What Does Resistance Look Like?

In the months and years ahead, we need to seek out the avenues of light and refuse to be obedient to the reversal of progress Trump's Republican party will attempt to impose upon all of us.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with
me your girl Daniel Moodie recording from the Home Bunker. Folks.
You know, I know that all of us have been
experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions over the last several days
since the election. And for me, I'm up and then

(00:35):
I'm down, and then I'm up again, and then I'm
like on my couch in the dark, eating popcorn, just
staring into an abyss. And I think that what it
is is that I am in this place of just

(00:56):
deep disappointment and who I believe that I'm America had
the possibility to be. I was never under any illusion
that America was this beautiful land of opportunity where streets
are paved with gold and everyone has all obstacles removed
and you know, can live the life of their choosing.

(01:17):
But America on the spectrum of freeness, provided a sense
of freeness for even the most marginalized people, right. And
you know, we're under no false ideas about what the

(01:37):
experience in America is for black people. And the fact
that you can lose your life at a routine traffic
stop because of a trigger happy, white, delusional law enforcement officer.
We're under no false ideas about the treatment that trans

(01:58):
people receiving this country, where I just saw the other
day that a woman who was misgendered by a man
in Texas, murdered by him was just given a free
pass because the victim was trans. So I'm under no

(02:18):
illusions about the work that America has needed to do
on itself to actually live up to its ideals. But
the disappointment comes when we experience an absolute reversal of
fortune of progress, and that's the moment that we're in now.

(02:39):
I think that it's really important for us to understand
that when folks say, oh, we've seen worse before, Oh
we'll get through it, the fact is that sure there
have been worse moments, but understand that everybody did not
make it through. We're still discovering in this country mass

(03:01):
graves of enslaved black people or free black people who
were killed by white mobs. We're still discovering the Native
American children who were stolen, kidnapped from their families, their tribes,
sent into sexually abused educational environments, and were also killed.

(03:29):
And we're still discovering those graves. America in so many
ways is in fact a cemetery. And so while we
can look and say that there have been darker times,
you also have to understand that everybody didn't make it
to the other side, that there were countless lives that

(03:49):
were lost. And so I think that where I find
myself when I get into moments of despair and grief
is knowing that we're all not going to make it
through Trump's regime, that millions of lives will be lost,

(04:12):
millions of people will be traumatized, will lose their homes,
their lives, their livelihood in this new regime that centers whiteness,
centers patriarchy at the expense of everything else. And so

(04:35):
what I feel is important in this moment for us
to remember and not just to acquiesce, is that we
can grieve. We can have moments and days of deep sadness.
We just can't stay there. You know. This is why
I talk about community being so important and people needing

(04:59):
to find the that they can lean on so that
we're all not down at the same time that when
you're down, there are other people that will be there
to comfort you and to show you the light once again.
And then when they are down, you can be the
one that is the lantern that shows them the light.
Because a part of where we are is also recognizing

(05:24):
that we cannot just acquiesce. And I know, and I'm
speaking to myself as much as I'm speaking to all
of you, that we can't just resign ourselves to what
will be, That we still have agency, we still have
a story to write. You know, I was reading this

(05:46):
piece at Talking Points Memo and I posted it on
my YouTube page on Friday, and the title reads, the
most pernicious anticipatory obedience hides in plain sight. And you
know what was written here, and what I want to
say to all of you is that it is fair

(06:10):
to be overwhelmed, but we cannot just be obedient. This
is a moment for good trouble. As John Lewis once said,
here's what he writes in this piece. During harrowing times,

(06:31):
some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It's not
a one way progress. Almost everyone has their moments, but
there's a particular kind of militant dumerism afoot at the moment.
Any discussions of next steps in the battle against trump
Ism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or

(06:54):
strategies are met with a chorus of don't you get it,
don't you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin,
or don't you know? Rules don't matter to Donald Trump?
And this is the point, right is to have us
believe that we have nothing left to do. They go

(07:17):
on to say, in a sense, it's a dialogue genetically
related to what I called competitive hyperbole two days ago.
Strategies for the future, or even the assumption that there
will be a future, get shouted down as a hopeless
naivete and at least within the stream of conversation, which
I'm certainly not saying is dominant, but it is there.

(07:40):
It leads to the same escalating declarations of dystopia and totalism.
Is it possible that Donald Trump could push the American
public into dictatorship or, more plausibly, the kind of soft
autocracy or broken democracy we know today in places like
Russia or Hungary or Turkey? Sure? Is it likely? I

(08:02):
don't know any way of putting odds to such a thing,
But what I know is that it's not easy. There's
Congress and the courts, and even when they're compliant, the
process is still difficult, time consuming, and hard to pull off.
There's also the double level government of federalism, in which
a great deal of the machinery of government remains in

(08:25):
other hands. That's more difficulty and time consuming obstacles, and
it's the work of an opposition to make it as
hard and time consuming as possible, to make the consequences
as visible as possible. I really appreciated this piece in
Talking Points memo, and like I said, I've posted it,

(08:47):
but you do need a subscription to read the entire thing.
But I pulled out those two pieces from it because
I think that it's important. We cannot just make this
easy for Donald Trump and his clown cabinet to instill
the type of militant power that they want to hold

