Good morning, peeps, and welcome to woke Ep Daily with me your girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks.
First off, thank you for sending me a happy anniversary WOKF messages and comments and you know, just letting me know how much you all appreciate this show.
It really just warmed my heart. So I just wanted to start off today with saying just a deep, deep appreciation and gratitude for all of you who have been writing with me for so long and listening to the show Switching gears. Though God, I hate Donald Trump.
It's like.
I just I wonder if there will ever come a day where I don't mention that man's name. I feel like I say his name more than I say my own, because it is just every fucking place that you look, this motherfucker is doing something that deserves not just attention but condemnation in a way that it's not being received.
So you know, over the Easter holiday weekend, right you had Donald Trump hockin bibles and posting imagery of Joe Biden Hogtide behind a car, and just I am just so in awe, and by in awe, I'm just like fulabergasted at the media after seven fucking years, the inability to just call out this motherfucker. You have never met a person more handled with kid gloves than fucking Donald
Trump and corporate media. It is a I mean, just think about if any other politician, Republican or Democrat, were to repost a picture of political violence, what the fuck would happen. I miss the days where the smallest gaps would result in you losing your fucking job. I miss
those days. I long for them. But my god, Donald Trump is just such fucking trash and a criminal, and instead of us just honestly being able to call it what it is, we still have these conversations in media as if we don't know what he's up to, as if Donald Trump is just like an overgrown fucking toddler. He's not. He's been scamming and grifting and lying and cheating for the last fifty fucking years and has been able to do so without having any accountability for any
of his actions whatsoever. Right now, you have foot soldiers of the insurrection in prison that he is referring to as political prisoners that he will free, but not the man that was the architect behind the insurrection and continues right to court violence on his enemies, whether they be Joe Biden or the judges or the judge's family that
are hearing his bevy of criminal cases. I'm just so sick to fucking death, and I honestly I pray for a day when there is no more conversation about Donald Trump, but to talk about like him in the past fucking tense as like a warning. That's the day that I
pray for. My God, I'm just so over it. Coming up next, though, is my conversation with president of Children's Partnership is a policy and advocacy organization focused on advancing child health equity through research, policy, and community engagement, and we get into a conversation about where we are currently with women's reproductive rights, abortion, IBF and more. That conversation with Mara Alvarez from Children's Partnership is coming up next, folks.
I am very excited to welcome to OOKF Daily for the very first time. Mayra Alvarez, who is the president of the Children's Partnership, a policy and advocacy organization focused on advancing child health equity through research, policy and community engagement.
Myra First, I got to tell you that I feel when I have conversations with people in your line of work, it is a tough time to be in this type of work, in child advocacy, in reproductive care, in any type of community that frankly is under attack right now. And so I just want to ask you, you know, with your organization, with Children's Partnership, how are you dealing with the current political climate and attacks that we are seeing on our children, on families, and on just our well being.
Yeah, that's a great question, Danielle.
Well, first, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this conversation and for creating the space to engage in the common with you. It is a really tough time as advocates for children, particularly children from marginalized communities, black and brown families, immigrant communities. It's a challenging time, and it's been a challenging time
for many of our families. Remember, we're not that far removed from the global pandemic that hit our families harder than other communities, and we're not far removed from the very many challenges that they were facing even before that
global pandemic. So you can imagine it's been difficult. And I think what motivates me every day and what gets me up every day are the families that we're seeking to uplift and the incredible resilience and strength that they're bringing to these conversations into this work every day, because I think that that resiliency and the ability to move forward and believe that we can have hope rests and the experiences of our black and brown families that have
overcome so much for centuries and that continue to lead the way, and that continue to be strong, and the way they raise their children and the way they contribute to their communities, and the way they are demonstrating time and time again how strong they are and how they are the ones that are holding the solutions that we need to abide by in order to create a more welcoming, more equitable environment.
For children and families.
So that's what gives That's what gives motivation every day in our work, and I think we hold on to that, hold on to that hope every day.
You know, it is like you were saying, you know, from the beginning throughout history, black and brown families communities have faced so many attacks through policy, right through policy that whether it is not providing you know, hungry children meals, whether it is not providing universal pre K and you know, things that would actually go to strength in the family and strengthen children and help build of resilience and possibility.
