WokeAF Daily 4.13.20 - Leadership Matters

that I have because it's been rough. I think that last week was probably one of the roughest weeks that we have had, not just because of the COVID numbers that reached really crushing numbers, the most deaths. The United States has taken over the spot that we would have never wanted to be in the number one spot for coronavirus cases for coronavirus deaths in the United States. New York leading the way unfortunately in that space. But here's what I will say about New York in this moment.

And I can't, you know, provide a enough praise for what Governor Cuomo has been doing, because while New York maybe the epicenter, I actually feel safer here than I

would anywhere in the country. Why Because leadership matters, and it matters for me and I think for all New Yorkers right now and people that are living in the Tristate area to have a leader that is dedicated to truth, transparency, giving us the tough love that we need, but providing us with empathy, doing all of the things that are necessary in this moment of great tragedy, of fear and anxiety,

which is holding us together. Over the weekend, you know, as I celebrated the Easter holiday, which is a tough one.

It's it's tough, and I think that many people will share my sentiment when I say that spending a holiday in isolation, away from your family, your friends, your church, your loved ones, whatever type of traditions and gatherings that you would have normally over this weekend, for my Jewish friends with Passover, for those that are getting ready to celeidate, to celebrate Ramadan that is coming up, like this is

really trying. And you know, I'm not going to make light of it, and I'm not going to try and you know, have a speed bump over it, because I think that it's important that we feel the loss and the pain because that's how you begin to heal, that's how you move on, that's how you can feel your way through this. And I think that that's one of the most important lessons right now that we can take on each and every day, is the feeling of this.

You know, my friend Sata said to me over the weekend that maybe, you know, she's like, we just need to give the earth a break. She needs to heal. Mother Nature needs to heal from all of the damage that's been caused. And maybe when we are able to rejoin our lives society link arms, whether virtually or figuratively, again with one another, will do so with a deep sense of gratitude because we will understand collectively what it

means to have loss. And I think that the difference with this and let's say, other wars and tragedies that have happened around the world and in this country, is that it's always focused on one community, one country, one place. And the thing about the coronavirus is that it shows us just how connected we all are. We're all connected in the pain of consistent ambulance sirens and announcements of

death and obituaries and sadness and grief. You know whether or not you know somebody at this particular moment that is connected to the coronavirus, Whether or not you know somebody that has passed away or is in hospital, doesn't really matter, because we've all lost something, right, our connectivity,

our purpose. In many ways, myself, I'm driven every day by my purpose to do good, to be better, to try and offer information, to try and offer hope, to remind everyone that listens to WOKAF and the other shows that you do have power, right, that you do have collective power, and you do have a voice and in

these days. And that's why I started off by saying that last week was a particularly hard week, because I think that in many ways, the shock begins to subside and the reality of the situation that we're in becomes ever present and we're ever rooted in this moment. And I think that that is what is so jarring, Because the first week you can say, well, this sucks and this is terrible, and you have a lot of shock

around it. The second week you can say, Okay, well, you know, maybe it won't last that long and let me try and make the best of it. The third week, and now heading into the fourth week, For many people, it's like, how long is this going to go on? And is it this in fact the new normal? Will we return to society? And what doctor Fauci and many others are saying is that will we rejoin society at some point? Yes? Will it look like pre COVID No?

And so that also creates another layer of grief and frustration because we didn't even have the time to really say goodbye to our former lives and our former selves. And that's jarring because we want to believe. And you know, it's funny because I'm watching all of these commercials, commercials that tell us that, you know, we'll go to concerts again, and we'll go to restaurants again, and we'll hug people again, and and I'm looking at them and I'm watching it,

and I'm saying, will we We don't know. We tell each other that because I think that the reality is too much to take, it's too much to swallow, it's too much of a hard pill to get down when you try and figure out what re emerging if I use the biblical term of resurrecting from this, you know, coronavirus lockdown that we've been in, What does it look like. And I think that that's hard to figure out, and we're all trying the best that we can. And I just want to offer to people that last week was

really tough for me emotionally. It's a tough. This past weekend was incredibly tough. Easter is a holiday for me.

