WokeAF Daily 4.27.20 - This Is Not Normal

to the judiciary to television. I am going to have in depth discussions with the folks about how we are dealing with this and what are some of the opportunities. Frankly that can come out of this obstacle. Look like everybody else, on a day to day basis, I probably swing from mood you know A to mood Z in a matter of minutes, if not ours. And so one of the things that has been pressing on me though is successful people usually in the midst of some type

of crisis. They become successful because they find the niche, they find the right wave to ride at the right time. This is not about profiting off of people's pain, but it is about rethinking our democracy, rethinking our society, looking at where all of the gaps have been that we have just normalized, right like it has been normal to us that there are people that hold a majority of the world's wealth, like ten people right that hold a majority of the world's wealth while the rest of us

are starving. Right, We have normalized the fact that your zip code can determine your life expectancy and whether you'll end up in jail, whether or not you'll end up with a college degree, whether or not you'll end up with high blood pressure. We have normalized the idea that there are some people that will have to work two

four jobs in order to make ends meet. We have normalized the idea that we don't have a national living wage for people, right, even though those are the very people that are continuing to keep us fed right and keep us in our homes because we're able to go to the grocery store, because they're taking care of our elderly that we're no longer able to visit. There are so many things, in so many aspects of life that we have taken for granted because somebody else was doing them.

So in the midst of this crisis, instead of just focusing on the crisis, maybe for a little bit of the time, we should start thinking about what are some of the opportunities available to make things actually better. So let's start at the top with woke a F Daily. Today, we're going to be in conversation with our regular woke F contributor Melissa Murray, who is a constitutional law professor at NYU and she also hosts the podcast that focuses on the Supreme Court. And why do I love to

talk to Melissa? One because she is brilliant, but two because she has an ability to look at and analyze the world in a very different way, particularly as it pertains to law. But also we got into a very interesting conversation about what this current moment is telling us about working moms right about what structures are in place for parents right now. What happens if you are living in a Georgia, if you were living in a Texas,

so if you're living in a Wisconsin. States that are considering or have already opened, but they're not opening up schools, what does that mean for working moms Because we know that most of the childcare child rearing falls on women. So if you now are being forced to go back to the workplace, whether or not it is deemed safe, whether or not the businesses are abiding by whatever guidelines

Brian Kemp has put out, What does that mean? How does our education system right in this moment need to evolve and innovate in a way that has been lacking for decades. What are the things in terms of television and how we access television, how we access entertainment, how we stream services, how we record things. What are the things that are going to be changing. Those are the conversations that I'm going to be digging into this week

because I think that it's important. So excited to welcome back to wok F Daily Melissa Murray, who is a professor at and Why You Law School and also the co host of Strict Scrutiny, I, a podcast covering all things scotus in the world that you need to be paying attention to. Melissa, Welcome back, How are you doing? Thanks for having me and doing well? Sheltering in place, per usual, per usual. In California, things are going well over there. I think things are sort of flattening out

and there's some talk of reopening. I think some areas in Irvine and Newport Beach have opened up, although the rest of the state seems to have been taking a much slower approach. To reopening more cautious, I mean, and rightfully so the same thing with us here in New York. Governor Cuomo told us today that maybe construction and manufacturing in certain places can open as a phase one, but that businesses need to start putting together their plans on

what they envision reopening to look like. So it seems that we're all on that kind of slow role. God only knows, Melissa. So last week, the President of the United States, in the midst of one of his briefing slash rallies, which is more less brief decided to pontificate to the American people whether or not injecting disinfectant and UV light into the body would rid us of COVID nineteen in less than a minute. This is what he said.

He said it very definitively. He said it at the presidential podium in the press room at the White House. Doctor Bricks has been asked now several times since the White House had to issue a statement saying that, oh, you know, it's the liberal media that is making a big deal about this, and the President wasn't at all, suggesting that it was just him brainstorming. I've never known the president of the United States to brainstorm on live television.

But maybe that is something new. Since then Lisol had to issue a statement, Chlorox had to issue a statement. Several state health departments have had to issue statements urging people not to drink disinfectant or injected into their bodies. What are the legal, if any, ramifications around the president just popping off at the mouth and then the consistent backtracking by this administration. Well, first, let's just acknowledge that there were people who took this seriously on a number

of individuals or hospitalized. I think that just speaks to the fear and real desperation that people feel around the pandemic. I think there's incredible worry. Even as we sort of seem to have qusted about the worst of this in the major urban areas, there's still I think incredible fear because there's so much that is unknown about this illness, like why it happens to be virulent in some individuals, whereas in others it just sort of passes without incident.

