Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKF Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: Your Girl Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks
Speaker 1: Happy Pride. June celebrates the beginning of Pride Month, something
Speaker 1: that has been celebrated in this country since nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. If we all recognize the beginning of
Speaker 1: pride being the riots that took place at Stonewall Inn
Speaker 1: in New York City in nineteen sixty nine, when cops
Speaker 1: came into the Stonewall Inn on a mission to arrest,
Speaker 1: humiliate queer people and folks back. Marsha P. Johnson, a
Speaker 1: black trans woman, fought back against the police and said
Speaker 1: no more, No more harassment, no more closets, no more criminality,
Speaker 1: no more abuse. When you look up the definition of pride,
Speaker 1: Miriam Webster defines it as this reasonable self esteem or
Speaker 1: confidence and satisfaction in oneself. Oxford defines it as this
Speaker 1: a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's
Speaker 1: own achievements. Consciousness of one's own dignity. That's the one
Speaker 1: I like the most, consciousness of one's own dignity. We're
Speaker 1: living at a time where dignity and respect are almost
Speaker 1: non existent, not in politics for sure, not in sports,
Speaker 1: not in entertainment, where we see through policies, through rhetoric,
Speaker 1: the assaults on any number of communities, but it always begins,
Speaker 1: for some reason, with black people and then LGBTQ people
Speaker 1: to make the targets of the radicalized right, because I
Speaker 1: don't even want to call these folks the religious right anymore,
Speaker 1: because their religion is bullshit. Their religion is white supremacy,
Speaker 1: their religion is racism, their religion is patriarchy, their religion
Speaker 1: is read. Their religion actually disrespects the very text that
Speaker 1: they love to recite, but only portions of so pride.
Speaker 1: Pride is about not giving a fuck what the outside
Speaker 1: agitators and haters say, even if those haters happen to
Speaker 1: occupy or have occupied the White House, occupy governor's mansions,
Speaker 1: occupy police departments, Senate seats, congressional seats. Pride is something
Speaker 1: that comes from the inside out. This month and this
Speaker 1: year has been testing the LGBTQ community in ways. I
Speaker 1: don't even think that we have expected the amount of
Speaker 1: anti trans, anti LGBTQ pieces of legislation, well over five
Speaker 1: hundred plus the indignities that so called representatives want to
Speaker 1: write into law make it that much more important to
Speaker 1: have and create reasonable self esteem. Pride Month used to
Speaker 1: piss me off. I'm gonna be honest, as a black
Speaker 1: queer woman, initially I loved Pride. I loved the marches,
Speaker 1: I loved the rainbows everywhere, I loved the parties. Let's
Speaker 1: be honest. I loved it when I was younger because
Speaker 1: it just felt so free. There's a free that comes
Speaker 1: with Pride, a liberation. When you look at all of
Speaker 1: the people that intersect inside of the queer community, it's everybody,
Speaker 1: and it's everybody learning to love themselves and each other
Speaker 1: despite what embedded homophobia and transphobia tries to tell us
Speaker 1: that we're unworthy, that we don't matter, that we should
Speaker 1: go away, or worse, we should be locked away. The
Speaker 1: reason why I started to hate Pride over you know
Speaker 1: the last several years, was because it became so corporatized. Right.
Speaker 1: You see, all of these companies just for this one
Speaker 1: month put up their rainbow flags and their rainbow icons,
Speaker 1: put out their merchandise because capitalism. But then the other
Speaker 1: eleven months of the year put their resources behind politicians
Speaker 1: and policies that work to take away our rights. So
Speaker 1: they're good with taking our money, but they're not actually
Speaker 1: good with the follow through of what it means to
Speaker 1: be a real ally And it doesn't just happen in June.
Speaker 1: If you care about LGBTQ equality, you should be giving
Speaker 1: to this community all year, not just one month and
Speaker 1: then patting yourself on the back. So it was never
Speaker 1: the fact that I hated Pride. It was the way
Speaker 1: in which capitalism and corporations decided to weasel their ways
Speaker 1: into our communities expression of freedom of joy. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've ever spoken about this before. Maybe I have,
Speaker 1: but I'll speak about it explicitly today on wokf's first
Speaker 1: real official day of Pride, because that Trump trial fucked
Speaker 1: me up and I had to talk about it on Monday.
