Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Okay f Daily with
Speaker 1: me your girl Danielle Moody, recording live from our podstream
Speaker 1: studios here in Times Square. You know, folks, every week,
Speaker 1: right at the end of the week, it is Friday,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be a mix of fucking
Speaker 1: Friday and feel good Friday. But there isn't really a
Speaker 1: lot to feel good about if you've been paying attention.
Speaker 1: You have celebrities that are spouting some of the most
Speaker 1: ridiculous and false medical information as our country is spiking
Speaker 1: from COVID nineteen. Looking at you, Nicki Minaj, wish that
Speaker 1: you would spend some time, maybe a little bit of
Speaker 1: time in between trying to keep your husband out of
Speaker 1: jail and maybe potentially trying to do your quote unquote
Speaker 1: research on COVID nineteen vaccines instead of spreading bullshit to
Speaker 1: twenty two million people. Right, somebody told me essentially that
Speaker 1: I needed to provide quote unquote grace for black women
Speaker 1: that mess up. I provide grace for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: But what I don't provide grace for for people that
Speaker 1: decide to double down on their foolishness and potentially risk
Speaker 1: right having twenty two million people decide that they're not
Speaker 1: going to get vaccinated because Nicki Minaj and the barbies
Speaker 1: told them not to, right, based on some false premise
Speaker 1: that three countries had to come out and smack down.
Speaker 1: I'm just outdone by the fucking stupidity at this point.
Speaker 1: And people quote unquote doing your own research. Meanwhile, I
Speaker 1: would love to see what your grades look like in science,
Speaker 1: you know, when you were in high school and probably
Speaker 1: skip those classes. What kind of fucking research are these
Speaker 1: people actually really doing? Are you googling? Are you going
Speaker 1: to the CDC? Are you going to the who? Are
Speaker 1: you going to Nicki Minaj's page or you know, Buster
Speaker 1: Rhymes's page or ice Cube's page to figure out what
Speaker 1: kind of fuckery they decided to spread today. Understand, folks,
Speaker 1: at you now, you people, you Nicki Minajes and Busta
Speaker 1: Rhymes and ice Cubes have become a tool of the right.
Speaker 1: So when the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens
Speaker 1: are singing your praises and retweeting, you know that you
Speaker 1: are on the wrong fucking side of history and on
Speaker 1: the wrong fucking side of literally everything. When they decide
Speaker 1: to lift you up. You should fucking run and suspend
Speaker 1: your own goddamn accounts. So that's that. On that here
Speaker 1: we are once again folks with the potential right to
Speaker 1: do something right around voting rights, to do something that
Speaker 1: is going to change America's slippery, slippery, sliding slope into
Speaker 1: fascism right right now. I just saw pictures on MSNBC
Speaker 1: of our capitol buildings surrounded by essentially, you know, seven
Speaker 1: foot high fences, barbed wire, all of these things, and
Speaker 1: I wonder, is this what democracy looks like? Is this
Speaker 1: what it looks like to live free when our capital
Speaker 1: building is behind bars? Like? Is this? So recognize that
Speaker 1: we have become prisoners of the right. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that folks are really wrapping their eyes around what
Speaker 1: has happened. Whether or not you're living in a red state,
Speaker 1: but you actually have blue sensibilities, meaning that you believe
Speaker 1: in vaccines, you believe in science, you believe in facts,
Speaker 1: and now you're being held hostage, whether it be in
Speaker 1: your home or in your school by a governor who
Speaker 1: was choosing to not follow any science, to not follow
Speaker 1: any rules, and to essentially become the executioner for the
Speaker 1: citizens of their state. And so as I look around
Speaker 1: right now at our country in shambles every which way
Speaker 1: that you look and pick an issue, it's fucked. Right now,
Speaker 1: I think about Joe Mansion, and I think about the
Speaker 1: fact that this attention whore is the one who now
Speaker 1: we are essentially pandering to higher democracy, and the health
Speaker 1: of it is on the shoulders of a man from
Speaker 1: West Virginia who is the king of Cole, who has
Speaker 1: no black or brown constituents and could give a fuck
Speaker 1: so long as he remains the king of his small fiefdom.