I'm not a religious person, but it's a holiday for me that I had begun a tradition with my loved ones and friends of gathering together and it kind of being our holiday and our time to see everyone's kids and just like enjoy each other and we do some day drinking, and we play some games, and we take pictures and we laugh for hours and hours and hours and and it's hard to understand the deep sense of loss and change and transition that we are all experiencing.

And you know, I took to social media, as everyone is doing on a day and day out, and looked at old pictures and liking everybody's old pictures or current pictures of how they're trying to make the best of it with online church and online synagogue and zoom celebrations, you know, and all of it. Because I think that what this has shown me, more so than any thing else is just how much we yearn to be connected, how much we yearn to love and share and be

in community with one another. And I think that a lot of our despair and sadness and frustration comes from that lack of connection and the lack of vulnerability to admit that you want that connection. So I just I offer that as a way to say that I am here with all of you, love all of you, and am sending you virtual hugs as we move on this Monday and head into our fourth week, our fourth week of lockdown. So where are things politically? Who the fuck knows?

You know? There was a piece in the Washington Post over the weekend entitled Sidelined by coronavirus pandemic, Congress seed stage and authority to Trump? What else is do? This is how it begins. Weeks into a pandemic that has upended American life, Congress is struggling to adapt to the country's new socially distanced reality, hampering an entire branch of the federal government during a crisis of epic global scale, and tilting the balance of power in Washington towards Trump.

With lawmakers dispersed across the country and with rules frequently out of step with modern telecommunications. The House and the Senate are only starting to come to terms with how to conduct many of their most essential functions amid and extended national emergency. I just quote, I just think it's time for Congress to think differently about how we operate, said Rob Portman, Republican from Ohio. Most of my constituents right now are working at least somewhat remotely. Some are

entirely teleworking, others are partly teleworking. So it's not as though this isn't being done. Congress is one of the few entities that has not been able to figure this out. Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Moscow Mitch have made clear in recent weeks that remote voting is not feasible in the near term, citing concerns of security, practicality, and even constitutionality. But the disruption on Capitol Hill only begins with casting votes. And I have to say this,

You know, it's twenty twenty. It's twenty twenty, and the fact that our institutions and agencies have yet to evolve innovate technologically is incredibly struggled. Like troubling. The fact that our infrastructure is not set up to handle this type of disaster just shows exactly how vulnerable the United States is. I mean, just think about this for a second. Any terrorist you know who decided that, you know what, we're going to move beyond planes into buildings like what happened

on nine to eleven. We're gonna evolve past planes into navy vessels as what happened in Paul Harbor, and literal boots on the ground. Instead, we're gonna focus on cyber attacks and viral attacks. We're not prepared for any of it,

any of it. It's been nineteen years since nine to eleven, right since one of the biggest terrorist attacks and significant loss of life before the coronavirus in a single fucking day, and we've done really nothing to think ahead of the game about what happens if there was a global hacking, if there was you know, any type of intervention. I mean, fuck, it's been four years since the twenty sixteen election, when we knew that the Russians hacked and tried to destroy

our democracy. They have been successful in some ways, but in others. You would think that we would have put together the plans and the security measures to ensure that in the event of some type of major cyber attack, that our government could still fucking function. And so here we are, in the midst of a global pandemic, and our House Speaker and Senate Majority leader are like, I really don't know what to do here because voting is impossible,

So I guess we just won't fucking do it. What, folks, we are only like two hundred plus days out from the next election and Congress doesn't even know how to vote amongst itself, let alone figure out how two hundred and thirty million of us are going to be able to vote? Like, what the fuck? This does not make me feel calm. This does not make me feel like

government knows what the fuck it's doing. It makes me feel like they are just as blind and just as dumb and just as caught off guard as the rest of us. What the fuck do we pay them for? You know? One of the things about representation right is that you look for people you vote in, people that you believe have your best interests at heart and are going to do their job to represent your best interests

right to the best of their ability. And what I'm beginning to really wrap my mind and arms and legs around is that they don't know much more than you do. They are not thinking ahead. They are literally taking everything step by step in one day at a time. And frankly, in twenty twenty, that's not how our government should be functioning.

You know. You take this pandemic for instance. Trump likes us to believe and wants to convince America and the world that he and his entire administration were completely caught off guard. No one could have predicted this. Oh really, then I wonder why the Obama administration put together a all day meeting with the Trump administration's counterparts to the outgoing Obama administration to practice this very situation. If no one could predict it, then how could they have practiced?

