DeSantis vs. Disney vs. The Rest of Us

Jeremie Greer:
Low income housing, black.

Solana Rice:
Black.

Jeremie Greer:
Climate change, black.

Solana Rice:
Black.

Jeremie Greer:
Healthy food, black. Medicaid, black. Heating assistance, black. Budget, blackity-black, black, black, black. That’s what they really mean when they say woke.

Sen Sheldon Whitehouse:
They’re relying on a new magic budget word. That word is woke. The house budget chairman says his budget will be modeled after a draft budget put together by Trump’s Budget Director, Russ Vought, which uses the phrase woke 77 times. I think the previous record for the use of the term woke in budgets is zero always. Call everything woke, and then try to cut its funding, seems to be the strategy. Housing, woke, chop it in half. Public schools and job training, woke, slash it. Auditing tax cheats, woke, let’s not do that. Fighting climate change, woke, none of that. Healthy food for kids and families, woke, cut it. Medicaid, health insurance, heating assistance; cut, cut, cut.
From behind this new catchphrase, Republicans want workers and families to line up behind the tax cheaters, behind the polluters, behind the campaign donors, behind the well-connected and the well-off whom they serve. Well, their problem is, you can say woke for a while, but then people will notice that they no longer have disability benefits, or that they can’t afford their prescription drugs, or that huge corporations are paying nothing in taxes. The woke screen is a smoke screen, and people need to see through it.

Unknown Speaker:
Say that again, Sheldon.

Sen Sheldon Whitehouse:
The woke screen is a smoke screen, and Americans will see through it [inaudible 00:01:55] the Republicans are really trying to do.

Solana Rice:
They said, say it in the back. Say it louder.
Oh, that was one Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island, and welcome y’all to Racism is Profitable, a podcast about racism and the economy. Welcome, welcome. Jeremie, I love [inaudible 00:02:23].

Jeremie Greer:
Stay woke. Yes, man. He said the woke screen was a smoke screen. That is funny.

Solana Rice:
I love the amens in the back. They said, “Say what? Say that again. Say that again.”

Jeremie Greer:
Like they was in a AME church.

Solana Rice:
Yeah, say it again. Say it so they can hear you in the back. The woke screen is a smoke screen.

Jeremie Greer:
He is right. The budget that the Republicans put out in opposition to the Senate budget had the word woke in it 77 times. All of a sudden there’s this obsession in conservative spaces with wokeness. Solana, what is that?

Solana Rice:
I think you can replace the word woke with black.

Jeremie Greer:
Black, black, back.

Solana Rice:
I think it’s black.

Jeremie Greer:
Let me try it, let me try it. Let me try it the way that Sheldon Whitehouse did.

Solana Rice:
Yeah.

Jeremie Greer:
Low income housing, black.

Solana Rice:
Black.

Jeremie Greer:
Climate change, black.

Solana Rice:
Black.

Jeremie Greer:
Healthy food, black.

Solana Rice:
Black.

Jeremie Greer:
Medicaid, black. Heating assistance, black. Budget, blackity-black black black, black. That’s what they really mean when they say woke. Is that what you’re saying, Solana?

Solana Rice:
That’s the sense I get.

Jeremie Greer:
That’s how [inaudible 00:03:55] it.

Solana Rice:
I don’t think that’s far off. When we went through the pandemic, remember when everybody had to go get unemployment insurance, there were a lot more people that had to go get unemployment insurance, and there were a lot of white folks that were like, wait a minute, this system doesn’t work. We were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s because black people have to go through this, it’s by design. Let’s remember again that when we hear woke out of conservatives mouths, usually it’s about black people and blackness. One Ron DeSantis is in a battle with Disney. We can get into why, but I think the tie here is that Disney needs to, this is a quote from Ron DeSantis, “Stop trying to inject woke ideology on children.” Woke ideology. Here it is again. Ron DeSantis up against Disney, talking about a woke ideology. This isn’t the first time, right?

Jeremie Greer:
No.

Solana Rice:
We saw Governor DeSantis down in Florida push through legislation around Don’t Say Gay. I think that’s part of the woke ideology.

Jeremie Greer:
That’s it. Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening. Again, this whole thing about woke, this is just another example where something that derives from black culture and black experience gets injected into political lexicon as a way to shoot down and tear down stuff. Let’s just be frank about what wokeness is, what they mean by wokeness, and how they use it.
What’s happening in Florida is that … For a long time, Disney, our favorite, Disney owns everything. They own Fox Entertainment. They own Marvel. They own Star Wars. They own parks, one in Florida and one in California. In Florida at Disney World, they have a special tax district that they operate in, but basically what happens is Disney doesn’t pay taxes to the state of Florida or to the city of Orlando or the county that it’s in. In exchange, it governs itself, essentially it has its own police force, it has its own fire department, it has its own public works. It basically runs its own municipality within the state of Florida.
Ron DeSantis then … What happened was Disney came out, rightfully, against the Don’t Say Gay bill that was passed in Florida. The Don’t Say Gay bill is, basically, you can’t use those words at a public school because conservatives are afraid that liberals are turning their kids gay. What happened is Disney came out against that bill, and then Ron DeSantis got really upset because Disney is the largest employer in Central Florida and one of the biggest corporations in the state.
What they’ve just done is passed a bill to remove that special taxing district, which means Disney is going to have to start paying their share of Florida state taxes, and they’re going to lose this governing power that they have over this special district. What’s built in there is that they’re going to have to start paying money to Orange County, I think it’s Orange County, and City of Orlando, to cover costs that they have accrued over years and had to borrow.
To start with, is the Disney Special Tax District is fucked up. It should not exist. Let’s start there. It’s okay to start there.

Solana Rice:
Let’s be clear. Let’s be very clear.

Jeremie Greer:
This is a bad thing. Disney has avoided paying their fair share of taxes in the state of Florida for a really, really long time. They should pay their fair share, and they shouldn’t have the authority to run their own police force. They should not have the authority to run their own fire department. They should not be responsible for their own public works. These are things that they should not be able to do, so let’s just start there. That does not mean that Ron DeSantis is taking this away from them for the right reasons.

Solana Rice:
No, no-

Jeremie Greer:
This is an autocrat. Go ahead. Sorry.

Solana Rice:
Yeah, Here we are, black and brown people. Do we side with Disney? Do we say right, we should be able to say gay and we should be able to have a special tax district? No.

Jeremie Greer:
Not we, no, Disney.

Solana Rice:
No. Right, Disney and Disney. Do you side with Disney? Do you side with Ron DeSantis, and say that’s right, we should be collecting taxes from Disney because they shouldn’t be able to say gay? They shouldn’t have this woke ideology. Wow. We talked to Epiphany Summers last season about Governor DeSantis, how we can easily see him taking plays from Governor Ronald Reagan back in the day, of California, and also on a real tear about shutting down freedom of speech.

Jeremie Greer:
This is no protest. Yeah, this dude … Yeah, No Protest Bill. This has passed a No Protest Bill in the state of Florida after George Floyd or Ahmaud.

Solana Rice:
This is not a one-off. He is very committed to not letting people say the things that are not in his ideology, which is problematic for our freedom of speech and for our democracy. That’s something that we talked about in that episode with Epiphany of Dream Defenders. What do people in Florida do? What do black and brown folks in Florida do? How do we discern where to stand on this? What should be our posture to Disney or DeSantis? We have to recognize that corporations have undue power, period. They have this unfettered, uncontrolled power, yet we can’t fight that same … We can’t fight against corporate power in the name of losing freedom of speech.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah. The thing is, it’s not just the people of Florida because this man has presidential aspirations. It’s Disney today, it’s JP Morgan and Chase, the National Bank tomorrow. It’s BP Oil and Gas Company tomorrow. What is happening is this is a fascist, autocratic, authoritarian lean in the Republican party that has been popularized by Donald Trump. What they want to do is control the wheels of capitalism for their ends. We’ve said this man is not about free speech. He is not about protecting the civil and human rights of certain people in this country; black people, brown people in particular, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, queer people as well. They have no interest in protecting the rights of those people. What they’re saying is that we will use the mechanism of capitalism in order to silence you. That is what this is about. This is a power play, is what this is about for authoritarian control. While it’s happening in Florida today, this man wants to be the president of the United States. Don’t get it twisted.

Solana Rice:
Yeah. I think it’s important also because what we didn’t talk about is actually that now in light of this Don’t Say Gay, then the special district backlash, now this woke ideology, DeSantis is now saying there is a commission that has to govern Disney.

Jeremie Greer:
That he appoints.

Solana Rice:
That he appoints.

Jeremie Greer:
With his people that are going to do his bidding. This is how authoritarian fascism works.

Solana Rice:
Is Disney going to push back on being governed by this small commission?

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah. I read an article, it’s a lot of they’re not. They’re really not fighting this, which is weird. They’ve had this huge beneficial thing for a long time, and they’re not fighting it. Which begs the question, are they all that mad about this? I read an article that said that their stock price actually went up on the day that this bill passed. I think that there’s a lot of folks on the Disney board, in and around Disney, that probably quietly are fine following Ron DeSantis down the road that he wants to take the state of Florida and the country.

Solana Rice:
Because at the end of the day, racism is profitable.

Jeremie Greer:
It’s profitable, it’s profitable.

Solana Rice:
They are a for-profit company.

Jeremie Greer:
Company.

Solana Rice:
To be clear, they are not our moral compass. We might have a black Ariel, but …

Jeremie Greer:
Or Wakanda or Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever.

Solana Rice:
We ain’t with Wakanda right now. We not [inaudible 00:14:58].

Jeremie Greer:
We’ll be like, Wakanda forever?

Solana Rice:
Forever? The next one will have a big question mark behind it.

Jeremie Greer:
Behind it. Yeah, this is a company that is invested in racial capitalism because they profited and benefited from it. This is in line with the tenets of racial capitalism and the oppression economy that we often talk about, that racism is profitable. Capitalism thrives by exploiting black and brown folks. While they’re taking Disney’s … It’s one of those Disney might be taking one for the team kind of thing right now because really what they know quietly is this type of authoritarian, anti-black, anti-gay, racist governance will benefit them over the long term because it has benefited companies like Disney to this point.

Solana Rice:
I feel like we should end on a note for the alternative. We started, what do we do as black and brown people, what should we be advocating for? There is a both/and here. We can both get the freedom of speech that … It’s odd to be like, companies should have freedom of speech, but …

Jeremie Greer:
They’re people, Solana. The Supreme Court has defined them as a person, so Disney is a breathing, heart-beating entity.

Solana Rice:
Yes, said that they’re people.

Jeremie Greer:
Mickey exists, is real. He’s there, he’s the company.

Solana Rice:
It’s like, knock, knock, I’m here. We should be advancing the freedom of speech, and at the same time, we should be advancing regulation and oversight of corporations at the same time. Both can happen at the same time. We were chatting a little earlier about what could have been the possibility here? There could be an oversight board for Disney, but it doesn’t have to be the governor’s appointees.

Jeremie Greer:
His cronies, yeah.

Solana Rice:
Imagine, it could be folk that are in the community, maybe some people that are actually directly impacted, that live near the actual Disney.

Jeremie Greer:
It could includes Disney employees, it could [inaudible 00:17:39] workers at the park.

Solana Rice:
It could include Disney employees and workers. It could be a diverse commission of folks, but that’s not what we’re seeing. I think it’s so important … What it reminds me of is the conversation that I had a while back with Mo Mitchell and Rukia Lumumba of Mississippi, back when we were doing some work with The Forge about co-governance. I will never forget that Mo said, let’s be clear, we have co-governance in this nation. The people who can pay to make decisions, the people who can pay to be policymakers, are co-governing with corporations every day. That pushback that we’re not seeing from Disney, that we might not see from Disney, that’s clearly in line with what Mo was putting forth. We have alternatives, and I love what Rukia offered in that conversation about the work that they’re doing in Mississippi, to have people’s assemblies and make it clear about what their local governance could look like with real participation from actual everyday folks. I think it does bode that there is a way forward that does not require, unfortunately, these folks that are just motivated by profit on both sides to be governing.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah, yeah. No, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. We should not adopt the values of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump and their fascist ideology in order to push back on the oppressive activity of a company like Disney. We should have our own vision. I think the vision that you talked about with Mo and Rukia, which we could put into show notes, is a vision for how we could co-govern, so that a company like Disney is actually doing well by the people of Florida and not oppressing them and not paying their fair share in taxes. Yeah, I think that vision is one that we can look for and try to strive for. First we have to defeat this motherfucker Ron DeSantis. He cannot be president.

Solana Rice:
We cannot let him out of Florida y’all.

Jeremie Greer:
No, no, no. Let him be the Florida man.

Solana Rice:
Yeah, the Florida man.

Jeremie Greer:
But not the governor. All right, y’all. Look forward to seeing you next time. Peace.

Solana Rice:
Take care. Peace.
Thanks for listening. For more information, check out our list of episode resources and visit us at liberationinagenerationaction.org. Shout out to our producer and audio editor, Nino Fernandez, the design team at TrimTab, and the LibGen Action communications team. Like what you heard? Help us make some noise by telling two friends about the Racism is Profitable podcast. Until next time y’all, peace.