Speaker 1: I am so sick to death of hearing his fucking
Speaker 1: name and Kirsten Cinema's name, and recognizing that we have
Speaker 1: three branches of government, as somebody had said to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and I said, damn, you know, this is
Speaker 1: really the goddamn truth. They said. The three branches of
Speaker 1: government as they sit right now is Biden, McConnell's courts,
Speaker 1: and Joe Mansion. So essentially, three white men are controlling
Speaker 1: every direction that this country takes, and the only direction
Speaker 1: that it's moving in right now is backwards. And Joe
Speaker 1: Mansion has signaled that he wants to move on voting rights,
Speaker 1: a bill that he has decided to endorse that. Guess
Speaker 1: what takes out every single ethics rule that was put
Speaker 1: into the other of voting rights legislation to make sure
Speaker 1: that a Trump like figure cannot emerge right and cannot
Speaker 1: take over this country. So he's removed those things. He's
Speaker 1: removed a lot of things that have to do with ethics.
Speaker 1: And our friend who joins the show often, Ellie Mitzel,
Speaker 1: wrote this in The Atlantic, and I tell you, friends,
Speaker 1: if you have not read the piece, you should. It
Speaker 1: is both depressing but also necessary. And he said this,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you you know, whenever Ellie writes,
Speaker 1: I am both extremely excited and also very depressed. He
Speaker 1: says this at the end of his piece entitled Joe
Speaker 1: Mansion giveth on Voting Rights and Joe Mansion taketh Away.
Speaker 1: He says, this America isn't a democracy right now. It's
Speaker 1: a hostage scenario. Mansion is just toying with the Democrats
Speaker 1: who insist on negotiating with him. And that is the
Speaker 1: absolute truth here, folks. You see, Joe Mansion is having
Speaker 1: the time of his fucking life. He is on everybody's lips,
Speaker 1: and he is at the center of every conversation. I've
Speaker 1: never seen an attention horror like this, other than maybe
Speaker 1: a Nicki Minaj, But I've never seen anything like this
Speaker 1: in a politician. Usually they really want to go to
Speaker 1: the table. At least maybe in my you know, very delightful,
Speaker 1: lovely memories from back in the day when I worked
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill and I believed in democracy and I
Speaker 1: believed in the people. Maybe it's that memory that is
Speaker 1: being conjured and that often times is proving not to
Speaker 1: have been the truth. Right, you know, folks, when you
Speaker 1: think about this, right, and I just again, we don't
Speaker 1: need to present hypotheticals on this issue. We need only
Speaker 1: to look at the last four years under Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and the fucking grift that his entire family put together
Speaker 1: in order to square as much money away from the
Speaker 1: American people, away from agencies, away from social safety nets,
Speaker 1: and into his fucking pocket. So how is it that
Speaker 1: a Joe Mansion, who on his own is a fucking
Speaker 1: sellout because he has more money from coal than anywhere else, right,
Speaker 1: as well as you know, the fucking Koch Brothers decides
Speaker 1: that after witnessing Donald Trump and all of his family's
Speaker 1: fucking grift over the last four years that we don't
Speaker 1: need to put in writing the things that we expect
Speaker 1: from our fucking president and vice president. How is that right?
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing that you are essentially asking burglars
Speaker 1: to watch the fucking beck That's what we are doing
Speaker 1: right now with our politicians. Right, we can't get shit
Speaker 1: done with regard to Big Pharma and how they price
Speaker 1: their prescriptions right that they create for the American public.
Speaker 1: You know why because three of the biggest right Dems
Speaker 1: quote unquote middle of the voters take close to two
Speaker 1: million dollars from big fucking Pharma. All of this is
Speaker 1: a goddamn sham, And I wonder how we make it
Speaker 1: through each and every week without going out of our
Speaker 1: front doors and just screaming that primal scream and waiting
Speaker 1: for something to fucking change and happen. Because what I
Speaker 1: am starting to recognize is that it does not matter
Speaker 1: who the fuck we vote for, because at some way
Speaker 1: form shaping down the road, they will turn into a grifter,
Speaker 1: just like everybody fucking else. Right, You know, I remember
Speaker 1: there's an episode of Sex in the City that I
Speaker 1: love so much. It was very funny where Carrie Branshaw
Speaker 1: says that squirrels are essentially rats, just in better costumes.
