Troublemaker & Civil Survival Featuring Carla Kaplan and Cody Nagle

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Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.

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make this moment a movement.

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Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.

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The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.

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Hello, and welcome to another Moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.

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Today, I have two guests, young ladies,

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who are doing things with their experience and their talent to make a statement

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and make some changes, right?

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So, one is a historian and a professor and an author.

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And she has written a book about a woman who not only went against the system,

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but even her own family to try to make a difference here in the United States.

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And then the other guest is someone who has battled personal challenges in order

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to turn around and help people that have gone through those similar challenges

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and just be an example that you can make it through.

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And she has dedicated her life's work to helping people get through.

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So it's really, really an honor and a treat to have interviewed these women.

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And I hope that you agree with that assessment and enjoy the conversations that we had.

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If you support this podcast, and just by listening, you have done me a tremendous favor by doing that,

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you can go to www.momenterik.com and show or see how else you can support the podcast.

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We, you know, if you want to just make a one-time donation, if you want to subscribe.

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You know, got all the information, it's like, oh, well, I like this particular podcast,

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man, I want to check out, you know, another one, you can use the website to

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do that, you know, whether you want to have a specific time or,

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you know, a particular guest to hear what they had to say, you can do that on the website.

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So please go visit that if you like what you're hearing, write a review, all that stuff.

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So please do that, all right?

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Okay, so let's go ahead and kick this show off. And as always,

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we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.

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Thanks, Erik. President Trump dismissed Attorney General Pam Bondi and appointed

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his former lawyer, Todd Blanche, to lead the Justice Department in the interim.

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President Trump used a primetime address to claim the U.S.

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Military is nearing its objective in Iran, while warning of further escalation

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if the country does not capitulate.

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An estimated 8 million participants joined nationwide No Kings protests on March

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28 to oppose President Trump's policies and the ongoing war with Iran.

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Iranian-linked hackers breached FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email,

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leaking private photographs and historical documents to the Internet.

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The Supreme Court held oral arguments regarding President Trump's efforts to

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limit birthright citizenship.

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Major U.S. airports are returning to normal operations after President Trump

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signed an emergency order to pay TSA officers who had been working without pay

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during a partial government shutdown.

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DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen paused a controversial $38.3 billion plan to

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utilize large warehouses for immigrant detention.

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Idaho's legislature passed a bill criminalizing the use of public and private

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restrooms or changing rooms that do not align with an individual's sex assigned at birth.

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In an 8-to-1 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for minors.

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ICE reported that at least 14 immigrants have died in custody during the first three months of 2026.

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Authorities have arrested the husband of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Mateer

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Bowen, the city's first black and Haitian female commissioner in connection

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with her death in a domestic violence case.

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Vice President J.D. Vance won the 2028 CPAC straw poll, securing 53% of the vote.

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And NASA's Artemis II mission successfully launched a crew of four astronauts

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on a historic voyage around the moon.

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I am Grace G., and this has been a moment of news.

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All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it is time for my guest, Carla Kaplan.

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Carla Kaplan is the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at

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Northeastern University.

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She has published seven books, including Miss Anne in Harlem,

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The White Women of the Black Renaissance, and Zora Neale Hurston,

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A Life in Letters, both New York Times notable books, and has written for such

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publications as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, and The Nation.

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Kaplan has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National

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Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

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She serves on the Board of Biographers International Organization and is a Society

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of American Historians Fellow.

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Kaplan earned her Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University.

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She divides her time between Boston and Cape Cod.

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Her new book, which we will discuss in the interview, is Troublemaker,

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The Fierce Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

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on this podcast, Carla Kaplan.

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All right. Carla Kaplan, how you doing, ma'am? You doing good?

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Doing really well. So nice to be with you today. Well, it's nice to meet you,

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and we're going to be as expeditious as possible, but I want to get into this

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book that you wrote, Troublemaker,

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The Fierce Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.

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You have been recognized for this book as well as other books that you have written, and,

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This is going to be a fascinating thing for me, and we'll get into that in the

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interview. But I do a couple of icebreakers real quick.

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Sure. So the first one is, I want you to respond to this quote.

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You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the

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guilty. What does that quote mean to you?

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That's one of my favorites. I love that you started with that.

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Now, I mean, I have to say she did believe you could change the world.

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And she believed that one of the ways you could do it was by embarrassing the guilty.

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It's one of the reasons we need her so much today.

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You know, we're surrounded by the guilty, I don't have to tell you.

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And she would just be having her way with them because she had a genius for

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not only letting the exploiters and the fascists and the authoritarians and

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the racists hoist themselves by their own petards,

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indict themselves by their own language, but her real genius was that she could

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always do it with a certain amount of humor.

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Now, even when she was treating the most serious subjects like fascism,

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she would go after people who supported fascism in a way that made you both

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see everything that was wrong with their thinking, but it brought everybody

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together to laugh at them as well. And that was her gift.

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She could infuse laughter into almost any context.

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Her most famous book is the world's funniest book about death and dying,

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the American way of death.

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So when she says you can embarrass the guilty, you know, she means that very

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seriously. You can sort of laugh them out of the room, and that was her gift. Yeah.

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So now the next icebreaker is what we call 20 questions.

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Okay. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

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Seventeen. Okay. What's something about people who see the world differently

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than you that you've come to appreciate?

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You mean people who are wrong, who don't see things the way I do?

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Is that what you're asking me? Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what I'm asking.

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What do I think about the wrong? Yeah.

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Nobody comes to their point of view out of nowhere.

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And one of the things that I am trying to learn from Jessica Mitford,

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and I will admit to you, I am still struggling with it, is to really listen to other people.

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One of her gifts was humor, but another one of her gifts was listening.

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Now, she sometimes listened to the people who didn't agree with her because

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she knew she was going to skewer them.

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She wasn't always listening to them with the kindest or the most sympathetic ear.

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She had what she called an unusual instinct for destroying the enemy.

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So she wasn't always operating out of love and kindness, but she knew how to

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truly listen to other people, so that she could get inside their thinking and

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their rationale, whether she agreed with it or not.

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And I'm trying to learn this from her, because everybody who comes to a point

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of view comes to it because of something in their history, or something they've heard,

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or something that they think.

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And if their ideas are really crazy or offensive, it's all the more reason we

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need to try to understand where they're coming from so that at the very least

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we know what we're dealing with.

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And I do feel that's one of the lessons Jessica Mitford offers because it was

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part of her skill set. Yeah.

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All right. So let me be candid with you. I have never heard of the Mitford sisters

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until you wrote the book.

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But it seemed like they were a big deal in their time. So to put it in perspective,

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were they the original Kardashians?

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In some ways, they were, and I'm actually really glad you made that analogy.

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It's actually made often because, like the Kardashians, the Midford sisters

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were famous for being famous and famous for being beautiful.

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And they knew how to capitalize on their notoriety and their fame,

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also like the Kardashians.

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Now, of course, the media they were exploiting was a completely different media

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than the Kardashians have.

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The Mitfords largely had newspapers. So they knew how to exploit the value of

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their own names in the written press. And they were very good at that.

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So in that way, the comparison is absolutely sound.

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Also, the fact that their story fascinates other people.

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So in the same way that the Kardashians fascinate people, and I will be frank

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with you, I don't really understand why, but I know that they are interesting to a lot of people.

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Sorry, Kardashians, not getting it over here in Boston, but I know it's true.

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And the Mitfords have been fascinating for a long time.

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I think the fascination with the Kardashians tells us something about our own

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moment and our own culture.

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Same was true and is true of the fascination with the Mitfords.

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It tells us a lot about our cultural moment.

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And there, perhaps, the similarity ends. Because.

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One of the differences with the Mitfords is in their own way,

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every single one of them, with the exception of Pamela.

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Really wanted to have an impact on her society, actually wanted to change or

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preserve the social order.

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And these were women who had no outlets. They didn't have a television platform.

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They didn't have the kind of wealth that many of the Kardashians have.

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They didn't necessarily have the spheres of influence, although they were aristocrats.

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So what they were looking for was a way into circles of influence.

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And they were very politically minded. They were writers. They were incredible readers.

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I don't know if that's true of the Kardashians. Have any of them written books?

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I don't know this. I think they have.

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And then, of course, Kim is actually a lawyer following her dad's foot. Right.

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Good point. So there's somebody obviously looking to have impact.

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And maybe they are looking to have more impact.

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Then I understand. The Mitford girls were very much looking to have an impact.

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Now, some of them were looking to have really horrible impact.

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Diana was an unrepentant fascist and an anti-Semite all her life.

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She never moved away from those views.

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She, in fact, went to her grave claiming that the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews.

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So this is someone, you know, who wanted to have the worst kind of impact.

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Unity, Jessica Mitford's actual favorite sister for a long time,

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was Hitler's intimate and profound anti-Semite.

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So, you know, some of the things, the spheres of influence they chose were,

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excuse me, despicable. Yeah.

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So, who was Jessica Mitford? Why was she a troublemaker? and why did you feel

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compelled to write about her?

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Maybe I'll start with the why I felt compelled as a way of answering the other two parts.

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And I did feel compelled, and I felt very lucky that I got to tell her story.

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I think I was looking for Jessica Midford for almost 20 years before I found

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her or knew that she was what I was looking for.

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And let me tell you what I mean by that. What I mean is my whole career,

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maybe 30 years now, I've wanted to tell the story of a woman activist who was

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really funny and lively and just a lot of fun to be around.

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Because there's a myth out there that women activists or serious women are grim

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and gray and cheerless and no fun to be around and nobody wants to be in the room with them.

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And, you know, they're always wagging their fingers at somebody.

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And I grew up in activist circles. I grew up surrounded by activists,

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all of whom were fun and funny and lively and people I really enjoyed being with.

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And I thought, I need to be able to tell a story that changes this narrative.

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So in that way, I was looking. I didn't know it would get to be Jessica Mitford.

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I didn't know that I was going to get to tell the story of the person who may

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be the funniest activist in American history. She just had an irrepressible sense of humor, and.

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Kind of raised the spirits of everybody around her and people wanted to work

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with her because she was so much fun. So there was that.

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But she came into my life at a very particular moment.

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I was writing a trade book prior to this called Miss Anne in Harlem,

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The White Women of the Black Renaissance, which was a group biography of a very

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unlikely cohort of women,

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white women, who they all looked sort of at the left bank and then they looked

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at Greenwich Village and they said, no,

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I'm going to go to Black Harlem. I'm going to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.

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What? It was such an unlikely thing for them to do.

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And the truth is, the book was in some ways a story of failed allies.

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Most of them didn't succeed in the ways they wanted to. They went with their good intentions.

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And if we've learned anything about racism, it's that good intentions alone

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are not going to do very much, right?

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Good intentions alone are pretty thin.

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So it was a story in many ways about failed allies.

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And as I was a chapter into that book, I knew I could never tell another story about a failed ally.

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I needed a successful ally. I had no idea it was going to be Jessica Mitford,

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who is not only one of the funniest activists in our history,

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but one of the most successful allies in the sense of crossing from one world,

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the British aristocracy.

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To a really important ally and advocate in another world, Black Oakland, California.

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Those two worlds are about as different as you can get. I always say that the

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Cotswolds to Oakland, that's a pretty big divide.

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And Jessica Mitford not only bridged that divide,

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she did it by kind of playing into her past, playing into the idea that we can

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all learn about people who are really different from us,

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playing into the idea you don't have to look like other people to care about

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their struggles and their rights and their justice.

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And she didn't look like the Black Oaklander she was fighting for in the Civil

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Rights Congress, in the American Communist Party, as a muckraker.

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She couldn't have looked more different from them.

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She looked like what she was. She looked like a British aristocrat.

00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:13.600
And she played into that to show that being an ally doesn't mean you pretend

00:20:13.600 --> 00:20:15.260
to be the people you're fighting for.

00:20:15.480 --> 00:20:19.900
It means you learn about them and you actually care about their rights.

00:20:20.512 --> 00:20:27.192
So that's what made her so important and so interesting, and the fact that she

00:20:27.192 --> 00:20:29.892
was the only Mitford with a sense of social justice.

00:20:30.152 --> 00:20:35.312
All the other Mitfords leaned toward the right, even her more liberal sister,

00:20:35.592 --> 00:20:37.112
the novelist Nancy Mitford.

00:20:37.492 --> 00:20:42.132
And Jessica Mitford was a socialist from the age of about five years old.

00:20:42.412 --> 00:20:48.672
She was that kid who looks around and says, wait a minute, Wait a minute.

00:20:49.072 --> 00:20:54.652
Something's not right here. How come we have pretty much everything and everybody

00:20:54.652 --> 00:20:56.632
around us has pretty much nothing?

00:20:57.532 --> 00:21:00.632
You know that kid that some of us have been that kid.

00:21:00.892 --> 00:21:06.032
Many people outgrow that. She never outgrew it. And we don't know exactly why

00:21:06.032 --> 00:21:12.772
she alone out of that family had that sense of justice, but she had it. She was an outlier.

00:21:13.092 --> 00:21:16.132
She described her life as a lonely opposition.

00:21:16.652 --> 00:21:20.072
And I think her story is also important for that reason.

00:21:20.812 --> 00:21:28.292
Yeah. Yeah. It's the kind of, there was a line in the book somewhere, I'm trying to remember,

00:21:28.952 --> 00:21:33.592
exactly, but it was something to the effect that somebody said,

00:21:33.872 --> 00:21:40.492
or somebody had talked about the aristocrat saying, about fashion saying, I'm in Dior.