I think people are genuinely worried, and we don't really know when a vaccine is likely to arrive, and so I think people hear this individual who the President of the United States, who is in a position of authority, and you know, maybe they're not exercising terrific judgment, but this is an official mouthpiece of the United States, the representative of the United States on a global family saying this, and you know, whether he's joking or not, people are

going to take it seriously because it comes with the in premature of the federal government, of the most important office in the federal government, and you know, that is incredibly unfortunate. The president's spokespersons say that, you know, this was a joke, and then they did a sort of traditional pivot that often happens when the president's statements come

in for scrutiny or for challenge. They talked about freedom of speech, and I just want to sort of push back on this idea that freedom of speech it's just kind of an unfettered license to say what you like at any time that you like without any consequences, Like, that's not the case. There is no liberty that is inscribed in the Constitution that is absolutely unfettered. And I say this under the best of circumstances when we're talking

about things like gun rights. Yes, the Constitution provides for the right to their arms, but it's not unfettered. It's not when you want to without any restrictions. There are lots of ways in which they fundamental freedoms that are enshrined in the Constitution can be restricted. And so again, as with free speech, the president doesn't have unfettered license to say what he wants whenever he wants them. Again, there's a very famous Supreme Court case. You cannot simply

yell fire in a slotted theater right. You must take into account the impact of that speech on broader public health, public safety consequences. And this might be one of those cases. Now, whether or not the president can be held into court and called to account what he says, I mean, you may have lots of sort of procedural limits on whether or not the president can be subject to civil suits,

and lots of constitutional inkis and filled on that. But at the very least I think you can say that, you know, free speech isn't truly free right, you have some limits on it, like you have to exercise this liberty in a responsible manner, and all of the case law in this arena make clear that that is surely the case. I mean It's just terrifying to me that this president gets up on a microphone and that there are forty percent of the population Melissa believes everything and

anything that comes out of his mouth. And so the idea that one of the first things that people tell you when they have kids, what is the first thing when your kids are crawling walking? What are you supposed to do? Lock all of your medicine cabinets, Lock the cabinet underneath the sink where there are harmful and dangerous chemicals. And yet this president essentially just said, bust open the child locks. Why don't we try and see what happens. That is, to me akin to yelling fire in the

middle of a crowded theater. And then we're supposed to say, after the fact, where people are rushing and trampling for the door or ingesting things that they should not be ingesting, say oh, well, I don't know why you were taking anything that the president was saying. Seriously, he was just kidding, or it was sarcastic. None of those things were true. The tape has been replayed over again, and we watch

the uncomfortableness of doctor Bricks. But I'm wondering, now, is everyone just fearing the loss of a job instead of fearing the loss of more dead Americans at the hands of a very dangerous and uninformed president. Well, so I think we ought to just start generally with our people afraid. I think people are really afraid. I think a lot of this kind of comes down to root fear and I think a lingering suspicion that this administration does not have handle on this. And I think we know that,

and we're all grasping at straws. And maybe you know, those individuals who thought it would be a good idea to ingest cleaning products because the President said that that might be a way to stave off this virus, I think that's an action, an act of desperation, an act motivated by fear. And it is a fear that I think this President has done little to a swage right. In fact, you know, he stoked it in a lot of ways, or you know, try to sort of pawn it up. This is a Chinese virus. There are other

people to blame for it. Instead of just really sort of grappling what we need to whoever cause this, we need to get a handle on it. Um, I don't know what it means going forward for us, that we had forty percent of you know, the electorate who believes what he says unwillingly, because I mean, I think, and I believe this quite strongly. The whole prospect of democracy isn't about unwavering and blind faith and allegiance to a

charismatic leader. I mean, it's exactly the opposite. The whole point of democracy is that you have a citizenry that is educated, and I don't mean like it has gone to college, but can generally discern for themselves, have other sources of allegiance, whether it's religion or their families, beliefs that allow them to be skeptical of government and to call the government out when it goes too far. I mean,

that's the vision of democracy that the Framers had. I mean, it's why we have protections for freedom of speech, for the press. This idea that there should be other sources of authority that can challenge the government so that the government cannot become so powerful so as to completely overwhelm the liberty of the people. And we don't have that

right now. Instead, what we have is, you know, a charismatic leader who's telling everyone to do something and people just sort of blindly falling in line and sometimes to their detriment. You know. One of the things that I keep thinking about, you know, on a day to day basis. And again, I'm in New York with the both of us are literally functioning under governor's leadership that have sense. Right. You're with, you know, with Governor Newsom in California, and

