Voting Blue Isn't Enough

Here's the thing that I want to say about the Democratic establishment and the moment that we are living through, right the fuck now, fuck you, The reason why we are here at this moment isn't just because Republicans have been showing us who the fuck they are for the last fifty goddamn years. That's not the reason why we are here, right, Republicans have always shown us who they are.

It is Democrats who are set down or fucking better yet laying the fuck down like a bunch of goddamn doormats, believing that these people who build a fucking gallows are their friends who believe right that somehow you can negotiate with fucking terrorists. Let me paint the picture for you right now of what the Supreme Court has fucking done so yesterday they decide that oh, in New York City, in New York State, you can no longer create your

own laws for your own constituents. Right that states rights apparently only matter if you are a red fucking state. If you are a blue state, or a person that actually right wants to live free, free of fear, free of violence, you're just fucked because the Supreme Court just turned America into the wild, wild fucking West, where we

don't know who got a gun? Right, there are three hundred and ninety million of them floating around these United States that only has about three hundred and thirty million fucking humans. But here we are because, according to the Supreme Court, the more guns we have, this say that we are. I don't know where were they during Uvaldi? Where were they during Buffalo? Where where are they during Parkland?

Where were they during Newtown? Right? And the list fucking goes on and on and on and on the reality is that we are here because Democrats believe that, oh my god, if we force the hand of Republicans too much, that when they get empowered, they're gonna slap us back. Guess what, bitch, we have arrived. Okay, we are in the moment that you all have been too tepid to fucking deal with from jump. Republicans have all the power.

We have the fucking White House, we have Congress, and we don't have Dick because we have nobody that has been fighting for the American people to see. Obama left office not a fucking person. And you know, frankly, what Obama was in office. He fucking sat around and allowed Mitch McConnell to dictate the terms of whether or not he could actually fully function as the President of the

United States. And instead of taking that motherfucker the court, what he should have to say, you don't get you, as majority already leader in the Senate, decide who gets to sit on the Supreme Court, because the American people the nation didn't fucking vote for you. But no, he get it because he was too afraid about his fucking legacy and he was too concerned with what Republicans would do well. Republicans are doing right the fuck now, So now,

what are you doing? Right? Joe Biden is sitting up in front of the American people telling us that we have to vote. Where the fuck were you in twenty twenty We turned up in mass in the midst of a pandemic before a fucking fucking right vaccine, people were out in the goddamn streets turning up to fucking vote.

You're telling us now that they are continuing to crime out in the open, that they have displaced electors that they have voted in for secretaries of States, that they have at the ag level, they are at the school board level. You've been voting. Is gonna fix this, you've been voting. The loan is gonna fix where the fuck we are right now? These motherfuckers have created no recourse.

Do know, but Else's Supreme Court overturned this week your ability to have your Miranda rights read by police officers and then your ability to sue them. Right if in fact they don't read you your Miranda rights, that's gone as well. So you want to tell me about this strategy that has been put in place by Republicans out in the fucking open that Democrats weren't expecting, and everybody felt them walking around with their hands up in the air talking about, oh my god, I can't believe that

this is happening. You can't believe that this is happening. It's your job. If I am at work and fucking shit gets fucked up while I'm there. Who's responsible for that, right, Not the customer that is walking in, not the listener that is listening to my podcast. No, it's a person that you voted into office that is supposed to be responsible for keeping Americans safe, telling us that, oh, this is all on us, we gotta go and vote. What is it that when Democrats are president? Right, when Democrats

hold the presidency, why does it seem feckless? What does it seem that they have absolutely no power, that all power lies with the people. But when Republicans are in office, somehow the presidency is akin to a king. How the fuck dies that work? You're telling me that they got all the smart people around them. I mean, we fucking know that from the one six commissioned fucking here and said, ain't nobody smart was around Donald Chump, but he was

able to fucking undo democracy and four fucking years. Give me a break, right now, I am so tired of the democratic establishment believing that they can solve every fucking problem with a finger wag and a fucking bottle of scotch in a back broom somewhere. You are living in the twenty first century. These motherfuckers are violent. It isn't just Marjorie Taylor Green. There is a whole fucking militia

of Marjory Taylor Greens and Lauren Boubert's. If they were willing to hang Mike Pence, do you think that they're not willing to shoot you? Do you think that they're not willing to show up at your house with the fucking lynching mob like they did in Mississippi, like they didn't Alabama, like they did it all across this country to lynch black people, you'll think that you're safe these politicians, My god, wake the fuck up. That was not a

speech that provided any fucking sense of urgency whatsoever. All they did was once again put put a band aid on a fucking gaping, goddamn wound where the heart of this country used to be is now fucking hollow down by six fucking people. Five excuse me, because it was a five to four decision, five fucking people that the

