Greed Isn't Good

The PTSD, the trauma, the grief, the anxiety that we felt back then is back. And frankly, you know, it's hard to consistently consistently be the guinea pig for nineteen and whatever variants come and so right now, currently there are four New York City schools that are closed. Hundreds of teachers have tested positive in one day. Mayor Bill de Blasio says that he will not be closing schools.

I mean, schools will obviously be closing down for the upcoming holiday shortly, but that he has no intention, no intention of closing schools as he did back in twenty twenty. The reality is this, we have a problem in the United States that is obvious, right, and it isn't just Amicron.

We have a whole host of problems that I'm going to dig into today because frankly, folks, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a level of fatigue, frustration, and just hopelessness as we are approaching the holiday season that I haven't felt in quite some time. You know, Amicron, what is troubling me about this new variant? You know? One I will say this, we are in a better place. Why because we have vaccines and we have boosters. But I know way too many people who have been vaccinated,

been boosted and have contracted COVID. What we are learning about amicron is that it is more contagious, and that the likelihood of us being able to dodge this variant that is three times as more contagious than alpha, than delta, and even in some instances they're saying three to eleven times more. It depends on how you are doing your math. But what we know is that it is unlikely that we are all going to end up unscathed. So I cannot say this enough. If you are have not been vaccinated.

If people around you have not been vaccinated, have not been boosted, please please please continue to encourage them to do so. This is not a joke. Again, I have friends right now who have contracted COVID after doing all

of the right things. And I also want to add to this, it is not an indictment of your character if you do contract COVID, because what we know is that because of the actions right of wealthier nations in not giving a waiver to other countries, lower income countries to be able to produce their own vaccines, this is

why variants keep happening. Just you know, we want to blame the people that are unvaccinated for this surge, but the reality is is that this came out of or at least was first identified in South Africa, a country whose vaccination levels are low, not because of vaccine hesitancy, but because of lack of accessibility and the amount of vaccines that the higher income nations said that they were going to be offering right and giving to these nations

they fell short of. And why is that because they would rather Maderna and Fiser and these other pharmaceutical industries make billions and billions of dollars that they receive money on the back end for. So once again, what is going to be the destruction of this country, of our planet? Right, it is going to be greed. Greed is going to

be what destroys us. But what concerns me the most about Omicron is this, And I have stated this before, and our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel has told us that when there is more virus that is in the air, right, it is more likely that it's going to mutate. And there was a conversation I was having with a friend of mine a couple of days ago, and it was this, how long, right, did it take us to discover Delta?

So let's let's look at this. In June of twenty twenty one, vaccinations were readily available and we had mobilization and roll out from this administration. Okay, by July, Delta was already prominent. So by the time that we had received the vaccines, right, we're alpha, Delta had already come on to the scene. Only a couple of months had passed between the emergence of COVID nineteen alpha to Delta.

Now Delta came on the scene in July. It is November. Right, it was November when omicron was first identified in South Africa and in several other countries in Europe. So we're looking now at the fact that within July, August, September, October, November, we're looking at a rent roughly four to five months in terms of the next variant. Right, Like the time is becoming smaller and smaller between when these variants are coming.

So if we're looking at omicron and we're saying that there is more of it and it is spreading faster, the likelihood of the next variant coming is probably going to be in the next two to three months. We already see that with omicron, that it is moving around the vaccinations. Now, people that are vaccinated plus boosted are less likely to have severe symptoms and be hospitalized right and die. But the thing is is that this virus is getting smarter, replicating faster, and moving at the speed

of light. So in order to her for us to get a hold of it, people need to get fucking vaccinated and boosted. But more importantly, the wealthier nations need to be providing those trip waivers so that lower incominations can begin to tackle the initial vaccination fucking rollouts. We cannot be self serving at this moment. If there's anything that we have seen over the past two fucking years of living in this pandemic is that it is not a pandemic of isolation and silos. It is a communicable

fucking disease and virus. So if we are not thinking about the collective we then we are going to all lose. Period. In other news, Joe Mansion is an asshole, right. Joe Mansion continues to show the American people, continues to show the world that he just does not give a fuck. And look, I know that shaming somebody who is shameless does not matter, but the level of rage that I have for Joe Mansion is on some next level. Shit.

