WEBVTT - Latinos vs. The 2024 Election 0:00:01.560 --> 0:00:05.160 Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:08.639 social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:14.640 Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Latinos versus the twenty twenty 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:19.760 four election. Consider the numbers. Latinos represent the US electorate's 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:24.680 second fastest growing voting group after Asian Americans. About thirty 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.920 six point two million Latinos are expected to vote in 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:31.920 the twenty twenty four presidential election, four million more voters 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:34.440 than in the twenty twenty election. According to the Pew 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.400 Research Center, Latino voters have tended to have low turnout 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.839 rates and elections, but this hefty increase in that electoral 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:46.080 pool is due to the mobilization of enthusiastic and engaged, 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:50.760 younger US born Latino voters, and you'll find that growth 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.680 concentrated in swing states in the Western US like Nevada 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:58.840 and Arizona. Forty five percent of all eligible voters in 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.280 New Mexico are Latina knows, and California is home to 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:05.880 about twenty five percent of all eligible Latino voters in 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:10.240 the entire US. Latino voters have strong regional differences in 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:12.880 their cultures and values, and this plays out around what 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:19.760 they care about entrepreneurial opportunities, abortion, voting rights, citizenship, immigration, 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.400 and other issues are front and center. Latino voters played 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.120 a pivotal role in Joe Biden's twenty twenty victory, and 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.559 they will figure prominently in a twenty twenty four presidential 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:33.000 race in which Donald Trump can leverage strides he's made 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.440 courting them. The both work hard to woo Latinos, and 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.319 the race could be decided in part by who's the 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.760 most successful. I'm happy to tell you that Maria Teresa 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.680 Kumar joins me today to dig into all of this. 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:50.040 Maria Theresa is the CEO of Voto Latino, an influential 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:54.680 advocacy group that mobilizes Latino voters around a range of issues. 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.160 It's been so successful that is now the largest voter 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:03.000 registration group in the ipocket community and among youth voters. 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:04.800 Greetings Maria Theresa. 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:06.840 Tim, I'm thrilled to be here. 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.600 I just wanted to tee this off by asking you, 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:13.560 in the most general of ways, what's at stake for 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:15.880 Latino voters in the twenty twenty four election. 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:21.320 That is such an all encompassing question, because I would say, Tim, 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.040 that it is no different than that of our neighbors 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.560 as American citizens. And one of the things that we 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:31.320 saw under the Donald Trump reign was that he put 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:35.400 Latino's front and center as the experiment of what he'd 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:38.360 like to do with the rest of Americans. And I'd 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.079 say this not lightly. We were absolutely the canaries in 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.040 the coal mine when he descended that escalator and basically 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.040 said that we were criminals and rapists. He tried to 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:49.400 be too smart by half saying that it was the 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.760 person crossing the border from Mexico. But there was not 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.600 a Latino in America who understood that he meant us. 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:01.519 And then he denigrated every single institution. When he went 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.200 first after a Latino reporter of hore Ramos, that was 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:07.320 his indication that he was going to go after the 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:09.520 press as a whole, and we saw that when he 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:12.720 was in office. Then we saw him go after a 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:16.040 Mexican judge, and we saw his playbook that he was 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.480 intending to do that for all of the judicial branch. 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:22.000 And if we were to take his word of what 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.640 he has now claimed in the New York Times, he 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:29.360 intends to concentrate power and make America a democracy on 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:33.720 paper only, and so while we have absolutely the Latino 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.080 community been at his cross hairs. First, we are the 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.520 litmus test of what he intends to do with our 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:44.360 democratic institutions as a whole. And so when he speaks, 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:47.000 you and I both took him seriously. From the onset. 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:49.720 We saw many colleagues kind of shrike him off as 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:51.839 a joke. But if someone tells you who you are, 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.000 you believe him the first time. And boy, has he 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.440 fulfilled everything he said he was. 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:00.000 Yeah, there should be a little question in people's mind 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.160 about who Donald Trump is and what he intends to do. 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:05.600 There's enough evidence now. People might have skated on that 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.520 in twenty sixteen, if they didn't read or listen, they 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.480 might have gotten away with that. But you know no 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.000 longer and you know. And why should other voting groups 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.200 be concerned about all of this, whether they're Asian America 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:22.080 voters or black voters or white voters. What is the 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:26.159 common thread or the commonalty here that each group should 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:26.839 pay attention to. 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.160 I would say that one of the reasons that immigrants 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:33.280 fled and are here because they recognized that they had 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:38.039 a deep entrepreneurial spirit, but perhaps no connections. And in America, 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.240 if you have a good, fine idea, it has a shot. 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.120 In Latin America, you don't have a shot at all 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:47.520 at your big dreams because you are immediately born into 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.080 a class, whether you like it or not, and you're 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.320 immediately born into a corrupt system that you may have 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.960 a great idea, but you're going to have to grease 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.360 the hands of someone as little as the cable guy 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:03.040 to put in your internet connection so that you can 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.279 go ahead and found your company. And so when folks say, well, 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.760 what is Donald Trump? You know, why is he such 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:10.919 a threat to democracy? I also like to say we 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.440 often talk about the rights that he has said that 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.120 he's going to abdicate, whether it's a woman's rights and 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:20.320 agencies over her body through abortion, whether it's condoning book 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:23.000 banning so that we don't know our history. We can 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.320 talk about those rights as fundamentals, but then we should 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.320 also look at the rights of what makes America a 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:34.440 thriving democracy, and it is because we believe in a capitalist, 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.880 just system. Do we actually achieve that every day? No? 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:43.560 Are we aspirational? Absolutely? And when folks from business Tim 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.120 and I say this because you're with Bloomberg, often say, well, 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:50.040 Donald Trump or Biden doesn't really make a difference. I 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.080 always counteract. Is like the reason that we were able 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.360 to be the first people on the moon, the reason 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:57.479 that we were able to have an iPhone in our pocket, 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:00.200 the reason that we have been at the cutting edge 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.719 of research is that the government has been out of 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.240 our business to think big as an individual. But the 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:10.680 moment that you have in isocrasy that disrupts the ability 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.560 for the little person with big ideas to break through 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.080 because under the autocracy system, it depends on what favors 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.040 you will do to your local government and to the 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:22.960 top of the government and to part of the party. 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:25.560 We can say that it's one of the reasons why Russia, 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.720 being as large as it is, has not been able 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.920 to thrive because it is an oligarchy. The reason that 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:33.800 communist China every time there's a big idea look at 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:38.080 Ali Baba, it has dampened its ability to compete in 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.960 commerce in large part. And why you have so many 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:43.839 middle class Chinese fleeing right now is that they have 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:45.839 now hit a level of what they can and cannot 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.880 do in their country. And so in thriving democracy is 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.320 dependent on a thriving middle class with the ability to 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:54.120 think big as an entrepreneur. 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.520 I would add to the great point you made about 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.680 how the US can excel spanned opportunities and take on 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:06.560 challenges is because of our diversity. We have an innovative economy, 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.000 and innovation comes from new ideas, and it comes from 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.400 a plurality of ideas, and those ideas and that innovation 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.520 are only as strong as the diversity of the population 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.840 they represent, which is another reason why immigration is key 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:26.040 to both US democracy and US opportunity and US economic growth. 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:29.280 Which anyone who really digs into this nos and anyone 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:31.200 who denies it as in telling the truth. In the 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.000 same way that Donald Trump said he'll be dictator on 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:36.200 day one, and we know he might be dictator for 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.280 thousands and thousands of days. Speaking of opportunity, you know 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:43.760 your story I find inspiring and interesting. You were born 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.440 in Colombia, then your family moved to California. You went 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:51.280 to college at UC Davis and then graduate school at Harvard. 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.600 Along the way, you became a legislative aid before joining 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.040 Voto Latino. So tell me a little bit about how 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:01.400 do you think about all that looking back at it now? 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.480 So just to backup a few steps. My mother was 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:10.760 a single mom in Colombia. She was Afro Colombian and 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:15.520 had an eighth grade education. By all those metrics, tim 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:18.800 I shouldn't be where I am today because I was 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:22.840 born into a system that was already stacked against me 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.680 for all of the legacy of what it means to 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:30.240 be black in Colombia. My mother met my father, who 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:33.240 adopted me when I was one year old, shortly after 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:35.840 he met my mother, and they got married, though he 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.560 got really ill, and so my parents had to pack 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.800 their bags and move from a very solidly middle class 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:48.280 in Colombia to northern California, where I like to say 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.880 prepared me for the moment of Donald Trump. And I 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.360 say this because my grandparents did not have their wits 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:58.439 about them. That my father shows up with Latina and 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:03.760 her daughter and their only interaction, quite frankly, with Latinos 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.600 at the time were the migrant workers that worked their fields. 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.240 And so while my father convalesced, I was three at 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:14.559 the time, I navigated a household that was already trying 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.120 to define who I was, but who loved us nonetheless, 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:20.680 and set my mother to work in the field. You 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.080 can imagine how awkward that was for Thanksgiving, but it 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:28.599 started informing me also of the possibility that America offered me. 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.640 I will never forget. My proudest moment was when I 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.280 was nine years old and I had just come back 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:38.079 from city hall in San Francisco, and the teacher asked 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.680 what we were thankful for, and I raised my hand 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:43.719 very proudly saying that I was thankful that today I 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:47.120 was an American citizen. I believe that it meant so 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.920 much for me to be able to unopen these possibilities 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:55.000 that I knew at a very young age in Colombia 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:59.480 were closed. My mother worked very hard to help make 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.480 THENDS me But then I went to UC Davis and 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:03.600 my world opened up. 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.560 And you took great advantage of those opportunities that came your. 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.199 Way, Oh Tim, I was hungry because I will tell 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.560 you that I knew that it was through education and 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.040 through access that I was going to be able to 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:18.480 have a different life, not for myself, but for the 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.000 family that I wanted in the future. 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:22.760 If that makes sense, it does make sense. And I 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.720 also love your use of the word hungry because it's 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.360 so evocative, right, It's you know, literal hunger for food. 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.560 It's intellectual hunger for new ideas, it's hungry for new opportunities. 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.040 And I think a lot of people can be hungry. 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:38.600 Not every one of them feeds themselves in the way 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.640 that you have and the other things that you talk 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.680 about about your direct experience as an immigrant. You know, 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:48.080 I'm an Irish American, many generations removed. I think my 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.400 relatives first came over in the eighteen thirties or the 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:54.600 eighteen forties. And I think recent waves of immigrant Americans, 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:58.360 because we are an immigrant country by definition, forget that 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.200 we have this commonality, because we've gotten ours, whether that's 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:08.599 economic or cultural, or spiritual or political, the legacy migrants 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:10.920 have put their stakes in the ground, and I find 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.240 it troubling when they don't read their own history and 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.960 look at actually the important bonds they share with newer 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:19.199 generations of migrants. 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.160 Well, I think you spark something oftentimes people like to 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.760 And this was really very much unleashed by Donald Trump, 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:28.560 but I would say Sarah Palin had a hand in 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:32.880 it as well. This idea of how immigrants are the 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.760 challenge in America, and in fact, what we've been able 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.360 to demonstrate throughout history, whether we're talking about Irish Americans, 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:42.240 whether we're talking about Chinese Americans, and the list goes 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.480 on that, in fact, what we've been able to do 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.960 so differently than the rest of the world is bring 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.280 in the most innovative entrepreneurs. And they may not be 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:57.600 entrepreneurs in our sense, but they're entrepreneurs in that they've 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:01.240 recognized that they're fleeing something that is in just or 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.120 so stacked that they come to the United States because 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:06.199 they think that here they could become the best versions 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:10.280 of themselves. And as a result, in a multicultural America, 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.959 we all profit from it. And I often say Tim 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:15.720 that you don't have to take my word for it. 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.080 You don't have to take my word that multicultural America 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:22.600 is our superpower in an increasingly global world. You just 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:27.160 have to take nefarious activities of foreign actors who tried 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:32.120 to divide us in elections through race. There's well documented 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.720 that the Russians did massive interference in our twenty sixteen election, 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:39.200 and it was all around race. And it's because they 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.960 recognize that a divide in America is a weakened America, 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:47.400 but a collective, strong, multicultural America is the one that 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.840 we'll be able to actually map the next hundred years, 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.400 not just for the United States, but for the globe. 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:58.520 And while we may not be completely satisfied in attaining 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:01.880 what our founding fathers saw through the Constitution, we are 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:06.160 well ahead of everybody else, and a multicultural America will 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.760 demand collectively that we continue trying to achieve that perfect document. 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.040 So how did you come to vote Latino? How did 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:14.880 that happen for you? 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.319 So we're on the this is our twentieth year anniversary. 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.440 So I like to say we're twenty years young. And 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:24.800 if I were to be completely transparent, I was tragically 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:29.080 in New York when September eleventh happened, and I was 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.120 on the path of going into corporate America like so 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:34.679 many young people at the time, and I had this 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:37.000 realization that while I was the first person in my 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:39.680 family to graduate get my masters, and I was about 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.880 to engage in living the immigrant dream of every parent 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:46.800 for their child, that is different was that really my 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.760 dream was also acknowledging that my cousins who were younger 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.600 than I were not okay. And at the time tim 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.800 I did not have the language of institutional racism, but 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:58.480 there was something very clear that the women in my 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.440 family were thriving, and the young men in my family 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.480 were not. And we grew up in Sonoma, the liberal 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.840 bastion was as segregated as you could possibly imagine. And 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:09.880 I stepped back and I realized, I'm about to go 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.920 into corporate America to give people who have access in 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:17.120 information more access and information. And anyone can do that. 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.280 But at this point I had a set of values 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:23.720 that I felt that if we can enfranchise and start 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.640 talking to young people about the importance of their democracy 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:28.600 and how they fit into it and how they can 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.480 help self define themselves and their family by participating, that 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.640 we could have a revolution for good and it can 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.200 be transformative. And about a year later, I was talking 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:41.240 to a mentor of mine and he introduced me to 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:45.120 Rosario Dawson, who had just launched a campaign called Voda 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.040 Latino with MTV. And that's all it was supposed to be, 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.720 tim it wasn't supposed to be anything more. And I 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.400 saw this ad and granted I had worked in Congress, 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.680 I'd gone to the Kennedy School, I had been interning 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.560 the sacrament of State Legislature when I was in college. 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.640 I would consider myself highly political, but it wasn't until 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:05.840 I was twenty eight years old when I saw one 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:09.360 of the PSAs where one of the actors was looking 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:11.760 straight to the camera say registered to vote because I 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:16.360 can't that I finally felt seen that, I finally felt 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:20.360 someone say you are Latina and American and what a 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.280 beautiful thing, and what's the power. And it was that 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.320 advocacy that I realized that this is where I wanted 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:28.520 to spend my time, and so, believe it or not, 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.400 I quit my job. I moved back home to my 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:35.080 mom on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, and I 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.760 funded an underwrite vit Latino for the first three years 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.840 on my credit card. Whoever's hearing this, don't ever do 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.040 that this is a terrible idea. But it was this 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:49.920 deep understanding that I had navigated America for my mom 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:52.080 since I was nine years old, and there were millions 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:54.800 of other young people doing the same thing. And while 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.960 Latinos are the second fastest group of growing Americans, we're 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:02.200 also the second largest of Americans. And for the last 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:06.160 two census tim it's been because of the Latino growth. 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.200 Fifty two percent of the US population growth has been 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:15.440 attributed to Latinos, not immigration, but the birth of American Latinos. 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.000 If you can, in a kind of a direct and 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:21.800 succinct way, tell me a little bit about what your 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:25.560 involvement in Voda Latino meant to you as an activist 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:27.680 and someone who was deeply politicized. 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.880 So when I inherited Vota Latino, it was just an 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:36.000 idea in PSAs, and it was the first organization to 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:40.280 speak to me as an American, and I fell in 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:44.040 love with its possibility because I knew that when I 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.360 was underage, I was navigating this country for my mother, 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.920 for my grandmother by translating everywhere, and I knew that 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:56.760 millions of other Latino youths were doing the exact same thing, 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:00.440 and they didn't realize that at the time that when 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.560 they turned eighteen, all of a sudden, they would have 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.440 greater agency to impact their families than through simple translation, 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:13.399 by really navigating the country, by basically registering to vote, 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:17.440 registering their families and changing dynamics in this country. 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.119 And understanding the tools that they needed to use to 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:21.080 empower themselves. 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:22.280 That's exactly the vote. 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.760 Alone, although it's an important one, but you brought many 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.280 other organizing principles to bear on that effort. 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:29.280 That's exactly right. One of the things that if you 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:31.480 were to ask what makes us principally so different from 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.320 other voter registrations, I would define us more as a 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:38.560 civic education and advocacy organization, because not only do we 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:41.760 register you to vote, but then we inform you about 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.560 the issues that matter to you, and then we teach 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:46.760 you how to take action. We don't leave you the 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.399 next day, but we really create a community. And what's 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.760 neat is that if you were to go into Texas 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.920 and ask a seventeen year old if they know Little Latino, 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:58.280 almost seven out of ten will say that they do. 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:02.080 We've been able to say see how young people, once 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.600 they recognize that the levers of power really lie in 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:11.199 their hands, they participate and they start changing the direction 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:12.160 of their states. 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.480 So on that happy note of both brand recognition among 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.240 voters and your great organizing effort, I want to take 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.479 a quick break so we can hear from a sponsor, 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:30.080 and then we'll come right back. I'm back with Maria 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:33.760 Theresa Kumar, CEO of vot Latino, and we're talking about 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:37.119 the power and promise of Latino voters in the US. 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:41.199 You've just been regaling me with both your poignant and 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:45.040 powerful personal story of how you became a voter organizer 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:49.000 within the Latino community, and then Voto Latino's own strides 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.639 in both the depth of its representation across a number 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.920 of states and the variety of issues that it embraces 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:58.560 and advocates for. On that note, can we talk a 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.480 little bit about demographic You know, I think many Americans, 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:05.960 particularly white Americans, think of Latinos as this big homogeneous 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.800 block of people doing something here there, And it's a 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:15.400 richly diverse, geographically dispersed community. And that's important, I think 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:19.000 in understanding that communities interests as voters and its needs 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:20.200 as citizens. 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.320 Right absolutely. And I think one of the things is 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:25.679 tim that most fellow Americans don't know is how young 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:29.639 the population is. So according to a Peuce study that 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.640 came out a few years ago, the most common age 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.240 among whites is fifty eight, the most common age among 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:40.120 African Americans is thirty three, But the most common age 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.320 among Latinos. I'll give you a guess. 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:44.520 Well, I'm well, since you've set me up, I'm going 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:45.520 to say twenty. 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:46.560 Two, eleven years old. 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.560 Oh my gosh, I wasn't even close, and. 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:51.800 Most folks aren't, right. I mean, I asked the same 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.640 question in Little Rock with a conversation we were having 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.480 with Hillary Clinton and her crowd, and I have to 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.359 tell you that when I said eleven years old, she 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:07.399 included gasped. But it also speaks to the moment we're in. 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.280 It speaks to the moment where you have voter suppression 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:15.439 laws that are trying to beat back not the voter today, 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:20.000 but the voter that's coming. It wasn't until twenty eighteen 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.600 that Latinas became the second largest demographic of voters. We 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:28.560 have a Latino voter turning eighteen every thirty seconds in 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:31.960 this country. And they are not on the coasts, but 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:34.679 they're in the eight states where we have focused on. 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:42.920 They are in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas. 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.000 We can park Florida there for a second, but this 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.480 is what's really interesting. In a place like Arizona, where 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:52.879 the Latino vote is close to forty percent of the vote, 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.800 what's just as interesting is that thirty five percent of 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.840 them are young people under the age of twenty nine. 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.120 In twenty twenty, vote Latino proudly registered and turned out 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.600 thirty two thousand Arizonans. Nineteen thousand were first time voters. 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:13.040 Biden won by less than twelve thousand votes. But guess 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:17.719 what the opportunity is in Arizona alone. We're expecting one 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.280 hundred and sixty three thousand young people to have turned 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.960 eighteen in the last four years, so more than ten 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.680 times the margin of victory that Biden squeaked by. 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:31.200 And tell me, they also tend to be more engaged 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.399 with the process than their parents or their grandparents, right, Like, 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:39.639 they're less extisent about expressing themselves politically, about registering to vote, 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:45.399 about actually voting, which is a huge cultural and democratic 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:47.560 change that's fundamental. 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:50.280 Right Well, and this is where people like to say, well, 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:53.239 we see that Latinos are turning to the right, and 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:56.840 that's not the case, because the older Latinos, even they 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:01.760 sixty percent of them voted for Biden. They did. Seventy 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.600 percent of young people voted for Biden in the last election. 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.199 But what we find is that people don't talk to 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.960 young people because they don't recognize how engaged they are 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:17.960 on the issues of gun safety, the environment, student loans, abortion, abortion, 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:21.440 right abortion, and so when people say, well, Latinos don't 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:23.879 care about abortion, said, the majority of Latinos are thirty 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:27.399 year old women. They don't want the government deciding what 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:30.760 their trajectory should right. They care because that eleven year 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.159 old is their kid, right, the one that I was 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:35.399 talking to you about. Right. And this is where I 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:39.440 think media and people in power really need to check 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:43.280