The Long Deathmarch To Midterms

remote work, remote schooling, and all of these things. And you know, listening to the kids that they had interviewed, there was a study that had come out a couple

of weeks prior that asserted the same thing. And while we are dealing with another announcement coming out of the White House only yesterday that you know, we must prepare before we even get to fucking experience summer, that we are going to be headed into another COVID fall in winter, where they are talking about the fact that one hundred million people can potentially become infected with COVID. And we know this now, like these things are not a shock

to us. But what I realize is that the persistence of this virus the lack of empathy, and I mean lack of empathy across the board, not just the assholes that don't want to wear masks and the people who have put other people in harm's way in the selfishness and all of that, But I'm really talking about the lack of empathy as it pertains to the emotional strain and mental health strain that this has placed on our

kids and on ourselves, on adults. You know, when I think about as I was watching these kids talk about the isolation and talk about the loss of being able to socialize and the socialization, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, these were like kids that were, you know, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old that we're entering into middle school, particularly that they were talking about and how devastating it has been.

And there have been other reports about how there have been a lot of fights in schools, you know, and a lot of issues with student engagement with one another because of the anxiety and depression and all of these things that were caused with COVID. And when you pause to think about this, folks like not only where we and how and we have been just working through a pandemic, like all of this shit remains normal right when it

is not not. I mean, there's a meme that comes out every once in a while that says, I'm tired of living through historical events every fucking week, right, And I don't think that we are taking into consideration the stress and the strain that this has caused on our kids and on ourselves and what frankly, we should be

doing to manage and deal with it. So I want to share with you that, you know, while I continually talk about taking care of your mental health and centering joy and grounding yourself, I have found myself and I just had a really in depth conversation with my therapist, a really in depth session, i should say, because I find myself falling back into really unproductive of an unhealthy routines because of the level of stress and strain and anxiety that I'm under that all of us are under.

You know, it takes a lot to be able to continually follow breaking news all times of day. You know, I had put my phone down, for example, I put my phone down, you know, last week in the middle

of the evening because I was finished with work. Then all of a sudden, text messages, tweet alerts, Oh my god, the abortion you know decision draft being leaked, and I'm thinking myself, Jesus Christ, you can't even we have gone back to a place where you can't put your phone down because you don't know what the fuck is coming next. You don't know. You know, Tennessee decides that they're going to outlaw you know, abortion pills and Plan B and

all of these things. And then you know, you have this state rolling on another anti trans bill, and then you've got this state, you know, rolling on another vote suppression bill, and it's just it's unrelenting. And when I think about the kids and what they're dealing with, you know, think about what the fuck they are living through as well, right like we as adults are struggling with the ability to process everything that is being thrown at us every

single week. By the time we get to Friday, by the time I get to Wednesday, and I'm doing woke Wednesday, I already feel like I've lived two weeks in one and it's only been three days, right, And so I imagine that, but on the emotional capacity of like a twelve or thirteen or fourteen year old teenagers in general, and I'm thinking, and we are expecting them to go to school and still learn and still get the grades and take the tests and just like move through, like

none of this is happening. Our societies like obsession with work and I put school in that text is really, I mean, aside from our democracy of crumbling, is really going to be incredibly detrimental to our mental health development of our youth and what is that going to look

like when they enter into the workforce. Right, So I find myself really not focusing on the things that I need to focus on, like making sure that I am exercising daily, that I'm getting outside on a regular basis, because I find myself once again strapped to my cell phone, strapped in front of my computer and hunched over right.

And you know, I even had my neighbor the other day say to me, had left a package, you know for me, And he was just like, have you left your house because the package has been you know, in the place that I put it for you for two days. And I was like, yeah, so thank you for the call out, because no, I haven't left my house in

two days. Right, These things really matter, And I offer up the fact that I am struggling because I can't imagine that I'm the only one that doesn't find themselves, you know, down a rabbit hole on Twitter, you know, down just a catastrophe hole on like what can come next? And what my therapists offered to me, and I'm going to relay an offer to you as a way one to speak out loud to myself but also to share, is that we have got to put ourselves on our calendars.

