Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, Recording from the Home Bunker.
Speaker 1: The folks, I'm excited about on today's conversation, which is
Speaker 1: uh will be coming up shortly with Justin Lofton, who
Speaker 1: was recently elected to local office in Mississippi. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you you're going to want to
Speaker 1: listen to this interview because what is surprising about Justin
Speaker 1: is one, he is young, he is black, and he
Speaker 1: is also openly bisexual. Those are not the things that
Speaker 1: we think about when we necessarily think about Mississippi and
Speaker 1: a new elected official. So his story is coming up
Speaker 1: on how he made what many would thing to be
Speaker 1: the impossible possible. But before we get into that conversation,
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about a couple of things.
Speaker 2: Which is first George Santos, like, what a fucking disaster
Speaker 2: of a human being. Twenty three charges I think that
Speaker 2: he has against him now finds himself on cameo, which
Speaker 2: is a site that you can go to to get
Speaker 2: celebrities from A to apparently Z record messages for you
Speaker 2: for fee. And George Santos clearly hasn't grifted enough because
Speaker 2: he's recently joined that platform, which I'm like, who the
Speaker 2: fuck is gonna pay? But maybe people will and it'll
Speaker 2: be like a funny joke, but the joke will be
Speaker 2: on you, because what you're doing is just continuing to
Speaker 2: fund somebody like this. The other piece about George Santos
Speaker 2: is that you know he now that he's gone, makes
Speaker 2: the Republicans very very very paper thin majority even slimmer,
Speaker 2: and I think that we would all do ourselves a
Speaker 2: good service by looking at his expulsion as an opportunity
Speaker 2: to regain the House from the least functional House of
Speaker 2: Representative session since the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it. That's what's coming out of news reports,
Speaker 1: which should be embarrassing, but apparently it takes an outward
Speaker 1: grifter like George Santos to make the Republicans move from
Speaker 1: their Orange Jesus worshiping into recognizing that maybe this guy
Speaker 1: is not the vibe that we want for our party.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to me that they can expel Santos, who
Speaker 1: basically would not have existed if not for Donald Trump
Speaker 1: being the blueprint on how to fucking grift off of
Speaker 1: your constituents, right like Donald Trump, president former twice impeached,
Speaker 1: multiply indicted former president of the United States used his
Speaker 1: hotel that was in walking distance to the White House
Speaker 1: as a way to use his political influence to gain
Speaker 1: monetarily right for both himself and his kids. But like, oh,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about George Santos's ethics violations, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, Donald Trump has a bevy of them, but
Speaker 1: we don't pay attention to that. It's just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I want to say that it's hypocrisy at
Speaker 1: its best, but I mean, that's what the Republican Party does. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: George Santos is out. Maybe you'll see him or get
Speaker 1: a cameo video for the Happy Holidays or Hanukkah where
Speaker 1: he'll say something to the effect of happy Jewish Holiday.
Speaker 1: What a piece of trash, but so perfectly associated with
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, and you know who they are, who
Speaker 1: they are and what they embrace. Sadly, Matt Gates is
Speaker 1: so upset that Republicans wouldn't let this play out because
Speaker 1: winning is more important than having any type of integrity
Speaker 1: or values. But you know, does this shock anyone coming
Speaker 1: from Matt Gates props not so coming up next, Dear friends,
Speaker 1: my interview with Justin Loft it. I hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, Folks.
Speaker 1: I am very excited to welcome to OKF Daily for
Speaker 1: the first time, a newly elected Justin Locksim, who will
Speaker 1: start your tenure as the next Pike County District one
Speaker 1: supervisor in January of twenty twenty four and it'll be
Speaker 1: a four year term. And what is amazing aside from
Speaker 1: I mean, as I was going through the bio, I
Speaker 1: said in Mississippi.