If I saw that man on the street, it would take everything in me not to punch him square in his face. And I'm not an advocate for violence, but I am at my wits fucking end, because what I'm starting to realize, folks, is this is that the end of our democracy isn't solely going to be laid on the shoulders of the Republican Party. The fascist cult right that wants to bring us back to nineteen fifty three. No,

it is. It is going to rest on the shoulders of Democrats who are not seeing the urgency of now right. I listened fucking yesterday to Jen Saki, Press Secretary Jen Saki's press conference right following the major scathing statement that the White House put out in response to Joe Mansion going on Fox Right, going on Fox not calling the President of the United States, not issuing a statement, but going on the very network that is responsible for spreading

the big lie, for spreading fucking COVID. That's where Mansion decided to go on to go and tell the American people that he doesn't give a fuck about them. Now. Jensaki right in her statement in her press conference following the quote unquote scathing statement that was put out, Jensaki contin he needs to refer to Joe Mansion as a good friend of the president. Let me tell you something, If Joe Mansion is somebody that you consider you're a good friend, then I would hate to think what your

enemies do to you. Because Joe Mansion is no friend of this president. He is no friend of this fucking country, and he is sure as fuck not a friend of democracy. This man who was elected with two hundred and ninety thousand votes is able to thwart the voices and the need of eighty one million Americans that turned down in

twenty twenty to vote for Joe Biden. Now, I know that everybody wanted to be up in arms about host Charlemagne, the God who has a new show on Comedy Central, and if you are a New Yorker, you know him because he is one of the three hosts that hosts the show called The Breakfast Club, which is a very popular morning our urban radio show. Charlemagne had Vice President Kamala Harris on air, and he asked her directly, who is the President of the United States? Is it Joe

Biden or Joe Mansion. Now, Kamala Harris, in my humble opinion, which I said, recently missed a major opportunity, missed the major media moment to be able to go after fucking Joe Mansion's juggular. You know, here's the thing. I get that Joe Biden wanted to come into the presidency and say that I am the complete opposite of Donald Trump. I'm not going to trash my political opponents. I'm not

going to make targets of them. I'm gonna usher in some grown up sensibilities back into our body politic and back into this White House. But at the end of the day, if you are not going after enemies of democracy, when you see that we are under fucking attack and that people within your own party are the ones that are bringing the sword to your legislation, that are tearing it up and defecating on our democracy, then I don't know what the fuck you are doing, right I honestly

do not, because politics is a fucking blood sport. Right now, eight hundred thousand Americans are dead. And what we have learned right through tens of thousands of documents is just how willing and able the Trump administration was in thwarting right our ability to fight back against COVID when it first came on the scene right in twenty twenty, and when he learned about it in twenty nineteen. Is Donald Trump in jail or any of those administration officials in

jail for what they did to the American people? Are they in jail for negligent homicide? Are they even being fucking indicted or questioned about what they did not do for the American people? Know they are not and so we want to believe in this country that every time we get a new administration that we can just turn the page without looking back and seeing exactly what it was that was done. It isn't just Republicans that are to blame for the situation that we are in right now.

It is Democrats who want to think that we are continuing to function in some type of twentieth century mentality. We are at war. These people are at war. We already have eight hundred thousand people dead. By the time that we end the first quarter of this new upcoming year, a million Americans will have parish perished to COVID nineteen And do you know whose responsibility it is that we reach that number? Donald fucking Trump and the Trump administration.

But do you hear this current administration laying blame where blame should be. Do you see them waging campaigns, going after their own party members and having them fall in line? Because it is it is inconceivable what will happen to this country if we don't pass voting rights? Right, I just do not get at it. And I am at a place right where I just put up and you can go to Zora zoramag dot com you can go to media to read my latest piece in zoramagazine, which

is twenty twenty one, the Year of trauma, right. And I have to tell you that when I was asked to do a reflection piece on this year, there was not one good thing in terms of not in my personal life, right, but in the grand scheme of America. There is not one good thing that we can point to, not one. Now my friends want to say to me, oh, Danielle, well, the vaccine rollout went really well, And I'm like, were you around for the vaccine rollout? Because initially it was

a bumbling, fucking mess. Now, I'm not saying that this administration didn't walk into a steaming pile of shit, but they were aware of the steaming pile of shit that they were walking into. The vaccine rollout was not great. The flip flopping by the CDC was not great. Right. But when we started off twenty twenty one, we started off six days in with a fucking insurrection, an insurrection,