We have got to pull ourselves back every day from this unrelenting despair because the shit is just going to get worse. It really is. There is no way around me telling you that in a couple of months all will be well, because I don't believe it. I do believe that things are going to get incredibly worse in this country. And if I am struggling, now, what is

that struggle going to look like? And so if we all are not pausing each day, taking out thirty minutes for ourselves to get some fresh air, to do some exercise, to do something that we enjoy, to start and end our day with things that we enjoy, and then create moments, you know, in the middle to take a mental break. You know, whatever that looks like for you, We're all gonna fucking lose it. I feel it already. I had said to myself, you know, I wasn't going to get

back on this hamster wheel. I wasn't going to get back into this grind culture. I wasn't going to allow the catastrophe of the world to suck me back in. And here I am not sleeping, waking up in the middle of the night anxious. And that doesn't allow me to do my best work for all of you. It doesn't allow me to do my best work for the movement. And so I think about the ripple effect that the lack of self care and attention and intentional joy and

intentional slowing of the pace does. And so I say to you, if you have kids, and our caregivers to or our caregivers to children, or you're a teacher, figure out what it is that will get your kids to talk each day about how they are feeling. If they are artists, maybe they write about it, maybe they do a poem, maybe they do something, but something that allows you to have some insight so that you can intervene before they get to a place where they're even contemplating

taking their own lives. I say the same thing for all of the adults, you know, do something that allows you, whether it is, you know, beginning a journal or a diary, if it's written, if it's auditory, if you're drawing, if you're writing poetry, something that allows the feelings not to enter this dark place but find an exit point for it. And one is that is healthy, you know, because that's

the other thing too. We all have exit points, and lots of them involve martinis and wine and cocktail and weed, you know, and these things. And I'm not passing any judgment. I partake just like everybody else does. But when that seems to be the only thing, the only direction that is a allowing there to be a bomb, then we

need to take another look. Coming up next, friends, my Conversation monthly conversation that we are revisiting with our friend the Reverend Mark Thompson, to talk about where we are as we make the long death march to midterms and

what it is that Democrats need to do. Folks. I am very happy to welcome back to Woke a f daily my friend the Reverend Mark Thompson and host of make it plain, Mark, we gather today on in a week that I don't think any of us expected to see, and I shouldn't say that any of us expected to see, because we actually knew where this was going and how it was kind of how it was going to evolve. How are you feeling today? Well, first of all, good to see you, Glad to be with you as always, Danielle.

I think that some of us felt and knew this was likely to happen, that the Supreme Court would strike down the road. We didn't necessarily expect to learn this way, and it may be a blessing that we are learning this way. But the problem is, I think what has happened. So many people have been victims of the skies falling Chicken Little, and so nobody really believed it until they saw it. Our enemies have been organizing for almost for forty nine years, NonStop, most of us, but I shouldn't

say most. Many of us have given up since twenty twenty. Stuff's not happening fast enough. I'm not getting what I want. Biden ain't doing this, ain't doing that, which is not false. But we quit after a year and a half. They have not quit after forty nine years now. One of our ancestors, Frederick Nuglas, said, the price of freedom is

eternal vigilance. We don't listen to him, though. We listen to what is immediate, and we react and respond on social media that we don't control and are going to lose even more control of when elon Must takes over. That's that's how we make our decisions. That's where our ideology a lot of times is formed. And so this is a big time l There's no other way to put it. And those who may not want to hear that, or may resent me saying it, I'm signing, but you

got we have to join. We have to figure out of a way to join organizations, get involved, be active, not just emote with words on social media. And I'm sister to the word emote too. I'm not talking about just women. I'm talking about men too. Men need to decide to step up more and defend women's bodies and lives. This is crazy. And I read part of discipin Have you read some of this? Yes? I did? Hold it. Wait a minute, wait, wait, go ahead and say something else?

What I look because I want to pull up something I don't want it to be bil there, but I just want to find something. While I'm looking for something, go ahead, I will say that. You know, folks have been very clear right as we were going through the confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsch, for Brett Kavanaugh, for Amy Covid Barrett, they have all been very clear about where they fall on ideological lines. Right. This has never been about the rule of law and and and and justice

and uh and equity. It has been about control. And to your point, they never let up for forty nine years, right. And what you see in parts of the opinion that I did read, um, is this, you know, clarification around quote unquote life. Right? Is this you know, discussion around privacy? Right? Because what what we understand is that the way that Roe v. Wade was constructed was about was around a woman's right to privacy. It was not around equity, right, Um,

It was not around the equity of women and pregnant persons. Right. And so what what what they are not tipping their hat at are all of these others decisions, particularly those around LGBTQ people, that had been made with regard to privacy and not equity. Yeah, yeah, this is. This is from the draft that was leaked via Politico. The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's history and traditions. Now let's just

stop there for a minute. Replace a right to abortion with a blank and just filling a blank. The inescapable conclusion is that is that a blank is not deeply rooted in the nation's history and traditions. On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion or blank, I'm doing it for a reason now on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of common law until nineteen

seventy three when the law was changed. Now, if you just put blank there, you can apply that it's about anything, yea. The inuscapable conclusion that the right of African Americans to read is not deeply rooted in the in the nation's history and traditions. On the contrary and unbroken tradition of prohibiting reading on the part of African Americans on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of common law.