Speaker 1: That's how the fuck I feel about the Democrats right now.
Speaker 1: Essentially many of those centerists right are just what Republicans
Speaker 1: in different fucking clothing with different mantras, but they're doing
Speaker 1: the same type of underhanded grifting shit that Republicans just
Speaker 1: do to your face, right because they say their work
Speaker 1: is who gonna fucking check me, Ain't not a goddamn person.
Speaker 1: Because everybody is trying to get on or get off
Speaker 1: with money in their pockets, in their packs, right in
Speaker 1: their businesses or what have you, they could give a
Speaker 1: fuck about the rest of us. And this is why
Speaker 1: I continue to say that revolution to me looks like
Speaker 1: the only direction that we are headed in, because I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure how you continue to try and reform
Speaker 1: a system that was based on grift and racist capitalism.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Coming up next, folks, is my conversation
Speaker 1: with a really dynamic duo who put out a very
Speaker 1: thoughtful book that I think that this conversation is one
Speaker 1: that should be happening a lot more, but doesn't. I
Speaker 1: get to talk with k Whitlocke and Nancy Heightseg who
Speaker 1: wrote the book Carcerol Khan, The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal
Speaker 1: Justice Reform, and I really enjoyed this conversation. It was
Speaker 1: about thirty five minutes of just listening to these women
Speaker 1: talk about the ways in which we've all been duped
Speaker 1: right by the prison industrial complex. That they talk about
Speaker 1: how its tentacles reach into every part of our society.
Speaker 1: So I hope that you enjoy that conversation. Let me
Speaker 1: know what you think about the ideas around abolition, restoration, reform,
Speaker 1: and reimagining this broken system. Folks. I am so happy
Speaker 1: to be joined for the first time on Woke, a
Speaker 1: f daily with k Whitlock and Nancy Heitzegg, authors of
Speaker 1: Carcel Khan, The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform. Thank
Speaker 1: you to the both of you for one for your
Speaker 1: work in a topic that I think doesn't get enough attention.
Speaker 1: When you highlight the fact that the United States has
Speaker 1: four percent of the world's population and yet twenty percent
Speaker 1: making up of those that are incarcerated, those are numbers
Speaker 1: that I think are really difficult to run from and
Speaker 1: they're really shocking. And the premise I think of your
Speaker 1: work is we have people, organizations, administrations that always want
Speaker 1: to talk about how we reform this system, and the
Speaker 1: both of you were saying, how do you reform a
Speaker 1: system that was built on injustice? To begin with, one
Speaker 1: of many big conversations that came out of the uprisings
Speaker 1: over the summer in twenty twenty was abolished the police. Right,
Speaker 1: we had multiple very high profile and then many very
Speaker 1: low profile murders of unarmed black people by police, and
Speaker 1: the conversation got stuck on language right about abolition and
Speaker 1: not necessarily what that means. And so tokay, I'll give
Speaker 1: this to you first, which is, you know, how important
Speaker 1: is a language here right when we're talking about we're
Speaker 1: talking about reform, or we're talking about reimagining a system,
Speaker 1: or we're talking about abolition. How important is the language
Speaker 1: that we're using versus the impact that is needed to
Speaker 1: change or shrink I should say this octopus that you're
Speaker 1: talking about that is the prison industrial complex. Well, the language,
Speaker 1: the rhetorical devices that are used, especially to frame reform
Speaker 1: are very important in the sense that people really need
Speaker 1: to know how they're being used and misused. Abolition has
Speaker 1: a long history in this country and it comes out
Speaker 1: of a biack radical tradition, and there are many streams
Speaker 1: and currents and threats of abolitionism that have fed in
Speaker 1: this country. When we start to see the gathering of
Speaker 1: what Nancy and I call reform inc. That is the
Speaker 1: coalescence of an emergent industry that's going to it's a
Speaker 1: public private industry that's going to manage reform, and it
Speaker 1: starts to really gain momentum in the brokering of certain
Speaker 1: kinds of agreements between governments and it's philanthropy driven and
Speaker 1: agreements between public and private partners. And the rhetoric they
Speaker 1: use to fashion some of the responses is really kind
Speaker 1: of important because they pick rhetoric that they believe will
Speaker 1: respond to most people and that will actually blunt protest.