Speaker 3: Got elective, we sure first out black bisexual man who unseated,
Speaker 3: by the way, a twenty four year incumbent, Is that correct,
Speaker 3: a twenty four year incumbent in McComb, Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Talk to me first of all about McComb, Mississippi, and
Speaker 2: then why you decided to run and think you winning
Speaker 2: was possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for that, and first thank you for
Speaker 4: having me on.
Speaker 5: I want to say that I truly appreciate this forum
Speaker 5: to share space. So McCombe is located in Pike County
Speaker 5: and Pikee County is a proximate about thirteen thousand people,
Speaker 5: and so with this particular seat, it actually is not
Speaker 5: only the city of Macombe, but also the town of
Speaker 5: Summit as well. Everything that kind of lies, what I
Speaker 5: would say, in the more.
Speaker 4: Eastern part of the county and so that little region.
Speaker 5: And what really inspired me to run for office was
Speaker 5: when I drove around my community. It's a simple fact
Speaker 5: that it did not look like the way it used
Speaker 5: to be. And I started to question whether we were
Speaker 5: electing the person or whether we were electing.
Speaker 4: The purpose in our community.
Speaker 5: And I think as I continued to dig and do
Speaker 5: research and really try to figure out, like, Okay, here
Speaker 5: are these factors that could be against me if I
Speaker 5: decided to run, But what are the opposition details that
Speaker 5: I could utilize to figure out like where my opponent
Speaker 5: is weak and maybe why our community looks the way
Speaker 5: it looks. And as I Doug, I began to uncover
Speaker 5: his lack of responsibility or accountability. We're completing road inventory
Speaker 5: reports and if you drive on our roads, they're dilapidating
Speaker 5: right beneath us. Potholes everywhere in a mostly black community,
Speaker 5: and we expect our black leaders to show up.
Speaker 4: For us when we elect them you look at the businesses.
Speaker 5: That are in the middle of our community that we're
Speaker 5: black owned. At one point they no longer really exist,
Speaker 5: with the exception of two of them. And of course,
Speaker 5: in our part of our community, we have our own
Speaker 5: little community ecosystem, our economic system as well. Where that
Speaker 5: business drives employment, it drives opportunities for families in their areas,
Speaker 5: access to nutrition and gas and important resources and necessities.
Speaker 5: So I begin to look at that and the economic
Speaker 5: development factors, and I said, well, I have nothing to lose.
Speaker 5: It's never been my passion to run for office. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, I can't expect change to happen
Speaker 5: if I'm not willing to step up myself and be
Speaker 5: the change.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that, first of all, you grew
Speaker 1: up in this area, right, so you have your own
Speaker 1: perspective and insight on how things were and what they
Speaker 1: look like. Now, give us some idea of you mentioned
Speaker 1: a mostly black so give us some idea of the demographics.
Speaker 1: And you know, as you're beginning to think about your opponent,
Speaker 1: how your being a part of the LGBTQ community could
Speaker 1: be seen as a death set right, as a blockade
Speaker 1: to you being able to win this seat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for that question. So my district, which
Speaker 4: is District one, is comprised of about.
Speaker 5: Sixty eight to seventy percent Black people.
Speaker 4: Majority of those folks are Democrats.
Speaker 5: The district has since expanded to create opportunities for more
Speaker 5: educated and more diverse groups of people to be a
Speaker 5: part of our district, but still heavily Democratic. Most of
Speaker 5: the folks that live in our district, not all of them,
Speaker 5: but a good number of them are more distressed. So
Speaker 5: you'll see a lot of apartment communities that are some
Speaker 5: ways shape or form dilapidating things of that nature. You'll
Speaker 5: see a lot of families in our community that may
Speaker 5: be benefiting from much needed social insurance programs that are
Speaker 5: helping them to stay above while they pulled themselves up
Speaker 5: by the bootstrap. And so, given the context of the
Speaker 5: environment that I live in and where I come from,
Speaker 5: it's very hard for anyone from the LGBTQ community to run,
Speaker 5: and especially when but I decided that when I ran,
Speaker 5: I was going to run very hard, and I was
Speaker 5: gonna put every resource I had into it, including moving
Speaker 5: savings out of my account to make it happen. So
Speaker 5: I was fifteen thousand dollars campaign altogether, which is big
Speaker 5: for my type of race. But that being said, some
Speaker 5: of the challenges that I felt like I faced was
Speaker 5: that my opponent would certainly use my sexuality against me
Speaker 5: as political ammunition to say why I'm not.
