The Great American Whitelash

the case. Yesterday. I found myself laying in my bed at around eight pm. I wasn't necessarily tired, like I wanted to go to sleep. I was just done. I was done with the day. I was done with America. I was done with watching the news, I was done with being on Twitter and hearing about everything that was wrong. And my body was aching and exhausted and just spent. And what I find about that is, folks, what is happening right now is going to begin to manifest itself physically, spiritually,

and emotionally. You may find yourself for no reason, bursting into tears or just wanting to take a nap. And what I want to encourage you at the beginning of this show is listen to your body. Listen to yourself, because your body is telling you what it is that it needs. And right now, what we all need in

ways that I would never have anticipated, is rest. Because I believe that what Republicans and the radical rights and these white Evangelical Christians which are just under this whole big banner of authoritarians and fascists, what they are trying to do is wear us down. What they are working to do is wear us out and make us feel like we have no options, that there is nothing that we can do, that we feel helpless, and that all

we want to do is check out. Now, what I'm offering here is not just saying to check out and never check back in. But these moments of angst, of anxiety, of stress, of grief require rest so that we can restore ourselves, we can recharge, so that we can lift our heads out of the sand and continue to march forward. Because the journey that we are on is a long one. It's actually a marathon. We are in a marathon where the baton has been handed over a generation after generation

after generation, and now it's our turn. At the beginning of this year, I found myself really troubled with the fact that it had hit me, I'm never going to see real justice. I'm never going to probably see real equality. Now one can argue that I'll be around God willing for several more decades, and maybe I will, maybe I won't.

There are people right who never thought that they would live to see a black president, and they did, But I don't think that they ever thought that they would live to see the kind of white lash that we are recognizing and experiencing on a day to day basis because of the election of the nation's first black president.

Because you see, that's what we're in the midst of, folks, is the great American white lash, where white people have been told by folks like Donald Trump and DeSantis and Abbott and Steve Bannon and Miller and the rest of them that this nation is closing in on them, that they will soon be the minority, that they must do everything within their power to stop the inevitable from happening.

But the thing is that I always want to argue with these folks if I were to ever actually share space and breath, which no, because covid A and because I care about my sanity. B But the thing that I always want to ask is this, why are you so concerned about becoming a quote unquote minority. Why are

you so concerned about the demographic shift? Because if white privilege doesn't exist, and white supremacy is something that I've made up in my mind, then it shouldn't matter whether you're the majority or not, because how you are treated

won't change. And less, of course, you believe the opposite is true, that these things do exist, that you have in fact benefited from white privilege, from being able to use your whiteness as currency, for never having to worry about what would happen to you if you get pulled over, what would happen if a security clerk came up to you in a store, whether or not when you were sending your kids to the store, if they were going

to return, or you would never see them again. You don't ever have to worry about these things, right, because you see the world that's been set up for you. You don't have to worry that if you don't get a call back from a job that you went after that was it your name? Was it too ethnic? Right? Did you show up in the right way at the interview. Does the person that is interviewing you more likely than not who happens to be white, Do they have any

black friends? Are they going to try and box you if you get there is a culture set up for you to succeed, or are they just going to assume that if you fail it has nothing to do with the systems or lack thereof that we're put in place, would have everything to do with you, because you know, black people, brown people are lazy. They're just not as smart as their white counterparts. You see, if you've never had to worry or be concerned about any of those things,

then you have been set up to win. You have been set up with a mount of privilege that the rest of us have never been afforded. So what would make sense then if you were to actually intellectualize what is happening right now and say that, oh, well, it is white angst right, That's what we were told back in twenty sixteen. Bernie Sanders had said it himself. Don't talk about identity politics, because you know, white people don't

want to have an identity. They want to believe that they are the norm and that the rest of us just act in reaction to them, So you never really have to think about anything, but the rest of us do.

That's what it means to exist in this space. So we wonder then, why we are seeing these stories one after the other going viral on the internet of white people in stores spitting on folks not wearing masks, accosting teenagers getting off of the school bus that are wearing a mess, threatening to beat up doctors, saying that I know where you live because they've never had to work in concert, right, They've never had to work in community. It's only the rest of us that have had to

band together. Why because the systems weren't never created for us to win. So we were going to have to set up our own food programs, our own daycares, our own system to work within a system that wasn't created for us. So we're shocked right now at the fact that the lack of patriotism, but we never held hands around the flag because we don't see that symbol in

the same way. So the idea then that we need to do this type of outreach to this community that has done nothing to reach out to anyone that doesn't look like them, doesn't pray like them, doesn't love like them, doesn't want to exist like them, is bullshit to me. You know. Coming up next, Folks, is going to be my conversation with my friend abortion activist Danielle Campamore. And Danielle has been on the show throughout the years, and the interview that you were about to listen to was

a tough one. Tough one because it's hard right now. It is hard if you are a person that is conscious, if you are a person that has spent your life and career trying to create room and make space for other people to be advocated for the forgotten, it is really tough right now. So Danielle is going to offer ways in which each of us can help in this moment, right and not just rely on the fact that, oh, well, we don't live in Texas, so I don't have to care.

