Speaker 1: Whether we're talk in world history, US history, neighborhood history.
Speaker 1: Some of US ain't really have an option what flag
Speaker 1: he was flying. There was people one day that woke
Speaker 1: up in Arizona and realized this was Arizona, that it's
Speaker 1: not Mexico no more. There was people that woke up
Speaker 1: in Central Europe and realized they was in Germany. It
Speaker 1: just they didn't move. I didn't know what happened. You
Speaker 1: just started. There was a moment I woke up and
Speaker 1: realized I lived with cripps. It's I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: didn't get no flyers about it. There wasn't no recruiting.
Speaker 1: It wasn't at least I didn't know. I was too young.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was some recruiting. I didn't know. I just
Speaker 1: woke up one day and was like, oh, oh, we're crips.
Speaker 1: At least my neighborhood was. I ain't signed up for this.
Speaker 1: This is just where I live. And then don't mess
Speaker 1: around and make a friend, because then you mess around
Speaker 1: and make a friend. And if you and your friend
Speaker 1: one day y'all walking home and somebody with some other
Speaker 1: color shoelaces decide that they was gonna, you know, take
Speaker 1: your bike right quick, and then that friend go tell
Speaker 1: his big brother and then march you and y'all Homie
Speaker 1: back over there to either squaw up you saying to
Speaker 1: get your bike back, or he do it to guess what.
Speaker 1: Guess what, Your shoelaces the same color as that big brother.
Speaker 1: Now in the eyes of the other hood, this just you.
Speaker 1: You wanted them now, Homie Bamboo was telling me when
Speaker 1: I asked him how you got put on the hood,
Speaker 1: he was like, look, it happened twice once. I was
Speaker 1: just sitting outside with my uncles and they was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: go fight this fool. Now I'm all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it's like okay, and now I'm I just got jumped in.
Speaker 1: I don't know just what happened. Of course, later on
Speaker 1: he made his conscious decision to be in the hood,
Speaker 1: but that that first jump in, that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we just happened to be over here. The district lines
Speaker 1: have been drawing money. This is where you at. Somebody
Speaker 1: drew the districts. I had. Don't say then it might
Speaker 1: get even worse, because you know, sometimes depending on who
Speaker 1: go off to jail and who's able to hold down
Speaker 1: the block, sometimes the neighborhood changes, I know, and a
Speaker 1: lot of parts of Los Angeles just neighborhoods went from
Speaker 1: black to Latino quick. Quick, of course is in air quotes.
Speaker 1: But once they become Mexican, these ain't cripping blood neighborhoods
Speaker 1: no more. This is all cold. And what if you
Speaker 1: didn't move, guess what you hadn't been redistrict. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to y'all about jerrymandering. Politics. It's so real
Speaker 1: right now, Politics, y'all. Politics, All right, y'all, let me
Speaker 1: tell you this little story from my life. So south
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, northeast of Compton City called Lynnwood borders
Speaker 1: Compton Long Beaches in the South Bay in Wood. When
Speaker 1: I was younger, you know, child middle school. Apparently I'm
Speaker 1: what they call an old millennial black hood. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's Watts, Compton Long Beach, Carson Like, they're all sort
Speaker 1: of around. It's this corridor right now. What boarders up
Speaker 1: to Lynnwood is this area called south Gate Huntington Park.
Speaker 1: These are these other now south Gate and Huntington Park
Speaker 1: have been as star as far as i've I've understood,
Speaker 1: those were Latino, those were Mexican hoods. My wife is
Speaker 1: from Huntington Park. Uh shout out doctor Alma. So if
Speaker 1: y'all new here, you don't understand it preferred her by
Speaker 1: her prefix. But my pH d wife used to gang bang.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna leave that alone for now. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: that area of town, Southgate, Huntington Park, Bell Gardens, these
Speaker 1: areas were, like I said, predominantly Latino and so I
Speaker 1: for sil Cyper Hills from this around this area, right,
Speaker 1: So that's those. But Lynnwood, however, Lynnwood was like it
Speaker 1: was like it was black, and a lot of areas
Speaker 1: in this part of town where people who were able to,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe leave South Central, maybe leave Watts who
Speaker 1: were just such active hoods and kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe own a house, maybe start a family like these
Speaker 1: people had. Like these were to income homes or families,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So like they were able
Speaker 1: to afford something like this, But it didn't mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't active. These were active areas that you didn't go
Speaker 1: necessarily kicking in because I mean, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a child of of you know, a
Speaker 1: young child of the heyday of this of nineties. You know, gangbanging.
