Our New American Nightmare

Meet your Girl Danielle Moody pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, I hope that you have enjoyed this week on WOKF our Cookout Week, where we have been in conversation with some of my favorite past guests and friends to talk about our complicated relationship with Independence Week in America with the Fourth of July holiday, and the complicated relationship that I think that all of us have either had from birth or developed over time with a country that we

love that does not always or has ever, really truly

loved us back. If you've listened to my show over the past several years, you know that during the Fourth of July, I have adopted a tradition from one of my friends who you listened to earlier in the week, the Reverend Mark Thompson, who on his show Make It Plain, has read in its entirety Frederick Douglas's speech What to the Slave is the fourth of July and if you remember back during the pandemic, if you were following me there when we were in quarantine, I read it alongside

my sister on Instagram Live and have recorded it on wok f before. I will not read it in its entirety this year, just because of time constraints, but also you know, there are pieces of it that I will be lifting up today because I think it's an important way to close out this week on WOK. I think that we should use the holidays that we are given, the ones that we are given with little context or a little conversation outside of barbecuing and cocktails, to really

delve into who America is right now. Who do you find America to be at this time? What is your relationship with this country with the narrative that you have been prescribed throughout your life, How does it measure up to where you find your relationship with this nation at

this moment. Similarly, last month, when we were talking to queer people about pride and how we understand pride during a really unfortunate and horrible time for the LGBTQ community, particularly for trans people, with an onslaught of over five hundred pieces of anti LGBTQ legislation, I think that it's important not to just consume what it is that people are putting out, but really, in your own way, in your own circles, be having these conversations and analyzing and

really understanding that this relationship with this country, much like any relationship that you're in, changes over time, and if you were not nurturing that relationship, if you are not truly connected and present, much like let's say a marriage or a friendship, it can end. The relationship with America is one that is complicated in the same way that

your relationship with your family may be complicated. When we are young, we rely on our parents and our caregivers right to teach us how to walk, how to talk, how to cross the street, how to tie shoes, how to become you know, adult humans, thinkers, doers, how to be kind, how to read. And as we adapt all of these new skills, we develop in our thinking, we

formulate our own questions and our own ideas. And then our relationship with our parents, usually around our teen years, becomes fraught because as we are trying to calm into the full name of who we are, they still see us as the children that they have been rearing. And then as we continue to age and they age in some instances, those roles become reversed, and now you are helping your parents walk, helping them in many ways as

they enter into their sunset years. The relationship that I have personally with this country is one you know, that kind of Toshi had lifted up in the earlier episode this week where she talked about the relationship with an

abusive partner. You know, but the relationship wasn't always abusive, right Like, I personally entered into a career in politics because I really wanted to be of service, because this country had given my family so much in terms of opportunities when they left Jamaica and came to the United States in the nineteen seventies, and because of their decision to leave their own country, I was able to forge in my cousins, and my sister and I were able to forge our own paths, write and build lives and

careers in this country that we might not have been able to do in Jamaica. And particularly as a black queer woman, right that was growing up in a time when we were actually creating laws to protect the humanity and dignity of queer people. If I had lived and was born in a country that did not have those protections, I probably never would have came out because it would have been too dangerous to do so. So I wanted to live a life and build a career where I

felt like I was giving back. And over the years, as I have been an educator, as I have worked on Capitol Hill for members of Congress, as I have worked for nonprofit organizations trying to better the environment and better education for the nation, I felt like I was able to become a part of America's story, right. And then President Obama was elected and I thought, Oh my god, We're just going up from here. We're just you know,

like this is going to be amazing. I'm going to get to be a part of this next golden era of creation and innovation and just acceptance and equity. And then the bottom fell out and Donald Trump descended down those escalator stairs and stood before microphones, disparaged Mexicans, disparaged people of color. And our new American nightmare would begin then.