If there's anything that we have learned over the last eighteen months, it is just how connected we all are and just how easy it is to lose our rights in the blink of an eye. Everything that you thought was cemented is not. And if they can come for abortion rights, now, what do you think they're going to go for next? It's voting rights? Abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, religious freedom, for everybody that isn't Christian that will be gone. Pay attention because the alarm is sounding and they are

coming for each and every single one of us. And unless we stand up as a collective, unless we allow our voices to be heard, unless we start to put our money where our mouth is, if you have the ability to do so, I'm going to be doing this show from an undisclosed location until they come and drag

me out, because that's where this is headed. Coming up next, folks, is my conversation with our friend Danielle Campamore, and I hope that you will let me know what you are thinking about this moment, how you are dealing with the stress of this moment, because we will, in fact get through it. We will get through it together, folks. I

am very excited. Well, I wish that every time that we had Danielle Campamore on that we were actually talking about strides that we've made in abortion rights, and you know how we have expanded it. But Danielle, you know it seems that every time that we bring you on, we are in the midst of a disaster. You are

an abortion advocate, a freelance writer. You have written on this topic, you speak on this topic before we jump into the details of where we are in Texas and the copycatting that we're seeing happen now across Red States. Tell me how you're feeling about, you know, what the Supreme Court did with their shadow docket, and the fact that Democrats for some reason couldn't see this coming, even though we knew that we had three Trump appointed, you know,

judges that are incredibly radically to the right. Right. First, thank you so much for having me and I echo your sentiments. I wish we were speaking under far better circumstances right now. I am incredibly angry, I am incredibly sad, and I am incredibly exhausted. I have had an abortion. I don't have any shame about my abortion as the best decision I've ever made, and it's given me the

life I have now, including my two sons. And my heart just goes out to the people in Texas who are being forced into parenthood, forced to carry pregnancies, pregnancies that they don't want, forced to give birth, which is dangerous, especially in this country, particularly in Texas, and I feel for the providers. I have been on the phone with people on the ground. They're scrambling to find additional funds to get people out of states. Abortion providers are looking

at ways in which they can protect themselves. One abortion provider who I speak with frequently, in particular, her son, was asking her questions about ways in which that she could or a person could escape jail. She asked him why he was interested in jail. All of a sudden, he said, because you're an abortion provider, mom, and abortions illegal. Now, I mean their parents, they loved ones, they're family members, their children, their siblings are all afraid for them, and

they're afraid for themselves. But amongst all of that, I am also in awe of these providers, of these abortion fund workers. They are tired and angry and sad too. They're scared also, But they've been here before, They've done this before, and they're going to continue to fight. And I think that's a very important message to send the people of Texas. If you find out that you were pregnant, there are people who will help you. You are not alone,

and this is not over. You know, Danielle, you helped to paint such a perfect picture of the pain and the frustration, the uncertainty right of a son having to say, how do people escape from from prison because fearful of what is going to happen to his mother that is

a provider? Can you tell us? Because what I am hearing or you know and reading, is that a lot of the abortion providing clinics have shut down right because of the fear of the essentially the abortion bounty hunters that now have a price on their heads of ten thousand dollars that they could possibly sue up to in civil courts. So, how many abortion clinics were there in Texas prior to this draconian move by Governor Abbot and

how many are there today a week now post the decision? Right? Well, I think it's important to take this in the context of what abortion accesses look like in Texas. In twenty thirteen, a law was passed that essentially shuttered about half the clinics that were there. The law demanded that abortion clinics adhered to hospital regulation regulations and that providers would have

admitting privileges in nearby hospitals, and that was impossible. The hospitals simply denied them admitting privileges, and therefore they couldn't grant abortion access in their clinics, so that shut it about half of them already, so abortion access prior to this six week ban was already difficult for a lot of people. There were a handful of clinics at best. Leading up to when the band was going to go

into effect, there were anti abortion people. They're shining floodlights at the clinics, trying to look inside to see if they were going to be offering abortion services past the midnight deadline. They have been outside the clinics now harassing them, saying that they're going to turn them in. They're watching them. There's always fear of violence that's been escalated the clinics. Some it's not that they're shutting down, is that they

simply can't provide services anymore. People aren't able to get to them in time. The six week ban is almost impossible to overcome. Most people do not know that they are pregnant within that timeframe. They don't even if you have a normal period, you aren't going to miss that period until five weeks. That gives you a week and Texas already has other laws in place, including mandatory waiting period, mandatory counseling that deny care. So the clinics just simply

don't have anyone that they can help withness moments. And that's where they're having to send people out of state and therefore having to shift down because there's really nothing for them to do. Their hands are time. What happens now if I'm a woman that is in Texas, I'm a person that is in Texas because there are people with uteruses. If I'm a person that is in Texas and it is past the six week ban, right, you

just laid that laid that timeline out. If I go to another state according to this law and then come back to Texas, what is what potentially can happen to me? Well, if you're the person who obtained the abortion out of state according to this law, nothing but if anyone in this state helped you, if anyone assisted you in any way leaving the state, according to this law, someone can

turn them in. So if a parent helped you, if a partner helped you pay for it, if a friend helped you drive, if someone told you go to this website and they can help you get the funds, they can all be sued. And so while the person doesn't have any legal ramifications. The people that assisted them would be liable according to this law. I mean, this is just absolutely disgusting. And you know, the more that I unpack it and the more that I understand it, I don't.

Can you explain to us why Democrats didn't see something like this coming? And why only now after the fact, we're hearing that the Department of Justice is looking into ways in which we can uphold Roe v. Wade because it was the law of the land. But it's not so. I mean what, I know that you are not a lawyer, but you are very involved in understanding how abortion works state by state. So why couldn't Democrats see this coming?

Why didn't they see this coming? And I'm going to try and get through this segment without cursing, because I'm incredibly angry at the Democrat girl. The show is called Vocus fuck. You know damn well that you can curse on here, and this is a cursing moment. He has not said the word abortion once. He didn't once when he denounced this ban, and then he goes back to saying healthcare, women's choice, reproductive healthcare. He won't even say

the word abortion, and many of these Democrats won't. They want to shy away from it. And that is the reason why we were caught on our heels is because they did see this coming. They know that this has happening. If they paid attention to any of the Texas Abortion Fund workers, the advocates, the abortion storytellers who've been sharing their experiences to end abortion stigma and to work to expand access, they would have seen this coming a mile

away because they knew was coming. And it's been here already. There are a handful of states with only one people have to drive hundreds of miles away already. This is nothing new. It's just now grabbing headlines. So now we're getting halfhearted condemnations from an administration who should be doing more, who can do more, and who needs to do more, and that includes ending the filibuster and expanding the court.

Anything less than that makes them complicit enforcing people in this country, the United States of America, to give birth. You know, for years, right back when I was on Serious, you would come on and we would talk about The Handmaid's Tale, and we would talk about where we were going. If we were not going to have an open conversation about abortion right. And you're right because we democrats to me this issue, do the abortion issue a continued disservice

when we decide to wrap it around euthanisms. I read an article yesterday and I can't remember the name of the author, but it was so punchy and to the point because they were saying that, look, I don't have to tell you why I had an abortion. I don't need to offer you a sob story. I don't need to offer you a conversation about rape and incest and what have you. People have abortions for a range of fucking reasons, and most of the time they are happy

that they did so right. And most of the time it is people that are already parents who are having abortions because they know about the cost, they know about the time, they know that they are either working in a job or in a state that is not going to be of service and help provide right for them after the fact, after a child leaves uterus. And so you know, my frustration here is is this a time that you believe that we are going to move Democrats

from there? You know from their tiptoeing around what this actually means, and get to the heart of the heart, or are we just going to see more to your point, halfhearted thoughts about oh, well, sh aim on Texas and shame on Abbot and let me pray for them type of bullshit when we know that that is actually not going to change policy, It isn't going to make women in Texas more free, and frankly, we're going to see a domino effect, which we've already started to see since

the midnight deadline hit last week. Absolutely, I think that is entirely up to us. I think we have to demand more of this administration. I think one of many of the downfalls of four years of Trump is that it's well, at least he was better than the guy. Well, that's not good enough. And I'm tired of us treating Biden with kid gloves. Fuck that, I don't care. We need to demand more of them, and if they don't do more, then they need to lose their jobs. That's

the end of it. We also need to demand that they center abortion storytellers and that they talk about abortion number one at all, say the word. It's not a bad word. And number two accurately. I think that a lot of our politicians and a lot of people in the media easily attached, hold onto and then regurgitate anti abortion terms that are not factual at all, their devoid of reality, their stigma inducing. For example, this is not a heart fan. There is no heartbeat at six weeks,

Yet we use that all the time. We say late term abortion. That is not a thing. Late term in pregnant past forty weeks. No one is having an abortion past forty weeks. Just partial of birth abortion. That is not a thing. Post birth abortion that is not a thing.

Yet we see those terms because their headline grabbing, and because politicians are too lazy to center people or to learn or to listen from the people that have had abortions, who know and give abortions, who know how that works, to know the correct terms, and so they're doing the work for these people. They're doing the work for problems in Texas and elsewhere. Do we work for anti choice

finance abortion people. So we center storytellers, abortion advocates, and abortion providers, learn from them, and then demand that this administration actually do something instead of saying that they want to protect row. Then this is going to continue. We're going to see more states do exactly what Texas did. And then we're gonna see row fall, not just in name, but in actuality. That's it for Today's Woke, a f

daily podcast. To hear more from today's show, including my full interview with Danielle Campamore, support me on Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke AF Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke, and stay woke as fuck.