Speaker 1: But for me, you will hear me say, and have
Speaker 1: heard me say throughout the years, that I am queer
Speaker 1: and a black queer woman, a black queer woman child
Speaker 1: of immigrants. I often say this, and I say it
Speaker 1: at the beginning of conversations, I say it in interviews,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that is because one I see
Speaker 1: my queerness as a political identity as well as an orientation,
Speaker 1: a political identity, in the fact that I am deeply progressive,
Speaker 1: deeply believe in equity and queer because lesbian for me
Speaker 1: just never sat right, because I think that there are
Speaker 1: all different ways in which you can love and fall
Speaker 1: in love with an array of people, and so I
Speaker 1: never wanted to necessarily feel like I was boxed in,
Speaker 1: and I think that that is important. What I love
Speaker 1: the most about this younger generation gen Z is that
Speaker 1: a lot of them identify as non binary, as queer,
Speaker 1: as just living on the spectrum where they understand that
Speaker 1: sexuality and identity is fluid, and that it is patriarchy
Speaker 1: and religion that has put us all in varied boxes
Speaker 1: and forced us to comply to their rules. When I say,
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about abortion, for instance, and I say
Speaker 1: women and people with uteruses, it isn't just to be
Speaker 1: quote unquote woke, even though I am and flucking happy
Speaker 1: for it, but it is to acknowledge the spectrums of
Speaker 1: identities of people who can in fact become pregnant that
Speaker 1: don't all identify as women. What queerness requires is really
Speaker 1: an exercise in intellectual expansion. The idea that we are
Speaker 1: forever learning and growing. And if we see the world
Speaker 1: in that way where I'm not stuck just with the
Speaker 1: information that let's say I graduated from undergrad or grad
Speaker 1: school with as the only right way it it is
Speaker 1: that I am nimble and I avail myself of new information,
Speaker 1: of new perspectives, of the friction that does come with expansion.
Speaker 1: It's not always easy, right. People would tell me, you know,
Speaker 1: it's so difficult to you know, to do the pronoun
Speaker 1: thing quote unquote. And I say, why if I walk
Speaker 1: into a room and tell you that my name is Danielle,
Speaker 1: but you tell me that I look like a Patricia?
Speaker 1: What the fuck gives you the right to call me Patricia?
Speaker 1: When I've told you what my name is. It goes
Speaker 1: back to dignity, right and respect. I respect you enough
Speaker 1: to challenge myself in ways that usher in a wider
Speaker 1: way of thinking, that challenge what I have been taught
Speaker 1: never to question. And now I'm asking why. It isn't
Speaker 1: all this quote unquote new fangled stuff. It's people gathering
Speaker 1: more information and recognizing that in many ways they've been
Speaker 1: forced to adapt to society's whims and ignore themselves. So
Speaker 1: pride is really about self trust. I am trusting myself
Speaker 1: to know myself so that I can show up as
Speaker 1: my full self, and that I am so rooted in
Speaker 1: the truth of who I am that whatever wind, whatever
Speaker 1: storm you try and bring my way, will not knock
Speaker 1: me over. And there are some people that hear that
Speaker 1: statement and they want to dig down to the roots
Speaker 1: and pull it out, and sometimes they win, because, as
Speaker 1: you all know, the LGBTQ community has higher suicide rates
Speaker 1: than any other community. So what pride gives us, particularly
Speaker 1: young queer people who may sometimes travel great distances to
Speaker 1: experience what it's like to be in community with people
Speaker 1: who accept them for who they are, and just that
Speaker 1: that sense of knowing that another world exists, even if
Speaker 1: it isn't right outside your front door, is what helps
Speaker 1: these young people helps all of us deepen and strengthen
Speaker 1: our roots, our dignity, and our esteem. So when people,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Rondescantises of the world, who pass
Speaker 1: legislation that said that no building could light up in rainbows,
Speaker 1: because my god, what would happen if people were to
Speaker 1: see a rainbow? I guess they're going to what spontaneously
Speaker 1: combust So we must protect the eyes and the egos
Speaker 1: of those fragile, fragile heterosexuals. These people go out of
Speaker 1: their way to try and make queer people ashamed of themselves.
