Our Failed Democracy

real time, all of the things that scientists. You know, remember when we used to actually listen to scientists and believe them as a whole entire country until Republicans decided that they would have their own scientists and their own alternative facts and then distort reality. Well, now their warnings

have come to pass. And the thing that I wonder as I listened to President Biden talk to the American people about the crisis that we're in and false short of issuing a public health emergency around climate change, is are we just too late? You know? I've been watching videos all over social media of the tarmac at Heathrow Airport that fucking melted, of a sinkhole that swallowed up nearly half of a goddamn street in the Bronx in New York after the rain that we just got in.

There was entire once again subway stations that turned into geyser's You're talking about the state of Texas issuing like a series of alerts because they are experiencing one hundred and fourteen degree temperatures for a number of days in a row. Where we're talking about drought, where we're talking about a food shortage, We're talking about all of these

things that have now just blown out of control. We had twenty thirty year lead time to avoid this, to actually create policies and initiatives that supposedly where people were supposed to come together in the Paris Climate Agreement to do, and then come to find out this week that not one country, not one of them that signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement, is on track to deliver what it was that they said that they would deliver to the world.

So the world is on fucking fire. No one has infrastructure built to sustain the rising temperatures that are now going to be the norm, and what we are going to see is the chain reaction of events that are going to come to pass. I talked about this yesterday with regard to the price of food, the price of water, right, Because what's going to happen is that as folks are just trying to water their lawns or keep their plants alive, you have farmers that are trying to water their produce

in order to keep us alive. You have the entire country of Italy declare a climate emergency because they're in a major fucking drought. So you talk about the fact that we are all interconnected, we have not been acculturated to be noble citizens, and surely not under Trumpism, because that was all America first. Well, you know there is no America first, Italy first, this, that and the other thing.

We're all fucked right. That's what it means to be interconnected, and that's what it means when you don't have a community mindset and instead are continuing to function in silos as if one country's actions doesn't affect the other. We can no longer pretend that we are not in a crisis.

And you know what's funny is that when you are looking to voters right now on where climate change falls in their list of issues that they're concerned about, Well, when you're looking at people sixty five and up, who are generally the ones to vote in mid term elections

and off presidential year elections. They don't really care about climate change, right because more than half of their lives are fucking over And many people have actually articulated that in the public sphere because I guess they're shame around being so fucking selfish. Does not matter because the world,

right is just so selfish. But when you talk to young people, particularly Generation Z, climate change is kind of the number one thing because they're wondering how they're going to, I don't know, be able to sustain on a planet that we are killing every single day. So you know, you have Joe Mansion, who has once again said that he is not going to vote for any climate legislation. Why should he give a fuck? His family are multi millionaires, right that are making money off the backs of the poor,

stupid people in West Virginia. And yeah, I said stupid because today I'm fucking pissed. I'm pissed that this motherfucker stays in power. I'm pissed that nobody calls him out. Joe Biden and his fucking press event to the world around climate change is calling out Republicans but not calling out fucking Joe Mansion and Kursen Cinema. Oh, because what

what are we afraid of? That he's going to continue doing nothing, That he's going to continue rolling with then acting like a Republican and being a Democrat and fucking name only. Like, at this point in time, I just wish that we would stop operating from a place of fucking fear and start operating from a place of reality and strength. That motherfucker needs to go, right along with Merritt Garland needs to go. And it's just like these fucking quote unquote moderate white men are going to be

the fucking death of us. And I'm just wondering when everybody else is going to start to realize that. Coming up next, my conversation with voting rights advocate and political narrative strategist Maya Contreras, Folks, I am very excited to welcome to wok F Daily for the first time, Maya contrerez who is a voting rights advocate and political narrative strategist, which I like that name and I may steal it at some point. Maya, thank you so much for making the time to join woke F. I want to start

off our conversation today. You know we are a month plus a little bit out from the reversal of Rob Wade from the Supreme Court to dramatic decision to take away for the first time, I think in modern history, to take away a right that Americans have had over the last close to fifty years, and we are still

dealing with the repercussions of that. Many states, as you know, had trigger laws that were already in place, so women and people with uterus is in roughly I believe it's thirteen plus states have lost the ability to have bodily autonomy.

