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Sam interviews Teri Kanefield, lawyer and author of multiple books and articles which you can read about at terikanefield.com. Follow Teri on Twitter at @Teri_Kanefield. Then, Sunsara Taylor interviews Derenda Hancock, abortion rights activist and defender of the one abortion clinic in the entire state of Mississippi (this interview originally aired on The RNL Show).
Fascism is based on myth and not truth and rule of law requires truth. One of the things fascists do is try to undermine actual authority, academics, so that their lies can take hold. The kind of authoritarianism that Trump was trying to put in place probably would have just completely taken apart rule of law. If Trump would have been maintained in the White House after losing we would have had a dictator. He would have told the judges what to do, there would have been no more democratic institutions. –Teri Kanefield
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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown.
Transcript:
Teri Kanefield 00:00
Fascism is based on myth and not truth and rule of law requires truth… One of the things fascists do is try to undermine actual authority, academics, so that their lies can take hold… The kind of authoritarianism that Trump was trying to put in place probably would have just completely taken apart rule of law… If Trump would have been maintained in the White House after losing we would have had a dictator. He would have told the judges what to do, there would have been no more democratic institutions.
Sam Goldman 00:47
Welcome to Episode 69 of the Refuse Fascism podcast. This podcast is brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of this show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country. In today’s episode, we are sharing a conversation I recently had with Teri Kanefield, award-winning author and lawyer regarding racism, fascism, and the rule of law. We’re also bringing to you an interviews and Sansara Taylor did with Derenda Hancock, which is extremely moving, on the abortion emergency. The interview originally aired on the RNL show.
But first, let’s talk about some developments from this past week, as they relate to the continued fascist threat. Over six months after the January 6 unprecedented coup attempt, none of the individuals responsible for launching it – those within the regime or Republi-fascist party have been held to any sort of account. After weeks of stalling, Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, offered his nominations for the select committee to probe January 6 and — drum roll — they included Jim Jordan, Jim Banks and Troy Nehls, all of whom voted to ory cverturn the election results the night of the violent coup attempt. This should surprise nobody. When Nancy Pelosi said: umm, no, we won’t take open insurrectionists in the investigation of the insurrection, accepting all but Jordan and Banks who both are Trump loyalists who’ve attacked such a commission — again, no surprise if you’ve been paying attention — Kevin McCarthy withdrew all his nominations and declared they would do their own investigation. Worth noting, Nehls who voted to refuse to certify election results that night, was not rejected. This is an essential illustration of why there can be no reconciliation with fascism except on the terms of the fascists.
The fraudulent audit or “fraudit” in Arizona is doubling down. Salon writer Amanda Marcotte has made a compelling case that the endless clownish chaos is by design. She wrote, “information overload is part of the strategy. Logan, Trump and other fake audit proponents are pouring out lies and false allegations of irregularities so fast that fact checkers can barely keep up. It’s very much a variation of the GOP’s Benghazi playbook. Flood the zone with so much confusing information that most people don’t bother trying to understand it. Instead, many will assume that there’s so much smoke, there must be a fire.” Beyond creating broad public opinion. Amanda hits the nail on the head when she makes clear that their “longer term goal” is “setting up Republican controlled state legislators or even a Republican controlled Congress in 2024, to simply throw out a Democratic win in 2024.” In a surprise to nobody…at the Turning Point Action rally last night in Phoenix, Trump praised the Arizona Senate for its ongoing audit in Maricopa County and slammed Governor Ducey for not helping facilitate the deadly delusion of voter fraud. I’m not going to go through his speech here. The bottom line is that the central message is fueled around weaponizing the big lie.
What I do want to highlight is people’s focus on that the message is fringe — how fringe It was, his declining mental capacity, his unhinged character, his instability. All of these are true, but they are not the point. They obscure the fascism thary ct is central. The reality that he was the leader of the world’s biggest superpower for four years. The danger he poses and continues to pose that 74 million people voted for. An objective increase in support. Trumpism, which can only be described as 21st century American fascism, is becoming more entrenched. In other news, after a two year long request to find out about the handling of the FBI investigation of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, we learned that the FBI received 4500 tips in 2018 as part of an FBI background investigation into then Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. What happened to them? Well, “relevant ones” went on to Trump’s White House Counsel never to be further investigated.