00:21:41.052 --> 00:21:44.072
And she said, I'm in JCPenney.

00:21:44.812 --> 00:21:48.552
Yes, exactly. Exactly. And she was in JCPenney.

00:21:48.712 --> 00:21:55.292
I mean, that was her high style, was JCPenney in Oakland, California.

00:21:56.072 --> 00:22:02.492
She couldn't be bothered with all of the stuff that was the center of most of her sister's worlds.

00:22:02.752 --> 00:22:08.592
The high fashion and the never gaining an ounce and the knowing who was who

00:22:08.592 --> 00:22:10.332
by looking it up into Brett's peerage.

00:22:11.152 --> 00:22:13.332
You know, she didn't care about any of that stuff.

00:22:14.130 --> 00:22:17.550
And she came from a world in which that stuff was everything.

00:22:17.930 --> 00:22:23.510
And to me, that made her so interesting and, you know, made her story really

00:22:23.510 --> 00:22:28.990
worth spending the ridiculously long amount of time I spent trying to write it.

00:22:29.570 --> 00:22:37.650
Yeah. So did the current political, because I think you said you spent a decade researching her.

00:22:38.330 --> 00:22:42.610
Yeah. Did the current political climate give you more fuel to write this book?

00:22:44.130 --> 00:22:48.150
Well, it, you know, it did in a lot of ways.

00:22:48.990 --> 00:22:55.130
Certainly, you know, the first Trump election gave me a ton of fuel.

00:22:55.410 --> 00:23:01.270
The global turn towards fascism, because it's happening in countries around the globe,

00:23:02.210 --> 00:23:05.870
the rise of new nationalisms,

00:23:06.490 --> 00:23:13.470
the unapologetic rise of racism again, anti-Semitism,

00:23:14.010 --> 00:23:22.670
all of that did fuel my belief that the story of a lifelong anti-fascist could matter today.

00:23:22.930 --> 00:23:30.610
But what I never predicted and wouldn't have predicted is that we would be living

00:23:30.610 --> 00:23:33.110
in a moment with a second Trump presidency.

00:23:34.493 --> 00:23:39.693
I didn't see this coming. I didn't, you know, I don't know how to say it other

00:23:39.693 --> 00:23:42.473
than I didn't think so little of my fellow citizens.

00:23:42.913 --> 00:23:48.933
I didn't think, knowing everything we know about the venality of this man,

00:23:49.133 --> 00:23:50.973
that they would elect him a second time.

00:23:51.393 --> 00:23:57.553
And in that way, she really speaks to the current moment because she spent all

00:23:57.553 --> 00:24:03.453
her life standing up against forms of authoritarianism and bullying.

00:24:04.213 --> 00:24:07.393
Jessica Midford could not be bullied.

00:24:07.593 --> 00:24:13.433
She was a person who not only never bent the knee to authoritarians,

00:24:13.553 --> 00:24:15.833
but she was literally unbelievable.

00:24:16.333 --> 00:24:20.073
I don't think that's a word. I think I just coined it. But she was an unbelievable

00:24:20.073 --> 00:24:22.893
person. Part of that was because she was an aristocrat.

00:24:23.393 --> 00:24:28.193
She came from a world in which her people were the apex of everything.

00:24:28.473 --> 00:24:32.433
And you just, you couldn't bully her. And bullies were her special target.

00:24:32.733 --> 00:24:35.413
Bullies were what she hated most.

00:24:35.773 --> 00:24:42.173
The idea that, you know, a deeply disturbed bully would be the president right

00:24:42.173 --> 00:24:45.373
now as this book came out, that I couldn't have foreseen.

00:24:45.773 --> 00:24:49.253
But I think she's a gift to this moment.

00:24:49.273 --> 00:24:55.733
I think somebody who knows how to bring people together to kneecap bullies,

00:24:55.733 --> 00:24:58.733
and the president is hardly the only one, right?

00:24:58.933 --> 00:25:02.633
I mean, Project 2025, it's a manifesto for bullying.

00:25:02.873 --> 00:25:05.633
That's really what it is. Right.

00:25:06.172 --> 00:25:08.892
She's a gift to this moment. Yeah.

00:25:09.352 --> 00:25:13.572
So you kind of answered this one question I wanted to ask with that answer,

00:25:13.752 --> 00:25:19.032
what made a socialite like Jessica an effective advocate for social change?

00:25:19.372 --> 00:25:23.832
And just her being from that aristocratic background, you know,

00:25:24.052 --> 00:25:25.692
you use the term unbulliable.

00:25:25.972 --> 00:25:28.932
I would say that she bullied the bully. She was.

00:25:29.252 --> 00:25:36.652
Yeah. She came from a position her aristocracy gave her the moral spine to just

00:25:36.652 --> 00:25:42.092
look what she disdained in the eye and just and just go for the jugular.

00:25:42.332 --> 00:25:48.812
Which leads me to this question. Was Jessica more of a terrific hater or an angry empath?

00:25:50.103 --> 00:25:59.263
So she was both, but I have to explain that she defined hater a little differently than we do today.

00:26:00.823 --> 00:26:05.003
She loved people who were what she called terrific haters.

00:26:05.683 --> 00:26:11.523
And what she meant by that is not what we mean by it now when we say don't be such a hater.

00:26:11.903 --> 00:26:16.883
What she meant when she said that the one thing she liked about her family is

00:26:16.883 --> 00:26:20.983
they were all good haters, is that they weren't wishy-washies.

00:26:21.183 --> 00:26:23.183
They didn't prevaricate.

00:26:23.543 --> 00:26:29.663
What she liked were people who took a stand and stayed with their program.

00:26:29.943 --> 00:26:34.943
Now, she didn't like the stand her sisters Diana and Unity took.

00:26:35.103 --> 00:26:41.043
She couldn't bear it and, in fact, never spoke to Diana all her life.

00:26:41.063 --> 00:26:51.703
But what she liked were people who kept to their positions, who were bold about taking strong views.

00:26:52.043 --> 00:26:55.523
And she was somebody who was able to do that all her life.

00:26:55.663 --> 00:26:59.403
She joined the Communist Party quite early on,

00:26:59.583 --> 00:27:06.483
early 1940s, at a time when Americans across the country who cared deeply about

00:27:06.483 --> 00:27:10.963
social justice and racism were joining the Communist Party because it was really

00:27:10.963 --> 00:27:17.583
the only interracial anti-racist social justice organization that was national.

00:27:17.943 --> 00:27:19.103
So that's where people joined.

00:27:19.892 --> 00:27:24.392
When she left the Communist Party in 1958, when pretty much everybody left it

00:27:24.392 --> 00:27:29.652
because of the revelations of Stalin's atrocities, she never apologized for

00:27:29.652 --> 00:27:33.612
her position. She never said, oh, I was duped. I was fooled.

00:27:34.032 --> 00:27:37.392
She said there were things we didn't know. They were terrible.

00:27:37.712 --> 00:27:43.832
But I don't regret my time. She said she learned how to be an important activist.

00:27:43.832 --> 00:27:45.792
She learned what racism was.

00:27:45.952 --> 00:27:49.392
She learned what capitalism was. She learned what social injustice was.

00:27:49.892 --> 00:27:58.112
And she never kind of hung her head about her positions if she made a mistake.

00:27:58.272 --> 00:28:01.492
She said that was wrong, and then she developed a new position.

00:28:01.492 --> 00:28:07.992
And that's what she meant by being a good hater, somebody who knew how to kind

00:28:07.992 --> 00:28:10.152
of stick to their guns. Yeah.

00:28:11.312 --> 00:28:16.452
So one of the things that was fascinating was that she influenced a lot of people.

00:28:18.032 --> 00:28:22.652
And having read the book, I think I understand like Congressman Raskin.

00:28:23.112 --> 00:28:30.212
And, and so I was like, I can, I can kind of see him trying to channel that, right?

00:28:30.492 --> 00:28:33.772
When he's dealing with his counterparts in Congress.

00:28:34.152 --> 00:28:41.512
But who would you say currently embodies the relentlessness of a Jessica Mitford today?

00:28:42.772 --> 00:28:45.752
Oh, I think that's a really good question.

00:28:47.511 --> 00:28:52.731
And I think somebody like Jamie Raskin is actually a good example.

00:28:54.911 --> 00:29:04.671
Jessica Mitford, like Jamie Raskin, was relentless not only against injustice,

00:29:05.231 --> 00:29:11.411
but she was relentless for people having rights and a voice.

00:29:12.071 --> 00:29:18.691
It's why we really have to credit Jessica Mitford with being the first powerful

00:29:18.691 --> 00:29:21.191
consumer rights advocate in our

00:29:21.191 --> 00:29:24.591
national history, because that's what the American way of death was about.

00:29:24.731 --> 00:29:28.771
It was standing up for working people who were being fleeced.

00:29:29.331 --> 00:29:38.871
And you think about somebody like Jamie Raskin and his relentlessness for democracy.

00:29:38.871 --> 00:29:45.751
You know, his refusal to give up on the idea of participatory democracy.

00:29:46.231 --> 00:29:51.331
And he's more relentless for, I think, than he's relentless against.

00:29:52.531 --> 00:29:58.031
And that's a difficult thing these days, because people who are relentless for

00:29:58.031 --> 00:30:03.951
are up against people who will stop at nothing in their relentlessness against.

00:30:03.951 --> 00:30:13.171
But he's relentless for democracy, and I think Jessica Midford was relentless for working people.

00:30:13.731 --> 00:30:18.351
I think that when we look for someone like her,

00:30:18.831 --> 00:30:29.111
we need to look mostly outside of elected governmental circles and to her fellow

00:30:29.111 --> 00:30:30.331
investigative journalists.

00:30:31.748 --> 00:30:38.668
I think that so much of what's going to turn things around is in the hands right

00:30:38.668 --> 00:30:43.608
now of investigative journalists who can reveal what's going on.

00:30:43.728 --> 00:30:47.728
And I don't mean there are no elected officials who are keeping up the fight.

00:30:48.028 --> 00:30:52.988
I mean, goodness, Mamdani was just elected, and that's so amazing.

00:30:52.988 --> 00:30:56.288
What a fascinating moment that is, right?

00:30:56.568 --> 00:30:59.908
And clearly, Mamdani is truly a fighter.

00:31:00.248 --> 00:31:06.388
But I think we have to look at the journalists, and we have to look at the kind

00:31:06.388 --> 00:31:13.668
of activists who were behind Black Lives Matter, and who have been behind Black Lives Matter,

00:31:13.888 --> 00:31:22.288
who refuse to accept that Black people's lives don't count, who refuse to accept

00:31:22.288 --> 00:31:27.608
this notion that the police, or now it's ICE,

00:31:28.088 --> 00:31:30.428
can gun down whoever they choose.

00:31:31.208 --> 00:31:36.468
Those are the people who I think are embodying the Mitford spirit. Yeah.

00:31:37.108 --> 00:31:41.408
All right. So I know you got to go because you've got a real job outside of

00:31:41.408 --> 00:31:44.488
being a writer. Which is also a real job.

00:31:47.828 --> 00:31:51.068
Finish this sentence for me. I have hope because...

00:31:52.858 --> 00:32:01.998
I have hope because people like Jessica Mitford lived through even darker times.

00:32:03.158 --> 00:32:08.778
And they give us a model of coming out the other side.

00:32:09.078 --> 00:32:18.598
She lived through World War II, global fascism, global Nazism, the Holocaust.

00:32:19.538 --> 00:32:24.438
She lived through the Red Scare. She lived through the Red Scare as an American

00:32:24.438 --> 00:32:29.018
communist who watched the people she knew and loved leave the country,

00:32:29.258 --> 00:32:34.218
lose their jobs, lose their families, go to prison. Some of them killed themselves.

00:32:34.458 --> 00:32:38.178
She lived through really, really dark times.

00:32:38.378 --> 00:32:44.758
And she got up every day ready to fight and every day looking to have some fun. That gives me hope.

00:32:45.638 --> 00:32:50.798
So, Carla Kaplan, how can people get a copy of this book, Troublemaker?

00:32:50.798 --> 00:32:52.638
How can people reach out to you?

00:32:53.058 --> 00:32:59.038
Just go ahead and tell people how they do it. My website is www.carlacaplan.com

00:32:59.038 --> 00:33:02.078
or www.troublemaker.com.

00:33:02.538 --> 00:33:07.298
My author email is on the website. The book should be available anywhere.

00:33:07.858 --> 00:33:13.038
Please support your independent bookstores. They need your patronage, and we need them.

00:33:13.478 --> 00:33:18.838
So get the book from an independent bookstore. Well, Ms. Kaplan,

00:33:18.998 --> 00:33:20.978
thank you for coming on to the podcast.

00:33:21.538 --> 00:33:25.438
But most importantly, thank you for your activism through your writing.

00:33:25.698 --> 00:33:32.818
Your historical research has really, really enlightened people like me and just

00:33:32.818 --> 00:33:34.758
continue to do what you do.

00:33:34.758 --> 00:33:41.398
And I'm glad that the success is coming with the work.

00:33:41.538 --> 00:33:45.638
I just think people need to get their flowers while they can still smell them

00:33:45.638 --> 00:33:52.338
and it seems like you've been doing that but I appreciate you doing this. Thank you so much.

