Rest and Revolution

I want to share some nuggets for my conversations this week with my friends Ellie Mistel, Justice correspondent for the Nation and Anita Copatch, author and spiritual psychologists, which you can hear right now and full at patreon dot com slash woke AF. Later on you'll hear Anita talk about how wellness and wokeness actually go hand in hand and

how you need one to feed the other. But first, my dear friend Ellie joined me on Thursday show to discuss how we as a nation cannot and will not get well until we get woke and take action against these seditious dissidents who incited a white supremacist riot in our nation's capital. Take a listen. So I want to start at the very very top, where you say, look at all these calls for unity, right that you knew we're coming, that I knew we're coming, That basically every

mildly conscious black person knew would be happening. This is what they always do, right. The white people at the Constitutional Convention want unity and comedy with the slavers and colonists who were raping and holding our brothers and sisters in bondage right after the first unity call after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, great emancipator, out here with charity for all and malice are well, fuck that, I want some malice for these insurrectionists who just started a five

year civil war. But no, no no, no, we have to have unity with our Southern brothers and sisters. Right. It happens all the time that every time white people get crazy and violent, the white people who weren't crazy and violent want to embrace and how and understand and a commission studies about the grievances of their brothers. Right. They never want to hold them accountable, which is why they are always permissive of white supremacy, white anger, and white violence.

What could we do, Corey Bush? Absolutely, legally, it's relatively easy to expel a member of Congress. You make a rule, and then you vote on it, and if more people vote on it than not, that member is expelled. It's actually not that hard if you have an underlying crime, right, like it's it would be hard to just say, like I don't want Ted Cruz to be in Congress because he's an asshole, Like that's that's not enough, but a seditious asshole. Well, well now you tell me more, tell

me right, maybe we can do something about that. So yeah, the spelling members of Congress is not often used, but it's not particularly hard to do if you have enough congress people willing to do it. The Congress sets their own rules. Congresses like a club. They set their own

rules of entry at some kind of basic level. But I think more than that, and really even more than going after Ted Cruise and Josh Alvey, who absolutely should be expelled, the very first level of accountability has to start with the people who a rioted and you know, attack the capital, right and all that, many of whom have not yet been found or arrested. It has to start there, and it has to start with the people who directly incite it the riot on the day of

the riot. I am here for discussion theoretically of how Ted Cruise is adoption of the election fraud lie Like, I'm here for that discussion. But first we have to get Don Junior, who sat there for five minutes telling these crazy people go fight for Trump, Go fight for Trump. First we have to get Moe Brooks, who sat there for fifteen minutes and told his people this is the day we start taking names and kicking ass. First we have to get Rudy Giuliani, who ordered them to have

a trial by combat. And first we have to get Donald Trump, the president, who spent two hours whipping these people up in a frenzy and telling them to march on the Capitol and find his vice president and quote make him do the right thing. All right, these people got to go now, all right, way before we get to Holly and Cruise and you know, Matt Gates, all of whom are dicks who should have some kind of

accountlatily brought to them. But before we get to that, we have to legally hold accountable and punish the people who directly inside it the violence they would do it to black people. I wrote in the Nation, I took people back to two and seventeen during a protest for Alton Sterling, Louisiana man who was just shot to death by the coll when he was in a prone position.

Black Lives Matter organizers like Deray McKesson and Brittany pack At Cunningham were arrested after one of these protests because one guy, one guy who was not them, who did not know them, through a brick at a cop. Ye, all right, he hurt his foot or something through a brick at a cop, and they arrested the organizers for inciting the violence. Even though Deray and Brittany are not out here saying let's throw bricks at cops. Fight the cops throw bricks at them. They're not saying that, but

they got arrested anyway. They were eventually released. The injured cop actually sued Deray for his injuries and Deray had to fight him all the way to the spring court. All right. So that's what they do to black people. If you do that to black organizers of protests, the very least we can do is arrest Don Junior, Moe Brooks, Rudy Giuliani Trump once he's out of office and no longer protected by the Office of the Presidency, and arrest these people for inciting a riot. That is the first

level of accountability. If we don't have that, at least we don't only have anything. Let me ask you this though, Ellie, because it turned out right that the Department of Justice, which is still currently under the Trump regime, has decided that they are not going to prosecute anyone for incitement, right, meaning any of the folks that were at this bullshit Save America rally. However, DC Attorney General right an office

is actually looking into this. We know that we have but a handful of days left until Merrick Garland is the new Attorney General of the United States. Talk to us about the kind of pressure that is going to be necessary to get done exactly what it is that you just said. These people didn't find themselves on the steps of the Capitol inside the Capitol Building on their own. They were fucking led there. They were led there by Donald Trump. They were led there by Rudy Giuliani. They

were led there by Don Trump Junior. They were led there by Matt Gates. They were led there by these people. Right, you can't lay out, right, all of this tender, all of this gasoline, give everybody a match and then walk away, and you have no responsibility for the fucking fire that was set. So what pressure needs to happen in order to get these things done, so that these people a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now know that, oh, actually my words do matter, that

we're not just supposed to shrug it off. Well, here's my worry with the Biden administration. Right from from where I said, Barack Obama's biggest mistake was in the transition after he was elected, before he was inaugurated, when he went on this Week with George Stephanopolus, I believe and said that he wasn't going to be focused on prosecuting Dicky and people in the Bush administration for war crimes and torture because it was important to move forward and

