Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wokate F Daily with me your girl, Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, let me tell you something. On a day this week, I woke up with sheer panic in my stomach and in my heart. I had had a series of nightmares about the now fifteen thousand plus people that have been murdered,
majority of them children and women in Gaza. I had a nightmare that Donald Trump became president, the last president of the United States, that I was ripped apart from my family, from my friends, from my freedom, that LGBTQ people were forced into camps and or underground, that black people segregation was born and new, except more violent people were losing their jobs, their homes, being incarcerated at rates that we have never seen. And the Trump administration twenty
twenty five was like a steamroller. Thankfully, I woke up and it was still twenty twenty three. However, folks, this week, Donald Trump, in a pre taped interview with Sean Hannity in Iowa, when asked by Sean Hannity, will you weaponize your position if president again? Will you seek retribution on those that were against you? Donald Trump's response was, I'll only be a dictator on day one. To that response was rousing laughter and applause from the audience. Right after that, folks,
which happened at the beginning of the week. It happened on Tuesday. I went on MSNBC that Wednesday morning with Anna Cabrera and she played the clips and it was like the same questions, Well, what do you think about this? Should we take this seriously? Blah blah. I cannot fucking express enough that we need to take Donald Trump very seriously.
Do you think that, oh, Donald Trump will be a dictator on day one and then you know, he'll go back to following the Constitution, which his lawyers most recently said that he did not swear to protect the Constitution, to uphold the Constitution. I want to remind folks that everything that came out of Donald Trump's mouth that he said that he would do during his first administration, he did. He tested the fences. Now he knows where all of the weak spots are, he knows where all of the
hidden doors are. He knows exactly what to expect, exactly who to install to finish the hit job on our democracy. So when I'm asked, should we take Donald Trump at his word? My response is yeah, apps fucking lutely, and so forevery one who is continuing to signal comfortably in twenty twenty three that they're not going to vote for Joe Biden. Look here, folks, I'm having nightmares about what
is happening in Gaza, just like all of you. I am disgusted, dismayed, feel a sense of hopelessness that this could be happening in broad daylight with our fucking tax dollars and everyone's just okay with it. Then I remember they martyreed six million Jews and Gypsies and all different types of people that Hitler deemed unworthy before the United States would enter into World War II. We have an entire museum now dedicated to lynchings that took place in
this country. We don't even know how many enslaved Black Africans were killed, murder, torture, beaten, raped, and we're talking about centuries, folks. This country's hands have never been cleaned, they have always been covered in blood. But the kind of rampage that Donald Trump will do in this country, I want you to remember the image from Lafayette Square where he had protesters cleared out forcefully. We're in Madison's book. General Madis's book, he said, Donald Trump asked them, can't
we just shoot them in the leg or something. He said, absolutely fucking not. The next general that Trump would install wouldn't have sworn an oath to the Constitution. They would have sworn an oath to Donald Trump. He wants the ability to turn the military on citizens he deems as dissenters or enemies of the state, which would be anyone who is not white, who is not straight, who is not male, who is not Christian, and who is not MAGA. So, folks need to wake the fuck up. You need to
start having conversations. Friends. Keep having those conversations with your family, your friends, your colleagues, your voting age kids, because what is at stake is our freedom. Coming up next my conversation with my friend Roquel Willis, who is an activist, a trans activist, author, writer, just all around badass. I interview her about her new book, The Risk It Takes to Bloom. Yeah, dear Friends, is coming up next, folks.
I am so excited anytime that I get to bring in some bad ass voices to wok F I am thrilled and newly minted author Roquel Willis is here with me today. She has authored the memoir The Risk It Takes to Bloom, which girl the title just bravo on life and liberation about her story, and it is just I mean, if you can tell by the plants in the back the cover, the entire breakdown into budding and blooming is right up my alley. But Raquel, let me
start out by asking this question. You have been in media and journalism for years, right, you have founded the alarm on so much. You have been a person that has been the consciousness in a lot of places, and I want to ask you why now for your memoir? You know, what was it about this moment, this time? What was the deciding like, yes, it's this is this is the time for me to put out my full story.
Well, thank you so much, Danielle. Well, I've been joking that, well this is when the publisher set it could come out, which is.
Kind of true.
But part of it, I mean, and let's be roll, some of it is that. Some of it is like it has taken me having a certain amount of access and a certain platform to be kind of co signed by the powers that be that my story can be told on this level and in this format, So that is also important to name. But the the seeds of this really started in college when I was at the
University of Georgia back in twenty thirteen. I studied journalism and at that time, like it was just before Orang Just a New Black came out, it was almost the years before Janet release Janet Mock released Redefining Realness, So there weren't a lot of narratives out there about black trans women, much less people in general.
So I knew that.
I wanted to add something to the trans canon about my experience coming into my identity as a young black trans person in Georgia in the South, because we also don't really have a lot of Southern narratives about black trans experiences.
I think that that is what is also really important about your story, and I want you to be able to explain more about that, is that there has been you know, when we have national conversations around the trans community, there is this assumption that it must be these liberals in these you know on the coasts right that there you know that uh, that trans people queer people don't exist in other places, let alone the South, let alone Georgia.
So I want you just to be able to speak to why it is also important to be able to lift up geographical and regional narratives of queer stories and not just you know, queer stories in general.
Yeah, I mean growing up in the South in the nineties and early two thousands, I mean everything in general was kind of situated elsewhere. I mean thinking about media and the TV shows, living Say Go Martin, et cetera, et cetera. Everything was based somewhere else. It was based in New York, it was based in maybe Chicago, maybe San Francisco. So a lot of what I consumed as
a young person was somewhere outside of the South. And then I think also coming into my identity as a queer person, the idea was like, oh well, my freedom for expression lived somewhere else and lived in these queer meccas New York and South San Francisco, which is not
unlike I think generations before. And I grew up with these stories of black folks who left the South for a better life elsewhere, whether it was up north or out west where it was less restrictive for black folks or people on the margins, and so I kind of see that story of my grain for Liberation as a part of that kind of narrative I built within myself.
And so I think there's also an intervention I wanted to make in my career and of course with this book, around how the South is kind of thrown away in
discussions around societal progress. And so there's this idea that the South is a lost cause, interestingly enough situated in some of the ideas from the Civil War and the lost Cause, right, But this idea that, oh, well, the South will always be regressive because that's where the staunchest discrimination has happened historically and maybe still happens legislatively.
But I think that's a lie.
I think, especially as you go through the book and I talk about my experiences both in progressive regions quote unquote, these places like the Bay Area or New York, these blue coastal areas as we like to say, but also in so called progressive movements.
Right.
No, there's still anti blackness and trans misogyny in the LGBTQ movement. There's still all of those things in feminism, and they're still trans misogyny and queerophobia and black liberation movement, yes, right, and so we also don't talk about those things enough as well.
Do you think that you know, when adding your memoir coming out at this time, right, which is and I you know, I will speak to it from my angle as a black queer woman. I think that this is probably one of the most troubling and toxic times for queer people that I've seen since I became you know, an advocate and an activist a decade plus ago. Right
that I hadn't seen book banning. I hadn't seen you know this, These kinds of regressive policies that we are seeing originate in places like Florida, like Texas, you know,
in these southern regions. And I wonder, as you are able to live now out loud, what does it mean to like, both be able to live out loud and be this model of possibility, but also recognize that young people coming behind you actually maybe in a worse situation than you were when you were looking for you know, looking for your own models, that while there may be more for them to see like that, the reach, the distance seems further.
It's a mixed bag for show. I mean, some of it is, of course, there is a bit of freedom that comes from access, from having a platform, from having success, and in that the visibility that also kind of informs some of those things.
And then, unfortunately, and I talk.
About this dynamic as well, you know, passing is still a thing, right, this kind of conditional passing privilege. So in my day to day life outside of you know, my public life, I have ease, but so much of that comes from embodying a certain type of womanhood, a certain type of femininity, and so we still haven't moved far enough in.
Terms of society around those things.
Right, There's a real and some of this privilege is a lot of this privilege is a lot of the reason why people take notice or listen to what I have to say, right, And that's not even getting into you know, light skin.
Privilege, social economic privilege, educational privilege, and on and on.
And so it's a mixed bag, right, because my hope has been throughout my career that the next generations don't have to check off the same boxes that I did. But unfortunately, so much has not shifted. To your point, right, there is still a lot of walking on water that has to happen, you know, to get to a space like I'm at where I can share my story on this level.
So that's difficult to hold. And it is.
Difficult to think how difficult it is for young, particularly trans folks, to own their truths. I mean, I can't imagine what it would be like for me to come into my transidentity in college at a flagship institution in the South right now, where one of the benefits back then is not being legible, which is it's the weird double edged sword of visibility, right the not being seen, the not being visible and legible gave me a sense of freedom because there wasn't.
All of this baggage, yeah, that was attached.