We have a party, the Republican Party, that has always couched themselves and their policies as pro children, as pro life, and yet there is nothing that they do that actually is about strengthening the lives and the livelihood of children. As of late, in some states, they have rolled back child labor laws. Right in some states now just recently, we're seeing IVF even the ability to create the family
that you want being taken away from families. We've seen the criminalization of people who seek reproductive care through abortion. And so I want to talk to you about the systematic kind of roll out that we are seeing that isn't that is coming from everywhere. It's like, we're going to get you while a fetus is in utero, We're going to get you. If you're forced into labor, we're
going to get you. And you know, say that your children have to be put to work because in these you know, states that are rolling back child labor laws. It's not white children that they are targeting. It's not white children that are going to be in these in
these factories. And so I want to get a sense from you, how are you able to fight back and make the greater case around health and wellness for our children, which are in fact the future, not just the future of our workforce, not just the future right in terms of how capitalism continues to flow, but like really are our future and we should be caring for them in that way.
Absolutely, I could not agree with you more.
And you know at where I work at the Children's Partnership where you know, where a nonpartisan organization or one.
Three, and actually really believe that across.
The political spectrum, children generally are upheld as this universal value that across the board, across income, across race, across ethnicity, again across politics, people speak to the issue of children as a top priority and it's in their actions that we want to hold them accountable. And as you said, time and time again, there are certain elected officials who are talking about children but not demonstrating that commitment in
their actions. And I think what's important to remind ourselves is that when we talk to people individually, one on one, that we can delve deeper than when we talk about politics at a national level and we hear soundbites coming from elected officials. I think it goes back to this
idea of building community with one another. It's really hard to do that when you're waking up in a twenty four to seven news cycle to multiple sound bites that are preaching the divisiveness, that are making clear how politically contentious everything is, how we're in the stalemate, how we're not making progress. And yet in a community level, when we are having one on one conversations as parents, as mothers, as neighbors.
There's a shift.
There's a shift, and I have to believe that that one on one interactions, the relationship building, the community building, is the absolute necessity to make change happen in this country.
And it's the only thing that's going to make change happen in this country because as people, we can see that we are not able to rely on elected officials and the way that we have wanted you, because the policies that are moving forward are not reflective of what families need and want, particularly black and brown families.
But as you saw with the recent Alabama decision.
Many white families have spoken out with serious concern about what the ramifications of that decision were.
And I think this is.
The time to really demonstrate that the decisions that you said disproportionately impact black and brown communities are actually lynch pins for what is happening to communities at large, right And I think that's the danger, and that's why we have to really consider ourselves part of one larger community. And that only happens with building relationships. And it's you know, again, coming out of this pandemic where we saw social isolation
as a necessity of keeping ourselves safe. In a world of increased technology where frankly, you don't have to talk to anyone outside of your four walls, creating community and building relationship is that much more difficult, but it can be done. And again, it is necessary in order to ensure that we're going to continue to prioritize the needs of our children, in order to prioritize the needs of all of us, given that children are our future.
And again, I.
Really want to emphasize that we need to start holding accountable elected office for their commitments to children, because that talking point is just a talking point in many instances, and when we think about.
Being pro life, not being pro embryo, not being pro what's happening in that process, but the birthing process, the birthing process.
That has taken far too many lives of black women and black birthing people across the country just proportionately dying compared to white women. Also when that child is growing up their early childhood development and investing in their screenings and preventive services, and making sure they can see a doctor in their neighborhood in a way that is culturally competent, that speaks their language. Those are investments that we have
to make. Our education system and ensuring that we have a public education system that provides the necessary skills and environment to support again the healthy development of children. These
are all incredible responsibility. These that is a society we have for children, and that we need to hold our elected officials accountable to again across both sides of the aisle, and I think it's important to emphasize that that really rests in the power of people and really recognizing the power of people to hold those elected officials accountable through the many very processes of civic engagement that we can make happen for people in this country.