Speaker 4: The right ca for the job.
Speaker 5: That he would utilize the fact that my job was
Speaker 5: one of those jobs that really had me travel some
Speaker 5: contractually to do work, and that oh, I'm not from here,
Speaker 5: I don't pay taxes here, and lo and behold, that's.
Speaker 4: Exactly what happened.
Speaker 5: In fact, there is this one instance where my opponent actually.
Speaker 4: Was around my dad.
Speaker 5: My dad walked up to him and just wanted to
Speaker 5: have a general conversation about you know, hey, I don't
Speaker 5: appreciate you, you know, really coming at my son the
Speaker 5: way that you're doing it.
Speaker 4: You know, can we tone.
Speaker 5: Down that type of rhetoric, the narrative that you're presenting
Speaker 5: and just run on our platforms. He gets upset with
Speaker 5: my dad and it becomes this really aggressive.
Speaker 4: Thing and he reaches for a gun and tells me
Speaker 4: a punk ass bagget in the process. No, and so
Speaker 4: here I am.
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, here's this twenty four year incumbent who
Speaker 5: is supposed to be representative of all the people, who
Speaker 5: is also seventy four years old at the time, got
Speaker 5: in when he was fifty one, and he lacks the
Speaker 5: very basic principle of respect and equality and equity for
Speaker 5: the mere existence of a person of my lifestyle where
Speaker 5: I come from, and so I knew those are going
Speaker 5: to be barriers, but I didn't let those things stop me.
Speaker 5: I actually utilized that as motivation to work twice as hard.
Speaker 5: If you're going to come at me, I'm the type
Speaker 5: of gonna be jazz and that's just how I see things,
Speaker 5: And so it didn't deter me. Of course, my feelings
Speaker 5: were hurt because I really looked up to him throughout
Speaker 5: the years as a pillar in our community.
Speaker 4: So to have you say those things, it was super hurtful.
Speaker 2: But also he put his hand on his gun and
Speaker 2: said those things like that's that's an attempted hate crime, right,
Speaker 2: like that's not so just I mean and aside, but
Speaker 2: not really did you press any charges or did.
Speaker 4: You just well, he didn't do it to me. He
Speaker 4: did it dad, reaching your dad.
Speaker 2: Okay, this you weren't there, Yeah.
Speaker 5: This is regurgitated information to me from the people who
Speaker 5: were around the scene.
Speaker 2: At the got it.
Speaker 1: I mean that is but that that type of vehement hate,
Speaker 1: right that, like your father is saying, can't you run on?
Speaker 1: Like you twenty four years you would think that you
Speaker 1: have a platform to run on, right, but most likely
Speaker 1: haven't been challenged in all that time in any considerable way.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that gets me so angry, is that
Speaker 1: what I realize is you know, and you're saying this
Speaker 1: is a largely democratic place, that this is not. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about oh, this republican said X, Y and Z, right,
Speaker 1: like this is somebody that supposedly has the same political
Speaker 1: affiliation as you do, but was using your sexual orientation
Speaker 1: as a way to demean and potentially threaten you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when you were deciding to double down, right, to
Speaker 1: knock on more doors and to create a platform, you know,
Speaker 1: what were some of your constituents' pauses? And then what
Speaker 1: were who the people obviously event you know, did have
Speaker 1: your back because you're you know, newly elected and will
Speaker 1: begin your term. But talk to us about some of
Speaker 1: you know, what would you come face to face with
Speaker 1: when you were door knocking.
