No Voice, No Choice

your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, Often on this show we talk about democracy and the fact that, regardless of whether or not we stop the actual physical insurrection that happened on January six, twenty twenty one, that there is a continuing coup that has been unfolding at the state and local and national level since then, and if not before that, we have watched as regular citizens have been co opted into the Magadum and QAnon

belief system that has led them to believe that they can no longer trust their government, that they can no longer trust their boat, that they can no longer trust their voice. And frankly, if you were to dare to decide that you wanted to volunteer your time to be a public servant, to volunteer on a campaign, to run for school board or city council, to work at a pole, well, basically in this current political climate, you're putting your fucking

life in your hands. Because we have seen as the rise in political violence has taken shape, that good people have been driven underground, lost their normal day to day lives because of terrorism. Let's call it what it is, because we love to use euphemisms in mainstream media where

they'll say harassment. But you all have listened to the conversations that I've had with Jennifer Jenkins, who is a school board member in Brevard County, who detail painstakingly the kind of violent terrorism that she was faced with for

having the audacity to run for school board in her town. Right, we saw what happened to the poll workers in Georgia who had the audacity to decide that they wanted to volunteer in their community and help their fellow neighbors get to the polls, and what happened to them because of

Donald Trump's targeting. So on today's show, I am very excited to welcome Miila Atmost and Mila is the producer and host of Future Hindsight, a show that is weekly a weekly podcast that is aimed at sparking civic engagement through in depth conversations with different civic leaders and change makers. Mila is about trying to activate people to realize their power and their voice. We talk about this all the time. No one would be trying to steal your vote or

suppress your vote. If your vote did not matter, no one would be trying to funnel the airwaves and social media with disinformation If an informed citizenury is one that representatives had to actually be responsible to. The goal is to gaslight, as Miriam Webster pointed out as their word of the year in twenty twenty two. Their goal the Republican cult Party, it's to make you feel like you have no power, no voice, and frankly, no choice but to live a life that is filled with fear and

hatred of the other. This is how they win. This has been a tactic that they have used for decades, and now they have the ability, with technology and social media and the likes of Elon Musk to be able to spread as much hate and disinformation as possible, making us believe that there is more of them than there are of us. But we know that that's not true.

They just exist inside of an echo chamber. We were able to fight back in the twenty twenty election, to fight back again in this past midterm election, to continue saying that no, you will not take my democracy from me.

So coming up next, my conversation with Mila is about you know, how we are feeling right as people who have used our platform and our voice to try and create a conscious and woke citizenry in this country, and what our hopes are and our worries are as we transition into twenty twenty three, which will all for all intensive purposes, be the run up to the twenty twenty four election. Democracy has been saved not once, but twice.

Will we have the ability to do it again? Coming up next, my conversation with host and produce sir A Future Hindsight Mila at Most. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to Woke f Daily for the first time fellow podcaster Mila Atmost, a global citizen based in New York City and the producer and series host A Future Hindsight, a weekly podcast that aims to spark civic engagement through

in depth conversations with citizen change makers. Mila, it's wonderful to see you love your show, because I think that a lot of people they want to listen, but they want to feel like they can do something about their democracy. They want to listen to understand and get great analysis, but then it's like what do I do with that information?

So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about why you started the pod and and maybe how it's evolved over the time that you've started it to kind of this very critical moment in our politics and our democracy that we're in. Thank you, Thank you very much for having me on. Really, I really enjoy your show as well, and I listened to it on the regular, So thank you for sharing of all your

knowledge and your guests with us. So I started the pod because after Trump was elected, I thought, you know, what's ailing our country is that not enough people are involved, not enough people care to vote, not enough people care to be engaged in their communities. And a lot of people I spoke to the time, you know, they were so desponded, and they said, you know, I voted, but it just didn't work out, Like what else can I

be doing? You know, because I think a lot of people think that the next step after voting, if you want to get engaged is to run for office, and I thought, you know, that just can't be true. You know, we can't all be running for office. And so one of my guiding principles in the show is to figure out what can everyday people do that's beyond voting. Because for sure, at the very least we should be voting.

So beyond voting, but shorter running for office. And as it turns out, there are a lot of things that you could be doing. So in the beginning, I really wanted to showcase the things that you could be doing and also share with you the people who are already doing it. So that's why we call them citizen change makers. So we really want to showcase to people that, look,

you're not alone. Other people are doing this and some people, of course, the people that we interview normally have done something that's exemplaries, so they can, you know, inspire you to take action. And then over time, I would say, what is really changed with the podcast as I've learned more and more about how people are engaged about what people can do, is well, I would say to backtrack, I would say I discovered first and foremost that people

have a lot of power. We just don't don't know it. We don't understand how to wield our own power. We don't know how we can make change in our communities, whether that's on the local or state level, or even on a national level. And I think as as I have learned more and more I'm understanding better that there are parties who want to obstruct your ability to wield power, and that I didn't fully understand when I set out in the beginning, and I appreciate that so much more today.