I'm with Cuomo in New York. And one of the things that has been amplified during this time is states rights. We're all getting a really good lesson in what states have the authority to do and what the federal government

has the authority to do. And you know, for so many years we've all been able to and I mean and I mean years, you know, decades upon decades, been able to rest on our laurels, understanding that there are a myriad of agencies that we don't even know the names of that are working on our behalf, and understanding

the true distinction. What I'm concerned about, however, is that the lack of federal leadership in this moment, right is not just about the you know, the letting go of power and leadership and like acquiescing to the states, but I wonder what this looks like moving forward. Right, we have I mean, not only in this country has Trump

the Trump administration essentially thrown up their hands. Right, Governors are are conducting treaties, essentially trade agreements, I should say, not treaties, trade agreements with foreign leaders in order to acquire the ventilators the ppe that they need. Right. And Cuomo said the other day last week, it's not our job. It's not our job to negotiate with foreign countries, like

that's the federal government. How do you see the roles and the responsibilities between the federal government and the states moving forward? Right where we can no longer trust that there is going to be any kind of unified leadership, and we are literally in a situation where it's everyone for themselves. You have Georgia opening, you have Texas getting ready to open. Rallies in Wisconsin. New York saying slow your role. We're working on a regional situation. California saying

slow your role. We're also working regionally, but everyone else is kind of doing their own thing. What does that look like for the future of our democracy? Well, to think about the future of our democracy, let's look at the past. So let's go all the way back to seventeen eighty seven. This nation had just come out of

the American Revolution. They didn't actually have a constitution yet. Instead, they had this document called the Articles of Confederation, which basically allowed for this kind of loose confederation of states, and all of the states, all of these thirteen colonies now skates. We're basically free to do whatever they like. So Virginia had its own money, Connecticut had its own money. Virginia was trying to negotiate something with England and France.

Jina had paid off its debt, New York had paid off it's that other states had not. It was all kind of a hodgepodge and they couldn't do anything. And so they get together in seventeen eighty seven for the purposes of trying to amend these Articles of Confederation and actually make a working document to run a government. And they realize that they can't have a working document that is premised on this idea of thirteen sovereign entities, like they actually have to draft a plan that allows for

a kind of centralized government. But they can't. They're scared. The idea of centralized government to them looks very much

like England Parliament the King. They are worried about a centralized government leading to tyranny, and so the constitution that they draft is this very delicate balance between centralizing power within a federal government for the purpose of coining money, negotiating with foreign powers, conducting foreign policy, but then also limiting that federal government so that the individual state and the people within them can actually have some room to move.

And so you know, they strike this balance of divided government among the federal government. So there're three branches and they each can check each other in particular ways, and so there's a kind of horizontal division and diffusion of power. And then vertically they diffuse power between the federal government

of the states. So constitution is basically a list of all of the things that Congress, the President, the courts can do, and then everything else is supposed to be left up to the states, right, And so you know, the way this is shaken out over time is that the federal government really deals with these issues of centralization

that we need. Like you know, you want to have interstate commerce, a market market economy, that's for Congress, right, But individual things within states, those are for states to do. So states will do these kind of things that are in trust, state in nature. The Trump administrations really turn these ideas on their head in some ways that are

really so. At the beginning, when the Trump administration was rolling back federal protections for the environment and things like that, California and many of these other Western states began codifying into their state laws the existing protections that had been available in federal statutes that had been rolled back under the Trump administration. So an example of what some have called, like Heather Gerkin and Jessica Bowman Posen for example, have

called uncooperative federalism. So, you know, we're really getting this sort of emboldened sense of the states because realistically the federal government hasn't protected some of the things that the states think are important. Right, They're not acting in a way, but the states see as important by the same token.

We see this in a lot of different issues. So a lot has been made about Letitia James, the Age in New York, going after the Trump administration and the Trump family for its sort of business dealings, which you know, she finds shady. A lot of that is a response to the fact that Congress for much of the administration has been really blacks on oversight of the executive branch,

and so you see a kind of displacement effect. If Congress isn't going to do it, isn't going to call the president and his family to account for these business deals that seem shady, while then that will go to the States. And so you know your syvance in New York City eventually going about trying to get the president's

financial disclosure. I mean, there was also lots to be made of the fact that he had an opportunity to really go after the Trump children and pass that up initially, but you do see a lot of this work being displaced. So I actually think the Trump administration is kind of a really reinvigorating moment for federalism. But it's not the federalism that we might have seen, you know in nineteen

sixty five where you've been in eighteen sixty five. One to really talk about federalism was to give states the power to do things that we might find really troubling. So, you know, slavery was defended as an exercise of states rights of federalism and the idea that the federal government could tell states that they could not be slaveholding was

seen as completely inconsistent with the Constitution. And then of course you have the fourteenth Amendment, the fifteenth thirteenth Amendment coming along to make clear that the federal government does have a role to say in whether or not you can own people. But I think what we're seeing right now is a kind of new, weirdly progressive brand of federalism that is very much unlike what we've seen before, probably you know, a species of what the founders had

in mind. But again, this idea that the states are going to check an overrunning, an over encroaching executive branch. I just you know, I want to think that in the hands of good you know, to me, it looks like this. In the hands of good people, good things happen, right, So the fact that and in the hands of bad people,