American people didn't elect. And right now Clarence Thomas is sitting around figuring out how to get rid of them, how to get rid of contraception, how to get rid of same sex marriage, how to get rid of your ability to fuck who you want, how you want, where you want. That is what is at stake. I said, fucking money ago, I said years ago, the Martiniamola Perr. So first they come for First, they come for the socialist, but I didn't do anything because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the laborer, but I didn't do anything because I wasn't a laborer. What do you think that they've been doing? Now, First they came for the trans kids, but nobody gave a fuck because, oh, you know, we don't understand trans kids. Then they came for marriage equality. Oh, but I'm not gay, so that doesn't matter either. Oh. Then they came for abortion, but you know what, I'm not gonna have kids. I don't mind, so that doesn't

matter either. Oh. Then they came for voting rights. Well, you know, I don't really vote because only fucking sixty percent of America votes in any election. Anyway, they are coming for you. This is what they are saying. This was not target practice, This was not a shot up in the air. This was not a fucking flare, folks. They just dropped a bomb on our democracy. They dropped a bomb on our civil rights. They are thinking considering

overturning love in v. Virginia. Do you think that Brown versus the Board of Education ain't on their chopping block to the Supreme Court just told religious fucking zealots, Oh, you don't want to send your kids a public education. You don't want them to go to public school? Oh, we got you bet, because now the states and our tax dollars are going to go to educating your Christian fundamentalism, because there's no separation between church and state. Their plan

has been activated. It was activated when people decided that they were more concerned with Hillary Clinton's emails and fucking voting for Jill Stein than they were recognizing that Donald Trump was the fucking threat that he was and still is. We want to talk right now about how, oh my god, it was just a handful of people that you know, enacting, jumped into action and staved off a coup, staved it off from where we have a radicalized, compromise and corrupt

Supreme Court. Why do I say that, not just because I don't like their decisions, but because of this. So let me give you point one. Clarence fucking Thomas is

a compromised corrupt piece of shit. We know that him and his wife Ginny right, are all up in cahoots with John Eastman, who was Clarence Thomas's clerk, and Mark Meadows, who Genny Thomas just so happened to have on speed dial on January sixth, Right, and then he just happens to sit on a couple of cases that he gets to be the deciding factor on and doesn't refuse himself, and nobody opens up an investigation into that motherfucker. That's

number one, because that's the latest shit. Brett Kavanaugh had over four thousand tips that came into the FBI for his predator sexual predator, rapist ass. Do you know what the FBI did with those four thousand fucking tips. They stuffed them in a fucking drawer. Oh and then they dropped them off at the Trump administration's White House. Then he became a justice. So you want to tell me

that the Supreme Court isn't compromise. You had Mitch McConnell jam through Amy Covid Barrett in thirty fucking days, and once again Democrats didn't push back. These motherfuckers are sitting in lifetime appointment positions. Folks, give me a break. Don't tell me shit can't be done, because Republicans always find a way to get some shit done. Democrats sitting around going maybe we'll get them next time. There is no next time. Let me say that again. There is no

next time. We are not getting another election following mid terms. You want to think that I'm chicken little telling you that the sky is fucking falling. Remember this, right when you are being carted off, there is no next time. Republicans take control of the House and of the Senate. Biden will be impeached. You will say to me, Danielle, how will they do that? They will own all fucking mechanisms of government. That's how it doesn't need to be based in fact, it doesn't even need to be based

in fucking reality. They become the leaders again in Congress. You're gune, you got Wrongda Scantists. That is climbing up right now in the Republican polls for president. Do you see what he has done to the state of Florida with his white discomfort bills, with his don't say gay bills. Let that ship be nationalized. People want to tell me, oh, well, I'm safe, I live in California, or I live in

