Host Erik Fleming interviews historian Carla Kaplan about her new biography Troublemaker, exploring Jessica Mitford’s sharp humor, anti‑fascist activism, and impact on consumer rights and social justice.
Also featured is Cody Nagle of Civil Survival, who shares her lived experience with addiction and incarceration and her legal work to remove barriers to employment, housing, and record relief for people reentering society.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.
00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 If you like what you're hearing, then I need you to do a few things.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:19 First, I need subscribers. I'm on Patreon at patreon.com slash amomentwitherikfleming.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:24 Your subscription allows an independent podcaster like me the freedom to speak
00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 truth to power, and to expand and improve the show.
00:00:28 --> 00:00:32 Second, leave a five-star review for the podcast on the streaming service you
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 listen to it. That will help the podcast tremendously.
00:00:36 --> 00:00:41 Third, go to the website, momenterik.com. There you can subscribe to the podcast,
00:00:42 --> 00:00:47 leave reviews and comments, listen to past episodes, and even learn a little bit about your host.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:51 Lastly, don't keep this a secret like it's your own personal guilty pleasure.
00:00:52 --> 00:00:57 Tell someone else about the podcast. Encourage others to listen to the podcast
00:00:57 --> 00:01:02 and share the podcast on your social media platforms, because it is time to
00:01:02 --> 00:01:04 make this moment a movement.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:10 Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:20 The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:05 Hello, and welcome to another Moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:11 Today, I have two guests, young ladies,
00:02:11 --> 00:02:21 who are doing things with their experience and their talent to make a statement
00:02:21 --> 00:02:23 and make some changes, right?
00:02:24 --> 00:02:29 So, one is a historian and a professor and an author.
00:02:29 --> 00:02:36 And she has written a book about a woman who not only went against the system,
00:02:36 --> 00:02:41 but even her own family to try to make a difference here in the United States.
00:02:41 --> 00:02:49 And then the other guest is someone who has battled personal challenges in order
00:02:49 --> 00:02:54 to turn around and help people that have gone through those similar challenges
00:02:54 --> 00:02:58 and just be an example that you can make it through.
00:02:58 --> 00:03:03 And she has dedicated her life's work to helping people get through.
00:03:04 --> 00:03:10 So it's really, really an honor and a treat to have interviewed these women.
00:03:11 --> 00:03:17 And I hope that you agree with that assessment and enjoy the conversations that we had.
00:03:18 --> 00:03:26 If you support this podcast, and just by listening, you have done me a tremendous favor by doing that,
00:03:26 --> 00:03:35 you can go to www.momenterik.com and show or see how else you can support the podcast.
00:03:35 --> 00:03:40 We, you know, if you want to just make a one-time donation, if you want to subscribe.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:45 You know, got all the information, it's like, oh, well, I like this particular podcast,
00:03:46 --> 00:03:51 man, I want to check out, you know, another one, you can use the website to
00:03:51 --> 00:03:56 do that, you know, whether you want to have a specific time or,
00:03:56 --> 00:04:03 you know, a particular guest to hear what they had to say, you can do that on the website.
00:04:03 --> 00:04:08 So please go visit that if you like what you're hearing, write a review, all that stuff.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 So please do that, all right?
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 Okay, so let's go ahead and kick this show off. And as always,
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:04:24 --> 00:04:29 Thanks, Erik. President Trump dismissed Attorney General Pam Bondi and appointed
00:04:29 --> 00:04:34 his former lawyer, Todd Blanche, to lead the Justice Department in the interim.
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 President Trump used a primetime address to claim the U.S.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:42 Military is nearing its objective in Iran, while warning of further escalation
00:04:42 --> 00:04:44 if the country does not capitulate.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:50 An estimated 8 million participants joined nationwide No Kings protests on March
00:04:50 --> 00:04:55 28 to oppose President Trump's policies and the ongoing war with Iran.
00:04:55 --> 00:05:00 Iranian-linked hackers breached FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email,
00:05:01 --> 00:05:04 leaking private photographs and historical documents to the Internet.
00:05:05 --> 00:05:10 The Supreme Court held oral arguments regarding President Trump's efforts to
00:05:10 --> 00:05:11 limit birthright citizenship.
00:05:12 --> 00:05:16 Major U.S. airports are returning to normal operations after President Trump
00:05:16 --> 00:05:21 signed an emergency order to pay TSA officers who had been working without pay
00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 during a partial government shutdown.
00:05:24 --> 00:05:30 DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen paused a controversial $38.3 billion plan to
00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 utilize large warehouses for immigrant detention.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:38 Idaho's legislature passed a bill criminalizing the use of public and private
00:05:38 --> 00:05:44 restrooms or changing rooms that do not align with an individual's sex assigned at birth.
00:05:44 --> 00:05:51 In an 8-to-1 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for minors.
00:05:52 --> 00:05:58 ICE reported that at least 14 immigrants have died in custody during the first three months of 2026.
00:05:59 --> 00:06:04 Authorities have arrested the husband of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Mateer
00:06:04 --> 00:06:08 Bowen, the city's first black and Haitian female commissioner in connection
00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 with her death in a domestic violence case.
00:06:11 --> 00:06:18 Vice President J.D. Vance won the 2028 CPAC straw poll, securing 53% of the vote.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:23 And NASA's Artemis II mission successfully launched a crew of four astronauts
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 on a historic voyage around the moon.
00:06:26 --> 00:06:30 I am Grace G., and this has been a moment of news.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:44 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it is time for my guest, Carla Kaplan.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:50 Carla Kaplan is the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at
00:06:50 --> 00:06:51 Northeastern University.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:55 She has published seven books, including Miss Anne in Harlem,
00:06:55 --> 00:07:00 The White Women of the Black Renaissance, and Zora Neale Hurston,
00:07:00 --> 00:07:06 A Life in Letters, both New York Times notable books, and has written for such
00:07:06 --> 00:07:10 publications as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, and The Nation.
00:07:11 --> 00:07:15 Kaplan has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 Endowment for the Humanities, among others.
00:07:17 --> 00:07:23 She serves on the Board of Biographers International Organization and is a Society
00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 of American Historians Fellow.
00:07:26 --> 00:07:30 Kaplan earned her Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University.
00:07:30 --> 00:07:33 She divides her time between Boston and Cape Cod.
00:07:33 --> 00:07:38 Her new book, which we will discuss in the interview, is Troublemaker,
00:07:38 --> 00:07:42 The Fierce Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.
00:07:42 --> 00:07:46 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:07:46 --> 00:07:50 on this podcast, Carla Kaplan.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:04 All right. Carla Kaplan, how you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:08:05 --> 00:08:09 Doing really well. So nice to be with you today. Well, it's nice to meet you,
00:08:09 --> 00:08:17 and we're going to be as expeditious as possible, but I want to get into this
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 book that you wrote, Troublemaker,
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 The Fierce Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.
00:08:22 --> 00:08:27 You have been recognized for this book as well as other books that you have written, and,
00:08:28 --> 00:08:32 This is going to be a fascinating thing for me, and we'll get into that in the
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 interview. But I do a couple of icebreakers real quick.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 Sure. So the first one is, I want you to respond to this quote.
00:08:39 --> 00:08:43 You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the
00:08:43 --> 00:08:45 guilty. What does that quote mean to you?
00:08:46 --> 00:08:50 That's one of my favorites. I love that you started with that.
00:08:50 --> 00:08:54 Now, I mean, I have to say she did believe you could change the world.
00:08:55 --> 00:08:59 And she believed that one of the ways you could do it was by embarrassing the guilty.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:03 It's one of the reasons we need her so much today.
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 You know, we're surrounded by the guilty, I don't have to tell you.
00:09:06 --> 00:09:12 And she would just be having her way with them because she had a genius for
00:09:12 --> 00:09:18 not only letting the exploiters and the fascists and the authoritarians and
00:09:18 --> 00:09:22 the racists hoist themselves by their own petards,
00:09:22 --> 00:09:27 indict themselves by their own language, but her real genius was that she could
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 always do it with a certain amount of humor.
00:09:30 --> 00:09:36 Now, even when she was treating the most serious subjects like fascism,
00:09:36 --> 00:09:43 she would go after people who supported fascism in a way that made you both
00:09:43 --> 00:09:47 see everything that was wrong with their thinking, but it brought everybody
00:09:47 --> 00:09:51 together to laugh at them as well. And that was her gift.
00:09:51 --> 00:09:57 She could infuse laughter into almost any context.
00:09:57 --> 00:10:02 Her most famous book is the world's funniest book about death and dying,
00:10:02 --> 00:10:03 the American way of death.
00:10:03 --> 00:10:09 So when she says you can embarrass the guilty, you know, she means that very
00:10:09 --> 00:10:14 seriously. You can sort of laugh them out of the room, and that was her gift. Yeah.
00:10:14 --> 00:10:18 So now the next icebreaker is what we call 20 questions.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:23 Okay. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.
00:10:24 --> 00:10:30 Seventeen. Okay. What's something about people who see the world differently
00:10:30 --> 00:10:33 than you that you've come to appreciate?
00:10:34 --> 00:10:38 You mean people who are wrong, who don't see things the way I do?
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 Is that what you're asking me? Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what I'm asking.
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 What do I think about the wrong? Yeah.
00:10:46 --> 00:10:50 Nobody comes to their point of view out of nowhere.
00:10:51 --> 00:10:58 And one of the things that I am trying to learn from Jessica Mitford,
00:10:58 --> 00:11:05 and I will admit to you, I am still struggling with it, is to really listen to other people.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:11 One of her gifts was humor, but another one of her gifts was listening.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:17 Now, she sometimes listened to the people who didn't agree with her because
00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 she knew she was going to skewer them.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:26 She wasn't always listening to them with the kindest or the most sympathetic ear.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:33 She had what she called an unusual instinct for destroying the enemy.
00:11:33 --> 00:11:38 So she wasn't always operating out of love and kindness, but she knew how to
00:11:38 --> 00:11:44 truly listen to other people, so that she could get inside their thinking and
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 their rationale, whether she agreed with it or not.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:54 And I'm trying to learn this from her, because everybody who comes to a point
00:11:54 --> 00:12:00 of view comes to it because of something in their history, or something they've heard,
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 or something that they think.
00:12:03 --> 00:12:10 And if their ideas are really crazy or offensive, it's all the more reason we
00:12:10 --> 00:12:15 need to try to understand where they're coming from so that at the very least
00:12:15 --> 00:12:16 we know what we're dealing with.
00:12:16 --> 00:12:22 And I do feel that's one of the lessons Jessica Mitford offers because it was
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 part of her skill set. Yeah.
00:12:25 --> 00:12:30 All right. So let me be candid with you. I have never heard of the Mitford sisters
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 until you wrote the book.
00:12:33 --> 00:12:38 But it seemed like they were a big deal in their time. So to put it in perspective,
00:12:39 --> 00:12:41 were they the original Kardashians?
00:12:42 --> 00:12:47 In some ways, they were, and I'm actually really glad you made that analogy.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:53 It's actually made often because, like the Kardashians, the Midford sisters
00:12:53 --> 00:12:57 were famous for being famous and famous for being beautiful.
00:12:57 --> 00:13:01 And they knew how to capitalize on their notoriety and their fame,
00:13:01 --> 00:13:02 also like the Kardashians.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:07 Now, of course, the media they were exploiting was a completely different media
00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 than the Kardashians have.
00:13:09 --> 00:13:15 The Mitfords largely had newspapers. So they knew how to exploit the value of
00:13:15 --> 00:13:19 their own names in the written press. And they were very good at that.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:24 So in that way, the comparison is absolutely sound.
00:13:24 --> 00:13:29 Also, the fact that their story fascinates other people.
00:13:29 --> 00:13:34 So in the same way that the Kardashians fascinate people, and I will be frank
00:13:34 --> 00:13:40 with you, I don't really understand why, but I know that they are interesting to a lot of people.
00:13:40 --> 00:13:45 Sorry, Kardashians, not getting it over here in Boston, but I know it's true.
00:13:45 --> 00:13:48 And the Mitfords have been fascinating for a long time.
00:13:48 --> 00:13:54 I think the fascination with the Kardashians tells us something about our own
00:13:54 --> 00:13:56 moment and our own culture.
00:13:56 --> 00:14:00 Same was true and is true of the fascination with the Mitfords.
00:14:00 --> 00:14:03 It tells us a lot about our cultural moment.
00:14:03 --> 00:14:08 And there, perhaps, the similarity ends. Because.
00:14:09 --> 00:14:13 One of the differences with the Mitfords is in their own way,
00:14:13 --> 00:14:17 every single one of them, with the exception of Pamela.
00:14:17 --> 00:14:25 Really wanted to have an impact on her society, actually wanted to change or
00:14:25 --> 00:14:27 preserve the social order.
00:14:27 --> 00:14:33 And these were women who had no outlets. They didn't have a television platform.
