Hate is Not an Ideology

of time like bashing mainstream media. And it's all justified because you know, at the end of last week, you had special counsel that Merrick Garland, who should not have the job of Attorney General in this moment, appoint you know, special counsel her to over or see the investigation into Biden's documents, and in his report, which should have only been about the fact that there's nothing to see here because he didn't do anything illegal, he didn't obstruct the

Justice Departments, he returned the documents once he realized that he had them. Instead, her decided to attack Biden's age and his mental fitness. And this is a sycophant of Trump that you served as counsel in the Trump administration, and it's a holdover. And I just for the life of me can't figure out why fucking Democrats bend themselves over backwards to try and appease the monster that is

Maga Republicans. I just, for the love of fucking God cannot figure it out and think that somehow you're going to satiate this insatiable beast that wants to destroy democracy, and the way that they do that is by sowing doubt about Joe Biden's capabilities. Now, we can talk about our feelings about Joe Biden, frankly, which there are many that I have that I know many of you have.

But at the end of the day, the fucking false equivalency that is put up in the media at a time when we actually need people to be as informed as they can be is just like, oh God, folks, I I'm just so angry. I'm just so angry. I'm angry that Merrick Garland is the Attorney General of the

United States. The man is so fucking weak and lacks the integrity intensity fortitude that it takes to maneuver this Justice Department through the domestic terrorism that we are experiencing and have continued to experience since the beginning of Donald Trump's presidency that has just gotten worse. We're in this fucking run up against the clock with cases that Merrick Garland could have brought the day that he was fucking sworn in, but didn't. He sat on his fucking hands

for over a year. Had he brought this case when Donald trump let office assigned a special prosecutor the moment that Donald Trump was on that helicopter, we wouldn't be pushing up against an election, and there would have been more than enough time, and Donald Trump probably would not have announced right his bid, so wouldn't have seemed like a political fucking attack. And which hunt that he lies about.

So Merrick Garland has no business being Attorney General and then appointing a Republican to oversee an investigation into Joe Biden, as if somehow this is the fucking nineties, Like are we dumb here or do you just not fucking get it? Like which one is it? Are you incompetent or are you stupid? And so I just, you know, find myself consistently shaking my head realizing that, you know, folks, fucking

February is halfway done. We are just like racing towards this election that I think is going to be devastating

unless some miracle happens. Devastating for this country, devastating for all of us who are not part of MAGA, who are not white rich men, and the fact that I'm still having to convince people that the threats that we are facing are real, and it's not even just the voters, because apparently we have to convince fucking Merit Garland that these threats are not just gonna go away because you close your eyes or because you want to seem like

you're unbiased, So you're going to pretend that the Republican Party isn't at the root of the cancer that is eating away at our democracy. I tell you that the politicians of yesteryear do not have the ability to deal with what is when they are still nostalgic for what was that is never returning. So I'm angry, and I'm tired, and I'm also tired of being angry. So it's, you know,

it's like, where do we go from here? Not to mention that by the time that you're listening to this, all of you are more than aware of the absolutely brutal bombings and attacks that Rafa, an area that was supposed to be designated as safe for Palestinian civilians to pass through, was attacked during the Super Bowl, so that all eyes were away from social media and glazed over with commercials and bullshit, I'm just, oh, I don't know,

I don't know. It's like it's just getting harder and harder and harder to muster faith.

that happened while I was live in New Orleans. Today's conversation is with Andrea Monthenez talking about, you know, what it means to be trans and try to create safety for other trans people in these red states and what is needed and required you know, And I will tell you that I consistently talk about the fact that we won't know right for those of us that live in blue states until if and when Donald Trump becomes president again and makes these states an absolute hell right what

it is like to be queer in a state that you are made a target of, And so these conversations, I hope give us a lens into what that is like and the fact that everybody doesn't have the means to leave, and that we don't want everybody to leave because if they do, nothing ever changes. And so these are some of the bravest people that I've had the opportunity to speak with. So our continuation of the LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change Conference Queering the Vote campaign is

coming up next. I'm really excited folks to welcome to wok F Daily Andrea Montanez from the Hope Community Center, who works on how to include trans people into the immigration conversation. We talk about immigration a lot on this show.

I have never Andrea talked about it from the lens of trans folks coming to this country, and so I'm very grateful that we are meeting here at Creating Change, the LGBTQ Task Force Conference to discuss twenty twenty four and to discuss one of the major issues in the twenty twenty four election, which is going to be immigration. Andrew talk to me about the Whole Community Center and about your role.

and the LGBTQ immigration organizer. That's my position. My position is too working in the intersectionality between what is immigration and what's important for the LGBTQ community, in particular the trans community in this case Hope. What's created to be short stories. It is located in a Podca, Florida, a podcast a city like fifteen minutes from fifteen miles from Orlando, Orland is the bubble of the only city protected in Florida. I can say that Aportica is so conservative and we

are almost there. So the organization was created fifty years ago for four Catholic nons. That's an interesting historian. They can hear for the times when Apordca has racial issues with the black community. The black community cannot go to the same places to the white community in that time. So when they come in here, they working with that with the black community to do because they were the hard workers in that time until started moving in the

immigrants as far workers to the scenario. And the organization is still working with that, supporting the documentary. The hard workers see the kid the youngest one and looking for intersectionalities the does when it's LGBTQ, when the trade gender community came to Hope, when Poles happened in twenty sixteen, and this is a history why I'm there because it's important to explain because I tell at the start this is a what's founded for the Catholic Moons, but now

it's an opening organization with them. When it happened the Poles Foundation, the Pole's attack with one of the two of the big things where Mexicans and living in a podca. So when the director of Whole Community Center went to the house to the pattern or one of the kids was killed in Pouls, does the gay club.