Dahlia Lithwick, in her piece on Slate, “We now know what the FBI did with the 4500 Kavanaugh types that collected in 2018,” wrote, “it is in a sense hard to be horrified by the explicit confirmation from the FBI that this was indeed a sham investigation, simply because much of this was known at the time, and more has emerged since. The sham occurred in plain view, as did the decision to dismiss all of the 83 judicial ethics complaints lodged against Kavanaugh at the time.” Going on to say: “We have become so inured to all the shamming in plain sight, that having it confirmed years later barely even feels like news.” She concludes by saying, “The only way to win at the high court involves Washington absolving him every single day of allegations that were not even surfaced, much less adjudicated by any fact-finding entity. And if that’s not absolute power, I’m not really sure what is.” It’s worth noting , that this news came out the same day that Mississippi’s Attorney General urged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, as part of a case that Kavanaugh could play a pivotal role next term in ending the right to abortion.
In today’s episode, I’m talking with Teri Kanefield. Teri is an award winning author. She’s a lawyer and contributor to The Washington Post, NBC, and you can find her writing elsewhere on our website, which is linked in the show notes. Welcome, Teri. Thanks for joining me.
Teri Kanefield 07:32
Thank you.
Sam Goldman 07:34
So states across the nation are criminalizing protests, suppressing the right to vote, and banning discussions of slavery in schools while the GOP leadership refuses to investigate the January 6 coup? I know, that’s a big question. But in your perspective, what’s happening here? And where is this coming from?
Teri Kanefield 07:53
That is a big question. I think there are lots of different ways to look at what’s happening, but I prefer to see things, a big picture in terms of American history as a whole. There’s one theory that isn’t wrong, but I think it’s limited, which is that, oh, 30 – 40 years ago, the Republican Party started sort of breaking laws and trying to suppress votes, and it just basically went off the rails. And that’s not wrong, but another way to see it as a 250 years struggle. This idea that all of a sudden, the Republican Party has become anti-democratic. By democratic, you have to remember, we haven’t really had in this country, yet, a functioning multiracial democracy. So we use the word “democracy” – a sort of big word, right. Before 1955, we did have a functioning democracy. Meaning we had democratic institutions, we had elected leaders who acted in the best interest of their constituents. We had functioning courts, we had elections that work, but the constituents were white.
We didn’t have, ever, in our history, what we would call a multiracial democracy, where all people are included. So initially, when the country was set up as as a representative democracy, only certain people were included, at the time only land-owning white, mostly educated men. That was who was included in the people. So democracy worked for them. But if you are a Black woman in 1850, democracy didn’t work for you. You were not included in the way that people, and before 1920, the 19th amendment women weren’t included. This idea that what the Republicans are doing is trying to undermine or destroy democracy is one way to say it, but that sort of sounds as if we had a lovely democracy, and now the Republicans are trying to undermine it. In fact, what happened was, that New Deal helped create a lot of economic opportunity for a lot of people. We had a healthy middle class in the fifties, but Blacks were left out. So what happened in 1954 – 1955 was very important, because the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation. And this ignited the civil rights movement. And so what happened about 40 – 50 years ago was an attempt to bring Blacks in. If you think about what America looked like before 1955, all of our institutions were dominated by white men; court, universities, governors’ mansions, the government at Congress was all white men. What’s happened in the last 40 or 50 years is an attempt to expand the democracy to include everybody.