You know, Well, what's funny. I think that when you started out, we started our pots roughly around the same time, kind of in response to the Trump presidency, or at least the potential of the Trump presidency, which would become

the Trump presidency. And you know, I think that at that time we weren't we were watching the rise of the Tea Party, but it wasn't the rise of anti democrat cradicum sentiments, right, Like there were things with regard to President Obama and with regard to him not being a citizen, and you know, for for people of color and particularly black people, that's just like that's just racism, par for the course, right, Like, you know, we get that.

And I think that what has happened over the last seven plus years, right is this embrace of anti democratic sentiment sentiments in such a way that you don't need to be a political science scholar. You don't need to be um, someone who who went to school like you know, uh, to study this work to understand what's going on. It's very clear, and I think for a lot of people, because it has become so clear, so apparent, it's also

become quite scary. Um. You know. One of the things when I when I think about your show, You've had some of my friends on, uh, like like Rebecca co who who I endure so much, has been on the forefront of disability advocacy in this country. And you know, is this idea that civic engagement used to be something

that gives us pride? Mila? As you have seen again this rise in political rhetoric and violence, do you find that your listeners, while they want to get engaged, are they more fearful of what that kind of civic engagement could mean for their day to day lives. I don't know if my guests are more fearful, but for sure I would say I am more fearful. You know sometimes when I'm in situations and I feel like, well, did

you really say that just now? I went to a wedding recently and I sat next to somebody, the cousin of the groom, and he didn't say that he was a Qann believer, but it was pretty clear that he was viewing in that direction, and it was the kind of thing where I was so thrown. You know, we were talking about gun legislation. Somehow I never do that at what was happening, I don't know. We were talking about Trump. He was telling me he doesn't like Trump anymore,

And this was my missed opportunity. I should have asked him why don't you like Trump anymore? Even though he had voted for him twice. And then he basically said, well, you know, it doesn't really matter if we vote or not, because you know, they just install whoever they want. And I was like, who's day? You know? They right? And so in any case, I said, well, you know, Biden isn't perfect, but he's gotten a lot of really good

things done, for example, gun safety legislation. And then he tried to put words in my mouth about taking guns away, and I said, no, no, I didn't say that. I didn't say any of those things. And then he says, well, I think a lot of the mass shootings are false flag operations anyway, and I thought what so I was like, which was and so he said, well a lot of them, And so he couldn't pinpoint of course any of them.

And so you know, we kept on going down this road, and finally I said, wait, are you just saying this to egg me on or do you really believe this? Like at some point I thought, I'm in the twilight zone here, and maybe he's just saying this because you know, he clearly knows from what I was saying that I'm progressive and he maybe just as poking at me. And I think he was thrown when I said that that

I assumed that maybe he's not serious. It was really strange, and it was the kind of thing where actually, in that moment, I felt incredibly unsafe. I mean, I knew I was at a wedding, nothing was going to happen, but I was like, oh, I need to get out of this conversation, and maybe I should get up from the table and hit the dance floor because this feels very uncomfortable, right, And so these are the kind of

things you don't want to have. You don't want to have these kind of conversations because it's you don't feel safe. But at the same time, I think it's important to have these conversations because if you don't, then they never hear that there's this other world out there where people don't believe what he believes. You know. It's so interesting because I want to dig in a little bit. When

you say that you felt unsafe. Is it because of what we know that people who believe in this q Andon line of thinking are capable of or was there something that happened during the conversation, an escalation that made you actually feel unsafe. I think it's the former. But also, you know, because they you know, because we were talking about gun legislation. So I thought to myself, Yeah, maybe this guy came to the wedding with a gun, you

know that. I mean, I don't think that he did, but it was the kind of thing was right, wait, you know what you know, like for example, if I'm in Texas, I don't want to do anything, you know, silly because people can open carry. I want to talk me a lot for a minute about the way that the media has been presenting these conspiracy theorists. They still present them as if it is logical, as if it is just a different ideology than the rest of us.

We're existing on Earth one saying no, no one's installing people. This is still not yet a banana republic. It's not a dictatorship regime. But when I turn on CNN, when I turn on MSNBC, when I am listening to these folks, they're like, well, Marsh retailer Green thinks blah blah blah blah blah, as if it's a normal line of thinking.