00:14:34 --> 00:14:38 They didn't have the kind of wealth that many of the Kardashians have.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:43 They didn't necessarily have the spheres of influence, although they were aristocrats.
00:14:43 --> 00:14:49 So what they were looking for was a way into circles of influence.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:58 And they were very politically minded. They were writers. They were incredible readers.
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 I don't know if that's true of the Kardashians. Have any of them written books?
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 I don't know this. I think they have.
00:15:04 --> 00:15:09 And then, of course, Kim is actually a lawyer following her dad's foot. Right.
00:15:10 --> 00:15:14 Good point. So there's somebody obviously looking to have impact.
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 And maybe they are looking to have more impact.
00:15:18 --> 00:15:22 Then I understand. The Mitford girls were very much looking to have an impact.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:27 Now, some of them were looking to have really horrible impact.
00:15:28 --> 00:15:33 Diana was an unrepentant fascist and an anti-Semite all her life.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 She never moved away from those views.
00:15:36 --> 00:15:41 She, in fact, went to her grave claiming that the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews.
00:15:42 --> 00:15:46 So this is someone, you know, who wanted to have the worst kind of impact.
00:15:46 --> 00:15:51 Unity, Jessica Mitford's actual favorite sister for a long time,
00:15:52 --> 00:15:56 was Hitler's intimate and profound anti-Semite.
00:15:56 --> 00:16:01 So, you know, some of the things, the spheres of influence they chose were,
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 excuse me, despicable. Yeah.
00:16:06 --> 00:16:12 So, who was Jessica Mitford? Why was she a troublemaker? and why did you feel
00:16:12 --> 00:16:14 compelled to write about her?
00:16:16 --> 00:16:22 Maybe I'll start with the why I felt compelled as a way of answering the other two parts.
00:16:23 --> 00:16:28 And I did feel compelled, and I felt very lucky that I got to tell her story.
00:16:29 --> 00:16:36 I think I was looking for Jessica Midford for almost 20 years before I found
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 her or knew that she was what I was looking for.
00:16:40 --> 00:16:44 And let me tell you what I mean by that. What I mean is my whole career,
00:16:44 --> 00:16:52 maybe 30 years now, I've wanted to tell the story of a woman activist who was
00:16:52 --> 00:16:56 really funny and lively and just a lot of fun to be around.
00:16:56 --> 00:17:03 Because there's a myth out there that women activists or serious women are grim
00:17:03 --> 00:17:09 and gray and cheerless and no fun to be around and nobody wants to be in the room with them.
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 And, you know, they're always wagging their fingers at somebody.
00:17:13 --> 00:17:18 And I grew up in activist circles. I grew up surrounded by activists,
00:17:18 --> 00:17:25 all of whom were fun and funny and lively and people I really enjoyed being with.
00:17:25 --> 00:17:29 And I thought, I need to be able to tell a story that changes this narrative.
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 So in that way, I was looking. I didn't know it would get to be Jessica Mitford.
00:17:34 --> 00:17:38 I didn't know that I was going to get to tell the story of the person who may
00:17:38 --> 00:17:45 be the funniest activist in American history. She just had an irrepressible sense of humor, and.
00:17:46 --> 00:17:50 Kind of raised the spirits of everybody around her and people wanted to work
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 with her because she was so much fun. So there was that.
00:17:53 --> 00:17:56 But she came into my life at a very particular moment.
00:17:56 --> 00:18:02 I was writing a trade book prior to this called Miss Anne in Harlem,
00:18:02 --> 00:18:07 The White Women of the Black Renaissance, which was a group biography of a very
00:18:07 --> 00:18:09 unlikely cohort of women,
00:18:10 --> 00:18:14 white women, who they all looked sort of at the left bank and then they looked
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 at Greenwich Village and they said, no,
00:18:16 --> 00:18:20 I'm going to go to Black Harlem. I'm going to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.
00:18:20 --> 00:18:24 What? It was such an unlikely thing for them to do.
00:18:24 --> 00:18:30 And the truth is, the book was in some ways a story of failed allies.
00:18:30 --> 00:18:37 Most of them didn't succeed in the ways they wanted to. They went with their good intentions.
00:18:38 --> 00:18:42 And if we've learned anything about racism, it's that good intentions alone
00:18:42 --> 00:18:44 are not going to do very much, right?
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 Good intentions alone are pretty thin.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:52 So it was a story in many ways about failed allies.
00:18:52 --> 00:18:58 And as I was a chapter into that book, I knew I could never tell another story about a failed ally.
00:18:58 --> 00:19:03 I needed a successful ally. I had no idea it was going to be Jessica Mitford,
00:19:03 --> 00:19:07 who is not only one of the funniest activists in our history,
00:19:07 --> 00:19:13 but one of the most successful allies in the sense of crossing from one world,
00:19:14 --> 00:19:15 the British aristocracy.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:23 To a really important ally and advocate in another world, Black Oakland, California.
00:19:24 --> 00:19:28 Those two worlds are about as different as you can get. I always say that the
00:19:28 --> 00:19:31 Cotswolds to Oakland, that's a pretty big divide.
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 And Jessica Mitford not only bridged that divide,
00:19:36 --> 00:19:44 she did it by kind of playing into her past, playing into the idea that we can
00:19:44 --> 00:19:47 all learn about people who are really different from us,
00:19:47 --> 00:19:51 playing into the idea you don't have to look like other people to care about
00:19:51 --> 00:19:53 their struggles and their rights and their justice.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:58 And she didn't look like the Black Oaklander she was fighting for in the Civil
00:19:58 --> 00:20:02 Rights Congress, in the American Communist Party, as a muckraker.
00:20:02 --> 00:20:04 She couldn't have looked more different from them.
00:20:04 --> 00:20:07 She looked like what she was. She looked like a British aristocrat.
00:20:07 --> 00:20:13 And she played into that to show that being an ally doesn't mean you pretend
00:20:13 --> 00:20:15 to be the people you're fighting for.
00:20:15 --> 00:20:19 It means you learn about them and you actually care about their rights.
00:20:20 --> 00:20:27 So that's what made her so important and so interesting, and the fact that she
00:20:27 --> 00:20:29 was the only Mitford with a sense of social justice.
00:20:30 --> 00:20:35 All the other Mitfords leaned toward the right, even her more liberal sister,
00:20:35 --> 00:20:37 the novelist Nancy Mitford.
00:20:37 --> 00:20:42 And Jessica Mitford was a socialist from the age of about five years old.
00:20:42 --> 00:20:48 She was that kid who looks around and says, wait a minute, Wait a minute.
00:20:49 --> 00:20:54 Something's not right here. How come we have pretty much everything and everybody
00:20:54 --> 00:20:56 around us has pretty much nothing?
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 You know that kid that some of us have been that kid.
00:21:00 --> 00:21:06 Many people outgrow that. She never outgrew it. And we don't know exactly why
00:21:06 --> 00:21:12 she alone out of that family had that sense of justice, but she had it. She was an outlier.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:16 She described her life as a lonely opposition.
00:21:16 --> 00:21:20 And I think her story is also important for that reason.
00:21:20 --> 00:21:28 Yeah. Yeah. It's the kind of, there was a line in the book somewhere, I'm trying to remember,
00:21:28 --> 00:21:33 exactly, but it was something to the effect that somebody said,
00:21:33 --> 00:21:40 or somebody had talked about the aristocrat saying, about fashion saying, I'm in Dior.
00:21:41 --> 00:21:44 And she said, I'm in JCPenney.
00:21:44 --> 00:21:48 Yes, exactly. Exactly. And she was in JCPenney.
00:21:48 --> 00:21:55 I mean, that was her high style, was JCPenney in Oakland, California.
00:21:56 --> 00:22:02 She couldn't be bothered with all of the stuff that was the center of most of her sister's worlds.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:08 The high fashion and the never gaining an ounce and the knowing who was who
00:22:08 --> 00:22:10 by looking it up into Brett's peerage.
00:22:11 --> 00:22:13 You know, she didn't care about any of that stuff.
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 And she came from a world in which that stuff was everything.
00:22:17 --> 00:22:23 And to me, that made her so interesting and, you know, made her story really
00:22:23 --> 00:22:28 worth spending the ridiculously long amount of time I spent trying to write it.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:37 Yeah. So did the current political, because I think you said you spent a decade researching her.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:42 Yeah. Did the current political climate give you more fuel to write this book?
00:22:44 --> 00:22:48 Well, it, you know, it did in a lot of ways.
00:22:48 --> 00:22:55 Certainly, you know, the first Trump election gave me a ton of fuel.
00:22:55 --> 00:23:01 The global turn towards fascism, because it's happening in countries around the globe,
00:23:02 --> 00:23:05 the rise of new nationalisms,
00:23:06 --> 00:23:13 the unapologetic rise of racism again, anti-Semitism,
00:23:14 --> 00:23:22 all of that did fuel my belief that the story of a lifelong anti-fascist could matter today.
00:23:22 --> 00:23:30 But what I never predicted and wouldn't have predicted is that we would be living
00:23:30 --> 00:23:33 in a moment with a second Trump presidency.
00:23:34 --> 00:23:39 I didn't see this coming. I didn't, you know, I don't know how to say it other
00:23:39 --> 00:23:42 than I didn't think so little of my fellow citizens.
00:23:42 --> 00:23:48 I didn't think, knowing everything we know about the venality of this man,
00:23:49 --> 00:23:50 that they would elect him a second time.
00:23:51 --> 00:23:57 And in that way, she really speaks to the current moment because she spent all
00:23:57 --> 00:24:03 her life standing up against forms of authoritarianism and bullying.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:07 Jessica Midford could not be bullied.
00:24:07 --> 00:24:13 She was a person who not only never bent the knee to authoritarians,
00:24:13 --> 00:24:15 but she was literally unbelievable.
00:24:16 --> 00:24:20 I don't think that's a word. I think I just coined it. But she was an unbelievable
00:24:20 --> 00:24:22 person. Part of that was because she was an aristocrat.
00:24:23 --> 00:24:28 She came from a world in which her people were the apex of everything.
00:24:28 --> 00:24:32 And you just, you couldn't bully her. And bullies were her special target.
00:24:32 --> 00:24:35 Bullies were what she hated most.
00:24:35 --> 00:24:42 The idea that, you know, a deeply disturbed bully would be the president right
00:24:42 --> 00:24:45 now as this book came out, that I couldn't have foreseen.
00:24:45 --> 00:24:49 But I think she's a gift to this moment.
00:24:49 --> 00:24:55 I think somebody who knows how to bring people together to kneecap bullies,
00:24:55 --> 00:24:58 and the president is hardly the only one, right?
00:24:58 --> 00:25:02 I mean, Project 2025, it's a manifesto for bullying.
00:25:02 --> 00:25:05 That's really what it is. Right.
00:25:06 --> 00:25:08 She's a gift to this moment. Yeah.
00:25:09 --> 00:25:13 So you kind of answered this one question I wanted to ask with that answer,
00:25:13 --> 00:25:19 what made a socialite like Jessica an effective advocate for social change?
00:25:19 --> 00:25:23 And just her being from that aristocratic background, you know,
00:25:24 --> 00:25:25 you use the term unbulliable.
00:25:25 --> 00:25:28 I would say that she bullied the bully. She was.
00:25:29 --> 00:25:36 Yeah. She came from a position her aristocracy gave her the moral spine to just
00:25:36 --> 00:25:42 look what she disdained in the eye and just and just go for the jugular.
00:25:42 --> 00:25:48 Which leads me to this question. Was Jessica more of a terrific hater or an angry empath?
00:25:50 --> 00:25:59 So she was both, but I have to explain that she defined hater a little differently than we do today.
00:26:00 --> 00:26:05 She loved people who were what she called terrific haters.
00:26:05 --> 00:26:11 And what she meant by that is not what we mean by it now when we say don't be such a hater.
00:26:11 --> 00:26:16 What she meant when she said that the one thing she liked about her family is
00:26:16 --> 00:26:20 they were all good haters, is that they weren't wishy-washies.
00:26:21 --> 00:26:23 They didn't prevaricate.
00:26:23 --> 00:26:29 What she liked were people who took a stand and stayed with their program.
00:26:29 --> 00:26:34 Now, she didn't like the stand her sisters Diana and Unity took.
00:26:35 --> 00:26:41 She couldn't bear it and, in fact, never spoke to Diana all her life.
00:26:41 --> 00:26:51 But what she liked were people who kept to their positions, who were bold about taking strong views.
00:26:52 --> 00:26:55 And she was somebody who was able to do that all her life.
00:26:55 --> 00:26:59 She joined the Communist Party quite early on,
00:26:59 --> 00:27:06 early 1940s, at a time when Americans across the country who cared deeply about
00:27:06 --> 00:27:10 social justice and racism were joining the Communist Party because it was really
00:27:10 --> 00:27:17 the only interracial anti-racist social justice organization that was national.
00:27:17 --> 00:27:19 So that's where people joined.