00:33:53.192 --> 00:33:56.112
Thank you so much for having me and for such great questions.

00:33:56.472 --> 00:33:59.412
Yes, ma'am. All right, guys, and we're going to catch you all on the other side.

00:34:18.947 --> 00:34:24.727
All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Cody Nagle.

00:34:25.167 --> 00:34:30.167
Cody Nagle is a staff attorney with Civil Survival, a Washington State reentry

00:34:30.167 --> 00:34:31.507
legal aid organization.

00:34:31.927 --> 00:34:36.967
Born and raised in Seattle, she recently returned to the Pacific Northwest after

00:34:36.967 --> 00:34:38.707
nearly a decade on the East Coast.

00:34:38.887 --> 00:34:43.987
She holds a law degree from Syracuse University College of Law and is licensed

00:34:43.987 --> 00:34:46.907
to practice in Washington State and the District of Columbia.

00:34:47.267 --> 00:34:52.247
Cody's passion for reentry and legal reform stems from her personal experience

00:34:52.247 --> 00:34:57.087
overcoming barriers to employment and housing as a result of her criminal record.

00:34:57.347 --> 00:35:02.327
Cody struggled with substance use disorder from a very young age and spent most

00:35:02.327 --> 00:35:06.847
of her teens and early 20s cycling through treatment centers and jails across

00:35:06.847 --> 00:35:14.047
western She successfully completed Pierce County's drug court program in 2012.

00:35:14.507 --> 00:35:20.447
Since that time, Cody has become acutely aware of the institutional and systemic

00:35:20.447 --> 00:35:23.247
barriers for people with criminal convictions.

00:35:24.268 --> 00:35:29.248
Struggling for years to find meaningful employment, she became dedicated to

00:35:29.248 --> 00:35:34.408
helping others reclaim their lives after incarceration or mental health and

00:35:34.408 --> 00:35:35.968
substance use disorders.

00:35:36.948 --> 00:35:41.588
Cody was one of the first people with felony convictions to serve in the executive

00:35:41.588 --> 00:35:44.468
office of the president under the Biden administration.

00:35:44.468 --> 00:35:49.868
She worked as a policy and outreach advisor in the Office of National Drug Control

00:35:49.868 --> 00:35:55.228
Policy, where she used her lived experience to advance drug policy reform and

00:35:55.228 --> 00:35:58.888
connect diverse groups to address the national overdose epidemic.

00:35:59.768 --> 00:36:04.848
Cody has also worked as a legislative attorney, researching and drafting legislation

00:36:04.848 --> 00:36:08.468
related to drug policy and the criminal legal system.

00:36:09.108 --> 00:36:15.928
In her spare time, Cody loves to travel and spend time outdoors with her husband and three kids.

00:36:16.128 --> 00:36:20.568
Ladies and gentlemen, it is truly my distinct honor and privilege to have as

00:36:20.568 --> 00:36:23.928
a guest on this podcast, Cody Nagle.

00:36:35.142 --> 00:36:38.282
All right. Cody Nagle, how are you doing? Hello.

00:36:38.802 --> 00:36:42.222
You doing good? I'm doing great. Thank you.

00:36:42.562 --> 00:36:47.702
Glad to be. Well, thank you for accepting the invitation. I greatly appreciate that.

00:36:48.322 --> 00:36:53.302
One of the things that I don't know if you had a chance to do any background

00:36:53.302 --> 00:37:00.142
on me before we got this interview going, but I was a state legislator at one time.

00:37:01.302 --> 00:37:10.862
And a couple of things I was really, really involved in was trying to get people their suffrage back.

00:37:12.302 --> 00:37:17.222
And in Mississippi, it's a unique process where...

00:37:19.082 --> 00:37:23.302
Say, for example, you were my constituent or just somebody that approached me

00:37:23.302 --> 00:37:27.202
and said, you know, I'm out, you know, I've served my time.

00:37:28.082 --> 00:37:31.482
And the general standard is like five years, even though that's not written

00:37:31.482 --> 00:37:35.582
in code. That's just kind of the gentleman's or lady's agreement. Right.

00:37:36.322 --> 00:37:42.922
And so you've been out for five years. So I would submit a bill and it would

00:37:42.922 --> 00:37:47.442
be a bill with strictly your name on it. it's the only type of legislation that

00:37:47.442 --> 00:37:49.402
can be designated to one person.

00:37:50.222 --> 00:37:55.062
And then we can't vote on it in a block, right? If it gets at it,

00:37:55.202 --> 00:37:57.962
we got to do the whole process. You got to go through the committee.

00:37:58.382 --> 00:38:02.422
I did serve on the judiciary committee where that happened.

00:38:03.002 --> 00:38:08.822
And then you would, if the bill made out of committee, then the whole house,

00:38:09.002 --> 00:38:13.262
because I served in the house, would vote on it and then it would go over to the Senate, right?

00:38:13.262 --> 00:38:19.602
And then the Senate had an additional test to make sure that you have paid all your restitution.

00:38:20.982 --> 00:38:24.582
We don't require that in the House, but on the Senate side, they do.

00:38:24.722 --> 00:38:27.742
They have some kind of ancient computer that goes back to hell,

00:38:28.502 --> 00:38:30.622
Space Odyssey and all that.

00:38:31.382 --> 00:38:35.862
And then if they pass mustard in the Senate, then that individual person,

00:38:36.082 --> 00:38:38.602
you would get your suffrage rights back.

00:38:39.422 --> 00:38:43.962
Now, I say all that to say that it's a belaboring process.

00:38:45.182 --> 00:38:52.122
And, you know, but the other thing that I did was I served on a board that dealt

00:38:52.122 --> 00:38:56.782
with formerly incarcerated people that I would,

00:38:56.962 --> 00:39:02.702
you know, we sat there and tried to figure out ways to make the transition easier.

00:39:03.662 --> 00:39:09.362
And, you know, so I've always been fascinated with the work because,

00:39:09.362 --> 00:39:14.222
you know, we have this mindset in America.

00:39:15.158 --> 00:39:22.678
Where people are disposable. And I don't buy that. I think everybody deserves a chance.

00:39:22.998 --> 00:39:26.558
And so when I came across this woman named Cody Nagle, I said,

00:39:26.738 --> 00:39:29.658
oh, wow, she's got a story to tell.

00:39:31.038 --> 00:39:36.038
And, you know, it's you are proof positive of my belief.

00:39:36.578 --> 00:39:41.538
And there's thousands of Cody Nagles out there, but I want to talk to you because

00:39:41.538 --> 00:39:45.798
not only have you been through the experience and we'll get into that in the interview,

00:39:46.138 --> 00:39:54.178
but you've taken a path where you're helping other folks guide, you know,

00:39:54.778 --> 00:39:56.978
you're a guidepost to other people.

00:39:57.998 --> 00:40:03.378
So it's really, really an honor for me to talk to you, kind of pick your brain

00:40:03.378 --> 00:40:07.058
a little bit about what's going on and let people get to know who you are.

00:40:07.378 --> 00:40:14.518
So I did all that. I normally don't do introductions, but I just kind of felt I wanted to lay that out

00:40:14.918 --> 00:40:21.858
in the beginning to give the listeners a sense of who you are,

00:40:22.018 --> 00:40:24.798
and you'll get into that into greater detail.

00:40:25.078 --> 00:40:27.938
But again, thank you for accepting the invitation.

00:40:29.598 --> 00:40:34.158
So let's do what I normally do and do some icebreakers. So the first icebreaker

00:40:34.158 --> 00:40:37.058
is a quote I want you to respond to.

00:40:37.278 --> 00:40:43.578
And the quote is, when we center the people most impacted, we create lasting change.

00:40:43.798 --> 00:40:52.858
What does that quote mean to you? For me, having people that have been through

00:40:52.858 --> 00:41:03.438
the problem that you're trying to solve gives you a viewpoint of not just the problem,

00:41:03.438 --> 00:41:12.578
but every other piece of the puzzle that you can't get from looking at just from the outside.

00:41:12.578 --> 00:41:22.118
So, I don't think there's a substitute for lived experience in decision making.

00:41:23.098 --> 00:41:31.618
There's no way that the people that are writing policy or passing laws or even,

00:41:31.618 --> 00:41:35.518
you know, deciding who gets a paycheck at their company.

00:41:36.878 --> 00:41:39.878
There's no way unless they have either I

00:41:39.878 --> 00:41:42.858
mean been through it themselves or had somebody

00:41:42.858 --> 00:41:47.418
there with them that's been through to like make the right decision that's going

00:41:47.418 --> 00:41:52.618
to be long lasting that's going to be sustainable change that that really makes

00:41:52.618 --> 00:41:58.498
the impact that we want it to make and I think that that quote really in a more

00:41:58.498 --> 00:42:00.198
succinct way than I could put it,

00:42:01.258 --> 00:42:04.378
puts lived experience kind of on the table.

00:42:06.318 --> 00:42:12.598
That's what I get out of it. All right. Now, the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.

00:42:13.218 --> 00:42:17.078
Okay. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

00:42:18.372 --> 00:42:27.392
What is the one thing you hope the current administration will do or not do during this term?

00:42:27.392 --> 00:42:30.672
I I'm going

00:42:30.672 --> 00:42:34.752
to go with a not do and I really

00:42:34.752 --> 00:42:46.732
hope that they do not halt the progress that we've been making in reform on

00:42:46.732 --> 00:42:52.892
drug policy and and the criminal legal system.

00:42:52.892 --> 00:43:01.352
Because I think even this administration has been able to see the value in the

00:43:01.352 --> 00:43:05.392
work that has been done over the past 20 years now.

00:43:07.470 --> 00:43:12.550
And I and I see a lot of I see a lot of ways that that could be stopped and

00:43:12.550 --> 00:43:14.190
is kind of heading that way.

00:43:14.510 --> 00:43:17.710
So I'm really hopeful. Yeah. Yeah.

00:43:18.430 --> 00:43:23.410
All right. So how did Cody Nagle become a champion for those formerly incarcerated?

00:43:25.670 --> 00:43:34.570
I had my own experiences with the criminal legal system and incarceration.

00:43:34.570 --> 00:43:43.450
I was a young person into my early 20s and got out and realized that the system

00:43:43.450 --> 00:43:50.430
is not set up for people to move on after they've served their time.

00:43:50.870 --> 00:43:56.570
Even though there's a lot of motivation there to help people, I think.

00:43:56.570 --> 00:44:01.710
And I think a lot of the system players have good intentions and had good intentions,

00:44:01.710 --> 00:44:08.690
possibly for longer than I want to admit, but there wasn't anything there.

00:44:08.790 --> 00:44:15.490
And I didn't know how to get a job or get a place to stay.

00:44:15.810 --> 00:44:20.630
I didn't know how to navigate the systems that were supposedly put in place

00:44:20.630 --> 00:44:22.890
to help me, even with social services.

00:44:22.890 --> 00:44:26.030
And so you try and

00:44:26.030 --> 00:44:29.890
transition out of this life you've been I

00:44:29.890 --> 00:44:33.010
tried to transition out of a life I had been living into one that

00:44:33.010 --> 00:44:36.010
felt meaningful and purposeful and healthy

00:44:36.010 --> 00:44:38.930
and it just felt like you just keep hitting

00:44:38.930 --> 00:44:42.990
roadblocks and so it

00:44:42.990 --> 00:44:49.630
took me a little while but I finally realized that The tool that I had to make

00:44:49.630 --> 00:44:56.190
this easier for other people was my own experience and my own perspective that

00:44:56.190 --> 00:45:00.070
I had in that system. And that's similar to that quote you shared earlier.

00:45:01.763 --> 00:45:09.963
People like to hear success stories, but a lot of the time the interest wanes after the story's over.

00:45:10.163 --> 00:45:14.923
And so we need people that have

00:45:14.923 --> 00:45:20.443
experienced this in the work because that interest never goes away for us.

00:45:21.083 --> 00:45:26.483
And so I've just kind of taken all the opportunities that I can to get involved.

00:45:26.483 --> 00:45:33.423
And I've been really lucky to have, you know, a lot more opportunity than I've

00:45:33.423 --> 00:45:36.763
seen a lot of people go through.

00:45:37.063 --> 00:45:42.023
So just try to take advantage of everything that I could until I got to a point

00:45:42.023 --> 00:45:47.123
where I was able to, like, really put this into work and make it make,

00:45:47.323 --> 00:45:51.603
you know, survive while I was doing it, make it a make it a career. Yeah.

00:45:52.383 --> 00:45:57.203
You once said, I just think it's important that people know that we can change.

00:45:57.603 --> 00:46:02.843
We can become what we maybe don't even know that we could become.

00:46:03.463 --> 00:46:09.223
Why is that important? And would you modestly say that you are a living example of that?

00:46:09.223 --> 00:46:22.323
But I do modestly say that because when I said that quote, I was thinking of myself, you know?

00:46:22.643 --> 00:46:28.883
I had no—there was no—it was not something I could think of.

00:46:28.883 --> 00:46:35.803
I could not imagine the life that I live today 15 years ago when I was really

00:46:35.803 --> 00:46:41.223
in the midst of addiction and homelessness and the carceral system.

