Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Daniel Moody. Recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is really special. Usually I do not do
Speaker 1: solo shows on Monday, but today April first, Happy April
Speaker 1: Fool's Day, we have an announcement and it's kind of wild.
Speaker 1: So today on iHeart, we launch Wokf's fifth season. That's right,
Speaker 1: season five, which is pretty incredible. Five years ago in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, which pause for shock for that shit, because
Speaker 1: I posted a meme in my Instagram stories I think
Speaker 1: like a week or so ago where it was. Can
Speaker 1: you believe that twenty nineteen was five years ago? It's
Speaker 1: hard to think back that far because so much has happened.
Speaker 1: It's like, what you know, Your head just starts spinning
Speaker 1: trying to get back. And literally the other day I
Speaker 1: went into my phone and put in twenty nineteen because
Speaker 1: I literally had no real recollection of that year, like
Speaker 1: it was wild, and so I had to put the
Speaker 1: date in the year in and then begin to go
Speaker 1: through photos and I'm just like, I look, here's my
Speaker 1: thing to you all. Do this. If you have not
Speaker 1: done this, if you don't do this on your phones.
Speaker 1: Do it put in like January twenty nineteen, and then
Speaker 1: just let or twenty nineteen and just go through the year.
Speaker 1: I look like a different person, like one hundred percent
Speaker 1: and the stress, the pandemic, I just look like a
Speaker 1: different person. And so I say that to say that
Speaker 1: when Andrew, my producer, who has been with me since
Speaker 1: the beginning of WOKAF and so we're counting. So if
Speaker 1: folks are like, wait a minute, I've been listening since
Speaker 1: the beginning beginning, We're really looking at twenty nineteen as
Speaker 1: wokf's independence year, which is when I left Sirius XM
Speaker 1: and went to an independent company, went to DCP Entertainment,
Speaker 1: and the show went through a couple of iterations after
Speaker 1: leaving Sirius. And so for me, five years ago is
Speaker 1: a wild time because it was a time that I
Speaker 1: decided to really bet on myself and to bet on you.
Speaker 1: All the listeners. Some have come and go, and there
Speaker 1: are new and old and like ride dies from you know,
Speaker 1: from the beginning, and people that have just heard about
Speaker 1: me recently and are signing up. And I just want
Speaker 1: to say, particularly to all of those that went on
Speaker 1: this ride with me that signed up for Patreon that
Speaker 1: are still on Patreon, which I can't express to you
Speaker 1: all enough what your support financial support has meant for
Speaker 1: my ability to continue doing this show in an independent fashion,
Speaker 1: and even though it's been through so many bumps and
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through you know them, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been through so many bumps on this show, but
Speaker 1: the country, my god, you know, we've been up and
Speaker 1: down Everest, I don't even know how many fucking times
Speaker 1: over the last five years. And so I just want
Speaker 1: to thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Speaker 1: Just incredibly, I'm so indebted and in so much gratitude
Speaker 1: for the love and support that you all continue to
Speaker 1: show me and have allowed me to actualize my dreams
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. I just want to start
Speaker 1: off by saying, too, just like a little quick background,
Speaker 1: particularly for those that are new to wokay app, is
Speaker 1: that back way back when you know, I launched this
Speaker 1: show as a response to Donald Trump being elected president
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen and just being completely and totally fucking
Speaker 1: flabbergasted that this country that I had decided to like
Speaker 1: dedicate my brain power and work and energy and passion
Speaker 1: to making better, whether that be as a school teacher,
Speaker 1: as a fellow on a congressional fellow on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: as a federal lobbyist, set a series of organizations and
Speaker 1: cities to working, you know, and launching initiatives to better
Speaker 1: the lives of LGBTQ plus people, particularly those that are
Speaker 1: black and live at the intersection of multiple identities. I
Speaker 1: believed in the promise of this country. I believed in
Speaker 1: the responsibility of each generation to do its part to
Speaker 1: make way right for the generation to come behind it
Speaker 1: and pick up the baton, and that we would get
Speaker 1: better right with more knowledge, more access, more technology, each
Speaker 1: and every year, each and every decade. And then Trump happens,
Speaker 1: and you know, I will say, folks that since then,
Speaker 1: since then, and we're talking now, it's like it's so
Speaker 1: hard to kind of go through the years. But Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was inaugurated seven years ago, and since then it
Speaker 1: is like a portal of hate has opened up in
Speaker 1: this country and is just eating it from the inside out.