an attempt to overthrow the government. And as we are coming up on that year anniversary, the people that were in charge, the architects behind that, have yet to be fucking indicted. We have a Department of Justice that is spineless and run essentially by amibas. We have a Department of Health that is trying to do their best but still still playcating to the twenty five percent of Americans that refuse to get vaccinated and doing so in a way that makes them feel good about the fact that

they're not getting vaccinated. When are we going to actually start to police and make policy, not police to make policy right with those that are doing the right thing in mind? When are we going to start to recognize that nicenes and euphemisms and patting everybody on the back for doing the bare minimum doesn't fucking work. So it

brings me back to Joe Mansion. So one of the reasons why Mansion is saying that he will vote no on Build Back Better, and Chuck Schumer has recently said that he is going to bring the legislation to the floor because he wants everybody to be on record as if that fucking matters. Nonetheless, Joe Mansion says he's not going to vote for it because he doesn't believe in the childcare tax credit, because he thinks that parents are going to use that to go on vacation or to

use it for things that they do not need. And the question that I tweeted when I heard that that was one of his responses, was why doesn't anybody ask Joe Mansion why he thinks that the American people are so undeserving? Why he thinks that low income Americans are lazy and not deserving of their own fucking money back.

I am so sick and tired of this narrative coming down from this fucking uber wealthy about how they're going to dictate certain things to low income people and to the poor, and do so through a lens right, through a lens of scarcity, but also through the perception that these people are poor are low income because they just don't work hard enough, and that if we give people quote unquote handouts, then they won't want to do for themselves. Because to me, basically, what you are saying is that

you do not believe in Americans. And I want somebody to have Joe Mansion be on the record fucking saying that as he is sitting on his seven hundred thousand dollars yacht and driving in his fucking thousands of dollars tens of thousands of dollar Maserati. Right, when you look at West Virginia, they are at the bottom, the fucking bottom of every socioeconomic indicator. Right, They're at the bottom of healthcare, bottom of education. But this man they have

continued to elect for four fucking decades. I didn't have the opportunity to vote for or against Joe Mansion because I don't live in fucking West Virginia. But Joe Mansion has the power in our broken, fucking democracy to vote against eighty one million Americans. And we think that the system is working for us, folks, let me tell you something.

Friend of the Show, Kurt Bardella also this week has a really great piece set is up at USA today which is his recommendations of what Democrats need to do. But basically, what he has stated is that Democrats need to prepare themselves for the fact that we are losing the midterms. Right, the calendar year hasn't even changed, but we can already sense what is in the air. Democrats will lose the fucking House, and they will lose the

goddamn Senate. And what Republicans have already said is that they will spend the next two years right making it so that Donald Trump is going to be the nominee for twenty twenty four. We will never have three and fair elections, and they will end up probably throwing Joe Biden in jail for whatever things that they want to make up about him or his families. They have told you out loud what the fuck they plan to do, and so what Kurt Bardella says in his piece is like,

here's the thing. You need to operate off of the fact that we are fucked and that we have nothing left to lose. So instead of operating from this place of fear, which is so the place of comfort for Democrats, right, they are fearful of every goddamn thing. What will people think? What about the movable middle? What about independence? We need to be bipartisan? Fuck that. Guess what. Republicans don't want to fuck with you, right, They've said that to you

time and time again. And as a matter of fact, if you're really not paying attention, many of them have threatened you all with fucking violence. Your colleagues in the fucking Congress have threatened you with violence. So to think that they're coming to the table for any bipartisan measure is like dreaming about candy Land, I guess you probably believe in Santa and the tooth Ferry as well. So that's number one. Number two is this number two? Is this?

No one fears Democrats. That's what Kurt said in his play and his Peace. No one fears them. They don't fear the Commission, they don't fear the Department of Justice. They don't fear this White House because they know they have no teeth, because they've proven time and time again that they are not willing to do what it takes

in order to save our democracy. So when you know that you're going to continue to run them up, you think Mark Meadows wasn't isn't afraid of the criminal indictments that may or may not come down from the Department of Justice because Merritt Garland has showed us that he has no sense of urgency, that he doesn't think that

ourocracies in peril, and that apparently right. His colleague Bob Mother, who put together a fucking walking memo of ten ways that you can fucking charge Donald Trump, well he, I guess put that in the bottom of the file draw and locked it up. You have all of the evidence in front of you. You know that the administration that came before. You are a group of criminals. They have fucking told you on podcasts and on Fox, and still

you do nothing. I am so tired, folks, of being a part of a party that no one fears, being a part of a party that all they want to do is have in fighting about policies that the American people honestly don't understand. Do what needs to be done, get your fucking members in line. And if you're not going to do it with carrots, right then it's time to take out the fucking stick. I want to see

campaigns waged against Joe Manchin. I don't give a fuck if we lose West Virginia, because frankly, we are losing right now. Because if this is what power looks like, if this is what winning in twenty twenty looks like, then you can fucking have it, you know. I'm so like infuriated because we have so much that is at stake, There is so much that is at risk, and it seems like there are only a handful of people that

recognize that truth. And so when Charlemagne says to Vice President Kamala Harris, who's the president of the United States, and she has the audacity to pop off and be like, it's Joe Biden, don't act like a Republican. Well, then Joe Biden should start acting like the fucking president, right, Maybe do that. We are in a lot of trouble, folks, Like as this year comes to a close and as we get ready to move into twenty twenty two, we

are in a world of fucking trouble. Over eight hundred thousand Americans are dead, Twenty five percent of the population still doesn't want to get vaccinated. We have mass shootings that are back on the rise. We have over four hundred voter supression bills that are on the books. We have you know, the rise in racism, rise in white supremacy. We have so much climate change right. I mean, it

is either fire season, tornado season, hurricane season. But every time these seasons roll around, they are once in a century. How can it be once in a century? Every couple of months, we are headed towards the end of days in so many fucking ways. It's biblical what is happening right now? And yet I'm waiting for Democrats to wipe the call out their eyes and wake the fuck up.

We are out of getting to a point where we have nothing to left to lose, so you better leave it all on the fucking floor right now, or just leave. The reality is is that I'm ready to fight. I've never stopped fighting. The Trump administration and what they did and Donald Trump descending down that escalator set off an alarm inside of me that has yet to go, that has yet for me to be able to hit snooze. It has been blaring for the last five years, and I want to know if anybody else can hear it.

There's so much at stake, and as we tick down with just a handful of days left and this year, all I keep wondering is, my God, what does twenty twenty two have in store? Because I'm actually terrified to find out, folks. Coming up next is a really hopeful,

hopeful conversation with Hope will Well and Sack. Hope Well and Sack is the executive director of a Georgia initiative to create a guaranteed income for black women of eight hundred and fifty dollars eight hundred and fifty dollars a month that could provide black women with breathing room, provide them with the ability to understand what it's like to

thrive and not just survive. And I'm really excited because Hope will offer to us a lot of statistics and a lot of reasons why the in Her Hand initiative that they have launched will launch, excuse me at the beginning of twenty twenty two matters and could possibly present itself as a model for what guaranteed income, which is different from universal basic income, what guaranteed income could look like for those communities that are always marginalized and never

invested in. So I'm very excited for the upcoming conversation with Hope while in Sack, folks, I am very excited to welcome to woke F for the first time Hope wallin sach who is the executive director of Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund or GROW Fund in Atlanta. The in Her Hand initiative will be focusing on providing black women with guaranteed income of around eight hundred and fifty dollars

a month over the next two years. And the hope here, I'm assuming, is to see how such a program that we've heard in different formats and in different ways by different politicians, how we can help those black women who want are the base of the Democratic Party, who are often heads of households, and who are often also making fifty cents on the dollar or seventy five cents depending

on who's measuring on the dollar of white men. Hope, thank you so much for making the time to join us on woke F tell me more about this extraordinary in Her Hands initiative and this program. Thank you so

much for having me, Daniel. Yes, so, just as you described, the in Her Hands Initiative is a partnership between the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund or Growth Fund and give directly and we'll be providing thirteen million to black women across Georgia in a two year program that provides approximately eight hundred and fifty dollars a month on average to

participants to over six hundred women across the state. Our focus, or our launch site is the Old fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta, which is directly in the heart of the city of Atlanta. It's the neighborhood where doctor Martin Luther King was born, where he preached to ebnez Or Baptist Church. King was an early advocate for guaranteed income, especially in his last book in nineteen sixty eight, Chaos our Community.

And yet this neighborhood today, like many neighborhoods across Atlanta and across Georgia and probably across the country, although it sits in the shadow of King's legacy of justice, it's home to the largest concentration of Section eight housing jud

was too million dollars newly constructed homes. So we feel that this neighborhood, like many neighborhoods across the city, across the country, has a particular charge to pursue racial and economic justice in really bold ways that are not just a program, but also switching the paradigm on how we understand economic insecurity and poverty. So very excited about the launch of this program in early twenty twenty two and all of the work that's gone into it over the

past couple of years to make it possible. Talk to me about the difference between what you in this initiative are calling a guaranteed basic income versus what we heard in the you know, the initial I guess it would be twenty nineteen, twenty twenty primary Democratic primary where we had Andrew Yang talking about you know, universal basic income. What are the distinctions between the two. Yeah, absolutely so.

Guaranteed income is a term that goes back to the Civil rights movement also the Black power movement, and has long been a term to describe sort of an unconditional cash transfer program that has racial and economic justice at the heart of it. Guaranteed income programs tend to be targeted towards members of a specific community because we know that these issues of racial and economic injustice and disparities

did not emerge out of nowhere. They emerge as a result of policy, political and policy choices, and so if we want to uproot some of those issues, we have to tackle them head on, and we actually have to under know the roots of where they came from and be intentional about the solutions and policies that are going to help to pursue a more more racially just and equitable economy. And so guaranteed income tends to be more focused on members from a specific community and at least

started beginning with those communities and hute impacts. It begins with those communities. Certainly can be widespread for everyone below certain income thresholds, but tends to be more focused whereas universal basic income most common proposals sort of our universe, and so they would focus on everyone in a population sort of even regardless of income, so a little bit more targeted. The other is universal. As the title implies.

Now I have my thoughts, which I said at the top, as to why this is being focused on black women initially. Can you explain more as to why they in Her Hands initiative, why it's focused on black women and not just black people in general. Yeah, absolutely so. This program is the result of a twenty twenty task force that convened in Atlanta called the Old Fourth Ward Economic Security Task Force and involved twenty stakeholders from across the metro

Atlanta area as well as several national stakeholders. And of course we began this work actually before the economic and health public health impacts of COVID had really taken hold, but certainly any trends that had already been in place for hundreds of years were brought to the four and really amplified. During twenty twenty, we saw that we finally started to recognize and talking about it in regular discourse, the disproportionate women were taking on in terms of childcare.

The unpaid limit for women also take on in terms of sort of household duties and caretaking duties. We also saw unemployment rate spike for women in particular, and of course, Black women live with the intersection of both gender inequality and racial inequality, and they bear the brunt of both of those. So women here in Georgia makes sixty three

cents on the dollar to their white male counterparts. We know that those paid disparities also increase or widens as we gain higher educational attainment, and so these disparities are really pervasive. This task force asked open ended questions about economic insecurity, and what we found when we barely scratch the surface, was that although economic insecurity is pervasive, there

are certain communities that are feeling it more acutely. And we would not be doing justice to tackling the problem of economic insecurity if we did not face that head on and start with some of the groups that are facing the most pervasive, the most acute impacts of economic insecurity and an economy that isn't working for everyone. And so really this is how the task force really decided to focus on Black women. Black women are one of the groups most likely to live in poverty in Georgia.

They're also one of the groups like we stuck in poverty in Georgia. And we know black women serve this role as oftentimes head of households, but also like the backbone of our community in so many ways, and so we don't view this program as something that is a handout. We view this as something people already deserve, and so excited to help to bring the conversation into this is what people already deserve and more and how do we

actually direct more of that towards these communities. Let's dig into the already deserve peace, because you know, one of the things that troubles me the most, particularly when we're talking about let's just look on the macro level at federal programs that we're looking right in this occurrent administration. We just learned yesterday Build Back Better is dead in the water, right because of one obstructionist Democrat who does not care about the needs of a majority of Americans.