00:46:42.886 --> 00:46:51.326
So it's important that we give the public an opportunity to see our success

00:46:51.326 --> 00:46:54.246
when we come out of things like that.

00:46:54.806 --> 00:47:00.766
But I also like and the reason that that's important is because I think so often

00:47:00.766 --> 00:47:07.906
the narrative is that people that live the way I used to live or people that

00:47:07.906 --> 00:47:11.006
are incarcerated deserve to be there.

00:47:11.006 --> 00:47:14.406
And that that is them.

00:47:14.426 --> 00:47:16.126
That's not something that they

00:47:16.126 --> 00:47:21.326
did or something that they suffered through. That is them as a person.

00:47:21.726 --> 00:47:23.726
And I don't think that's true.

00:47:24.746 --> 00:47:33.266
And so I love opportunities to show the public that people change.

00:47:33.526 --> 00:47:39.926
And I don't think that I'm the best shining example, but I know that,

00:47:40.026 --> 00:47:42.806
like you said, There's thousands of Cody Nagles out there.

00:47:42.966 --> 00:47:48.566
And if we could get the rest of society to see all of these thousands of people

00:47:48.566 --> 00:47:53.726
that are doing better than we were told we could do, I think a lot more change could happen.

00:47:53.726 --> 00:47:59.226
And I think there'd be a lot less resistance to supporting, you know,

00:47:59.386 --> 00:48:02.126
people in recovery and reintegration.

00:48:03.789 --> 00:48:07.989
I think that could really open a lot more eyes. Yeah.

00:48:09.269 --> 00:48:14.589
Well, I personally think that, you know, you're being, because you're talking

00:48:14.589 --> 00:48:19.249
about yourself, you're being modest and you come across a very modest person.

00:48:19.709 --> 00:48:21.589
So let me brag on you a little bit.

00:48:23.289 --> 00:48:28.489
You've made it all the way to working in the White House at some point.

00:48:28.489 --> 00:48:36.289
And now, as part of your current job, you're a lobbyist at the state capitol in Olympia.

00:48:36.729 --> 00:48:42.529
So which one is more intimidating? You working in the White House or you being

00:48:42.529 --> 00:48:45.469
a lobbyist at the state capitol in Washington State?

00:48:46.849 --> 00:48:52.949
With hands down, what I do today is more intimidating to me.

00:48:54.029 --> 00:48:57.249
There was a...

00:48:58.489 --> 00:49:03.049
I don't know. I guess I don't know how to explain this without sounding contrite

00:49:03.049 --> 00:49:07.729
a little, but the White House isn't all it's cracked up to be.

00:49:08.149 --> 00:49:15.829
It was not prepared to have people like me there at the time.

00:49:16.029 --> 00:49:19.789
And so a lot of my job was not glamorous.

00:49:20.589 --> 00:49:24.669
Most of my job was not glamorous. I tried to make the best of it and do what I could.

00:49:24.889 --> 00:49:30.349
I brought, you know, I brought a perspective again that hadn't been there before.

00:49:31.929 --> 00:49:35.609
But today, I'm an attorney.

00:49:35.649 --> 00:49:43.389
I go represent people in court, and that is one of the most intimidating things

00:49:43.389 --> 00:49:46.189
that I've ever had to do, I think,

00:49:46.509 --> 00:49:53.149
is go back into courtrooms and argue with prosecutors, knowing that.

00:49:54.139 --> 00:50:00.539
My, that is not me today that, you know, is going to suffer the consequences of my decision.

00:50:00.699 --> 00:50:05.659
It's somebody that I care about or that I'm, you know, committed to helping.

00:50:06.179 --> 00:50:13.019
And the same thing is true going in and trying to sit with legislators and talk

00:50:13.019 --> 00:50:19.459
to them about change that I think they should be supporting when often I know

00:50:19.459 --> 00:50:22.179
that they either can't or won't.

00:50:22.319 --> 00:50:29.139
I feel a heavy burden on myself to represent my community in a way that's going

00:50:29.139 --> 00:50:33.319
to get change made, and that's intimidating.

00:50:33.799 --> 00:50:37.759
Yeah, I understand. And me being a former legislator, I get it.

00:50:37.759 --> 00:50:41.599
Oh, yeah, I get it. You know, it's excuse me.

00:50:41.739 --> 00:50:45.619
We're you know, we're we're pretty interesting to deal with.

00:50:45.799 --> 00:50:49.839
I'll say that I won't necessarily, you know, because you got all these different personalities.

00:50:50.059 --> 00:50:54.739
And one thing I used to remind folks all the time is that all of us got elected

00:50:54.739 --> 00:50:58.239
to that spot, but none of us in the room voted for each other.

00:50:58.239 --> 00:51:02.139
So we all have our own ego

00:51:02.139 --> 00:51:04.819
and our own agenda and all that kind

00:51:04.819 --> 00:51:07.619
of stuff and you coming in and saying all right

00:51:07.619 --> 00:51:10.599
let me hurt all these cats and see if I can get them to vote on

00:51:10.599 --> 00:51:13.559
this particular issue and it's you

00:51:13.559 --> 00:51:18.239
know it's it's hard and I and I get that because I've been in the lobbyist myself

00:51:18.239 --> 00:51:24.079
after I served so I I totally understand I I agree with your your assessment

00:51:24.079 --> 00:51:29.139
and then the The other thing that was really cool about your story was that

00:51:29.139 --> 00:51:32.999
when you came back home to practice law,

00:51:33.299 --> 00:51:37.259
you had to go through the process of being admitted to the bar.

00:51:37.519 --> 00:51:43.019
And the judge that basically saved your life, if you would agree with that,

00:51:43.179 --> 00:51:44.659
and put you in this process.

00:51:45.803 --> 00:51:50.463
Drug court program was the judge that swore you in as an attorney.

00:51:50.883 --> 00:51:54.303
See, that's the kind of stuff they write movies about. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

00:51:54.863 --> 00:51:58.783
And so that's why I was really, really intrigued. And now you're involved with

00:51:58.783 --> 00:52:01.243
this group called Civil Survival.

00:52:02.303 --> 00:52:09.423
So talk about what is Civil Survival? How did it begin? What is the mission? All that stuff.

00:52:10.370 --> 00:52:18.890
Yeah, so Civil Survival is a Washington-based nonprofit legal aid organization,

00:52:18.890 --> 00:52:24.350
and we also have a policy and advocacy arm.

00:52:24.350 --> 00:52:31.730
It is, we consider ourselves a bias for us organization,

00:52:32.170 --> 00:52:40.390
kind of grew out of this idea that formerly incarcerated people need a vehicle

00:52:40.390 --> 00:52:47.970
to advance other formerly incarcerated people and currently incarcerated people.

00:52:47.970 --> 00:52:54.170
How do we help change the system again when the people that are the most impacted

00:52:54.170 --> 00:52:56.050
are not there at the table?

00:52:56.870 --> 00:53:05.650
And so we, most of our priorities focus on eliminating collateral consequences

00:53:05.650 --> 00:53:08.830
of criminal convictions and incarceration.

00:53:09.450 --> 00:53:17.590
We do a lot of the legal aid work around helping people get out of legal debt.

00:53:17.970 --> 00:53:21.210
Especially when they, you know, everybody that comes to us for help,

00:53:21.430 --> 00:53:26.430
if they qualify for our services, then they are considered indigent.

00:53:26.730 --> 00:53:34.930
And by our statutes, a lot of these financial obligations in Washington should

00:53:34.930 --> 00:53:37.570
not have been imposed on them because they're indigent.

00:53:37.570 --> 00:53:42.550
And so we represent them trying to get those removed.

00:53:42.810 --> 00:53:48.550
We help people vacate their criminal convictions and try and get them as little

00:53:48.550 --> 00:53:54.630
on their record as possible so that then they can go on and do what they want

00:53:54.630 --> 00:53:56.910
to do, like housing and employment.

00:53:56.910 --> 00:54:03.630
And then our policy team works a lot on trying to change conditions of confinement

00:54:03.630 --> 00:54:12.510
and conditions of release and some of those areas like financial obligations or.

00:54:14.214 --> 00:54:20.174
What you have to do when you get out of prison. So we really are focused on

00:54:20.174 --> 00:54:24.114
post-conviction relief for individuals

00:54:24.114 --> 00:54:28.054
and trying to ease the burden for people that are still inside.

00:54:28.834 --> 00:54:33.194
Yeah. Now, y'all are based out of Seattle, Washington, right?

00:54:34.234 --> 00:54:39.594
Yes, but we practice statewide. We're fully remote, so we have the ability to

00:54:39.594 --> 00:54:42.974
help people in every Washington State jurisdiction.

00:54:43.474 --> 00:54:50.714
Yeah, the reason I want to highlight that because people believe that Washington

00:54:50.714 --> 00:54:54.094
State, California, everybody on the West Coast, right?

00:54:55.534 --> 00:54:59.574
It's like, surely you're not having the same problems as, say,

00:55:00.414 --> 00:55:03.434
people in Georgia or people in Mississippi where I was.

00:55:03.834 --> 00:55:11.994
Donald Trump said that y'all, of the leadership in Seattle's liberal slash communist leadership, right?

00:55:12.274 --> 00:55:20.394
So in the mindset of people, you know, and one fun fact, it's like Seattle is in King County.

00:55:20.734 --> 00:55:25.394
And initially it was named after some white general or something.

00:55:25.734 --> 00:55:30.674
And then the city, I mean, the county commission said, no, we're going to name

00:55:30.674 --> 00:55:33.554
it after Martin Luther King instead of this white guy named King.

00:55:33.554 --> 00:55:39.334
And so actually Martin Luther King's picture is on the county flag in King County.

00:55:39.594 --> 00:55:45.114
So a place like that, you would think, well, maybe Cody's work is not as hard

00:55:45.114 --> 00:55:51.214
as opposed to, say, if she was working, say, in the Deep South or Pennsylvania

00:55:51.214 --> 00:55:53.394
or somewhere like that, right? Kansas.

00:55:54.626 --> 00:55:58.586
Why is that not true? There's a few reasons that it's not true.

00:55:59.166 --> 00:56:07.366
Our state is not all liberal, although arguably even our reddest jurisdictions

00:56:07.366 --> 00:56:11.626
may be a little bluer than some of the deepest red in the South.

00:56:12.086 --> 00:56:17.106
We have a ton of rural counties, farmland and things like that.

00:56:17.206 --> 00:56:19.646
So we do get quite a bit of opposition.

00:56:21.086 --> 00:56:27.366
I mean, there's tons of other reasons But I've been, the longer that I do this

00:56:27.366 --> 00:56:31.246
The more surprised I am actually by exactly what you're talking about.

00:56:32.732 --> 00:56:37.512
Washington state's laws are not met.

00:56:37.812 --> 00:56:41.612
They are not where maybe the rest of the country thinks that they are,

00:56:41.772 --> 00:56:43.732
especially when it comes to reentry.

00:56:44.252 --> 00:56:50.932
Some of the southern states have more resources going to helping incarcerated

00:56:50.932 --> 00:56:57.972
folks get ready to be released, job training, things like that, than Washington by far.

00:56:58.292 --> 00:57:06.452
And so although we are liberal in a lot of ways, our criminal legal system has

00:57:06.452 --> 00:57:10.632
not kept up that same trend.

00:57:11.592 --> 00:57:20.552
And I think it's true that no matter where you live, when you get out of prison

00:57:20.552 --> 00:57:23.332
or jail or have a criminal conviction,

00:57:24.352 --> 00:57:32.992
there are barriers in place, and stigma crosses just about every political spectrum.

00:57:33.432 --> 00:57:40.412
So going and trying to get a job when you just got out of prison for whatever

00:57:40.412 --> 00:57:47.672
crime that you were convicted of, that barrier is there whether you live in a liberal city or not.

00:57:49.552 --> 00:57:52.392
So maybe my—you know, I don't know.

00:57:52.392 --> 00:57:57.932
I think also, now that I'm thinking about it, we have a lot of people in this

00:57:57.932 --> 00:58:02.612
state that think they're do-good or liberal, you know, really doing the Lord's

00:58:02.612 --> 00:58:05.832
work with having these progressive ideas.

00:58:06.192 --> 00:58:11.972
And when it comes down to it, when you're comparing it to other areas that are

00:58:11.972 --> 00:58:14.112
maybe considered more conservative,

00:58:15.132 --> 00:58:19.152
that just having that mindset that we're already doing everything,

00:58:19.152 --> 00:58:21.892
Like we already believe all these liberal things,

00:58:22.572 --> 00:58:30.672
It's probably not as true as they think it is So I don't know I don't think that that justice and,

00:58:31.823 --> 00:58:37.543
the criminal legal system have moved as far as other liberal policies have.

00:58:38.803 --> 00:58:44.543
Gotcha. Is the Washington legislature still in session? No, we had a short session

00:58:44.543 --> 00:58:47.163
this year and ended a couple of weeks ago.

00:58:47.583 --> 00:58:52.663
Okay. All right. So there's some things I want you to break down.

00:58:52.883 --> 00:58:57.903
So one of the things I noticed that you were real active, your organization,

00:58:58.403 --> 00:59:01.583
was this House Bill 2430.

00:59:01.863 --> 00:59:06.863
So kind of talk about what its intention was and what did y'all,

00:59:07.023 --> 00:59:08.543
were y'all able to stop it?

