Unrelenting Deluge of Hate

very beginning, I just can't wait for this next chapter. So, folks, it seems that the entire time that I've been away, trying to get my thoughts together, you know, get a

little bit of peace, taken some books and some walks. Unfortunately, the world did not decide to take a break with me, and things have been spinning out of fuck in control from the unrelenting amount of anti trans bills that we have seen, to Rondascentis and his high heel wearing self just trying to become I guess young Mussolini, to the potential of Donald Trump being indicted with news coming out of the Manhattan District Attorney's office. I mean, there's just

so much, so friends, I'm excited to be back. Let's dive in, all right. Starting off, I have to say that what we have seen over the last month plus since we were together with regards to the anti trans,

anti lgbt Q bills have been absolutely crazy. And I say that because, you know, folks, I am not kidding myself when I thought that after the passage of marriage equality that there would somehow be this slow move, continued move towards progress that we would feel right like the change that people have fought for since Stonewall, to watching the White House turn into a rainbow after the passage

of marriage equality by the Supreme Court. After we told young kids that things would get better, folks, I did not think that I would be here. I got to be honest with you. I didn't think that things would be perfect. But I sure as fuck did not think that we would be going backwards at the speed and

at the rate at which we are right now. Where it stands, dear friends, we have over three hundred pieces of legislation that have been offered up to ban everything from drag story time to drag performances in public to gender affirming care to the criminalization of parents who want to access gender affirming care for their children that are under the age of eighteen. I mean I got to

tell you that it's terrifying. I have friends who have made the decision to move out of the state of Texas to move to Washington, d C. I know other people that are making decisions who have the privilege, right, Because let's be real, when we kind of make flipping comments, you know, for those of us that happen too currently, right, because it doesn't mean that it's forever. And I'll get to the case of abortion that is happening right now

in Texas that has national implications. But when we look and we say to people, well, why are you living in Mississippi, Why are you living in Arkansas? Why are

you living in Tennessee? Just move? Let's understand that we are saying that comment and it's dripping in privilege and classism because there's only a select group of people, right that can look at their significant others, or look at their family, or look at themselves and say, you know what, I have the money, I have the resources to pick up and relocate my entire life, leave my family, leave my friends, leave all that I know, and go pick

up and start someplace else. Right, So let's understand that when we make these comments, right, it's like looking at the people back during you know, terrible natural disasters that we know have gotten worse. But it's like looking at the people who live in Tornado Valley or who live in hurricane places, and we say, well, why don't you just move because it's not that fucking easy. Why didn't you just leave when they said that the hurricane was coming, Well,

because that takes resource. Right, So let's just make clear that when we say those comments, and I have definitely said them and tweeted them before, that I understand right

that not everybody can move that way. And so when we're looking at these pieces of legislation that all right oriented out of that Petrie dish that we call Florida, which began last year this time with the passage of they Don't Say Gay Bill, that we know that every Republican governor is acting like a copycat of Rhonda Santis is trying to compete right on the national stage who

can be the worst. And these barrage of bills are set to do nothing more, dear friends, then to make us feel like the progress that we have made, the progress that we have fought for, is done and gone with. And so either we just lose ourselves in hopelessness, or we begin to figure out a pathway forward. Because here's the thing. I was talking to my therapist the other day, and when I'm in therapy these days, you know, I talk about a lot of my feelings of being kind

of trapped in an existential crisis. Right that. You know, there are some people who will enter into therapy and they learn that the stories that they're telling themselves are not,

you know, really aligned with reality. With me, however, right doing this work, working in politics, working on the front lines for social justice in a media capacity, that what I am actually facing and what I'm talking about every day is real, right, Like I'm not making up three hundred pieces of legislation, Right, I'm not making it up

in my head. That you have people like Rhonda sand Fitz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gosar, Matt Gates, and others that are using language like Mike Knowles did at Sepack a couple of weeks ago when he said that transgenderism needs to be quote eradicated. Right when you have people who are in positions of power or have proximity to power that once they do have the White House back once they do have the Senate back that their eradication plan

can be operationalized. That's not me being chicken little. That's not me, you know, making up stories. That's me taking the facts of what it is that these people are articulating and saying, oh shit, if we don't hold on to the White House in twenty twenty four, if we don't expand the Senate, right, if we don't take back the House, that the eradication solution that the Republicans are offering, and they're starting because I want folks to understand two.

And this is the piece in the piece that I wrote in the Daily Beast last week entitled Democrats need to fight harder as the GOP tries to eradicate transpeople. And what I said in this piece is this eradicate right, eradicate What does that word actually mean? And this is what I want people to understand. To be clear. Quote, the definition of eradicate is to remove or destroy entirely.

So when Michael Knows says this, and by the way, folks, he said this to a room that was filled with applause, This is not me saying, oh, well, they probably don't really mean it, right. This is me sitting down with my therapist being like, I am having trouble mustering up consistency around my joy and ease because I feel like the walls they're closing in on me as a black queer woman, as an out black queer woman, as an out black queer woman with a bit of a platform

that she uses to advance equity and justice. Right, So, what I say about this terminology, what I say about these bills, is this terminology like this is used for one purpose to separate people from their humanity. Why, to normalize brutality, to make a violence legislatively or physically not

only justifiable but necessary. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis referred to the Jewish people as quote vermin that needed to be quote eradicated from Germany, they were able to convince enough of the population that their neighbors were subhuman.