Also if no one could have predicted it? Right? Like, what this isn't how we have shown up to deal with this global pandemic. It's not an accident, right. I believe that ignorance sometimes is purposeful. And I keep trying to ask myself and I haven't come up with the answer yet as to what exactly this administration would get out of bumbling the fuck out of their response to this pandemic. It's like who is getting rich, who is

getting more power? I don't know. I don't know. I do know that many of Trump's cronies have gone into the ppe manufacturing business, but you know, for a fee m. I do know that, I do know that the federal government has given a considerable amount of money to one of Trump's cronies, Peter Navarro, and the manufacturing of the twenty nine million pills the hydros is what I'll call them, because I can't pronounce the name the malaria pills. I

do know that. I just feel like if we were to follow the money, and I can't say it enough because I'm not a you know, forensic accountant, but I feel like if anyone is out there that is listening who knows how to do this, please please, please, please follow the fucking money. It's always about money with Trump, and I feel like if we follow it and we go back further enough, we'll get the answers that we're looking for. But in the meantime, Congress isn't doing shit.

They're trying to pass yet another stimulus package in the midst of this one that we've been told last week that for those of you who will receive the twelve hundred one time twelve hundred dollars payment. You could be waiting for as long as three months. So how is that one time twelve hundred dollar payment going to help you, your family, your small business if you're not getting it until I don't know, June or July. I have to tell you that I am. Every day I become more

and more worried. Not that we won't come out of this, because you know, all things end. It's just a matter of how right, Like you know, there are cycles, there are stages, and we're being told, well, the Spanish flu lasted actually for two years. Can I spend two years in isolation? Probably not. I will probably lose my fucking mind. I don't care how much Netflix, how much Wi Fi, how many fucking walks I'm allowed to take two years doing this. No. No, I've always wondered if I was

like built for prison. You know, like my dad, he's obsessed with those prison shows. He watches them all the time on on MSNBC, on TNT, wherever the fuck they play those. And you know, I only ever watch I can only ever stomach like ten minutes of them, and I look at them and I always say to myself, like, I really need to be above the law, because like I can't. I wouldn't make it through prison. I don't even think I would last a night. I think I

would lose it. And that's how I feel now when they're talking about, well, the Spanish flu lasted for two years, and I'm like, yes, true. I would also like to believe that we did not have the technology one hundred years ago that we do now. We did not have the amount of scientists and researchers and different prototypes of vaccinations that we could be trying different combinations of you know, I'd like to think that a lot of things have

changed in the past hundred years. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm wrong, because the best defense that we have against this is to stay the fuck home, right. It's not like anybody is like out in the street spraying the air to try and get rid of coronavirus, because what

the fuck would you be spraying. But I do have to say that the continued lack of coordinated response from this administration from Congress in general is deeply troubling, and I believe that if anybody else had been in charge, whether it was Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, we wouldn't be at half a million cases in the United States. I don't think that we would have the most deaths in the world either. There's a meme going around that shows the countries that are led by women, right and their

response and how their countries are doing. And apparently, you know, Denmark, New Zealand, Germany and several others that are led by women have all flattened the curve for the entire country, not just you know, a particular area like we're doing right now in New York. Why is that right? And I wonder is it because women recognize, like know what they don't know and are not ruled by their ego in the same way that male leaders are. I wonder, honestly,

I'm not even joking. Is it the fact that men are completely ruled by their egos and so asking for help or seeking out advice outside of yourself, especially when you are a narcissist, egomaniac, petty small toddler of a man. That Trump is admitting that you don't know something is completely outside of your nature. But I believe that in order to balance things out right, in order for us to get back on track, you have to be able to admit what you don't know and ask for help.

And I think that men in general have problems with that, and I think that men that suffer from narcissistic disorder like Trump do. It is impossible, So I, you know, I keep having these fantasies and wondering what would happen if we had a woman in charge right now? Where would the country be? And frankly, I think that we would be a lot more unified. We'd have we'd be on the same page and possibly the same team, the

American team. And you know that this would be a way to unite us in some cases, the way that rooting for the Olympics usually does. Right, it's not your team or my team, it's our team against the world. And I feel like any other administration would have been able to gather us up as a country and make us feel like we can make it through this together.