New York. Well, guess what, We're no longer safe to walk around the fucking streets here because we don't know which motherfucker got a gun or who doesn't. Right, So you think that, oh, because you live in a blue state or inside of a blue city, that somehow you are going to be safe from the violence, right that they are getting ready to inflict or already inflicting. You have thirty one white Supremacs that we're arrested in Idaho for getting ready to riot out a pride of vent

Do you know what the Republican response was to that? Oh, for Governor Abbott to make it illegal for drag queens to be able to read to children. Oh that's right, because I guess a drag queen is an equivalent of an AAR fifteen with a hundred magazine cap with capability the ability to kill at least thirty people. We're in a blink of an eye, because that's the biggest threat to our children, not AAR fifteens, but drag queens. Bitch,

miss me with it. Then you also have Nancy Pelosi today wanted to get up to self congratulate on gun legislation. Oh my god, bipartisan gun legislation pass the Senate, going to be voted on in the House, and then they can all throw a party at the White House to congratulate themselves on what exactly, Because let me tell you what this legislation doesn't do. It doesn't ban assault rifles, it doesn't van bump stocks, it doesn't raise the minimum age of being able to buy a weapon of war.

So tell me again why we are celebrating bipartisan bullshit gun legislation that the only thing that it has in the title that deals with guns is the name. Because other than that, what they are offering is mental health services for the kids that we continue to traumatize while sending them to school to learn active shooter drills and hide underneath their desks. What we are doing is providing

mental health care for teachers who will already underpay. But here, strap up, because you need to be able to teach that ABC's with an AAR fifteen strap to your back. Oh, because we believe that teachers are going to be more brave than the police officers that sat outside of you, Vald the elementary school for sixty goddamn minutes while they

listen to children die. You're telling me that a teacher it's gonna stop the crimes that police officers stood outside and didn't fucking stop, and all of them were strapped up with bulletproof. Fucking vess, miss me with it. This country just became incredibly unsafe because of a corrupt Rock Supreme Court and because we have an opposition party, and I'm talking about Democrats that don't oppose a fucking thing. I don't need your fucking thoughts and prayers. I don't

need your finger waving. I don't need your strongly worded, fucking speeches that don't mean shape, because right now they are falling on non listening ears. Because the only thing that I am hearing right is the fear and the threat of people who look like me and love like me, wondering where the fuck they are going to be safe. Because I'd love to say that I'll just become a recluse and I'll just stay inside my home. We'll bring out a tailor thought that she could do that too,

and she died in her fucking sleep. Right, Oh, I thought that I had the freedom. I thought it was America, the home of the brave, Oh right, the police. We congratulate them, we celebrate them, We give them, guess what, immunity right from prosecution? Oh my god, because they should be applauded for doing what exactly. They don't stop crying. They aren't organized crime? Right. May Or Adams here in

New York just gave them what. Oh I think maybe billions of more dollars than they asked for, because he believes that more of a police president is evils to safety. Show me what wealthy white community has. Streams of police officers that are in there, and that's why the neighborhood is safe. Folks, if you today have had it right, if you are like me and you were like at

ten o'clock this morning, I need a fucking drink. I understand that you are not alone or an alcoholic, because this goddamn country has tested us for the last time. So let me tell you this in closing, because I need to catch my breath. Right, let me tell you this in closing. Voting ain't fixing this. Let me say that again. Voting is not fixing this. Not when you have a two party democratic system with only one party that believes in the constitution and that believes in the

people's ability to vote. What the one six hearings are showing you are the lengths that the Republican Party are willing to go to in order to make sure that you are unable to vote. So every time that I hear somebody from Nancy Pelosi to Joe Biden to fucking Schumer right to fucking Kamala Harris tell me that, oh, we need to vote and we need to march bitch, miss me with it, okay, because while we are doing that, they are arming up right, their militias are ready to go.