00:59:08.883 --> 00:59:12.443
Is the governor going to veto it if it passed? What's going on with that?

00:59:13.223 --> 00:59:17.443
Well, I'm just pulling up the most recent. Okay.

00:59:18.843 --> 00:59:23.543
This is the crime victim's penalty assessment. Okay. Sorry. What's the number?

00:59:23.663 --> 00:59:24.563
The number didn't registered.

00:59:25.343 --> 00:59:33.323
So a few years ago, they dropped this, and this was in the same vein as these

00:59:33.323 --> 00:59:37.923
legal financial obligations for people that can't pay them.

00:59:38.303 --> 00:59:46.363
There was a penalty, and it's required or mandatory that when somebody gets

00:59:46.363 --> 00:59:49.783
convicted of certain crimes that this penalty be assessed.

00:59:50.083 --> 00:59:57.443
And a few years ago, they said, well, that should be able to be changed if a

00:59:57.443 --> 01:00:00.323
person can't afford to make that payment.

01:00:02.134 --> 01:00:07.654
And the legislature agreed. Well, suddenly now these courts are losing a lot

01:00:07.654 --> 01:00:12.314
of money that they were getting as a result of these crime victim penalty fees.

01:00:12.614 --> 01:00:15.874
And so the state's in a terrible deficit.

01:00:16.634 --> 01:00:21.734
Pretty much everything in the budget had to be slashed.

01:00:21.954 --> 01:00:28.054
Our organization lost a large chunk of our funding as a result of budget cuts last year.

01:00:28.834 --> 01:00:31.594
And so courts are saying well

01:00:31.594 --> 01:00:35.234
maybe we can reinstitute this crime victims penalty assessment

01:00:35.234 --> 01:00:38.134
this fee and make it higher make it

01:00:38.134 --> 01:00:40.894
mandatory and make it higher to i think they wanted to raise it

01:00:40.894 --> 01:00:48.774
to a thousand dollars it is it stalled this year it did not pass but there was

01:00:48.774 --> 01:00:54.654
a lot of support for it and the thing i think the the most important thing that

01:00:54.654 --> 01:00:59.574
we advocate against it for is these people cannot pay it.

01:00:59.734 --> 01:01:04.434
So you can put the number at any number you want and it's just gonna turn into

01:01:04.434 --> 01:01:13.734
legal debt that in some instances can stop somebody from full reintegration when they're released.

01:01:13.894 --> 01:01:19.194
You know, you can't go back and get your record vacated. You can't get,

01:01:19.374 --> 01:01:24.134
if the court puts a lien on your house because of it, you're gonna lose your

01:01:24.134 --> 01:01:26.434
housing. I mean, there's all different kinds of consequences.

01:01:27.494 --> 01:01:31.674
When in reality, like we knew from the start that this person was not going

01:01:31.674 --> 01:01:33.054
to be able to pay this fine.

01:01:33.834 --> 01:01:40.114
So it did not go forward. I imagine that they'll probably bring it back again

01:01:40.114 --> 01:01:46.134
next session when they have longer to to work on it and more time to kind of

01:01:46.134 --> 01:01:48.294
lobby for and against. But,

01:01:49.297 --> 01:01:52.397
That's the saddest of it right now. Okay. All right.

01:01:52.617 --> 01:01:56.237
Well, like you said, it's like, you know, it's kind of like,

01:01:56.337 --> 01:01:57.577
okay, you showed your hand.

01:01:57.797 --> 01:02:03.917
So now we know what we're dealing with and, you know, we'll figure out a way to stop it. Right.

01:02:04.497 --> 01:02:09.257
All right. So explain this, the state versus Black decision.

01:02:09.257 --> 01:02:15.057
Now, from what I understand, this was a decision that was passed in the that

01:02:15.057 --> 01:02:20.337
was made in the Washington state courts that basically said that drug charges,

01:02:20.817 --> 01:02:24.857
drug possession charges were unconstitutional.

01:02:25.677 --> 01:02:33.217
And so a lot of the things that you are doing, your organization is doing,

01:02:33.517 --> 01:02:36.677
is trying to get people that fall under that.

01:02:36.677 --> 01:02:41.517
I think you even categorize them as Blake.

01:02:42.217 --> 01:02:47.577
I forget the term I'll use, but they're in a certain category under this decision.

01:02:47.897 --> 01:02:53.017
And so you're trying to make sure that if they fall into that,

01:02:53.137 --> 01:02:54.837
that those records are vacated.

01:02:55.197 --> 01:02:59.717
However, it costs money to do that. And I think you just alluded to the fact

01:02:59.717 --> 01:03:09.237
that you, there were two figures that were out there. One was $10 million and one was $750,000.

01:03:09.717 --> 01:03:14.417
So kind of explain what was going on with that.

01:03:14.617 --> 01:03:21.357
It's like, you know, did you need just $750,000 this fiscal year to do what you needed to do?

01:03:21.897 --> 01:03:25.497
And, you know, the overall cut has been $10 million.

01:03:26.037 --> 01:03:32.177
Just kind of explain because I think that's fascinating that a state looked at drug possession.

01:03:32.617 --> 01:03:36.037
And for some reason in the state's constitution, they said, yeah,

01:03:36.117 --> 01:03:40.037
no, we can't be charging people with that or we shouldn't have been convicting people on that.

01:03:40.917 --> 01:03:43.197
And, you know, it would seem like.

01:03:44.094 --> 01:03:49.534
There should have been some legislation to say, OK, well, everybody is everybody's father vacated.

01:03:49.734 --> 01:03:56.534
Why you got to go through this whole court process to vacate these these convictions?

01:03:56.774 --> 01:04:00.674
But go ahead and explain better. You're in the you're on the front line. Talk to me.

01:04:01.214 --> 01:04:05.394
Yeah. So you're right. Actually, your your summation was was great.

01:04:05.394 --> 01:04:12.074
In 2021, the Washington Supreme Court had a case where a woman,

01:04:12.354 --> 01:04:16.154
whose last name was Blake, which is what the name of the decision comes from,

01:04:16.354 --> 01:04:26.534
was arrested because she had been arrested and they found a bag that had methamphetamine

01:04:26.534 --> 01:04:31.194
residue in it or some small amount of methamphetamines in the pocket of her jeans.

01:04:31.194 --> 01:04:34.174
And she argued that she didn't

01:04:34.174 --> 01:04:37.154
know that that was in there whether any of

01:04:37.154 --> 01:04:40.394
that's true or not the way that our statute was

01:04:40.394 --> 01:04:44.014
written did not require the court

01:04:44.014 --> 01:04:50.934
or the state to to show that she knew the drugs were on her and so there was

01:04:50.934 --> 01:04:55.314
no knowledge requirement so they were basically saying no matter what the circumstances

01:04:55.314 --> 01:05:00.994
if you have drugs on your person in your house near you in your car,

01:05:01.194 --> 01:05:03.094
you are guilty of possession.

01:05:03.334 --> 01:05:08.114
And the Supreme Court basically said, that's unconstitutional.

01:05:08.314 --> 01:05:14.934
They can't say that you are guilty of a crime you didn't know you were committing.

01:05:15.154 --> 01:05:23.554
And so what ended up happening is they ruled as unconstitutional any conviction

01:05:23.554 --> 01:05:27.054
that had happened under that specific statute.

01:05:27.374 --> 01:05:33.974
It ended up being something like 600,000 convictions in the state.

01:05:34.694 --> 01:05:40.934
And the legislature did go back and make a new, it's called the Blake Fix Act,

01:05:41.546 --> 01:05:45.766
legislation that basically added a little knowledge requirement.

01:05:45.766 --> 01:05:48.146
Now it's if you knowingly possess

01:05:48.146 --> 01:05:53.006
drugs, that's illegal and it's a misdemeanor. It used to be a felony.

01:05:54.046 --> 01:06:00.346
But as a result, like you said, there's 600,000 convictions out there that need to be dealt with,

01:06:00.466 --> 01:06:07.026
and our system is not set up to say that, you know, we can't have the legislature

01:06:07.026 --> 01:06:12.046
suddenly say all of these crimes are vacated and all of,

01:06:12.286 --> 01:06:18.186
you know, we need a person to look at every single conviction at, you know,

01:06:18.486 --> 01:06:25.066
at the court and pick out which ones were, which ones fall under this statute specifically.

01:06:25.726 --> 01:06:27.906
And then vacate them.

01:06:28.346 --> 01:06:32.566
There is a way for a court to go through and do each one,

01:06:32.566 --> 01:06:39.506
one by one really quickly or more quickly than having an attorney file a motion

01:06:39.506 --> 01:06:43.486
and say this should be vacated and ask the judge for it to be vacated.

01:06:43.706 --> 01:06:49.866
The other thing that's been really complicated is there's lots of other subsections

01:06:49.866 --> 01:06:53.706
of that statute that we're litigating.

01:06:53.846 --> 01:06:56.866
Does this fall under it or not? Does this fall under it?

01:06:57.126 --> 01:07:03.226
And so it's taken a lot more work than I'm sure anybody foresaw.

01:07:03.606 --> 01:07:06.806
But what ended up happening with our funding,

01:07:07.026 --> 01:07:11.606
you know, the state legislature initially put something like,

01:07:11.786 --> 01:07:18.126
I think it was $63 million or something like that they allocated to help pay

01:07:18.126 --> 01:07:24.266
people back for all the fines and fees and help fund courts and attorneys to do this work.

01:07:25.426 --> 01:07:31.726
And that money is that money is still there but it is not enough and there's

01:07:31.726 --> 01:07:38.606
no money going forward so that money was there for the 2023 fiscal year I think it was and,

01:07:39.620 --> 01:07:44.200
the money that was basically paying for attorneys to go through one by one and

01:07:44.200 --> 01:07:49.560
do these vacates, which we've decided each person is constitutionally entitled

01:07:49.560 --> 01:07:53.260
to, that money kind of got slashed completely.

01:07:53.800 --> 01:08:01.620
And our organization lost part of a $5 million pot of money that was helping

01:08:01.620 --> 01:08:06.080
to fund our services and a few other organizations that do the same kind of work.

01:08:07.140 --> 01:08:13.460
But we needed $10 million, I believe it was, to go forward.

01:08:13.920 --> 01:08:19.160
What ended up happening was the states, the House and the Senate,

01:08:19.760 --> 01:08:24.700
each made their own budget for this year, knowing that we have this $2 billion deficit.

01:08:25.620 --> 01:08:28.400
And they each came up with different figures that they were going to give us

01:08:28.400 --> 01:08:29.520
a little bit of money back.

01:08:30.620 --> 01:08:35.240
One number, I think it was the House, said they would give us $750,000,

01:08:35.240 --> 01:08:38.000
and the Senate said $250,000,

01:08:38.220 --> 01:08:44.080
and we ended up with the $250,000, and that's going to be split between all

01:08:44.080 --> 01:08:45.760
the organizations doing this work.

01:08:46.060 --> 01:08:51.260
So it won't go super far, but luckily we've found ways,

01:08:51.840 --> 01:08:57.400
not just us, but across the state to try and keep doing this work and get as

01:08:57.400 --> 01:09:01.420
many people the relief they're entitled to as we can.

01:09:02.280 --> 01:09:08.240
But the financial situation in Washington is not looking any better in the next

01:09:08.240 --> 01:09:11.440
few years. So we'll just see what happens.

01:09:12.875 --> 01:09:18.815
Yeah. And, you know, that's, that's real talk. That's, that's the dynamics of that.

01:09:19.055 --> 01:09:24.095
I, you know, I know that the work that you have done has,

01:09:24.255 --> 01:09:33.635
has gotten at least $750,000 worth of restitution back to people that you were

01:09:33.635 --> 01:09:35.095
able to get through the process.

01:09:37.055 --> 01:09:40.715
So, you know, I understand the state's like going, well, we ain't got no money,

01:09:40.795 --> 01:09:46.275
but, you know, you made the decision, but that we could, you know, don't get me into that.

01:09:46.655 --> 01:09:50.475
Anyway, I want one last issue I want to deal with, and then I want to start

01:09:50.475 --> 01:09:53.455
closing it out real quick. And I appreciate your time.

01:09:54.635 --> 01:10:00.615
So is Washington state one of those states that the you've eliminated,

01:10:00.615 --> 01:10:04.195
like the cash bonds, the cash bails and all that stuff?

01:10:05.385 --> 01:10:08.925
I don't think we've eliminated cash bail. I'm trying to remember.

01:10:09.085 --> 01:10:15.785
We have had bills trying to address it, but no, I don't believe that we've successfully

01:10:15.785 --> 01:10:17.525
done it. And I know we didn't this year.

01:10:18.045 --> 01:10:23.045
Yeah, because that's, you know, when I saw it, it was like one of the concerns

01:10:23.045 --> 01:10:26.605
that you all are working on is dealing with the bail system.

01:10:26.605 --> 01:10:29.705
It kind of infers that it's hard for

01:10:29.705 --> 01:10:33.425
people to claim to be

01:10:33.425 --> 01:10:36.385
indigent when it comes to their bail

01:10:36.385 --> 01:10:39.325
being set and y'all are trying to fix that

01:10:39.325 --> 01:10:42.165
because they're y'all basically said that there's

01:10:42.165 --> 01:10:44.885
a lot of people in whether it's the

01:10:44.885 --> 01:10:51.045
county jail or in the state prison system in Washington state that the only

01:10:51.045 --> 01:10:55.445
reason why they're in there is because they couldn't bond out yeah well and

01:10:55.445 --> 01:11:02.165
you think about how much would your family scramble to put together if your freedom was on the line.

