Good morning, keeps, and welcome to WIKF Daily with Meet your Girl. Danielle Moody recording from the home bunker, Folks. I am very happy, I guess happy ish to report that the white woman, Susan Luis Lorinsk, who murdered isjk Owens, the black mother of four in Florida, has been arrested
and charged with manslaughter. Susan Luis Lrinsk, according to The New York Times, was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in the shooting death of ijk Owens, and she has also been charged with culpable negligence, battery, and two counts of assault. This shooting happened on Friday night, and it has taken until this week, with the family of aj Owens giving a press conference going on cable news networks retaining counsel to get this arrest to take place. Now.
One of the reasons why it takes so very long, aside from the obvious, you know, racism, but one of the reasons why it takes so long is because of the absolutely heinous law that we know as stand your ground. And this is what stand your ground states, is that the law allows for the person to have a right to meet force with force if they believe it's necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm. And this is what the sheriff said with regard to this particular case.
Anytime that we think or perceive or believe that that might come into play, meaning stand your ground, we cannot make an arrest. The law specifically says that, and what we have to rule out is whether the deadly force was justified or not before we can even make the arrest. Can you guys just think about this with me for
a fucking moment. That somebody can commit murder in the state of Florida, in the state of Minnesota and other places right that have standing ground laws, and that murderer just get to walk free until it can be determined because the burden of proof is on the police to determine whether or not the person who was still alive
and well was justified in committing murder. So now we have instances where people one cannot make wrong u turns right into a driveway, cannot knock on a neighbor's door, cannot have a conversation with somebody because what by virtue of somebody else's skin, right, they're melanin They fear for their lives and can use that refrain that we've heard from police officers who are trained and have guns against black, unarmed black people, and now you can't go to your
neighbor's home. It is absolutely obscene where we are and how our society has been rapidly crumbling under these anti neighbor right, anti civility laws that are placed on the books. You know, the Second Amendment is not the only fucking
amendment as a part of our constitution. The only reason why guns were written into the constitution is because it was a burgeoning country that did not have police departments in the way that we have them now all over the place where you could call for help it could take days, So the ability to protect your land actually mattered when we were still using horses and buggies. The fact that we our laws and our thinking have not evolved, and it feels to me like we're still just operating
with this reptilian brain in America is wild. This story has captivated, you know, the hearts and minds of people across the country because how many parents have had to go and knock on neighbors doors, right, how many parents have had to have conversations. This is a normal act of parenting, and now four children are without a mother. It's absurd and it's sick, but that is the reality
here in America. You know. My other story before we get to our guests today, is that of CNNs now fired CEO Chris Lickt and the fact that Chris Lickt, I think, lasted about four hundred days so a little over a year as the CEO of CNN, where he greenlighted the town hall and celebrated the town hall of Donald Trump and has ushered in, you know, just like his predecessor bullshit theory of both sides right, and has enacted, you know, the failure of journalism, the failure of journalism
to provide context, to provide analysis, to provide information to the viewer that is needed. I believe that the media is also part, a large part on top of the policies that are being created in the denigration of our society with the fear mongering, with the lies, with the both sides is we don't trust the people down the street.
And so I'm glad that Chris lick is out, but I'm sure that he will just be replaced with another You know, person that will do the bidding of Zaslov and you know, and bring in more Republicans, more liars, and more stories that don't allow us as a country to come together right, that continue the fracture. What I am happy to talk about today though, is with Representative Lee Finke, who is the first out trans representative in the state of Minnesota. And we get into a conversation
because Minnesota has done, you know, the unthinkable. The Democrats have taken back the governorship, the State Senate, and the State House, and in this last session passed some of the most progressive policies that we've ever seen, from gun reform to minimum wage, to cannabis to aid for children. It is remarkable, and so it's incredible to finally get to tell a good story of what happens when people give power to the party that is actually aligned with
the people. So coming up next my conversation with Representative Lee Finkey, Folks, I am very excited to welcome to Woke f Daily Representative Lee Finkey, who is a representative in the Minnesota Legislature that just wrapped up an extraordinary and significant term, passing some of the most progressive and thoughtful pieces of legisl that we have seen in quite some time since Democrats have been able to take over
the State House, the Senate, and the governorship. So Representative Thinkee tell us about this session that just ended and why it's making headlines.