The White House with their with their outgoing White House Communications Director push back against activists in a way that was really shocking, kind of pinning activists in a way against establishment Democrats and saying that those that are fighting on the ground and are the first line of defense are apparently out of step quote unquote with establishment amocrats.

I wanted to get your initial reaction from that statement and then you know the subsequent actions and things that we have been hearing, reading and observing on social media in the news as it pertains to this administration emergency action against this reversal. So when I first heard with the outgoing Secretary set I I put like twelve hands over my face. I was, I just was. I was fatterned, but not surprised. And the reason why I say that

is my grandfather taught an American university. My mom was born in Washington, d C. I spent a lot of time in DC grang up and one of the number one things that I learned about DC when I was eight years old was that DC is allergic to creativity. And yes, and I will say that because of that, you have people that are moving into a bubble there who are still thinking in ways that are very antiquated. And one of my issues with and first of all,

let me say this too, I live in definitions. One of the things that doctor ebra Max Kindy said and I love, is that we need to live in the definition. So when I say, when I use the word establishment, anyone that steps into Congress becomes establishment, I want you all to understand that that is an establishment. And you're moving into establishment, and you're choosing to work in an

establishment environment. It is very difficult to work in something that was not created for the vast majority of us. It is very difficult. The bones of DC inside that is racism, misogyny, misogynoir. That is what you're walking into.

That's why that's the se as difficult. Now on top of that, when you have messengers and are vast the vast majority of them are white and who have never worked in activist spaces or advocacy spaces, this is the kind of messaging that comes through where the fault Laes is in not recognizing that they need to have more people that work in those spaces inside of the White House. That was the biggest mistake. I will say she fundamentally

in that moment. I think I'm not going to assume what she thought, but I'm assuming she did later regret to say it. I think that she was trying to hit hit back off of people who have been maybe performative and their activism. But what it did is hurt people that are waking up in their daily lives fighting against this tide of racist codified policies that are coming out through throughout the country. So that I will say that was my initial reaction and a little bit of

where I saw the mistake coming from. You know, I find that you know as somebody not not quite like you, not as embedded, but I spent over fifteen years in Washington, d C. I went you know, undergrad political science, grad school education policy, and then worked on the hill, ran the gamut until I fled DC in twenty sixteen to move to New York. And what I can say about

inside the Beltway is that you are absolutely right. Creativity is an oasis there right that many and maybe not even an oasis, I'll say, a mirage that you you kind of think with new administrations that you will come to this place of consensus and biparticism, and you know, and this this imagined place of yesteryear, and what we are seeing, I think more and more is that the behind the curtain scotch drinking, handshaking, you know, kind of politics that Joe Biden cut his teeth in are no

longer apparent. Yet the people that he employs and that still find themselves employed in Washington, DC and in politics, are still of that mindset. And so where they're viewing activism right, even the acknowledgement that this administration is not going to its full capacity of power to push back against the compounded crises that we're dealing with, that we are the problem somehow. And so you know, for many activists who I've talked to, particularly around abortion. They were pissed.

They've been pissed at this administration. You know, they were pissed at this administration because we have yet to have a president under the word abortion, let alone fight for it in a way that would say that we are going to go to the very lengths that our executive power allows us to go. We go in there, right.

