Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with Me your Girl, daniel Moody recording pre recording from the home bunker, Folks, I am taking a few days away, but you know that I'm never too far away, so make sure that you are following me on social media at D two sense Danielle Moody underscore on TikTok, Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the show. Transgender rights activist Dominique Morgan. Dominique is the first transgender woman Black woman to have a street named after her in
the entire country in Omaha, where she grew up. And in this conversation, we talk about you know what block black trans women face in this country. We talk about you know, her as a role model, and the work that is still needed to be done for trans people to be able to live free and safe in their bodies, and the horrendous laws that are being introduced to limit their humanity. And so this conversation was recorded prior to the seismic shift that we've had in our politics with
a switch in candidates for the Democratic Party. But nonetheless, the issues and the stakes still remain the same. So coming up next, my conversation with transgender activists Dominique Morgan, Folks, I am so very happy to welcome to WOKF Daily, the director of Fund for Transgenerations, a activist, a warrior for justice in so many different ways, and I think still to this point, the first black trans woman to have a street named after them in the entirety of
the United States. Dominique Morgan, talk to us about that honor. I mean, in all of the streets in all of the United States. In Almaha, Nebraska, there is a street that is named after you in a historically black neighborhood. Walk us through how we got there.
You know, the short answer is black women. And the background of that is Miss Kathy Tyree, who has been in community back home for years, activists and an actress and a musician. And one day she was just like, do you think they would do this? And you know, she was like, I'm going to pick up the application, I'm going to put it in. And there were multiple black women who pushed this forward. The city council person.
It needed to be a unanimous vote or they would have had to go door to door for people to say they wanted to happen. So Miss Jackson, I be Black Girl. It had to be sponsored by a nonprofit organization. So it was these multiple moments where black women were saying this was important. And as a street I grew up on in North Omaha, and Simone Sanders is a
good friend of mine, I know, you know Samone. So Simone had gotten her street renaming earlier that year back in our hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, and it was just really, I don't have the words for to understand how it feels, because there are moments it just feels very surreal in regards to just what it means. That's the same street that I got arrested on when I was twelve years old, the first time that I had an interaction with the
police system. And that day my juvenile judge, who is a person who sentenced me to juve, now, she was there at the street naming, and so that street for many reasons, both of my parents have passed on. But the house I grew up in is the house my grandmother owned. It was a beautiful not a period to the end of that sentence. But and I my brain is I'm with these journalism folks. Whatever the symbol is that tells you that there's more to the paragraph, but it makes it clear.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, ellipses the ellips yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
It was. It was very much that for a life that has already I've already been very privileged and blessed, but it was a clear it was ellipses for anyone who's been through the things that I've been through, that there's more.
I love that and you know the fact that you ended that with with there's more, right, Because what I find is when we are talking about the lgbt Q plus community, but when we're talking specifically about black queer people, black trans folks, it is almost as if everything is a period and not an ellipses, that there isn't more
behind the stats, behind the stereotypes, behind the trauma. So can you talk about what it even means to say that you've had so many points of privilege in a community that we don't normally equate with having any privilege at all, and what that means to you to be able to say that in comparison and in conjunction with other people's experience inside of the community.
It's so important for me to inventory one if I focus on the pieces of my identity that are marginalized and the way they're marginalized, and I don't look at my access. It just internally doesn't allow me to acknowledge my journey and what I've done and what I've accomplished and what I really have. I think it doesn't allow me to be thoughtful and weaponize what I have in
the best way. Right. And then on the other side, I never have a fear around calling people into their privilege and access because I'm doing the same work and I know if I can do that work when I'm looking at a white man and asking him to do that work, when I am sitting in a room with
a white woman and they start crying. It's like, if I can look at my journey from prison, ten years in prison, eighteen months in solitary confinement, literally six months being housed on death row, and I can talk about where I am now, what that means. It means that I don't want any sort of excuses from anyone else. More importantly, it is important as a black trans woman for me to figure out how I disenter myself in opportunities that come to black trans women because so many
folks talk about divesting from scarcity. If your cup is full, if you know your cup is full, even if you want more poured into it, it just that's a rule. And so if I am not thinking about what level my cup is a naturally I'm gonna want more and more and more. But if I'm thinking about it, I can have all I need and I can be thoughtful about making sure that my siblings have what they need, and not by me sacrificing. Like being thoughtful means I
don't have to do the work from sacrifice. I can do the work because I'm like, oh, you're good, and we can make sure that other people are good.