Speaker 1: Like I'm a little young for it. But I was
Speaker 1: a kid when all this was, like all the movies
Speaker 1: was being made about what was happening in l A.
Speaker 1: I was. I was a kid then, So you know,
Speaker 1: you you didn't you ain't just venture in the neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: You didn't know you know. I think I've I've made
Speaker 1: this made this very clear. But the but the borders,
Speaker 1: the lines, you had to be able to read the
Speaker 1: Google map. You understand what I'm saying. But the map
Speaker 1: was essentially it was fixed in the sense that as
Speaker 1: a black neighborhood, you know what I'm saying. So you
Speaker 1: knew you know, red blue, whatever you knew. You just
Speaker 1: read the read the graffiti to figure out where you
Speaker 1: are or know who know or know somebody over there.
Speaker 1: You just know the deal. So lynn Wood's been like
Speaker 1: that as far as I could remember. Now. When I
Speaker 1: met my wife, when we first started dating, you know,
Speaker 1: I was rounding out, you know, I was out of college.
Speaker 1: I was rounding out in my twenties. She I'm starting
Speaker 1: to like meet her family, and she tells me, yeah,
Speaker 1: heard her brother and nephew live in Lynnwood. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh where, that's crazy. It's Mexican in Lynnwood.
Speaker 1: And she looked at me like what and I was like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean what She's all, we'll go visit them, y'all.
Speaker 1: Now obviously this was some years back, but like when
Speaker 1: we got off the freeway, I mean there was a Kodasa,
Speaker 1: which if you don't know, that's like that's like a
Speaker 1: Latino best Buy. So it's like if you're buying like
Speaker 1: electronics and you don't speak no English, like you would
Speaker 1: go there. You know. I've said, there's an l which
Speaker 1: is like you know at a North Gate, which are
Speaker 1: like Mexican grocery stores. I was like, ain't no sign
Speaker 1: in English. It was the weird. I felt like I
Speaker 1: was in an altered universe. I was like this, when
Speaker 1: did this get When did this become Mexican? And she
Speaker 1: was like, what are you talking about? It always has
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, no, no, it hasn't. She
Speaker 1: was like, you're the Tweetie. Tweetie is a it's a
Speaker 1: cholo like a like a vato like like gang over
Speaker 1: there because it's a street called Tweetie. And she was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my nephew lives over here, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it got the mug right, Wait what? And I was like,
Speaker 1: but I still got home down here. I still got
Speaker 1: friends who I never would and go visit because I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like, look I'm not good down there. That
Speaker 1: like that's dayhood. I thought I come see them in
Speaker 1: neutral areas. I didn't know when did this become? So
Speaker 1: this ain't they're not crimping down here. She was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? The whole joint got redistrict.
Speaker 1: I was like, I had no idea. Now you may
Speaker 1: have not whether you live you may have lived in
Speaker 1: Livewood for thirty forty years, this where your grandma stayed
Speaker 1: where Like all of a sudden, you gotta change your
Speaker 1: shoelaces you didn't even know, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and and and obviously I'm talking about like us who
Speaker 1: were civilians, Like who wasn't active? You feel me? When
Speaker 1: you active? You can't change your shoelaces like nah, man,
Speaker 1: like you it is what it is you feel me
Speaker 1: like yo, we you are we right? I don't care
Speaker 1: who like you know what I'm saying, Like when they
Speaker 1: didn't redistrict your zone, It's like, no, that's not your hood.
Speaker 1: No more homie like y'all. The the g I graphy
Speaker 1: has changed. Now. This don't happen often, but when it
Speaker 1: do happen, it's real stark. You didn't move, You ain't
Speaker 1: change your location at all, but your affiliation has absolutely
Speaker 1: changed right up under your feet. Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about jerry mandarin Now. Now the situation
Speaker 1: I just explaining you had to do with a vast
Speaker 1: number of so your economic and migratory and just changes
Speaker 1: in the demographic of the city, you know, uh in
Speaker 1: birth rates, all this good stuff. Like, there's a million
Speaker 1: different things that make this jerrymandering is a lot more sinister.
Speaker 1: To step back to explain jerry mandering. Let me talk
Speaker 1: about why I want to talk about it. So check
Speaker 1: this out. Merrick Garland, the head of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, is suing the state of Texas over districting.
Speaker 1: As a lot going on here. So you got the
Speaker 1: federal government suing a state you know so, and you like,
Speaker 1: how can you do that? What's happening right now? Well,
Speaker 1: every so often, around uh time for mid terms or
Speaker 1: voting things, you have to set up your congressional district
Speaker 1: and a congressional district is an area of town depending
Speaker 1: on where you live. And in that district, there is
Speaker 1: a representative that goes to the legislature. Um that is
Speaker 1: supposed to represent your district. That's who you are voting for.