00:27:19 --> 00:27:24 When she left the Communist Party in 1958, when pretty much everybody left it
00:27:24 --> 00:27:29 because of the revelations of Stalin's atrocities, she never apologized for
00:27:29 --> 00:27:33 her position. She never said, oh, I was duped. I was fooled.
00:27:34 --> 00:27:37 She said there were things we didn't know. They were terrible.
00:27:37 --> 00:27:43 But I don't regret my time. She said she learned how to be an important activist.
00:27:43 --> 00:27:45 She learned what racism was.
00:27:45 --> 00:27:49 She learned what capitalism was. She learned what social injustice was.
00:27:49 --> 00:27:58 And she never kind of hung her head about her positions if she made a mistake.
00:27:58 --> 00:28:01 She said that was wrong, and then she developed a new position.
00:28:01 --> 00:28:07 And that's what she meant by being a good hater, somebody who knew how to kind
00:28:07 --> 00:28:10 of stick to their guns. Yeah.
00:28:11 --> 00:28:16 So one of the things that was fascinating was that she influenced a lot of people.
00:28:18 --> 00:28:22 And having read the book, I think I understand like Congressman Raskin.
00:28:23 --> 00:28:30 And, and so I was like, I can, I can kind of see him trying to channel that, right?
00:28:30 --> 00:28:33 When he's dealing with his counterparts in Congress.
00:28:34 --> 00:28:41 But who would you say currently embodies the relentlessness of a Jessica Mitford today?
00:28:42 --> 00:28:45 Oh, I think that's a really good question.
00:28:47 --> 00:28:52 And I think somebody like Jamie Raskin is actually a good example.
00:28:54 --> 00:29:04 Jessica Mitford, like Jamie Raskin, was relentless not only against injustice,
00:29:05 --> 00:29:11 but she was relentless for people having rights and a voice.
00:29:12 --> 00:29:18 It's why we really have to credit Jessica Mitford with being the first powerful
00:29:18 --> 00:29:21 consumer rights advocate in our
00:29:21 --> 00:29:24 national history, because that's what the American way of death was about.
00:29:24 --> 00:29:28 It was standing up for working people who were being fleeced.
00:29:29 --> 00:29:38 And you think about somebody like Jamie Raskin and his relentlessness for democracy.
00:29:38 --> 00:29:45 You know, his refusal to give up on the idea of participatory democracy.
00:29:46 --> 00:29:51 And he's more relentless for, I think, than he's relentless against.
00:29:52 --> 00:29:58 And that's a difficult thing these days, because people who are relentless for
00:29:58 --> 00:30:03 are up against people who will stop at nothing in their relentlessness against.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:13 But he's relentless for democracy, and I think Jessica Midford was relentless for working people.
00:30:13 --> 00:30:18 I think that when we look for someone like her,
00:30:18 --> 00:30:29 we need to look mostly outside of elected governmental circles and to her fellow
00:30:29 --> 00:30:30 investigative journalists.
00:30:31 --> 00:30:38 I think that so much of what's going to turn things around is in the hands right
00:30:38 --> 00:30:43 now of investigative journalists who can reveal what's going on.
00:30:43 --> 00:30:47 And I don't mean there are no elected officials who are keeping up the fight.
00:30:48 --> 00:30:52 I mean, goodness, Mamdani was just elected, and that's so amazing.
00:30:52 --> 00:30:56 What a fascinating moment that is, right?
00:30:56 --> 00:30:59 And clearly, Mamdani is truly a fighter.
00:31:00 --> 00:31:06 But I think we have to look at the journalists, and we have to look at the kind
00:31:06 --> 00:31:13 of activists who were behind Black Lives Matter, and who have been behind Black Lives Matter,
00:31:13 --> 00:31:22 who refuse to accept that Black people's lives don't count, who refuse to accept
00:31:22 --> 00:31:27 this notion that the police, or now it's ICE,
00:31:28 --> 00:31:30 can gun down whoever they choose.
00:31:31 --> 00:31:36 Those are the people who I think are embodying the Mitford spirit. Yeah.
00:31:37 --> 00:31:41 All right. So I know you got to go because you've got a real job outside of
00:31:41 --> 00:31:44 being a writer. Which is also a real job.
00:31:47 --> 00:31:51 Finish this sentence for me. I have hope because...
00:31:52 --> 00:32:01 I have hope because people like Jessica Mitford lived through even darker times.
00:32:03 --> 00:32:08 And they give us a model of coming out the other side.
00:32:09 --> 00:32:18 She lived through World War II, global fascism, global Nazism, the Holocaust.
00:32:19 --> 00:32:24 She lived through the Red Scare. She lived through the Red Scare as an American
00:32:24 --> 00:32:29 communist who watched the people she knew and loved leave the country,
00:32:29 --> 00:32:34 lose their jobs, lose their families, go to prison. Some of them killed themselves.
00:32:34 --> 00:32:38 She lived through really, really dark times.
00:32:38 --> 00:32:44 And she got up every day ready to fight and every day looking to have some fun. That gives me hope.
00:32:45 --> 00:32:50 So, Carla Kaplan, how can people get a copy of this book, Troublemaker?
00:32:50 --> 00:32:52 How can people reach out to you?
00:32:53 --> 00:32:59 Just go ahead and tell people how they do it. My website is www.carlacaplan.com
00:32:59 --> 00:33:02 or www.troublemaker.com.
00:33:02 --> 00:33:07 My author email is on the website. The book should be available anywhere.
00:33:07 --> 00:33:13 Please support your independent bookstores. They need your patronage, and we need them.
00:33:13 --> 00:33:18 So get the book from an independent bookstore. Well, Ms. Kaplan,
00:33:18 --> 00:33:20 thank you for coming on to the podcast.
00:33:21 --> 00:33:25 But most importantly, thank you for your activism through your writing.
00:33:25 --> 00:33:32 Your historical research has really, really enlightened people like me and just
00:33:32 --> 00:33:34 continue to do what you do.
00:33:34 --> 00:33:41 And I'm glad that the success is coming with the work.
00:33:41 --> 00:33:45 I just think people need to get their flowers while they can still smell them
00:33:45 --> 00:33:52 and it seems like you've been doing that but I appreciate you doing this. Thank you so much.
00:33:53 --> 00:33:56 Thank you so much for having me and for such great questions.
00:33:56 --> 00:33:59 Yes, ma'am. All right, guys, and we're going to catch you all on the other side.
00:34:18 --> 00:34:24 All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Cody Nagle.
00:34:25 --> 00:34:30 Cody Nagle is a staff attorney with Civil Survival, a Washington State reentry
00:34:30 --> 00:34:31 legal aid organization.
00:34:31 --> 00:34:36 Born and raised in Seattle, she recently returned to the Pacific Northwest after
00:34:36 --> 00:34:38 nearly a decade on the East Coast.
00:34:38 --> 00:34:43 She holds a law degree from Syracuse University College of Law and is licensed
00:34:43 --> 00:34:46 to practice in Washington State and the District of Columbia.
00:34:47 --> 00:34:52 Cody's passion for reentry and legal reform stems from her personal experience
00:34:52 --> 00:34:57 overcoming barriers to employment and housing as a result of her criminal record.
00:34:57 --> 00:35:02 Cody struggled with substance use disorder from a very young age and spent most
00:35:02 --> 00:35:06 of her teens and early 20s cycling through treatment centers and jails across
00:35:06 --> 00:35:14 western She successfully completed Pierce County's drug court program in 2012.
00:35:14 --> 00:35:20 Since that time, Cody has become acutely aware of the institutional and systemic
00:35:20 --> 00:35:23 barriers for people with criminal convictions.
00:35:24 --> 00:35:29 Struggling for years to find meaningful employment, she became dedicated to
00:35:29 --> 00:35:34 helping others reclaim their lives after incarceration or mental health and
00:35:34 --> 00:35:35 substance use disorders.
00:35:36 --> 00:35:41 Cody was one of the first people with felony convictions to serve in the executive
00:35:41 --> 00:35:44 office of the president under the Biden administration.
00:35:44 --> 00:35:49 She worked as a policy and outreach advisor in the Office of National Drug Control
00:35:49 --> 00:35:55 Policy, where she used her lived experience to advance drug policy reform and
00:35:55 --> 00:35:58 connect diverse groups to address the national overdose epidemic.
00:35:59 --> 00:36:04 Cody has also worked as a legislative attorney, researching and drafting legislation
00:36:04 --> 00:36:08 related to drug policy and the criminal legal system.
00:36:09 --> 00:36:15 In her spare time, Cody loves to travel and spend time outdoors with her husband and three kids.
00:36:16 --> 00:36:20 Ladies and gentlemen, it is truly my distinct honor and privilege to have as
00:36:20 --> 00:36:23 a guest on this podcast, Cody Nagle.
00:36:35 --> 00:36:38 All right. Cody Nagle, how are you doing? Hello.
00:36:38 --> 00:36:42 You doing good? I'm doing great. Thank you.
00:36:42 --> 00:36:47 Glad to be. Well, thank you for accepting the invitation. I greatly appreciate that.
00:36:48 --> 00:36:53 One of the things that I don't know if you had a chance to do any background
00:36:53 --> 00:37:00 on me before we got this interview going, but I was a state legislator at one time.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:10 And a couple of things I was really, really involved in was trying to get people their suffrage back.
00:37:12 --> 00:37:17 And in Mississippi, it's a unique process where...
00:37:19 --> 00:37:23 Say, for example, you were my constituent or just somebody that approached me
00:37:23 --> 00:37:27 and said, you know, I'm out, you know, I've served my time.
00:37:28 --> 00:37:31 And the general standard is like five years, even though that's not written
00:37:31 --> 00:37:35 in code. That's just kind of the gentleman's or lady's agreement. Right.
00:37:36 --> 00:37:42 And so you've been out for five years. So I would submit a bill and it would
00:37:42 --> 00:37:47 be a bill with strictly your name on it. it's the only type of legislation that
00:37:47 --> 00:37:49 can be designated to one person.
00:37:50 --> 00:37:55 And then we can't vote on it in a block, right? If it gets at it,
00:37:55 --> 00:37:57 we got to do the whole process. You got to go through the committee.
00:37:58 --> 00:38:02 I did serve on the judiciary committee where that happened.
00:38:03 --> 00:38:08 And then you would, if the bill made out of committee, then the whole house,
00:38:09 --> 00:38:13 because I served in the house, would vote on it and then it would go over to the Senate, right?
00:38:13 --> 00:38:19 And then the Senate had an additional test to make sure that you have paid all your restitution.
00:38:20 --> 00:38:24 We don't require that in the House, but on the Senate side, they do.
00:38:24 --> 00:38:27 They have some kind of ancient computer that goes back to hell,
00:38:28 --> 00:38:30 Space Odyssey and all that.
00:38:31 --> 00:38:35 And then if they pass mustard in the Senate, then that individual person,
00:38:36 --> 00:38:38 you would get your suffrage rights back.
00:38:39 --> 00:38:43 Now, I say all that to say that it's a belaboring process.
00:38:45 --> 00:38:52 And, you know, but the other thing that I did was I served on a board that dealt
00:38:52 --> 00:38:56 with formerly incarcerated people that I would,
00:38:56 --> 00:39:02 you know, we sat there and tried to figure out ways to make the transition easier.
00:39:03 --> 00:39:09 And, you know, so I've always been fascinated with the work because,
00:39:09 --> 00:39:14 you know, we have this mindset in America.
00:39:15 --> 00:39:22 Where people are disposable. And I don't buy that. I think everybody deserves a chance.
00:39:22 --> 00:39:26 And so when I came across this woman named Cody Nagle, I said,
00:39:26 --> 00:39:29 oh, wow, she's got a story to tell.
00:39:31 --> 00:39:36 And, you know, it's you are proof positive of my belief.
00:39:36 --> 00:39:41 And there's thousands of Cody Nagles out there, but I want to talk to you because
00:39:41 --> 00:39:45 not only have you been through the experience and we'll get into that in the interview,
00:39:46 --> 00:39:54 but you've taken a path where you're helping other folks guide, you know,
00:39:54 --> 00:39:56 you're a guidepost to other people.
00:39:57 --> 00:40:03 So it's really, really an honor for me to talk to you, kind of pick your brain
00:40:03 --> 00:40:07 a little bit about what's going on and let people get to know who you are.
00:40:07 --> 00:40:14 So I did all that. I normally don't do introductions, but I just kind of felt I wanted to lay that out
00:40:14 --> 00:40:21 in the beginning to give the listeners a sense of who you are,
00:40:22 --> 00:40:24 and you'll get into that into greater detail.
00:40:25 --> 00:40:27 But again, thank you for accepting the invitation.
00:40:29 --> 00:40:34 So let's do what I normally do and do some icebreakers. So the first icebreaker
00:40:34 --> 00:40:37 is a quote I want you to respond to.
00:40:37 --> 00:40:43 And the quote is, when we center the people most impacted, we create lasting change.