basalism can be bad. Yeah, federalism can be bad. So it's like, okay, great right now, because as the two of us are positioned in states that are in the hands of who I perceived to be people that are on the side of public health and science and facts and climate change and wanting to do right by the by their residence, I feel like it's a good thing. But in the Florida of the world, or Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia, right, it's like, what are those residents

supposed to do? You have a state right now? You know, you have a state yesterday. Um, you know, over the weekend, I went on MSNBC for the first time in weeks and weeks and weeks, and you know, one of the questions that I was asked about is why do you think that states Republican governors are rushing to open up these states to reopen And I said, because they don't want to pay unemployment because there is a rush for

people who have lost their jobs. And one of the questions that you are asked when you are seeking unemployment is that is has there been an opportunity for you to get work? Right? Well, if the states now open up, even though you don't feel safe and you don't want to endanger yourself or your family, you have now been

placed in a position where you have no option. That's a great example of you know, federalism looks really different if you're in a red state versus a blue state, and so, and you can think about that even going back, you know, why does Georgia have this problem right now

in terms of unemployment insurance. Well, they passed a number of laws that limit the degree to which they can expand their budget and whether they can tax their citizens in order to expand the budget to accommodate, you know, a kind of unprecedented economic pressure like the one that we're seeing right now, and they can't because they pass these laws. That's actually, like that was within their progative

to do, That's what the voters in Georgia wanted. So limiting their ability to raise taxes and to raise revenue is something that george did a couple of years ago at the will of its citizens. And now, you know, one of the consequences is that you're not going to have those robust protections for unemployment because they can't afford

to right now. So you know, again, I think when they were doing this three or four years ago, they probably did not anticipate a kind of catastrophic economic event like this one, and they did this, you know, sort of to be fiscally prudent, you know, to be responsive

to what the citizens about it no more taxes. But now we're sort of in the situation and again everyone talks about this whole question of socialism, and you know, socialism is a bad word, but I will note this is a global pandemic and there are some societies like

Finland Denmark, for example, where this has been devastating. But they shut down, they immediately sequestered their individual their citizens, and they you haven't seen the kind of economic strife that we're seeing here, in part because there is a robust social saking net. They did rely on their jobs for health insurance, they had additional health service, they had unemployment protections, they had protections for individuals. In terms of childcare,

they had some state sponsored support for childcare. One of the things that this has made incredibly clear to me is that for parents, the only state support of childcare that we have is the earned income tax credit and the childcare deductions that you may or may not be able to take advantage of, and public school. And when public school isn't there, you can't work because or you can't work at the same level of productivity that you once did. You can only sort of just do what

you can't while you're also homeschooling your kids. So you know, one of the things I think this is sort of laid there is not just sort of the distinction between what the federal government should be doing and what states have had to do when the federal government blacks off, but as a general matter, the government, whether state or federal, has not been doing that much to create a social safety net that holds all of us in place when

something catastrophic like this happens. And I've been on Facebook. I grew up in Florida. A lot of the people that I grew up in Florida with our Republicans that many of them are small business owners. And these are the first people to decry the whole idea of public assistance and the first people to tell you, like, you know, I brought myself up by my bootstraps. I founded this business. I sacrifice, and everyone else should do it. And I get it, Like they did a really great job. They've

made these small businesses for themselves. But now they're finding, you know, even with the kind of drive and ingenuity that they had to get their small businesses off the ground, they are it's not enough right now. This is a global catastrophe, an economic scourge that we have never seen since nineteen twenty nine. And even with all of their ingenuity and their drive. They cannot make their businesses work, and now they're asking for PPP and small business loan assistance.

And you know, I'm just sort of like that's a kind of welfare too, Like it can't be the case that you don't. You're not for government subsidy when it's about single mothers, but now you are because it's about keeping your business uploat. We all need a safety net. We never know when the next economic scourge is coming. That has been the constant drumbeat of the Republican Party.

Social safety nets. You might as well say, like you said earlier communism, you might as well say, well, you were lazy, right, government should only intervene for those people

that are lazy. We've created a construct right that tells us that those people that are economically on the bottom are there for lack of ingenuity and not lack of structures in safety nets that were good in it's always it's always it's always the p's we make wealth or lack thereof something that is very personal about your ambition, your ability. You're never about your access, never about like

the obstacles that are placed in your way. And so when we look at the countries that are doing well, right, that are that are able to do well, and I use that relative, you know, to to a global pandemic, but are doing a hell of a lot better than us. Are those countries that have put together programs that are about helping all people. To me fundamentally, though, our lack of social safety nets goes directly to the core of racism and white supremacy. We do not in this country

want all people to be helped. We want certain people to be helped. It is why when the New Deal was created, there was right the government was going to take care of everyone, but in order to appease Southerners, right, in order to appease the South, we had to cut out right people of color, domestic workers, sharecroppers were which