Speaker 1: And because they're so busy banning books and denying history,
Speaker 1: they don't know that queer people have always existed. This
Speaker 1: ain't new. So what's new is that over the last
Speaker 1: decade the LGBTQ plus community has made significant advances in equity,
Speaker 1: in dignity written into policy. Which is why you see
Speaker 1: these motherfuckers working over time to condemn to shame, to silence,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, they are afraid
Speaker 1: of Generation Z. They're afraid that they know themselves more
Speaker 1: than the right wing ever will. They don't need prescriptions
Speaker 1: on toxic masculinity. They find it abhorrent. And so when
Speaker 1: you see acceptance happening and having a ripple effect, you
Speaker 1: know that the pushback is inevitable. But what I refuse
Speaker 1: to do, and I hope what my fellow LGBTQ plus
Speaker 1: community refuses to do, is to ever let them take
Speaker 1: away our pride, our joy, all your love, I say,
Speaker 1: all your love. Aud your Lord said that self love
Speaker 1: is a revolutionary act, and it is when you really,
Speaker 1: really really think about it. If you are from or
Speaker 1: identify with a marginal community, a marginalized community, a community
Speaker 1: that has been oppressed pushed to the margins at one
Speaker 1: point in time or another, or you're from a group
Speaker 1: that exists at the intersections of multiple marginal communities, then
Speaker 1: loving yourself ferociously from the tips of your toes to
Speaker 1: the top, top top of your head when everything around
Speaker 1: you is saying to hate yourself. I can think of
Speaker 1: no greater revolution than that. That's why when black folks
Speaker 1: we're saying in the nineteen sixties, I'm black and I'm
Speaker 1: proud because white supremacy would have us be ashamed. When
Speaker 1: I name the show Woke as Fuck, that was a
Speaker 1: declaration of consciousness. I love when I see signs that
Speaker 1: say loud and proud, because they want us to be
Speaker 1: silent and ashamed. They talk about silencing us because everything
Speaker 1: apparently that comes out of a mouth that is not white,
Speaker 1: that is not man, that is not sis, is indoctrination.
Speaker 1: But we can't talk about the indoctrination that we've had
Speaker 1: since birth, since the blue beanie or the pink beanie.
Speaker 1: Now it's multicolored, that's nice, but you can still walk
Speaker 1: down a clothing store aisle, a toy ale and see
Speaker 1: the gender separation happening from jump you want to talk
Speaker 1: about indoctrination. Girls play this way, boys play this way.
Speaker 1: So it's this realization that I don't have to gender
Speaker 1: my kids. I can let them like what they like.
Speaker 1: I can love them for who they are and how
Speaker 1: they show up. You know, when marriage equality passed in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, the Supreme Court, which this current Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is getting ready to overturn it. But when it passed
Speaker 1: and the White House lit up in a rainbow, I
Speaker 1: was actually in San Francisco, so I missed running down
Speaker 1: because I had at that time, I was still living
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC. Running down the street to the White House.
Speaker 1: That image was so powerful because in the most powerful
Speaker 1: building in this country, not only did they see us
Speaker 1: as queer people, but they celebrated us. I don't want
Speaker 1: people's tolerance. I never understood that to be tolerated. Who
Speaker 1: the fuck wants to be in a relationship with somebody,
Speaker 1: whether it be a person or a country that fucking
Speaker 1: tolerates them. I don't even want to be quote unquote accepted,
Speaker 1: because still that requires some type of exchange, like I
Speaker 1: have to give up something in order to be accepted.
Speaker 1: I want to be celebrated. I want to go where
Speaker 1: I am celebrated. And so this prime month, I just
Speaker 1: ask us all queer or not to really think about
Speaker 1: self love as a revolutionary act, joy as a revolutionary act,
Speaker 1: and think about the ways in which we are actually
Speaker 1: in the midst of a revolution right now. Change great
Speaker 1: changes upon us. We see it, we feel it, and
Speaker 1: we can choose to embrace it. We can choose to
Speaker 1: thank right give gratitude for the great shakeup that we've
Speaker 1: had over the last decade, because now we don't we
Speaker 1: need to smile in people's faces that we know don't
Speaker 1: like us. We don't need to pretend. But it is
Speaker 1: a reminder consistently that we won't find dignity and respect
Speaker 1: outside first, we must find it inside. And in this climate,
Speaker 1: we have got to grow deep, strong roots so that
Speaker 1: nothing that they can throw at us will have us
Speaker 1: uproot from ourselves. Wishing all my queerdos in this country
Speaker 1: around the globe the happiest, most joyful, beautiful, peaceful and
Speaker 1: loving pride sees in this month. Unwokay f we will
Speaker 1: do what we have done for the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: which is sit down, be in conversation with queer folks
Speaker 1: around the country. What does it mean to be queer
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, How are we preparing ourselves for
Speaker 1: this election? What does it mean to have honest conversations
Speaker 1: in the media and hold the media to account. What
Speaker 1: does it mean to be queer? And in education? Right now?
Speaker 1: We're going to be digging into all of that throughout
Speaker 1: the month of June. That is it for me today,
Speaker 1: dear friends on WOKF As always, power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.