LIBTQ community immigrant. They saw that important they don't saw before. So to explain that that one was created my position and when I come in, of course a couple of years after that, and we work in organizing these communities

again bring the LGBT community. Uh, hit the spaces with education because again when I talked explained that area our Latin community, and I Latin is the or difficult community with the same transgender people in particular, So maybe I was the first transgender person dation in the LIE and I start to educate. Then I start to organize. Then and I start to fight for the rights of the immigrant community. But also I start to found the transgender

and documented immigrants. They had the same struggle and then they were with the same family. So when we create our relation, and that's the job we're doing, and we start to go into Tallahassee to do raalies for immigration and to do righties for the tradgender community together because now the understand and we open more spaces to fighting because in this moment particular, my estate is the immigrant and the and the transgender community. The more attack it

and I think it's national now to be there. It's veryware. Immigration is the big probably EveryWare and that include us. So that movement was incredible. So I started moving organization, you know LGBT organization today understand the immigration part two that was important. So I was educay, then edukay the LGBTQ. Remember I'm immigrant to. I don't in the citizen now,

but an immigrant to. So I got the history and a lot of the LGBT community coming looking for asylum or protection because all the hey they had in other countries, so they start to understand the immigration part and they started working with us. And we do the same in the other way. With the far worker you had LGBTQ people there are with you. We're working together, and we start to create different the first ally with different the

trans community, with the with the organization. The moment mass emotional for me was see for workers with the transgender flag. You know, So that's that's that's, that's proof we are together. This is working and at least in put together everybody and understand you know, I guess if we can't teach an immigrant the same machismore families, Yeah, why the style of Florida government don't understand that.

director trust in this person, it's's real. So that that part is don't is in this community start to move a little. It's still difficult because it's still a lotto or the war own community. They are doing a love to be in the home they almost hate, but you start to see it also education. You still to see people coming to you. I think, can you talk with my kids? Because I don't know where they are. I think they are part of the lit bity. You can you explain me this? So I opened open doors. It's

not easy. It's often to the more horrifule question they can do to me and I answer, But that was my decision, and that maybe is the way the people start to change. I don't know how.

through moving past this kind of stigma. An idea of who you think that somebody is, and through whole community center, people seeing you and saying, well, she is working here, she is helping us, she is one of us, right, and so can build that trust because I think that that, to me, is part of what the opposition is trying to do, is turn the trans community, the LGBT larger community, into the boogeyman, something to be afraid of, something that

you need to protect your children from. And I wonder if you think that we need to have what needs to happen in order to push back against that idea of be afraid of these people. You don't know them, you can't trust them. So how do we push back against that?

with that we don't recruit tragender people. We don't need to recruit because this is so special and so and I'm going to say this, we are human, but we are more special than everybody, so this is no place for everyone. It's so hard to be who we are. We don't need to recruit more. It's like, you know, and I'm going to say the word because I say that all the time. Transgender is magic, because this is a magic we had inside. And that put me in the old timers when they bore the wishes because they

were magic. They bore one other article because its magic. So not because that's exactly how I feel sometime with the trends coming sometimes now that's a feeling they want to boring us because they are scared of us. They care scared because we are still there. They attacking every day us and we still show our smile talking about kids. We don't going to got kids everywhere. I don't want the kids be transgender, but we only want is our

transgender kids survive. Leave this is It's like we have to teach people again because people is following what the people say in the news, what the parties say. Because that's the problem. When you get the ideologies they say, you go, oh, tragender, and they're gonna cut me sorgery tomorrow and they're gonna put all my genital that's not true. This is a locking, difficult process. This is my lie completely.

I'm fifty eight years ball and always if I told my story, I can start for my day one when I start this process. But I don't know that's so, and it's not easy. And for the kids, we don't want they go to go need they be social dately. So people have to understand that part. We don't recruit trance, We don't want to compare your kids in transgender, but we're gonna protect.

is just hate. And I think that you know the reason why I believe that the Maga supremaists, which is what I refer to them as the Maga supremists, hate the trans community so much and hate the LGBTQ community so much, is because you represent possibility, hope and the idea that you can create your own path, that you can build a life and create a life and be successful and full and happy outside of the bullshit binary and that's what scares them because it's like, well, I

followed it, why can't you follow it right? Like I suppressed myself, So why can't you suppress yourself? And that that is what I truly believe. I think that you're right when you said you know that you believe that trans people are magic. You go back to the idea of burning whiches. You know, witches at the State. They weren't witches. They were independent women right with brains and ideas and thoughts that were outside of what society at that time deemed. Okay, So you must be dangerous and

we must put you down. And I love the fact that you that you made that link. As we wrap up, tell me how people who are not in Florida can get connected with how donate and learn more about the Whole Community Center.

how is it important on these people? It's like and so it's like the two worlds. I think we're more medical with your immigrants. The immigrants, they are not a problem. The immigrants are part of the solution, yep. And the transgender immigrants are more part of the solution to were productives. So looking for that, looking for you, looking for the immigrations.

What's the true about immigrants to what does the they have to look in and support Florida looking for the organization in Florida, not only Hope, all the lgby all the trans organization, all the immigrant organization. It's a lot of grassroots try to survive in this place. And every single day it is more thangerous to us. A lot of people is living every month from every way I say somebody to somebody's living. I don't go nowhere because I think when I come to this country looking for freedom,

I gave my freedom. I gave my citizen. I was federal officer, so I work for this government before I decide to do what I do now. So this is my country, this is my place. I don't go nowhere, so that come with that and a lot of people with me. But we have to be together for that, so please support us, we assist.