So instead of saying the Republicans are trying to undermine democracy, another way to say it is they’re trying to prevent us from becoming a multiracial democracy. That’s what’s at work. The Republicans are breaking a lot of laws, and they’re trying to prevent people from voting. Now, what they’re doing right now didn’t used to be illegal. So in the 1920s, it was perfectly legal to prevent Blacks from voting. So in some ways, what they’re trying to do is take us backwards. Instead of taking us to some new place where we’ve never been, they’re trying to take us backwards. Now, if it comes to fascism, here’s an interesting tidbit. One of the important scholars of fascism, Robert Paxton, said that the world’s first fascists weren’t actually the Italians. He says that the world’s first fascist was the Klu Klux Klan in the United States. And when he described fascism, he said, they actually fit. They had a kind of a uniform here, those white sheets; they work in unison. All the things that they did, all the things that they stood for was fascism. The way he described fascism, if we phrase the problem, as “they’re breaking laws, and they’re trying to suppress the vote, and they’re trying to create an oligarchy or fascism.” We don’t know how to handle that, when you think about it that way, because it sounds like something new and scary that’s never happened before. But if you think about them trying to unwind, rewind and go backwards, and sometimes they’re very open about it, what they want to go back to. In fact, “Make America Great Again” is a reactionary expression. It says, we want to go back to a time when America was great. What I see happening with all of this law-breaking and voter suppression, is an attempt to recreate in lots of ways, not just racially, but economically, what we had in the 1920s. They want to peel it back, they want to roll it back. And that’s been the agenda for a very long time.
Right now it’s picked up in intensity. And I argue that the reason it’s picked up in intensity so that you have this insurrection, and you have this blatant law breaking. And it’s really frightening. I see it as complete desperation, because they are losing. America is becoming a multiracial democracy. So as we get closer to a true multiracial democracy, we’re going to have a stronger and stronger backlash from the people who can’t and won’t tolerate that. But we’re close. But we can get over this roadblock, sort of put another way. If you say we had a democracy, and now the Republicans are trying to undermine it, you feel a little bit like somebody tried to break into your house and steal what belongs to you. They’re trying to take away our democracy. But if instead you say, we are moving towards something we’ve never had, which is a true racially diverse democracy, and they’re trying to prevent us from getting there, then you see it as a roadblock, which is different in some ways. Because if someone’s breaking into your house and taking what’s yours, you feel paralyzed, and you don’t know what to do and you’re passive. But if you are actively trying to create a multiracial democracy, which is what has been happening for the last 50 years, then you say: okay, there’s a roadblock in our way, these people do not want it. But they’re losing, because the demographics are working against them. And it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle. So that’s sort of a big answer to a big question.
Sam Goldman 14:01
I think that’s very helpful. I think that really grounding it in the history of this country, and people coming to terms with what democracy actually means and who is and who isn’t represented. Not as Refuse Fascism, but personally, I do question whether there can be a democracy for all in a society where there is class divisions. But I think that looking at the mythic past that is both propagated by Trump and those who follow him, but also the fact that the real past of this country – the past of women being subservient to men and in the kitchen and not in the workplace, and Black people not having access to voting, let alone being full participants in society to the degree. Yes, we still have a lot of oppression going on, but there is a hunger to go back to that and through a violent reassertion of those traditions they long for where those who aren’t white men are stripped of their full humanity. There is something helpful in people looking at the power that they have had in changing things. Especially if you look at the past year alone, we think about COVID, we think about the Trump trying to steal an election. Sometimes we lose sight of the beautiful George Floyd uprising and the fact that not just conversations were changed, but monuments went down and that those bold conversations lead to action. And I think that people sometimes don’t fully recognize that there’s a lot of fear at play. That isn’t just our fear, that is people afraid of losing power and position.
Teri Kanefield 15:45
And replacement. That’s what they’re afraid of. That’s the word, they’re afraid that they’re going to be replaced. They don’t imagine that it’s possible to have equality, they think that there’s a hierarchy and that somebody wants to replace them, it does trigger a lot of fears. You actually said something in there that was interesting, when you said you don’t know if a true democracy is possible with class distinctions. And I was talking about our history in terms of race. But the economic history is very linked, the kind of extreme would be the plantation system, you know, where one person owned everything. In fact, before the Civil War, 1% of the population controlled all three branches of government. The South was dominant politically, and it was a 1% of the population with slave owners who controlled the entire government. So that was actually oligarchy. And so in the 20s, you had a sort of similar situation. The danger we have right now is we’re tipping again, toward these enormous levels of income inequality. There’s the racial aspect, but then there’s also the economic aspect. What the Republicans are doing is both of these together.