Yeah, so, I mean, the thing, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm so glad to be here. The thing about our session, right, we have what we call the trifecta, right, the three power in the three chambers, and we had that before in twenty twelve and twenty thirteen. Long this is my first session, so this is my first experience. But when we had it in twenty twelve twenty thirteen, there was a lot of caution about how we can keep those things rather than a lot of
aggressive desire to govern. And I think that coming out of that experience, our leadership wanted to make it clear that we were going to win our re elections by doing as much good stuff for the people of Minnesota as we can, and truly we held to that. I mean, we passed every single priority bill that we had in the House dfl up on the wall. We had our thirty priority bills. Every single one of them is now
signed into law. And I mean massive important things that have been waiting to get done in Minnesota, gun control legislation, driver's license for everyone, paid family medical leave, right down, cannabis legalization, expungements. And I mean the word historic gets thrown around a lot, and it kind of has lost its meaning and the past of the conversation. But it truly is historic. Every single bill we passed was historic
and transformational. The housing bill is the hot was a billion dollar housing bill, the biggest by at least seven hundred million, right like the education bill, All of the bills, the tax bill, just hugely, significantly progressive bills.
So one of the things, you know, it's funny because a in a headline story it says, Minnesota legislature wraps up seventy two billion dollars state budget and ends legislative session with far reaching impact. Right. And one of the things that was harped on, of course by Republicans in your state was the fact that this was I think
that they said very disappointing. You know, every and that there was let's see quote even a little bit of tax relief that is in some of the bills is not going to be recognized because of all the expenses from our car tab fees and taxes and delivery fees, increases costs all the way around, said the House Minority
Leader Lisa de Muk. What do you say to that kind of reaction to this history to actually, in my humble opinion, which is what I say nationally all the time, tax payers actually getting back their tax dollars in ways that make sense for them. So what do you make of those comments by the minority leader?
Yeah, I mean I think that they misunderstand the work that we have done, right. I mean, we came into the session with, as Lisa Damuth, Minority Leader. Damuth said many times, we came in with a historic budget surplus, but most of that was left over from the federal COVID money that was not ongoing money, and it was
not surplus tax payments. We use that money to build a budget for the people of Minnesota that is going to transform what it means to live in Minnesota in a progressive way, in a way that's going to improve the lives of people. And we have I mean, I have no problem saying, you know, we did increase taxes in places to better the lives of everyone in Minnesota, but we we'd also pass a historic middle class tax cut, just tremendously powerful tax bill from Representative Gomez, our tax chair,
that is going to really help people. So we have to have ongoing services. But we also recognize that this is a time when people need support in their pocketbooks, but they also need better access to healthcare. They also need better access to the services that their lives depend upon. That's going to take money, and we are going to make sure that's not going to stop in two years when we have to do this all again. We are going to fund these programs into the future.
How do you think that we need to be using your state as a symbol, right, as an example for how government is supposed to work form by the people. Like, what is the conversation because we're seeing, right, we saw pushback in Wisconsin. We've seen pushback with people in terms of how they are voting and what they are doing in trying to fight against these Republican supermajorities that aren't
offering the people anything, They're just taking things away. So what is it that other states can take at this moment that we're seeing when we're seeing the opposite happen in these red states?
I mean, I think that what Minnesota saw one. Minnesota has just the DFL party here. We have a dog at ground game that has made sure that we are at least running in every district and everybody's hearing from us. We don't leave districts that we can't win and say we're not going to put resources there. We want everybody to hear our message. And then the thing that we had a one vote majority in the Senate, right, we have senators in the state of Minnesota who are not progressive. Right,
I'm in a safe blue urban district. I'm the first trans person in this place. I have my own world that I opper in. But we have rural senators and we brought them along with us, and we said we are going to focus on transformational policies that we can all get behind, and then we passed them. We said we were going to do them, and we did it. We didn't say we weren't going to do things. We didn't.
I mean, I can't stress enough how important it was that our leadership sat together across the entire spectrum and said, what can we get done, what do we need to do to get that done? And then they actually followed it all the way through and held people to say and you said you would support this, and now we're here and we're going to support it. And you know, I mean, I don't know states that are in a trifecta Republican. I mean, that's an extremely different circumstance when
you're in zero power. But I do think that the idea that Democrats nationally are getting their message to everyone in every part of the country and every part of their state really has a value, even if not right now. Right, that work that was being done, the reason this got done in Minnesota was because of you know, projects that
got started five ten years ago. There's an MVP project, right, that was something that was started to build what does a state like statewide agenda for the state of Minnesota that's run by progressives look like. And that that work was going on for years and years and years, so that when this moment came, it was just teed up. They knew exactly what they wanted to do. They've worked
it through the whole state. Right, you got to do that work so that when your moment comes, you can do what we just did.