Speaker 1: And again in the legislature you have the Senate and
Speaker 1: then you have the House of Reps. Your district is
Speaker 1: the person that's in the House of Reps or your
Speaker 1: congress person. We're talking about Congress. There are every state
Speaker 1: only gets two senators, right, so that's different. Right, your
Speaker 1: district goes into the House. Now, how you decide who
Speaker 1: that person is is you'll vote, you elect them, but
Speaker 1: you vote based on your address because your address tells
Speaker 1: you what district you in, and that district is gonna
Speaker 1: put up somebody will run for Congress for your district
Speaker 1: and you vote for. Well, how do you decide what
Speaker 1: district you're a part of? Now? Why is my address
Speaker 1: a part of a certain district and not a part
Speaker 1: of another district. I live in the thirty fourth district
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and my Rep is Jimmy Gomez. He'd
Speaker 1: been in this congressional district since July of two thousand, seventeen.
Speaker 1: Is next election is next year, it's a Democrat, that's
Speaker 1: my district. It's also important. I suggest there's a gov
Speaker 1: Track dot us. Uh if you want to like find
Speaker 1: your district like that. Stuff is super important because this
Speaker 1: is how we're gonna see how this matters a little later.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm doing this thing. Okay. Uh. You need
Speaker 1: to know what flags somebody doesn't put on you as
Speaker 1: you're walking around here, because sometimes imagine imagine walking through
Speaker 1: a hood not knowing what flag you got, but everybody
Speaker 1: else know. Nik is out here putting in work for
Speaker 1: you and you don't know they're doing it. Nick is
Speaker 1: making decisions on your behalf. You feel me deciding who
Speaker 1: the OP is for you, my nigga. You just out
Speaker 1: here trying to just buy some groceries. You're trying to
Speaker 1: go get a taco. You feel me over at the
Speaker 1: over at the Holy Moli and Long Beach niggas and
Speaker 1: already decided, oh no, we know who you is. And
Speaker 1: you're like, wait, what now I'm from? And they're like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not that hood, that's that hood is this now?
Speaker 1: And you're like, well, I think it. When did you
Speaker 1: become an OP? When did I become the op you
Speaker 1: better know your district. So districts are set up in
Speaker 1: theory to be geographical, and that the idea of them
Speaker 1: being geographical has to do with the thought that people
Speaker 1: in share geographical spaces have similar concerns because people usually
Speaker 1: cluster around people that they live similar lifestyles, to similar
Speaker 1: socioeconomics and full of ways of life, YadA, YadA, YadA. Right, So, like,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have city folk in a farm, right,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have farm folks in a farm. So you
Speaker 1: just make that one district because they're going to have
Speaker 1: similar needs and desires and similar things and things are
Speaker 1: gonna ask for their rep Now us in you know, cities,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have also similar things. Like we're all of
Speaker 1: my district. We're all kind of concerned about, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's gentrification, whether it's clean streets, good sewage, good schools.
Speaker 1: Like we're all concerned about the same stuff. Now, Long Beach, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a coast right, So uh, although we're both cities,
Speaker 1: we have different needs. Right, one of their needs has
Speaker 1: to do with the beach and with keeping the beach clean,
Speaker 1: and their sewage system is different. You know, and it's
Speaker 1: you've got more salt water in the air, so there
Speaker 1: are certain things that they're going to be concerned about
Speaker 1: that even though we're both cities, we shouldn't be in
Speaker 1: the same district because we have different needs. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense, right? That's the way that districting is supposed
Speaker 1: to in a in a type of democratic republic that
Speaker 1: we have. That's that's the concept, right, But who gets
Speaker 1: to decide what district? Well, not us. Somebody draws red
Speaker 1: lines on a map. We'll talk about redlining one day,
Speaker 1: which is a different type of districting, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: just draw lines on a map. Another good parallel that
Speaker 1: might help, Like if you're not really into the understanding,
Speaker 1: is like what high school you're gonna go to? Like
Speaker 1: your school district? You know, some of y'all may live
Speaker 1: in an area where the high school closest to you
Speaker 1: is actually out of district. You gotta go to one
Speaker 1: different and it seems like that don't make sense, right,
Speaker 1: But it's just how the things were drawn, and then
Speaker 1: maybe next year it might be different all of a
Speaker 1: sudden that schools in your district. It's just it's weird, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's in a lot of ways, it
Speaker 1: feels real colonial. Like now going into y'all's history, like
Speaker 1: your global history. Uh, this is a freebee. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of of North or Saharan Africa or different
Speaker 1: just Africa period. Once Europe got there and decided that
Speaker 1: it belonged to them, they they decided to just like
Speaker 1: divide the land and being like okay, you get this part,
Speaker 1: you get this part used, and they just drew these lines.