Speaker 1: And what began my career as this hopeful, ambitious young
Speaker 1: person that saw how government and policies were able to
Speaker 1: bring my family from Jamaica to the United States to
Speaker 1: build a life and a way that I could then
Speaker 1: exist right and be first generation American born here because
Speaker 1: of policies that allowed for immigration right and the ability
Speaker 1: to start over and build a life right. And my
Speaker 1: family has always had such a strong sense of pride
Speaker 1: for this country. And I think that that's what makes
Speaker 1: me so angry about the anti immigrant, hateful, white supremacist
Speaker 1: rhetoric that we hear in this country, which is that
Speaker 1: you will meet no person of greater pride than an
Speaker 1: immigrant who has come to this country and built a life.
Speaker 1: You will meet no one more dedicated to this country
Speaker 1: than an immigrant that comes here. And that's just facts.
Speaker 1: Because up until right the last seven years, America, while imperfect,
Speaker 1: has been that country where you can start anew and
Speaker 1: build something for you, yourself, your family, build a community.
Speaker 1: That has always been the promise of America in its hopefulness.
Speaker 1: And so and I'm getting like choked up talking about it,
Speaker 1: because what's happened over the last seven years has been
Speaker 1: a robbing, a ransacking of that hopefulness and that idealism
Speaker 1: that everyone should have. Right. You think about things that
Speaker 1: were impossible until they were done. That's the story of America.
Speaker 1: We have so many faults, so don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: right and I could, I could list them right as
Speaker 1: well as you. But I want to speak about for
Speaker 1: a moment, like the hopefulness and the idealism that is
Speaker 1: actually what has made America great and a standout from
Speaker 1: other nations. What is heartbreaking is that over the last
Speaker 1: five years of me being on air and independent with WOKF,
Speaker 1: I have seen a horrific devolving of America and my
Speaker 1: own hopefulness, my own desire to participate in this American project,
Speaker 1: in this democratic project, because until seven years ago when
Speaker 1: Donald Trump became President of the United States, there was
Speaker 1: a belief that even though we have horrific gun violence,
Speaker 1: even though black people are killed by police on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, even though there are hate crimes and hatefulness,
Speaker 1: that there was still opportunity and still more people that
Speaker 1: believed that we could be better tomorrow than we were today,
Speaker 1: and that we all, with our varied talents, ethnicities, culture races,
Speaker 1: that we add something, We add value, not by virtue
Speaker 1: of what we produce, but by who we are. But
Speaker 1: now as I look back and I hold up just
Speaker 1: unlike Wikipedia, let me see all of the things that
Speaker 1: happened in twenty nineteen, y'all so much that it is
Speaker 1: genuinely like so hard to think back pre pandemic. But
Speaker 1: I want to give you some highlights. Well, five years ago,
Speaker 1: we weren't in two wars. Five years ago, a million
Speaker 1: plus Americans hadn't died from a global health pandemic. But
Speaker 1: we had a number of Democrats announcing that they were
Speaker 1: going to be running for president, which all of whom
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Mary Ann Williamson,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren, Like, I kind of forgot that so many
Speaker 1: people had announced to take on Trump, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court had allowed Donald Trump to roll back
Speaker 1: progress inside of the military with limiting the participation of
Speaker 1: patriotic trans people who wanted to serve their country, and
Speaker 1: this president was like No, I forgot that Roger Stone
Speaker 1: had been charged with seven counts of obstruction of justice
Speaker 1: and witness tampering, but he would later be pardoned right
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump. I forgot that there had been so
Speaker 1: many shootings when you pull up Wikipedia and you look
Speaker 1: and you put in a year, and they listed out
Speaker 1: month by month, and kind of pull out, you know,
Speaker 1: important dates where things had happened, so many shootings, pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: Democrats took back the House to stop Trump. Bill Barr
Speaker 1: lied to the American public about the contents of the
Speaker 1: Mull Report. The list kind of goes on and on
Speaker 1: and on, and it's just we've lived so many lives
Speaker 1: since then, and that's kind of what has stood out
Speaker 1: to me the most is that I feel like I
Speaker 1: have a lived so many lives over the last five years.