And So what is it that you see or think about this administration what it's been faced with, Because I'm not saying that they walked into a warm, welcome setting where they could kind of take on task one at a time. They kind of walked into a five alarm fire and now it really is one across the planet. What do you think that this administration isn't getting and do they have an opportunity to make a pivot? So I have said this and I just said it in an article I wrote for Dame this week that the

message is policy. So we have to look at what our legislators are doing in Congress, and by that this administration and by that I mean the one hundred and seventeenth Congress is actually doing quite well. They've introduced a host of amazing legislation to codify abortion, to expand protections, to protect our data from being released, and things like that. However, we have a Senate that is gridlocked, and no matter what anyone says, Joe Biden has no sway or control

overmansion and cinema because these are separations of power. He's not a dictator. He cannot tell them what to do. These stories of LBJ saying that he leaned people in the corner and intimidated him, those are overblown and if you read the history the history of LBJ there, they're much blown and exaggerated. Second, I will say this, Joe

Biden is somebody that is a moderate president. It's like when a lot of people thought when Obama got elected that he was going to do all these things and really swing to the left, but he was moderate too. We have to recognize that when we're electing moderates, we're going to get moderate responses. So I don't so all the things that Joe Biden is doing. I'm not surprised. That's why he wasn't my first pick for president either. Right, So that's why to me, we have to recognize when

they're showing us, I'm telling us who they are. That is who we're getting now regarding backdoor deals. I want to go back to that for a second. Unfortunately that still exists the local level and the state level, and at the federal level. I mean in New York, we're both New Yorkers. We are haunted by the ghosts of Tammany Hall and Robert Moses. We have so many people that once they move into spaces of power, want to stay there. This is the problem with the entrenchment of power.

All of a sudden, you have people that are willing to not be transparent and the deals that they are making, including city council members that I had in the past really supported and liked, and then solve them change the moment they moved behind that power door. So what we have right now in DC is a more of a rarity of people that are willing to speak their mind and speak freely about it. And unfortunately a lot of people who've been entrenched in power are so risk averse

that they're the ones that are really the problem. So to me, what the problem is that's going on the local, state, and federal level is an aversion to risk. Joe Biden and of traditional moderate Democrats have long looked at polls to decide what people want, well Biden. If we can fault Biden specifically, it will be that one, people want to have access to abortion. Seventy seven percent of this country supports that people support SSI, which would help the

disabled community. They support so many pieces of policy that Biden should understand that they're popular and he can make these decisions to do more. However, I will say this regarding EO's executive ordered, they can only do so much. They can be thrown out by our scotus, our right wing scotus. They can be overturned by the next president.

So this is why they're very difficult. The main thing that we want to do, and what I will also say that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanted to do was actually Alya slowly put these pieces together so it's harder to blow it down. That's why she never ever wanted row Vue way to go in the way that it did. However, when was the opportunity to codify it. I went through.

You should know that I'm an award winning researcher, So I went through and would love every single Congress since nineteen seventy three to see when there was a supermajority and when they could have codified, and it only happened two times, Jimmy Carter's administration for two years, an Obama for seventeen working days, and for a Jimmy Carter. People need to understand, Jimmy Carter was not pro abortion. He didn't want federal funds available for it, so that was

never gonna happen. Not only that, but he had one hundred and twenty five men, men that were like, hell, no, it's not happening, so that that was not gonna happen. The same with the Obama administration. Obama came in and saying, hey, let's do this, naively thinking I've got the votes. He didn't have the votes. Obama needed to look before he spoke, and when saying that, you go back through and you see the votes, he didn't have him. He didn't have him.

He didn't have him. It would have been filibustered, and he didn't have him. If it wasn't filibustered. So this is why I'm saying, we have never had the opportunity to codify it. We've got the ACA through with the skin of our teeth. So That's why people have to understand that one of the ways if we want to codify wrote and we're trying to do that, it's past in the House is not going to pass thissent as

we have to elact more senators. That unfortunately sounds like such an annoying and boring thing, right, But that is the reality of our situation if we're talking about strategy. Hey, I'm David Plots of Slates Political Gapfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all the noise and the news. Each week, on The gap Fest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathlon and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter.

We do not always agree, We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slates Political Gapfest new episodes every Thursday. Get a behind the scenes look at comedy centrals The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an

original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast, new episodes every Tuesday.

You know, it doesn't It's not even to me, Maya that it sounds boring. It's just that when I even hear the word moderation right now, as we are seeing pictures of literally the globe that is on fire, when we are citing that, I I just watched a story right before we were talking today. More women, I think it's up one hundred, one hundred and fifty percent of women looking into sterilization in places like Texas and Ohio.