You know, one of the things that I want to go back to when you have mentioned COVID a few times, and I know that you were appointed to President Biden's COVID task Force, I believe in what twenty twenty one or twenty twenty What gets me myra is that it's been four years, right since the global health pandemic started claiming the lives of millions of people in this country
and globally, since children, jobs, education was disrupted. What troubles me about where we are right now is as if we have pretended that it never happened, and yet so many things are fundamentally different now than they were four years ago, particularly how our children feel safe and engage with one another, engage with their schooling, the amount of education socialization that was lost in that time period that we're still building back, and really don't talk about the
effects of what has happened. So I want to get your thoughts on how just we as a society have kind of I thought we had an extraordinary opportunity to kind of choose a different path, to see what wasn't working right and be able to refresh and start a new but instead we have, in my opinion, have regressed considerably, and so I want to get your thoughts about how we have dealt and continue to deal with the effects of COVID and that time that we collectively experience together.
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I think.
I'm going I feel like I'm an optimist at my core, Danielle, and I hold on to that optimism as a strength to believe that we there is hope, and hope is something I.
Hold on to as much as possible.
And I have to say that one of the greatest takeaways from COVID was the opportunity to listen to community
members about what they needed. Because as we were in the thick of COVID, it was clear that the federal government couldn't our state governments couldn't do it alone, that they could not reach people with the that they needed, that they could not educate folks, that they could not make people come in to get vaccinations and learn about what was necessary in order to keep themselves healthy alone.
It was only in partnership with community organizations, with church leaders, with community health workers and promotas that our state and country really was able to make any type of progress in response and even within that, you know that disproportionately decimated many of our black and brown communities with the COVID deaths, with how hard it was hit, I taught I think a lot about I shared this when I was part of the task force about my own mom,
you know, during the pandemic, and my own my own siblings, my mom, you know, during the pandemic, cleaned houses, My mother made, did everything to make ends meet, and there was no stopping her job. Right that For many families across this country, it was not it was not an option to work from home. And for those of us privileged myself included, to work from home, it was often because there were people facing the frontlines every day and recognizing that so I personally was not far removed from
that for many in our communities they were. And so thinking about holding those experiences, putting ourselves in other people's shoes, was absolutely necessary during COVID and is that much more necessary now? And I think it's those experiences and the realization of government how critical the reliance was on partnerships with the community that enabled us to again come out of that pandemic, but also to think differently about what are we doing moving forward? And I see that today
in our healthcare system. You know, the Biden administration has released multiple efforts to try and strengthen community partnerships through the federal government, whether it is something like community health workers and really stabilizing that workforce across the country, or whether it is through local health departments and their collaboration with local organizations, or through many of our more historic events in our country. There has to be a commitment
to that partnership in order to make progress. And so I'm hopeful that we will continue that trend. And again, this is absolutely necessary in black and brown communities, but it's absolutely necessary and predominantly white communities do. It's necessary in rural communities where we rely, where neighbors rely on each other to be able to get support from one another and be connected to services and have someone in
their community that they trust to answer those questions. That skepticism of government or the skepticism of large institutions that crosses our color lines, and we have to understand that we need to work against that in order to ensure that there is trust in what the government is able to provide. And that is only necessary again through trusted
messengers through those strong partnerships. So and like I said, I have seen some of that as we've worked, you know, since the quote unquote ending of the public health emergency. And I say quote unquote because for many of our low income families, again across color lines, across and ethnicity, it's still an emergency. You know, housing is still too high of a cost, health care access is still a challenge, getting the healthy foods and the mouths of their children is still a challenge.
And so those are emergencies for families every day. So when we think.
About the opportunity to offer flexibilities during the public health emergency, which we did many of our public programs, families were allowed to stay enrolled in those public programs because they didn't want to cause more burdens during the emergency. Why aren't we offering those types of same flexibilities now again when it's always an emergency for low income families who are trying to take care of themselves and their families.
There were certain.
Again flexibilities, certain opportunities that afforded themselves in our country because of this quote unquote public health emergency or the pandemic.
And now as we're trying to come out of it. How can we explore what needs to stay, what worked in.
Order to better respond to people's needs during the emergency, that we can continue to strengthen how our systems respond to people. And I put that back on our elected officials, on our policy makers to think that through. Here in California, we've asked our state of California to keep children continuously enrolled in the medical program so that those first five
years of life. Why are we asking new parents or parents that are stressed out about the first few years of their child life to go back and make sure you're still eligible for Medicaid.