You got proud boys storming in unaffected into LGBTQ spaces and ain't nobody doing dick. You got march ar Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert telling us that the LGBTQ community is the biggest threat to their kids. No, bitch, you are, and Democrats are too chicken shit to say so. Want to still be talking about their colleagues from across the aisle, Nigga, they try to kill you. Do you understand that these

people want you? Bet? Do you get that? Do you understand that your colleagues gave insurrection as a map to your office? There was no way for people to be able to find Nancy Pelosi's office in the capital. How do I know that because I used to work on the hill. So how is it that people, literally we're mapping out your death and you still think you can compromise.

Oh my god. I think that bipartisanship in this day and age should be the dirtiest fucking word, because it is the biggest fucking lie you want to talk about, the big lie. It isn't just what Donald Trump has been fucking spitting around for the last fucking two years. No, the biggest lie right is the belief that somehow these politicians that you vote in care more about you than they do filling their own pockets. We did not have to be here, We don't have to be here right

now if we're not Joe Manchin and Kursten Cinema. They tell you that they believe more in the filibuster than they do in our constitutional right to be able to have an abortion, then our constitutional right to be able to vote. They want to tell you that, oh, we need to preserve this. They know what they want to say, but they won't is that they are a part of the white supremacy structure that they want to be preserved because you see in that structure, they are at the

top and they get to play every fucking body. They get to play Republicans who are like, oh, come over the here, They get to play Democrats because they're like, oh, well, if you don't have our vote, then you don't have anything. I didn't get to vote for a fucking king cole in West Virginia. I didn't get to vote for that denim that's wearing bitch in Arizona. Okay, So I don't know why they are the ones that get to dictate

the terms of how this Senate should operate. And once again, if we had a president that was on our side, that people were actually fucking afraid of, that, maybe they wouldn't be calling press conferences. When the president rolled up to capital, it's talking about I'm not going to back this voting rights legislation. I'm not gonna back infrastructure. It's

just not what I want to do. What you know, why they act the way they do because there are no fucking consequences for their actions And I'm telling you here right in this moment, they will face consequences for these actions one way or the fucking other. Right, this ain't ending well, I say if every fucking day on wik I've been saying it since Donald Trump went down

those fucking golden fucking escalators. I said that white supremacy was not going down without a fight, right, that people wanted to believe, Oh no, he could never become president. And then O becomes president. Just give him a chance. It won't be that bad. I don't need to see a burning cross on my front lawn to recognize what racism looks like. Right. I don't need to see somebody grab a woman by the pussy to recognize that you don't have any care whatsoever for women and people with

uterus is. You don't need to call me the F word. You don't need right to gay bash me for me to recognize that you don't give a fuck right about me as a whole human being. So understand that there will be consequences to the actions that have unfolded this week, right, Because what I know to be true is that the people, the real people of this nation, are not as weak

as a democratic establishment is. The real people, you know, the ones that actually are affected by inflation, the people who are affected by gas prices, the people that were affected by COVID. These people are real people, and they're not just going to sit around casually while one right after the other is stripped away. I know that I am not going out like that, and nobody that I know is going out like that. So don't sit around here right and think for a minute that all is

said and done. No, this is just the beginning. They have declared war, and the question is what is our response going to be. It's no secret that the news is horsepill hard to swallow. Thankfully, there's The Bituation Room podcast hosted by comedian and commentator Francesca Freer and Tini for a lighter take on the heavy stuff. Each week, The Bituation Room brings you progressive comedians, experts, and activists to break down the issues in a way that won't

just leave you crying under a weighted blanket. Get The Bituation Room on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and streaming on YouTube and Twitch. Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Gohler, the president of Emerge. BGG is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the

world of politics. Join a Shanty this season as she talks to incredible women of color who are changing the face of politics and tackling some of the most important issue spacing the United States, from reproductive justice to voting rights, to climate change and more. Tune in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts, Folks, I am very excited to welcome to WIKA a daily for the very first time. Mayor, former mayor and niece Parker, who is the CEO of

Victory Fund and Victory Institute. They are the electoral candidate arm of the LGBTQ movement, the organization that is responsible for getting as many LGBTQ plus people elected to office from the local, state and national level. Mayor Parker, you took over the reins at Victory Fund at a very interesting time in our politics, where we were headed into I believe headed into the twenty sixteen election between Donald

