaker 1: for his crimes against our country? And if not, what
Speaker 1: does that say about America? But to be honest, white
Speaker 1: supremacy is in our legacy and lineage, going back before
Speaker 1: the founding of our nation. I was also joined this
Speaker 1: week by the amazing Robert Jones Junior aka son of Baldwin,
Speaker 1: author of the new brilliant novel The Prophets. In addition
Speaker 1: to talking all about the long journey that led to
Speaker 1: the creation of his first novel, Robert also discussed how
Speaker 1: white supremist patriarchy is tied to the legacy of slavery
Speaker 1: and the long held suppression of black queer love. It
Speaker 1: was an enlightening and emotional conversation which you can hear
Speaker 1: all thirty minutes of right now at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Woke af Here's a taste of what we talked about.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that it is still so difficult?
Speaker 1: We're talking twenty first century, so many decades removed from
Speaker 1: Harlem Renaissance, from these different iconic moments for us to
Speaker 1: talk still about black queer love for that question, for
Speaker 1: you still to ask that question, what about? And I
Speaker 1: would even say what about our love? Right right? Because
Speaker 1: there are so many answers to the what about love?
Speaker 1: People will point to what they believe to be representations
Speaker 1: of love, But I say, what about our love? What
Speaker 1: is it about black queer love that is still something
Speaker 1: that is so underground, that is still so wanting and
Speaker 1: still seem so fictational? I know when I was doing
Speaker 1: the research, everything pointed to Christian indoctrination because when listeners
Speaker 1: might not know. But there are several chapters in a
Speaker 1: novel that go back to pre colonial Africa to discuss
Speaker 1: what life was like for pre colonial continental Africans in
Speaker 1: terms of gender and sexuality and such. It is not
Speaker 1: until the European colonizer and the Christian missionaries show up
Speaker 1: to many of these African tribes that we begin to
Speaker 1: look at things that we deemed a normal part of
Speaker 1: the landscape, a normal part of life, as sinful and disgusting,
Speaker 1: and then internalize those feelings as almost to say that
Speaker 1: they rose up out of themselves. And I tie it
Speaker 1: very closely to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the desire to
Speaker 1: ensure that each black person is basically a machine to
Speaker 1: make more laborers and soldiers, So it needs to be
Speaker 1: in these heterosexual paradigms, under these rape cultures in order
Speaker 1: to produce more laborers and soldiers for the overseers and
Speaker 1: the plantation owners. And that trauma has really affected the
Speaker 1: way in which black queer people are regarded and the
Speaker 1: ways in which we are able to be free about
Speaker 1: our love and care for one another. And it is deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply sad. But I hope that with a confrontation we
Speaker 1: could get to restoration and then eventually to healing. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I can remember, and I still there are
Speaker 1: some sites that, you know, celebrate black queer life right
Speaker 1: some you know, there are so many on Instagram. I
Speaker 1: think Native Suns is one of them that my friend
Speaker 1: of Meal and he says, and when years as well
Speaker 1: created because he has always been a visionary about the
Speaker 1: power of images, right, and the power of those images
Speaker 1: to transform our perception, our stereotypes, ourselves through those pictures. Right.
Speaker 1: And I think about the way in which your writing
Speaker 1: creates this beautiful cinema in our minds of what we
Speaker 1: can see and smell and taste and connect with in
Speaker 1: such a brutal period of our history, you were able
Speaker 1: to articulate something that was also beautiful. How do you
Speaker 1: find you know? You know what I'm saying, because even
Speaker 1: in these moments, Robert, it is so hard to find
Speaker 1: the beauty and the tragedy. Yes, but it was so
Speaker 1: necessary because what I realized when I was writing this
Speaker 1: book was the pain, the physical pain I was feeling
Speaker 1: on my skin as I was writing some of these scenes.
Speaker 1: I said, the reader is going to feel this thing too.
Speaker 1: So I have to imbue as much love and compassion
Speaker 1: for this situation and for these characters, particularly the black characters,
Speaker 1: as I can, because I have to remember, I'm writing
Speaker 1: for the ancestors like this, this is a witnessing. I
Speaker 1: am giving testimony on behalf of the people who survived
Speaker 1: so that I could be here to do what was
Speaker 1: illegal for them to do, read and write, And so
Speaker 1: I had to ensure that their lives were as full
Speaker 1: as they really were, because when we whenever we think
Speaker 1: of this time period, we only think of the labor
Speaker 1: m and the brutality that they faced, But we don't
Speaker 1: think about how they loved and who they loved, and
Speaker 1: what made them laugh and when they went to bed,
Speaker 1: where they dream about. You know, these were people. They
Speaker 1: were not slaves. They were people, and slavery was not
Speaker 1: their burden. Slavery is the burden of the white people
Speaker 1: who enslaved them. And that's the only reason why white
Speaker 1: characters show up in this book is because I wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that the sin rested with the sinner,
Speaker 1: and the sinner and in my mind, are the white
Speaker 1: people who enslaved our ancestors. White supremacy is not in
Speaker 1: the past. Patriarchy is not in the past. Homophobia is
Speaker 1: not in the past. The same forces that oppressed us
Speaker 1: from hundreds of years are still working out in the
Speaker 1: open to this very day. It's up to us to
Speaker 1: fight back to create a better world and sustainable future
Speaker 1: for ourselves and for those that come after us. These
Speaker 1: are the kinds of conversations I will continue to have
Speaker 1: this year on woke F daily. So please head over
Speaker 1: to patreon dot com slash woke F and subscribe so
Speaker 1: you don't miss a single moment. Five dollars a month
Speaker 1: gets you five shows a week, as well as some
Speaker 1: bonus content, so you get a lot of me every
Speaker 1: single month. For now. I hope you stay safe and
Speaker 1: well as we enter into this new era of what
Speaker 1: America can be. Power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.