How Many War Crimes Does It Take

Danielle continues to shine a light on the most important story in America: the violent crackdown on student protests on college campuses across the country. This is actually not a "complex" issue, and we as a people need to think about the work that is required to put into creating the world we desire.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Woke f Daily with
Meet your Girl Danielle Moody back recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
I'm struggling and when I have moments of struggle. In
times of struggle, I try and offer up that truth
to all of you. And I'm going to say some

(00:33):
things on this Woke Wednesday that I find troubling about
the current moment that we are in. And the purpose
of woke a App is not for people to you know,
agree with every single thing that I say and feel
the same exact way that I do. The purpose is
to spark conversation. The purpose is to have us tilt

(00:57):
our heads and open our eyes and say, huh, I
never thought about it that way on a variety of issues, right,
because it's that kind of thinking of understanding that there
is always more to learn, more to know, and to

(01:20):
allow ourselves to continue to be students of the world
that we're living in, to ask questions, to be critical thinkers.
And so I'm struggling right now with how the protests
at the universities and colleges are being characterized. I'm struggling

(01:46):
with this current administration and their response to it and
their you know, unwavering support for Israel. I'm struggling right
now with accusations of anti Semitism, all for the benefit
of shutting down conversation that is necessary in order for

(02:08):
us to get to a place of real significant change.
I'm struggling with the way in which the oppressors right
and those that uphold systems of injustice want to tell
other people the right way right to protest systems of injustice.

(02:29):
So what I'm going to offer today are a couple
of my thoughts, not on different news stories, but on
this particular story, because I think, friends, that this story
that it's happening on college campuses is the most important
story in America right now, and I'm going to tell
you why. From my perspective, Colleges and universities have always

(02:55):
been a petri dish, if you will, a place of
great experiment and thought, a microcosm of what society is
and who it wants to be, a place where you
can go to sharpen your skills right and understanding of

(03:18):
various industries, various philosophies, to learn how to socialize with
so many different groups of people, people from around the
United States, from around the world, from different ethnic groups,
from different cultural backgrounds, different sexual orientations and identities. Right,

(03:41):
the importance of colleges and universities to me is not
just about the lie of what it was of getting
a good job, because that's what my generation was told,
is that you go to college because you can't get
a quote unquote good job without going there. And now, college,
as I continue to say, is a Ponzi scheme, right,
it is a setup, particularly for those in middle and

(04:03):
low income communities that are roped into ratcheting up six
figure plus worth of debt that they're told that they
can't exist in the professional workspace without, but are not
given the certainty that said debt is going to shove
somehow provide them with a better life and a better future. Right,

(04:26):
Because what we are seeing now with the younger generations
is that that's not the fucking case, because income has
not kept pace with inflation, with corporate greed, right, with
the rise in rent and mortgages and interest rates in
all of these things. And so when people want to

(04:47):
dictate to young people about how to best spend their money,
it's not the same fucking pot of money. Yoh, Like,
it's just not. But aside from the economics that are
at play, the point of colleges and universities is really
to help diversify thought, to help put different perspectives on

(05:11):
critical issues and see if we can't look at them
from a different lens, from a different vantage point and
come up with solutions right like to our most pressing
issues and problems. It is also the place where young
people begin to formalize their perspectives and their opinions on

(05:38):
a myriad of issues, in justice being one of them. Right,
you're taught from such a young age right from wrong,
or at least you used to be, and we all
had some universal idea of what was right and what
was wrong. It was wrong to cause unnecessary harm to people.

(05:58):
It was wrong to be mean, it was wrong to steal,
to murder, to pillage, all of these things. Like, we
were taught what was right and wrong. But then now,
as I look back through my own education, you realize that,
like you may have been told on the playground, don't
knock down Johnny and take his candy, right, because that's

(06:21):
not yours, it doesn't belong to you. But when we
see it on a larger political scale and landscape, right,
then somehow the ends justify the means. And was it
really Johnny's candy, right or was it mine? And you know,

(06:41):
and if there are more people in my corner saying
that that candy is actually belongs to me and Johnny
really stole it, what then becomes the truth. I do
not think that the issues that are playing out on
the college emphasis are that complex. I really don't. I

(07:08):
don't think that it is complex at all to bear
witness to horrific atrocities on your phone every single day,
where you see headlines and videos that show you body parts,

(07:28):
headlines of yet another mass grave that was uncovered in Israel,
filled with the bodies and parts of Palestinian people. Don't
take my word for it, Google it because it was

(07:50):
broadcast on CNN. How many war crimes does it take
for folks to recognize that those that say that they
are the victims right can also victimize That two things

(08:15):
can be true at the same time. That there can
indeed be anti Semitism that exists and anti Islamophobia that
exists as well, anti you know that exists as well,
That those that were oppressed when given unbridled power, can

(08:41):
also turn around and become the oppressor. And that is
what young people are seeing. They're asking themselves, why are
we funding this? It is one thing to have the
right to defend yourself, but you do not have the
right to torment, destroy, abuse and torture all others because

(09:07):
of your sense right of victimhood, because what does that
then make you? For so long, hundreds of years in fact,
enslavers did not want to teach the enslaved Africans how

(09:32):
to read because knowledge is power, did not allow enslaved
Africans to congregate in mass because then community is built.
Because they dictated the rules of slavery through the lens

(09:55):
of fear of uprising. Well, the thing is is that
you don't actually have to fear an uprising. If you're
not torturing, brutally beating, right and like manipulating, verbally abusing people,

(10:17):
then you don't have to worry about what happens when
they become free. And yet, through my own lens, when
I traveled to Israel and Palestine, I saw oppression that

(10:37):
I had only ever read in history books. I saw
apartheid with my own eyes. When you have two types
of license plates, one for one group of people and
one for another. And I'm not talking about the difference
in license plates of those that live in Texas versus

(10:58):
those that live in Louisiana. I'm talking about a license
plate that says that you are less than human and
that you do not belong on this road. Similarly to
the sunset laws that are still on the books in
many states inside of these United States, that dictated that

(11:20):
any black person, regardless of their status, found inside of
any said town after sunset, could be lynched, could be beaten,
could be raped, could be maimed, could be tortured because
that person, that black body, was not welcomed. I understand

(11:51):
what it is like to feel unsafe. I understand it
through the lens of being black. I understand it through
the lens of being a woman, understand it through the
lens of being queer. I understand it in a way
that my ancestors didn't have the ability as some groups

(12:13):
who came to these United States willingly. First of all,
so there's already we're starting off in a different fucking place,
but willingly come here and then change their name so
that they could assimilate and the generations after them could
assimilate into this country, because when you're black, you don't

(12:33):
just get to change your skin. It doesn't work that way.
So much so that they created an entire rule and
system called the one drop rule, meaning that if you
had even one drop of African blood in you, you
were black. Because for white America, it was always about

(12:57):
a numbers game, and they had to continue to suppress
the number of black people right so that they could
continue with their oppression and their power. It is not
hard now to look back in time and say, oh,

(13:23):
that was repulsive, But do you know how I grew up, Well,
that was the times. That's what my teacher said, Oh
you know, that's what they did then, not that it
was cruel and inhumane and horrific. And my god, let
us look at this and how we decide to oppress

(13:46):
an entire group of people and criminalize them for nothing
other than existing in the same space as you, and
you feeling threatened just by virtue of having to share
space with other people that may not look like you,
that may not pray like you. If we actually embraced

(14:10):
real civil behavior in modern civilization, then we wouldn't have
to worry. But when it's decided that the only way
that you can stay safe and in power is to
press your foot on somebody else's neck and tell them

(14:32):
that they are the problem. What do you think that
the long term result is going to be? So when
young people now are looking around understanding how much money
they are paying into these institutions that are paying into
systems that they do not want their money to go towards.

(14:56):
Much in the same way that the United States is
paying billions of dollars a year, three to four billion
in fact, to provide welfare for Israel, and you put
no contingency on that money, like to build an actual democracy,

(15:20):
even one that is as imperfect as the United States.
But my God, when I was in Israel, I said,
this is what the United States would have looked like
had the Civil rights movement not happened, or had it
been queuched, had the justices that were on the Supreme

(15:41):
Court be the very justices that are sitting there now,
I'm sure as fuck wouldn't have a podcast, let alone
be living in the building that I'm living in and
the part of town that I'm living in. Having had
an education that I had, there is no civilized way
to protest against in civility. Martin Luther King was the

(16:06):
biggest proponent an example of non violent resistance, and do
you know what they did to him? They shot him dead,
widowed his wife, and left his children fatherless. The late
Congressman John Lewis marched peacefully across Edmund's Bridge and was

(16:33):
beaten and bloodied by a legal system that told him
that he did not have the right to exist. Black
panthers that organized in this country for black liberation, that
created food programs and literacy programs in after school programs

(16:53):
were bombed, jailed, and assassinated by this government. What were
they doing? They were bearing arms the way that the
constitution told them that they could. They didn't see the
fine print that had said only white men were allowed
to do that, and that in so exercising the fullness

(17:17):
of your citizen injury would cost you your life. There
are still political prisoners in these United States that were
black liberationists. They only are let out of jail when
they are on depth's door. That's the modern day political

(17:38):
way of leaving the body hanging from the news or
leaving Mike Brown's body rotting in the street after police
officers killed him. For four hours in the hot sun
as a reminder to stay in your place. There is
no right way to react to the obscenity of what

(18:03):
is considered the rule of law. So when you see
young people setting up camps, barricading themselves in buildings, and
trying to figure out how to have their voice is heard.

(18:23):
When they try to be civil but are met with incivility,
you tell me what is the right way. If I
can't critique a system of government because of the religion
of the people who are running that government, how are
we to form conversation and get to a point of

(18:45):
change and clarity. There are bigger issues at play here
that are about power and control, subjugation and silence. It
isn't just about what's happening on the college campuses, my friend.
It is about what is happening all around us. And

(19:08):
the questions that I want to be asked and not
necessarily answered on this show every single day is what
are we going to do about it? How are we
going to create this more perfect union? How are we
going to talk openly and honestly about injustice and our

(19:32):
responsibility to bring light to darkness. That is the underlying
question of what it means to be woke. What kind
of world do we want to live in and how
do we want to create it together? Because it's sure

(19:55):
as fuck is not about lying about what we are
seeing with our own eyes and pretending it doesn't ega exist,
or staying silent because we don't want to hurt other
people's feelings. It is about telling the truth. It is
about integrity, It is about compassion and empathy. That's how

(20:18):
we build community. It starts with us. It starts with
hard conversations about who we are and who we want
to be. That is it for me today, Dear friends

(20:39):
on Woke a f as always, Power to the people
and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay
woke as fuck.