were largely people of color. And so in this country there's a reason why we don't have this, and I believe that fundamentally it is about racism and the pervasiveness that we have been locked into this idea that those that require government assistance are on the government's tip. As we as Republicans, have told us from beginning to end,

all of that is exactly right. I mean, you sort of saw species of this when the Surgeon General was speaking I guess now a week ago, and he admonished all of us to stop you well, all of the black people, all the black and Latin us, because it was that was very discernible based on the language that he decided to do it. Do it for Big Mama. It's really interesting that you just sort of have this idea that what is going on is really about a

personal failure. I mean, that's the way he sort of broke broke it down, like, yes, you know, black people and brown people are suffering just a personal and it's about personal choices rather than thinking about well, it's also about the fact that they are likely to be those in jobs that are now considered essential, that where their exposure to the virus is heightened and they don't have the opportunity to quarantine because they're in these essential positions.

And alternatively, when they do go home, they may not be in a position to sort of spread out and be comfortable, like they're living in smaller situations where the likelihood of passing this on to their family members as higher.

So there's this whole vernacular and sort of discourse of personal responsibility or a lack there of and no appreciation for the kinds of really broad and pervasive systemic impediments that would make certain groups more susceptible to this than others, And that to me, I think has been really difficult

to watch and to hear. I strongly believe that the more we talk about coronavirus as something afflicting particular communities rather than talking about the universality of its devastation, we're going to have the sort of situation where people can just sort of think about, like, you know, coronavirus or something that happens to them not to meet, when in fact, this is something that it's going to be a huge level or whether you get coronavirus or not, we are

all going to feel the impact of this. Yeah, because the economic the economic repercussions of what is happening, the health repercussions. We also don't know what the capacity is for people who recover. Right in certain test and certain places, researchers are saying that you've you're losing twenty percent of your lung capacity, right and other like. We have no idea. So the repercussions are going to continue. But it is this pervasiveness that like it's happening to them, it's not

happening to me. We see the folks who are at these reopen rallies right with their adam, I mean, the people who are like, you know, this is oppression. I'm like, if you like, it's amazing that, like the fact that you have to stay at home in a global public health crisis, you think that is oppression? You haven't lived through some oppression, Like it's the ultimate form of privilege to be able to call this oppression. I mean, and get it. I understand the economic anxiety that prompts a

reaction like that. I mean, it's a kind of economic anxiety that I think a lot of people of color have lived with perpetually. Nobody cares, really exactly nobody cared. But I mean, like so I get what animates it, and just sort of like, this isn't really oppression. This is like kind of what we have to do in this moment to deal with this thing that we don't actually have a handle on because we don't have a federal government that really seems to know what's going on here.

I mean, we wasted a lot of time dealing with this. We've now sort of relied on our state governments to take the lead in this. There's this content back and forth power struggle between the administration and the very estate government statism't helping. And then now like you know, the call to liberate these particulars, this is liberation. This is one. This is when I understood, Melissa, that we have to we have very different understandings of what liberty and the

word liberate actually mean. Right, Like, this is when I have fundamentally I got it. I'm like, wow, I don't know how we're ever going to move forward as a country, as a collective again, because we have two very different understandings of what liberty and justice actually look like. Well, and as a lawyer just listening to it, just sort of like you all have like very little understanding of

constitutional law. I mean, states have anything we talked about this last week, they have, you know, police power to legislate in order to preserve public health and safety within their states. Like it's not an unfettered power. I mean there are obviously constitutional limits, whether it's the first meant or other fundamental liberties that people possess, like free speech. But again even those have to be sort of tempered,

like the Constitution is not a suicide pact. So it is not like, well, I didn't say it, but I think it's it's just it's clear that those who say these things, but we have to liberate this, we have to liberate that. Like, that's not liberty. Liberty, like the liberty protected in the Constitution is not a kind of unfettered liberty to do what you want when you want without any kind of government in position. I mean, and

then there's a kind of double speed to this. I mean, the people who you know, I'm talking to you on Facebook from my high school. Um, you know, there is this idea that you know, they don't want government intervention,

government regulation because what they want is free market. But then part of me is like, well, if you want a free market then when they were trying to tax you, you should also be okay with a free market now because right now it maybe the case that the kind of business you have isn't viable in this new reality. Like I mean, you know, maybe if you had a business that was supplying I don't know, like cruise ships, maybe people aren't getting on cruise ships now. And that's

the economic reality. That's the free market you've got a shift and pivot. But I mean it's when you say it to them like that, they're like, well, that's not what I mean. I'm like, well, that's actually classical economics, Like that's truly less ay fair, Like you if you can't survive and this economy, maybe your business wasn't meant to survive. And look when you say it like that to them, they're like, well, that's not what I'm meant. I'm like, well, I know, because you want it both ways.