When you look at the income inequality charts, it was Reagan that set it off. Reagan’s policies, that’s when the income inequality started separating again. So what they’re doing right now is tax cuts for the rich, or for corporations is capitalism, but the child care credit when it’s tax cuts for the middle class, that’s socialism. Their economic policies are still all about creating this enormous income inequality. That’s what they’ve always wanted. At different times in history as there have been people who have a strong force that want the income inequality, and the way they’re pulling it off, is through stirring up these cultural wars. So their followers will fall in line with economic policies that hurt them, which actually also happened at the time of slavery. So at the time of slavery, you had a lot of white people willing to fight for the institution of slavery, even though 1% of the population controlled everything. But, they were still fighting for that 1% because they had the delusion, or the belief, that white supremacy meant they were supreme, even though really, power was very concentrated in the hands of very few people. But lots of the masses of whites were willing to fight for that. Just like right now, they have a lot of the people go to Trump rallies. They don’t benefit from the tax cuts that the Republicans put in place. And if they do, it’s $10 on their paycheck, it’s silly. But they are willing to fight for a very few people that have all the money, which is really mind boggling. So they’re linked. And I think they’re linked in that it’s racial prejudice, which is what will persuade a lot of people to get behind the billionaires. Now I guess we call them billionaires. In the 20s and at the turn of the century, we called them the business tycoons and railroad executives, the rich people, then the robber barons. So now we call them just the billionaires, right? There is this billionaire class that are trying to rule the country. But it’s linked to racism, but its economics, kind of complicated.
Sam Goldman 18:51
I really agree that they are inextricably linked. Earlier you were talking about the replacement. And I think that a lot of times, people when they’re talking about it, it comes off as just about the demographics, the fear of becoming, you know, minoritized, or something. But the way that I think about it is also about this vengeance; that they’re not just being replaced in terms of being outnumbered, but they’re being stripped of their power and supremacy and that people that they see less than human are now having positions of power far above them, and how dare they. And I think that this is particularly acute, and came to a head in my opinion, most recently around the Tea Party movement. Having a Black man in the highest office of the land and all these grievances, I think was a driving force of building this movement.
Teri Kanefield 19:48
Back when the electorate was really a majority white, you didn’t need the Tea Party and it was done with dog whistles. So it wasn’t as blatant because it didn’t have to be. You’re way too young to remember this, but I remember the “welfare queens.” When Ronald Reagan talked about it, it was so obviously coded so that the Wall Street types didn’t really get it. That part of the base has always been Republican, ever since the southern strategy, It is kind of a long story. Originally, they were Democrats. The Confederacy was the Democratic Party. There’s been a shift. But as we moved toward the Tea Party, not only was Barack Obama elected, but the electorate itself is changing in ways that people are feeling alarmed.
Sometimes I think of two ways of viewing the world. One way is where you believe that equality is possible that, okay, someone’s going to be better at math, so not everybody is going to have the same salary, but everybody can have an equal voice. And then there are people who don’t believe it. They think that nature forms a hierarchy, that there are the makers and the takers, and they don’t believe equality is possible. So they think there will always be a hierarchy, and if it’s not them on top, someone else will be on top. I think what fuels this replacement theory is this fear: Oh, my gosh, whites are going to be in the minority. I know what it feels like not to understand why that was a problem. But then for some people that hits a nerve way down there. It hits something alarming, and they just have a visceral: Oh, no, what’s going to happen then? The changes we’ve had over the last 30 years, 40 – 50 years…desegregating the schools was a start; the GI Bill helped because it educated, it brought people into the middle class. Then each decade, as more and more Blacks get better and better educations and start competing for better and better jobs, and as the electorate gets more diverse, they’re losing that country.
Some of these guys like Mitch McConnell grew up in a world where this isn’t history to him. Somebody who’s 20 or 30, it’s history. But I actually remember when people would say: “Oh, look at that woman truck driver. Women shouldn’t drive trucks.” And I remember the civil rights movement when it started. But somebody like Mitch McConnell, they really feel like the America that they knew is being taken away from them. And so we’re dealing with irrational fears. Some people have believed that they could be educated, but there are some political psychologists who I admire who say: “No, you just have to out-vote them.” Because there’s just some way some people are hardwired to believe that they’re going to be replaced. That they can’t believe that Black women are going to come in and treat them respectfully. We think that Black women are going to treat them the way they treated Black women. There’s a lot that brought us to that. And I think the country is changing, and that’s scaring them. Can you go backwards? Think how hard that task is for them. Sure, you could, I suppose. But the task of pushing forward to a multiracial democracy is a lot easier than the task of trying to go back to the 20s. The only way to do that is really to destroy, you have to destroy a lot.
Sam Goldman 23:07
That’s the perfect segue to my next question. At Refuse Fascism, we say that fascism isn’t just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies, it is a qualitative change in how society is governed, once in power, fascism is defining feature is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights. And I’m wondering, as someone who was lawyer and someone who has written extensively about the rule of law and democratic rights, can you talk about the effects of Trump and Trumpism in this regard?
Teri Kanefield 23:40
Well, that’s interesting, because the historic way of seeing that is most people didn’t benefit from the democratic institutions. I think that if Trump were to succeed, I think he would still probably have, to some extent working democratic institutions, but not for everybody. But the kind of authoritarianism that Trump was trying to put in place probably would have just completely taken apart rule of law. So that’s where I’m really going someplace new and different, because in the past, institutions work for some people, but rule of law and fascism don’t go together. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Max Weber’s work, where he talks about the three forms of authority. And so fascism is based on myth and not truth and rule of law requires truth. You really cannot have both. What Trump would like to take us into is authoritarianism, where one person really is a dictator. But I think that the Republican Party doesn’t want that. There are some who do. Some Republicans won’t cross the line. There’s a line they won’t go across. They won’t throw an election. So Raffensperger wouldn’t throw the election to Trump. Some of them would, but some of them wouldn’t.
I think you can divide the Republicans into those that would be very comfortable with a full on authoritarianism, where there is a dictator, but I think some of them don’t want a dictator. They want democratic institutions to work, but for them, so they’re not willing to put in a dictator, which is why Trump failed, because not enough people would get behind him and throw him the election. If Trump would have been maintained in the White House, after losing, we would have had a dictator. He would have told the judges what to do, there would have been no more democratic institutions. And that could have only happened if enough Republicans are willing to do that, generals and election officials across the board. But enough people said no. They still want to be able to suppress black people from voting, but they don’t want to throw an election; there’s a difference. There’s a fine line. But the difference is whether you have a situation where democratic institutions are working, but not for everybody.
Sam Goldman 25:39
Before we close, my last question is one that’s important. I think, not just because I’m an educator, but because it’s something that you point to in your work as well. You’ve written that one of the best ways to combat fascist tactics is to educate people. And I’m wondering, what does that look like to you? And what is the key thing that you think in terms of fascist tactics, people need to be educated about?
Teri Kanefield 26:03
How to evaluate sources. I think that’s one of the most important things that’s taught in school detecting propaganda. I heard a 13 year old once say: “Oh, I’ve never seen any, there’s no propaganda, I’ve never seen any propaganda.” It’s like, oops, his teachers needed to show him. I did have contact with an acquaintance who is an anti-vaxxer, and she would not listen. And I told her that I had some friends who are medical doctors who would be happy to sit down with her and talk to her, and she absolutely heard stories, and she knew that the COVID vaccine was dangerous, and she wasn’t listening. And she also finished high school. I think she finished high school, but I don’t think she went any farther. And talking to her, what struck me was that she didn’t understand how to evaluate the information. You know, she would hear anecdotes and read something on Facebook, and she was positive that people ended up in the emergency room after taking the vaccine. We live in a small town, if that were true, we’d know about it. People go to the emergency room for an anxiety attack. But she wasn’t open to talking to an actual doctor. She didn’t trust doctors, she trusted whatever her source was on Facebook.
A lot of what the fascists do is they say: “the elites, you can’t listen to them.” I can always tell people say: “well, she went to Berkeley, so that tells you everything about me.” It’s like wait, Berkeley’s hard to get into, you know, I went to law school at Berkeley. In my world, that gives me some credibility, but there’s a world in which the fact that I went to Berkeley says: so don’t listen to her, which is sort of inverted. I mean, you don’t have to listen to me because I went to Berkeley, but to not listen to me because I went to Berkeley seems sort of backwards. So one of the things fascists do is try to undermine actual authority, academics, so that their lies can take hold. So I think that’s the most important; evaluate sources, detect who to listen to.
Sam Goldman 27:50
I agree. And I want to thank you, Teri, for taking the time to chat with me and to share your expertise and perspective with our listeners. You can read more from Teri at TeriKanfield.com. And a link to her Twitter handle and website is in the show notes. In a major abortion case at the Supreme Court, Mississippi explicitly asked this past week in court papers filed for the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The threat to abortion rights cannot be overstated. Right now, fascists in power are fighting to eliminate the right to abortion everywhere. This can’t be met with our complicity, it must be opposed. It’s with that, that we’re sharing an interview with Derenda Hancock of Pink House clinic defenders at the last abortion clinic in Mississippi Jackson Women’s Health Organization, aka The Pink House, sounding the alarm on episode 61 of the RNL show on YouTube.
Sunsara Taylor 28:57
This year alone, there have been record restrictions introduced on abortion across this country. Over 650 restrictions introduced and many of them passed in 47 states. We’re going to be covering this in episodes going forward, including a very fascist law down in Texas which are set to go into effect on September 1 that would ban abortion at about six weeks, long before most women know they’re pregnant. But today we want to talk about Mississippi, and a case and a law that was introduced there in 2018. It was a ban that was blatantly unconstitutional. It was passed in the state legislature and for good legal reason, the courts blocked it from going into effect. But earlier this year, the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, sent shockwaves of fear across this country by agreeing to hear an appeal from the state legislature of Mississippi asking that this law should go into effect anyhow. Now this can only mean that the Supreme Court, a court that has been recently packed with three more fascist judges by Donald Trump, is agreeing to reconsider whether abortion rights should be further restricted or outright overturned. This is a very, very big case. And for very good reason people all across the country are watching this and we need to be watching this.
So to get into this today, we want to bring alive what it’s already like to get an abortion in this state, with only one clinic. And what’s at stake if this if the Supreme Court further restricts this right or overturns it all together. And we’re going to do this by sharing an interview that I did with Derenda Hancock. She is the head clinic defender at The Pink House, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. I first got to know her over 10 years ago, on one of many trips that I’ve made down to that clinic as part of mobilizing people to stand up to defend this right. She’s got a deep dedication to the women who come to that clinic, to the staff, and the doctors who serve in it. And I think you’ll learn a lot from this interview. We have somebody who’s been on the front lines part of what’s called the Pink House Defenders, the clinic escorts and defenders at the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. Derenda Hancock, welcome to the RNL, Revolution, Nothing Less show. T
Derenda Hancock 31:11
hank you, Sunsara, I appreciate you having me.
Sunsara Taylor 31:13
Listen, first of all, it’s really good to see you, it’s really good to see that you are still out there on the frontlines in Mississippi. And I think it’d be helpful if you talk about even before the Supreme Court hears this challenge, and makes a decision over whether there can be even greater restrictions to abortion access in this country, or it can be overturned all together, abortion rights and access are hanging by a thread across this country. And in fact, in the state of Mississippi, it’s one of five states with only one abortion clinic in it. I wonder if you could just bring alive for our viewers and listeners, what is it like for a woman in Mississippi who needs to access abortion.
Derenda Hancock 31:51
It’s nearly impossible. So for years, the clinic here, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which we refer to as The Pink House, for years, it’s been the last clinic since 2006. So 15 years of people driving from all corners of the state, as well as Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, surrounding states come to us as well, since access anywhere down here is slim to none. And I guess you noticed I just said driving. A lot of people don’t have that privilege here. We have women who’ve come on a Greyhound bus to get here. We have people drive for hours, five hours. Mississippi, in case you don’t know, I’m sure you do, but a lot of people don’t, is the poorest state in the nation. It’s actually improved in the last five years, but our poverty rate is 19.6%, and just getting to a clinic in your hometown, it’s not always easy. But when you have to drive that far, some women can’t make it here. They don’t make it here. We have tons of hurdles that you have to jump over just to get here, the 24 hour waiting period. They have to wait a minimum of 24 hours to return to the clinic before they can do either the medical abortion, the pill, or the surgical — I hate that word, but the surgical abortion procedure. That’s the minimum they have to wait.
Let me throw another crank into that box. Our doctors have to fly in from out of state. There are no doctors in the state of Mississippi that will perform abortions. Mississippi is the only state that requires all abortion providers to be ob gyn board certified. So it’s not real easy to find someone to do this. We’re incredibly fortunate right now. Four different doctors rotate out of here and perform abortions. But nonetheless, they all have practices in other states, so we work around their schedule. So the clinic days that we see patients change each week. And it’s two and a half days a week. When you’re the only abortion clinic in the state, in the poorest state in the nation, and you have to obtain childcare before you come here — 60% of women who have an abortion are already mothers. When you have to take off work from your job, not once but twice. When you have to find a way to get here, if you don’t have the means to travel here. All of these hurdles are in front of you before you pull up to the clinic, and see what else you have to face standing on the sidewalk.
Sunsara Taylor 34:14
So they arrive at The Pink House.
Derenda Hancock 34:18
So I’m going to go ahead and tell you ahead of time. Anti choice protesters are all over the sidewalk. We constantly refer to them as antis. So that’s what I’m talking about when I say that the next 500 times. Antis will be lined up and down the sidewalk. There are days we have five or six. There are days we have 50, and the rare occasions about once a month we do have we do see patients at the clinic on a Saturday. Saturdays have been up to 165 people before. A lot of women, a lot of patients have already had a really tough time coming to this decision in the first place. And then when they roll up on the sidewalk and see that, it’s horrifying. So patients are constantly tricked into stopping for them. They hand them propaganda, and they try to get them to go across the street, which is directly across the street to this crisis pregnancy center, which are the fake clinics, as you know, that are everywhere. There’s about 10 or 12 of those to every single abortion clinic in the nation. So patients are just waylaid from the time they turn the corner, trying to get half a block to our parking lot to the actual safety net, before they go into the appointment.
Sunsara Taylor 35:32
What is the larger worldview? What are the larger motivations of some of the people who make it their life’s work to harass women and, and abortion providers outside The Pink House and other abortion facilities?
Derenda Hancock 35:45
Abortion is just a small part of this. That’s truly not their main goal. Obviously, their main goal is control; particularly of women, and of course, everyone else. It’s all religiously motivated. We actually have them on video saying their goal is to make this a theocracy. Yeah, it’s it’s about white supremacy. It’s about controlling. And it’s about really keeping people in their place. Not just women, but minorities, people of color. Obviously, they’re completely anti-LGBTQ. Yeah, it’s it’s all a control mechanism. And these people on the sidewalks, things that a lot of people don’t realize, they have control in the legislatures. They are supporting these candidates that are not only trying to abolish abortion, they’re also putting people into the seats that do not want the separation of church and state.
Sunsara Taylor 36:42
What will it look like? If the Supreme Court does overturn or significantly undermine Roe v. Wade, and allow this ban to go into place, what will this look like for the women in Mississippi and for the women across the country?
Derenda Hancock 36:55
If they win this case, and the process begins, and Roe is overturned, abortion will be illegal in the state of Mississippi. Eleven states will follow quickly behind that. There will only be like 13 safe states if this happens. And you know, the closest place that women can go from here, if we’re lucky, would be Georgia. If not, Colorado or Illinois, and people can barely afford to get from North Mississippi to Jackson. How in the hell are they going to get to Illinois? So it’s the beginning of the end if it happens here.
Sunsara Taylor 37:33
I see you’re carrying the emotion of what that means. Do you want a…
Derenda Hancock 37:36
I try not to, but
Sunsara Taylor 37:37
Well, we have to, and I just wonder if you want to share what what you’re feeling.
Derenda Hancock 37:42
Well, it’s a personal thing, but this is not a personal thing for me. I’m quite past my childbearing years. I never wanted any anyway, but this is about the women that I see every day. Some of my defenders are at The Pink House volunteer defenders of Pink House are 20 year olds, you know, 25, and to think about the fact that they can live in a world where they have no choice, where they’re going to literally be turned into a handmaid. It devastates me. And I know that we’re going to try to keep fighting and come up with alternatives. You know, how do we get people to other states? But what I don’t think anyone understands is once they do abolish abortion, in the 37 states or whatever, do those other 13 states really think they’re safe? Because they’re going for them next, okay. I mean, these people have power. They have people in the Senate and in Congress and not just on a state level on a national level. They’re going after everyone.
Sunsara Taylor 38:53
Well, Derenda, I want to say first of all, your warning is 100% well sounded, it is reality based and people need to hear it — and this is the lives of women it is the lives of half of humanity, and it is about enslaving women. That’s what this movement, the anti- abortion movement has always been about. It’s not about babies. It’s not about life. It is about enslaving women and installing the overall fascist theocracy that you’ve been speaking to so well. So I want to I want to thank you for sounding the alarm and and not watering it down. It’s important. I want to say all over the world, there have been outpourings of fury of women standing up against the restrictions on abortion, demanding legalization of abortion, and demanding that women be treated as full human beings, not incubators. And there is a tremendous need for people to rise to that challenge in this country at this time. And from our perspective here on the Revolution, Nothing Less Show, to fuse that with a deeper look at the nature of the system that we live under, that has legitimize this kind of violent hatred of women in the halls of power, and the need for an actual revolution, an emancipating revolution to sweep this system into the dustbin of history. So that’s a big order. And that’s what we’re working on here. So I just I want to express my appreciation and my love.
Derenda Hancock 40:09
Thank you Sunsara. I appreciate you having me here, and it’s been great. And I appreciate your fight, keep doing it. And we’ll try to continue to work together.
Sam Goldman 40:19
Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. Back in 2016, we didn’t just take a guess that this Trump/Pence regime were fascists, on track to consolidate a fascist form of rule here in the US. We analyzed and recognized something that it took four years and lots of hindsight for even many good people to start to see, and which all too many people are still in denial of. And we’re not just guessing that this threat continues to grow. We are not special but because we understand this. It’s incumbent on us to help others see it and act on it. Without an understanding of what it is that we face, nothing less than nuclear, super powered American fascism, its manifestations and most importantly, its roots, people are helpless to stop it. On the other hand, if millions right now understood that this country is filled with fascists, including throughout all levels power, especially within the courts; that they, the fascists, are willing and proving able to do away with even the semblance of democratic rights and norms to exercise rule, and therefore, relying on any institutions for the so called normal way we do things is grossly insufficient to this looming threat. Then people could go to work now, building the organization with the determination needed to respond commensurately should the fascists attempt to re-seize power. Part of repudiating this xenophobia, this patriarchy, this white supremacy is calling it out. If you can’t even see it, and mislabel it as buffoonery or idiocy or merely inchoate delusions or grift, then you are obscuring not only the threat we face, but what it is that people need to do about it. It’s with all this in mind that you play an important role in mass education by listening to this podcast and spreading it, by having brave conversations. It’s not a passive activity, but massive struggle, community and vigilance.
Thanks again for listening. If you want to help the show, it’s simple. You can rate and review us on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice. And of course, subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can chip in to support the show by clicking the donate button at RefuseFascism.org or Venmo Refuse-Fascism, cash app RefuseFascism, and be sure to let us know it’s other hearing this podcast. As always, I want to hear from you. Share your comments, ideas, questions, suggestions of topics or guests or lend a skill. Tweet me @SamBGoldman or you can drop me a line at [email protected]. Leave a voicemail by calling 917-426-7582 You can also record a voice message by going to anchor.fm/RefuseFascism and clicking the button there. You might even hear yourself on a future episode.
Thanks as always to Lina Thorne, and Richie Marini for helping produce the show. Did you know that transcripts of each episode are made available thanks to volunteers? Check them out at RefuseFascism.org. We’ll be back next Sunday with an interview with anti racist educator Tim Wise. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.