Birthday Wishes and Reflections

am feeling this week. So first I want to share with you that as I was getting ready to celebrate my birthday, and for those of you who've been listening to me for a while, you know that my birthday is always a big deal. I believe that people should take off if you are privileged and have the ability to do so. It's like your own personal holiday, right. You work all year and if your birthday happens to fall you know, during the week, and you can, you

should take off. And I know many people that can and just don't even if you want to do nothing right, like, it's your time, it's your day. We have three hundred and sixty five days, you get one. But what I will say is that I was having difficulty, not in terms of wanting to take time, which I am taking, but in terms of finding it in myself to want

to celebrate, because I haven't been feeling very celebratory. We've been discussing this for weeks now as we enter into the full month of the war in Israel and Palestine and the devastation that has happened, the lives ten thousand plus lives, most of them children, being taken. It is heartbreaking and devastating to think that our tax dollars, not just in this country, but in other countries, go to

fund other people's misery, other people's death. And I think right now, for me, as I am centering my feelings about what is happening, I just want us to dig into our humanity and to understand that it isn't just about your child, right, It isn't just about our country,

It isn't just about your life. We are interconnected. We are a global community of humans that need each other, and that if we turn our backs on marginalized communities and say that it is okay and justifiable for us to still govern with an eye for an eye, mentality that we know makes the whole world blind do you think that I justify at all the killing of fourteen

hundred people. No, I do not. But I believe that we've been lied to into believing that war and murder and bombing people out of existence is the answer to peace and justice. It isn't the only answer that allows us to get to a place of peace of justice.

No one group has a claim to land. And I've said this continually on my show on all of them, frankly, that if your liberty and freedom comes at the expense and the oppression of someone else, you are not free because you will always be living and navigating from a place of fear. That's not freedom. And so to believe right, and I got to tell you that this whole censuring that has happened of Congresswoman Rashida Tuleb is white supremacy

and anti democratic values at play. And the fact that twenty two members of her own fucking party voted to close her mouth as the only Palestinian American in Congress right now with experience of the community that is being bombarded,

is insane to me. And so when I see the people that are marching, that are speaking out all around this world, in this country, that are blocking shipping containers right that are carrying weapons of death, that are saying not in my name, Jewish voices for peace, Rabbis for peace, Muslims for peace, all of these people into religion and cultures, races and ethnicities that are saying no, we don't want to live in a world that thinks that it is

okay and justifiable to kill babies. There is recordkeeping that is being done to the best of their ability, recordkeeping that is used right to provide humanitarian aid and has been right for decades. This is the same record keeping that the United States has used. But all of a sudden, now, oh, I don't believe the Palestinian numbers. Why because they're not favorable. One, two, three, four, five, six plus pages where there are names listed and next

to those names is a zero. The zero represents the age six plus pages of babies that will not see their first birthday. They're terrorists. So another report recently that said that largely the children that have survived are surviving through the grace of God right now suffering depression, suicidal ideation, mental health issues that we could not even comprehend because the amount of death and destruction that these little eyes and little hearts are taking in should not be the

case for anyone's child. Do understand that? So it was hard for me today to muster the joy right that is needed to celebrate a birthday. That I thought to myself, and this is something that I really want folks to take in, is that what we need right now is more light. What we need right now is more healing. What we need right now is more joy in a world that is becoming hardened by the day. Softness is resistance in a world that is becoming more hateful and

toxic by the day. Joy and self care is resistance because what a pressors want is for us to believe

that there are no avenues out. They want us to exist in a place of hopelessness, grief, and devastation because you know what that creates, as Belle Hooks has said, paralysis, and that paralysis that inability to think outside of ourselves, the inability to imagine and to dream for bigger and better worlds, not just to be anti something, to resist what is happening, but to dream about something that is better. That requires us to be in a space of hopefulness.

How do you get there? When you find yourself in tears on a regular basis. You get there by healing your own wounds. You get there by tending to what is broken inside of you. You see what we are right now, and I'm going to continue to save this on this show is a bunch of wounded souls walking around harming each other because we haven't found a way to excavate and heal what hurts us. Right, we live inside of this system of greed and dominance and oppression

and domination right like it is. Oh, I can't possibly provide these people with self determination and liberation. They said that about enslaved Africans, because then they will turn around and do to me what I've done to them. Except all of us don't operate that way from a place of deprivacy, which is exactly where the roots of slavery were.