So I want you to understand and feel community in the fact that you are not alone, if you, like me, are struggling these days with finding your north star, finding your sense of hope, your sense of light, when every single headline, every single alert that's coming across on your phone is one of something else that is bad, that

was just past. But here's the thing that I want folks to understand is that it is time, dear friends, it is time for all Americans, whether you know a trans person, whether you are a member of the LGBTQ community or not, to wake the fuck up. Because what I close and write in this piece and the Daily Beast is this Republicans are laying out their plans. First they come for the transgender community, but because a majority of Americans don't know a person who is trans, they

do nothing. Eventually they come for you. It's time we as Americans wake up and realize the end to me, to freedom and our collective humanity is within and the war has already begun. That's the truth, folks, those are the facts. This for the Republican Party has never been about protecting children. It has never been about the concern around children. It has been the concern around the consolidation of their power and the ability to weaponize government to

serve their own ends. You go for the most marginalized and vulnerable community because when we look at reports, I think less than twenty percent of the American population actually know somebody who is trance. You see, you go for the community that people still have a hard time placing their fingers are and you you dehumanize them because it's easy because most likely over the holidays, right at your kitchen table, you're not sitting across the table from somebody

who is transgender nonconforming. But I want to tell you this, folks, it shouldn't fucking matter. It shouldn't matter whether you know someone, whether it is a person that is inside of your own family, in your own classroom, next to you, on the job, sharing a cubicle with you, they are a person. They are human, And what we know to be true

is that this is a tried and true tactic. I talk to you about Hitler because when people are feeling the weight of their lives, when they feel like the walls are closing in and they are drowning, and they are looked for anyone to blame to say, so long as that person suffers, then I will be doing better. The reality is that Democrats need to do more and show people the true face of the Republican Party that is full on anti trans, anti Semitic, anti black, anti woman.

Everything that they are pro is about regression. You know why they went ahead and reverse Rob Wade because they don't want women and people with uterousist to have the autonomy over their bodies. Because guess what reports are coming out, folks that younger generations are not getting married and they're not having kids at the same rate. So let's blame the books. Let's blame wokeism instead of the fact that capitalism only works for a certain few. So let's remove

the books and then call that freedom. I don't know about you, but I don't know a free democratic society that jail's librarians and targets schools and targets private industry for stating their opinion on the states where their headquarters are. The way that Rhnda Santis is going after Disney. This isn't about fucking freedom. You got Marjorie Taylor Green talking about wokeism is being shoved down my throat. I say,

turn off the fucking television. If you choose to want to live your life like an Austrians, if you believe that freedom looks like something that should only be given and taken by those that are white, that are cists, that are hetero, that are Christian, then you shouldn't live in these United States because our founding may be fucked up. But the work that we have been doing to perfect our union each and every generation is work worth doing.

But understand, folks, that we have had people by different names, but of the same white, angry, angry, rageful faces pushing against progress since the beginning of time, literally since the formation of what we know to be the United States. There is always, as my therapist is trying to move me out of my existential downward spiral, there is always going to be polarity in life. The yang and the yang, and the dark and the light. That is just what

it means to exist. We're not looking for a utopia. We're looking for equanimity. We're looking for balance. But my feeling is that what happens when Republicans and I far right christio fascist agenda begins to wait on the scale, folks, then the light and the love and the goodness and what is just needs to put just as much weight,

if not more, on that scale as well. We don't have the luxury, dear friends, to rescind our energy and our time and say, oh no, maybe next time I'll go get him, because we are at a point, folks, where those next times are not given. They want us to believe that they are gaining steam and momentum, and

they are. But I will tell you that the reason why this is happening is because there are more people that are fucking woke and conscious to social injustices to the layered crises than have ever been before in this country and globally. People have become critical thinkers that are asking questions about why we've been operating under this arbitrary set of societal norms that actually don't feel like they fit.

The shit is not couture. It's like a cheap fucking suit, right, So we talk about, oh, well, a woman is a woman and a man is a man, says who ask yourself? Who benefits from the lies that we've been fed. Adulthood, dear friends, is about on learning all of the things that we have been taught. We have been brainwashed to understand the reason why the right is pushing in the way that they are because more people are questioning. That's why they want to move the books, folks. That's why

they want to erase history. That's why they want to put their clause into curriculum, because an educated populace is a dangerous populace to the status fucking quo. So if that doesn't show you that we are winning, right, because let me tell you something, people don't steal and take things that are of no value. That's why they try and steal your vote. That's why they're trying to steal your books. That's why they are trying to steal our joy.

Our job as we march forward together is a reclamation project, folks, because I'm telling you this show, the next iteration of wok F is not about marinating in the misery. It is about recognizing the polarity, recognizing that, yes, I'm going to be honest about all the dark shit because there is a lot of it, and I'm also going to be honest about all of the light, about all of the good because we cannot get stuck in one place

or the other. We have got to be nimble, to be pliable, to be expansive in the way that we think and in the way that we dream, because without the ability to have ease, without the ability to actually dream, we cannot think past the bullshit that we are in right now. And we have got to be able to think past it otherwise we can't actualize it. So this is a window into what woke a f in our new chapter, in our new home of iHeart will be.

It'll be about holding the both and about asking the critical questions, about unpacking what we don't know, and calling in our friends, our academics, our analysts, our authors, our change makers, our activists, our artists, our musicians to help make sense out of all of the fucking nonsense. Because I know that there is a strong desire to want to tune out, because everything is really overwhelming. And that's why you have to have the ability to be able

to pick and to choose. And I'm so happy that I'm one of the choices that you make. That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke f as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.