Trump and Hillary Clinton. We all obviously know how that turned out, and we are dealing with the residual effects of that disastrous election today and every day over the last five years. Can you tell us what you see as the climate right now for your candidates and the movement in general. I actually took over victory right at the beginning of twenty eighteen, so we'd had time to process the impact of Donald Trump, and we were heading

into the twenty eighteen elections. And at that time I was very optimistic because twenty eighteen saw more women, more candidates of color or more LGBT candidates, non traditional candidates of every stripe running for office, people who were appalled at the election of Donald Trump, at the rhetoric he was spouting, at what he was inspiring in people, and they were standing up to run for office. Now. The it was a little bit of a good news bad

news situation. A lot of these were first time candidates. A lot of them lost, but it meant that people were paying attention and they wanted to get engaged. There was there was a surge of new people elected. There were some of the very few congressional seats that are in play were flipped red the blue. There was a little bit of optimism. I mean, today is a hard day because of the Supreme Court decision on Rob Wade.

As we're as we're recording this, and you know, all of the horrible things Donald Trump is and was The one thing he did spectacularly was reshaped the Supreme Court, and that is something that's going to take probably the rest of my lifetime to undo. You know, it's really disheartening because I came into politics at a time when we were about progression. It we were experiencing a kind

of surge of progressive ideas, progressive candidates we had. You know, we're coming off of the bush years into yes you can and yes we can and hope and change and eight years of believing that it was possible to actually bend the arc towards justice. How do you stay inspired? Right? Because you have been in politics, Mayor Parker for a long time in a you know, in a in a tough in a tough in a tough state, right in Texas, right, um, and and and so you are no, you are no

stranger to the roller coaster. But but this time feels different. So how are you staying inspired? Engaged? And if you're not, that's fine too. But I just I want to understand how people are keeping their wits about them. I've actually been asked by a number of younger people recently. I'm sixty six years old. I attended my first LGBT organizing event in nineteen seventy five. Yes, I was in office for eighteen years in Houston, but I started out as

an activist in the seventies as a college student. And the thing that sustains me is that we have made so much more progress than I ever imagined would be

possible in my lifetime. And even though we are stepping backwards in a lot of ways, I have every faith that we're not going to go back that far because the world has changed, the world has shifted, and young people, if they would engage, and that's the frustrating part, if they would engage, have a completely different attitude on a range of social issues and see the world differently than I did and my parents did, and then a couple of generations in between us. That I have faith in

what is possible. I think on a range of issues that I care deeply about, on social issues that I care deeply about, that we're going to eventually get there. That you know, the the quote that you gave the ark of the moral universe is long, but admin storage justice. People use that as if it's somehow magical, If we're just if we pray or have hope and or patient, we'll get there. That's not how it works. The arch of the moral universe binds because we put our hands

on it and move it into place. And if we take our hands off, if we take our eyes off the prize, we can go backwards. But we're not going to go back to the nineteen fifties. We're not going to go back to the nineteen forties. And that's what sustains me. Incremental progress. We're gonna hold whatever we can and then gird up and move forward again. I am tired of doing this. So today it feels a lot.

Today feels a lot like you know, four times in my adult life in Houston, my neighbors have voted to tell me that as a lesbian, I have fewer civil rights than they do. We had a statewide marriage amendment, and then we've had three votes on LGBT rights in the city of Houston, the last one coming in my last year as mayor. Voters you'd already elected me to office nine times consecutively citywide voted that I shouldn't have

non discrimination protection. So you know, I guess I think the long view in this that and I'll take hope in the in the things that I know have changed and won't go back, but it is it is hard. One of the things that I am most concerned about, and and you know, my timeline is different, but one of the things I'm most concerned about is that the opposition,

the Republican opposition, seems actually to be violent. And you know, when I got into politics again, you're talking about, oh, it was ideological differences, right, And I use quotations because I still believe that they use ideology to mask racism, misogyny, and all versions of hatred LGBT, you know, Q phobias