To my experience, and I kind of just got to be myself, even if some people might have thought I was weird or whatever.
I got to be an individual.
And now, because of what these conservative politicians are doing and these ignorant celebrities are doing, because they are part of this misinformation mountain that we're up against, a lot of trans folks don't get to be anything outside of the these tropes and these narratives that they keep pushing. And that's unfortunate.
Yeah, And I would imagine, you know, just like I always try and take a step back and kind of open up the aperture on my eyes, the lens you
know that I come to things with. And you know what, I remember coming into the movement and being like, oh, so there's racism here too, Like, oh, I thought this was going to be liberal, you know, Like I remember going into you know, you and I have had it's funny, like similar kind of bios where I'm just like, oh, I went to a women's organization and then I was just like, oh, you're a racist, right like, and and you're homophobic and you know, and it. You know again,
that was like the early two thousands. But you think that they're these spaces allow for more expansiveness, and so I just want you to speak to like showing up in spaces where you're just like, oh, you're hearing this is about everybody's liberation, this about everybody's right, and then being met with yeah, no, right, Like, just speak to that a little bit of what it's like to be in these varied movement spaces, these varied newsrooms where you think that like space has been made that you can
take up and then you're told yeah, no, too much.
Yeah. I mean I think about the fact that we kind of give ourselves.
Free passes because we're like, oh, we're on the margins in this way, and so we often just don't consider or it takes much more work to consider that, oh, just because I'm oppressed on this access doesn't mean I'm not oppressive on this other.
And that's a hard thing. I mean.
And we also love a binary honey across the board, not even just talking about But the truth is is that we all kind of live depending on positionality, depending on the environment, the space, on different parts of this larger grid of oppression and privilege, so to speak. And I think we all have a hard time grappling with that.
So that's the thing. But then I think even in these spaces where so for instance, nonprofits or in these movements, where certain people become leaders for any myriad of reasons, that desire for validation, that desire for power, it's hard
for people to check. It's hard for people to check that ego, and so folks often don't realize when they're being harmful to others because they're still in the space where they haven't healed around the validation that they've been seeking and the title that the nonprofit is not going to fill that void that.
You have, Honey, come on right.
The position you made a crew in community is not going to fill those wounds in that void that you have. From whatever reason, I know my voids came from, and I talk about in the book this idea that I felt like I had to create a life despite my queerness and transits, right, like I had to try and make my life as palatable as possible because those were
already strikes against me. And that came from wounds from my relationship with my parents and particularly my father, of not living up to his ideals of black masculinity and society's ideals. And so this book gave me a chance to dig deeper into that work and to also just think about how expectations have plagued me at various points in my life. And I hope that that's something that everyone can latch onto from this book, beyond maybe even being black and trans.
I mean yes, because those are like universal themes of us trying to meet somebody's expectations right in our lives. And I wonder, you know, through putting together you know, your intricately woven story, what did you learn from your process of going through this, like about you and where you know, how far you've come, and like where you are now, Like what was that? How has that journey been for you?
Well, I'll go back to talking about that voice and that need for validation, because that colors every part of your life. And one of the revelations that I had as I was going through the revision process in particular, was that I needed to reconsider my relationships even with my family.
Right.
So, I know in the book, you know, we talk about the evolution of my relationship with my mom and my sister and my brother, an extended family, and also I realized, like, oh, there's an intimacy gap and a lot of it. I mean, and I'm talking from my perspective, Like for me, it has been that shield of like trying to again make my life palatable enough to just get a baseline feeling of adequacy to my family's expectations.
But I think on different levels, like.
The sis straight people in my family also did that, right, And so our baggage is like sitting side by side and it's a barrier between us really just like engaging, Like I want to be able to share my insecurities, my anxieties, my fears, et cetera, et cetera. I don't want to have to put on this pristine image for you, at the very least not my family. So that is a thing, and I think that that probably resonates with a lot of particularly black folks, brown folks, folks from
immigrant experiences. Right Yeah, there's a way that we have to comport ourselves to be seen even within our own families and communities.
So that's the thing.
But I also think about, I guess, in our communities and in our movements, how we continue to carry a lot of these fissures from the past that were never like really acknowledged, or when they were, those efforts were squashed. And so I think about, for instance, terfism.
Right in the feminists speak on it tell people what to tell people what it? You know, because while I may talk about tell people what that is so that they understand. I mean, we've talked about Chappelle, We've talked about headline moments when that kind of shit comes up.