not look backward. That was Barack Obama in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and I believe that was rock. I believe that was permissive of attacks on our very character and permissive of criminals. And I believe that other Republicans understood that, took note of that and realize that they can do whatever they want while cloth and power, because the Democrats will never have the stones basically ye to go back and find them when the

wheel turns around and the Democrats were empowered. Note that this is not how the Republicans played right. Had Hillary Clinton won, it would have been four straight years of Manghazi hearings. By the way, more people die than the Capitol attack than at Benghazi. If Barack Obama had prosecuted his presidency like Donald Trump has, Barrock Imbaba will be in jail right now. Publicans never just move forward and move on and don't worry about the past. They always

go back and settle their scores like a mom or something. Right, Joe Biden needs to prosecute these people. Yes, we cannot move forward until there is accountability. We cannot heal until the bleeding wound is staunched. I don't think that he understands that. His pick of Merrick Garland suggests that he doesn't understand that it's just incredibly rare to get white people, especially even white liberals, to take action against white racist It's just not something they're kind of. It's just not

something they ever seem to want to do. We cannot move forward unless there is accountability, folks. I've been saying that for weeks now, But do you know what we also need to move forward rest. I said this on Friday's show, which you can here right now on patreon dot com. Slash Woke af that rest is part of the revolution. We cannot tire ourselves out before we even get to the starting line. I was so happy to be joined on this Friday show by my friend Anita Copatch,

who talked about her work as a spiritual psychologist. Hear her thoughts on how using techniques of mindfulness and spirituality can bring wokeness into our everyday lives. How do you work with people who feel in this moment stuck, right, They do feel stuck, and they don't feel rooted, they feel weighed down. How do we help those into the space of being in flow, even if that flow feels like a tempest at times? Yeah, yeah, that's very true.

So most of the people that I work with, I know, we haven't brought it up, but most of the people that I've worked with have experienced sexual trauma. And the way that I work with that because a lot of times they will feel stuck or they won't know what it is, and so I don't push them to say so much, but I create a space for them to

figure that out. Right, because when we find out what it is that's holding us back, rather than someone telling us what it is, it's a much more profound effect on their healing and how they move forward because once we realize we are our own healers, that we don't say like, oh, I need her in order for me to move to this next level. And so what I do is, if they're feeling stuck, I ask those small questions like how are you feeling? You know, what is

giving you anxiety? What are you sad about? What are you excited about? And it's such simple things. But as they begin to talk and say it, they come to these realizations within this space right And it's interesting because most of the people within my communities right now are feeling very motivated, which is interesting because I don't feel it all the time rightly. I'm like, let me just

sit in this bed right now. Oh my gosh. So I've been getting much of my inspiration from seeing the people around me, Like it's so important to connect with your community during this time, especially if you're feeling stuck.

Have an accountability of partner, have someone who can check in with you, or you can check in with each week at least because there are some people who are out there feeling very alone during these times, and though creating these spaces where you're in community, right because as we see the mirrors around us, we're able to see who we are even more clearly because you know, underneath it all, we all are all one. But there's so many different levels of healing in order for us to

even get to that. You can't ask someone to buy pass, you know, their pain of what they're feeling from their experience of being black in America, right, Oh no, but we're no, I'm not going to get there until I heal all of these things, these ancestral things, like for instance, I had this experience where this person contacted me and asked me to create these things, you know, for this big event. And I was like, oh, yeah, absolutely, and

I created them. And then she told me after or my team created them, right, so it's my time, my resources. She told me after that they weren't able to be vetted in time and something like that. And so I sat there for a moment and I was feeling so triggered, Like yeah, so triggered, And I was like, why are you so triggered about this Anita like, what is that?

I mean tears like anger, and I was like, I know, it's not just about this, right, And I realized it was about because to me it felt like I did work for a white person and they didn't pay me. And I not only did work, I did work and I used my resources to have someone design things, you know, like it was a whole uful thing. And so I don't know if before twenty twenty I would have allowed myself to feel those triggers, right like, I probably would have been annoyed and then just moved on and did

something else. But it was almost as if I couldn't help it. And so when I went into my own self counseling about it, it did. It went into those wounds of slavery. And so basically, once I had cleared that and went into that, I was able to respond without the emotional triggers, but also allow this person to know what she did, because it's especially within the millennials, there are so many people who are trying to be

woke and triab to through this work. And you know, one of the things she wanted to vet was make sure that I had people of color within my organization and another organization that I raise money for. And so I just told her, I said, you know, I am a woman of color, and what is happening right now is that there is a disrespect that's happening because you asked me to do this work without letting me know that there was a possibility that it was not going

to be used. Yeah, yeah, yep. So I was like, you have to realize that at every level, not just oh, let me see if they have black people working, you know, if they have enough black people where I'm like, I am a black person, right and this is it, this one on one, Like every moment is a chance for us to wake up. Every moment is a chance for us to wake up. I will leave you with those

wise words from Anita Copatch. Thank you so much for checking out Woke a F. If you want to hear more of my full thirty minute interviews with Ellie and Anita, they are alive right now on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash Woke a F head over and subscribe for just five dollars a month and get access to hundreds of past shows as well as five new one hour shows

every single week. I'm looking forward to expanding our vision of what it means to be woke in twenty twenty one, and your support helps spread that message far and wide. As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.