and all of these things. And they say that it's their conservativism that has them believed this way, right, that people are less than However, what we are seeing, you know, as we're watching these insurrection hearings, the J six committees hearings, we are and the listening to the rhetoric of people like a Marjorie Taylor Green and a Laura Boubert who have become the voices and the faces of the House

of Representatives and the Republican Party just in general. These are not people that see their colleagues as just their ideological opponents. They see them as their actual opponents, meaning they see them as the enemy, right, and they and they and they rallied a crowd of people to go in and attack who they perceive to be the enemy. So, for people who believe and are invested in our democracy by way of running for office, how do you tell, like, how do you convince folks to run for office and

that it's safe to do so? And then what do you what are your feelings about the democratic establishments, understanding of who their opponents really are and the lengths that they're willing to go to to win. So, first, I'm going to say that in a lot of ways, it is not safe to run for office, and it is always less safe for women. Always the rhetoric directed at women, the threats directed at women are more personal and more visceral than those directed at men. However, there've always men

folks who are willing to stand up. One of the reasons that I'm not a big believer in in recruiting people to run for office. I much believe that people need to be willing to raise their hand and say pick me, I'm ready to do this because we have to. And even though it is and when I say it's unsafe, it's unsafe. It can be unsafe emotionally, it can be

you know, psychologically and sometimes physically. But there are struggling democracies around the globe where and even in our neighbor in Mexico, our neighbor in Mexico, in certain parts of Mexico where anyone who is a public official is a target for assassination. We're not there, but it is a fraught time. And you know, Donald Trump didn't create this problem. Donald Trump enabled it. He helped exposed it, expose it

because he normalized it in a lot of ways. But and then, as ugly as it is in some ways, I'm grateful that we now see that they're you know, thirty percent of America is this roiling mass of anger and fear and disdain for the rest of the country, and we have to We're gonna have to come to groups with that and address it. Now the work I do with Victory, I've chosen to do this because I believe that ye a march is a moment in time, a protest is important and it can make things happen.

But somebody has to be in the room to sign that piece of legislation, to direct the final action, and I want to be able to put people in the room. And it's going to end on people saying I'm going

to conquer my fears. I'm gonna do whatever it needs, whatever I need to do to win this race so that the Marjorie Taylor Greens and the Lauren Boberts aren't the face of democracy in America because they are so anti democratic and it's they come from a place of of Hey, now again, I have been doing this for a long time, and I would not have survived nearly fifty years of activism by doing it. I mean, I get frustrated and I get angry, but I don't come

from a place of anger. I you know, I guess it sounds a little a little trite, but you know, I have faith. I know what is possible in human beings, and I'm going to keep trying to to with with people of good faith, trying to make a difference, and even and even if I don't succeed, I'm I can't accept that doing nothing is an option. I mean, I do I talk to a lot of people who are who are frustrated and oh I'm just gonna give up and voting doesn't matter and maybe not every time, right,

who we get an abomination like Donald Trump? But right, we can't not try, we can't not strive, and the world and the world has changed, just not as much as we want and not as permanently as we had thought. You know, I so apologies because I too have I do have an animal in at this time. UM. You know, one of the things that is really troubling me right at this time is that we have you know, we're

speaking today as folks, you're listening to this. The decision to overturn Ruby Wade has come down, and that followed the decision for or the Supreme Court also to UH to gut uh New York City, New York State's ability to hold onto one hundred and eleven year old law that would disallow concealing carry in this state, UM, which

signals a lot, right. And I want to ask you, you know, as a former mayor of a city, what what implications that decision, the New York decision UM has on our safety in cities, right, um, which are inherently uh in a lot of ways blue right UM, and and and inherently democratic. And also where where every other part of every state receives its economic viability. So what does it mean now, right that this decision has come

to pass. You are right that virtually every major city in America has a democratic majority, and most of them have democratic mayors, and they are the economic engines of their state. But Texas has had an open carry bill for a while now. The legislature has been moving rapidly in that direction. For a long time. We had a reasonable and I think correct, concealed carry law which required

people to get a permit. It wasn't oneris to get a permit, but you did have to spend time in class proving that you knew how to handle a gun, and then you knew the gun laws in the state of Texas. But the last session they passed something called so called constitutional carry, which anybody essentially what the Supreme

Court has now done to the entire country. There's no there's not going to be an immediate practical effect, but over time, what you have is more and more people normalizing the carrying of guns and less and less knowledge about how to safely do that. So now we've had this so called again constitutional carry for long enough that, um, we've had a rash of child shootings where they have an find an unsecured gun and start playing with it.

Or we've had a rash of road rage incidents in Houston where you know, people are frustrated shooting somebody barreling down the freeway, which isn't just a danger to the poson they're shooting at, but to everybody else on the road. And that's it. It's like a barrier breaks that. We already have a serious problem of gun violence across America, particularly young men shooting other young men, and violent gang violence where you have known essentially known as sales, are

silence known to each other. Um, what this adds is that is a layer of an additional unsafe layer. It's people who never thought about having what to do. I my children are now in the ground, My youngest is twenty seven, but I have grandchildren now. And you know when you think about, oh, my kids are gonna go on kids or grandkids gonna go on a playdate. And you know you used to think about, well, is there going to be a parent at home? And and you know, what do I have to what do I have to

worry about? Now you have to worry about is there are going to be an unsecured firearm somewhere and and really, you know, parents are going to have to to step up and step in. Now. We are also having the conversation right now because of the horrific shooting in Uvalde about arming teachers in the weeks since that shooting, where we find out that three different police agencies on the scene failed to act and allow those children to be killed. Yep,

so you have armed, trained police officers huddled outside. But oh, let's get a give a teacher who really has no place to secure that weapon and no time for something else to do, and not no requirement for training. Now to have a gun in the in the classroom, that's going to make us safer. That's just that's just an absurd argument that you know, the Second Amendment is a well regulated militia being necessary. To my mind, the well

regulated militia I was perfectly comfortable with. Yes, go learn how to shoot a gun, handle a gun, prove that you know how I can accept that. But this open you know, complete open carry is insane. And at a time when you have this rising tension, and we've already talked about that that this is not you know, the principal opposition is that you have. As we saw with the January sixth, the rhetoric is so extreme on the right. The people who look like like you and me, we're

we're in the enemy, yep. And if you are the enemy and not an opponent, then it's a small step too. I can do violence against you, yep. And I have the means in my hand, are on my waistband. I mean, I just you know, I guess there's not a lot. There's not a lot that mayors can do, even if the states do that. Now, you know, we cities do. We do gun buy back programs, we do violence reduction programs, We give away gun locks, um, so the responsible gun

owners can can secure their firearms. But when I was mayor, we at the request of the Houston Zoo. Of all things, the Houston Zoo belongs to the city of Houston, but

it's privately operated. They wanted to in the summer. I mean, as a zoo, it's filled with kids all the time, and particularly school field trips during the during the school year, and they wanted to be able to ban guns at the zoo, and so we banned guns at the zoo in the state of Texas promptly overrode my ability to do that because of course somebody and know the I guess the chaperone of a school busful of kids at

the zoo ought to have a gun. I just, I mean, it is just I feel like we are in crazy town.

You say that it'll take the rest of your life to fight I this is generations upon generations that we are for the first time, I'm going to be looking at my god daughter and nieces and nephews and realizing that the world that they are coming into is a world that is completely unsafe for them, with queer parents, for them who are black, for them, with uteruses like it is just, it is a filed idea that we are creating a generation that is going to be far

worse than the previous generations. And so, you know, my last question to you is about the LGBTQ community as a whole. In your opinion, you know, the radical right has placed a target on the backs of transuth of

trans people, of the LGBTQ community as a whole. You have this decision that came down and I'll and I'll read you this that i'd saw right before I came on that Clarence Thomas just filed a concurring opinion to the dobb's decision, calling for the Court to consider overturning gay marriage, overturning birth control right, and overturning Lawrence v. Tribe and so Lawrence, I'm sorry, Lawrence v. Texas, Lawrence Texas. So I read this. They are saying the loud part,

there's no quiet part. They're on bullhorns. They have organized, they have strategized, and Victories are saying this for a long time. Victory Fund, Victory Fund, and Victory Institute. We're thirty one year old organization. We have been a pro choice organization, even though that we're focused on. We don't do lobbying or anything, but we're a pro choice organization.