But please, yeah, I mean what I think about particularly feminist movements, right, Like, we've had some conversations around anti blackness and how feminisms of color were marginalized, and feminists of color and marginalized lesbians and queer fem were marginalized within the larger feminist movement, of.
Course, all of the attacks on sex workers.
And on and on, but also alongside that trans women, the marginalization of us within feminisms, its roots go back far. I mean at least to the seventies right, and I talk about Janis Raymond and some of these high profile trans exclusionary radical feminists before we really had the term, and how they planted these fissures and it was never really addressed then. And so now we see the conservative right taking advantage of those fissures and pulling them farther right.
That's why the Turfs are working with the Christian conservative right. But when I also think about black liberation movements, you know, I talk about the Movement for Black Lives and what the experience was like in this movement that is on the same line, of course of previous black liberation movements.
So think about the Black Panther Party. I mean, I mentioned Elaine Brown and the experiences that she had around massage noir in the Black Panther Party right, and while there were overt discussions, particularly from someone like Huey P. Newton around the intertwined destinies of gay and lesbian folks.
And the fight for black liberation.
I still to this day don't know any openly queer and trans folks who were within the Black Panther Party. I may be missing them. And I know, you know, we know a lot more about the experiences, for instance, of like Angela Davis, right, but I don't know that we've ever.
Even on a public level, discussed well.
I never knew that, even though I knew Angela Davis's work, I didn't know that until the last few years, right, that she was queer. And so how those kind of
hidden stories are there. And then, of course in the LGBTQ plus movement, right, there is a forgotten understanding that some of the initial gay lobbying for political rights in the seventies was adamantly opposed to the inclusion of trans folks and the inclusion of what they considered to be freaks, you know, the drag queens and on and on, because you know, they weren't palatable enough not to mention the sidelining of queer women and lesbians in early gay lobbying
and leadership as well, so these exist.
You know, I remember, in my limited time and experience being told that you need to put you know, you kind of need to choose which identity you want to fight for liberation for. It's why we have conversations around intersectionality. That has been used and said at nauseum without really understanding the context around that, but the fact being that you're always asked when you're a person that embodies multiple identities, which many of us do live at the intersection of.
Many are told, well, we need to fight for the most marginalized part of you first, so you're either black first, queer first, trans you know, or what happy when you're like, that's not how I exist, And I have always found that extraordinarily troubling. So it's not surprising that in our history of understanding, like the Panthers and what have you, that we have not necessarily unearthed in a mainstream type
of way those queer people who were there. Right, But we're probably told or maybe felt, now, we gotta focus on, you know, what is seen readily first before we do anything.
Else, right, Yeah, I mean I think to that point.
You know, I often think about this quote that we hear a lot from James Baldwin, of course, particularly when he's talking about to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state.
Of state average almost all of.
The time and in one's work. And I feel that way right as a black trans woman who is to someone relatively conscious, like I don't just carry the personal harms that I've experienced in my life, but as someone who has to connect to trancestors and queer ancestors, often through the work that they left behind, I'm carrying the
historic harm as well. I'm carrying the pain of Marsha P. Johnson dying unceremoniously right and potentially being murdered, but we don't know, because it was her death was not regarded with the seriousness that it deserves, or thinking about Sylvia Rivera's railing against these national and of course New York state wide nonprofits that ignored trans folks for so long in a time where they could right because we weren't
visible and so there wasn't any real accountability there. But those dynamics still exist today, and I often find it infuriating that people in particularly our institutions are unwilling to engage with those historical harms because we're carrying that, you know, like it doesn't just go away. We have to acknowledge it at some point to move forward.
Yeah, And I think, I mean, I think that that's right. I think that the work that you do, not only you know, authoring this memoir, that will be a guide for so you know, for so many people. The work that you do just in elevating media and telling stories, right, you know, of those stories that go untold or have been silenced or cut short, I think is really really extraordinary.
And Folks, I owe a continued debt of gratitude to Raquel because if not for her, the stories and the conversations that I have here on iHeart with WOKF daily wouldn't have happened without you. And so I just you know, I appreciate how dedicated you are to diverse queer voices, to diverse black queer voices and making space for them, because I just think it's it's extraordinary and it's deeply appreciated and deeply needed. So thank you, my friend. Congratulation
on your book. Folks. It is called the risk it takes to Bloom on Life and Liberation. Pick it up, by a copy for yourself, by a copy for your friends. It is that giving and holiday season time, so give this gift. I appreciate you, my friend.
I appreciate you. Thank you.
That is it for me today on woke a app as always power to the people and to all the people power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.