You want to be able to have no regulation when it suits you, and then you want to be able to and then and then you want help when things are lot And I'm like, I just want everyone to be helped to the extent that we can so that we can all sort of thrive. And it always goes back to the fact that I believe that folks in general in this country, Americans will cut off their nose to spite their face, and like they we have to.

We live in two very different worlds. What is considered liberty and justice, what is considered free market, what government should support versus what it should not based on stereotypes, um that aren't real, right, And so to me, like what this does. What this situation does, it continues to do, is just exasperate what we've already known, the gaps between the rich and the poor, the gaps in the you know,

within the racial wealth gap. Who is actually considered essential, Who is doing the mandatory jobs that doesn't, that don't have the ability to work at home? Who the government is going to give breaks to, right, which is Wall Street before they even bother looking at Main Street? Right? The rush to reopen, to get workers back so that they can start to fill the coffers for CEOs and shareholders like there is. We live in a very distorted reality.

And one of the things that I consistently been saying on woke app is that this rush to get back to normal, right, we all need to figure out which part of normal we want to get back to, because none of the ways in which we have been operating should be looked at as normal. We have normalized bad behavior, but that does not make it normal. What we have normalized systemach and equality and chalked it up to personal choices.

And you know, maybe there is some personal choice in it, but it's not It can't exclusively be accounted for just by you know, poor decision making or good decision making,

like some of this is deeply institutionalized. And I think one of you know, the questions going forward as we move toward whatever the new normal is is to what degree are we going to reckon with and wrestle with the fact that some of this is baked gin Melissa, with just a few minutes that we have left, what are some of the other stories that we should be

paying attention to? Because you know, like we were saying before we even jumped into our conversation on what gay app is that the news doesn't seem to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. And while we're in the midst of a global pandemic that is incredibly important for us to keep eyes on on a daily basis. There are so many other stories that we are missing, and because the relentless criminality of this

administration has not backed off of the gas. And I think that, especially because we are in the midst of a global pandemic, they are putting their foot through the floor. So what are some of the other things that we just we should be keeping an eye on as we

head into another week. So last week I talked a little bit about COVID opportunism in terms of access to abortion, and a number of states that have limited access to abortion on the ground that ppe is needed and needs to be preserved, and so they've limited abortions of non essential healthcare. During this period, there have been a couple

of lawsuits that have already percolated. One in Texas that seems to sort of resolved itself as the state is reopened, but there's also one that as of last week was going through Tennessee. And there will be other challenges because there are a number of red states would have done this, So that's certainly one thing to keep an eye on. The other thing I think just we're thinking about is something I think almost everyone who's at home with small

children right now can and deal with. Is you know, I don't think we have really come to grips with as women, or at least thinking about women's progress. So much of the women's rights movement and what we call women's liberation has really been focused on the market, allowing women to enter into workplaces that historically had been inhospitable

to them. So we have Title seven and all of that, and women had made enormous gains I think in the work world, but now that work has moved back through the home, I think we're seeing very clearly how little we have done to equalize or to integrate the work of caregiving. And I think women contain to take on the burden of that. And now that work and home are in the same place, and I have to and

have to be reconciled together. I think, you know, I really worry about women losing ground, Like you know, when the zoom call have to be rescheduled, who zoom call is it? And I think it's a really important question as we have families that no longer huge a sort of heterosexual model like that same sex families or single mother families. You know, we haven't really talked about that, Like we're telling people that, you know, one family member needs to be the one designated to go get the

groceries so that you can limit exposure. What does that mean if you are a single parent and you have a small child at home and you can't leave your child alone, what does it mean in terms of the work that you do, or even how do we reopen knowing that schools are not resooming like that we're not going to have summer camp in the summer. I mean, you know, the President keeps talking about reopening. I'm like, I'll talk like, one, are you going to talk about schools?

What are you going to recognize that school for a lot of parents is a key part of how they maintain their own productivity during the day, Like you rely on school to care for your children and educate them, and that is part of what allows you to be

productive at your job during the days. I mean, I just think there is this larger conversation to be had, not just about reopening, but what women's productivity, what famili's productivity looks like as these essential basically the only kinds of subsidies that governments provide to families in terms of childcare have really sort of gone dark, and families have been taking on the bulk of this sort of supervisory work.

I think that what we recognize too, is that our way of life, it has been I think in a lot of ways to just disrupted on a permanent level. The ways in which we've been able to kind of go through, navigate some of us hang on for dear life right are going to be changed because all of these questions that we are posing now right, and that our governors, the ones that actually care about their residents, are pontificating on which is what does a reopen look like?