00:40:43 --> 00:40:52 What does that quote mean to you? For me, having people that have been through
00:40:52 --> 00:41:03 the problem that you're trying to solve gives you a viewpoint of not just the problem,
00:41:03 --> 00:41:12 but every other piece of the puzzle that you can't get from looking at just from the outside.
00:41:12 --> 00:41:22 So, I don't think there's a substitute for lived experience in decision making.
00:41:23 --> 00:41:31 There's no way that the people that are writing policy or passing laws or even,
00:41:31 --> 00:41:35 you know, deciding who gets a paycheck at their company.
00:41:36 --> 00:41:39 There's no way unless they have either I
00:41:39 --> 00:41:42 mean been through it themselves or had somebody
00:41:42 --> 00:41:47 there with them that's been through to like make the right decision that's going
00:41:47 --> 00:41:52 to be long lasting that's going to be sustainable change that that really makes
00:41:52 --> 00:41:58 the impact that we want it to make and I think that that quote really in a more
00:41:58 --> 00:42:00 succinct way than I could put it,
00:42:01 --> 00:42:04 puts lived experience kind of on the table.
00:42:06 --> 00:42:12 That's what I get out of it. All right. Now, the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.
00:42:13 --> 00:42:17 Okay. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.
00:42:18 --> 00:42:27 What is the one thing you hope the current administration will do or not do during this term?
00:42:27 --> 00:42:30 I I'm going
00:42:30 --> 00:42:34 to go with a not do and I really
00:42:34 --> 00:42:46 hope that they do not halt the progress that we've been making in reform on
00:42:46 --> 00:42:52 drug policy and and the criminal legal system.
00:42:52 --> 00:43:01 Because I think even this administration has been able to see the value in the
00:43:01 --> 00:43:05 work that has been done over the past 20 years now.
00:43:07 --> 00:43:12 And I and I see a lot of I see a lot of ways that that could be stopped and
00:43:12 --> 00:43:14 is kind of heading that way.
00:43:14 --> 00:43:17 So I'm really hopeful. Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:18 --> 00:43:23 All right. So how did Cody Nagle become a champion for those formerly incarcerated?
00:43:25 --> 00:43:34 I had my own experiences with the criminal legal system and incarceration.
00:43:34 --> 00:43:43 I was a young person into my early 20s and got out and realized that the system
00:43:43 --> 00:43:50 is not set up for people to move on after they've served their time.
00:43:50 --> 00:43:56 Even though there's a lot of motivation there to help people, I think.
00:43:56 --> 00:44:01 And I think a lot of the system players have good intentions and had good intentions,
00:44:01 --> 00:44:08 possibly for longer than I want to admit, but there wasn't anything there.
00:44:08 --> 00:44:15 And I didn't know how to get a job or get a place to stay.
00:44:15 --> 00:44:20 I didn't know how to navigate the systems that were supposedly put in place
00:44:20 --> 00:44:22 to help me, even with social services.
00:44:22 --> 00:44:26 And so you try and
00:44:26 --> 00:44:29 transition out of this life you've been I
00:44:29 --> 00:44:33 tried to transition out of a life I had been living into one that
00:44:33 --> 00:44:36 felt meaningful and purposeful and healthy
00:44:36 --> 00:44:38 and it just felt like you just keep hitting
00:44:38 --> 00:44:42 roadblocks and so it
00:44:42 --> 00:44:49 took me a little while but I finally realized that The tool that I had to make
00:44:49 --> 00:44:56 this easier for other people was my own experience and my own perspective that
00:44:56 --> 00:45:00 I had in that system. And that's similar to that quote you shared earlier.
00:45:01 --> 00:45:09 People like to hear success stories, but a lot of the time the interest wanes after the story's over.
00:45:10 --> 00:45:14 And so we need people that have
00:45:14 --> 00:45:20 experienced this in the work because that interest never goes away for us.
00:45:21 --> 00:45:26 And so I've just kind of taken all the opportunities that I can to get involved.
00:45:26 --> 00:45:33 And I've been really lucky to have, you know, a lot more opportunity than I've
00:45:33 --> 00:45:36 seen a lot of people go through.
00:45:37 --> 00:45:42 So just try to take advantage of everything that I could until I got to a point
00:45:42 --> 00:45:47 where I was able to, like, really put this into work and make it make,
00:45:47 --> 00:45:51 you know, survive while I was doing it, make it a make it a career. Yeah.
00:45:52 --> 00:45:57 You once said, I just think it's important that people know that we can change.
00:45:57 --> 00:46:02 We can become what we maybe don't even know that we could become.
00:46:03 --> 00:46:09 Why is that important? And would you modestly say that you are a living example of that?
00:46:09 --> 00:46:22 But I do modestly say that because when I said that quote, I was thinking of myself, you know?
00:46:22 --> 00:46:28 I had no—there was no—it was not something I could think of.
00:46:28 --> 00:46:35 I could not imagine the life that I live today 15 years ago when I was really
00:46:35 --> 00:46:41 in the midst of addiction and homelessness and the carceral system.
00:46:42 --> 00:46:51 So it's important that we give the public an opportunity to see our success
00:46:51 --> 00:46:54 when we come out of things like that.
00:46:54 --> 00:47:00 But I also like and the reason that that's important is because I think so often
00:47:00 --> 00:47:07 the narrative is that people that live the way I used to live or people that
00:47:07 --> 00:47:11 are incarcerated deserve to be there.
00:47:11 --> 00:47:14 And that that is them.
00:47:14 --> 00:47:16 That's not something that they
00:47:16 --> 00:47:21 did or something that they suffered through. That is them as a person.
00:47:21 --> 00:47:23 And I don't think that's true.
00:47:24 --> 00:47:33 And so I love opportunities to show the public that people change.
00:47:33 --> 00:47:39 And I don't think that I'm the best shining example, but I know that,
00:47:40 --> 00:47:42 like you said, There's thousands of Cody Nagles out there.
00:47:42 --> 00:47:48 And if we could get the rest of society to see all of these thousands of people
00:47:48 --> 00:47:53 that are doing better than we were told we could do, I think a lot more change could happen.
00:47:53 --> 00:47:59 And I think there'd be a lot less resistance to supporting, you know,
00:47:59 --> 00:48:02 people in recovery and reintegration.
00:48:03 --> 00:48:07 I think that could really open a lot more eyes. Yeah.
00:48:09 --> 00:48:14 Well, I personally think that, you know, you're being, because you're talking
00:48:14 --> 00:48:19 about yourself, you're being modest and you come across a very modest person.
00:48:19 --> 00:48:21 So let me brag on you a little bit.
00:48:23 --> 00:48:28 You've made it all the way to working in the White House at some point.
00:48:28 --> 00:48:36 And now, as part of your current job, you're a lobbyist at the state capitol in Olympia.
00:48:36 --> 00:48:42 So which one is more intimidating? You working in the White House or you being
00:48:42 --> 00:48:45 a lobbyist at the state capitol in Washington State?
00:48:46 --> 00:48:52 With hands down, what I do today is more intimidating to me.
00:48:54 --> 00:48:57 There was a...
00:48:58 --> 00:49:03 I don't know. I guess I don't know how to explain this without sounding contrite
00:49:03 --> 00:49:07 a little, but the White House isn't all it's cracked up to be.
00:49:08 --> 00:49:15 It was not prepared to have people like me there at the time.
00:49:16 --> 00:49:19 And so a lot of my job was not glamorous.
00:49:20 --> 00:49:24 Most of my job was not glamorous. I tried to make the best of it and do what I could.
00:49:24 --> 00:49:30 I brought, you know, I brought a perspective again that hadn't been there before.
00:49:31 --> 00:49:35 But today, I'm an attorney.
00:49:35 --> 00:49:43 I go represent people in court, and that is one of the most intimidating things
00:49:43 --> 00:49:46 that I've ever had to do, I think,
00:49:46 --> 00:49:53 is go back into courtrooms and argue with prosecutors, knowing that.
00:49:54 --> 00:50:00 My, that is not me today that, you know, is going to suffer the consequences of my decision.
00:50:00 --> 00:50:05 It's somebody that I care about or that I'm, you know, committed to helping.
00:50:06 --> 00:50:13 And the same thing is true going in and trying to sit with legislators and talk
00:50:13 --> 00:50:19 to them about change that I think they should be supporting when often I know
00:50:19 --> 00:50:22 that they either can't or won't.
00:50:22 --> 00:50:29 I feel a heavy burden on myself to represent my community in a way that's going
00:50:29 --> 00:50:33 to get change made, and that's intimidating.
00:50:33 --> 00:50:37 Yeah, I understand. And me being a former legislator, I get it.
00:50:37 --> 00:50:41 Oh, yeah, I get it. You know, it's excuse me.
00:50:41 --> 00:50:45 We're you know, we're we're pretty interesting to deal with.
00:50:45 --> 00:50:49 I'll say that I won't necessarily, you know, because you got all these different personalities.
00:50:50 --> 00:50:54 And one thing I used to remind folks all the time is that all of us got elected
00:50:54 --> 00:50:58 to that spot, but none of us in the room voted for each other.
00:50:58 --> 00:51:02 So we all have our own ego
00:51:02 --> 00:51:04 and our own agenda and all that kind
00:51:04 --> 00:51:07 of stuff and you coming in and saying all right
00:51:07 --> 00:51:10 let me hurt all these cats and see if I can get them to vote on
00:51:10 --> 00:51:13 this particular issue and it's you
00:51:13 --> 00:51:18 know it's it's hard and I and I get that because I've been in the lobbyist myself
00:51:18 --> 00:51:24 after I served so I I totally understand I I agree with your your assessment
00:51:24 --> 00:51:29 and then the The other thing that was really cool about your story was that
00:51:29 --> 00:51:32 when you came back home to practice law,
00:51:33 --> 00:51:37 you had to go through the process of being admitted to the bar.
00:51:37 --> 00:51:43 And the judge that basically saved your life, if you would agree with that,
00:51:43 --> 00:51:44 and put you in this process.
00:51:45 --> 00:51:50 Drug court program was the judge that swore you in as an attorney.
00:51:50 --> 00:51:54 See, that's the kind of stuff they write movies about. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
00:51:54 --> 00:51:58 And so that's why I was really, really intrigued. And now you're involved with
00:51:58 --> 00:52:01 this group called Civil Survival.
00:52:02 --> 00:52:09 So talk about what is Civil Survival? How did it begin? What is the mission? All that stuff.
00:52:10 --> 00:52:18 Yeah, so Civil Survival is a Washington-based nonprofit legal aid organization,
00:52:18 --> 00:52:24 and we also have a policy and advocacy arm.
00:52:24 --> 00:52:31 It is, we consider ourselves a bias for us organization,
00:52:32 --> 00:52:40 kind of grew out of this idea that formerly incarcerated people need a vehicle
00:52:40 --> 00:52:47 to advance other formerly incarcerated people and currently incarcerated people.
00:52:47 --> 00:52:54 How do we help change the system again when the people that are the most impacted
00:52:54 --> 00:52:56 are not there at the table?
00:52:56 --> 00:53:05 And so we, most of our priorities focus on eliminating collateral consequences
00:53:05 --> 00:53:08 of criminal convictions and incarceration.
00:53:09 --> 00:53:17 We do a lot of the legal aid work around helping people get out of legal debt.
00:53:17 --> 00:53:21 Especially when they, you know, everybody that comes to us for help,
00:53:21 --> 00:53:26 if they qualify for our services, then they are considered indigent.
00:53:26 --> 00:53:34 And by our statutes, a lot of these financial obligations in Washington should
00:53:34 --> 00:53:37 not have been imposed on them because they're indigent.
00:53:37 --> 00:53:42 And so we represent them trying to get those removed.
00:53:42 --> 00:53:48 We help people vacate their criminal convictions and try and get them as little
00:53:48 --> 00:53:54 on their record as possible so that then they can go on and do what they want
00:53:54 --> 00:53:56 to do, like housing and employment.
00:53:56 --> 00:54:03 And then our policy team works a lot on trying to change conditions of confinement
00:54:03 --> 00:54:12 and conditions of release and some of those areas like financial obligations or.
00:54:14 --> 00:54:20 What you have to do when you get out of prison. So we really are focused on
00:54:20 --> 00:54:24 post-conviction relief for individuals
00:54:24 --> 00:54:28 and trying to ease the burden for people that are still inside.
00:54:28 --> 00:54:33 Yeah. Now, y'all are based out of Seattle, Washington, right?
00:54:34 --> 00:54:39 Yes, but we practice statewide. We're fully remote, so we have the ability to
00:54:39 --> 00:54:42 help people in every Washington State jurisdiction.
00:54:43 --> 00:54:50 Yeah, the reason I want to highlight that because people believe that Washington
00:54:50 --> 00:54:54 State, California, everybody on the West Coast, right?
00:54:55 --> 00:54:59 It's like, surely you're not having the same problems as, say,
00:55:00 --> 00:55:03 people in Georgia or people in Mississippi where I was.
00:55:03 --> 00:55:11 Donald Trump said that y'all, of the leadership in Seattle's liberal slash communist leadership, right?
00:55:12 --> 00:55:20 So in the mindset of people, you know, and one fun fact, it's like Seattle is in King County.
00:55:20 --> 00:55:25 And initially it was named after some white general or something.
00:55:25 --> 00:55:30 And then the city, I mean, the county commission said, no, we're going to name
00:55:30 --> 00:55:33 it after Martin Luther King instead of this white guy named King.
00:55:33 --> 00:55:39 And so actually Martin Luther King's picture is on the county flag in King County.
00:55:39 --> 00:55:45 So a place like that, you would think, well, maybe Cody's work is not as hard
00:55:45 --> 00:55:51 as opposed to, say, if she was working, say, in the Deep South or Pennsylvania
00:55:51 --> 00:55:53 or somewhere like that, right? Kansas.
00:55:54 --> 00:55:58 Why is that not true? There's a few reasons that it's not true.
00:55:59 --> 00:56:07 Our state is not all liberal, although arguably even our reddest jurisdictions
00:56:07 --> 00:56:11 may be a little bluer than some of the deepest red in the South.
00:56:12 --> 00:56:17 We have a ton of rural counties, farmland and things like that.
00:56:17 --> 00:56:19 So we do get quite a bit of opposition.
00:56:21 --> 00:56:27 I mean, there's tons of other reasons But I've been, the longer that I do this
00:56:27 --> 00:56:31 The more surprised I am actually by exactly what you're talking about.
00:56:32 --> 00:56:37 Washington state's laws are not met.
00:56:37 --> 00:56:41 They are not where maybe the rest of the country thinks that they are,
00:56:41 --> 00:56:43 especially when it comes to reentry.
00:56:44 --> 00:56:50 Some of the southern states have more resources going to helping incarcerated
00:56:50 --> 00:56:57 folks get ready to be released, job training, things like that, than Washington by far.
00:56:58 --> 00:57:06 And so although we are liberal in a lot of ways, our criminal legal system has
00:57:06 --> 00:57:10 not kept up that same trend.
00:57:11 --> 00:57:20 And I think it's true that no matter where you live, when you get out of prison
00:57:20 --> 00:57:23 or jail or have a criminal conviction,
00:57:24 --> 00:57:32 there are barriers in place, and stigma crosses just about every political spectrum.
00:57:33 --> 00:57:40 So going and trying to get a job when you just got out of prison for whatever
00:57:40 --> 00:57:47 crime that you were convicted of, that barrier is there whether you live in a liberal city or not.
00:57:49 --> 00:57:52 So maybe my—you know, I don't know.
00:57:52 --> 00:57:57 I think also, now that I'm thinking about it, we have a lot of people in this
00:57:57 --> 00:58:02 state that think they're do-good or liberal, you know, really doing the Lord's
00:58:02 --> 00:58:05 work with having these progressive ideas.
00:58:06 --> 00:58:11 And when it comes down to it, when you're comparing it to other areas that are
00:58:11 --> 00:58:14 maybe considered more conservative,
00:58:15 --> 00:58:19 that just having that mindset that we're already doing everything,
00:58:19 --> 00:58:21 Like we already believe all these liberal things,
00:58:22 --> 00:58:30 It's probably not as true as they think it is So I don't know I don't think that that justice and,
00:58:31 --> 00:58:37 the criminal legal system have moved as far as other liberal policies have.
00:58:38 --> 00:58:44 Gotcha. Is the Washington legislature still in session? No, we had a short session
00:58:44 --> 00:58:47 this year and ended a couple of weeks ago.
00:58:47 --> 00:58:52 Okay. All right. So there's some things I want you to break down.
00:58:52 --> 00:58:57 So one of the things I noticed that you were real active, your organization,
00:58:58 --> 00:59:01 was this House Bill 2430.
00:59:01 --> 00:59:06 So kind of talk about what its intention was and what did y'all,
00:59:07 --> 00:59:08 were y'all able to stop it?
00:59:08 --> 00:59:12 Is the governor going to veto it if it passed? What's going on with that?
00:59:13 --> 00:59:17 Well, I'm just pulling up the most recent. Okay.
00:59:18 --> 00:59:23 This is the crime victim's penalty assessment. Okay. Sorry. What's the number?
00:59:23 --> 00:59:24 The number didn't registered.
00:59:25 --> 00:59:33 So a few years ago, they dropped this, and this was in the same vein as these
00:59:33 --> 00:59:37 legal financial obligations for people that can't pay them.
00:59:38 --> 00:59:46 There was a penalty, and it's required or mandatory that when somebody gets
00:59:46 --> 00:59:49 convicted of certain crimes that this penalty be assessed.
00:59:50 --> 00:59:57 And a few years ago, they said, well, that should be able to be changed if a
00:59:57 --> 01:00:00 person can't afford to make that payment.
01:00:02 --> 01:00:07 And the legislature agreed. Well, suddenly now these courts are losing a lot
01:00:07 --> 01:00:12 of money that they were getting as a result of these crime victim penalty fees.
01:00:12 --> 01:00:15 And so the state's in a terrible deficit.
01:00:16 --> 01:00:21 Pretty much everything in the budget had to be slashed.
01:00:21 --> 01:00:28 Our organization lost a large chunk of our funding as a result of budget cuts last year.
01:00:28 --> 01:00:31 And so courts are saying well
01:00:31 --> 01:00:35 maybe we can reinstitute this crime victims penalty assessment
01:00:35 --> 01:00:38 this fee and make it higher make it
01:00:38 --> 01:00:40 mandatory and make it higher to i think they wanted to raise it
01:00:40 --> 01:00:48 to a thousand dollars it is it stalled this year it did not pass but there was
01:00:48 --> 01:00:54 a lot of support for it and the thing i think the the most important thing that
01:00:54 --> 01:00:59 we advocate against it for is these people cannot pay it.
01:00:59 --> 01:01:04 So you can put the number at any number you want and it's just gonna turn into
01:01:04 --> 01:01:13 legal debt that in some instances can stop somebody from full reintegration when they're released.
01:01:13 --> 01:01:19 You know, you can't go back and get your record vacated. You can't get,
01:01:19 --> 01:01:24 if the court puts a lien on your house because of it, you're gonna lose your
01:01:24 --> 01:01:26 housing. I mean, there's all different kinds of consequences.
01:01:27 --> 01:01:31 When in reality, like we knew from the start that this person was not going
01:01:31 --> 01:01:33 to be able to pay this fine.
01:01:33 --> 01:01:40 So it did not go forward. I imagine that they'll probably bring it back again
01:01:40 --> 01:01:46 next session when they have longer to to work on it and more time to kind of
01:01:46 --> 01:01:48 lobby for and against. But,
01:01:49 --> 01:01:52 That's the saddest of it right now. Okay. All right.
01:01:52 --> 01:01:56 Well, like you said, it's like, you know, it's kind of like,
01:01:56 --> 01:01:57 okay, you showed your hand.
01:01:57 --> 01:02:03 So now we know what we're dealing with and, you know, we'll figure out a way to stop it. Right.
01:02:04 --> 01:02:09 All right. So explain this, the state versus Black decision.
01:02:09 --> 01:02:15 Now, from what I understand, this was a decision that was passed in the that
01:02:15 --> 01:02:20 was made in the Washington state courts that basically said that drug charges,
01:02:20 --> 01:02:24 drug possession charges were unconstitutional.
01:02:25 --> 01:02:33 And so a lot of the things that you are doing, your organization is doing,
01:02:33 --> 01:02:36 is trying to get people that fall under that.
01:02:36 --> 01:02:41 I think you even categorize them as Blake.
01:02:42 --> 01:02:47 I forget the term I'll use, but they're in a certain category under this decision.
01:02:47 --> 01:02:53 And so you're trying to make sure that if they fall into that,
01:02:53 --> 01:02:54 that those records are vacated.
01:02:55 --> 01:02:59 However, it costs money to do that. And I think you just alluded to the fact
01:02:59 --> 01:03:09 that you, there were two figures that were out there. One was $10 million and one was $750.
01:03:09 --> 01:03:14 So kind of explain what was going on with that.
01:03:14 --> 01:03:21 It's like, you know, did you need just $750 this fiscal year to do what you needed to do?
01:03:21 --> 01:03:25 And, you know, the overall cut has been $10 million.
01:03:26 --> 01:03:32 Just kind of explain because I think that's fascinating that a state looked at drug possession.
01:03:32 --> 01:03:36 And for some reason in the state's constitution, they said, yeah,
01:03:36 --> 01:03:40 no, we can't be charging people with that or we shouldn't have been convicting people on that.
01:03:40 --> 01:03:43 And, you know, it would seem like.
01:03:44 --> 01:03:49 There should have been some legislation to say, OK, well, everybody is everybody's father vacated.
01:03:49 --> 01:03:56 Why you got to go through this whole court process to vacate these these convictions?
01:03:56 --> 01:04:00 But go ahead and explain better. You're in the you're on the front line. Talk to me.
01:04:01 --> 01:04:05 Yeah. So you're right. Actually, your your summation was was great.
01:04:05 --> 01:04:12 In 2021, the Washington Supreme Court had a case where a woman,
01:04:12 --> 01:04:16 whose last name was Blake, which is what the name of the decision comes from,
01:04:16 --> 01:04:26 was arrested because she had been arrested and they found a bag that had methamphetamine
01:04:26 --> 01:04:31 residue in it or some small amount of methamphetamines in the pocket of her jeans.
01:04:31 --> 01:04:34 And she argued that she didn't
01:04:34 --> 01:04:37 know that that was in there whether any of
01:04:37 --> 01:04:40 that's true or not the way that our statute was
01:04:40 --> 01:04:44 written did not require the court
01:04:44 --> 01:04:50 or the state to to show that she knew the drugs were on her and so there was
01:04:50 --> 01:04:55 no knowledge requirement so they were basically saying no matter what the circumstances
01:04:55 --> 01:05:00 if you have drugs on your person in your house near you in your car,
01:05:01 --> 01:05:03 you are guilty of possession.
01:05:03 --> 01:05:08 And the Supreme Court basically said, that's unconstitutional.
01:05:08 --> 01:05:14 They can't say that you are guilty of a crime you didn't know you were committing.
01:05:15 --> 01:05:23 And so what ended up happening is they ruled as unconstitutional any conviction
01:05:23 --> 01:05:27 that had happened under that specific statute.
01:05:27 --> 01:05:33 It ended up being something like 600 convictions in the state.
01:05:34 --> 01:05:40 And the legislature did go back and make a new, it's called the Blake Fix Act,
01:05:41 --> 01:05:45 legislation that basically added a little knowledge requirement.
01:05:45 --> 01:05:48 Now it's if you knowingly possess
01:05:48 --> 01:05:53 drugs, that's illegal and it's a misdemeanor. It used to be a felony.
01:05:54 --> 01:06:00 But as a result, like you said, there's 600 convictions out there that need to be dealt with,
01:06:00 --> 01:06:07 and our system is not set up to say that, you know, we can't have the legislature
01:06:07 --> 01:06:12 suddenly say all of these crimes are vacated and all of,
01:06:12 --> 01:06:18 you know, we need a person to look at every single conviction at, you know,
01:06:18 --> 01:06:25 at the court and pick out which ones were, which ones fall under this statute specifically.
01:06:25 --> 01:06:27 And then vacate them.
01:06:28 --> 01:06:32 There is a way for a court to go through and do each one,
01:06:32 --> 01:06:39 one by one really quickly or more quickly than having an attorney file a motion
01:06:39 --> 01:06:43 and say this should be vacated and ask the judge for it to be vacated.
01:06:43 --> 01:06:49 The other thing that's been really complicated is there's lots of other subsections
01:06:49 --> 01:06:53 of that statute that we're litigating.
01:06:53 --> 01:06:56 Does this fall under it or not? Does this fall under it?
01:06:57 --> 01:07:03 And so it's taken a lot more work than I'm sure anybody foresaw.
01:07:03 --> 01:07:06 But what ended up happening with our funding,
01:07:07 --> 01:07:11 you know, the state legislature initially put something like,
01:07:11 --> 01:07:18 I think it was $63 million or something like that they allocated to help pay
01:07:18 --> 01:07:24 people back for all the fines and fees and help fund courts and attorneys to do this work.
01:07:25 --> 01:07:31 And that money is that money is still there but it is not enough and there's
01:07:31 --> 01:07:38 no money going forward so that money was there for the 2023 fiscal year I think it was and,
01:07:39 --> 01:07:44 the money that was basically paying for attorneys to go through one by one and
01:07:44 --> 01:07:49 do these vacates, which we've decided each person is constitutionally entitled
01:07:49 --> 01:07:53 to, that money kind of got slashed completely.
01:07:53 --> 01:08:01 And our organization lost part of a $5 million pot of money that was helping
01:08:01 --> 01:08:06 to fund our services and a few other organizations that do the same kind of work.
01:08:07 --> 01:08:13 But we needed $10 million, I believe it was, to go forward.
01:08:13 --> 01:08:19 What ended up happening was the states, the House and the Senate,
01:08:19 --> 01:08:24 each made their own budget for this year, knowing that we have this $2 billion deficit.
01:08:25 --> 01:08:28 And they each came up with different figures that they were going to give us
01:08:28 --> 01:08:29 a little bit of money back.
01:08:30 --> 01:08:35 One number, I think it was the House, said they would give us $750,
01:08:35 --> 01:08:38 and the Senate said $250,
01:08:38 --> 01:08:44 and we ended up with the $250, and that's going to be split between all
01:08:44 --> 01:08:45 the organizations doing this work.
01:08:46 --> 01:08:51 So it won't go super far, but luckily we've found ways,
01:08:51 --> 01:08:57 not just us, but across the state to try and keep doing this work and get as
01:08:57 --> 01:09:01 many people the relief they're entitled to as we can.
01:09:02 --> 01:09:08 But the financial situation in Washington is not looking any better in the next
01:09:08 --> 01:09:11 few years. So we'll just see what happens.
01:09:12 --> 01:09:18 Yeah. And, you know, that's, that's real talk. That's, that's the dynamics of that.
01:09:19 --> 01:09:24 I, you know, I know that the work that you have done has,
01:09:24 --> 01:09:33 has gotten at least $750 worth of restitution back to people that you were
01:09:33 --> 01:09:35 able to get through the process.
01:09:37 --> 01:09:40 So, you know, I understand the state's like going, well, we ain't got no money,
01:09:40 --> 01:09:46 but, you know, you made the decision, but that we could, you know, don't get me into that.
01:09:46 --> 01:09:50 Anyway, I want one last issue I want to deal with, and then I want to start
01:09:50 --> 01:09:53 closing it out real quick. And I appreciate your time.
01:09:54 --> 01:10:00 So is Washington state one of those states that the you've eliminated,
01:10:00 --> 01:10:04 like the cash bonds, the cash bails and all that stuff?
01:10:05 --> 01:10:08 I don't think we've eliminated cash bail. I'm trying to remember.
01:10:09 --> 01:10:15 We have had bills trying to address it, but no, I don't believe that we've successfully
01:10:15 --> 01:10:17 done it. And I know we didn't this year.
01:10:18 --> 01:10:23 Yeah, because that's, you know, when I saw it, it was like one of the concerns
01:10:23 --> 01:10:26 that you all are working on is dealing with the bail system.
01:10:26 --> 01:10:29 It kind of infers that it's hard for
01:10:29 --> 01:10:33 people to claim to be
01:10:33 --> 01:10:36 indigent when it comes to their bail
01:10:36 --> 01:10:39 being set and y'all are trying to fix that
01:10:39 --> 01:10:42 because they're y'all basically said that there's
01:10:42 --> 01:10:44 a lot of people in whether it's the
01:10:44 --> 01:10:51 county jail or in the state prison system in Washington state that the only
01:10:51 --> 01:10:55 reason why they're in there is because they couldn't bond out yeah well and
01:10:55 --> 01:11:02 you think about how much would your family scramble to put together if your freedom was on the line.
01:11:03 --> 01:11:06 And you know people are people that
01:11:06 --> 01:11:09 have the money to get out and and be and
01:11:09 --> 01:11:16 represent themselves or or be you know we all know that when you're not wearing
01:11:16 --> 01:11:21 a jail jumpsuit you have a better chance of getting out of whatever if you have
01:11:21 --> 01:11:25 to go to trial or if you're standing in front of a judge It's why they let people
01:11:25 --> 01:11:28 put on suits before they come to court, even if they're incarcerated.
01:11:29 --> 01:11:40 But when you're trying to address a criminal charge from inside incarceration,
01:11:41 --> 01:11:42 your chances are much lower.
01:11:42 --> 01:11:48 So people will sacrifice a lot to get the money to get out of jail.
01:11:49 --> 01:11:54 And often that will look to the outside world like, well, you had money to get
01:11:54 --> 01:11:58 out of jail, so why can't you pay an attorney?
01:11:58 --> 01:12:02 Maybe you don't really deserve indigent defense or X, Y, Z.
01:12:02 --> 01:12:09 But I can say from experience that my freedom, I will sacrifice very many things to.
01:12:10 --> 01:12:18 To not be in a jail cell. Things that, you know, usually would not count against me as far as assets.
01:12:18 --> 01:12:26 Like, you know, some people's mom will sell their car or her wedding ring. Get your kid out of jail.
01:12:26 --> 01:12:33 So that's kind of the issue that we're trying to address when we go,
01:12:33 --> 01:12:38 You know, fight against cash bail. It just isn't the.
01:12:39 --> 01:12:43 It isn't a good indicator of the crime someone has committed,
01:12:43 --> 01:12:48 and whether being in incarceration when you're dealing with your criminal charge.
01:12:50 --> 01:12:53 Or not, so somebody on the outside versus somebody on the inside,
01:12:53 --> 01:12:58 is also not a good indicator of guilt or, you know, it's just an indicator of
01:12:58 --> 01:13:01 how much money they have in their pocket that's expendable.
01:13:02 --> 01:13:05 Yeah. So, I just wanted to scratch the surface on that because y'all are doing
01:13:05 --> 01:13:10 a lot of work, a lot of good work, but I want to just kind of give the listeners that sense.
01:13:11 --> 01:13:13 So, I've got a couple more questions for you.
01:13:14 --> 01:13:20 What will it take for American society to change his opinion toward those formerly incarcerated?
01:13:22 --> 01:13:30 It's been real interesting. When I first was hired at the White House, there was this, oh,
01:13:31 --> 01:13:37 one of the first people to be hired with a felony conviction on their record.
01:13:37 --> 01:13:45 And now we've got the president of the United States has a felony conviction. It's the thing to do.
01:13:45 --> 01:13:49 Suddenly, he's opening a lot of doors in ways he maybe didn't consider.
01:13:49 --> 01:13:54 So maybe it's going to take the president of the United States having,
01:13:54 --> 01:13:59 you know, felony convictions to suddenly realize that this can happen to anybody.
01:14:00 --> 01:14:05 I think we need more and more people who don't feel ashamed and scared of losing
01:14:05 --> 01:14:12 what they have to come forward and say, this happened to me too. Here's my experience.
01:14:12 --> 01:14:17 It's similar to the stigma that surrounds people with substance use disorder
01:14:17 --> 01:14:18 or history of addiction.
01:14:18 --> 01:14:22 We've got celebrities coming out and talking about their experiences.
01:14:23 --> 01:14:27 I do not think the way that our system is currently set up that we're going
01:14:27 --> 01:14:34 to convince everybody that incarceration doesn't equal you're a terrible person.
01:14:35 --> 01:14:40 But I think the more that we can show what it looks like to be a person with,
01:14:40 --> 01:14:44 you know, incarceration in your past...
01:14:45 --> 01:14:49 I think it just opens eyes. Every time I go and talk or present somewhere,
01:14:49 --> 01:14:53 somebody approaches me and says, nobody knows this about me,
01:14:53 --> 01:14:57 but my son, or I struggled with X, Y, Z.
01:14:58 --> 01:15:05 It's almost without fail, somebody comes up and, or you've kind of changed what
01:15:05 --> 01:15:07 I thought about how this looks.
01:15:09 --> 01:15:13 So it's information and advocacy, But again,
01:15:14 --> 01:15:22 America isn't set up for accepting that everybody deserves equality or,
01:15:22 --> 01:15:25 you know, or equal chances or equal rights.
01:15:25 --> 01:15:29 It's just we're not meant for that, unfortunately. Yeah.
01:15:30 --> 01:15:32 And an interesting stat for listeners.
01:15:33 --> 01:15:37 So in Washington state, one out of
01:15:37 --> 01:15:44 every four adults have been through the correctional system in that state.
01:15:44 --> 01:15:48 So I just want you to just get that in your mindset is, you know,
01:15:48 --> 01:15:50 people like, oh, Seattle.
01:15:51 --> 01:15:57 One out of every four citizens, adult citizens, has been through the correctional
01:15:57 --> 01:15:58 system of Washington State.
01:15:58 --> 01:16:05 So when Cody's talking about people coming up to her, it's because the odds
01:16:05 --> 01:16:10 are more likely you are going to see somebody or run into somebody because that's
01:16:10 --> 01:16:12 that's it's not as high as Georgia.
01:16:12 --> 01:16:17 And again, that's a whole other podcast we can get into, but that's pretty high.
01:16:17 --> 01:16:22 So it doesn't surprise me that you encounter those people when you go out there.
01:16:22 --> 01:16:26 All right. So let's finish this sentence. I have hope because...
01:16:28 --> 01:16:32 I have hope because every time I go present, somebody approaches me.
01:16:32 --> 01:16:40 Because this isn't just impacting any one particular population more and more,
01:16:40 --> 01:16:45 especially with things like your podcast or just the vast spread of information.
01:16:46 --> 01:16:57 We are seeing more and more people coming to realize the impact that over-criminalization,
01:16:58 --> 01:17:06 of mental health, substance use, race, nationality, what that effect is having
01:17:06 --> 01:17:09 or what the effect is on our society.
01:17:09 --> 01:17:14 And we're learning more about our neighbors, close neighbors, far neighbors.
01:17:15 --> 01:17:19 So it gives me hope. It gives me hope that, you know,
01:17:19 --> 01:17:24 today I feel comfortable talking about where I've been and what I've gone through
01:17:24 --> 01:17:31 without thinking that I'm going to screw up any chance I have of getting a job or a house.
01:17:31 --> 01:17:35 I'm lucky because I know that not everybody feels that way and it's taken me
01:17:35 --> 01:17:42 a lot of work to get there, but I have hope that my experience,
01:17:42 --> 01:17:46 whether good or bad, is becoming more...
01:17:48 --> 01:17:54 Understood and, like, recognized by maybe people that don't have my same experience.
01:17:54 --> 01:18:02 Yeah. Well, Cody Nagle, again, I just want to commend you for the courage that
01:18:02 --> 01:18:06 you've had to go forward in your life,
01:18:07 --> 01:18:11 not let something challenging hold you down.
01:18:11 --> 01:18:15 You've lived up to, what was Denzel Washington, he said, if they knock you down
01:18:15 --> 01:18:17 seven times, get up eight.
01:18:17 --> 01:18:23 I think you are a great example of that.
01:18:24 --> 01:18:31 Is Civil Survival a nonprofit? And if they are and people donate, go ahead.
01:18:31 --> 01:18:35 If people want to contact you, this is the time to make that pitch.
01:18:36 --> 01:18:38 Yes, we are a nonprofit.
01:18:40 --> 01:18:45 There are ways to donate. Civilsurvival.org. Check out our page,
01:18:45 --> 01:18:48 learn more about what we're working on and how you can get involved.
01:18:48 --> 01:18:57 Always looking for opportunities to do more good work and help other people
01:18:57 --> 01:19:00 and places kind of do work where they're at, too.
01:19:00 --> 01:19:05 So happy to talk to anybody that's interested in learning more.
01:19:05 --> 01:19:06 How can people reach you?
01:19:08 --> 01:19:14 Well, you can reach me on my email, cody.nagle at civilsurvival.org.
01:19:14 --> 01:19:17 It's probably the best way to get a hold of me. Okay.
01:19:18 --> 01:19:21 All right, Cody. Well, thank you again for sharing your story and your work.
01:19:22 --> 01:19:27 And one of the rules we have on this podcast is that once you've been on,
01:19:27 --> 01:19:28 you have an open invitation to come back.
01:19:29 --> 01:19:32 So if there's some pressing issue that you think needs to be addressed,
01:19:33 --> 01:19:35 reach out to me and we'll make that happen.
01:19:35 --> 01:19:40 But it's really been an honor to meet you and talk to you and look forward to
01:19:40 --> 01:19:42 hearing more good things about the work you're doing.
01:19:42 --> 01:19:46 Yeah, the honor is all mine. Thank you so much for the invitation.
01:19:46 --> 01:19:49 All right, guys, and we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:20:01 --> 01:20:09 All right, and we are back. So I want to thank Carla Kaplan and Cody Nagle for being on the podcast.
01:20:09 --> 01:20:17 Please get Ms. Kaplan's book, Troublemaker, which talks about this remarkable
01:20:17 --> 01:20:21 woman, Jessica Mitford, who, like I said, I had never heard of her,
01:20:21 --> 01:20:24 excuse me, until I read this book.
01:20:24 --> 01:20:30 And it's incredible. It's very, very, very thorough. I mean,
01:20:30 --> 01:20:35 it is a real true biography of this remarkable woman.
01:20:36 --> 01:20:43 And as Ms. Kaplan stated in an interview, and I should say Dr.
01:20:43 --> 01:20:49 Kaplan, but she doesn't really bandy that about much, but Professor Kaplan,
01:20:49 --> 01:20:54 there should be more people like Jessica Mitford in the world today.