Oh, give me your income statements.
When the overwhelming amount of time people stay eligible, it's not like they're making so much more money that they're going to be out of eligibility. No, those first five years of life. I'm a relatively new mom. My baby's two and a half years old, and I went to the doctor more times in her first couple of years than I have been in.
My last ten years of my life. Yeah.
Right, If I had to worry that I didn't have insurance coverage or I had to pay full price for a vaccination, that is something that no parents should have to worry about No parents would have to worry about whether they're child's and they get a service. And we have the opportunity to do that through our policy process, and I think across the political spectrum that's something we want to offer.
Folks, how do you think that we need to be talking about the needs of children, children's health as we move to one of the most consequential elections in our time. Many people are and I know that your organization is nonpartisan, and I think that elections are about exercising your responsibility as a citizen right to vote for people that will represent your best interests, and a lot of people are
siloed voters. But what we saw, particularly during the pandemic, two million women dropped out of the workforce because they had to be caretakers. Right. We have seen so much again be reshaped by tragedy, by disaster, and I'm wondering how you think we focus the narrative over the next several months around the needs of families, around the needs of children, to energize people in a way that shows out in the votes.
I love that, and that's exactly what we're trying to do because to your point, even as a nonpartisan organization, we are able to ensure that people are thinking about the issues in front of them and who is going to best fight for those issues, who is the best best fight for their kids for their well being. By being in these positions of power and privilege, it's real privilege to be an elected official and serve the people that sent you there to do this work right.
And I think what we.
Talk about when we talk about children's health health is oftentimes when you think about health, people think about, oh, let me go to the doctor, let me access these services, let me have a health insurance card.
And those are apps absolutely essential tools to health. But if you think.
About our health and our well being, it's connected to so many different aspects of our lives. You can look at any of our biggest goals as a country, when we want our children to do well in school, when we want our parents to work a full work week, our community members to contribute to the well being.
Of their community.
Improving health is connected to every single one of those goals, and on an individual level, health is fundamental to opportunity. The healthier we are, the more freedom we have to pursue our dreams and to contribute to our families and our workplaces and our communities. And so we know that as we're trying to build in our state a healthier California, but a healthier country, we need a chance to have many more of our people to be able to reach
that full potential. And so I think if we think about children's health, we need to be able to connect it towards those other facets of life, and that as we think about the path towards equity, that it's the path towards health.
Right.
So I'm really thinking about how we can elevate these issues to be far more than the bubble that we place our health issues in, and that it is connected to nutrition and housing and economic security and racial justice.
All of these issues are impacting our well being, our health.
And that is why when we think about our elected officials and who we're putting in these positions, we want them to hold that and hold the complexity of that, because we're putting that on our families every day. A mother, a parent can't say I'm going to take care of my child care today and take care of their health care tomorrow. It's all at once, all the time. And
as we think about the multifaceted lives of families. We need to actually put that responsibility on our policymakers to do more than one thing at once as well, and oftentimes we're forced to choose.
And when we think about who.
Has hit hardest by levels of uninsurance, who's hit hardest by levels of food insecurity, housing insecurity, it's often the same communities. And so we have again this responsibility on our policymakers to move forward that whole child, whole family agenda in order to ensure that our families are taken care of holistically. And it's a lot of work and it's what we should be expecting and demanding of our
elected officials. And I think as you again, as we saw during COVID, as we saw in multiple chants in the street, and the calls for justice is what we heard, calls for justice, to demand better for the well being of our children, particularly our black and brown children. And that's what I hope we'll see rise up as we head into this election year.
Amazing Maira, please tell people how they can learn more about children's partnerships, how they can get involved.
Absolutely so, we have a website Www dot Children's partnership dot org. We seek to advance a whole child agenda utilizing the strength of partnership. We'd love to be connected to folks engaged in this work and wanting to do better and do right by our children.
Really appreciate you your work and thank you so much for making the time to join WOKF.
Thank you for the opportunity, Danielle.
That is it for me today. Dear friends on wok F as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.