Speaker 1: And these lines might have gotten drawn right in between
Speaker 1: your neighborhood, split your house and half. All of a sudden, Yo,
Speaker 1: cousin across the street, who's the who's that's your blood?
Speaker 1: We're the same tribe, we're the same everything. They're a
Speaker 1: different country because somebody drew a line there. It's just
Speaker 1: you're no longer and all of a sudden, they're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, no, no, that's that you're this
Speaker 1: you guys are different countries. What It's ridiculous, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: but that's you know, in a lot of ways, like
Speaker 1: that's some of the borders in Africa where you know,
Speaker 1: we're like that like colonizers drew it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, I've said in a poem before. If you
Speaker 1: guys are familiar with my other work, I have a
Speaker 1: poem called two Minutes and thirty Seconds. But I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and once you get up into space, you know, you
Speaker 1: look back down at the earth. You know, there's no
Speaker 1: lines all over the ground. There's no word. The word
Speaker 1: Florida isn't written across the ground. It doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it's not because it's not real. Somebody drew a line,
Speaker 1: you know, saying like and then you you we enforce them.
Speaker 1: I guess you know what I'm saying, but like, they
Speaker 1: don't occur, and there's no no force field at the
Speaker 1: forty seven parallel that separates Canada from it's not a
Speaker 1: there's no magical thing there, although it feels like it's sometimes,
Speaker 1: but it's not like it's there's nothing there except that
Speaker 1: we said it is parallels not real. It's because it's
Speaker 1: because of globes. That's why we call it that, right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so back to this, So congressional districting is
Speaker 1: decided by the state because if you can clump certain
Speaker 1: people together for their shared needs and concerns, if you
Speaker 1: get enough people that have the same shared needs and concerns,
Speaker 1: then what do you have your power? Right, That's how
Speaker 1: you can solidate power. That's how you get stuff past.
Speaker 1: That's how you get stuff done if you have enough
Speaker 1: people with the same shared interests and they all are agreeing. Yo,
Speaker 1: this is our guy, this is who we want. We
Speaker 1: all wanted to be like this. Boom, we got it right,
Speaker 1: that's that district. I wonder if y'all can already see
Speaker 1: how this can get weaponized in a white supremacist, horribly
Speaker 1: racist system. If you have a bunch of black people
Speaker 1: living in the same space and they become a district.
Speaker 1: When you outnumber everybody else, guess what, you have the
Speaker 1: most voting power. So if I draw a line around
Speaker 1: this city and that city is comprised of black people,
Speaker 1: guess who're gonna get to say? Because it's just more
Speaker 1: of us. So if you're trying to consolidate power, what
Speaker 1: do you do? You can re draw the lines. It's
Speaker 1: pretty simple. You divide that if it let's just say,
Speaker 1: let's just keep it real clean. You got black people,
Speaker 1: and just for the sake of this argument, the other
Speaker 1: twenty is white. Now, there's nowhere in California doesn't like that, right,
Speaker 1: But let's just say that is, then what do you do?
Speaker 1: You draw district around the white people and take ten
Speaker 1: percent of the black people and make that one district.
Speaker 1: You take another part of that black folks, and now
Speaker 1: that's only you draw. You go into another district over
Speaker 1: here that's maybe predominantly Latino, and you take ten percent
Speaker 1: of that Latinos added to another ten percented in white people. Right,
Speaker 1: so now this new district is white and ten percent Latino,
Speaker 1: and then you take this other district. So you just
Speaker 1: keep drawing lines that consolidate power for yourself. That's why
Speaker 1: the district's shapes are ridiculous, because they're not about share
Speaker 1: the interests. They're about power. Are y'all, y'all, y'all following me?
Speaker 1: You just draw lines around groups that make you more powerful,
Speaker 1: so you might wake up one day in a brand
Speaker 1: new district. I'm looking around my neighborhood. I live in
Speaker 1: a part of town that's like almost a percent Mexican.
Speaker 1: Like I'm I'm me and my daughter holding down the
Speaker 1: black population in my neighborhoo it you feel me? So
Speaker 1: we're in this one district, But what if they drew
Speaker 1: our lines a little different Where our house is now
Speaker 1: included in area called Monterey Park, which is a almost
Speaker 1: a percent agent. