Countering the ridiculousness of it all with some sense (Hour 2)

Broadcasting across the state of Wisconsin on the Civic Media Radio Network and around the world on the Civic Media app.

This is the Dom Salvia Show.

And now, here's your host, Dom Salvia.

Actually, not Dom Selvia.

It's Matt Rothschild.

I'm the former executive director at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and used to be the editor and publisher of the Progressive Magazine for about three decades.

And now I'm just happy to be on civic media whenever Dom's away and also to be able to be here on usually Wednesday afternoons with Dom and Jess because it's such a fun team to be a part of.

And I want you to be a part of two of this program too by calling 855-752-4842.

That's 855-75 Civic because we're on the Civic Media Radio Network all across the state of Wisconsin.

You can call or text at that line 855-752-4842.

We have a couple of texts I wanted to get to.

Andrew from Maine.

says a big question for him is how to believe the candidates, whether they're for Department of Public Instruction or Wisconsin Supreme Court or any other election for that matter.

That is a real question.

How are the Democratic candidates, Andrew says, going to be any different?

Well, you know, I do resist the temptation.

To say all politicians are bad or all politicians are the same or all politicians are corrupt because I know here in Wisconsin I'm very proud to be represented by Mark Pokan here in the second congressional district I think Tammy Baldwin has done a really good job as one of our senators And I don't believe either of them is corrupt or somehow

Lying in their ads and all the stuff that people mention about candidates and politicians So I think it's important to try to figure out who the politicians are who the candidates are and whether you trust what they say You know check for yourself the comments that they're making or the ads that they're running or the ads that the other groups on their behalf are running I get the cynicism and the disgust with the negative ads that

We all see, I mean, this big money in our politics is ruining our democracy.

And they're just splattering mud on all our screens all the time here whenever there's an election.

So I totally get that and I understand that, Andrew.

We also got a texture from the 608 who liked what Lisa Lucas of all in Wisconsin was talking about and wanted to know more about how important the messenger is versus the message.

You know, I think...

The messenger is important too and the tired old messengers need to step aside You know, I think Chuck Schumer is doing nobody any good over there in the Senate and we need new messengers but and you the listener can be a good messenger with your neighbor with your family members with people you know Who didn't vote last time around when one third of the voting population in this country didn't vote?

and look what we got are people who have voters remorse right now because they didn't know that, you know, Trump was going to make it harder for farmers because of the tariffs and because of the war on immigrants that he's waging right now.

And so, you know, there's an opening there.

There's an opening on the assault on Medicaid that appears to be coming because so many people know.

a close family member who is getting Medicaid, whether it's a grandmother or mother in a nursing home, or whether it's someone in your family who's disabled and needs the Medicaid, or whether it's someone who's just hard on their luck who needs the Medicaid to make it through rent the next month.

or someone who wants to go to Yellowstone, and now the National Park Service is being decimated, and just imagine what it's going to be like at our national parks, or at our wildlife refuge.

There's no one in the headquarters anymore to tell you where to go, or if you want to go...

skiing or snowmobiling the Chiquamagon, NikolayNationalForest.North.

And there's been no one there to make the trails for you.

I mean, this is going to affect people in so many ways.

And so I think that's how we need to start communicating.

But yeah, Lisa Lucas, Dr. Cass Bowers over at All in Wisconsin, tremendous advocates, go to their website, allnwi.org and figure out the best way to talk to your neighbor, the best way to talk to your

family member who now is wondering what the hell Donald Trump is bringing down on all our heads.

So I'm delighted now to have as my co-host, Angela Lange.

She's often my co-host here when Dom's away and it's terrific to have Angela.

Angela is the executive director at Block Black Leaders Organizing for Communities.

How you doing, Angela?

I'm good.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited.

And it sounds like you had a good hour.

I had a board meeting, so I wasn't able to listen, but

Just want to underscore, all in Wisconsin, Dr. Kaz Bowers and Lisa Lucas, they are the ones to really try to bridge this gap, I think, in Wisconsin.

And we, as Block, work with them very closely as well, too.

And I just can't say enough about their work, especially in a state like Wisconsin, where we have a lot of geographical divides and this urban and rural type of conversation.

constantly always bubbling up in this tension and they're able to kind of bridge that gap in answering the question about messengers.

Yes, messengers are incredibly important.

It's a lot easier for you to have conversations with your neighbors, you know, where they feel a little bit safer or maybe they, you know, maybe don't have the right language.

So, you know, they feel safe and comfortable talking to you because, you know, you're not going to judge them versus if I cold knock on their door.

So the messenger absolutely plays a part of it.

And I think what

Is a beautiful thing about democracy is that we all can be messengers in our own networks

Famous line from June Jordan or June Jordan poem.

We are the people we've been waiting for and It was a great pleasure of mine actually to work with June Jordan at the progressive back in the day So tremendous poet.

We ran one of her poems last week.

I think wasn't it just poem about my rights Yeah,

it

was just an incredible we only ran a minute of it.

We couldn't run some of it

because of the language, but it is a very strong poem that I recommend everybody take a listen to if you can.

But yeah, it's been a fun show so far, at least Lucas at all in Wisconsin, and then in the first half hour at Heather Dubois-Bernand from Wisconsin Public Education Network.

Also a good partner that I work closely with.

So it's just been fun.

I just love the opportunity that Dom gives me when he's away to get on here and get some of the activists and leaders in the tremendous nonprofit sector that we have here in Wisconsin, who I don't think get enough platforms and enough microphones.

So whenever I have an opportunity, I try to pass the mic around and also having you on is just one way to do it too, because you're doing such great work.

It blocked.

Why don't you tell the listeners just a bit about block?

Yeah, so we're just a little over a month from our next election.

So Black is a year-round civic engagement organization that started in 2017 in some ways in response to the 2016 election and Trump being elected.

But also in a lot of ways, I saw some really harmful narratives about who was to blame and blaming Black voters when, in my opinion,

Black voters are some of the most least engaged and most disenfranchised.

And so instead of having an honest conversation of how do we reach voters, we were to blame.

And that didn't set well with me.

And so being able to leverage some networks and some folks that I knew, being able to kind of try and fill that gap of how do we have year round civic engagement, not just in a time of an election.

So yes, right now the team was out knocking doors.

We have a community meeting on Saturday.

We have our community meetings once a month.

getting off the vote for the April election.

And we'll be having an interview with Susan Crawford and Dr. Jill Underly later this week as well, too, to make potential endorsements.

We'll see how they go.

Fingers crossed, I am encouraged.

But ultimately, it's up to our team of ambassadors who do this work.

So we're excited and we're excited for after April when we'll have a solid 10 months with no elections and we can organize.

And one of the neat things you do at Block is, yeah, doing this organizing when it's not.

election time, unlike, you know, the traditional way where, you know, from Washington, you know, organizers are parachuted in and telling people what the most important issue is in their community and they don't even know their community.

That

always rub me the wrong way.

And I admire greatly the work that you're doing there.

Why do you think this April 1st election is so important, Angela?

Lots of reasons.

One, I think it's important because people are kind of tapped out.

I think there's a lot of voter fatigue and we got to make sure that we're showing up for every election.

We had a couple of text messages recently when we were telling folks about the primary.

They were like, yeah, whatever, shut up.

The election's over.

And we're like, actually, no, there's the primary and then there's the April election.

So it's important to make sure that we're still focused.

We do have the state Supreme Court, which will yet again determine the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court.

And we know what that means, our rights, redistricting, all sorts of things like that.

And we also have our state superintendent that is up for a reelection against someone who has been.

closely aligned with the Trump administration.

So interesting to have a state superintendent candidates who was also aligned with the same party that wants to get rid of the Department of Education.

So that is interesting.

And the last thing that I'll mention is that there is a constitutional amendment on the ballot, which would basically codify our already existing voter ID law.

And we all know that it's just a Republican ploy to boost turnout for the Supreme Court race.

It is already existing law and codified.

in the Constitution will make it harder to get off the books and hopefully at one point try to overturn that.

So we are encouraging people to vote no and we want to do a lot of education around that as well.

You know, even Brad Schimel admitted that.

Schimel, who's running as the conservative of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, admitted that voter ID, which he was involved with there when he was

in the

Walker administration as attorney general, he was bragging about Trump winning in 2016, in part because of voter ID.

And this is what Todd Albaugh, the Todd Albaugh show has been talking about forever because to his everlasting credit, he resigned after being chief of staff for a Republican Senate Majority Leader, Dale Schultz, when he

other Republican state senators in the cloakroom after the vote on voter ID being giddy.

Giddy was the word that Todd used.

Giddy, that they were disenfranchising who they were disenfranchising, people of color and young people.

one Republican after another in private or in public bragging about how this was working out for them so well, including Brad Schimmel.

So it's just crucially important for people to get out and vote.

And, you know, this Wisconsin Supreme Court race will determine reproductive rights in Wisconsin, labor rights in Wisconsin, Act 10 is coming up again.

Jerry Mandarin, you mentioned Angela, that's going to be big and a whole slew of environmental issues.

You

know,

this is a really important race and we need to turn out the vote.

I know people are

feeling beleaguered by Trump in the onslaught, but hey.

We can do something about that.

In fact, this is the first opportunity to do something about that in an election.

And that's why I think everyone who is disgusted by what Trump is doing, by this authoritarianism, fascism, if you will, that's coming down from on high, who don't like Elon Musk and what Elon Musk is doing to the federal government and federal government employees and programs.

This is an opportunity, April 1st, to get out and show your disgust and vote for Susan Crawford.

I want to come back and talk about the Trump Cabinet meeting

that happened.

We'll be right back here on the Dom Salvia show with Angela Lang and me, Matt Rothschild.

So stay tuned and prepare to text and call us about your view about that cabinet

meeting.

Matt

Rothschild here, seven in for Dom on the Dom Salvia show.

Always nice to hear Jimi Hendrix improving on Bob Dylan.

My co-host today for the rest of the show, Angela Lang of Block, and I want to invite you, the caller, to weigh in here on Trump.

In his cabinet meeting with Elon Musk today, the number to call 855-752-4842, or text, same number, 855-75 Civic.

That's 855.

You know the 855.

Focus on the 752-4842.

You'll get through in a hurry and happy to hear what you think.

But I want to know right off the bat what Angela Lang thought about this cabinet

meeting.

I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore these days.

I also don't understand how we have an unelected person like in these cabinet meetings calling the shot.

Like I've just seen clips and I fear that we've strayed so far that we're starting to normalize the smaller things.

Um, you know, because there's so many big fires to be thinking about and to be putting out.

But, you know, if you take a giant step backwards, like why is someone like Elon Musk, who is a billionaire, who has like bought his way into helping co-govern this country?

Why, why is that?

That is a big, that we, yeah, that it was stunning.

I had to kind of double check and was like, this is, this is real.

This is happening.

Okay.

I don't

know about this.

You know.

$240 million or something he spent to get Donald Trump elected.

And now he's essentially co-president or deputy president, depending on how you want to look at it, but extraordinarily powerful.

You know, he gets up in the cabinet meeting today and I guess we have some audio on it, don't we?

Let's play a little

bit.

Unfortunately, let's sure.

Where do you want to start?

Why

don't you start with.

Elon Musk saying he was just a techie.

Sure, sure.

I'd like to have Elon Musk please say a few words.

Thank you, Elon.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Well, I should just put myself a couple tech support here because this is actually, as crazy as it sounds, that that is almost a literal description of the work that those team is doing.

I mean, that's not a literal description of what he's doing there.

It's not even close.

It's not even in the ballpark.

He's dismantling our government and firing federal employees by the thousands.

That's not what tech support does.

They're not fixing the internet connection that these agencies, they're getting rid of people.

Tech support also doesn't try to steal like the American people's like data and information and whatnot.

I'm pretty sure even, I don't even know, I'm sure different tech companies have some different agreements about like you can't do other people's data that you are seeing and privy to.

I haven't seen some organizations when you're using our voter database, there's like a thing signed that you're not going to use this data for the various things.

And these are just smaller organizations and tech companies, but yet a man running our government is allowed to just.

do whatever he wants from the inside and dismantle it from the inside and Trump is just letting him.

It's so disgraceful.

And there was Trump.

Let's hear the audio about Trump kind of laughing about any of the cabinet members.

Have any problem with Elon Musk?

Let the cabinet speak just

for a second.

If you are, we'll throw him out of here.

So if you couldn't hear that because of the giggling and the sycophantic clapping, he was saying, is there anyone unhappy with Elon?

If you are, we'll throw them out of here, which means if you're a cabinet member and you didn't like Elon Musk telling all of the employees in your agency that you were just confirmed to run, that they have, you know, 24 hours or 48 hours to list the five things they did last week, then you're going to be kicked out of the cabinet meeting and probably lose your job.

I mean,

as

an executive director of an organization, I seek to build consensus.

I very rarely make a sole decision by myself, right?

But that doesn't sound like a supportive work environment of saying, hey, if you disagree, we're going to throw you out, right?

It literally just feels like a one man show, or maybe two, depending.

But this whole kind of king dynamic is what's happening.

And it's just interesting that at some point people will start to maybe lash out given how they're treated, whether it's also internally or the American people.

Well, and also I think, you know, Elon Musk is a lot less popular than Donald Trump is.

And to the extent that Elon Musk is the face of the administration, it's going to hurt Trump himself.

I don't think he's realized that yet.

He just loves, you know, sitting next to, you know, the richest man in the world.

I think he gets his jollies that way, which is kind of sick too.

And then, you know, they're in this mutual admiration society.

Why don't we play Musk complimenting Trump on the cabinet that he's built, Jess, if you've got that one.

And President Trump has put together, I think, the best candidate ever.

And I do not give false praise.

This is an incredible group of people.

I don't think that such a talented team has actually ever been assembled.

The group full

of racist predators, sexual abusers, all the things homophobic, transphobic, yeah, real great group of people, real great.

And so well qualified to Pete Exeth, really.

RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Linda McMahon, and Education.

I mean, to have- The

look of on and

on.

And it was just, I mean, it is out of a kind of a thorough dictatorship or out of a Woody Allen bananas movie where you're just, you know, you've got to bow down and kiss the guy's ring.

And so, yeah, there's Elon Musk.

in this mutual admiration society with Donald Trump.

And it was just disgusting to behold.

And all the other cabinet members were just there yucking it up.

And that's where we are right now.

We have an authoritarian in power.

We have a kind of mad billionaire as his deputy or co-president.

And also, the thing that Elon Musk kept saying was, we're gonna go bankrupt.

We're gonna go bankrupt

basically

any day now if we don't cut a trillion dollars.

Well, they wanna cut the trillion dollars so they can give

You know, huge tax cuts to Elon Musk and Donald Trump and people like them.

And also the

idea that the United States is going to go bust because we're running a deficit is just false and has been proven false for the last, you know, 30 decades, three decades.

We can always

just tax the rich, you know, just saying.

Well, yeah, you can have an inheritance tax, tax the top.

income like they did during Eisenhower's day where it was taxed at 92%.

But that's not what Elon Musk wants or Donald Trump wants.

So

we'll talk more about Trump and Gaza video he put out when we come back, if you can believe that on the Dom Salvia show on the Civic Media Radio Network.

The Dom Salvis Show, Matt Rothschild here, guest hosting with Angela Lang of Block.

We're going to ask to listen to a couple of callers and answer your questions.

And you too can call at 855-752-4842.

That's 855-75 Civic all across the Civic Media Radio Network, which we're honored to be able to be on right now.

So we've got a call, a first time caller from Ruth.

Ruth from Eau Claire, you're on the line.

What's on your mind, Ruth?

Yeah, I know that for people that can seem like that the grassroots isn't doing that much.

And so there's some frustration about that.

But I want to point out, of course, there's a lot going on in communities.

One of the things that happened yesterday was a protest at Senator Johnson's office in Madison.

This is someone who doesn't answer his phone.

This is someone who, you know, doesn't listen to his constituents.

He sees himself as a soldier for Donald Trump, but not for the people he represents.

But there was a large protest yesterday, very short time frame to put it together, but there were like, people from all across the state, 250 to 350, depending upon, you know, there's somewhere in between there.

So maybe about 400 people showed up.

Medicaid was sort of the pinnacle of it, but there were other issues and concerns represented, you know, like schools and healthcare.

And just, you know, democracy.

So it was, it was very effective.

There was an appointment with one of Johnson staffers who just didn't show.

And of course, Johnson didn't show because he doesn't show up.

So there are things going on.

And so this was in Madison.

WPR covered it.

Local radio stations and TV stations in Madison covered it.

And just gave people a place to come and use their voice.

You know Ruth from

Eau Claire.

Thanks so much for that call.

I actually was at that protest myself

Look at

that.

Yeah, and it was it was really inspiring to see I've been doing headcounts at protest for 40 years.

I counted about 400 people

and

Mostly elderly mostly caring signs about Medicaid many

of them were

family members who were people who have family members who rely on

on Medicaid for someone who may be disabled in their family.

I took a picture of one woman who held up a picture of a loved one who needed Medicaid.

And this idea that they're going to slash $880 million out of Medicaid, and it's just going to be disastrous for people.

They're not going to get away with that.

And there were some great signs, too.

I love the homemade signs.

People were able to grab a sign and write whatever they want on it.

And the chants were great.

Stop the coup was won.

Elon has got to go with another.

Ron Johnson, do your job was another one.

Vote him out was another chant.

And it wasn't just in Madison.

I saw there was a protest in Milwaukee as well.

And they're going to be more and more of these.

And there have been protests, of course, at Glen Growthman's Town

Hall.

or it fits Gerald's town hall and I guess they're not going to be doing town halls after this because they want to face the music.

But

they're making.

they're making national news though, which is good.

You know, you turn on MSNBC or CNN or whoever and people are talking about how these are typically Republican districts, right?

Not even just like Madison and Milwaukee, but Republican districts and largely Republican voters are showing up upset.

And so what does that mean?

I also think, you know, keeping on the topic of Elon and coup and, you know, busting his way into our democracy, we're even seeing that here,

locally, right?

Like he's dumped in two million-ish dollars into, yeah, so far.

Thank you.

So far.

We assume there's more into Brad Schimel's campaign.

And so that is a direct through line through our state, through our state's highest court of the Trump administration.

And I think that is something that's really important about why the April election is so important, too.

Yeah, do you really want Elon Musk to decide who's going to be the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice?

Do you want Elon Musk to decide if abortion, if you should have an abortion or not?

Because that's what it basically is.

Or whether we should have fair maps here, whether we should have labor rights here.

But yeah, I mean, he doesn't believe in any of that.

No,

he just wants his Tesla company to be able to have unregulated sales in Wisconsin.

Well, no, if you want to see a picture.

of Elon Musk eating hummus.

You can find that at a video that Trump put out on his

social

network.

It's called Trump in Gaza.

It's this fantasy that the Trump people came up with a video showing Elon Musk eating hummus and Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu lying down half naked on a beach.

It is

disturbing.

As they're turning Gaza into what?

Cancun or something?

And the only Palestinians that are represented are first victims who are walking through rubble and then belly dancers.

It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.

Do we have any audio on that, Jess?

Unfortunately.

Oh,

just briefly, because I can't handle much.

All right.

Well, if your ears start bleeding, I do apologize.

TROPGASA

I want all this timeline It's disturbing like if you actually watch the video which I think people should But caution because it is disturbing on multiple levels.

It's like this weird AI I did not just need to see an AI version of Donald Trump shirtless like I did not need to see that No, it's also disturbing because it's dehumanizing gross and sick and to see this put out as like a

thing from our president with

enormous golden statues of yeah multiple enormous golden statues

you

can find it at Mother

Jones yeah motherjones.com has it if you have the appetite for that which I really don't have

our commenter mark says it's a parody it's funny

whatever

Somebody in the comments said that we all died in the pandemic, and this is what our terrible afterlife looks like.

This

is the seventh circle of

hell we're in.

It makes more sense than what we're seeing.

So I guess I'll take that analysis interpretation.

Jess, do we still have a caller online?

We do.

We still have Cam from Appleton, one of Donald's stomping grounds.

All right, let's hear from Cam.

Cam, you're on.

Hey, I think John Stewart was the one that originally had said that we died during COVID and we're in hell now.

I wanted to encourage those that are voting now and in the future until we get these voting stuff fixed.

If you are anything but white, please try to vote in person.

Greg Palace is a very reliable source for election data.

Civic media has had him on before, and I believe he cited around a 400% increase of a chance for your ballot to not get counted, period, if you are African American or Latina, Latinx.

I'm very bad at remembering the terminology there, so excuse me for that, but it's frustrating that I even feel like I need to bring it up, but I don't want people feeling like their voices weren't counted and then just not voting altogether going forward.

Cam, thanks for the call.

Angela, what do you make of that?

How important is it to vote in person versus just voting absentee or voting early voting?

Yeah, you know, I'll say one, you know, I think especially now in this landscape.

there's a lot of nefarious things happening first and foremost.

So I'm not gonna like deny that.

I think there's some healthy skepticism right now.

I also, multiple things can be true.

I wanna give a shout out to all the election workers.

We particularly as a staff always early vote at the Capitol Drive location and they always get excited to see us.

They are very efficient and we always make a point to thank them for the work that they do because we're attacking election workers.

Now, all of that said, I do know that we've talked to a lot of our elders in the community.

A lot of folks were like, I'm voting on election day.

They have their routine.

It's like they get up, sometimes they dress in their Sunday best.

They're one of the first ones in line at 7 AM, and that is their routine.

And even in the pandemic, when there was an increase and kind of an explosion of vote by mail, people were a little skeptical of it because people wanted to see their ballot go in the machine.

They want to see that.

And we also know that there has been some challenges, especially in 2020, about people not even receiving the ballots by mail.

I know people never even got their ballot to this day for what I call the pandemic election.

And so I think a lot of times people, especially elder Black

folks and I say elder because there's that historical context there of like understanding the importance and it's not a responsibility our community takes lightly especially knowing the civil rights movement and what it took to get here and so that's why people are like yeah voting early or voting absentee may be a little bit more convenient.

But people just in their mind feel so strongly about that responsibility that they were like, I want to see it go in the machine.

I want to get my sticker instead of just voting by mail.

But I think all of that is to say that there's multiple options and there's multiple ways.

And our job is to make sure that people have multiple avenues.

If you requested your ballot too late, there's still an option.

This is what you can do.

So whatever people prefer, but I understand the healthy skepticism.

And at the same time, the poll workers

for the most part, at least the ones that I talked to, are not up to anything nefarious.

And they have to do their best to keep up with the ever-changing rules and policy changes and rule changes from the Wisconsin Election Commission.

So I think that there's a fine line to walk.

I think there's healthy skepticism understanding the world that we're living in and also acknowledging the hard work that our election workers do too.

Yeah.

And I'm of the view that, you know, vote any way

you feel most comfortable.

It's just really important that you vote in this April 1st election.

You know, I'm going to vote early absentee.

And, you know, I'm kind of goofy about the post office.

So I actually, my wife and I fill out our absentee belts and go drive it over to the clerk's office and physically hand it to the clerk just so we

know it's gotten

there.

But whatever you're comfortable with, whether it's in person on April 1st, in person, two weeks early, absentee.

whatever.

It's just really important to vote and encourage your friends and family members to vote.

Spring elections, usually the voter turnout isn't super high.

It's

really

important to vote because of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and the superintendent's race.

You know, what kind of state are we going to have?

Do we

want to go back to

where there's a conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

Three of the four were perfectly willing to throw out hundreds of thousands of legally cast votes and

hand our

state over to Donald Trump, even though we didn't win the popular vote in 2020.

And that's why it matters so much, that in abortion and labor rights and environmental protections and all sorts of safeguards that we've

grown accustomed to, you

know,

everything, everything's on the line.

And if we haven't learned anything in the last, you know, 12 years, you know, after the Scott Walker counter revolution, it's, you know, statewide race is really important, not

just

for president.

And what I'll say too is, you know, if people choose to early vote, I personally am a fan of early voting.

We all early vote as a team, as a kind of our tradition.

But what you can do if you're on social media or not is I always like, usually in like an early vote center, there's some sort of like, I voted backdrop or some sort of, you know, vote here thing, some sort of signage.

I like to take a quick selfie by the signage.

And then you can post that on your social media.

And then people see that in the last couple of days of early voting and they start to make a plan and they're reminded you're not on social media.

media isn't your thing.

You can text that picture to 10 of your friends that said, Hey, guess what?

I voted today.

It was super easy.

I was in and out.

Here's the my vote website where you can find your polling place.

There's ways that we can again be trusted messengers by just showing example of how easy it was for us to vote.

Yeah, there you go.

We'll be right back for the closing segment here.

Tell us something good in a poem by Clint Smith.

You don't want to miss that.

I'm going to Chicago.

That's the last place my baby stayed.

It's high.

Yeah.

It's

high,

baby.

I'm packing up my bags.

Gonna leave this old town right away.

It's high.

It's high.

It's high, baby.

I've got to find that girl.

Dom always does, and Jess too, tell us something good, which is a great idea.

So if you want to tell us something good, something hopeful, something that gives you inspiration, call us or text us.

855-752-4842.

I'm Matt Rothschild.

I've been subbing in here for Dom this afternoon.

I'll be with you tomorrow.

I want to thank Heather Dubois-Bernon of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, Lisa Lucas of All In Wisconsin, and my co-host oftentimes, Angela Lange here of Block.

And Jess P.S., who does a tremendous job on the Dom Salvia Show.

It should be the Dom and Jess Show, I think.

Change the name.

And I want to thank the callers too and textures.

You know, every time I'm on, I try to bring a poem.

And for Black History Month, I had a sampling of Langston Hughes, June Jordan.

I got read a dove tomorrow.

But right now, I want Clint Smith.

Clint Smith is a contemporary poet with a very powerful voice.

Let's hear what he has to say, and then we'll get to some quick good news.

One night when I was 12 years old, on an overnight field trip to another city, my friends and I bought super soakers.

turned the hotel parking lot into our own water-filled battle zone.

We hid behind cars, running through the darkness that lay between the streetlights.

Boundless laughter ubiquitous across the pavement.

But within 10 minutes, my father came outside, grabbed me by my forearm, and led me into our room with an unfamiliar grip.

Before I could say anything, tell him I foolishly made me look in front of my friends.

He derided me for being so naive.

looked me in the eye, fear consuming his face, and said, son, I'm sorry, but you can't act the same as your white friends.

You can't pretend to shoot guns.

You can't run around in the dark.

You can't hide behind anything other than your own teeth.

I know now how scared he must have been, how easily I could have fallen into the empty of the night that some man would mistake this water.

for a good reason to wash all of this away.

These are the sorts of messages I was inundated with my entire life.

Always keep your hands where they can see them.

Don't move too quickly.

Take off your hood when the sun goes down.

My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells, so someone wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs, so that they wouldn't make a memory of this skin, so that we could be kids, not casket or concrete.

And it's not because they thought it would make us better than anyone else.

It's simply because they wanted to keep us alive.

All of my black friends were raised with the same message.

The talk, given to us when we became old enough to be mistaken for a nail, ready to be hammered to the ground when people made our melanin synonymous with something to be feared.

But what does it do to a child?

To grow up knowing that you cannot simply be a child, that the whims of adolescence are too dangerous for your breath, that you cannot simply be curious, that you are not afforded the luxury of making a mistake, that someone's implicit bias might be the reason you don't wake up in the morning.

But this cannot be what defines us.

It's way of parents who raised us to understand that our bodies weren't meant for the backside of a bullet, but for flying kites and jumping rope and laughing until our stomachs burst.

We had teachers who taught us how to raise our hands in class and not just to signal surrender.

That the only thing we should give up is the idea that we aren't worthy of this world.

So when we say that black lives matter, it's not because others don't.

It's simply because we must affirm that we are worthy of existing without fear.

When there are so many things that tell us we are not, I want to live in a world where my son will not be

He presumed guilty the moment he is born.

Where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy.

And I refuse to accept that we can't build this world to something new.

Some place where a child's name does not be written on a t-shirt or a tombstone where the value of someone's life isn't determined by anything other than the fact that they had lungs.

A place where every single one of us can breathe.

That's Clint Smith with a power.

I wanna help build that world with an amazing poem.

Tell us something good.

Well, I have something good to report.

I heard and then saw the first sand hill crane of spring and right over my house in southern Dane County.

And I think we have just 20 seconds of that call.

Do we have it, Jess?

Can we play it?

Here it is.

That's awesome.

Yeah, that got me out of my chair and opened the door and looked where and there was in the blue sky.

Angela, do you have something good to share?

I would say, yeah, about a week ago, oddly enough, the Wisconsin State Assembly formally recognized February as Black History Month.

It's something that had been going back and forth, and it had been controversy, and people would bring it up, and it hadn't been voted on, because we

know the legislature.

About time.

So finally, and in these dark times, especially seeing that now as DEI and all these things are happening racially to know that Wisconsin finally did it right.

It took longer than expected, but here we are.

We can hopefully take baby steps.

Well, that's that's a long time coming.

We got it done.

Congratulations on your work and trying to get it done.

Jess, what do you got?

Well, I went for a little walk and I noticed that on every tree that I passed, there were tiny little buds coming out.

So

just

like you heard and saw some

early sand hill cranes.

Spring really truly is just around the corner.

And in a couple of weeks, we're going to have that gorgeous Wisconsin spring where everything is in bloom.

I'm ready for it.

We've got a caller.

I think Chris still online is something good to report.

Chris, we've got one minute.

Hello.

Hello.

You got my

you hear me?

Yeah, you got one minute for something good.

Okay,

well,

I work for the post office and I just want to tell you, you know, you kind of, you know, went sideways on the post office a little bit.

We go way, way out of our way to make sure that all these ballots that are in the mail are delivered to the polling places.

They're kept separate from the general mail.

And the day of the election, there is a person that is assigned to make sure that all the ballots go after the office is closed that get dropped off at the

at voting please.

Sorry I got to touch off.

I get it and I apologize if I insulted anyone.

I think it was on the national level.

Like DeJoy

wasn't being helpful so I think there's that.

I don't think it's any shade to our local post office workers.

Have a nice night everybody.