And the idea here to me is that we all pay taxes. We pay a lot of taxes, right, particularly middle income and low income people pay more than their fair share. And I look at it, and I say on wokop all the time that the social safety net programs are the government reinvesting our money back in US, right, And yet when you hear these conversations happen on Capitol Hill, it is always, you know, clouded in this idea that Americans are lazy, that like, what we shouldn't be giving

them money? Oh my god, cut off the COVID relief package, you know, cut off the unemployment credits that we were giving back to people. Because if we provide, right, if we provide people with their own tax dollars back so that they can live their day to day lives without worrying about their basic needs, then they're not going to work.

And so how do you all push back against that narrative and kind of help to reframe it, you know, for people outside of oh, we're just giving these lazy people money to sit on their couch, as opposed to this is what they're owed right, right, right, This is a system that we've already paid into, and so now people just getting back a little bit of what we've

already paid into. Yeah, the core, at the core of this initiative is changing changing the narrative on what people broadly deserve and I think we start by doing that by changing the narrative on what black women deserve. I think for too long we have allowed the trope of in the myth of the welfare queen Yep influence policy that influences the material conditions of people across generations, across communities,

and it is no longer acceptable. We need to face it head on and say this is everyone deserves a decent, dignified life. Why why have we why have we decided

policies that actually undercut people's ability to do that. The truth is, the federal government, state governments play a huge role in determining who receives resources from, you know, those at the top to those at the bottom, and for some groups of people we put in these restrictions for some for some types of resource allocation, people have to jump through whos. And that is inherently linked to our

conceptions of who deserves what in this economy. And so at some point I think we sort of we change the narrative by building a new one. And that's what this program is. We are building something new. We are recognizing we're not waiting for someone else to recognize our deservedness. We're saying we have it already, and so certainly everyone

deserves a decent and dignified life. And so when we can, when we support black women, who have often been the punching bag on these policies, that we can begin to uproot this system that is actually failing broadly many different groups of women, but many different groups of people, I'm sorry, but on the back of really black women and by

using them as the punching bag here. So I mean, I think it goes without saying, people who are cash or experience in cash shortfalls, low income for whatever the term is, are incredibly resilient and resourceful. I think they could actually probably teach some folks who have a lot more more funds on like the best ways to make one dollar turn into two and to stretch a dollar. But we don't view it that way. We actually view

it the opposite. I view it that actually our communities are incredible places of wealth and knowledge on how to make an economy that is works for everyone, not just on an individual level, but on a community level, and to think about sort of how to make resources go further. But we don't tap into that knowledge. In fact, we do the opposite view. We view it as a place of absence of knowledge, a deficit based mindset versus a

asset based mindset. So hopefully this program can help to uproot some of those some of those tropes, and certainly our evaluation aspect of this program, we'll be looking into some of the questions you you just asked, So let's get into some of the nitty gritties of the program, which you know, again, I think it's extraordinary, right because I think, you know, I have been thinking it, particularly since the pandemic where millions of people lost their jobs.

You know, when I was quarantining with my family in twenty twenty at the height, you know, of the of the pandemic, I saw lines around food pantries that I didn't even know existed in the community that I grew up in. And there were lines that we saw on national news just I mean miles long, with people just needing to get a box of food so that they could get through the next couple of weeks. And I thought to myself, how often do we say that America

is the wealthiest nation. America is this beacon, and yet a majority of Americans, if a four hundred dollars bill can do wouldn't be able to pay it, and that has stayed consistent, you know, over the years. And so with this program, how do people opt in? Right? And then what are what are some of I guess the recordings or the reflections that you all will be get will be receiving from the participants in the program terrific.

So we'll be launching in the Old fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta, and then we'll be expanding out to a couple additional geographies across the state. So people will will be doing enrollment in reaching out to folks within these selected neighborhoods to focus to let them know that they may be eligible for the program and encourage them to apply. And so all right out, let me let me think. So we hope that this program, certainly it's one of

the largest guaranteed income programs in the country. It's also the largest program in the country focused on black women. It's the largest guaranteed income program in the South. And yet we know we would love to actually see this work grow because we know it's a bit of a drop in the bucket compared to be of the problem. And so we hope that this it's going to be

selected areas across the state. We're really about the size of it, but we also hope that you know, it can grow even further and that this program has actually an influence on state or federal policy towards similar type solutions. And we have some ideas on what sort of a guaranteed income could look like at scale, but that is