You know, and what you're talking about really is planting the seeds right, and not giving up or seating different parts of your state. And when we look at it at a macro level, the Democratic Party seating different states altogether and just saying oh, we're not going to put people on the ground in places like Texas or Florida is a foregone conclusion and we're not going to bother
wasting time in Mississippi. And I think that what we see is that, yes, planting those seeds is not going to bear fruit the day that you planned, right, that you have to have more of a long term on top of a short term strategy. Is that your opinion.
That is my opinion, right, and that's based in my work. You know, I come from activism. I come from LGBTQ and abortion activism, right. Those are areas that I've worked in for a long time. And when you are doing work on behalf of the queer community, you don't leave people, right. We can't say let's everybody leave Florida. We got to abandon Florida, right, because there are trans people in Florida,
and we don't just leave them behind. We continue to work there and we continue to make sure that the people who live there are being heard and having their needs met, and then we recognize that when the opportunity comes, we are going to be ready to make sure those people are getting the representation they need. Right and it's the same with the people who are doing reproductive work all over the country. You don't just walk away from
people who need access to your services. I mean the Democrats, the DFL in Minnesota were the DFL. You know we need to make What we did was say we may not have your county right now, we may not have your seat, but we're going to make sure you know that when we legalize cannabis, this is still going to benefit you. And here's how. When we pass paid family medically, here's how that's going to benefit the workers in your town.
Even though you probably aren't going to vote for the people who are going to pass this, we still are going to pass it and we're going to make sure you know that it benefits you.
And I think that that, you know, education is a huge part of campaigning. Education is a huge part of I think party responsibility is not just asking people for their votes when you need it, but also showing them how their vote is actually benefiting them, showing them the policies that you're creating and why they are necessary. Right.
You know, I want to switch gears for a moment to ask you your thoughts on what is happening outside of your state with attacks towards transgender Americans, particularly trans youth.
And you know, we just saw, you know, there have been a series of town halls that CNN is doing with Republicans and Nikki Haley being one of those Republicans that decided to use her prime time to well wage an attack on trans girls and saying that it's trans girls are the reason that CIS girls are committing suicide. And it was disgusting. It wasn't pushed back against by
the quote unquote journalists that was there. I want to get your thoughts on how the Republican Party is weaponizing fear against the trans community.
Yeah, I mean I have a lot of thoughts on that. I mean, that's that's the reason that I ended up running for office, right, I mean, even in our decid dividing government two years ago, we started to hear this, We started to have this debate happening in our house, in our Senate, and I started to get it just was getting closer and closer to home, and I thought somebody has to be there, right, we need trans people
in these spaces. That ended up being me, and we ended up with a trifecta, so I was able to do some aggressive pro trans work. At the same time, we saw the national discourse become just truly dystopian. The situation for trans people in this landscape that the Republicans are creating is it's almost beyond my ability to describe it as to people who are not trans, right, I mean young people and adults now, and adults in some of these states are facing D transition, forcable D transition.
They are being forced to decide whether to move or to lose medications that they have been taking, sometimes for years. What that means to our community is just that's such a violence, such a disgusting and cruel violence against our community that it really is about eradication, right.
Yeah, yea yeah.
It's like taking someone's medication away from them that they use to be who they are is a way to try to say, we don't want you to be here, so you're either going to change, or you're gonna coffin or the closet, is what I say, right, Like you can either you can either find a way to your coffin or we're going to take away who you are. And I mean, what is being done. That Nikky Haley quote that you're referring to is just it's just such a blatant one. It's disconnected from any reality that exists
anywhere whatsoever. And two, mentally, you know, the problem of teenage mental health among CIS girls is a real problem and it deserves to be taken seriously and talked about into Not only is it defense have been discussing to our community, but it also is offensive to young people who are having real mental health challenges and are looking at a world that doesn't seem to be offering them a future. And then to blame it on a minority community of you know, one percent of the population. I mean,
it's it's abysmal to me. I mean, it makes me so angry and so frustrated that people keep doing this, even as we see polls that show Republicans don't support this.