That those Google searches and those um those research meetings with doctors are becoming increasingly the norm because they would rather sterilize then end up in a predicament where they are not don't have access to contraception or changes you know, in in a month um or that they in fact do become pregnant and then of course are not able to abort that pregnancy, and so when you hear all of these stories and and I mean I could go

on and on and on. As people know on woke a f you think to yourself, where the hell does moderation make sense? Where does like you know what I'm saying that, And that's it's just like I didn't. Biden was not my first choice. He wasn't even my fifth. And so when I am talking about yes, I understand that, America said, you know what, here's an old white evil man, Donald Trump. We're gonna get a good white old man to battle against him, and then all is going to

be well. Well, eighteen months after an insurrection, an attempt to overthrow the government, and a series of laws that have been passed in red states, nowhere in sight do

you see Republicans working at a pace called moderation. So I'm wondering what you believe is a pivot or pivots that need to happen, not just from this administration, but at the state and local level with Democrats in order to one hold on to the majority in the House and in the Senate, even if it's by the skin of their goddamn teeth, to avert fascism, but in general, to recognize that this incremental change in progress that we've been kind of feeding people for decades plus, it ain't

it anymore. Sure. I would also say a couple of things. One, No, I'm not someone who believes in moderation when there is multiple crisis. There's a mental health crisis, there's an environmental crisis, there's a public health crisis. There's multiple crisises, right, and crisiss means they're that their need quick emergency response. But let me say this first. A lot of the white people that ended up voting for Joe Biden, that moved over to him, this is fine for a lot of them.

You have to understand this was fine for them. They're like, okay, so that we're good. Now we're going to go back to brunch. This was fine, okay, So they don't care. Now. I will say this within Congress. The reason why moderation has been a word used to describe Congress for so long, why because seventy seven percent of our Congress now is still white. The vast majority of it. I think it's seventy eight, seventy six percent, no, sorry, seventy three percent

is male. So you've understand that black women, women in color and Congress LGBTQ members, disabled members, they're still make up twenty seven percent a fraction of Congress. So when we say, well, why are things working at such a moderate pace, you have to understand that the vast majority of Congress doesn't see that necessarily as an emergency. I'm not saying there aren't some Donald Trump, some very fine white people on the Democratic sun. I'm not saying that

because obviously by Chris Murphy wants gun safety. You know, you have white women in there that are fighting for abortion access. But you have to understand, for the vast majority of time, these are people that don't necessarily understand what daily discrimination looks like. They don't know what that Black women go through a medical term called weathering due to daily discrimination, and it weathers on body. They don't.

They kind of started recognizing that during COVID, when black and brown people were dying at a disproportionate rate, that maybe that correlated with health brand and the way that we either use I don't know, maybe cigarettes or drinking to cope with daily discrimination or lack of opportunities and all those other stuff. So hye poppies, Sorry, no, no, no, they're just in the building and exactly they're they're just they're just like co signing that exactly mine. Ye right.

So what I'm saying is that the reason why the Democratic Party had long held moderation as a standard is because you mostly like white people. Now that we have more black people, more queer people in it, that isn't necessarily the narrative anymore. All the great policies, by the way, that I've talked about, to codify marriage equality, to quotify abortion rights and all that stuff, most of it came from black and brown people in Congress. If you look

at these battis. So that's what I'm saying. So the Democratic Party couldn't have a long term strategy because it did not include it for a very long time, centering people that were the closest to the harm. So this is why things are starting to change. But this is also why we need to elect more inclusive It's not just about representation, it's also about inclusivity. We want to

lack people that do understand the public health crisis. We want people to understand that this is a as a now situation, and and that's how it's going to change. So I'll say that, you know, I wonder though, my

you know, haven't we run out of time? Because here, like this is this is kind of this is the place that I am into where I'm just like, you know, I hear from people who are young, who are younger right generation Z and I guess you know early still late and millennials who are just like I've been told that every election since the first one that I was able to vote in is the most consequential election of

my time. I've been told for you know, every every single time that like now, we're never right, this one is actually the most consequential election of all time. And I'm wondering if you know, if we're just pressing pause on the catastrophe that our democracy is in, or if we really do believe that if we hold on by the skin of our teeth come November and then we continue to hold on in twenty twenty four, which is a real long shot, that somehow we can write this ship.