At the same time, I love that by saying that we don't have to do the work from sacrifice, because there has in many ways. I feel that a lot of people inside of movement, particularly the LGBTQ movement, though, believe that in order for there to be any achievements that there must be suffering attached to that. Can you speak to that point about how one can embody activism
center justice. Let's just say whole justice, whole life justice, this and it not come from a trauma lens that I don't need to suffer in order to be able to be in solidarity that there can be again more than the period at the end of the sentence. Can you speak to that.
I tell people often that a lot of the skills and ways of knowing that I have that allow me to navigate spaces and still kind of be grounded come from my incarceration. And I say that because one it's not I'm not saying that the walls and the institutions gave me those moments. It's the people. It was me having access to these people that people have said have nothing to offer, that taught me some of the most powerful moments. And I used to sit with this Arch Kirby.
My prison number was five six eight ninety two and that was issued to me in like two thousand and one. Artist number was like two three zero zero zero something, So that's how long he was incarcerated. He was doing life, and he worked in the laundry room, and he did the same things every day, and he should be like, Arch, aren't you tired? And he used to be like, I can choose to be tired, or I can choose to figure out how to find joy in what's in front of me. And I think in activism. We are given
these kind of cars that we're dealt. Right, it's like planning spades. Sometimes you don't get a hand and you might not have no spades at all.
Baby, we still got to get well.
And if you've really been in it, you can't even if you're defeated, you can't act like you're defeating. Right, How to make you think this to a diamonds is aasu spade? Come on? And I think that culture, I think that mentality. The riches already have the riches because I get to do this with my people. If you've ever been an activist for yourself alone, which is what incarceration is for a lot of people, there's a loneliness
to it. When I learned that there was something called abolition, when I became the executive director of SO I can pink and realize ten fifty people will get into a room and move, I'm like, that's dope. Just the people
coming together is the gift. And I think an outcome of white supremacy is putting us in that mindset of scarcity, and not just scarcity from access to things, but scarcity in the belief that we didn't accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, and a lot of that is because they position us to try to set goals like end world hunger. I ain't got that, baby. My grace quotient can't hold that. I can feed the block, though, And if I focus on attainable goals, I more times than not get to
sit in the abundance of accomplishing the thing. I think when you look at philanthropy and we look at dollar investment, and I said this today, so we were talking to some philanthropists. We will fund somebody for one year to address the issue that's been happening for thirty years with a staff that couldn't even handle the issue on that block.
And so how are we distributing dollars? How are we being in community as philanthropists in a way that support people in success and saying, you know what, job well done funding them multiple years for that anxiety, so that stress, The idea that someone can innovate while being stressed about where the next dollar is coming from is ridiculous. And last when not least, what we can name that they're
the experts and mean it. Those are the things that as an executive director and even in this role, that I've been in for about two years that have given me abundance even in the time of scarcity. I know what I'm talking about. I do the work well, and I have a proven track record holding on to those things even when I'm in a time where my god, where's this funding gonna come for next year? Right? I raise every dollar I give out. It lets me know the room I have to grow, But it never makes
me feel like the room is empty. If that makes.
What are the ways in which you think that philanthropy needs to be disrupted in order to really serve and be of service? Because you know, I sit on the board of the Misfoundation for Women which I have been a part of for several years now.
Shout out to.
Shout yes, yes, And I will say that Teresa's mindset has been about disrupting this idea of, you know, a philanthropy which is pretty much built on white people feeling very good about what has been stolen and giving back what has been stolen from community, right like with the name of grant in increments and in the name of grants. But then we get to control how you're going to use the money that was stolen, right, And so I feel like in many ways philanthropy has experience and has
experienced a disruption. But in a moment when we are seeing that these two political parties, one wants to eviscerate any social safety, that wants to eviscerate all things that government should provide to its citizens, philanthropy will have a bigger role. Do you think one that this kind of legacy space can be disruptive and are they prepared do you think for the role that is going to be needed.