01:20:54 --> 01:20:59 And it would be hard for me to argue otherwise, based on what I've read.
01:20:59 --> 01:21:01 And the interview we had.
01:21:01 --> 01:21:06 So I appreciate Ms. Kaplan for coming on.
01:21:07 --> 01:21:16 And then Cody Nagle, you know, when I read her story and I was just like, this is amazing, right?
01:21:17 --> 01:21:24 And, you know, in her own modest way, she understands that her story is amazing.
01:21:24 --> 01:21:33 But the thing that's so cool is that she has dedicated her life to help people
01:21:33 --> 01:21:35 have amazing stories like her.
01:21:36 --> 01:21:42 You know, it's one thing to hit that lotto ticket and live the life of Riley
01:21:42 --> 01:21:44 and do your own thing, right?
01:21:45 --> 01:21:53 But it's another to understand that the blessing that you received is now a
01:21:53 --> 01:21:58 duty, an obligation, if you will, to help others achieve that same blessing.
01:21:59 --> 01:22:03 Because it was people that helped her, people that she didn't know was going
01:22:03 --> 01:22:04 to help her, but they did.
01:22:05 --> 01:22:13 And just her spirit to accept that help and have her eyes opened has been a
01:22:13 --> 01:22:17 plus for the people in the Seattle, Washington area or the state of Washington.
01:22:18 --> 01:22:25 And it's going to have positive repercussions, you know, hopefully nationally
01:22:25 --> 01:22:29 because, you know, she's worked for the White House. Right.
01:22:30 --> 01:22:36 So, you know, this is why I do what I do.
01:22:36 --> 01:22:44 This is why I love what I do. I know those who have been avid listeners understand
01:22:44 --> 01:22:46 this is my therapy for times like these.
01:22:47 --> 01:22:55 But again, it's also just a joy to be able to highlight people who are doing the work.
01:22:57 --> 01:23:04 And whether it's Cody with her activism or Carla with her activism, right?
01:23:04 --> 01:23:11 It's just really, really great that we have people like that.
01:23:11 --> 01:23:16 And it's an honor for me to be able to talk to them on a weekly basis.
01:23:17 --> 01:23:22 All right, so as this podcast will drop,
01:23:22 --> 01:23:30 the fallout will have taken place and dissipated on the fact that President
01:23:30 --> 01:23:34 Trump has fired the Attorney General, Pam Bondi.
01:23:35 --> 01:23:44 And so two of the archvillains in this league of villains that we call the Trump
01:23:44 --> 01:23:47 administration are now no longer there.
01:23:49 --> 01:23:56 But they're going to be replaced by men who are just as much sycophants of the
01:23:56 --> 01:23:58 president as these women were.
01:23:59 --> 01:24:10 But it's like, you know, at least the pressure and the spirit of Saul has moved
01:24:10 --> 01:24:13 the president to get rid of these people.
01:24:14 --> 01:24:20 And again, it's, you know, I don't like to see people fired,
01:24:21 --> 01:24:28 but I'm not going to cry over it, you know, because when I think about how when
01:24:28 --> 01:24:33 they had power, how did this disdainful they were to the rest of us?
01:24:35 --> 01:24:41 You know you don't invoke sympathy when something bad happens to them if you're
01:24:41 --> 01:24:43 a normal human being you're empathetic
01:24:43 --> 01:24:48 to the fact like okay well you know adjustments have to be made but.
01:24:50 --> 01:24:53 Cause you just naturally you don't like it when people die you don't like it
01:24:53 --> 01:25:00 when people something bad happens to them you still have that reaction like ooh you know,
01:25:02 --> 01:25:06 At the same time, it's like you kind of earned that, right?
01:25:07 --> 01:25:13 And I know the source was unlikely of where the ire came from.
01:25:13 --> 01:25:22 But when you talk about that spirit of Saul, right, of being distrustful to
01:25:22 --> 01:25:28 those who are loyal to you, of thinking that you're higher than what you are,
01:25:29 --> 01:25:31 you know, not understanding the blessing.
01:25:32 --> 01:25:35 And the responsibility you have, especially if you've been given the opportunity
01:25:35 --> 01:25:40 to govern, as one of my coworkers would say, karma's going to get you.
01:25:42 --> 01:25:52 It's undefeated, right? So, you know, I just want us to channel that energy
01:25:52 --> 01:25:55 that we have been showing at these No Kings protests.
01:25:56 --> 01:26:01 You know, now I think the total was 8 million this last time that people came out.
01:26:02 --> 01:26:09 And I'll channel that energy into positive action.
01:26:09 --> 01:26:16 It's one thing for us to gather and see like-minded folks express a concern.
01:26:16 --> 01:26:24 But, you know, we've got to continue to push even more, continue to put the pressure on.
01:26:24 --> 01:26:30 As this old colloquialism, you know, pressure, and I guess it's scientific as
01:26:30 --> 01:26:31 well, pressure busts pipes.
01:26:33 --> 01:26:43 And so we have to bust this pipe of corruption and mismanagement and greed and disdain, you know,
01:26:43 --> 01:26:48 that our government is showing us and fight for something better.
01:26:49 --> 01:26:51 Now, the people that we put in.
01:26:53 --> 01:27:01 Going to be better, but as I highlighted last week, better in a scaled degree, right?
01:27:01 --> 01:27:07 Because like I said, Fetterman was better than Mezmit Oz, but Fetterman is not ideal, right?
01:27:09 --> 01:27:14 And, you know, if you want to be fair, it's like, okay, you know,
01:27:14 --> 01:27:16 he does vote with the Democrats on something.
01:27:16 --> 01:27:20 Yeah, Joe Manchin did, and so did Sinema. But it's like, you know,
01:27:20 --> 01:27:22 but there's a core value that you're missing.
01:27:23 --> 01:27:27 Right. It's one thing to try to be politically expedient and stay,
01:27:28 --> 01:27:29 keep your membership up.
01:27:29 --> 01:27:35 Right. You know, like if you got a like if you if you were at a gym,
01:27:35 --> 01:27:39 for example, and you had to show up at the gym like at least three times a year
01:27:39 --> 01:27:44 to maintain your membership or you show up to church.
01:27:44 --> 01:27:47 We just celebrated Easter, you know, season.
01:27:47 --> 01:27:51 You show up at church at Easter and, you know, Christmas or whatever,
01:27:52 --> 01:27:54 you know, you stay in good standing with your church.
01:27:55 --> 01:28:02 You know, it's just the minimum is not going to do at this particular moment.
01:28:02 --> 01:28:06 We have to have people that are committed, right?
01:28:06 --> 01:28:11 Even if we don't agree with each other 100% of the time, if you understand the
01:28:11 --> 01:28:16 main mission is that this experiment in democracy that has been around for 250
01:28:16 --> 01:28:18 years needs to continue,
01:28:18 --> 01:28:25 that the rights of people, regardless of their faith, regardless of their skin
01:28:25 --> 01:28:29 complexion, regardless of their lifestyle, needs to be protected,
01:28:29 --> 01:28:31 right, as citizens of this nation.
01:28:32 --> 01:28:37 But hell, we are in a position now where we have to defend the definition of
01:28:37 --> 01:28:40 citizenship at this point.
01:28:40 --> 01:28:45 I mean, that's how extreme we have gotten, where it's like we are literally
01:28:45 --> 01:28:53 asking the Supreme Court to make a decision as to who is actually a citizen of this nation.
01:28:54 --> 01:29:02 Extreme, right? The Constitution and its subsequent amendments pretty much lays it out.
01:29:02 --> 01:29:09 But the audacity to even challenge that to push an agenda that is not based
01:29:09 --> 01:29:13 on anything good and decent, right?
01:29:14 --> 01:29:18 It's all about power and authority, control.
01:29:18 --> 01:29:22 That's not what this country was set up to be.
01:29:23 --> 01:29:29 Because if that was the case, then I don't know if the pilgrims show up on Plymouth Rock.
01:29:30 --> 01:29:34 I don't know if they try the utopian experiment in Rhode Island.
01:29:35 --> 01:29:40 I don't know if John Oglethorpe sets up the prison colony that's now called Georgia.
01:29:40 --> 01:29:45 Because if they were cool with control, they could have stayed on their island
01:29:45 --> 01:29:48 called England and done whatever they wanted to do, right?
01:29:48 --> 01:29:53 But these people wanted to have their own destiny, right?
01:29:55 --> 01:30:00 And live the lives they wanted to live, worship God the way they wanted to worship
01:30:00 --> 01:30:02 God, make money the way they wanted to make money.
01:30:03 --> 01:30:11 So now that this nation is officially or will be officially 250 years old in
01:30:11 --> 01:30:16 July, the question is, why can't we still have those rights?
01:30:16 --> 01:30:22 Why can't a black person, a Latino person, an Asian person, a member of the
01:30:22 --> 01:30:26 LGBTQ community, why can't they have their own destiny fulfilled?
01:30:27 --> 01:30:31 Why can't they live the life they want to live? Why can't they have their version
01:30:31 --> 01:30:33 of the American dream realized?
01:30:34 --> 01:30:40 And why is it such a threat to the man that was elected to be the leader of that nation?
01:30:41 --> 01:30:43 Right? Why is that?
01:30:44 --> 01:30:49 It doesn't make any sense. And all throughout the history, we have tried to
01:30:49 --> 01:30:53 deal with people who have ascended to positions of power and influence,
01:30:53 --> 01:30:56 whether it's through the business community or through politics,
01:30:57 --> 01:30:59 that have tried to deter us from that.
01:30:59 --> 01:31:03 And we've challenged them in the courtroom, at the ballot box.
01:31:04 --> 01:31:05 Heck, even boycotting.
01:31:06 --> 01:31:08 We've done all these things.
01:31:09 --> 01:31:14 Just to remind them, America was not set up for you to control us.
01:31:15 --> 01:31:16 Doesn't matter who you are.
01:31:17 --> 01:31:21 Now, there are people who want to be controlled. That's them.
01:31:22 --> 01:31:25 The majority of us ain't down with that. You know?
01:31:27 --> 01:31:33 I'm always reminded of this scene from the first Avengers movie, right?
01:31:33 --> 01:31:36 Where Loki pops up and he's, I guess he's in Austria
01:31:36 --> 01:31:42 and he's telling these people to kneel and he's going through his soliloquy
01:31:42 --> 01:31:47 about this is what humans desire to be controlled and all that and that one
01:31:47 --> 01:31:51 man who was Holocaust survivor stands up and challenges him and then of course
01:31:51 --> 01:31:53 Captain America shows up and pops him upside the head.
01:31:53 --> 01:32:00 That is analogous of who we are, right?
01:32:01 --> 01:32:06 Not everybody wants to be subjugated. Not everybody wants to be controlled.
01:32:08 --> 01:32:14 There's some people that do it because they're scared and whatever,
01:32:14 --> 01:32:19 which is why Franklin Delano Roosevelt said at a moment in history,
01:32:19 --> 01:32:25 we cannot fear, fear itself, right?
01:32:26 --> 01:32:32 I know I butchered that quote pretty bad, but the only thing to fear is fear itself, right?
01:32:32 --> 01:32:36 Or to even get to the point where Dr. King talked about people hoping against
01:32:36 --> 01:32:40 hope. We can never get to that as a majority, as a nation.
01:32:41 --> 01:32:48 We've got to always have hope. We've got to allay our fear and boldly go forward.
01:32:49 --> 01:32:56 It's never been good for a select group of people to try to tell human beings what to do.
01:32:58 --> 01:33:03 Now, do we have governments? Yes, because we want to have boundaries,
01:33:03 --> 01:33:06 because we want to have society orderly.
01:33:07 --> 01:33:14 But it doesn't give the right for somebody to accept that responsibility of
01:33:14 --> 01:33:18 power and try to shut down everybody else's free will.
01:33:18 --> 01:33:20 We're not wired like that.
01:33:22 --> 01:33:26 And there's so much of your humanity you give up.
01:33:27 --> 01:33:34 You subjugate yourself to any human being, especially one in authority,
01:33:34 --> 01:33:36 in an authority that you gave him.
01:33:37 --> 01:33:43 I can imagine the challenges that people had when this whole notion of divine
01:33:43 --> 01:33:47 right was out there and all these kings and monarchies showed up, right?
01:33:48 --> 01:33:51 But America was never supposed to be a monarchy.
01:33:51 --> 01:33:55 America was supposed to be the country that showed that you You don't need to
01:33:55 --> 01:34:02 have an authoritarian monarch to rule over people.
01:34:02 --> 01:34:04 The people can govern themselves.
01:34:05 --> 01:34:10 They can choose the leaders to handle the day-to-day business while we go on
01:34:10 --> 01:34:15 about our lives and raise our children and work our jobs, our professions,
01:34:15 --> 01:34:18 our occupations, whatever. Go on vacation.
01:34:19 --> 01:34:22 Go to the movies. Whatever we wanted to do.
01:34:23 --> 01:34:32 And so this whole notion that we got to have that, when people say that,
01:34:32 --> 01:34:35 those are people who have checked their humanity at the door.
01:34:35 --> 01:34:41 And my suggestion to them is to go get it off the coat check and put it back
01:34:41 --> 01:34:45 on and come join the rest of us. Right?
01:34:46 --> 01:34:49 Nobody's advocating for anarchy. Right?
01:34:50 --> 01:34:58 Nobody's advocating for just massive riots and violence and rebellion, all that kind of stuff.
01:34:58 --> 01:35:04 All we are asking for is another R word, and that's respect. Period.
01:35:04 --> 01:35:08 End of discussion. Throwing a little empathy in here.
01:35:08 --> 01:35:13 You know, when we're talking about helping people who have served their time.
01:35:15 --> 01:35:19 Shouldn't be a stigma on you to help them any more than it should be a stigma
01:35:19 --> 01:35:21 that they made a mistake. Right?
01:35:23 --> 01:35:30 So, you know, we've got to, we just got to get back to what we were wired to be.
01:35:32 --> 01:35:38 And if you have to get that rewiring in the spiritual sense, knock yourself out.
01:35:38 --> 01:35:46 If you can get it by reading and listening and activating it on your own,
01:35:47 --> 01:35:49 following your dream, then do that.
01:35:50 --> 01:35:55 Whatever it is, don't ever give up a piece of humanity just so you can have
01:35:55 --> 01:36:03 favor for somebody that has either been put or find themselves in a position of power.
01:36:04 --> 01:36:09 We equate money with power and intellect, so we think these billionaires are
01:36:09 --> 01:36:10 special people. They're not.
01:36:11 --> 01:36:17 They are fortunate that their idea came to fruition to a point where they have
01:36:17 --> 01:36:21 more money than they'll ever spend in their life, their children's life,
01:36:21 --> 01:36:23 or their grandchild's life, right?
01:36:23 --> 01:36:27 But that doesn't give them some magical power over us.
01:36:27 --> 01:36:33 And just as we've seen, people that have money can lose it.
01:36:34 --> 01:36:36 If you don't believe that, ask Mike Tyson.
01:36:37 --> 01:36:44 These things happen in life. As sure as you gain something, the minute you lose
01:36:44 --> 01:36:48 your soul, which I think is in the Bible somewhere, you lose everything.
01:36:49 --> 01:36:51 Money can't buy you happiness.
01:36:53 --> 01:37:01 Help you do things that make you happy, like eat, like going to a Broadway play,
01:37:01 --> 01:37:06 traveling the planet, or just traveling down the street to your favorite barbecue
01:37:06 --> 01:37:08 place. Money can help you do that.
01:37:09 --> 01:37:14 But the joy is not in the money. The joy is in the destination that you're trying
01:37:14 --> 01:37:18 to get to or the activity that you are participating in.
01:37:18 --> 01:37:20 That's where the joy comes from. It comes from within.
01:37:21 --> 01:37:22 And we need to see that.
01:37:24 --> 01:37:28 I'm not, you know, doctor such and such.
01:37:29 --> 01:37:33 And, you know, I want people to make money.
01:37:33 --> 01:37:39 I want people to do what they want to do, except harm other folks.
01:37:40 --> 01:37:46 And when you try to tell me what I can do, what my child can do,
01:37:46 --> 01:37:49 what bathroom I can go through, what water fountain I can go to,
01:37:49 --> 01:37:50 where on the bus I can sit,
01:37:51 --> 01:37:55 if I can vote, You know, when you start telling me all these things,
01:37:55 --> 01:37:57 then, yeah, no, I'm not down with that.
01:37:58 --> 01:38:01 I don't want you to do that, right?
01:38:01 --> 01:38:06 Because you're making me do stuff I don't want to do or denying me the opportunity
01:38:06 --> 01:38:09 to do the stuff I do want to do, right?
01:38:10 --> 01:38:18 If you are in politics and you believe that what you are doing is right,
01:38:18 --> 01:38:23 then stand before the voters with your full chest and make your case.
01:38:24 --> 01:38:31 And if people say, no, that's not what we want, accept the decision and keep it moving.
01:38:32 --> 01:38:39 How could I, as a senator, vote for you in good conscience and not being politically blackmailed,
01:38:40 --> 01:38:45 vote for you to serve in the government when you can't even tell me who won
01:38:45 --> 01:38:49 an election for fear of the ignoring the person who nominated you?
01:38:50 --> 01:38:55 You've already told me you care more about that person than the people you're supposed to be serving.
01:38:55 --> 01:38:57 That's crazy. That's crazy.
01:38:58 --> 01:39:06 Person won't allow you to say what, speak the truth, regardless of their idiosyncrasies.
01:39:09 --> 01:39:15 Then maybe it's not worth serving that person or working with that person to serve a nation.
01:39:16 --> 01:39:18 Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem have found that out.
01:39:19 --> 01:39:23 And there's a saying that is going around the political community,
01:39:23 --> 01:39:27 everything that Trump touches dies, right?
01:39:27 --> 01:39:34 Good people are having their reputations tarnished by hooking up with him.
01:39:35 --> 01:39:38 Now, there's a supernatural connotation to that, right?
01:39:38 --> 01:39:42 And since it's not a religious show, I won't dive into that too deep,
01:39:42 --> 01:39:45 but I just want you to think of Rudy Giuliani.
01:39:46 --> 01:39:51 When 9-11 happened, he was so revered, he felt he could write a book about leadership
01:39:51 --> 01:39:53 and it was a New York Times bestseller.
01:39:55 --> 01:39:58 People were teaching classes based off of his book.
01:40:00 --> 01:40:05 Leadership. And oh, how the mighty have fallen now, right?
01:40:06 --> 01:40:10 Because of his affiliation with the president.
01:40:11 --> 01:40:14 Pam Bondi was an attorney general of a state.
01:40:15 --> 01:40:23 So out of all of the people that Donald Trump picked, she actually was qualified for the job.
01:40:24 --> 01:40:30 Now, she may not have the temperament. She definitely didn't have the best interests of the people at heart.
01:40:30 --> 01:40:35 But if you looked at the resume, it's like, well, at least she's done something similar.
01:40:36 --> 01:40:39 She's been attorney general of a state. Why not her be attorney general of a
01:40:39 --> 01:40:43 nation? She had the best argument of anybody else.
01:40:43 --> 01:40:48 But that foolishness when she got up there and thought she was scoring political
01:40:48 --> 01:40:52 points by trying to attack every Democrat that asked her a question instead
01:40:52 --> 01:40:56 of just answering the question, backfired.
01:40:56 --> 01:41:03 When you couldn't even play the political game enough after you campaigned,
01:41:03 --> 01:41:07 when you ran for attorney general, of fighting for victims of sexual assault,
01:41:07 --> 01:41:13 you couldn't even crane your neck to look at the people that Jeffrey Epstein
01:41:13 --> 01:41:16 harmed in your state, even.
01:41:17 --> 01:41:20 There were some islands and there's some place in New Mexico,
01:41:20 --> 01:41:23 but based out of Florida and New York.
01:41:24 --> 01:41:27 You couldn't train your neck to just look at them.
01:41:27 --> 01:41:32 You couldn't even act like you had empathy or compassion for them.
01:41:32 --> 01:41:37 Now, supposedly, she got fired because she wasn't putting enough people that
01:41:37 --> 01:41:39 Donald Trump didn't like in jail.
01:41:40 --> 01:41:43 That wasn't her job anyway. You gave her an impossible task to do.
01:41:46 --> 01:41:49 Blame her for trying to execute your bullshit.
01:41:49 --> 01:41:55 Because basically, in more eloquent legal terms, that's what all the judges
01:41:55 --> 01:41:58 have said when you brought these indictments or try to get these indictments
01:41:58 --> 01:41:59 on these people you don't like.
01:42:00 --> 01:42:03 So you put her in an untenable situation.
01:42:04 --> 01:42:09 But she signed up for it. And she suffered the consequences for doing it.
01:42:10 --> 01:42:16 Now, she's in a position where people were told, we're not going to disbar this
01:42:16 --> 01:42:19 woman because she's the Attorney General of the United States.
01:42:19 --> 01:42:20 We're not going to do that.
01:42:21 --> 01:42:26 Well, now she could possibly be disbarred. So whatever cushy job at a law firm
01:42:26 --> 01:42:28 she's supposed to be promised, she might not be able to have it.
01:42:30 --> 01:42:34 These people can go back and say, okay, well, she's not the attorney general anymore.
01:42:36 --> 01:42:45 Let's see if she can be disbarred, right? When you do stuff and it's not for
01:42:45 --> 01:42:48 the benefit of others or for the good,
01:42:48 --> 01:42:52 even if it's good for yourself, right?
01:42:52 --> 01:42:57 If you do things with bad intent, that's going to follow you.
01:42:58 --> 01:43:04 Now, if I'm Tulsi Gabbard or any other woman that's in the Trump administration,
01:43:04 --> 01:43:08 it's like, get your resumes ready because he's only firing the women.
01:43:09 --> 01:43:11 And believe me, Tulsi is next.
01:43:12 --> 01:43:20 Many thought Tulsi would be out before Noam or Bondi, but it is what it is. But she's next.
01:43:21 --> 01:43:27 And it's not because of what they did because they're doing what he asked them to do.
01:43:27 --> 01:43:32 It's because he's trying to minimize political damage.
01:43:32 --> 01:43:38 He doesn't care about who they harm. He doesn't care about the insults they
01:43:38 --> 01:43:44 hurl or their lack of professionalism or whatever. It's all about him.
01:43:45 --> 01:43:53 And so, you know, it is what it is, man. I just, I want us to care about us.
01:43:54 --> 01:43:57 And it needs to reflect in who we vote for.
01:43:58 --> 01:44:03 As clearly stated, I'm partisan. Doesn't mean you have to be.
01:44:03 --> 01:44:09 If you really believe that there's a person of the opposite party that really
01:44:09 --> 01:44:13 wants to make a difference for everybody, you should vote for them.
01:44:15 --> 01:44:21 Of times, you know, the differences can be worked out if we are rational.
01:44:22 --> 01:44:27 But if you're voting for somebody who basically doesn't give a damn about you
01:44:27 --> 01:44:32 just because they sound good or they look good on Fox or whatever the case may
01:44:32 --> 01:44:35 be, stop hurting yourself like that.
01:44:35 --> 01:44:38 That's almost as bad as just self-mutilation.
01:44:38 --> 01:44:43 Stop doing that to yourself. You deserve better.
01:44:43 --> 01:44:47 Each and every one of us deserves better.
01:44:48 --> 01:44:50 And we got to start thinking like that.
01:44:52 --> 01:44:55 Happened yesterday, yesteryear is gone.
01:44:56 --> 01:45:03 Each day, we advance into a new horizon. Each day.
01:45:04 --> 01:45:09 You know, I'm at that age now where, yeah, there's some things that I wish I
01:45:09 --> 01:45:14 could still do athletically or just basic physical stuff,
01:45:15 --> 01:45:20 you know, even some mental stuff, right? But I'm getting older.
01:45:20 --> 01:45:26 And so I have to try to do things to supplement just to maintain what I got. Right.
01:45:27 --> 01:45:30 Trying to beat something I can't beat, which is time.
01:45:31 --> 01:45:37 But you don't surrender to the inevitable. You push on, you fight. Right.
01:45:38 --> 01:45:40 You make the most of your life.
01:45:41 --> 01:45:46 And the one thing I try to encourage people when it comes to politics is vote
01:45:46 --> 01:45:51 for people that won't hinder you living your life.
01:45:52 --> 01:45:59 Don't do that. If you want to do something positive and strong and good,
01:45:59 --> 01:46:02 then vote for people that won't deny you that opportunity.
01:46:03 --> 01:46:08 Just stop doing that. Support people who understand that the purpose of this
01:46:08 --> 01:46:14 nation is for a group of people, these 330 million of us,
01:46:15 --> 01:46:20 is to live our own individual manifest destiny.
01:46:21 --> 01:46:25 Able to live the life we seek.
01:46:26 --> 01:46:33 Any politician that wants to deny that, whether it's how you live your life
01:46:33 --> 01:46:38 or when you want to have children, what books you can read, what movies you can watch,
01:46:39 --> 01:46:44 what house you want to buy, what neighborhood you want to move in,
01:46:44 --> 01:46:50 people that want to restrict your life are not worthy of your vote. Not anymore.
01:46:50 --> 01:46:56 My guests, get that. The people that they write about or work with, get that.
01:46:57 --> 01:47:01 Most of you listening, if not all of you, get that.
01:47:02 --> 01:47:08 But now we have to evangelize and get others to believe that they deserve better.
01:47:09 --> 01:47:14 You don't have to go along to get along, but you gotta fight for what you want.
01:47:15 --> 01:47:18 All right. That's all I got. Thank you.