Speaker 1: Our certainty about things that we could expect, our stability
Speaker 1: have all been uprooted, and there's this sense of feeling
Speaker 1: untethered right like you're just in this consistent state of unraveling.
Speaker 1: And to one extent, I find the unraveling cathartic because
Speaker 1: I think that America has spoon fed us a consistent
Speaker 1: diet of lies about who America is, what our shared
Speaker 1: values are, the idea of our exceptionalism, this badge of
Speaker 1: honor that we would wear around the world as we
Speaker 1: are the hardest working people that never take vacations, while
Speaker 1: the rest of the world looks at us and it's
Speaker 1: just like, huh, but your quality of life is shit
Speaker 1: and you were all dying much younger. The pandemic in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways helped lift the veil around the
Speaker 1: grind of capitalism and the fact that sure, you could
Speaker 1: put in fifty sixty seventy eighty hours a week, but
Speaker 1: if you drop dead, they will clean out your cubicle,
Speaker 1: your office, your locker in within a day and slide
Speaker 1: somebody else into your slot, pay them half of what
Speaker 1: you are being paid, and start the process all over again.
Speaker 1: We started to real lies during the course of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: how important precious and short our time on this planet is,
Speaker 1: and how do we really want to be living our lives,
Speaker 1: and do we really want to be living our lives
Speaker 1: in a way where we're spending our days, hours off
Speaker 1: of our lives, commuting, putting our lives on hold, so
Speaker 1: that we could put the value in the importance of
Speaker 1: insert said company, said organization. First, well, they pay my bills, okay,
Speaker 1: But can you also be a full human being? Right?
Speaker 1: People loved to talk about work life balance, but what
Speaker 1: folks realize for those that were privileged enough to be
Speaker 1: able to do their jobs from home was that going
Speaker 1: into the office was a lie for corporate real estate
Speaker 1: and for your bosses to be your overlords because there
Speaker 1: was a lack of trust. But yet they want to
Speaker 1: say that we're a family. Keep that familial language out
Speaker 1: your mouth. This is a job. My family doesn't hold
Speaker 1: evaluations and then fire me. Right. My family doesn't put
Speaker 1: my worth right in connection to what I produce for them.
Speaker 1: So this idea that your workplace is your family is
Speaker 1: a lie. It is it's a lie to get you
Speaker 1: to go above and beyond but only be paid what
Speaker 1: is on the ground. So why am I going above that?
Speaker 1: So people started to think differently and move differently, and
Speaker 1: we like to joke and I have about generation ze.
Speaker 1: Oh they don't want to work as hard and blah blah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because actually no, they want to work smarter. They want
Speaker 1: work to actually work for them and their lives and
Speaker 1: not the other way around, because they've seen their parents
Speaker 1: and their grandparents burn the fuck out. What would have
Speaker 1: made a difference if not just following along and climbing
Speaker 1: up the ladder right, hoping to be recognized and to
Speaker 1: be seen and to someday be paid your worth. But
Speaker 1: you just go along for the get along. That's what
Speaker 1: the prior generations did. And this one whose life was
Speaker 1: abruptly halted by a global health pandemic. They have a
Speaker 1: different understanding of how precious life and time is and
Speaker 1: how everything can be gone in an instant. We can
Speaker 1: learn from them instead of thinking that we know everything,
Speaker 1: We can learn from how gen Z looks at work
Speaker 1: and thinks to themselves, Yeah, this is just not my vibe.