01:11:03.165 --> 01:11:06.945
And you know people are people that

01:11:06.945 --> 01:11:09.985
have the money to get out and and be and

01:11:09.985 --> 01:11:16.185
represent themselves or or be you know we all know that when you're not wearing

01:11:16.185 --> 01:11:21.805
a jail jumpsuit you have a better chance of getting out of whatever if you have

01:11:21.805 --> 01:11:25.385
to go to trial or if you're standing in front of a judge It's why they let people

01:11:25.385 --> 01:11:28.985
put on suits before they come to court, even if they're incarcerated.

01:11:29.545 --> 01:11:40.945
But when you're trying to address a criminal charge from inside incarceration,

01:11:41.365 --> 01:11:42.945
your chances are much lower.

01:11:42.945 --> 01:11:48.485
So people will sacrifice a lot to get the money to get out of jail.

01:11:49.045 --> 01:11:54.005
And often that will look to the outside world like, well, you had money to get

01:11:54.005 --> 01:11:58.205
out of jail, so why can't you pay an attorney?

01:11:58.365 --> 01:12:02.305
Maybe you don't really deserve indigent defense or X, Y, Z.

01:12:02.685 --> 01:12:09.325
But I can say from experience that my freedom, I will sacrifice very many things to.

01:12:10.192 --> 01:12:18.092
To not be in a jail cell. Things that, you know, usually would not count against me as far as assets.

01:12:18.572 --> 01:12:26.172
Like, you know, some people's mom will sell their car or her wedding ring. Get your kid out of jail.

01:12:26.652 --> 01:12:33.632
So that's kind of the issue that we're trying to address when we go,

01:12:33.632 --> 01:12:38.512
You know, fight against cash bail. It just isn't the.

01:12:39.612 --> 01:12:43.652
It isn't a good indicator of the crime someone has committed,

01:12:43.672 --> 01:12:48.692
and whether being in incarceration when you're dealing with your criminal charge.

01:12:50.406 --> 01:12:53.286
Or not, so somebody on the outside versus somebody on the inside,

01:12:53.446 --> 01:12:58.966
is also not a good indicator of guilt or, you know, it's just an indicator of

01:12:58.966 --> 01:13:01.446
how much money they have in their pocket that's expendable.

01:13:02.006 --> 01:13:05.766
Yeah. So, I just wanted to scratch the surface on that because y'all are doing

01:13:05.766 --> 01:13:10.786
a lot of work, a lot of good work, but I want to just kind of give the listeners that sense.

01:13:11.226 --> 01:13:13.626
So, I've got a couple more questions for you.

01:13:14.146 --> 01:13:20.286
What will it take for American society to change his opinion toward those formerly incarcerated?

01:13:22.386 --> 01:13:30.486
It's been real interesting. When I first was hired at the White House, there was this, oh,

01:13:31.206 --> 01:13:37.386
one of the first people to be hired with a felony conviction on their record.

01:13:37.706 --> 01:13:45.026
And now we've got the president of the United States has a felony conviction. It's the thing to do.

01:13:45.246 --> 01:13:49.186
Suddenly, he's opening a lot of doors in ways he maybe didn't consider.

01:13:49.426 --> 01:13:54.646
So maybe it's going to take the president of the United States having,

01:13:54.646 --> 01:13:59.526
you know, felony convictions to suddenly realize that this can happen to anybody.

01:14:00.326 --> 01:14:05.986
I think we need more and more people who don't feel ashamed and scared of losing

01:14:05.986 --> 01:14:12.026
what they have to come forward and say, this happened to me too. Here's my experience.

01:14:12.326 --> 01:14:17.046
It's similar to the stigma that surrounds people with substance use disorder

01:14:17.046 --> 01:14:18.286
or history of addiction.

01:14:18.766 --> 01:14:22.726
We've got celebrities coming out and talking about their experiences.

01:14:23.266 --> 01:14:27.786
I do not think the way that our system is currently set up that we're going

01:14:27.786 --> 01:14:34.546
to convince everybody that incarceration doesn't equal you're a terrible person.

01:14:35.126 --> 01:14:40.346
But I think the more that we can show what it looks like to be a person with,

01:14:40.346 --> 01:14:44.046
you know, incarceration in your past...

01:14:45.301 --> 01:14:49.521
I think it just opens eyes. Every time I go and talk or present somewhere,

01:14:49.981 --> 01:14:53.361
somebody approaches me and says, nobody knows this about me,

01:14:53.381 --> 01:14:57.501
but my son, or I struggled with X, Y, Z.

01:14:58.021 --> 01:15:05.421
It's almost without fail, somebody comes up and, or you've kind of changed what

01:15:05.421 --> 01:15:07.901
I thought about how this looks.

01:15:09.401 --> 01:15:13.821
So it's information and advocacy, But again,

01:15:14.881 --> 01:15:22.301
America isn't set up for accepting that everybody deserves equality or,

01:15:22.301 --> 01:15:25.361
you know, or equal chances or equal rights.

01:15:25.561 --> 01:15:29.981
It's just we're not meant for that, unfortunately. Yeah.

01:15:30.241 --> 01:15:32.661
And an interesting stat for listeners.

01:15:33.401 --> 01:15:37.901
So in Washington state, one out of

01:15:37.901 --> 01:15:44.421
every four adults have been through the correctional system in that state.

01:15:44.641 --> 01:15:48.781
So I just want you to just get that in your mindset is, you know,

01:15:48.881 --> 01:15:50.081
people like, oh, Seattle.

01:15:51.301 --> 01:15:57.461
One out of every four citizens, adult citizens, has been through the correctional

01:15:57.461 --> 01:15:58.481
system of Washington State.

01:15:58.701 --> 01:16:05.301
So when Cody's talking about people coming up to her, it's because the odds

01:16:05.301 --> 01:16:10.161
are more likely you are going to see somebody or run into somebody because that's

01:16:10.161 --> 01:16:12.101
that's it's not as high as Georgia.

01:16:12.541 --> 01:16:17.781
And again, that's a whole other podcast we can get into, but that's pretty high.

01:16:17.781 --> 01:16:22.161
So it doesn't surprise me that you encounter those people when you go out there.

01:16:22.441 --> 01:16:26.441
All right. So let's finish this sentence. I have hope because...

01:16:28.143 --> 01:16:32.803
I have hope because every time I go present, somebody approaches me.

01:16:32.903 --> 01:16:40.123
Because this isn't just impacting any one particular population more and more,

01:16:40.303 --> 01:16:45.963
especially with things like your podcast or just the vast spread of information.

01:16:46.303 --> 01:16:57.243
We are seeing more and more people coming to realize the impact that over-criminalization,

01:16:58.163 --> 01:17:06.403
of mental health, substance use, race, nationality, what that effect is having

01:17:06.403 --> 01:17:09.343
or what the effect is on our society.

01:17:09.543 --> 01:17:14.803
And we're learning more about our neighbors, close neighbors, far neighbors.

01:17:15.323 --> 01:17:19.143
So it gives me hope. It gives me hope that, you know,

01:17:19.283 --> 01:17:24.903
today I feel comfortable talking about where I've been and what I've gone through

01:17:24.903 --> 01:17:31.403
without thinking that I'm going to screw up any chance I have of getting a job or a house.

01:17:31.783 --> 01:17:35.623
I'm lucky because I know that not everybody feels that way and it's taken me

01:17:35.623 --> 01:17:42.203
a lot of work to get there, but I have hope that my experience,

01:17:42.583 --> 01:17:46.863
whether good or bad, is becoming more...

01:17:48.417 --> 01:17:54.157
Understood and, like, recognized by maybe people that don't have my same experience.

01:17:54.917 --> 01:18:02.277
Yeah. Well, Cody Nagle, again, I just want to commend you for the courage that

01:18:02.277 --> 01:18:06.937
you've had to go forward in your life,

01:18:07.077 --> 01:18:11.677
not let something challenging hold you down.

01:18:11.917 --> 01:18:15.757
You've lived up to, what was Denzel Washington, he said, if they knock you down

01:18:15.757 --> 01:18:17.077
seven times, get up eight.

01:18:17.897 --> 01:18:23.617
I think you are a great example of that.

01:18:24.037 --> 01:18:31.077
Is Civil Survival a nonprofit? And if they are and people donate, go ahead.

01:18:31.317 --> 01:18:35.397
If people want to contact you, this is the time to make that pitch.

01:18:36.617 --> 01:18:38.717
Yes, we are a nonprofit.

01:18:40.097 --> 01:18:45.357
There are ways to donate. Civilsurvival.org. Check out our page,

01:18:45.477 --> 01:18:48.497
learn more about what we're working on and how you can get involved.

01:18:48.937 --> 01:18:57.397
Always looking for opportunities to do more good work and help other people

01:18:57.397 --> 01:19:00.437
and places kind of do work where they're at, too.

01:19:00.637 --> 01:19:05.177
So happy to talk to anybody that's interested in learning more.

01:19:05.517 --> 01:19:06.917
How can people reach you?

01:19:08.417 --> 01:19:14.597
Well, you can reach me on my email, cody.nagle at civilsurvival.org.

01:19:14.977 --> 01:19:17.417
It's probably the best way to get a hold of me. Okay.

01:19:18.057 --> 01:19:21.977
All right, Cody. Well, thank you again for sharing your story and your work.

01:19:22.717 --> 01:19:27.097
And one of the rules we have on this podcast is that once you've been on,

01:19:27.217 --> 01:19:28.757
you have an open invitation to come back.

01:19:29.137 --> 01:19:32.677
So if there's some pressing issue that you think needs to be addressed,

01:19:33.137 --> 01:19:35.157
reach out to me and we'll make that happen.

01:19:35.517 --> 01:19:40.017
But it's really been an honor to meet you and talk to you and look forward to

01:19:40.017 --> 01:19:42.277
hearing more good things about the work you're doing.

01:19:42.817 --> 01:19:46.097
Yeah, the honor is all mine. Thank you so much for the invitation.

01:19:46.897 --> 01:19:49.157
All right, guys, and we're going to catch y'all on the other side.

01:20:01.254 --> 01:20:09.274
All right, and we are back. So I want to thank Carla Kaplan and Cody Nagle for being on the podcast.

01:20:09.834 --> 01:20:17.114
Please get Ms. Kaplan's book, Troublemaker, which talks about this remarkable

01:20:17.114 --> 01:20:21.714
woman, Jessica Mitford, who, like I said, I had never heard of her,

01:20:21.714 --> 01:20:24.154
excuse me, until I read this book.

01:20:24.854 --> 01:20:30.374
And it's incredible. It's very, very, very thorough. I mean,

01:20:30.514 --> 01:20:35.674
it is a real true biography of this remarkable woman.

01:20:36.954 --> 01:20:43.154
And as Ms. Kaplan stated in an interview, and I should say Dr.

01:20:43.314 --> 01:20:49.314
Kaplan, but she doesn't really bandy that about much, but Professor Kaplan,

01:20:49.794 --> 01:20:54.074
there should be more people like Jessica Mitford in the world today.

01:20:54.534 --> 01:20:59.354
And it would be hard for me to argue otherwise, based on what I've read.

01:20:59.514 --> 01:21:01.334
And the interview we had.

01:21:01.594 --> 01:21:06.034
So I appreciate Ms. Kaplan for coming on.

01:21:07.457 --> 01:21:16.697
And then Cody Nagle, you know, when I read her story and I was just like, this is amazing, right?

01:21:17.337 --> 01:21:24.237
And, you know, in her own modest way, she understands that her story is amazing.

01:21:24.237 --> 01:21:33.137
But the thing that's so cool is that she has dedicated her life to help people

01:21:33.137 --> 01:21:35.717
have amazing stories like her.

01:21:36.277 --> 01:21:42.917
You know, it's one thing to hit that lotto ticket and live the life of Riley

01:21:42.917 --> 01:21:44.897
and do your own thing, right?

01:21:45.557 --> 01:21:53.577
But it's another to understand that the blessing that you received is now a

01:21:53.577 --> 01:21:58.997
duty, an obligation, if you will, to help others achieve that same blessing.

01:21:59.657 --> 01:22:03.277
Because it was people that helped her, people that she didn't know was going

01:22:03.277 --> 01:22:04.657
to help her, but they did.

01:22:05.957 --> 01:22:13.377
And just her spirit to accept that help and have her eyes opened has been a

01:22:13.377 --> 01:22:17.417
plus for the people in the Seattle, Washington area or the state of Washington.

01:22:18.781 --> 01:22:25.241
And it's going to have positive repercussions, you know, hopefully nationally

01:22:25.241 --> 01:22:29.361
because, you know, she's worked for the White House. Right.

01:22:30.081 --> 01:22:36.561
So, you know, this is why I do what I do.

01:22:36.981 --> 01:22:44.101
This is why I love what I do. I know those who have been avid listeners understand

01:22:44.101 --> 01:22:46.521
this is my therapy for times like these.

01:22:47.361 --> 01:22:55.621
But again, it's also just a joy to be able to highlight people who are doing the work.

01:22:57.241 --> 01:23:04.481
And whether it's Cody with her activism or Carla with her activism, right?