But instead, what Trump has done is what he always does, which is this level of divisiveness that has governors fighting against one another in order to keep their own residence safe as opposed to the entire federal government fighting to keep us all safe. And well, that's where we are. The Undivided States of America. We made the joke, you know, three and a half years ago when Trump was inaugurated, when we said we were no longer the United States

of America. You know, I'm not too old to remember when Barack Obama burst onto this political scene and was talking about we're not read states and blue states, but we are the United States of America. In these moments of great grief and strife and mourning and pain, you need those messages. And I know I didn't truly understand that until now. What it means to feel like someone's hand is on your shoulder or rubbing your back or making you feel like you can get through right now

is really about the triumph of the human spirit. When you feel like you've been beaten to shit day in and day out, doing the same things over and over again, going to the market, and fearing right that you may rub up against somebody by accident or touch something by accident, and you know, forget that you're not supposed to touch your face or sneeze and what does that sneeze mean? And all of these things, and you don't realize how important it is to have somebody providing some level of solace.

You know, I can remember after the horrific shooting in Newtown when I thought this was going to be it. There's no way in life we shrug off the murder, bloody, horrific murder of first graders and their teachers. There's no way we just pick up and go on like that's normal. And when President Obama made his way to Newtown for their multi faith service that was aired, and the President breaks down, you know, in tears, because how the fuck did we get here when that is okay? How do

you get there? How do you look grieving parents in the face and tell them that, well, there's nothing we can do because you know, some people have their First Amendment rights, and you know, we're not willing to budge. We're not willing to ensure that all Americans are safe, just those gun toting ones. When Barack Obama sang amazing Grace, it's those collective moments of grieving where we remember our humanness.

And when you have an administration that is so evil and so heartless, on top of battling with the anxiety of the moment and the grief, there's just this deep sense of what it means to be alone. Do you know what I'm saying? When you feel like you're on your own right, like nobody has your back, That's how I feel right now. And I'm looking and I'm really

like desperately searching for moments of connectivity of community. I love when my friends are posting that are still in Manhattan every day at seven o'clock, the applause for the

healthcare workers and the all of the essential workers. Right because it was last week that we learned about grocery store clerk Leilani, young black girl twenty eight years old diagnosed with cerebral palsy that was working at Giant food stores without protective gear, but wouldn't stop working because she wanted to help the elderly get the things that they

needed as they would come into the grocery store. She felt like her life had purpose and meaning and to watch her mother on MSNBC last week cry and grieve the loss of her twenty eight year old daughter and then receiving her paycheck for that week that was twenty dollars and sixty four cents, an amount of money that I will never forget. How much is a life worth? How much was her life worth? Twenty dollars in sixty four cents, Giant Foods did not provide her with latex gloves,

hand sanitizer, a mask, anything. And while cheering our first responders as we should, because they're dealing with extraordinary, extraordinary stress to try and live up to their oath to do no harm and to help as many people and save as many people as possible, so are our grocery store clerks, So are our truckers, so are nursing home attendants. And they're getting up every single day and they're doing their jobs, and they're doing so without the safety gear,

clothingpes that they need. And what we are learning each and every day is that the numbers of those people who do those jobs that are on the front lines are largely black and Latin X right, people of color, and they're dying. This virus is targeting those that are the most vulnerable among us. And that doesn't just mean

with underlying health conditions. It means economically vulnerable as well, the ones who do not have jobs that allow them to work from home, the ones who who are essential workers and need to get on the subways and the buses and the shuttles and get to their jobs. And we're not protecting them. Their companies aren't protecting them, and we're not protecting them as a nation because this administration

and big business gets to the side. Who's expendable. You know Republican yesterday, I don't even know her name, and frankly, I don't give a fuck, and neither should you. And she's one of those Republican personalities on social media, and she tweeted and said, you know, it's time for America to open back up. And somebody responded to her tweet and said, well, then, why don't you go down to

your local supermarket and start bagging groceries. Why don't you go into the hospitals and start cleaning up the waist of coronavirus patients. Why don't you start doing something in your community if you're so quick to put everybody else back on the front lines while you tweet from the safety of your fucking home. All of these people right who were talking about while we all just need to get back to work, where are they tweeting that from?