Speaker 1: You know everything can stop tomorrow because it has, so
Speaker 1: how do I want to live this one precious life?
Speaker 1: These are some of the questions that we have been
Speaker 1: asking ourselves, folks over these last five years, over the
Speaker 1: last five seasons of WOKF, where we've tried to bring
Speaker 1: in experts and academics and authors to work through these
Speaker 1: conversations with us, to maybe offer us a different perspective,
Speaker 1: a different vantage point, to help open up and expand
Speaker 1: our minds and our hearts a bit more. But when
Speaker 1: we really take a minute, take a pause, to sit
Speaker 1: back and look at all we've made it through to
Speaker 1: this point, My God, do we owe ourselves more than
Speaker 1: a round of applause, more than a pat on the back.
Speaker 1: We need to sit in deep gratitude for how much
Speaker 1: we have been through and we are still here. There
Speaker 1: are so many that are not. We have definitely been
Speaker 1: going through really dark times. But I still when I
Speaker 1: can see sunshine and blue skies and hear the birds,
Speaker 1: that's when my possibility and hopefulness grows. And some days
Speaker 1: I got it, some days I don't. Some days you
Speaker 1: got it, some days you don't. But we hope right
Speaker 1: that there are people around us who do have it
Speaker 1: when we don't, who can carry the hopefulness when we
Speaker 1: are feeling hopeless, that we can be in community and
Speaker 1: be balancing each other out as we move through these
Speaker 1: really difficult times. America has change so much, and not
Speaker 1: for the better in a lot of ways. You know,
Speaker 1: we've made way for a return to unabashed racism. We've
Speaker 1: moved back to a place where white supremacy is celebrated
Speaker 1: and not marginalized. It's hard, I tell you this often
Speaker 1: it is hard to get on this microphone some days.
Speaker 1: The last five years have been really difficult, very challenging
Speaker 1: to keep going and feeling like there is any impact
Speaker 1: to be had. So I just deeply appreciate those of
Speaker 1: you who send messages and tweet and post and you know,
Speaker 1: share bits and pieces of the show, because I will
Speaker 1: tell you that I've had a lot of dark days,
Speaker 1: a lot of days when I want to just pull
Speaker 1: the plug and I say, what does it all mean?
Speaker 1: Does it even matter? And then on those very low days,
Speaker 1: someone comments, share is a thought, thanks me. And I
Speaker 1: have always said that if I can only reach one person,
Speaker 1: but that one person then sees things differently and then
Speaker 1: starts having different conversations with the people around them, and
Speaker 1: then those people start to see things differently, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and then we become this ripple effect.
Speaker 1: Because what I do know is that change is an
Speaker 1: inside job. So if we can change and shift the
Speaker 1: way that we think and expand and the way that
Speaker 1: we love, and we begin that work on ourselves, that
Speaker 1: light shines out and it opens other people's eyes, It
Speaker 1: pulls the veil off, and it gives other people that
Speaker 1: you may not even know, permission to do something differently,
Speaker 1: to speak up, to take on varied responsibility to make
Speaker 1: this world better. So, on this five year anniversary and
Speaker 1: the kickoff of season five of Woke AFFI Daily on iHeart,
Speaker 1: I just want to thank each and every single one
Speaker 1: of you for your hopefulness, for your persistence, for your valor,
Speaker 1: for your love and support of independent media and voices
Speaker 1: like mine and a show like this. I would not
Speaker 1: have made it through the last five years without you all,
Speaker 1: so thank you. 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.