It's so sickening. And I found Nikki Haley, you know, I find Republicans in general to be reprehensible, like just absolutely abominal human beings. And I say, that and blanket it because if you support the Republican Party at this stage in life, then I know who you are, right,
and you're showing the world who you are. But when I look at this, when I look at the trans population, and I think, and maybe you know better than me, representative, But when I understand it to be, what about a million people in the country out of three hundred and thirty million people. So you're having, in our two party system, one party wage war on a million people, a minority
of a minority of a minority. How do you think that we shift change, create new messaging that shows exactly what it is that they're doing, because it's not enough to try and shame people that can't be shamed. It's not enough to just call them bigots or transphobes. It's like, I feel like I want to showcase the number that they're talking about that is the cause of all your problems in the world.
Yeah, I mean the number is really interesting to me because you know, I as I get into these spaces, it's it's often like there is this idea that Republican, this political messaging wants people to think that trans people are like it's a disease, right, and it's spreading. Tons of people are becoming trans, they are turning trans kids trans as. That's not a thing, but like that's what
the idea is. And they're everywhere and they're spreading. And then but then once you start trying to do resources for trans people like we are doing in Minnesota, the story flips right, and Republicans say, like, there's not enough trans people us to really worry about this, you know, we don't need to pay so much attention to this
one little group. And so you can't have it both ways, right, Either we're a menace and we're everywhere or a very tiny minority population and we just deserve rights to have resources and respect and pay and housing like everybody else. And I mean, I think that it is it is hard to be in that walking that fine line, because I don't want our community to seem like.
Or who whoa are we.
Who must like de brand upon everybody, you know, like we are just parts of the community, like every other part of the human experience. Right, Queer people of any identity interact in the same way. I think that the thing that we are facing now is very deliberate. It's a choice right. Leaders of this movement has said they chose this issue because this issue resonated. They threw everything at the wall, and trans kids stuck. Right. That's a direct quote from one of the leaders of this movement.
So it's really hard to figure out how to message against strategic hatred. But I do think we continue to just exist in the world. Data shows us that less than half of the country knows a trans person, and that's partially because there aren't that many trans people. I mean, there's a lot in terms of raw numbers, but comparatively percentage wise, there just aren't. And more people have access to what it means to be trans and how people who are trans are just everyday members of our community.
These that to me, is the strongest message that we have. It's just going to take time because there aren't there just aren't that many of us, and especially in those states and in those communities that have been the most hostile to us. Right, people are fleeing. We passed the trans Refuge bill in Minnesota and people are coming. People are coming fast, right, So that that's going to leave more vacuum in areas where there aren't trans people, where festering anti trans sentiment continues to.
Grow, right because those people won't will no longer be there for their own safety. You know, I feel like we're living at this really incredible time where we have trans people like yourself that are holding office for the first time in you know, in cabinet positions in the Biden administration, in you know, in in low in state governments, and yet at this same time, right, you have some of the biggest attacks that we haven't seen against this
community probably since the nineteen eighties and early nineties. So what keeps you representative thinking, what keeps you hopeful? And what message do you have for young queer kids that are living in these really terrifying times.
Yeah, I mean this is a tough question, right, because I am committed to the fight. Right, These are lifelong fights. We have to be in this work forever.
Right.
We don't outlast bigotry, we don't outlast racism. It's always going to be here. We always got to commit, and it can be hard to lose, or it can be easy to lose sight of a hopeful future when you think about doing this forever. But I will say that, you know, I am hopeful because of the relationships that I have in the world, and because of the young people that I meet in my work. Right, there are young LGBTQ people, young trans people in our communities here
who I meet because they're inspired by me. But I meet them and I am so inspired by them and the idea I transitioned in adulthood in the nineties in the suburbs where I grew up like, I had no concept. Right, you can't be what you can't see, and there were
no trades people, there was no concept of this. And I see these young people having a chance to live their authentic lives, and I'm so inspired and I'm deeply moved, and I'm reminded that the world is improving and that our position in the world is making progress right, and their existence because we are publicly queer, right, being trans is to be visibly queer almost for most people, almost
all the time. And to see young people living their lives is the evidence that our communities effort is being rewarded.
Yeah, well, representatively, Thinkee. I thank you so much for the work that you're doing in Minnesota, for the work that you've done and continue to do as an activist for for equity and for justice, for the LGBTQ plus community, but for all of us, I really really appreciate you and thank you for making the time for WOKP.
Thank you, Danielle. I really appreciate being here.
That is it for me today. Dear friends on woke as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.