To all of those points that you're making. But I love the fact that you are couching it around around women who are normally the ones that carry the burden of childcare, of child rearing. Right, what does that look like in the midst of a zoom call with your CEO or your whomever. Right, And now you're having to figure out how to homeschool and now all of a sudden,

businesses are opened up, a schools are not. I think that fundamentally we need to think about where we're getting our resources from and what it looks like when the bottom falls out, like there's an opportunity. That's why I continue to try and find in the midst of all of this chaos, what the opportunity can be to rebuild

something better. Right. It is evident that America as we have known nets, the social safety nets that we thought we had are broken, right and have been broken, And there are many people in communities that have always known

them to be broken. For them that there's an opportunity here to rebuild That's why they are pushing to reopen, because the longer this remained shuttered, the more people are going to recognize that, wait a minute, I actually cannot go it alone in the face of an imprecedented disaster. It would be nice to not worry about if my health character from my employer. It would be nice to know that there was a social safety net that I could rely on, whether in my old age or you know,

or right now. And so I think part of the push to reopen is so that they can sort of squelch this broader conversation about what does life in a democracy look like when you eliminate the sort of individualistic neoliberal ethos. Yeah, and those are all the things that we're going to have to examine in the coming weeks, in the coming months, and in the coming years when we actually do get to a place where America as a whole, whatever that means and actually looks like, is reopened.

Melissa Murray, thank you so much for joining us again on Woke EFFI daily. Your brilliance and your insight is something that we look forward to in these really trying times. I appreciate thanks for having me on. Look. We can all get lost in the sadness, the frustration, the anxiety, the depression of this moment. Look on a regular basis. First of all, we don't even know whether it's Monday or Friday, or Saturday or Sunday, whether it's one pm,

nine am, five am. What difference does it fucking make, you know? I remember one of my friends who is very big into mysticism, had said to me, time as a construct right, time is something that we have made up. And there is no other time for you to really think about that and what that really means than during

quarantine when one day runs into the next. But for those of us who are currently employed, doesn't mean that we will be right in the coming weeks and the coming months, because what we are seeing right now are massive layoffs that are happening or bankruptcies that companies are filing. But for those of us who are in a privileged position, and yes I refer to it as a position of privilege, if you have been in a job where you have been able to work from home close to two months now,

you are fortunate. Yes it may be frustrating, Yes it may be overwhelming. Yes, you may be living in a small space, or you may have to share space with an entire family, or you may, like many of us, be living in New York City where you decided to set sacrifice your interior space because the city was your oyster. And now you're like, why the fuck did I do that?

But there's an opportunity for those of us who are free to think about how we better society, how we better this country, how we better our democracy, because it is clear that in so many different ways we are failing now. I like to blame a lot of things on Donald Trump, like the fact that Lysol had to issue a statement and so did Chlorox, and multiple state health boards had to also issue statements and go out

on Twitter telling people what we've known since toddlerhood. Don't drink bleach, don't inject yourself with shit, lock the cabinets, and apparently now you need to lock the cabinets from yourself because the New York Post has reported that at least thirty New Yorkers have ingested some type of chemical. What the fuck is wrong with you? What is right

with you? You know better than that. You know? My mom read me a hilarious meme which was that the person said, now I understand why they needed to have a warning on irons that said, do not use while you're wearing your shirt because you have fucking people that are out in the streets protesting a virus. How fucking

dumb are you? Are you dumb? Right? And I don't want to say that you're dumb for having placed your hopes and good will in the hands of the president of the United States, because frankly, for the majority of your life, you should have been able to do that, right like you should have been able to believe that in the United States of the America that when the President of the United States gets up at their podium and begins to speak, that you can trust what the

fuck they are saying. In this case, no, no, you can not. I don't know how much more information you fucking me. Then, someone who has no medical degree probably doesn't have a fucking college degree, because he hasn't released his transcript much in the way that he hasn't released his fucking taxes. Tell you, hey, maybe if we inject disinfectant I don't know, Trump, Maybe if we all stand on our hands and spin around ten times and say, candy man, candy man, candy man, we will be, you know,

relieved of the COVID nineteen. What the fuck You might as well ask a seventh grade chemistry student to find you a vaccine. If this is what we're using as a fucking barometer, give me a break. Nonetheless, the president is a danger to society. I've been saying that for years, but now many more people are waking up to the fact that, you know, the taste of bleach in their mouth not good. You know, it's actually one of the

number one ways in which people commit suicide. Right, it should drink something where the warning label states do not drink tis dangerous. Alas, this is where we are, in the midst of hell. I've often wondered what hell would feel like. It's not exactly hot, right, but it is fucking miserable. It is miserable. It is miserable to be

led by a complete and total imbecile. But this is what I will say is, folks, I don't know how we get out of this, but I do know that consistently focusing narrowly on just COVID nineteen and not any of the other things that this president and this administration is doing, that is illegal, That is criminal, that is against our best interests and our public safety need to be investigated. But what I'm finding right now, much how I always find it, is that the mainstream media is