When you get to break apart people's humanity and justify right by calling them animals, by saying that they need to be broken, that their bodies are only good for work, and when that work is done, when they can no longer do that, than they are disposable. You see the language that I'm using. That is a language that was used to continue to enforce the abomination that we know

as slavery for centuries. It's a similar language that we are hearing from our own representatives in this country and NETANYAHUO in Israel when he is referring to the Palestinian people, they're terrorists. We got a level gaza. There are no

civilians there, They're all hamas. What. Let me make it very clear that if all Americans are not Maga, if all white Americans are not aligned with Donald Trump and Maga, racist, misogynist, stick antih Islam, anti black, anti trans, if all white people cannot be lumped into that bucket, then tell me

how you lump in all Palestinians into one bucket. We have to be better, and we have to ask ourselves who benefits from our miseducation, Who benefits from our ignorance, our complacency, our powerlessness, Who benefits from stoking the flames of hatred? Because you see, folks, there are always people groups that benefit from that. We have got to ask the questions and we have to tend to ourselves because

the pain that we are experiencing. Whether or not you are a person of Jewish faith, whether or not you are a person of Muslim faith, whether or not you are trans, whether or not you are black, whether or not you are disabled. The grief and trauma that we are experiencing is real, and it has been for years now, and so I know from firsthand experience how hard it is to muster joy. But it requires intentionality, it requires focus.

You see, Hollywood folks has lied to us, been making us believe that happiness right is just something that floats apparently on a bubble boop. We get bopped and then we're just happy. No, the world is fucking hard, and social media and the ability to see war and how it ravages bodies, communities in real time has made it

even harder. So the need to double down, triple down on what makes helps us find our joy on a daily basis is important not just for us individually, but you see, when you move from the individual and we start to grow that light out, we see how much more in common we have than what separates us. We're able to move and think in a different way and

move from a place of possibility. It is so necessary, so very necessary for us to get a hold of our own minds, bodies, spirits right now because the opposition is hoping and praying that we will just sit down and not have the strength, the passion or the conviction to get back up. We cannot let that be the case. Speaking of which, with a few minutes that I have left, I want to applaud the voters that showed out across this country, particularly in places like Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, that

had their voices heard. Let me tell you that Democrats for far too long have counted out red states. Just

let that be Republican will won't invest anything. And what Kentucky showed us with the reelection of Governor Basher, a Democrat that won one county by fifty three percentage points that went to Trump by more than sixty and twenty twenty is that when you tell people the fucking truth, right, when you align yourself with what they want, which is bodily autonomy, liberty, right, the ability to afford a quality

of life, they vote, They come out for you. Since the DOABS decision, we've seen that when abortion is put on the ballot, Republicans lose. They overstepped their bounds, they overplayed their fucking hand. So for all the years the Democrats wouldn't talk about abortion, wouldn't bring it up. It's like, oh, they'll put it, you know, in their bios. They'll say that they're pro choice, then won't utter the word. It's

a winning fucking issue. You know why, because people with uteruses want the ability to decide when, how, and if they have a family. And when you say brazen lye out loud as Republicans have that you want to strip away that right, guess what it gets, folks activated. Look at Virginia. Glenn Youngkin was not only gonna get ready to institute a fifteen week abortion band in Virginia. I'm pretty sure that that's where motherfucker was going to and

now it's his run for the presidency. And so not only did Virginia voters come out and say oh hell no, not only did they hold on to the Senate, they flipped the House. So now that that's wherein Maga lovin piece of shit doesn't have the power and the ability to introduce said ban. So it is important for folks to remember that so long as we continue to elect people that actually believe in the Constitution and the rule

of law, our rights will be protected and expanded upon. Now, I want to make something very clear as I come to a close today on my good, good birthday, which is this. I love this country, and as Baldwin said, I love this country so much I have the right to criticize it. I love democracy because it gives us the ability to speak out on the things that matter to us. I do not agree with this president's current

position in Israel and Palestine. I don't agree with sending hundreds of billions of dollars to fund war, but as Tupac said, can't feed the poor. I do not believe and support this president's decision to go to Israel and hug Net and Yahoo a man who does not believe in democracy. You can say all the fuck you want that you're the only democracy in the Middle East. But I don't know a democracy that has two sets of license plates for its citizens and that denies some access

to Rhodes and others are free to move. That's not democracy. That's Jim Crow. And that's why people are marching, because they're starting to wake up and say, you know what, I'm not a foreign affairs expert, but I sure as fuck know right from wrong. And this seems eerily familiar, particularly if you are an American particularly if you are a black American, because they will always come for you next.

But what that doesn't state is this, Joe Biden is our nominee for president for twenty twenty four And if you think for one fucking second that I am going to sit out this election or that I will not vote for that man because he is at the top of our ticket, you are tripping'. And if you think for a second that you are not going to vote for him and you're gonna sit this out or vote for an independent right, let me remind you of what the fuck happened in twenty sixteen. Thank you Jill Stein

and those with their protest vote. The consequences are too great. Situations are too dire for us to gamble with our future and the future of democracy. So don't do it. That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke af AS always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.