essentially how the program will be ruled out. And it's so it's a short term initiative in the hopes of generating insights and learnings and that would compel us towards sort of old old policy change towards these types of solutions. What does eligibility look like? Do you have to be at you know, at or below poverty level? Do you have to have depends you know, a certain amount of dependence. Yeah, this is one of the first programs you do. You

do not need dependence. So, okay, you can be um a parent or or not a parent and participate in this program. You um, it's focused on black women and focused on black women in specific geographies and so and then there is an income threshold for participation in the program, which will let people know for the specific geographies. Okay, you know, it's just I really love this idea and I'm excited to see how it changes, you know, how how it changes the communities that you're going to be

tapping in. Just tell us, you know, one of my last questions is, you know, tell us about what your hopes are, what what what do you hope to see um from out of the out of this two years and you know, how do you think that it will change the lives the participants? Yeah, our hope for these two years is that we're able to increase the economic security and financial stability of individuals who participate in the program.

We know that although cash shortfalls and financial insecurity, we use it that term as if it's really abstract from people's everyday lives, but it affects the material conditions of people's lives, the duration of their life, and the quality of one's life. So we hope that this, in some small way. It is certainly not enough, and people deserve more, but in some small way gives people back a little bit of time, a little bit of autonomy, a little bit of freedom to make choices, a little bit of

breathing room. Finally for them to just have a second to take a step back and take care of themselves and their loved ones. Individuals experience cash shortfalls, but those ripple effects are felt across generations, it is felt across communities, it is felt across household units. And so we hope that there are some ripple effects even across communities with

this type of program. And so our goal is, yes, to improve the sort of financial security of folks in the short run, and we think that we'll have sort of impacts on their financial well being in the long term, their mental health and well in physical health in the long term, as well as a number of other factors. But really, if I had to boil it down, giving folks just that breathing room, and then I think a second objective for the program is to influence influence policy.

Something about what we've been doing isn't working. As you said, the majority of Americans in a four to four hundred dollar emergency. We can keep trying the same things and investing in the same things over and over, or we can finally take a step back and say, why don't we listen to people in communities about what their needs are and then do something about it. Let's place the

power in the hands of the people. Closest to the problem to develop solutions on solving it and actually listen to them when they're telling us what the root of the problem is. We heard income community members cash would be a game changer. It is very difficult to budget plan for your life when month after a month your

experiencing cashhort falls. And so we hope that this program has some short term implications for program participants, but also begins to shift the paradigm on how we even develop policies in the first place, and whose voices are centered in that in that decision making process. You know, it's always the people who are so distant from the actual

problem that are the ones that are making policy. And one of the things that you had said, you know, earlier, is low income communities are so much more resilient because

they have always had to do more with less. And you know, and this idea that a lot of politicians, not just you know, Republicans, but Democrats alike, really look at low income communities as through a deficit lens, as opposed to saying, like we are in a bucks supposedly an abundant nation, right, and so how is it that we are unable to help the least among us and why is that? And it is because I believe that

they don't think that these people are deserving. We have set up this idea around you know, if you are wealthy, right, then we should be taking advice from you. You should be providing, you know, books on success and how to achieve.

And I'm just like, how when you look at most of those people, the super wealthy, the one percent, they received money from family right to start their businesses, to do these things, and it's like you should be asking questions of those that have been able to make the most out of the least about how you thrive right? And I think that moving this fun to me, seems like an opportunity to move people from a place of

survival into actually thriving. Like what does it mean, you know, to be able to have breathing room, whether you're putting that money back into the economy or you're saving it, or you find like I have a little bit to invest in something right and grow it from there. And I think that that's really important. Holly tell us, if folks want to find out more information, if they want to get involved, how they can find you all. Absolutely, so folks can visit the Growth Fund dot org to

learn more about our work and also support our work. Yeah, I just you know, I really want to commend you. I hope that we can circle back in a couple of months to hear how things are going, how many participants that you have, and what are some of the testimonies coming out from the women that you're helping, because I think that that's going to be really important too.

I want to definitely hear hear their voices about what it means to be able to know that you have this guaranteed income coming in and how you're better able to plan your life moving forward rather than dealing paycheck to paycheck. So, Hollie, thank you so much for making the time to join us on woke f and I hope to have you back to hear how well things are going and for those people that are interested in getting in contact folks had to grow dot org. Thank

you so much. We'd love to be back. That is it for me today. Friends on woke F as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.