Speaker 5: Honestly, to my surprise, I was actually a welcome face. Now,
Speaker 5: I think more of the pushback came from, here's this
Speaker 5: young person, and we've had another young person to run
Speaker 5: for office. I think he got elected at age of
Speaker 5: twenty one and he was elected as to city council,
Speaker 5: and he, in my opinion, lacked a level of mature
Speaker 5: to show up in the space, which caused some friction
Speaker 5: and it turned some of the voters away from you
Speaker 5: letting young people. And so a lot of the question was, well,
Speaker 5: how are you going to be different than this young person?
Speaker 5: What makes you qualified? And in our community, yes, it's who.
Speaker 4: Your mom and them. Well you're going to church it you.
Speaker 5: Know, that's the southern thing. And so it was being
Speaker 5: able to name drop, Oh my dad is so, and so,
Speaker 5: my family is this, and that allowed the welcome conversation.
Speaker 4: But I didn't see.
Speaker 5: Those things as really like a barrier to connect with people,
Speaker 5: because my approach wasn't about all these identities that I
Speaker 5: bring to the table. My approach was coming to folks,
Speaker 5: not trying to sell myself, but to listen, after listen
Speaker 5: to the interviews, how my name is justin Lawton. If
Speaker 5: you have a I want to know what you care
Speaker 5: about in our community and some ideas that you may
Speaker 5: have to fix it. And people will let you sit
Speaker 5: on their porch and on their couch and they talk
Speaker 5: to you about it, and that's when you introduce, Well,
Speaker 5: I'm running for this office and I love to have
Speaker 5: your support, and this is the plan that I've come
Speaker 5: up with.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Of course I have my general kind of platform and plan,
Speaker 5: but in these conversations I'm able to really gather additional
Speaker 5: ideas or solutions from the people. That way, it's for
Speaker 5: them and buy them and they can see me putting
Speaker 5: their ideas and pin to paper in the process of
Speaker 5: it as well to expand those platform ideas. So not
Speaker 5: too many barriers in that sense of the voters. And
Speaker 5: I'll be honest with you, not a lot of them
Speaker 5: ask me about my sexuality.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: You know, the south right has been very much and
Speaker 1: offices outside of national offices. I think Democrats in general
Speaker 1: have not paid attention to right. When we're talking about
Speaker 1: school boards and city councils and superintendents and these things,
Speaker 1: Democrats have allowed those spaces, in my humble opinion, to
Speaker 1: just go by the wayside, let us concentrate on who's
Speaker 1: in Congress and who's in the White House. What message
Speaker 1: do you give to folks you know that they need
Speaker 1: to pay attention to these offices and not let them go.
Speaker 1: And why it is important for folks who continually look,
Speaker 1: you know, what can I do? How can I be
Speaker 1: of service? What should I do? Why it's important for
Speaker 1: them to run for offices like yours.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think it goes back to a basic
Speaker 5: ended lesson for me is that what happens locally is
Speaker 5: then what also impacts us nationally. And I say that
Speaker 5: for those who might be interested in running, because oftentimes
Speaker 5: people look at DC or what's happening at the state
Speaker 5: level as like the major things. They don't recognize that
Speaker 5: the infrastructure money that's disseminated down from DC to the
Speaker 5: state is then disseminated down to the counties for disbursement
Speaker 5: for their everyday resources for them to have.
Speaker 4: Safe and reliable roads and bridges to drive on.
Speaker 5: They don't think about how the federal dollars come down
Speaker 5: for Tana for our assistance benefits for people in our community,
Speaker 5: and how our state legislature is. Yes, they're disseminating money down,
Speaker 5: but it's also the role of the county and the
Speaker 5: city government to create an equitable quality of life. Sometimes
Speaker 5: streamlining those funds are creating access to those services and
Speaker 5: funds as well. And so I think if any pop
Speaker 5: body is going to run, they have to be able
Speaker 5: to paint the road map about how all these things
Speaker 5: kind of really meld together and how each whether it's
Speaker 5: the down ballot races at the local level, the legislative
Speaker 5: races are even at.
