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Carmen Talk: Conviction With a Backbone: Why We Must Choose Courage Over Cowardice · All About The Joy

• 0:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Hey everyone, welcome to All About the Joy.
• 0:02
  Carmen Lezeth: This is Carmen Talk and I'm your host, carmen Lissette.
• 0:05
  Carmen Lezeth: Today I want to talk about cowards, and I'm not talking about the ones in the movies.
• 0:21
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm talking about the kind who run from truth, who hide behind cruelty, who weaponize their fear and then somehow call it policy.
• 0:29
  Carmen Lezeth: If you don't have compassion for other people I'm just going to say it this way you're a coward.
• 0:34
  Carmen Lezeth: It's so simple to me.
• 0:35
  Carmen Lezeth: If your hatred blinds you to the suffering of the Palestinians, for example, I'm calling you a coward If you can't hold two truths at once, if you can't care deeply for the hostages held by Hamas and still grieve for the Palestinian lives lost, you are absolutely a coward.
• 0:56
  Carmen Lezeth: If you think it's okay to rip people from our streets, people who came here for a better life because they don't look like you, pray like you or speak your language, I'm sorry, but I'm calling you a coward.
• 1:08
  Carmen Lezeth: And yeah, let's name names.
• 1:10
  Carmen Lezeth: Ice is cowardice in uniform.
• 1:13
  Carmen Lezeth: An agency that terrorizes communities, detains children are you kidding me?
• 1:19
  Carmen Lezeth: And calls it enforcement.
• 1:21
  Carmen Lezeth: They're raiding home depots and farms Okay, they're separating families, like that's nothing new with this stupid administration.
• 1:31
  Carmen Lezeth: But pretending that that's justice Okay, that's being a coward.
• 1:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Real men don't wear masks, by the way, they just don't.
• 1:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Ice isn't protecting American citizens.
• 1:43
  Carmen Lezeth: They're just punishing people for doing hard work.
• 1:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Oh, for being brown?
• 1:49
  Carmen Lezeth: That's the other thing.
• 1:51
  Carmen Lezeth: It's just racism on fire.
• 1:54
  Carmen Lezeth: And look, all of these workers are hired by American companies that pay them under the table.
• 2:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Why aren't corporations being held accountable for not assisting people with their paperwork or getting the right people, who are actually citizens of this country, to work here?
• 2:12
  Carmen Lezeth: They do it because they want cheap labor.
• 2:15
  Carmen Lezeth: But do you see how cowards will go after people who are leaving other countries, fearing for their lives, coming to a place where they think they have a better chance of raising their families?
• 2:28
  Carmen Lezeth: But instead we call them criminals, people who are doing all the hard work that no other American is willing to do, and we don't even give corporations or farm owners or anybody who actually is employing people under the table.
• 2:48
  Carmen Lezeth: We don't even give them a slap on the wrist.
• 2:51
  Carmen Lezeth: Instead, we go after poor, hardworking brown and black people, people of color, who are just here trying to have a better life for their children and are also doing all the right things to get their paperwork in order.
• 3:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Another way, you know, ice is and will continue to be considered cowards is because they're going to actual places where people are going to get their paperwork in order.
• 3:19
  Carmen Lezeth: Right, they're at the courts and ICE is sitting waiting there, for it's just ridiculous.
• 3:25
  Carmen Lezeth: And the people who cheer them on, who think that every brown body is a threat cowards.
• 3:32
  Carmen Lezeth: And yeah, I'm talking about you, stupid Dean Cain D-list actor, Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
• 3:38
  Carmen Lezeth: You're also a coward trying to redraw maps like mid-decade because the GOP's afraid of losing power.
• 3:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Really, my God, I have never, ever, ever in all my life seen so many losers in political office.
• 3:57
  Carmen Lezeth: Real men would fight fair, mr Abbott.
• 4:01
  Carmen Lezeth: Real men would not use gerrymandering to get their state's votes to stay in power.
• 4:07
  Carmen Lezeth: That's simply called cheating, you coward.
• 4:11
  Carmen Lezeth: And for those of you who don't know what gerrymandering is, it's basically when states draw borderlines right to make voting maps.
• 4:19
  Carmen Lezeth: They actually outline districts with borders in a sneaky way to help their team win, and that's what they're trying to do.
• 4:27
  Carmen Lezeth: And don't get me wrong, both sides do this, but this time I mean, gerrymandering is wrong on so many levels, but this time they're doing it when nobody ever does it.
• 4:39
  Carmen Lezeth: They're doing it mid-season basically.
• 4:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Usually it's done after the census, but they're doing it now specifically because the biggest coward in office, donald Trump, is afraid of losing because he won't win enough seats, so he's going to lose the House of Representatives.
• 4:56
  Carmen Lezeth: It's fascinating.
• 4:57
  Carmen Lezeth: It's fascinating to watch these quote-unquote real men do things right in the American people's face Total cowards.
• 5:07
  Carmen Lezeth: And Greg Abbott is ordering the arrest of lawmakers who dare resist them.
• 5:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Fascinating, fascinating them, fascinating, fascinating.
• 5:16
  Carmen Lezeth: That's not leadership, greg, that's fear in a suit.
• 5:26
  Carmen Lezeth: So what's the definition of being a coward?
• 5:27
  Carmen Lezeth: I think you can already get it by my voice, but a coward is someone who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.
• 5:32
  Carmen Lezeth: But let me add this A coward is someone who refuses to feel, who chooses power over empathy, who mistakes cruelty for strength but, more importantly, chooses cruelty for strength.
• 5:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, I'm talking about you, donald Trump.
• 5:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Donald Trump, biggest coward of them all.
• 5:52
  Carmen Lezeth: Now do you want to talk about courage?
• 5:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Because I've got some of that, because I always want to be about the positivity, I always want to try to see the good.
• 6:01
  Carmen Lezeth: So courage is not performative.
• 6:03
  Carmen Lezeth: It's not loud for the sake of being loud.
• 6:06
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the quiet, it's the refusal to betray your values, not make them up as you go along, not pretending you have values by saying you're Christian but actually not behaving as if.
• 6:20
  Carmen Lezeth: Courage is the Texas state legislature, the Democrats who fled to Illinois to block a racist redistricting plan in Texas.
• 6:30
  Carmen Lezeth: It's Governor JB Pritzker I'm sorry if I'm saying his name wrong saying we got you.
• 6:36
  Carmen Lezeth: It's standing up to Trump and Abbott and saying things like no, not on our watch.
• 6:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Courage is Governor Gavin Newsom fighting the Trump administration in court again and again and again and protecting billions in federal funding, defending immigrant rights and refusing to back down.
• 6:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Courage is local citizens forming rapid response networks to push ICE out of their neighborhoods, and you may not know this, but it's organizations like ICE out of California.
• 7:05
  Carmen Lezeth: It's another organization like Immigrant Defense Project, and we Are Casa.
• 7:10
  Carmen Lezeth: They say we will not be silent, we will not be complicit.
• 7:15
  Carmen Lezeth: Courage is knowing the risks and showing up anyways.
• 7:20
  Carmen Lezeth: So if you're listening to this and thinking I don't know what to do and I don't mean that in a mean way, but everyone seems to be throwing up their hands in frustration, in sadness, in defeat Don't be in defeat.
• 7:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Find courage within you, find the want, la gana, the want to want to do something, and you can start here.
• 7:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Ask yourself what you're afraid of, ask yourself what you're protecting, ask yourself what kind of world you want to live in.
• 7:51
  Carmen Lezeth: What kind of America do you want to live in?
• 7:55
  Carmen Lezeth: Because let me tell you something about being a coward.
• 7:58
  Carmen Lezeth: It is absolutely contagious.
• 8:01
  Carmen Lezeth: You can see it with the Trump ridiculousness.
• 8:04
  Carmen Lezeth: You can see it Like everyone is just a coward to stand up to him, because it's easier to be a coward, to keep your mouth shut, to say nothing.
• 8:14
  Carmen Lezeth: And every day, we walk towards losing more of our democracy.
• 8:20
  Carmen Lezeth: But here's the thing you're forgetting Courage is also contagious.
• 8:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Courage is something that, when you see it, you also feel like you need to be a part of it.
• 8:33
  Carmen Lezeth: So I choose courage, I choose courage and I will always choose courage every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
• 8:41
  Carmen Lezeth: So what do we do with all this?
• 8:43
  Carmen Lezeth: We name the cowards out loud and we honor courage.
• 8:48
  Carmen Lezeth: We stand in conviction.
• 8:51
  Carmen Lezeth: Conviction isn't just belief.
• 8:54
  Carmen Lezeth: It's belief with a backbone.
• 8:56
  Carmen Lezeth: With a backbone, it's the refusal to betray what you know is right.
• 9:00
  Carmen Lezeth: You know what is right and you know what is wrong, and you stop believing the BS that is being told to you, even though you can see it with your own eyes.
• 9:14
  Carmen Lezeth: You refuse to betray what you know is right.
• 9:17
  Carmen Lezeth: Refuse to betray what you know, is right, even if it's unpopular, even and especially when it's inconvenient.
• 9:25
  Carmen Lezeth: That is conviction.
• 9:26
  Carmen Lezeth: Conviction is also what lets you say I can care about the Palestinian lives and Israeli hostages, I can want safety and reject cruelty.
• 9:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I can love my country and demand that it do better.
• 9:44
  Carmen Lezeth: Because courage without conviction, that's just noise Okay, people, that's just mother effing noise.
• 9:51
  Carmen Lezeth: And conviction without courage, it's just a theory.
• 9:55
  Carmen Lezeth: But together it moves mountains and we can move mountains.
• 9:59
  Carmen Lezeth: So I'm not asking you to be a hero.
• 10:02
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm asking you to be brave enough to feel something, to stay in the game, to see clearly, to speak when it's easier to stay silent, to choose compassion when the crowd chooses cruelty.
• 10:18
  Carmen Lezeth: Being a coward is super loud right now.
• 10:21
  Carmen Lezeth: But courage with conviction that's how we change the world.
• 10:25
  Carmen Lezeth: That's how we do it together with conviction and a whole lot of courage.
• 10:30
  Carmen Lezeth: Thanks for stopping by.
• 10:33
  Carmen Lezeth: All About the Joy.
• 10:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Be better and stay beautiful.
• 10:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Folks, have a sweet day.