So you can just give you another example. The the interscapable inclusion that a that desegregation Yep, we can go on the right to vote. These people. This is evil. This, the wording of this is evil, and it's not something Frankly, when you read this that you have any reason to believe that they just wrote this the other night. They've

been working on this for decades. This is one hell of an argument to say that because something was outlawed since the founding of this country, it should still be outlawed today. If folks, if that does not shake you up and wake you up, then ain't nothing else we

can do do it? Nothing else Danielle Moody can say, or I can say, I'm telling you this, you know, we might as well just go ahead and do the cookie show, because you know, because here's the thing, Mark, because folks keep saying on social media right to your point, oh well, now people are going to be galvanized. Now people are gonna fight, and I'm saying, you lost the war. So what is it exactly that we want people to wake up too? Because I'll tell you this, Nicole Hannah Jones,

and let me pull this up. Nicole Hannah Jones had offered a tweet that I thought was so on point because every time people want to turn around and say, oh,

you know, well, now folks are gonna be galvanized. She said this, She's on Twitter, she said, Folks on here saying this will energize quote women voters are blatantly ignoring that the majority of black latina Asian indigenous women voted against Republicans and a majority of white women voted for voted for despite ours explicit promises to end row So what are you really saying? That's what she said in

her tweet. So when folks are like, oh, this will galvanize folks, we had a historic goddamn election in twenty twenty because black and brown people, indigenous people, API people, queer people were galvanized in recognizing that another term under

Donald Trump was gonna mean certain devastation. So when folks are saying it's, oh, they're gonna wake up, I said, wake up to what the fifty three percent of white women that voted for a man that said that he could grab that by the pussy in twenty sixteen, and they still show it up in mass and then did

so in increased numbers in twenty twenty. Well, the question becomes whether or not it's because those women know and believe that just like before in nineteen seventy three, there were those who had access to things that everybody else didn't have. Come on, So if you if you know for a fact that you'll still have the access to that which you want and need or whatever it is,

you don't really care. I'm gonna get it anyway. I can still go somewhere and get an abortion or have access to I mean, do you all really think it stops at abortion? Do you really think it stops you think it really? Are we just we're gonna let you'all. We're gonna let you have contraception and access to free clinics and playing parenthood. We're gonna let you do that. We're just not going to allow abortion. How far back

do they go? Mark? Do do you know? Because to your point, it is it is not going to stop an abortion. It is going to go to contraception. It is gonna go to every single way to be able to control right women. But I'm talking about, as you were reading through the opinion and inserting different things, I think we can go all the way back to plessy. We can go all the way back. I mean, every single right mark that we have gotten hasn't come through an Act of Congress. It has come through the courts.

So if this after fifty years falls you telling me that folks believe that lie, Oh this is gonna be done because Susan Collins said that, oh, she trusts Brett Kavanaugh, that she trusts the Supreme Court. How far back do you think that this is going and what is the preparation here? Because I feel like they've been at war

and we thought we were at a picnic. They've been at war and we thought that we were friends, and they dropped the hammer and we're still sitting around going, well, my friends from across the aisle, believing that they believe in the rule of law, that they care about the Constitution. Yeah,

it's we We've all been really demobilized. And the dependency on social media, the intoxication that we get from streaming all of these things are like the perfect confluence of events and situations that make it impossible for us to really um, for us to really organize, and for us to really wake up. And so most people are watching this unfold on television. We're riveted. It's the drama. We

were addicted to watching drama rather than doing something about it. M. I mean, imagine what other countries in the world must be thinking. There was even one other phrase in there. I want to see if I can pull that up too, where they were in the document where they basically said, well, you know, uh uh, the whole thing about having the right to liberty doesn't really matter either. You don't, I mean,

you don't have the right right to to that. That's not anything I want to I want to lift it up because it was such an incredible statement and so right wing. Uh, suggesting that that liberty isn't something that is just automatic and you can just do whatever you want to do. That sounds like Vladimir poutin. Come on, it really does. So I mean, is that is that? What what did Vladimir putin? Right? This? Is that what we're going back to? Uh? The here, here's something else.

