Weaponized Tragedy and Trauma

known as NAYRAU. And I have been someone who has worked inside and around different movement spaces throughout my entire profession, helping different organizations, whether they be LGBTQ focused, anti racist focused, abortion, rep justice focused, and so on, so long as they are focused on progressive issues. I have worked in a number of capacities as a consultant to help advance progressive causes. And I was invited to speak on a panel about

new media and progressivism. And when I arrived the night before the luncheon where I was speaking, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Amanda Zerowski. Amanda Zerowski is the lead plaintiff in a case against Texas for their atrocious,

deadly abortion ban. You heard Amanda's story most likely if you were watching the Democratic National Convention, where reproductive freedom was center stage throughout the entire event, but on one particular night, the stories of women who almost died like Amanda almost did because she was pregnant and was miscarrying and the doctors waited until she was near death in

order to give her abortion care. Her story is horrific and is something that should never happen inside of a developed country, but her story is becoming the norm in America, where we've heard of the two women black women who died in Georgia because they did not receive the abortion care that they needed, and they left their children and families behind. Those children will grow up without mothers unnecessarily.

Amanda's story is center stage along with two other incredible women, one of them who is also an OBGYN, who talk about their harrowing experiences of horrific I don't even know the word, but in a documentary called Zaraski v. Texas that is currently doing the film festival circuit, these women

their stories are front and center. One woman who was forced to carry a non viable fetus two term, only to listen in anguish as that baby was born and then would suffer a horrific, suffocating death four hours later. This is what the overturning of Robi Wade has returned America to a patchwork of protections for women and people

with uteruses. There was Ziaski. The tech Sis documentary is executive produced by Hillary Clinton Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence, and it can't find distribution because no distributor will touch it. And so the documentarians, the filmmakers are taking this film literally town by town, festival by festival, working really hard to get it widely released before the election. This is what censorship looks like. It isn't because the film isn't good.

It's winning awards. It's because it talks about abortion and changes the narrative around abortion. You see, for too long, we've allowed the right to literally write the story about what kind of person seeks an abortion. They've made it seem like it is women who just want to live a free wheeling life and no family, no responsibilities, and are just out there, you know, getting one abortion after

the other. The reality is that the women and people with you verses that get abortions oftentimes already have children. Oftentimes are having a horrific medical episode like a miscarriage, like a non viable pregnancy, and they need to be treated.

And there are women like Chrissy Teagan, who, if he followed her a couple of years ago, had announced her pregnancy with her husband John Legend and then miscarried, And what she would learn after the overturning of Rob Wade was that what procedure was used on her to save

her life was an abortion. She didn't know it, and a lot of women don't know it because the doctors are and the health professionals are moving in a way that they're doing everything at their disposal to save that person's life so that they don't bleed out like the

two women in Georgia did. So this film and the discussion that I had the great fortune to listen to when I was out in California really opened my eyes to the power of story and the necessity for story at a time when there is just so much disinformation, so many lies that are out there trying to distort our understanding of reality. Because that's what the Republicans are doing. At the end of the day. This is not just like about telling little fibbs about croud size here and there.

This isn't just about you know, the AI deep fakes. The ultimate goal is to actually shift and create and construct an entirely different reality than the real world, and we're seeing it with fifty percent of the population. So when there are storytellers that are brave enough and subjects like Amanda that are brave enough to want to tell their stories, they deserve a fucking audience. But the distributors are spineless, are narrow minded, are small, and don't understand

the gravity of the situation that we are in. Every day that I turn on my microphone and computer, I am reminded about the awesome responsibility that I have to tell the truth to help navigate all of you through a world that is becoming increasingly chaotic on purpose. I can't express to you enough how important independent media is at this time, and how its importance and its need

will increase over time. Our reality is being tested, our reality is being upended, and if we don't ground ourselves in truth, if we don't share important stories that we know are true, we're going to get lost in the

tornado of lies. Just like the people who have just suffered the tragedies of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, people literally not receiving aid, choosing not to receive aid because of the lies that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are telling them that if you accept FEMA aid, they're going to take your home, which is a bold face lie. They are weaponizing tragedy and trauma people's deep fears for their own political gain, and it isn't something to be

shrugged off anymore. On The Danielle Moody Show, which I encourage you all to watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. The Danielle Moody Show is live Monday through Thursday on YouTube five pm Eastern. I told people last week that the Zariski film needs support. It needs donations. If you head to the film Collaborative dot org, you can donate, you can host a screening because we're going to have to do this work from the grassroots because the powers

that be do not want these messages getting out. They don't want women and people with uteruses to understand that what is happening in these states right now, how Project twenty twenty five is unfolding in places like Texas and Florida and Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee and throughout the country. More than half of the country does not have abortion access. They don't care about the life of the pregnant person and our mortality rates for women, maternal mortality rates are

skyrocketing and will continue to do so. And for those people who think that oh, I'm in a blue state or I'm in a blue city inside of a red state, are safe, you are not. We are hanging on by a thread. So it is films like this one that require our attention and require our amplification. And that is why I ask folks, if you are liking these shows, these episodes, I ask you to like them, to share them, to post them, to get them out into your universe.

Because the more people we can connect with and encourage to really actively participate, to listen, to have conversations, to have the tough conversations. Because this is what I said when I was on the panel. I was in a ballroom full of majority white women, and I told them very explicitly, fifty percent of white women are going to

still vote with Donald Trump in this election. These are your family members, these are your colleagues, these are your friends, These are the people that you sit on the pta with. This is your walking buddy, and you have been told not to have impolite conversations. Let's not make it uncomfortable. Let's just keep things on the surface. Don't talk about politics, don't talk about religion, don't talk about what matters, in order just to save space, to save face, and to

create this false sense of a calm space. If we don't have these hard conversations, if we do not broach them, then we double down into our siloed camps, and we're more susceptible to the lies that are spread because we refuse to engage. The way that Donald Trump and Republicans win is when we go into our separate corners and decide to believe their narratives rather than engage with people

in real life. Our democracy thrives because of we the people, not we the algorithm, not we the siloed, not we the tribe, but we all the people. So we have to get uncomfortable. And you know, as famed personal trainer said Jillian Michaels, like, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable if you want change. Change does not come from your comfort zone. As so many personal trainers say about personal and physical trendsransformation. The same is true about

political and spiritual transformation. It doesn't come from a safe space. That's where the status quo lives. We must extend ourselves, open our arms, open all the modes of communication to get back to a place of community, collaboration and togetherness. Now, I tell you all the time, like I believe that a good amount of the population is fucking gone and they are looney tunes and they are not coming back.

But if you know and love one of those people, then don't pooh pooh them slowly try and bring them back in to our shared reality. I watch and I played this video on the Danielle Moody Show last week of a woman that was being interviewed and literally saying that the government was controlling the weather, that they were seeding clouds to intensify storms because she heard that from Marjorie Taylor Green, from Donald Trump and quote unquote reputable

Republican politicians seating the clouds. And people were commenting and laughing and calling her stupid. And I said, this is not the fringe. It was ten fifteen years ago. You would have seen that story on the cover of the Inquirer. That person would have been in an aluminum hat and he would have been like, Ah, whatever, crackpot, this is now fifty percent of the population. Folks. It didn't happen overnight. It happened over a decade. It happened over by telling

people that there are facts and alternative facts. It happened by telling people all no, the crowds were overwhelming, even though you're seeing empty space at Trump's inauguration mass empty space. It starts small and then it builds into a full blown, fucking avalanche of lies, so much so that you don't know which way is up. Right has become left, left has become right, down has become up, up has become down,

and you're just absolutely disoriented and exhausted. That is the goal, and to a certain extent, it is working, which means that those of us who are still on Earth one need to amplify, amplify, amplify the truth through our platforms, through our conversations. We have got to rebuild community brick by brick, because their goal is to tear us down, so we have to be stronger than the lies that

they are spinning. I encourage all of you to head over to the film collaborative, or to take a look at the trailer, to take a look at the action campaign for Zarawski. The Texas can host a screening between now and the election. Do so. If you have the treasure and the ability to donate, do so. Every dollar counts. We need to spread the message that is it for me today, Dear friends on Woke af AS always power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.