And I think that the reason why we're in this place is because outside of podcasts, outside of progressives where people are getting their mainstream news, are presenting these both sides as if they're normal. We're still talking about bipartisanship is if it's something that is readily accessible, as if one party hasn't become a cult. And so I'm curious as to what you have thought about the progression or

I guess devolving of our political conversations. And then how you can be sitting at a wedding talking to a guest where you're thinking, probably at this wedding most people are probably you know, think like me, you know, voted like me because of who your friends are, the family, what have you. And then you realize, oh, no, this is actually your first thing. Maybe it was your first encounter. I've never had an encounter yet with I mean, this is like the raccoon. I saw it side my window

just now. Like I've never had an encounter with a Q non person, it still seems like mythical in its thinking. But what do you think about the way it has been encapsulated in conversation as if it's normal. Yeah, I mean, first, yes, this is the first encounter and hopefully my last encounter in the wild with a Q and On supporter. But but in terms of the media, yeah, I think that the mainstream media is really doing us a disservice. And I think this is one of the reasons that Trump

was elected in the first place. It's because you know, basically, they covered Trump every day, every day of the week, several times a day, and over everything, every single outlandish thing he said or did, and it basically normalized this person being in the media, and then it normalized the

views that he espoused. And I think people just became inured and just was like, oh, you know, it's just what it is, and you move on, or you try not to think about it because it's just too depressing if you think about it too much, right, or if you're an everyday person. And then I think the other thing about the media, like you said they they I mean I think that they are just you know, their their profit motive is I think not considered in the

long term. You know, we talked about this separately before. Where look if something, if a regime like the Trump regime really comes into being full on, if fascism succeeds in the United States, there will be no free press. You know, CNN will have zero profits and there will be one state press and it will be like nineteen eighty four. But I think people don't don't think through

the logical conclusion, and that's really a bummer. And I think that this idea that you know, we have a free press here, I think there is a misconception of what that really means because I think, or at least this is my own, this is maybe my own interpretation. I feel like the free press, I don't think it's their job. I don't think that the free press means you can just lie about a lot of things all

the time. Yeah, death can't be you know, if you have libel lawsuits, you know, we should be suing CNN for Liabel. Right, Why are you telling us straight up about Q and on conspiracies as if they're real? You know that you know, and I'm so glad that you said that, because I have written about this so many times where I'm asking I'm not a lawyer, but I asked the question as to why the FCC, which is supposed to regulate right communications, national broadcasts, all of these things,

find people for the slightest things. Why aren't these outlets being fined significant that it would be significant enough right

for them to stop. There is no there's no reason other than your own soul searching as a television executive to say, oh, maybe we shouldn't put that out right, like it isn't free speech when you are poisoning the pool, whether it is about COVID, right, which I again think that there should have been and still should be, massive lawsuits against those who then caught COVID, who lost family members, loved ones because they were listening to Fox News and

deciding that they weren't going to wear a mask, that it was their freedom and liberty to walk around massless at the height of our global health pandemic. But why were they doing that? Well, because they were being spoon fed lies and nobody's been held accountable for it. And it says if you know you can do whatever you want in media, on radio, you can say whatever it

is you want. And I thought that we had regulatory bodies that were supposed to oversee, right what the public is supposed to know, and ingest totally yeah, totally agree, Please go ahead. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think, why hasn't anyone been held accountable? And like, look at these text messages that came out yesterday with Mark Meadows. How come these people are not under arrest for you know,

for treason. I don't really understand, like, you know, these congressmen and congressmen are still in office and they're walking around freely. I don't really I don't get it. So, yeah, it's a good question. And I feel like, why don't we have the answers? You know? And so we see there were I'm so glad you brought up the Mark Meadows text messages. Close to twenty five hundred text messages are now released, ones that we haven't seen before, the

public has not seen before. Thirty four members thirty four Republican members of Congress calling for martial law, calling for a way to disrupt a free, fair, transparent election in order to install Donald Trump, saying things like we need to save our democracy. These are supposed to be representatives

that know better. So what does it say, like, what what does it say to the American public again, who is still working on restoring their belief right in our government, that they see these trolls of text messages with elected officials calling for their votes to be null envoying? Yeah, I think that's really fascinating. This is again where the media could have helped us a lot, especially in the beginning.

You know, I think that we did not talk about enough in twenty twenty what an amazing feat be pulled off as the American people turned out in droves to vote, and that most all the states really facilitated voting in the middle of a pandemic, and that this is the most audited, most watched election in our lifetimes, and it was safe and secure, you know, and it was the kind of thing where I feel like all the press did was talk about, you know, Trump's shenatigans to deny

the election results, as opposed to saying this was a historic election. We the American people turned out in droves and look, democracy is alive and well in this country. I think those things would have helped so much in order to frame the things that have come out subsequently, and even to frame the January sixth thing. You know, if they had just said that since November, I would think that January sixth would have been perceived totally differently.

You know. Maybe I don't want to say it would have prevented that that sounds that sounds very unlikely, but at least it would have really made the American public more shocked, Whereas I think a lot of people shrugged their shoulders and they were like, oh, those crazies, you know, you know, But I think that collectively on that day, as we all watched, whether you were watching on television, you were watching streaming on your phone, you were following

it unfold on Twitter, were absolutely stunned. We have never seen anything like this in our entire lives. There's a reason why Marian Webster adopted the word gas lighting as their word of the year, because then following that, after maybe a couple of weeks of outrage, then it was back to business as usual. This is as if attacking the capital and threatening to hang the vice president of the United States is just par for the political course

in America, and it's not. And here we are coming up on the two year anniversary of this extraordinarily devastating event in our country's history, and the architects upset event have been walking around free have been walking around, you know, still tenning at maur Lago. And so I wonder, like, what do you think as we're heading into twenty twenty three,

the presidential cycle is going to rev up. Donald Trump has already announced that he is running again, despite the myriad of lawsuits that he has against him, actually because of the myriad of lawsuits that he has against him. Where do you feel that like the people are and where are you in terms of feeling like are we going to be able to thwart fascism again? Or was twenty twenty like lightning in a bottle? You know, I

wish I had a crystal ball. I don't know if we will, but high what a turnout is always encouraging. I think this is the work that we have to engage in between now and twenty twenty four. You know, I was really invested in the race in Texas for governor, and when I looked at the numbers, you know, post fact after the election, it was something like forty two percent of Democrats registered Democrats in Texas turned out to vote,

and I thought forty two percent. Really, you know, nine point six million registered voters in Texas did not vote, and in fact, both the Republicans and the Democrats in Texas thought two million more people would vote than actually did. And so it's the kind of thing where I thought, oh, you know, people don't understand you know, I saw this on Twitter, somebody had in this bio. People don't understand

this that Democrats who don't vote elect Republicans. So just because you're not voting doesn't mean you're not actually making your voice heard. You know. It's the kind of thing where like people need to understand that in order to actually get the people that they want elected, they actually have to show up and vote. And so I think if we can invest now in turning people out, it will pay off in twenty twenty four. So we need even more people to vote than in twenty twenty, even

more people than in twenty twenty two. And then I would say, you know, the referendum, the ballot measure in Kansas and the summer that was like in August, where people don't vote. People are you know, kids are not in school, and that was nearly presidential year turnout just to vote for the abortion measure. I thought, oh wow, you know this is really encouraging. You know, you were saying that we need historic, historic turnouts. I think that the numbers that you said in Texas are just I mean,

that's devastating. Right if those if those two million people had come out to vote, if those nine million people that were registered came out to vote. You're talking about the difference between a governor who you know, allowed his constituents to freeze right during a winter storm. Um, and with thinks it's more important to attack transgender children than it is to do anything about protecting their housing costs, protecting you know, uh, their their health and well being.

You're talking about that difference, right, And our races are so close these days that it matters. Every vote actually matters. I know that we've been saying it for for what feels like eons, but now it's it's it's true or than ever before. So you know what, what final question for you, Mila is what message you know, what keeps you? And I think that you asked me this on your show. Um, what keeps you hopeful? Um? As we are dealing with

and living through these incredibly precarious times. Well, the first thing is that there are more and more people voting, with the exception of Texas, but you know, I think these the trend is that more people vote. I think that's incredibly encouraging. And I think that a lot of the ballot measures that we saw pass in this last

cycle in the midterms are also encouraging. All the abortion measures passed, you know, the ballot measures to expand medicaid also passed South Dakota notably, and I think that's incredibly encouraging. That means people are paying attention. People know that there's something like this on the ballot beyond you know, just the politicians, and I think that's strong evidence that people

know what's at stake. I would say also that when it comes to voters, I do think that in the twenty two midterms, voters did know that democracy was on the ballot. I don't think that passed them by yep. And I think that keeps people engaged, people keep paying attention. The fact that you know, with um the House, that Congress really only barely became Republican, I think that's also incredibly encouraging. I think, you know, people are disappointed. Democrats

are disappointed we didn't keep the house. But I think because it was so close, I think people get it. They're like, we just have to keep going, you know, because we know that the people who are Republicans in Congress are the sedition people. I don't think people don't know that. I think people know. So I think people will redouble their efforts in twenty four. That's my hope,

and I think I think they will. I you know, I know that we don't have magic eight balls and can't read tea leaves, but you know, I hear is hoping that you are correct. Folks. Um the podcast is future a future Hindsight with Mila at most. Make sure or to check it out weekly. You get change makers, civic engagement, and just an understanding about how you can become a responsible, activated citizen in this country. Mila, thank you so much for making the time to join Woke app.

I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me on. That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke app as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.