Speaker 1: It seems to be responsive to protest. It seems to
Speaker 1: be responsive. You know, we have in in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, we have the Oscar Grant killings, we have Ferguson,
Speaker 1: We have this unending series of killings and the rising
Speaker 1: of of of protest and fury about that, and actually
Speaker 1: that starts to gain a lot of public support. Over
Speaker 1: the years, you can just chart an upward interest in
Speaker 1: in abolition things. So when we talk about the rhetoric.
Speaker 1: We can talk about the concepts abolitionists US and how
Speaker 1: they get coopted by reformers and how they get undermined,
Speaker 1: so that uh, you know, defund the police is a
Speaker 1: slogan that comes out and it means exactly what it says,
Speaker 1: defund the police. By defunding the police, you reduce contact,
Speaker 1: the amount of contact people have in community, and that's
Speaker 1: going to matter, and you free up more resources that
Speaker 1: should be spent on human needs, on social goods, on
Speaker 1: environmental needs, completely outside of the criminal justice system. But
Speaker 1: suddenly you have this reform that this backlash from the
Speaker 1: reform movement saying they don't really mean to fund the police.
Speaker 1: Yes we did, and yes we do. They don't. They're
Speaker 1: saying all or nothing, that that isn't a that isn't viable,
Speaker 1: that isn't viable. Then we start to see the emergence
Speaker 1: too of people who call themselves abolitionists, but say, we're abolitionists,
Speaker 1: but we believe first you have to build more humane
Speaker 1: new jails. We're abolitionists, but you know the way to
Speaker 1: have public safety is to have smaller, better run jails,
Speaker 1: better trained police. So there's a whole red rick of reform.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly deceptive. It masquerades in such phrases as public safety,
Speaker 1: as smaller, fairer, kinder for jails, the whole reimagining rhetoric.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting because I've been working in this particular
Speaker 1: area and considered myself an abolitionist since at least two thousand,
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties, and a number of abolitionists who'd been
Speaker 1: in it longer than I had were already using the
Speaker 1: reimagining kind of language. Now, the VERA Institute for Justice
Speaker 1: once to quote, reimagine prisons, not permanently reduce them. Let's
Speaker 1: make them nicer, Let's make them better, Let's make them
Speaker 1: an institution of democracy. So we don't let the co
Speaker 1: optation of rhetoric get in the way of saying what
Speaker 1: we really mean. Yes, we do really mean defund the police.
Speaker 1: Yes we do mean abolition, which is as much about
Speaker 1: creating the social and economic and ecological conditions in which
Speaker 1: both individuals and communities, especially those who have been marginalized,
Speaker 1: can thrive outside of the criminal legal system. Of lolling rhetoric.
Speaker 1: It's going to be evidence space reform, it's going to
Speaker 1: be just They will not touch structural racism will not
Speaker 1: touch structural poverty, but dressing up reform in certain words
Speaker 1: that are so compelling that we don't often understand how
Speaker 1: effective a vehicle so called criminal legal justice, criminal justice
Speaker 1: system reform is for advancing broader processes of criminalization and
Speaker 1: an expansion of police forces literally as a substitute for
Speaker 1: civil rights YEP, or voting rights for real justice. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a dark, little wonderland of sorts in the rhetoric.