always help bend. I'm like chasing their fucking tails. That's what I feel like. Covering this administration on a day in and day out basis feels like I'm just chasing my tail, right. But the thing is is it's attached to my body, and so I might as well stop running and actually take a moment, take a breather. That's what we need to do. We need to not pay attention to the forty percent of stupid motherfuckers that are going to continue to follow Trump off of a cliff right,

let them go. I don't want to convince these people not to drink bleach. Hey, you know that's what you want to do. Go out and do it. Your president told you to, right, But don't blame it on the quote unquote what did they say the lamestream media? Are you fucking dumb? Because every outlet covered this. The President wasn't joking. Did you hear a giggle after he said maybe we'll use disinfectant? Did you see doctor Bricks laugh? No? But her defense of him was laughable. Her defense of

him over the weekend was laughable and fucking ridiculous. The fact is, you need to stop paying attention to the president of the United States if you actually want to keep yourself and your family safe. Okay, if you are employed at this very moment, you could use part of that time to think about how you innovate in whatever field you were in. That's what this moment is actually

calling for. Once we can move through the ebbs and the flow of devastation and grief and law and anxiety, spend some time each day, maybe you start out slow, with like five minutes or ten minutes a day in thinking about what good can actually come from this. I'm going to try it as a practice this week because people need to be thinking about it, and not just the greedy, because that is always what happens in the

midst of crisis. The greedy, the already wealthy pillage, right, they pillage the village that is on fire that the people are screaming and they're hungry and they are in need of assistance. But you know what they come in and do, right, They buy up the town, They buy

up the homes, they buy up everything. I've been in conversation with different folks over the past couple of weeks, and I want us all of us right, who are not millionaires, who are not well off, who pretty much if you fancy yourself as middle class, you're probably hanging on by a threat because if you were real like fundamental middle class, you did not receive that twelve hundred dollar check. No relief has come to you as of yet.

And that's the problem with America and our capitalistic structure. If you are super wealthy, government going to give you breaks, because if you were super wealthy, then re reward your character, then there must be something fundamentally right about you. If you are poor, then there's something fundamentally wrong with you, right, But the government is set up to still, in some small way, offer some assistance. If you find yourself tracked

in the shrinking middle you are completely fucked. You don't make enough money to get the tax breaks and the benefits of the super wealthy, and you don't have to all money to be able to take advantage in some ways of some of the very dilapidated social safety nets that are in place. You're just fucked. So there is an opportunity in this moment to think that if we were to recreate something, maybe we don't want to go back to normal. Maybe we want to think about entertainment

and media in a different way. Maybe we want to think about education and our laws and our judiciary in a different way. Maybe we want to think about right, how we care for one another, how we connect, what the food industry looks like in a different way. My fear though, is that the same people that we're in charge during fucking Nixon are the ones that are still in charge now. So there's not a lot of room for innovation when you're in your seventies and fucking eighties

in this government. I'm looking at the aocs and the aion A says and the Rashida to libs to think in this moment big right, because they come from communities that have always had to scrap, that have always had to hustle, and that have always been on the front lines. What do those people need? And then we build from there. You know, the first of the month is coming at

the end of this week. There's been no relief given to those of us that pay rent none, and as a matter of fact, the mortgage relief that has been put in place essentially allows you to push it off for ninety days. But then your mortgage company read the fine print, they want to lump some when you're able to pay. So how do you go from needing to defer your mortgage to then all of a sudden hitting the lottery and are sitting on a wad of cash. No one has any idea, So I encourage you all

to read the fine print. But when you see AOC on the floor of the house saying what the fuck is going on here, she's a lot more eloquent than I am. She's asking all of the right questions. We know that the coronavirus is not an equalizer. It is not a level playing field. Those people whose communities have been vulnerable economically vulnerable, health wise vulnerable are the ones that are being the hardest hit. So maybe if we look at ways to help those that are most vulnerable

amongst us, the rest of us will do well. Maybe we should take this opportunity instead of consistently getting behind the top down approach, that we actually look at what it means to help those at the bottom and lift them up, because what we've been doing doesn't fucking work. It doesn't work. It only works for the one percent. It doesn't work for everybody else. We have to figure out a way to be better, to grow from this.

And so those are the conversations that we're going to have this week on Woke f What can be done? What should we be thinking about? What is being ignored? Where do we see opportunity in the midst of this obstacle? All right, folks, that is it for me here on

Woke a F Daily. As always, here is a reminder this week is the last week to get Woke a F Daily free when you subscribe two PM Mood wherever you get your podcasts, So if that is Google Play, if it is Spotify, if it is iTunes, subscribe for free two PM Mood and get Woke a F Daily four free for the next week for my Stay Safe as Fuck Quarantine special. As always, folks, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and day woke as fuck and remain safe as fuck.