Speaker 4: The federal level those elections, that they all work together
Speaker 4: for the greater good of the community.
Speaker 5: And you can't have one and not emphasize it without
Speaker 5: having the others.
Speaker 1: What advice do you give to justin to young queer
Speaker 1: people right who are now being faced with a climate
Speaker 1: that is incredibly hostile, which you know you experienced by
Speaker 1: virtue of telling the story about your dad and what
Speaker 1: he had to face, what advice do you give to them,
Speaker 1: first as just people right, as just young people living
Speaker 1: in environments towns you know that can be dangerous for
Speaker 1: them to be out in.
Speaker 4: Never settle.
Speaker 5: For delineating parts of yourself to satisfy anybody. People will
Speaker 5: either have to accept.
Speaker 4: All of you or none of you.
Speaker 5: Because one of the things that I've had to learn,
Speaker 5: and I will give this to any other queer candidates running,
Speaker 5: is that I wasn't willing to curate some inauthentic version
Speaker 5: of me to be elected. And the main reason is
Speaker 5: that when it comes to my sexuality, maybe clothes are
Speaker 5: for closets, not people, not our identities. We are who
Speaker 5: we are and at the end of the day, recognizing
Speaker 5: that it's not who you sleep with, who you love,
Speaker 5: who you share space with, but it's about what you
Speaker 5: do when you get into that boardroom, when you get
Speaker 5: into that legislative seat, when you.
Speaker 4: Get into Congress that matters. It's the impact.
Speaker 5: Because if sexuality defines success, well, heterosexual people have owned
Speaker 5: the public office for a long time and we send
Speaker 5: a lot of failures.
Speaker 4: So it might be the right time.
Speaker 5: In the right place for queer people to start running
Speaker 5: and winning because we may be able to change things
Speaker 5: that haven't been had to.
Speaker 4: Be changed in a long time.
Speaker 1: Justin last question for you, what are you most excited
Speaker 1: about come January twenty twenty four when you start your
Speaker 1: four year term.
Speaker 5: Good question. I'm excited about impact. I know that's very
Speaker 5: broad to say. But even before getting into office, I've
Speaker 5: already written a grant to the Office of Juvenile Prevention
Speaker 5: to help with juvenile diversion programs to reduce the burden
Speaker 5: on our jails and save taxpayers money. I've already began
Speaker 5: working with economic development, where there's a group of folks
Speaker 5: who are looking at spaces in my district to.
Speaker 4: Bring jobs, hundreds of jobs to the area.
Speaker 5: So being a part of those conversations, so I want
Speaker 5: to see those things flourish and come to life. What
Speaker 5: I'm more excited about is proving that young people and
Speaker 5: queer people are the leaders that our society has been
Speaker 5: waiting on, and that when you've been given the chance
Speaker 5: to show up and deliver, that we can do the job.
Speaker 5: And so I want to prove to everybody in my community,
Speaker 5: to every voter who may be hesitantly voted for me,
Speaker 5: that you made the right choice and that the results
Speaker 5: is driven by the impact that I've helped to make
Speaker 5: in our community.
Speaker 4: So that's what I'm looking forward to.
Speaker 1: Well, justin I wish you all of the success. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited by the fact that you ran, that you
Speaker 1: had the courage to run, and that you won, but
Speaker 1: I think that you're going to You've already made impact
Speaker 1: because you've already shown that the you know, what some
Speaker 1: would have said was impossible is possible. And so being
Speaker 1: that possibility model, being able to show young black men,
Speaker 1: young queer people, everyone who lives at the intersection of
Speaker 1: multiple identities that they can, particularly in this really dark time,
Speaker 1: is incredible.
Speaker 2: So thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4: I appreciate the opportunity to share.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke
Speaker 1: app as always, power to the people and to.
Speaker 2: All the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Speaker 1: Yah.