Speaker 1: So when Nancy and I are talking, for example, we're
Speaker 1: trying to be real specific about helping people understand peel
Speaker 1: away the co optation or the or just the deception
Speaker 1: or the incompleteness that's in the rhetoric and start to
Speaker 1: think about the concepts of structural inequality. I think that
Speaker 1: that makes so much sense, right for us to move
Speaker 1: past the rhetoric and into the concepts. But it's the
Speaker 1: rhetoric that turns into the hashtags, that turns into the protests,
Speaker 1: that turns into all of these different things. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, I wonder Nancy too. We see our politicians
Speaker 1: consistently get caught up in this, right, because if we
Speaker 1: have conversations about what it means to abolish police really
Speaker 1: conceptually have conversations about what it means to abolish the
Speaker 1: prison industrial complex. Then Democrats right, get the Moniker as
Speaker 1: being soft on crime, right, and then Republicans are able
Speaker 1: to co opt the mantra law and order. And so
Speaker 1: I'm wondering from your from your vantage point, you know,
Speaker 1: how how how do we negate those things from happening?
Speaker 1: Because it's it's where we get caught up in this
Speaker 1: vicious cycle where progress really is not made. The progress
Speaker 1: is really only made so much as we change the
Speaker 1: language and adapt to the times that we're in, it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually change the system in and of itself. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here in Minneapolis, um, you know, when the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the you know, George Floyd murder and Donty
Speaker 1: Wright murder and many murders and many protests burned on
Speaker 1: the third Precinct, um, you know, and thinking about language, UM,
Speaker 1: and I think how important it is to for abolitionists
Speaker 1: to not compromise the language or not try to assuage um,
Speaker 1: you know, various political parties. I mean, Minneapolis is a
Speaker 1: very democratic city, very blue city. UM. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the results UM UM of the George Floyd murder
Speaker 1: or some efforts on the part of the City Council
Speaker 1: and various activist groups like Reclaim the Block and Black
Speaker 1: Visions Collective UM now Yes from Minneapolis UM to organize
Speaker 1: and push for UM some changes to the language of
Speaker 1: the city charter UM, which mandates you know X amount
Speaker 1: of police officers have to UM you know serve here
Speaker 1: you know, And and lots of conversation you know, for
Speaker 1: more than a year now about UM changing the charter,
Speaker 1: about creating UM a new department of Public Safety that
Speaker 1: police might be a part of UM. You know, city
Speaker 1: council was for this UM. You know, it's about potentially
Speaker 1: defunding the police and replacing some police functions like mental
Speaker 1: health crisis calls, etcetera, with with UM, you know, public
Speaker 1: health options UM. Lots of support for this UM. You know,
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand Minneapolis residents you know signed UM you
Speaker 1: know petition to get this on the ballot. UM. The
Speaker 1: backlash has been stunning UM. You know, even in a
Speaker 1: democratic city. Backlash from the mayor you know, UM, backlash
Speaker 1: from other soul called democrat you know, former politicians, you know,
Speaker 1: the Minnesota Supreme court now is hearing UM whether or
Speaker 1: not this will even be on the ballot. So bottom line,
Speaker 1: I guess, and then this is related to everything that
Speaker 1: case said. UM. UM. I think abolitionists should be real clear,
Speaker 1: UM we want to defund the police, who want to
Speaker 1: abolish the police, who want to abolish the prison industrial complex. UM. UM.
Speaker 1: We might be interested in and certainly supportive of forms
Speaker 1: that UM immediately mitigate the suffering UM of those in
Speaker 1: the system without expanding it. UM, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess. My my view increasingly over time is that
Speaker 1: so much energy UM activist energy is spent on I'm
Speaker 1: trying to play Kate UM elected political figures. UM. That
Speaker 1: that that we should just say what we want, say
Speaker 1: what we mean, UM, move forward, UM, work in community
Speaker 1: as as much as we can to you know, create
Speaker 1: an envision, UM, you know, another world. That's it for
Speaker 1: today's wok F Daily Podcast. To hear more from today's show,
Speaker 1: including my full interviews with Ka Whitlock and Nancy heightseg
Speaker 1: do check out my patreon at patreon dot com. Slash
Speaker 1: Woke a f Power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.