01:23:04.921 --> 01:23:11.441
It's just really, really great that we have people like that.

01:23:11.441 --> 01:23:16.161
And it's an honor for me to be able to talk to them on a weekly basis.

01:23:17.261 --> 01:23:22.321
All right, so as this podcast will drop,

01:23:22.541 --> 01:23:30.081
the fallout will have taken place and dissipated on the fact that President

01:23:30.081 --> 01:23:34.401
Trump has fired the Attorney General, Pam Bondi.

01:23:35.241 --> 01:23:44.761
And so two of the archvillains in this league of villains that we call the Trump

01:23:44.761 --> 01:23:47.901
administration are now no longer there.

01:23:49.318 --> 01:23:56.578
But they're going to be replaced by men who are just as much sycophants of the

01:23:56.578 --> 01:23:58.358
president as these women were.

01:23:59.418 --> 01:24:10.558
But it's like, you know, at least the pressure and the spirit of Saul has moved

01:24:10.558 --> 01:24:13.638
the president to get rid of these people.

01:24:14.798 --> 01:24:20.618
And again, it's, you know, I don't like to see people fired,

01:24:21.098 --> 01:24:28.438
but I'm not going to cry over it, you know, because when I think about how when

01:24:28.438 --> 01:24:33.738
they had power, how did this disdainful they were to the rest of us?

01:24:35.018 --> 01:24:41.058
You know you don't invoke sympathy when something bad happens to them if you're

01:24:41.058 --> 01:24:43.058
a normal human being you're empathetic

01:24:43.058 --> 01:24:48.718
to the fact like okay well you know adjustments have to be made but.

01:24:50.238 --> 01:24:53.938
Cause you just naturally you don't like it when people die you don't like it

01:24:53.938 --> 01:25:00.678
when people something bad happens to them you still have that reaction like ooh you know,

01:25:02.029 --> 01:25:06.309
At the same time, it's like you kind of earned that, right?

01:25:07.769 --> 01:25:13.589
And I know the source was unlikely of where the ire came from.

01:25:13.789 --> 01:25:22.149
But when you talk about that spirit of Saul, right, of being distrustful to

01:25:22.149 --> 01:25:28.609
those who are loyal to you, of thinking that you're higher than what you are,

01:25:29.049 --> 01:25:31.869
you know, not understanding the blessing.

01:25:32.029 --> 01:25:35.769
And the responsibility you have, especially if you've been given the opportunity

01:25:35.769 --> 01:25:40.769
to govern, as one of my coworkers would say, karma's going to get you.

01:25:42.129 --> 01:25:52.169
It's undefeated, right? So, you know, I just want us to channel that energy

01:25:52.169 --> 01:25:55.909
that we have been showing at these No Kings protests.

01:25:56.949 --> 01:26:01.929
You know, now I think the total was 8 million this last time that people came out.

01:26:02.029 --> 01:26:09.289
And I'll channel that energy into positive action.

01:26:09.649 --> 01:26:16.289
It's one thing for us to gather and see like-minded folks express a concern.

01:26:16.949 --> 01:26:24.569
But, you know, we've got to continue to push even more, continue to put the pressure on.

01:26:24.909 --> 01:26:30.489
As this old colloquialism, you know, pressure, and I guess it's scientific as

01:26:30.489 --> 01:26:31.929
well, pressure busts pipes.

01:26:33.129 --> 01:26:43.669
And so we have to bust this pipe of corruption and mismanagement and greed and disdain, you know,

01:26:43.789 --> 01:26:48.909
that our government is showing us and fight for something better.

01:26:49.569 --> 01:26:51.849
Now, the people that we put in.

01:26:53.180 --> 01:27:01.320
Going to be better, but as I highlighted last week, better in a scaled degree, right?

01:27:01.500 --> 01:27:07.080
Because like I said, Fetterman was better than Mezmit Oz, but Fetterman is not ideal, right?

01:27:09.240 --> 01:27:14.300
And, you know, if you want to be fair, it's like, okay, you know,

01:27:14.360 --> 01:27:16.160
he does vote with the Democrats on something.

01:27:16.360 --> 01:27:20.820
Yeah, Joe Manchin did, and so did Sinema. But it's like, you know,

01:27:20.840 --> 01:27:22.780
but there's a core value that you're missing.

01:27:23.400 --> 01:27:27.840
Right. It's one thing to try to be politically expedient and stay,

01:27:28.080 --> 01:27:29.460
keep your membership up.

01:27:29.860 --> 01:27:35.420
Right. You know, like if you got a like if you if you were at a gym,

01:27:35.540 --> 01:27:39.700
for example, and you had to show up at the gym like at least three times a year

01:27:39.700 --> 01:27:44.200
to maintain your membership or you show up to church.

01:27:44.200 --> 01:27:47.660
We just celebrated Easter, you know, season.

01:27:47.940 --> 01:27:51.800
You show up at church at Easter and, you know, Christmas or whatever,

01:27:52.220 --> 01:27:54.580
you know, you stay in good standing with your church.

01:27:55.580 --> 01:28:02.220
You know, it's just the minimum is not going to do at this particular moment.

01:28:02.680 --> 01:28:06.380
We have to have people that are committed, right?

01:28:06.380 --> 01:28:11.620
Even if we don't agree with each other 100% of the time, if you understand the

01:28:11.620 --> 01:28:16.100
main mission is that this experiment in democracy that has been around for 250

01:28:16.100 --> 01:28:18.420
years needs to continue,

01:28:18.780 --> 01:28:25.120
that the rights of people, regardless of their faith, regardless of their skin

01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:29.200
complexion, regardless of their lifestyle, needs to be protected,

01:28:29.580 --> 01:28:31.920
right, as citizens of this nation.

01:28:32.560 --> 01:28:37.960
But hell, we are in a position now where we have to defend the definition of

01:28:37.960 --> 01:28:40.040
citizenship at this point.

01:28:40.940 --> 01:28:45.560
I mean, that's how extreme we have gotten, where it's like we are literally

01:28:45.560 --> 01:28:53.280
asking the Supreme Court to make a decision as to who is actually a citizen of this nation.

01:28:54.539 --> 01:29:02.159
Extreme, right? The Constitution and its subsequent amendments pretty much lays it out.

01:29:02.619 --> 01:29:09.919
But the audacity to even challenge that to push an agenda that is not based

01:29:09.919 --> 01:29:13.839
on anything good and decent, right?

01:29:14.019 --> 01:29:18.119
It's all about power and authority, control.

01:29:18.699 --> 01:29:22.219
That's not what this country was set up to be.

01:29:23.099 --> 01:29:29.899
Because if that was the case, then I don't know if the pilgrims show up on Plymouth Rock.

01:29:30.299 --> 01:29:34.699
I don't know if they try the utopian experiment in Rhode Island.

01:29:35.259 --> 01:29:40.319
I don't know if John Oglethorpe sets up the prison colony that's now called Georgia.

01:29:40.959 --> 01:29:45.019
Because if they were cool with control, they could have stayed on their island

01:29:45.019 --> 01:29:48.639
called England and done whatever they wanted to do, right?

01:29:48.939 --> 01:29:53.299
But these people wanted to have their own destiny, right?

01:29:55.559 --> 01:30:00.159
And live the lives they wanted to live, worship God the way they wanted to worship

01:30:00.159 --> 01:30:02.679
God, make money the way they wanted to make money.

01:30:03.947 --> 01:30:11.507
So now that this nation is officially or will be officially 250 years old in

01:30:11.507 --> 01:30:16.327
July, the question is, why can't we still have those rights?

01:30:16.967 --> 01:30:22.507
Why can't a black person, a Latino person, an Asian person, a member of the

01:30:22.507 --> 01:30:26.907
LGBTQ community, why can't they have their own destiny fulfilled?

01:30:27.247 --> 01:30:31.247
Why can't they live the life they want to live? Why can't they have their version

01:30:31.247 --> 01:30:33.487
of the American dream realized?

01:30:34.227 --> 01:30:40.507
And why is it such a threat to the man that was elected to be the leader of that nation?

01:30:41.167 --> 01:30:43.187
Right? Why is that?

01:30:44.007 --> 01:30:49.267
It doesn't make any sense. And all throughout the history, we have tried to

01:30:49.267 --> 01:30:53.707
deal with people who have ascended to positions of power and influence,

01:30:53.967 --> 01:30:56.787
whether it's through the business community or through politics,

01:30:57.167 --> 01:30:59.407
that have tried to deter us from that.

01:30:59.407 --> 01:31:03.627
And we've challenged them in the courtroom, at the ballot box.

01:31:04.127 --> 01:31:05.947
Heck, even boycotting.

01:31:06.567 --> 01:31:08.227
We've done all these things.

01:31:09.207 --> 01:31:14.647
Just to remind them, America was not set up for you to control us.

01:31:15.187 --> 01:31:16.487
Doesn't matter who you are.

01:31:17.107 --> 01:31:21.207
Now, there are people who want to be controlled. That's them.

01:31:22.007 --> 01:31:25.807
The majority of us ain't down with that. You know?

01:31:27.127 --> 01:31:33.067
I'm always reminded of this scene from the first Avengers movie, right?

01:31:33.207 --> 01:31:36.167
Where Loki pops up and he's, I guess he's in Austria

01:31:36.167 --> 01:31:42.787
and he's telling these people to kneel and he's going through his soliloquy

01:31:42.787 --> 01:31:47.467
about this is what humans desire to be controlled and all that and that one

01:31:47.467 --> 01:31:51.287
man who was Holocaust survivor stands up and challenges him and then of course

01:31:51.287 --> 01:31:53.567
Captain America shows up and pops him upside the head.

01:31:53.567 --> 01:32:00.787
That is analogous of who we are, right?

01:32:01.207 --> 01:32:06.787
Not everybody wants to be subjugated. Not everybody wants to be controlled.

01:32:08.367 --> 01:32:14.167
There's some people that do it because they're scared and whatever,

01:32:14.707 --> 01:32:19.567
which is why Franklin Delano Roosevelt said at a moment in history,

01:32:19.887 --> 01:32:25.807
we cannot fear, fear itself, right?

01:32:26.147 --> 01:32:32.147
I know I butchered that quote pretty bad, but the only thing to fear is fear itself, right?

01:32:32.507 --> 01:32:36.887
Or to even get to the point where Dr. King talked about people hoping against

01:32:36.887 --> 01:32:40.867
hope. We can never get to that as a majority, as a nation.

01:32:41.507 --> 01:32:48.647
We've got to always have hope. We've got to allay our fear and boldly go forward.

01:32:49.247 --> 01:32:56.807
It's never been good for a select group of people to try to tell human beings what to do.

01:32:58.047 --> 01:33:03.347
Now, do we have governments? Yes, because we want to have boundaries,

01:33:03.347 --> 01:33:06.687
because we want to have society orderly.

01:33:07.147 --> 01:33:14.227
But it doesn't give the right for somebody to accept that responsibility of

01:33:14.227 --> 01:33:18.147
power and try to shut down everybody else's free will.

01:33:18.647 --> 01:33:20.527
We're not wired like that.

01:33:22.027 --> 01:33:26.527
And there's so much of your humanity you give up.

01:33:27.785 --> 01:33:34.045
You subjugate yourself to any human being, especially one in authority,

01:33:34.045 --> 01:33:36.705
in an authority that you gave him.

01:33:37.285 --> 01:33:43.165
I can imagine the challenges that people had when this whole notion of divine

01:33:43.165 --> 01:33:47.605
right was out there and all these kings and monarchies showed up, right?

01:33:48.045 --> 01:33:51.085
But America was never supposed to be a monarchy.

01:33:51.285 --> 01:33:55.345
America was supposed to be the country that showed that you You don't need to

01:33:55.345 --> 01:34:02.285
have an authoritarian monarch to rule over people.

01:34:02.865 --> 01:34:04.785
The people can govern themselves.

01:34:05.405 --> 01:34:10.385
They can choose the leaders to handle the day-to-day business while we go on

01:34:10.385 --> 01:34:15.445
about our lives and raise our children and work our jobs, our professions,

01:34:15.645 --> 01:34:18.725
our occupations, whatever. Go on vacation.

01:34:19.945 --> 01:34:22.905
Go to the movies. Whatever we wanted to do.

01:34:23.645 --> 01:34:32.425
And so this whole notion that we got to have that, when people say that,

01:34:32.565 --> 01:34:35.065
those are people who have checked their humanity at the door.

01:34:35.785 --> 01:34:41.325
And my suggestion to them is to go get it off the coat check and put it back

01:34:41.325 --> 01:34:45.205
on and come join the rest of us. Right?

01:34:46.265 --> 01:34:49.785
Nobody's advocating for anarchy. Right?

01:34:50.505 --> 01:34:58.065
Nobody's advocating for just massive riots and violence and rebellion, all that kind of stuff.

01:34:58.385 --> 01:35:04.185
All we are asking for is another R word, and that's respect. Period.

01:35:04.965 --> 01:35:08.005
End of discussion. Throwing a little empathy in here.

01:35:08.445 --> 01:35:13.505
You know, when we're talking about helping people who have served their time.

01:35:15.101 --> 01:35:19.161
Shouldn't be a stigma on you to help them any more than it should be a stigma

01:35:19.161 --> 01:35:21.821
that they made a mistake. Right?