And that's what we've been locked into ever since. As I've watched and you have watched black people become hashtags week after week, month after month, whether it be at the hands of police or white vigilantes. We've watched voting rights be rolled back and gutted. We've watched Roe v wade be overturned after fifty years of a woman having the right to choose. We have watched our public education

system be gutted, the Environmental Protection Agency be gutted. What climate scientists said would be thirty forty years down the road has arrived. It has arrived in yellow skies from wildfires and historic tornado seasons that take out full fucking neighborhoods, costing billions of dollars, Hurricanes that linger over states and islands longer, devastating them. We've seen earthquakes take out thousands of people, Migrants sink to the bottom of the sea,

just trying to seek a better life. So much has happened, and my relationship with this country has shifted in so many ways. But you all know who listen to me on a daily basis that if I did not love America at its core, the idea of America, the idea of democracy that we've never seen fully actualized for all the people in this country, I wouldn't get up every day and turn on a microphone. I wouldn't get up every day and turn on my laptop and fire off

opinion pieces. I wouldn't go on television. I wouldn't bother because there would be nobody to convince, because I would have no faith and no hope that anyone would ever change. But the story of America isn't just in its progress. It is also in its pain. It is in its resilience, But it's also in its toxicity and its abuse. What happens when the wrong people are given power because we're too tired, too busy, or have lost all hope to care.

When I look back, as I do every year around this time, on Frederick Douglas's speech that he delivered on July fifth, eighteen fifty two. He addressed the Rochester Lady's Anti Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. And every time that I read it or have recited it, it really takes me abat to one the boldness and the confidence of this free black man in the eighteen hundreds to be providing a read upon read to the white people

in attendance. In his eloquence, which you can't say anything about this speech other than its eloquence and it's brilliance. He really has the audience captivated in the questions that he is posing, and he talks about the founding fathers, and why those in attendance should be proud right that these men were heroes, and that they were great men to come up with this idea. He says this about the founding fellow citizens. I am not wanting in respect

for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise at one time such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not certainly the most favorable, And yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots,

and heroes. And for the good they did and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. They loved their country better than their own private interests. And though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it

ought to command respect. He who will intelligently laid down his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise your fathers, stake their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. That to me is the greatest praise and acknowledgment. These were not small minded men.

These were people who, out of sheer imagination, came up right with this idea of forging a new nation that would be governed for and by the people, that the people would not be subjects of a king, that they

would have a voice. But they did so while in the shadows of the formation of this grand idea and experiment we call America, having this country be built by those who would never know freedom, who were shackled, who were raped, who were beaten, who were tortured, who were referred to as chattel and treated as animals, whose families were destroyed, whose life lives were never actualized except for

what they could produce. It's not lost on those that are listening to Frederick Douglas now in these times, that we have come so far and yet not far enough. He goes on to say this, fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask why I am called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that

declaration of independence extended to us? And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting for your independence to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and hours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light and my burden be easy and delightful.

For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him, Who sob abdorran and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits. Who is so stollied and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs. I am not that in a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak and the lame man leap as in heart. But such is not the

state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of the glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has

brought stripes and death to me. This fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejol. I must mourn to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems were inhumane mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct.

And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to the heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation and irrevocable ruin. I can today take up the plaintive lament of appealed and woe smitten people, fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy. I hear the mournful wail of milk, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee

shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the rooth of my mouth. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view, standing there, identified with their American bondmen making his wrongs. Mind, I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this fourth of July. Folks, For me and for so many who are black, who are indigenous, who are people of

color in this country. Frederick Douglas's words from eighteen fifty two still ring so damn true in the twenty first century. While we may not be in physical bondage, the policies that this country continues to turn out ensure that we remain in slow to a system that has never seen

acknowledge or respected our full humanity and dignity. It is absurd to hold deep comparisons between the Black community, whose ancestors were stripped of their culture, their religion, their voice, their freedom, and their language, to be compared to any other racialized group in this country, and whatever success they may have had, America will never truly be a democracy. America will never truly live up to its creed until not only it acknowledges its original sin, but it chooses

to do right by it. The conversation that I had with Torrey was one that talked a bit about reparations, and I struggle with the conversations around reparations, around asking the oppressors of this country to provide charity to those that they have extracted everything, including life from reparations is not asking for philanthropy. It is asking for a return with interest on what has been stolen, and until this country does that, their Independence Day will always always ring hollow.

That is it for me today, dear friends, on this wokf on this holiday week, this woke app hook out week, I hope that you all enjoyed the conversations that I brought to you by my friends, doctor Christina Greer, the Reverend Mark Thompson, Torrey Toshi Reagan. I thank them so much for their time, for their brilliance, for their boys, for their activism, for their work. And we are not free until we are all free as always, dear friends,

Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.