Um oh no, I'm sorry, that's the same thing. I'm sorry forgive me, forgive me, give me, give me a second. I want to because I want our audience to hear this, because go ahead, I'm sorry, no, no, no, because as you're as you're looking at up, because I'm saying to myself, these people people do not like this is the fundamental nature of white evangelical Christian dumb is that they do not believe in democracy. They believe in theocracy and authoritarianism.

They believe that men and white men alone should lead. That the breakdown of the perceived quote unquote nuclear family came from right the ability of women to have rights, right to have rightful autonomy over their bodies, to have rightful autonomy over all of these the pieces of themselves.

And so if you then go back to the way that it was, where white men alone can lead and do so with impunity, that they alone are the ones that disperse liberty to those they feel like have earned it right, then that will reorder things in our society and our culture. It's why we are going into classrooms to uphold what they perceived to be the rightful gender right, the rightful order of things. These are boys, these are girls.

Everyone needs to know their place in this hierarchy. I'm sorry, I can't put my finger on it right now, but I've read it for another guest and then I lost it. I should have bookmarked it. But basically the argument that so they're arguing for something called ordered liberty, which also was a very right wing concept I was speaking with the president National Organization for Women, and she was talking about the other part just read in terms of what

the nation's laws used to be. We'll wait a minute, Women, African Americans, other people of color, we're not even considered in the constitution, right, We're not even considered, right, So you might as well just nullify right, every protection that we have had it And don't tell me all you're going too far. It's not what you want to do. Uh No, you're not going to convince me of that

you have. You have jeopardized every protection that exists for all of the groups that have been impacted by racism and white supremacy and the very founding of this country. So none of these this is this is a monumental decision. Hopefully it's a wake up call in terms of the mid terms. I don't know. I think you just made the point. I mean, people didn't get it in twenty sixteen. And and the woman who ordered the red dress at the mid gala the other night told y'all but couldn't

stand her who. I don't know. I don't know if we should if she should be her, she should be a woman, or if we're done I mean, we went through all of that, and now this is what you have. And I'm speaking as a man. You know, if if if, if women don't give a damn men like me or not me, and like because I'm not like that, but man, well why should I give it? In? Why should I care? But I think it goes back to what you said is that white women have always been a part of

this elevated protected class. Yeah, right, where the harms that are bestowed on everyone else they're protected from, right, And that has always been the way. And what for me, We have allowed white women in this country to be able to both be in proximity with and then disassociate

from their access to power, which is white men. And so you know, it didn't really hit me until twenty sixteen when I was watching these white women jump up and down with signs that said he can grab me wherever he wants, right, these women in these rallies and on these streets. And this is not the fringe. These people are now a member of Congress. This is Marjorie

Taylor Green, this is Lauren Boebert. Right, So if if this is who they are, Trumpism has allowed them to really come from behind the curtains that they have been hiding behind. It has taken the lady right of the master outs out of the house where she was stepped and protected. Oh it's not me that's doing the whip and the beating and the rap thing, right, But you're complicit in all of it because you profit off of it.

This is the same space that we're in now. You know, we continue to always look at the monsters of these white men that are created, and we don't pathologize the white women that are the ones raising them. And I'm saying, wake the fuck up, right, Like, I mean, what what other? What? What? What else do you need to see? Yeah? Yeah, And so my question, you know, for you Mark, as we close today is that, like, as black people who know that we've never been removed from the chopping block, we've

never had any respect in this country whatsoever? What does this signify for us? Well, I think it shows the danger we're in. We've already had our voting rights undermine. They barely we barely have any voting rights left it and there's no reason for them to be protected under the current circumstances. And I think Democrats, whom we all want invest in although I think that's waning. I am right now. I don't think a lot of people have a reason to go out and vote. Don't have a

reason to go out and vote. Now. This may inspiring some women like you said to wake the f up, but it's kind of late. It's kind of late. We we we've lost the Supreme Court for practically a generation. That's not going to protect our voting rights. We are back to the way, and I don't know if people are prepared to become the same type of people who fought to get the freedoms we take for granted today. People Montgomery walked to work every day for three hundred

six and six days. We do we do? Are we gonna do that? Do we have the makeup to do? We couldn't stay in the house for three fucking months for corn, do you do? You know what I'm saying, Like, as a collective right in this country, we couldn't stay the fuck home and stream Netflix right, right for those of us who had the privilege to do so, because we were not considered essential. So those of us in the economic class that had the privilege to be at

home couldn't do that right, right, That's right? Couldn't do it. So I don't know. Um, I don't know where this will end up. It is very very very scary though, And if we don't do something and this goes beyond November, it's gonna get worse when the Democrats lose the House and the Senate. What's gonna happen in Mark and Dan Yell are crazy. They were trying to get us to organized and get us to do stuff. Really we're crazy.

So I'm telling you this, you might as well get rid of We might have to do the cooking show. I don't know from what, from what federal prison will be doing that as political prisoners in our own goddamn country. But right, right, right, but but we might. I mean, this is like because that's what you know, that's what people want to do, that's what they they We are We are in toxicated with distraction all the way around, and the things that people see as important are just

not important. Million people did from a plague that did not have to die, and now losing rights. We've lost voting rights, women have lost their reproductive rights. What's left if you don't have those things, what do you have? What do we have the right to do. What do we have the right to do? Now? Yeah, I mean what do we what do we literally have the right to go and do? We don't have a right to protest anymore. They're passing loss that you can run over

people who protest with a car. So folks, you know, y'all need to keep listening to Danielle and get motivated. Like you know, y'all we get on the colorton and other stuff to motivate us. We need we need a movement, peloton, something that's gonna and maybe that's Danielle because you'll cut y'all out. I don't cuss everybody out, y'all. Need you need listener because I mean, just get cursed out everything.

What are you doing? Get yourself together, get your get your raggedy, rusty, dusty up, yeah, together together like our parents used to do, because we ain't doing it. Maybe that's what we need, we need we need. Maybe that's maybe that's what we need to We need to come up with a with a with our own exercise bike, Danielle that has those kind of motivational messages. Right, are you running in place or running towards your freedom? Food? Come?

Come on? Where you running? Too, were running to you know, oh my goodness, trying to keep doses or trying to keep up with your freedom. M going on a stagecation of vacation or vacation and folks, ain't nothing funny, no more, ain't nothing fun. This is real with kids, it's hrt just got real. Yea. And again for y'all who think

why y'all talking about abortion, read that opinion. It says this must be struck down because the history of our country was that people were prosecuted and persecuted for doing this throughout our history. They can apply that line any and everything they want to. Daniel Moody's existence and my very existence going back is illegal. Yes, yes, we should be here. We should not be talking, We should not be doing anything that we're doing. It is illegal. People

take that for granted. M People take for grant did the sound of our voices and what we're trying to say that can just be thrown around and discard and whatever can be done with it. This is this is an act of civil disobedience to talk about this kind of stuff. So our voices, your voices all on the block, literally, So y'all, we got to get it together. I'm for that. Maybe we need a motivational exercise type of something, get yourself together, boots on the ground, organizing and struggle. And

what's interesting is the Supreme Court knew it. They put barricades up around the Supreme Court because they were afraid people are gonna protest. But the reality is what it was. It was it Poland where they were threatening to take away women's reproductive rights and they shut that country down. I think it was Poland. Don't Quoe be on that, But I mean it was looked like the million man march out there. The million woman marched, a million people

march two million people. What are we going to do? We need to shut the country down. We can do that. We can do it economically, women not men. The domestic workers were women in nineteen fifty five. They walk to work. They shut down the bus system in Montgomery. When have no mon Luther King holiday? If that ain't happened, King, Luke King. I love mon Luther King. No, you know, because you don't understand what he did in one little town and how disciplined people were, and what he really

died doing. Because the question, the question that I will leave, I want us to leave folks with today, and folks, if you were not listening to make it plain, you should be, because Mark is the spiritual side and the movement side of my anger, of my anger and my rage. But the question is what are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to give up? Right? Because freedom

is not free, freedom is has never been free. And that's the question that is being presented again that our generation that this time is asking us to answer, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to get free? Mark, as always, thank you so much for making the time to join us on woke f We appreciate you, your voice, your work, and continue to send you strength as we figure out how to move through this next iteration of the American Project. Sam, you queen, appreciate your work, appreciate

your voice. And I'm serious we might need some kind of motive movement organization, motivational exercise plan for folks to wake up here your voice every morning you curse them out to get up, get up out of their bed, get you get out that bed, and get them do something. Join an organization, Yes, do something, do something. Appreciate you, Appreciate you. That is it for me today. Dear friends on this woke a f as always, Power to the

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