(09:10):
over all of us. Now, to me, the resistance does
not look like pussy hats and women's marches and the like,
and then you go home and you feel really good
about the march that you did, but you actually do
nothing to follow up with that. It does look like
providing resources if you have them, to abortion clinics, to

(09:31):
reproductive justice spaces, to transgender equity spaces, to organizations and
nonprofits that are working in this really dangerous time. To
protect the most marginalized. It looks like sharing articles and
resources that direct people towards independent media so that they

(09:55):
can cut the cord from cable news, which has been complicit. Right,
it looks like figuring out what resistance looks like. And
if for you, that looks like holding on to your joy,
going dancing, gardening, doing what brings your soul peace, If
your resistance looks like that, then that is resistance. Because

(10:19):
the goal that they have for all of us is
to be downtrodden, hopeless, depressed, angsty, angry, sad, demoralized. We're
malleable if we do the work of beating ourselves down
and then by the time that they approach us, we're
already putting our hands out to put the cuffs on.

(10:41):
You have to think, in this moment, what does my
resistance look like? How do I want to show up
in this moment? And if in fact our days are numbered,
how do I want to be remembered. I remember being
young and learning about the civil rights era and always

(11:07):
wondering who would I have been right As the bus
boycotts were happening, as segregation was raging, as police were
beating and brutalizing and killing black people, and as they
were fighting back, you know, non violently and sometimes exercising

(11:28):
their Second Amendment right as the Black Panthers did. Who
would I be? And now I know? I'm the storyteller,
the narrator, the person that is offering up their analysis
and clear vision of where we are and where I
would love to see us be. I'm the person that
is producing political content for those that are willing and

(11:53):
want to know the truth, because story, narrative, truth is
how we battle against the lies, the grift, and the deceit.
The people that are being placed in positions of power
in our government are criminals. They're liars, their abusers, they're repugnant,

(12:17):
they're deplorable, and so we do not need to consume
their bullshit. We need to fortify ourselves and find the
avenues of light, of hope, and of truth that will
keep us afloat during the tsunami. I'm not gonna lie

(12:38):
to you and tell you like, oh, you know, it
won't be as bad, it'll be like twenty sixteen. No,
it's going to be worse than people could ever possibly imagine.
It's why I went horse for the entire election. Cycle
trying to get people to see what was at stake,
and seven percent of Democrats decided to stay home. Portions

(13:00):
of Democrats decided to throw their vote to Jill Stein,
but the majority of white people that are totally fine
with racism and misogyny came out in droves. So sure
as the numbers are tallied in we realize that the
margins were slim, which means to me, we could have won,
but something went awry. Some people were not reached, or

(13:24):
some just thought that, you know, oh, it's all bluster,
but we'll make it through. And now folks are recognizing
to some extent, but it'll get worse. The buyer's remorse
that they have Oh I didn't realize. I thought everybody
was doing their own fucking research. So what we have
to continue to do is to fortify ourselves, build real

(13:49):
life community in real life and online. That's not about
creating a bubble, It's about creating a net and network
of safety. I also incur people if you have the
ability to think about genuinely, if things become untenable in
the United States, what your exit strategy is. Knowing that

(14:12):
not everybody is going to be able to leave but
those people that can should start thinking about what it
looks like and preparing so that you are not caught
off guard but instead ready to go. We need to
be working in a both and mindset, both figuring out

(14:33):
what our resistance looks like in these uncharted times and
uncharted waters, and what an exit strategy looks like, because,
as I say, all of us will not make it
the same way that all of us did not make
it through the global health pandemic. A million Americans lost
their lives, the same way that all that came through

(14:55):
the Middle Passage did not make it. Yes, of course
there are a darker time times that we have seen
in our history, but we have to be very real
about the moment that we're in and recognize if this
is it, what do we leave behind for folks to know,
to remember and to pick up the baton where we

(15:16):
leave it. So my message is we have to resist.
And I'm saying that to you as much as I
say to myself, because There'll be some days that I
turn on this microphone and I've had it, I'm exhausted,
I've got nothing left to give, And then I'll go
through the comments sections and I'll see on Blue Sky

(15:38):
and in on Instagram, people sending messages of encouragement that
refuel me and give me the strength to turn on
the mic and do the work once more. But it
is all of our jobs. There's not enough to just
cut off family members, particularly those of you that are
white who are like, oh my sister's a Trump, Are

(15:59):
my dad's a Trump? Or and this amon and that one,
and just cut them out because again they're not listening
to me. But maybe if over these holidays that are approaching,
you actually have conversations and ask them why why did
you vote for him? What does it signify to you?
What are you hoping is the result? And listen, we

(16:22):
need to get back to a place of conversation. It
doesn't mean that we are going to agree, and particularly
when the decisions that other people make determine whether or
not people are treated with dignity and respect and have
the opportunity to access the American dream. No, that's not
up for debate. But I know that Donald Trump is
coming into office hoping to further divide this country furthers

(16:47):
so resentment and hate and anger, and so if we
are not trying to be the bridge in our own
families in our own circles. Then he's going to continue
to win and trump Ism will never go away. Pick
your path, choose who you're going to be in this moment,
and do it. Because if we band together, we build community,

(17:09):
we build safety, we just may have a chance to
make it through. That is it for me today. Dear friends,
on woke ath as always power to the people and
to all the people. Power. Get woke and stay woke
as fuck.