01:35:23.361 --> 01:35:30.881
So, you know, we've got to, we just got to get back to what we were wired to be.

01:35:32.161 --> 01:35:38.321
And if you have to get that rewiring in the spiritual sense, knock yourself out.

01:35:38.941 --> 01:35:46.661
If you can get it by reading and listening and activating it on your own,

01:35:47.061 --> 01:35:49.781
following your dream, then do that.

01:35:50.521 --> 01:35:55.101
Whatever it is, don't ever give up a piece of humanity just so you can have

01:35:55.101 --> 01:36:03.361
favor for somebody that has either been put or find themselves in a position of power.

01:36:04.001 --> 01:36:09.081
We equate money with power and intellect, so we think these billionaires are

01:36:09.081 --> 01:36:10.401
special people. They're not.

01:36:11.201 --> 01:36:17.241
They are fortunate that their idea came to fruition to a point where they have

01:36:17.241 --> 01:36:21.101
more money than they'll ever spend in their life, their children's life,

01:36:21.201 --> 01:36:23.201
or their grandchild's life, right?

01:36:23.561 --> 01:36:27.521
But that doesn't give them some magical power over us.

01:36:27.921 --> 01:36:33.581
And just as we've seen, people that have money can lose it.

01:36:34.161 --> 01:36:36.321
If you don't believe that, ask Mike Tyson.

01:36:37.321 --> 01:36:44.221
These things happen in life. As sure as you gain something, the minute you lose

01:36:44.221 --> 01:36:48.901
your soul, which I think is in the Bible somewhere, you lose everything.

01:36:49.721 --> 01:36:51.581
Money can't buy you happiness.

01:36:53.145 --> 01:37:01.245
Help you do things that make you happy, like eat, like going to a Broadway play,

01:37:01.785 --> 01:37:06.485
traveling the planet, or just traveling down the street to your favorite barbecue

01:37:06.485 --> 01:37:08.805
place. Money can help you do that.

01:37:09.465 --> 01:37:14.525
But the joy is not in the money. The joy is in the destination that you're trying

01:37:14.525 --> 01:37:18.165
to get to or the activity that you are participating in.

01:37:18.265 --> 01:37:20.505
That's where the joy comes from. It comes from within.

01:37:21.405 --> 01:37:22.905
And we need to see that.

01:37:24.785 --> 01:37:28.925
I'm not, you know, doctor such and such.

01:37:29.125 --> 01:37:33.345
And, you know, I want people to make money.

01:37:33.485 --> 01:37:39.485
I want people to do what they want to do, except harm other folks.

01:37:40.145 --> 01:37:46.045
And when you try to tell me what I can do, what my child can do,

01:37:46.305 --> 01:37:49.005
what bathroom I can go through, what water fountain I can go to,

01:37:49.245 --> 01:37:50.605
where on the bus I can sit,

01:37:51.445 --> 01:37:55.125
if I can vote, You know, when you start telling me all these things,

01:37:55.305 --> 01:37:57.625
then, yeah, no, I'm not down with that.

01:37:58.025 --> 01:38:01.305
I don't want you to do that, right?

01:38:01.905 --> 01:38:06.385
Because you're making me do stuff I don't want to do or denying me the opportunity

01:38:06.385 --> 01:38:09.525
to do the stuff I do want to do, right?

01:38:10.345 --> 01:38:18.365
If you are in politics and you believe that what you are doing is right,

01:38:18.825 --> 01:38:23.965
then stand before the voters with your full chest and make your case.

01:38:24.505 --> 01:38:31.085
And if people say, no, that's not what we want, accept the decision and keep it moving.

01:38:32.165 --> 01:38:39.645
How could I, as a senator, vote for you in good conscience and not being politically blackmailed,

01:38:40.005 --> 01:38:45.365
vote for you to serve in the government when you can't even tell me who won

01:38:45.365 --> 01:38:49.985
an election for fear of the ignoring the person who nominated you?

01:38:50.765 --> 01:38:55.065
You've already told me you care more about that person than the people you're supposed to be serving.

01:38:55.885 --> 01:38:57.525
That's crazy. That's crazy.

01:38:58.321 --> 01:39:06.901
Person won't allow you to say what, speak the truth, regardless of their idiosyncrasies.

01:39:09.141 --> 01:39:15.621
Then maybe it's not worth serving that person or working with that person to serve a nation.

01:39:16.241 --> 01:39:18.561
Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem have found that out.

01:39:19.301 --> 01:39:23.001
And there's a saying that is going around the political community,

01:39:23.281 --> 01:39:27.321
everything that Trump touches dies, right?

01:39:27.901 --> 01:39:34.101
Good people are having their reputations tarnished by hooking up with him.

01:39:35.001 --> 01:39:38.161
Now, there's a supernatural connotation to that, right?

01:39:38.841 --> 01:39:42.861
And since it's not a religious show, I won't dive into that too deep,

01:39:42.881 --> 01:39:45.921
but I just want you to think of Rudy Giuliani.

01:39:46.301 --> 01:39:51.801
When 9-11 happened, he was so revered, he felt he could write a book about leadership

01:39:51.801 --> 01:39:53.981
and it was a New York Times bestseller.

01:39:55.081 --> 01:39:58.241
People were teaching classes based off of his book.

01:40:00.266 --> 01:40:05.286
Leadership. And oh, how the mighty have fallen now, right?

01:40:06.166 --> 01:40:10.546
Because of his affiliation with the president.

01:40:11.286 --> 01:40:14.706
Pam Bondi was an attorney general of a state.

01:40:15.426 --> 01:40:23.626
So out of all of the people that Donald Trump picked, she actually was qualified for the job.

01:40:24.326 --> 01:40:30.166
Now, she may not have the temperament. She definitely didn't have the best interests of the people at heart.

01:40:30.326 --> 01:40:35.186
But if you looked at the resume, it's like, well, at least she's done something similar.

01:40:36.106 --> 01:40:39.666
She's been attorney general of a state. Why not her be attorney general of a

01:40:39.666 --> 01:40:43.126
nation? She had the best argument of anybody else.

01:40:43.766 --> 01:40:48.646
But that foolishness when she got up there and thought she was scoring political

01:40:48.646 --> 01:40:52.966
points by trying to attack every Democrat that asked her a question instead

01:40:52.966 --> 01:40:56.306
of just answering the question, backfired.

01:40:56.886 --> 01:41:03.046
When you couldn't even play the political game enough after you campaigned,

01:41:03.146 --> 01:41:07.366
when you ran for attorney general, of fighting for victims of sexual assault,

01:41:07.706 --> 01:41:13.466
you couldn't even crane your neck to look at the people that Jeffrey Epstein

01:41:13.466 --> 01:41:16.646
harmed in your state, even.

01:41:17.146 --> 01:41:20.006
There were some islands and there's some place in New Mexico,

01:41:20.266 --> 01:41:23.266
but based out of Florida and New York.

01:41:24.066 --> 01:41:27.506
You couldn't train your neck to just look at them.

01:41:27.826 --> 01:41:32.226
You couldn't even act like you had empathy or compassion for them.

01:41:32.986 --> 01:41:37.926
Now, supposedly, she got fired because she wasn't putting enough people that

01:41:37.926 --> 01:41:39.286
Donald Trump didn't like in jail.

01:41:40.026 --> 01:41:43.926
That wasn't her job anyway. You gave her an impossible task to do.

01:41:46.150 --> 01:41:49.310
Blame her for trying to execute your bullshit.

01:41:49.850 --> 01:41:55.030
Because basically, in more eloquent legal terms, that's what all the judges

01:41:55.030 --> 01:41:58.590
have said when you brought these indictments or try to get these indictments

01:41:58.590 --> 01:41:59.590
on these people you don't like.

01:42:00.330 --> 01:42:03.490
So you put her in an untenable situation.

01:42:04.350 --> 01:42:09.490
But she signed up for it. And she suffered the consequences for doing it.

01:42:10.330 --> 01:42:16.390
Now, she's in a position where people were told, we're not going to disbar this

01:42:16.390 --> 01:42:19.670
woman because she's the Attorney General of the United States.

01:42:19.670 --> 01:42:20.630
We're not going to do that.

01:42:21.110 --> 01:42:26.550
Well, now she could possibly be disbarred. So whatever cushy job at a law firm

01:42:26.550 --> 01:42:28.970
she's supposed to be promised, she might not be able to have it.

01:42:30.622 --> 01:42:34.442
These people can go back and say, okay, well, she's not the attorney general anymore.

01:42:36.222 --> 01:42:45.682
Let's see if she can be disbarred, right? When you do stuff and it's not for

01:42:45.682 --> 01:42:48.342
the benefit of others or for the good,

01:42:48.882 --> 01:42:52.202
even if it's good for yourself, right?

01:42:52.682 --> 01:42:57.762
If you do things with bad intent, that's going to follow you.

01:42:58.482 --> 01:43:04.122
Now, if I'm Tulsi Gabbard or any other woman that's in the Trump administration,

01:43:04.902 --> 01:43:08.582
it's like, get your resumes ready because he's only firing the women.

01:43:09.422 --> 01:43:11.402
And believe me, Tulsi is next.

01:43:12.282 --> 01:43:20.922
Many thought Tulsi would be out before Noam or Bondi, but it is what it is. But she's next.

01:43:21.702 --> 01:43:27.462
And it's not because of what they did because they're doing what he asked them to do.

01:43:27.982 --> 01:43:32.282
It's because he's trying to minimize political damage.

01:43:32.902 --> 01:43:38.962
He doesn't care about who they harm. He doesn't care about the insults they

01:43:38.962 --> 01:43:44.582
hurl or their lack of professionalism or whatever. It's all about him.

01:43:45.782 --> 01:43:53.582
And so, you know, it is what it is, man. I just, I want us to care about us.

01:43:54.302 --> 01:43:57.482
And it needs to reflect in who we vote for.

01:43:58.602 --> 01:44:03.422
As clearly stated, I'm partisan. Doesn't mean you have to be.

01:44:03.882 --> 01:44:09.342
If you really believe that there's a person of the opposite party that really

01:44:09.342 --> 01:44:13.422
wants to make a difference for everybody, you should vote for them.

01:44:15.138 --> 01:44:21.618
Of times, you know, the differences can be worked out if we are rational.

01:44:22.378 --> 01:44:27.078
But if you're voting for somebody who basically doesn't give a damn about you

01:44:27.078 --> 01:44:32.158
just because they sound good or they look good on Fox or whatever the case may

01:44:32.158 --> 01:44:35.178
be, stop hurting yourself like that.

01:44:35.418 --> 01:44:38.098
That's almost as bad as just self-mutilation.

01:44:38.638 --> 01:44:43.138
Stop doing that to yourself. You deserve better.

01:44:43.638 --> 01:44:47.418
Each and every one of us deserves better.

01:44:48.038 --> 01:44:50.958
And we got to start thinking like that.

01:44:52.768 --> 01:44:55.848
Happened yesterday, yesteryear is gone.

01:44:56.728 --> 01:45:03.808
Each day, we advance into a new horizon. Each day.

01:45:04.408 --> 01:45:09.328
You know, I'm at that age now where, yeah, there's some things that I wish I

01:45:09.328 --> 01:45:14.888
could still do athletically or just basic physical stuff,

01:45:15.368 --> 01:45:20.048
you know, even some mental stuff, right? But I'm getting older.

01:45:20.488 --> 01:45:26.768
And so I have to try to do things to supplement just to maintain what I got. Right.

01:45:27.528 --> 01:45:30.608
Trying to beat something I can't beat, which is time.

01:45:31.268 --> 01:45:37.488
But you don't surrender to the inevitable. You push on, you fight. Right.

01:45:38.328 --> 01:45:40.408
You make the most of your life.

01:45:41.308 --> 01:45:46.608
And the one thing I try to encourage people when it comes to politics is vote

01:45:46.608 --> 01:45:51.868
for people that won't hinder you living your life.

01:45:52.708 --> 01:45:59.168
Don't do that. If you want to do something positive and strong and good,

01:45:59.448 --> 01:46:02.748
then vote for people that won't deny you that opportunity.

01:46:03.488 --> 01:46:08.948
Just stop doing that. Support people who understand that the purpose of this

01:46:08.948 --> 01:46:14.968
nation is for a group of people, these 330 million of us,

01:46:15.808 --> 01:46:20.008
is to live our own individual manifest destiny.

01:46:21.773 --> 01:46:25.713
Able to live the life we seek.

01:46:26.833 --> 01:46:33.153
Any politician that wants to deny that, whether it's how you live your life

01:46:33.153 --> 01:46:38.993
or when you want to have children, what books you can read, what movies you can watch,

01:46:39.753 --> 01:46:44.193
what house you want to buy, what neighborhood you want to move in,

01:46:44.853 --> 01:46:50.033
people that want to restrict your life are not worthy of your vote. Not anymore.

01:46:50.833 --> 01:46:56.533
My guests, get that. The people that they write about or work with, get that.

01:46:57.413 --> 01:47:01.453
Most of you listening, if not all of you, get that.

01:47:02.093 --> 01:47:08.273
But now we have to evangelize and get others to believe that they deserve better.

01:47:09.033 --> 01:47:14.413
You don't have to go along to get along, but you gotta fight for what you want.

01:47:15.393 --> 01:47:18.193
All right. That's all I got. Thank you.