It's so funny you say this. We were talking about this at lunch a little bit one of our colleagues where we were talking about the pandemic and we were looking at my workbook and it's called Discovering Your Power, and they were like, you know, they tapped into their power. And I was like, I don't think they tapped into their power. I think I think of the Titanic, the things that no one could have access to that live below board, No one cared about it because the ship
was sinking. And I feel like philanthropy moved that way in the pandemic. We didn't know if we were going to what was going to happen, so people were, oh my god, I get to be radical, I get to be excited. I think there was a rush to it. I think it was a way for them to feel valid and to be a part of things. People enjoy oppression who have never had to be oppressed more than people talk about. It is a kink. It is a kink, and I'm not here yucking anybody's young, come on, but
it is a kink. And so I say that to say we've done it because in the pandemic we did disrupt it. The reporting processes changed. You would just get a phone call, we got one hundred thousand, we got a extra this, all those things happened. And I said, I don't want a lot of people to have to be dying for us to figure out how to show up. And I think what we can be thoughtful of going forward is one, let's be reflective about the pandemic, not in a let's create a strategy to where we don't
get back there. But let's not throw away everything. And that's the same mentality I talk about my incarceration a lot, because that was almost ten years of my life. If I threw away everything that happened there, I would be throwing away some of the pieces that allow me to go into a room and ask four million dollars with my chestyle. Right, it's the same thing that made me go Boston when I didn't really have it in my hand and still get it. You understand me, And so
we can disrupt it because we've done it. People have to be excited to not be essential anymore in philanthropy, and that is as someone who joined the ranks of philanthropy. I would be lying if I said a piece of the privilege of the cachet wasn't a part of Like, you know what, I'm tired. I want to be in this space and have some of that. But when I got over here, I realized the more of that I had, it meant the further our way I was from my people.
So to think of how gagged I am to be in philanthropy and be as tired as I was when I was running bell support programs every day is interesting. But we know how to do it. And so Danielle, what I'm saying is we can. We have to lock in. And the last thing is get rid of the language that tricks people into thinking that we're doing something we're not. Stop saying trust base we don't trust people. Stop saying right, right,
that's right now, But it's true. Right. A lot of the disappointment of community is predicated on we've given them a false sense of how we move, and then we don't move in that way, and then they're hurt, and then we don't want to be held accountable. And that's the last thing. Unless philanthropy has a system for us to be held accountable, power will never it will never be any sort of flat power, power dynamic. As long
as we're in touchable. As long as we can do what we want to do and not have to answer to anyone, things will stay the same. And I don't want to live a life where I can mess up and someone can't tell me I messed up.
Yeah, yeah, Another question for you. You know, as time marches on to this upcoming election, there are a lot of people that I talk to who are losing faith, right, They're losing faith in possibility, faith in the possibility that we can because we have made things better. What has your time both being incarcerated and outside of the system,
How has it grown your faith, challenged your faith? And what kind of advice can you provide to others who haven't even experienced those types of lows or moments, but they find themselves in a place of struggle.
It is heartbreaking and will often move me to tears to know that people have tricked us as black folks into not realizing that we are literally superhuman in regards to We are brilliant. We love each other in ways that people wish they could right these love stories that we see are taken from We have so much in us, and then we'll have these moments when it's like, oh, I don't know how we will get to the other side. And in my lived experience, in my faith, in my existence.
I'm a forty two year old black trans woman with I'm still a year from being able to get a part in almost fifteen years post release, with eight felonies on her record, that lives in Atlanta in the Perimeter in a three bedroom house with two baths, has two paid cars cars. There are savings. I can call my aunt and she will use the pronouns that are affirming to me. I can call my cousin who live in the hood, and he's gonna ask me about I saw
Laverne Cox on TV today. My nephews and nieces call me and they know that I'm still here and they want me to come to their events. That I walk in rooms with black people and they embrace me. I'm taking my black ass to the White House tomorrow, and it's not about who's in the White House. It's about the journey from there. I walk down a street named after me, and so in my story, like that's those
are nuggets, right. You look at a miss Major. If you lean into the brilliance and the pageantry of blackness in a real way, it is everywhere. It's in the bus driver, it's in the person who brings your mail, it's in your child. I think a lot of the struggle that I see black folks have is that they really don't love their blackness as much as they say they do. Because the love that I've had to work for in my blackness amplified whatever my trans experience brought
to me. Being trans is cute, being trans in black. The girls can't quantify it, right, And I know this seems like someone who's listening, like, oh my god, this seems us out there. This is really what my rooting is about. Every day I look at my people and I'm just like well, there's no way we're not gonna be okay. And if I'm really honest, those systems have never saved us or benefited us. Have they been less harmful at times? But I I was really thinking about
who was gonna help me pay my bills. I would not be looking for a stimulus. I would be like, hey, Angelica, since let me get alone. And it seems common sense. But the common sense is telling us that we will always be our own liberators. And due to that mindset, I won't let them capture me with fear going into this fall. That's not me saying I'm divesting. It's not me saying that I'm not aware. It's saying that if we're if we're focused on fear, we don't get to
be strategic. And focusing on my blackness always ensures that I get to be strategic.
Let me tell you something. I will go to whatever church you preach out. I will go. I will I will walk down whatever path because I am a said person that loses faith on a regular basis. I am said person who is just like, this whole place is fucked up, you know, But you reminding us that you know what these systems that are indeed fucked up. Were never created for our safety, for our resilience, for our audaciousness.
Everything about these systems were created to keep us small, and to keep our dreams dark, and to keep our spirits low. And so I just you know, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for the work that you do, for the life that you continue to live and share with so many people, and just for the spirit and the passion that you bring to everything that you do, because it is just such, it is such a gorgeous reminder of the magic that we have.
And I just I greatly appreciate you making the time for us today.
Thank you. And I want to say I met you the first time. It was twenty nineteen. It was right before I was starting my transition. No one knew this, and it was a dinner for the tenth in d C. Oh my god. And so I have loved you since. And I watch a show and I follow you and when they they said, oh this was a thing. I'm big on full circle moment. I'm a piscey. Yeah, And I was just like, oh, this is this is beautiful
because I just I love the conversations you bring. But I remember being in that very quiet space of knowing something bigger was coming from me, but not knowing how to tell the world. And that was the last you know, a small house in DC, having a dinner. That was the last time we saw each other. So I'm excited to see you tomorrow. Oh my God, for this opportunity.
Oh I love thank you so much for that, for that reminder that dinner was so special. Yeah, was was so special. Oh beautiful, wonderful. Well, tell people how they can be involved, how they can continue to show up in the ways in what you do.
Yes, one piece, we're launching this huge cultural capital project with TS Madison where she's given us her mansion and we're bringing in ten black trans women who lead organizations across the country to build this housing project in Atlanta, the TS Madison Starter House. So please go to Instagram, to Madison's instagram, to mind to name them in aesm
inc in Atlanta and you can get information there. Please follow us at Borealis And most importantly, I know y'all are thinking will Dominique, where do I get some coins? The Fund for Transgenerations. Our open way that we move dollars is through our rapid response, We move dollars monthly. If you go to Borealis Philanthropy dot org and you look for the Fund for Transgenerations page, it will tell
you how to apply the other. Great thing for you leaders who are like, we're talking about blackness, what about black folks who are not trans We have eight other sibling funds, the Black Movement Fund, Communities Transforming Police saying there are dollars there. We move sixty six million dollars a year. Every director at Borealis is currently a black woman that is raising that money, that is moving that money, and so I'll be dogging if it don't go to
black people. So please lock in with us and let's focus on how we can get each other free and stop waiting for permission from our presses.
Amen to that, Thank you, thank you, appreciate you so very much. That is it for me today, Dear friends on wokef as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.