In the beginning, when we were founded, it was every candidate we endorsed, they have to be LGBT and they had to believe in or right to privacy because we could clearly see the links at the time ROW was in place, and so we said you had to believe in you had to be pro choice and believe in or right to privacy because we were working to overturn sodomy statutes, which is which happened in Lawrence v. Texas, and we were working to make sure that we had

um equal marriage in the over Fell decision, and so we knew that they were inextricably linked. Now everyone can see in the minds of the right that this was this is a it is a these these are calculated and planned to have a Domino's fall. We have to wake up, as the title of your your guess, we have to wake up and recognize that this is not

an accident. This is a planned strategy, and that the LGBTQ community, people of color, immigrants, whatever the target of the week is, it is a target of convenience in a larger plan too. They truly, I believe again that thirty percent of America that wants to return to a time that will never come back, but they can sure drag us through the mud to try to get there.

It is. It is an ugly mix of white supremacy and economic angst and just the need to raise yourself up only because because the only way you can do that is by belittling somebody else. And uh, it's it's fueling what's going on here but there? And when you what is it reminded me lately is the all the story about you know, riding the back of the tiger, and and um, you ride the back of the tiger, and and people fear you, and you can you can do amazing things when you have the tiger underneath you.

But when when at some point either the tiger gets tiger carrying you or you want to dismount the tiger, you realize that there's no way you can get off without the tiger eating you. And that is what has happened, I think, to the right, because they have provoked this mob mentality and uh, you know, going to the halls of Congress talking about hanging Mike Pence, who was the epitome of the conservative mindset and has been a loyal

soldier in the Conservative cause for decades. That's what happens. The mob runs am up. We have to we have to stand against it. I mean, and I have faith, and I have a hope, and I and and maybe it's because I know how much worse it was when I started out, and I don't think it will go back there. But let's close it with talking about young people. And when when the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance went down in flame as my last years, as may actually the

day we elected my successor as mayor of Houston. That uh equal rights ordinance was on the was on the ballot. The average age of voter was sixty eight years old. Wow. This was a regular municipal election in November with a ALD initiative to provide non discrimination protections not just to the LGBTQ community but to everyone in Houston. Houston remains the only major city in America doesn't have any local non discrimination protections. It went down because of the age

of the voter. If the age of the voter had been fifty, I think the outcome would have been different if if anybody under forty he had bothered to show up in that municipal election. There's no doubt in my mind that the outcome would have been different. I don't know what it takes. Maybe this road decision will wake up millennials and jet xers to what we Baby boomers have been facing for a very long time and working for and thought we had handed them a better world.

Now we can all see that, Yeah, we did hand them a better world, but it's not safe. It could go backwards and we can all see it. Yeah, and I think that this is the first time in our lives that folks are seeing things go backwards. Like I said, I entered I entered politics at a time of progression, at a time of expansion, where we thought that we had already done the hard, bloody, violent work, and then we were in a place of conversation about expansion. You

didn't have to go to the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Now you may have to go to the Edmund Pettis Yeah. Yeah. Mayornie Parker, thank you so much for making the time to join woke A. Thank you for the work that you're doing to get as many as many LGBTQ candidates at the state, local and national level to run. Folks. If you are interested, please do check out Victory Fund.

Do check out Victory Institute. They also train candidates, They support candidates and give you everything that you need in order to win, and winning is what we need more than anything. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Indisputable with Doctor Rashid Ricci is one of the latest shows on the TYT network and also the fastest growing

news show in America. On his show, Doctor Ricci plays no games regarding policy, delivering a heavy dose of fact based truth and penetrating analysis on all the top news stories focusing on racism, criminal and social justice, politics, police brutality, karents, and much more. Listeners can also expect interviews with fascinating guests, political leaders, commentators, and even fiery debates with conservatives on

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a new episode. Folks, be well, this is one of the most fucked up weeks that I've experienced since Donald Trump became president, since the insurrection, by the way, which nobody has really been indicted for, because Merritt Garland is in Ukraine. Because that makes fucking sense. Let's go save other people's democracy while ours continues to go up in flames. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke, get woke, and stay woke as fuck.