Because to your point, we know who the problem is. It has been six white men, hetero Christian and I use quotations in power that have been the problem because any of the things that we are seeing be thrown out of the window in regard to our rights don't

affect them, right. So I'm just wondering, like, have we run at a time as we were preparing for and hoping for a demographic shift that was going to allow us to have more representation in the way that we needed it to have the kind of real, sustainable change that is necessary to write this imbalance. So I will say fabulous framing fabulous Russian. I will say this first, I believe that every election is consequential. Every single election is consequential, every single one. I also want to make

a distinction really quickly. The Republican Party has such an easy time. If you're only guarding white supremacy. Wow, you got one goal, pretty easy. They're protecting whiteness and the alliance of whiteness. It doesn't matter if you're black or brown, and in the Republican Party, you're still signing up for the alliance of whiteness. That is what's happening in the Republican Party. Okay, So they have one goal, protect white

supremacy and protect profits. That is it. The Democratic Party became the Civil Rights Party in nineteen sixty four, officially at that point with the signing of the Civil Rights Act and then with the signing of the Voting Rights Act, But that wasn't a purposeful mission of the Democratic Party. It was like LBJ felt he wanted to, you know, honor JFK's legacy. JFK kind of was like, I guess we should sign in civil rights, you know, he kind

of reluctantly did it was killed. LBJ signed it in, and then black people began to make the Democratic Party what it is moving towards at that moment. So there wasn't a long term plan because our party is only fifty seven years old. And really, as more groups begin to get civil rights, for example, when the nineteen ninety Disability Act was signed in Americans with disability acquisigned, and then you're moving more disabled people into it and more

disabled people, there's flit. They they're in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. But then also imbued our party more with protections. So the Democratic Party has a little bit of a harder time on messaging and long term strategy and planning because we are the only game in town. Okay, if we're the only ones that are saying we do want gun safety, we're the only ones in town. That

we're saying we do want trans rights. We're all the lgbtwo Q members in Congress right now, there's eleven of them. They're all in the Democratic Party. Okay, so we have to recognize that that is what that's what the difference is between the two parties. Now, I will also say this as we try to make these parties more inclusive at the local, state, and federal level. The problem is gate keeping starts at the local level. At the local level,

the demographics mirror Congress. It's overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly wealthy. Because people tend to think of Congress and a hierarchy, it's not power brokers. Start right at the local level. We should be looking at it in this kind of way. They're the ones making decisions at the local level. That also is funding, it's all of these things, neighborhoods, and then obviously at the state level, that's jerrymandering, that's determining all of these other laws, right, state laws. So all

of these are are mostly white men moving in. So to me, if I want the Democratic Party to have a plan, and they do, which is one we know that the Republicans have decided to continue to openly behave in an extreme way that that is never are going to change and less the power dynamic changes. And so for example, let me move into this that's every where you changeing the lost. The Democrats can move the filibuster out of the way, and then we can flood the

flood the zone with policy. But then the Democrats have to recognize that they have to start investing more at the local and state level too. Right now that infrastructure is not there. I'm glad that Jamie Harrison kind of sees that at the DNC. At the same time, it's still really frustrating because we also need a public to understand that if we want to change local, state, and

federal policy, we really have to be involved. And let me tell you, like my husband and I are constantly walking around and meeting and talking to people about politics and policy. And the vast majority of people in this country don't even know who their governor is, I know who their local representative is. So there's a lot of people that are politically involved. So unfortunately activists are doing a lot of the heavy lifting and trying to show up vote. So we need to get the general public

more involved. We still have a terrible vote record in this country. This last election in twenty twenty is one of the highest thresholds we've ever had in it was still only sixty percent. Forty percent of people decided to still set it out. So if we want things to change, yes, we can totally yell up by my criticized by it on the line all the time. I tried to be very specific in my criticisms and very specifically in my

criticism with Congress. But we also need to criticize aspects of the public that are sitting it out, that are brunching, that are taking their vacations. They're allowed to do that, but they also need to show up to vote. They also need to show up and show that there are people that are lives in the line. And so I think that's where we also, I think so that's why the conversation to me, I wanted to be more holistic

for the national conversation that I think we should be having. Yeah, and I will I will say this that you know, with regard to civic engagement in this country, it has never been a value or a tenant right because if it was, then our public education in our K through twelfth schooling would look a hell of a lot different. You would be graduating with your with your voter registration as well as receiving your cap and gown in your diploma.

We would have a rigorous civic engagement program that would be about understanding all the different facets of government so that it is not a surprise on your eighteenth birthday when you're able to go and pull a level in a polling place, what that actually means, and what your affect and what your power is at your state and local level. There's a purpose to keeping people ignorant so that you're able to control them, but then blame them at the end of the day to say, well, why

didn't you get involved? Well, I don't know enough to get involved. And the way in which this country has decided to miseducate me has left us with forty percent of the population unable to unwilling to vote because a they don't know anything, or me what they do know is enough to make them want to sit out. Yeah, really quickly to that there are there's a reason for that one. New Gangridge and to the Telecommunications Act in

nineteen ninety four. New Gangridge want an experts and civics to be done and over, and when he won control of the House in the nineties, he made that his mission to pull experts out of Congress and to slow the role on civic education programs. I'm somebody that was civically educated when I was a young child in New Mexico,

but that has stopped. So I want you to know that Republicans are responsible for helping getting now and then two with the Telecommunications Act, when you stopped having two different pundits from two different you know, I would say on the different ends of the polar spectrum being in the same room and having, you know, having to speak to each other. That also ruined engagement and being able to kind of confront the bullshit that was coming out

of like Fox News as his mouth. It's the reason why Fox News can exist, that Sinclair can take over local stations and miseducate people on purpose and also call themselves entertainment so they don't have to be called news. So this is why, and I agree with you completely. So yes, anyways, I know we're wrapping this up. I just want to say thank you so much for having me. I could talk to you about this all day long, but again, thank you so much. Thank you, Maya. This

has been a really great conversation. I know folks are going to enjoy it, and I really do hope that you come back, because we only touched the edge of the glacier that is rapidly melting, and I would love the opportunity to talk to you again. So appreciate you. The Damage Report with John Idarola is one of the most popular shows on the TYT Network that serves as your daily breakdown of the genuine threats and challenges facing our country and world. These days, we're confronted with an

overwhelming sea of shocking, confounding, and devastating news stories. The Damage Report is your life raft, helping you navigate the day's news and understand the damage caused by the corrupt establishment, politicians, corporations,

and everything in between. Join the Damage Reports notorious fan club, the Dragon Squad, where you become part of the fantastic community of progressives, create a fun dragon nickname that fits your personality, collaborate and participate in fun activities like voting for the Garbage Person of the Week, and much more. Listen to The Damage Report on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Indisputable with Doctor rashad Ricci is one of the latest shows on the TYT network and also the fastest growing news show in America. On his show, Doctor Ricci plays no games regarding policy, delivering a heavy dose of fact based truth and penetrating analysis on all the top news stories focusing on racism, criminal and social justice, politics, police brutality, urns,

and much more. Listeners can also expect interviews with fascinating guests, political leaders, commentators, and even fiery debates with conservatives on a wide range of policy topics in the Bullpen. It is an indisputable fact that you will love this show. Listen to Indisputable with Doctor rashad Ricci on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe so you never miss

a new episode. That is it for me today, Dear friends, on Woke a app as always Power to the people and to all of the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes an original podcast from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the

notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws, and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday.