The Morning After

It's Morning In America once again. Whatever comes next, we all have to stick together.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ok F Daily. Folks.
I am not going to sugarcode or reach for platitudes
or try and tell us that, you know, we must
roll up our sleeves and fight. What I'm going to

(00:33):
share on today's show is a live that I did
the morning after because I wanted to bring people into community,
but to have real talk. If you're not in a
place for real talk about who America is and where
we find ourselves, then this episode is not going to

(00:55):
be for you because it is not an episode where
I am talking about self care. Where I'm talking about
I'm talking about real ship. And again, this is taken
from my life that I did following the results, so
take it in folks. First off, we are in absolute

(01:22):
and total mourning those of us that have been working, marching, donating, speaking,
using our platforms creating. Today is a really dark day.
And I said, and I've been saying for the last

(01:45):
couple of days, to give yourself and the people around
you grace. And I say that because what has been
triggered in this country is astounding. I think that we
all wanted to believe that America is better than it is.

(02:08):
I think that we wanted to believe, as I did,
as you've heard me say time and time again, that oh,
it's thirty percent of the country. It's thirty percent that
is aligned with Donald Trump and white supremacy and misogyny,
and it's not. We see that now. And I think
that what the hiccup was between twenty sixteen and twenty

(02:29):
twenty four was COVID was the fact that five hundred
thousand people had died by the time that Donald Trump
had left office, and people were scared, and he told
them to inject bleach and light and you know, every
type of idiotic thing to do that would put their

(02:51):
lives and those around them in danger. He said to
open up and liberate places and all of these things.
And people chose their lives in twenty twenty In twenty
twenty four, white people chose themselves. And I'm going to
be very clear, honest and blunt. I woke up this

(03:12):
morning and I already started losing followers. And I'm okay
with that because what we all now stand to lose
in the coming months and years ahead are things that
we're not even going to be able to wrap our
minds around. For those in the comment section right now

(03:33):
that are saying that their children are in danger. They
are We're all in danger. We're in danger because Project
twenty twenty five and Donald Trump told us what their
plans were, so we know what is coming, we know

(03:53):
what to expect. It has been very clear. Donald Trump
and the millions of Americans that supported him have told
us that their priority, their number one priority is collective
suffering and pain for those that do not love like them,

(04:14):
look like them, or pray like them. Elon Musk said
that America is going to need to go through necessary
hardship in the short term in order to have long
term prosperity. When I look at some of the exit
poll numbers, which I'm really not going to trouble myself
with and neither should you. But the accuracy is that

(04:38):
in twenty sixteen, a majority of white women voted for
Donald Trump. In twenty twenty they did it again, and
in twenty twenty four they did it yet again. This
election is not on Kamala Harris and Tim Walls. They
ran an incredible campaign in the shortest time span that
we've ever seen. This election, right is the determination. This

(05:02):
clean sweep of MAGA is the determination of white people
in America that have decided that they are done playing
with democracy, that democracy no longer serves their interests, and
so if they cannot get ahead, then their goal and
desire is to pull every single person back and down.

(05:24):
Oh we're not going back to what was. There's a new,
fresh hell that is going to be in front of us.
Let me just speak the truth, friends, because I think
that we need to get this off of our chest
and get it out into the open. They have talked
about mass deportations, and yet a majority half of Latino

(05:46):
men voted for Donald Trump. Because that is how white
supremacy works. It expands itself right in order to bring
in the people so that they have the numbers. But
then it will turn on itself. So those Latino men
that think, oh I'm fair skin, right, Oh I came

(06:07):
here legally, they don't give a fuck. But you will
find that out. The white women that decided to vote
alongside their husbands, they didn't just vote alongside their husbands.
They voted for their own subjugation. But it doesn't matter, folks,
because at the end of the day, they believe that
their whiteness will in fact protect them and maybe for

(06:28):
a little while it will. You'll feel good playing house,
You'll feel good being a baby factory. You'll feel good
being pushed out of the workplace because you got a
good old white man that is going to be there
to take care of you until he gets tired of
doing that. And your abuse and whatever happens is whatever happens.
Because we now live inside of a lawless society. You

(06:52):
think the laws domestic violence that has protected women, the
safe spaces that women have been able to take themselves
and young children to get away from dangerous men, you
think that those things are still going to exist. They won't.
They talked about getting rid of no fault divorce. No
fault divorce is a piece of legislation that Ronald Reagan

(07:15):
signed in allowing people to get a divorce because they
no longer wanted to be married, not because they needed
to prove that there was any type of violence or
prove anything. It's just I don't want to be married
to this person anymore. That's going to go out the window.
While some states in this election voted to enshrine abortion rights,

(07:37):
I'm wondering how that plays out when the federal national
abortion ban comes in because we know that states' rights
only works when they are doing what exactly, protecting their
right to oppress, protecting their right to jerrymander, protecting their
right to harm. But any time that any state tries

(07:57):
to do something to enact laws to protect their own constituents,
it turns around that, oh, the executive in the federal
government is really the deciding factor. So folks that are
saying to themselves, well, I'll be safe because I'm gonna
stop you in that sentence right now, there is no

(08:17):
safety for people that look like me. I think that
safety has oftentimes been an illusion because during every Democrat
and Republican presidency we have watched countless black men, women,
and children be gunned down. That number is just gonna
go all the way up because now militias and white

(08:38):
supremacists are embolden. They're embolden on the courts, they're embolden
as the cops. So there is going to be a
significant amount of change that is going to happen quickly.
Last night I was on Ziteo with Mehdi Hassan and
he asked me, Dinielle, well, what is the pivot that

(09:00):
Democrats are going to need to make like, what will
democrats learn in this moment? And I said, what does
it matter if Donald Trump becomes president? Because at that
time we hadn't known Donald Trump becomes president. We don't
need to worry about the Democratic Party because it's not
going to exist. We don't need to worry about who's
to blame in this situation, although I am putting the

(09:22):
blame squarely on white people, because black men and black
women showed the fuck up and did what needed to
be done. But it is really difficult to be black
and queer and to wake up in a country that
despises you, regardless of how long and how hard you
have been fighting for it to live up to its ideals.
My mother said to me this morning, tears running down

(09:46):
her eyes. Why do they hate us so much? I
had no response. I don't know. Our skin is too dark,
our hair is too kinky. I have no idea. Why
do they hate gay people and trans people and queer
people so much? I don't know. Because we have the
audacity to live in our truth, that we have the
audacity to want to live in our skin and be

(10:08):
loved and protected instead of conforming ourselves to their gender
binaries and their stereotypical bullshit. Folks. I don't know what
the future holds. I am not a sorcerer, but I
do know that people like me are no longer safe

(10:29):
in this country. People right, young women that are of
child bearing age are no longer safe in this country
postmenopausal rite the cat ladies. They are not safe in
this country. And you are gonna watch as Donald Trump
takes his throne with pure immunity, pick off community after

(10:55):
community after community. You are gonna watch people that told
you that they love you align with the powers that
be in order to protect themselves. Black people are waking
up in this country today and saying, who are our allies?
Who are our allies? There are none. Fifty percent of

(11:15):
this country listen to Donald Trump for nine years, listen
to him the last fucking week of this campaign, and
chose him over a black and Asian woman. They didn't
vote against their best interests. Their best interest is white
supremacy and misogyny. That was always the goal, it was

(11:36):
always the plan. Donald Trump was right about who America is.
We have had moments, moments when we've been able to say, oh,
look we're better than we thought we were. Look we
passed marriage equality. Look, we had affirmative action. Look, we
had Roe v. Wade. Do you know that this country
has only had a democracy for sixty fucking years and

(11:58):
now it is done. Why do I say sixty years?
Because that is when the Voting Rights Act passed. That
is when we had Roe v. Waight, That is when
we had affirmative action. That is when it became illegal
to discriminate against people based on their race and based
on their gender. We held on to that true democracy

(12:19):
for sixty years because don't talk to me about before.
Don't talk to me about your fucking fourth of July, right,
because those forefathers did not include people that look like me.
We were three fifths and you know what we're about,
what two three four five laws away from being back

(12:41):
on a plantation. As was said earlier today on social media,
we have a maga Supreme Court that, oh sure Clarence
Thomas is on there, but I'm sure Clarence Thomas cut
himself out a little cozy deal. So you know what's
on the table. Brown versus the Board of Education. Oh,
they won't get rid of that, Danielle. They're gonna get
the whole fucking department of education. You think segregation is

(13:04):
not on the fucking table, y'all. I don't know what
resistance looks like in this moment. I really don't, because
I am in too much fucking pain, and the pain
is so deep that it's numb. You know what I'm saying.
When you're in so much pain that your body actually

(13:25):
can't feel anymore, that's the pain that black people, people
of color, queer people, marginalized folks, people with disabilities are
waking up in this country experiencing a type of pain
that they can't put a name to. To go have
people smiling their faces. Oh hello, take your order and

(13:49):
literally vote to take your life and livelihood away. Who
can you trust? Donald Trump has sowed the seeds of distrust.
But these motherfucking exit polls, Oh no, they have showed
us who we are. They continue to say that you
will repeat history if you do not learn from it.

(14:10):
And do you know what their responses, Burn the books,
criminalize the teachers, shut down the schools. We are two
steps away from critical thinking being a crime in this country.
Just wait, we have a red country screaming red, rage red.

(14:31):
They don't care what they are gaining from Donald Trump.
Because they're not gonna gain a fucking thing. It was
never about the gains, folks, It was about who they
get to direct the losses towards. So long as you
lose and I lose, that's their gain. We tried to
come at these people with facts, and they came out

(14:53):
us with telling us that Donald Trump was their fucking Messiah,
that he was brought to them by Jesus, this Christ himself.
They believe that God gives us interesting tools to work with.
Donald Trump was their tool. For sixty years, they have
watched this country change in front of them. They watched
the black man become president of the United States twice

(15:15):
and lost their fucking minds. Don't talk to me about oh,
I didn't do this, and all I didn't do that,
and not all white people miss me with the bullshit
today because if everyone had voted like their lives were
on the line, that they weren't going to be able
to hide behind their whiteness. Because this is what's gonna happen, folks.

(15:38):
This country is gonna get real dangerous, real fast. I
talked about the hashtags and how many black lives have
been lost. That number is going to accelerate young queer
kids today are waken up. We told them years ago
that it gets better when they get older. What the

(15:58):
fuck are we telling them to? Just kidding? You know?
For those folks that are able to hide behind their whiteness,
trust and believe that some of y'all will in order
to protect yourselves. But the rest of us are gonna
have to exist right out in the open and plain
fucking sight. It is. It is a deep dark place

(16:25):
that we find ourselves. And honestly, folks, I'm gonna say
this again. Miss me in the comments section with not
all white people, miss me in the comment section with
white people aren't the enemy? Miss me with it. Okay,
why do you think that towns have been burned down?
Do you know that the last surviving, the last surviving

(16:47):
living witness to the Tulsa massacre over one hundred years ago,
voted yesterday for Kamala Harris only to see this country
do what for her, deny the fact that she even
lost what she lost one hundred years ago, to see
that nothing has changed really fundamentally, because we've never addressed

(17:12):
the deep dark racism that exists in this country. We
just kid ourselves that it will go out of style. Oh,
they'll die off. There were young kids on Halloween dressed
up as Donald Trump and their Maga hats holding an

(17:32):
AR fifteen, a toy one dressed up as a school shooter.
Racism and hatred is going to die out. No, they've
been grooming. They've been grooming these kids, telling them who
to fear, who to hate. There's no disruption education. Our
public education system is supposed to be our disruptor. You see,

(17:55):
after the Holocaust, Germany had to come to Jesus moment
and they vowed not only to hold trials and hold
people responsible for the damage, for the deaths, for the
murders that were caused, but to also teach how it happened,

(18:16):
why it happened, so that it wouldn't happen again. Tell
me where we've done that in America. Tell me where
we have reconciled with looking at human beings as chattel.
Tell me where we have made the pivot into recognizing
everyone's humanity. We haven't, And that too was purposeful, because

(18:40):
then those that are oppressed spend the time and the
energy trying to convince you that your foot is on
their neck while you look up at the sky and say,
I don't know what you're talking about, young, And you know,
I got to say, this is not the under belly
of America. It's not. This is America. These are the

(19:05):
same people that spit on, threw rocks at and bombed
a church and killed four little black girls. That's who
America is, right, the same people who watched as George
Floyd took his last breath, had life squeezed out of him,
yelling for his mother, and then folks want to turn

(19:28):
around and re enact that for fun and make it
trend on TikTok. That's who America is. All. Political violence
is new. Racism is new. No, it's not. No, it's not.
Instead of us investigating the rise of white supremacy and
white militia and white nationalist groups in this country, instead,

(19:52):
what did we do? Oh, the FBI decided to investigate
black extremism. Somebody point to me and show me where
that's at. Is it on the police force? Is it
on the Supreme Court? Where's the black extremism at? Pointed
out to me. Was it on January sixth? But we
didn't look into it? Right? Republicans debted that because they

(20:13):
didn't want their base investigated, and Democrats let it go. Y'all,
I'm going to tell you that the road ahead is
dark and I don't know what resistance looks like, to
be honest, because I said when I launched my show
Woke AF back in twenty seventeen, when I launched Woke AF,

(20:37):
I said that everything in America was going to get
bloodier before it got better. We have hit that bloodier stage.
Because if we thought that the camps that were built
during Donald Trump's first administration, where he had his lawyers
go to court so that he wouldn't have to provide

(20:59):
hygienie products, toothpaste, soap, water flushing toilets for the undocumented
people that he corralled up, if we think that those
camps are only going to be for those folks. Donald
Trump was talking about the Aliens Act right seventeen ninety
eight or whenever it was. He loves the seventeen hundreds,

(21:23):
which was used to in turn Japanese Americans in this country.
So you think that what it's not going to be us,
It can never be us that are put in the
camps that are sent away. And the funny thing is
I was thinking about this. I said, who is going
to save America? Right? World War Two, we waited for

(21:46):
six million Jewish people to be killed. Six million, and
that's just the number that we work with. We know
that there was actually more, and then the world intervened,
but six million. Donald trum is reorganizing the access of
evil with America at the center, aligning it with Russia,

(22:08):
with North Korea. We will be at war with Iran
soon enough. It is. I cannot fathom how America couldn't
take democracy over the finish line. I just I don't
get it, but I do because when this country became

(22:32):
started to become too inclusive, right, we're respecting people's pronouns,
we're respecting women's bodies. Right, it's too much. And they
fucking yanked the cord on that shit and said, nah,
this democracy shit. Mm mmm, you know it's amazing. Let

(22:54):
me tell you something that I would never do. I'm
never going on a right wing lie and going into
the chat to say you're wrong, you're dumb, you're this,
you're that. Motherfucker. If you think I give a shit
about trolls today, this whole country is full of fucking trolls.
Ain't nowhere to be safe from them, Like you know

(23:15):
what I'm saying, that's what we know today. The whole
country is full of fucking trols, people who want the
worst for you, People who they're not just hiding behind
screens and avatars and saying oh die and whatever. No,
they're gonna say that shit to your face. The question is,
how are we going to decide to move forward? How

(23:37):
are we going to protect those that we love? I
don't know. I honestly do not have any answers today.
I have a lot of questions, but I do not
have a lot of answers for you know, I know
that there are people right now with their platitudes and
they're like, we live to fight another day, and you know,

(23:59):
don't worry. Let's look at midterms and let's look at this.
And I'm just like, look at the shit that we're
sitting in. How about that? How about we just take
a fucking collective pause. And for the Democrats that want
to star pointing fingers and talk about what Kamala did
wrong and what happened here and who's to blame miss
me with it? You know, who's to blame? American oligarchs,

(24:23):
corporate mainstream media, everyone who has been in cahoots for
Donald Trump for the last nine years. Also that they
can get more tax breaks. They don't care if it
comes at the expense of breaking other people's backs. As
a matter of fact, that's a perk. Again, we thought
by telling people here's the deal, this is what they're

(24:46):
up to, that they would be like, oh my god, shocked,
I'm going to vote for my rights. Instead, they did
vote for their rights. They vote for their right to oppress.
They vote for their right to oppress and suppressed and depress.
That's what they voted for. And there were people that said,

(25:08):
you know, I'm not going to vote. I don't like
neither one of them, right, I'm not going to vote
because I have principles about Gaza. How do you think
Gaza gounfair today? Real talk? It's not, you know, real talk.
What do we think is happening? You think as people
in this country are going to be toiling and reeling
with how they're going to put food on the table,

(25:29):
how they're going to afford healthcare, how they're going to
afford to like live and exist, how we're going to
get rid of because you know, one of the things
that they want to get rid of. And I put
it in a short the other day which was like
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, you know that
make sure that folks are treated equally at work and

(25:53):
are not fired on the basis of race, on gender,
on religion, on all of those things. That's gone. So
people are just like, oh my employer, you know, I'll
be okay, I have a job. Your boss can fire you,
right and now fire you. Look at you, Call you
the N word, call you a whull host of things.

(26:13):
What's your recourse? These are the these are the this
is real talk, folks. I'm genuinely not trying to scare
any I'm scared enough. I don't need to try and
scare Like, we're here, We're here, We've arrived. So what

(26:33):
I offer to all of you is to find ways
to protect yourself and protect the people that you love,
and protect your communities, because that's what it's going to
be about. You know what's sick too, is that I
know that gun sales are going to go through the roof.
That's what's crazy, is like who wins here? Every aspect

(26:55):
of the GOP, including the NRA, gun sales are going
to go through the roof. I've already seen it where
people are like, oh, we need to buy guns. It's
the master fucking plan here, because that's gonna keep us safe.
There are more guns in this country than there are
fucking people right now. How well has that been working
out for us? It hasn't. But this is what people

(27:18):
will do in order to feel like they are going
to be able to protect themselves and their families. For
those of you that are parents, I really my heart
goes out to you. I don't know how you explain
this moment to young people who were not able to vote,
but all of the decisions that were made last night

(27:42):
and today are absolutely going to affect their lives moving forward.
So I don't know how you talk to them, but
you try and keep your families as safe as you
possibly can. But it is important now more than ever
to tell the truth. To tell the truth. America is
a dangerous place. It is a dangerous, dangerous country for

(28:07):
anyone that is not white, not ciss, not hetero, not
pseudo Christian. It is a dangerous country that just got
increasingly more dangerous because all bets are off. So for
the folks that think that you know everything's going to
be fine. We survived Trump the first time. Understand that

(28:29):
there were lots of folks that were acting as guardrails,
lots of folks that stop Donald Trump from doing his
worst like shooting protesters. None of those people are around anymore,
and he has the military and the courts. So our resistance,
our action has to look really different than what it's

(28:53):
been because the things that we used to have on
our side, or we thought that we had on our side,
we know longer have on our side. So take today,
take the week to grieve, because the loss is really
real and it is going to get realer by the hours,

(29:18):
the weeks, and the months. So take care of yourselves, ground,
you know, build and find community because we are going
to need each other now more than ever. And it
is it's going to be about how we create community
that keeps us safe as safe as we possibly can be.

(29:40):
And we also have to change our idea of what
safety actually looks like in Trump's world and in Trump's America.
That's that's this is this is the new world order,
and we have to figure out how to move in
this new space. And it is not going to happen overnight,

(30:03):
but just going inward and protecting ourselves and not thinking
about the other is how we got to this place.
So we have to start thinking collectively minded as opposed
to individualistically, as opposed to selfishly. We need to build
the collective power wherever you are. But today, be gentle

(30:26):
with yourselves, Be gentle with the people around you. Give
yourselves deep, deep grace. And I do want to say
that we will get through this, but I don't know how.
And for as long as it is not illegal for
me to speak my mind and to share my thoughts,

(30:48):
I'm going to continue to do that. But do know
that the work that I do is going to get
increasingly dangerous. I don't know what is to come for
political analysts, academics, journalists. I have no idea. I know
what history has shown us where those people go and
what happens to them. So a lot of your folks

(31:12):
that you love and appreciate and have been following for
a long time, they may go off platform for their
own safety and protection. And like I said, I will
continue to speak for as long as I can without
jeopardizing my safety and the safety of those that I love.
So that's my promise to you. I wish that I

(31:36):
could give you all a collective hug. Hug yourselves, end
each other, and take good care today. Deeply, I'm going
to take the rest of the day to meditate and
to be in nature and to be with my family. Y'

(31:56):
all be well, Be well. There are dark days ahead,
and in the darkness, it is really important for you
all to be the light, to really be the light.
That's what this moment is going to require, because we
will have to be each other's lanterns. That is it

(32:19):
for me today, dear friends on wok f as always,
power to the people and to all the people. Power,
get woke and stay woke as fuck.