Where are they saying that from? Because there are thousands of people, tens of thousands of people that are going to work every fucking day and they're dying so that you can go and get you know, the canned soup that you want, right, so that they deliver you your packages that you're ordering while this administration is you know, really hell bent on bailing out big businesses, but won't bail out the United States Postal Service, you know, the one rain nor rain, nor sleet nor snow will keep

your postage and packages away from you. This virus is revealing so much, so very much about what is broken in this country, what has been broken. People are shocked when they see the numbers as it pertains to black and brown people that are dying from the virus. And I was saying all last week, why why are you shocked? You've known these things. You've known that a majority of black and brown people are the ones that live in

and around poverty levels, right. You've known that they are more likely to be unensured, that they are more likely to have medical underlying conditions such as high blood pressure, hypertension, diabetes.

They are most likely to live in environments that have food deserts right where you're not going to get supermarkets and healthy foods where you are picking up your food goods for liquor stores or bodegas or whatever type of pantries are available where the cheaper food, right, is the food that is worse for you, but it's the food that you can afford. So why would anybody be shocked if you follow racial disparities and gaps, racial wealth gap and so on and so forth. This virus is moving

right along those lines. We talked last week about the fact that in particular areas of the country, if you happen to be born black, and not just black and poor or black and working class, but just black in certain areas, your life expectancy is almost two decades less than your white counterparts. But this is the land of the Free, the home of the brave, where the American dream lives, and yet your life expectancy can be tracked by your zip code. How the fuck does that work?

You know? I've been thinking because I am sheltered in place with my family on Long Island, with my sister who is an international school teacher, and we've been having lots of deep conversations about distance learning and what is going to happen to young kids who were all ready at schools that were graduation rates super low, didn't even have the books that students need, let alone the ability

to provide them all with computers. We're talking about school districts, public schools that have a large population of free and reduce lunch recipients, which means that you have to make very little money, right in order to be able to qualify for those for your kids. You think that those folks, those families have Wi Fi at home, You think that they have multiple electronic devices so that their kids can distance learn. Are their parents those that are the essential workers?

So are they home by themselves? And are they going to be able to stick to a routine all by themselves to learn? So how much further will these kids already fall behind their counterparts that are white and more economically well off than they are? You're talking now, let's just assume that a lot of schools across this country

have closed right since March. You're talking about missing four months out of the school year, right, because the likelihood that anybody is opening back up in May, let's just say April is a wash. Right. We are at April thirteenth, so April is a wash. It is halfway done. Basically, you think May schools are going to open back up. I don't think so. So you're talking about four and

five months of being out of school. Then we go into the summer, so that's an additional two months, and then we pray to God that your kids can go back to school in September. You're talking about having an educational loss of six months or more for kids who, for all intensive purposes, we're already academically behind their classmates. I know this because I went to school for education policy. That's what my master's degree is in early childhood education.

There are children who were starting at school in let's say kindergarten, in preschool already five and ten thousand words behind their counterparts. That's how education begins and falls alongside racial and poverty lines, in some cases racial and economic lines. Were kids that are entering school, and you think that they're entering school all on the same playing field and a blank slate, they're not. There are young kids that are going into school with more words, so they already

have a sturdy foundation upon which to build. Friends that I've been talking to that are homeschooling, their kids have ordered all of these products and packets and things from Amazon. What about those people that can't afford any of that. The same way that I've talked about people being able

to have panic shopping is a luxury. Folks, Being able to panic shop and stock up your house with three four, five hundred dollars and more of groceries, of liquor, of this, that, and the other thing that is a fucking luxury and a privilege. A majority of people in this country have to wait for pay day in order to go and get the necessities that they need. So even if you are struggling now, which a majority of Americans are, ten

percent of the population has filed for unemployment. Let that sink in ten percent, and that was only three weeks into the epidemic. We're still at the beginning. What does this look like six months from now, a year from now, does that look like twenty percent, thirty percent, fifty percent

of the population filing for unemployment? But right now, if you have a home, a pantry that is filled with canned goods and pastas and rices, and a fridge that is packed, and a wine fridge and wine that is there, you count yourself among the privilege, whether or not you are jobless. If you have those things, that is in

stark contrast to many people right now. There's a reason why it took New York City public schools so long to close, because you're talking about a school population of over one million children, a majority of which live at poverty levels, so much so that New York City made lunch free across the board because that's how many kids were receiving free and reduced lunch. So everybody might as well we live in this fallacy that we've been fed.

America is the best, We're the greatest nation. Everybody wants

to come here. Some people do, Yeah, But when I start to look at how we have been reacting as a country to this global pandemic versus other countries, how other nations are providing true economic help that are stopping debt collectors and bills and halting mortgages and rents, and providing food and assistance for all people who are set up, who had been set up for distance learning, and who had innovated on education already so they weren't caught off

guard by this. Who've provided healthcare to their entire country instead of kicking three and a half million people off in the midst of a global pandemic and not extending the health exchange so that more people could be covered in the middle of a health pandemic. America hasn't been great in a long fucking time, but we've just been fed a lot of bullshit. But now when push comes to shove, we are realizing just how far behind we are.

You know, I, you know, I can't stand the pandering that is done to Trump voters, right like, I'm fucking over that. But the way that Trump was able to collect these aggrieved white folks so easy, right, like shooting fish in a arrol Because for them as well as you know, black and brown people and women and people who live at the intersection of multiple identities, and with each identity, their economic status and their economic viability is slashed just a little, right death by a thousand cuts.

America hasn't been great, and for some was never great. But when you have an egomaniac monster that comes out and pretends and lies to you and says that he can make it great, sometimes you're so downtrodden that you'll take the lie because the truth is so damn painful. So why I watch these commercials, these pandemic commercials that are you know, showing us concerts and game days and you know, celebration and telling us soon will be reunited.

And I'm thinking, are you sure about that? Because I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure that we see stadiums packed again. I'm not so sure that we see you know, sweaty people dancing the night away inside our outside of clubs. I'm not so sure that we see our beaches packed with you know, summer revelers again. I'm not so sure that you see Broadway and Times Square and all of those places packed with millions of moving bodies.

But sometimes the lie of the commercial and of the Trumps of the world that tell us that they're going to return, wind the clock back and take us back to better times eases the reality that we're in now. Trust and believe. I don't, you know, say to myself like, oh, well, you know, those poor people like Trump just sold them about. No,

they're racist folks, so like understand that. But it's this approach of the used car salesman, right that is trying to make the shiny lemon that you're going to be driving home with seem a lot better than it is because it's what you can afford, so you might as well make the best of it. Lie to me, tell me it's amazing. Tell me it runs like a Mercedes, even if it's a Pinto. That's what Trump did for the forty percent of Americans that back him. No matter what,

I'm going to bring back prosperity. I'm going to bring back your factory jobs. I'm gonna put you white man back on top of the pyramid where you belong again. They know it's bullshit, They know those jobs are long gone, but the pretending makes them feel better. But I think in these times, we need what Governor Cuomo has been bringing to the people of New York. Tough love, right, stay the fuck home. Yeah, I know it's painful. Yeah I don't want to close down the parks, But I

also don't want you all to die. I also don't want to continue to go on national television every day to tell you that seven hundred and ninety people, eight hundred people, a thousand people all died in one day. I don't want to do that either. Tough love is important. Doesn't mean that I don't love you, just means that, like you don't need the kid gloves, America should have taken off the kid gloves a long time ago. Tell people the truth. The reality is that been fed alive

for a long time. You know, you were told that if you just work hard, if you just had a high school education, you were going to be able to buy a house, a car, and provide for your family and always going to be great. Well, that lasted for a little bit till the Industrial Revolution, until more people started going to college. And then we continue to tell people, just go to college, get a degree, and you'll get a great job, and then you'll be able to afford

all the things that you want. Except those things continue to get more and more expensive, and your paycheck got less and less and less. So we keep telling you work harder, work harder, go get another degree, Go put yourself further in debt, but don't worry. You'll get a good job and you'll be able to afford the house and the car and the kids and this and then the other thing. And little by little, all of that

started to become less and less true. Now we have twenty something year olds, thirty something year olds, forty something year olds that are saddled with six figure debt because we told them it was the most important thing to do. We also keep telling folks that like, yeah, you can go and get your vocational certification, and like you'll be okay, you fucking won't. We haven't been planning ahead for what evolution looks like. We're still operating with twentieth century ideals

in the twenty first century. There's a reason why other countries are handling things a lot better than we are, because they've been preparing, because they haven't still believed that the tooth fairy was really the thing, and that the easter bunny existed. What we are dealing with in this country with going to the grocery stores, multiple grocery stores, and realizing that you know, uh, salmon and toilet paper and you know, fucking paper towels and soap just don't

you know, miraculously appear out of nowhere. There are countries where what we are experiencing now is a complete disruption of our norm has been their norm. Where food isn't readily available, it's scarce, where you don't have economic stability, where you can't believe the ship that government says because they've been lying to you for decades and that we know that they're all corrupt, and we just kind of moved through ruin. We are now in America living everyone

else's norms. The people who we turned our nose down at, who we said, how could you possibly vote for these people? They must be dumb, they must not care. We'll look at us. It's the same shit that now everybody can say about America. Ooh, America, yikes. Half a million cases of the coronavirus a botched reaction. It'll probably be an even more botched recovery, if we can even use that word, or throw that word around at all. Everything about this

country is predicated upon some false ideal. Everything about our government was pretty much based in a handshake that we just assume that everybody else would follow. I think that the coronavirus is showing us ourselves, our deep vulnerabilities and our weaknesses, how much we've taken advantage of mother Earth, how much we've taken advantage of each other, how much we've taken for granted as a society, as a people,

as a global community. The luxury of thinking that when you go to the store, what you want, exactly what you want is going to be where it always is. Your paycheck is always going to come, You're going to pay your mortgage, you're going to pay your taxes, you're going to send your kids to school, You're going to be able to have a little joy in your life. And that's going to be It never occurred to us

than any of the as things could go. But yet there are millions of people around this world who would love, as my friend Amon Mohadeen said on MSNBC, love the idea of being able to shelter in place. But you know, Syrian refugees had to leave their fucking homes because of war. So I say all that to say that it is okay to grieve, to feel the deep sense of loss, to cry, to be down, to spend however many days

in bed. But I also ask you to remember that if you have a bed, and you have a home, and you have covers to pull up, and television to zone out on, and family to fight and bicker with and be sick of, count your blessings, count yourself lucky. You can be both. And you can be both in grief and in deep frustration and panic and also recognize your privilege and your good fortune. We can do both. We don't need to do one or the other. And it fluctuates sometimes by the minute, sometimes by the hour,

sometimes by the day. But it's important, I think, to take stock of what we all have, what we all have lost, and what we're grateful for. I am a person who lives very much in the future. Did live

very much in the future. I used to lament the past, try and dash the present, dash through it, and just focus on the future, focus on what I was building for well in these deeply uncertain times, the future is unknown, as it's always been, but now more so than ever, the past is a memory and the present really is all we have literally, the world, our environment. This global pandemic has forced us to look at and to think about, and meditate on and pray on what is most important

because everything else has been stripped away. I think that the only way that we move through this is with

a deep sense of gratitude. Again, if you are listening to me right now, on a run, or you know, in a car because you just want to take a drive, or on a walk with your dog, or around your dining room table or nustled into your couch or in bed with the covers pulled up, take a moment, close your eyes, take a big inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth and just sit in gratitude because there are too many people right now that have none of

those things. So yeah, it sucks. But with all things that grow, there are pains. With all transitions, there is some level of being uncomfortable. But we will be reborn, we will rebuild, and I hope that next time around we will do so with a lot more compassion, a lot more love, a lot more authenticity, and with a lot more deep, deep gratitude for everything that we all

bring to the table. So as we prepare for this new week of our new normal, I challenge us all each and every day, as we continue to press on to find those moments of joy, to write them down, say them out loud, to record them, because when things are dark, they will be our little flickers of light. That is it for me here, Folks on Woke a F. Power to the people and to all the people. Power. Get woke and stay woke as fuck, and remember Woke

a F is free for the next three weeks. So share this show with all of your friends and tell them they can get it free wherever they get their podcasts. So let's all get through this together. Stay safe as fuck,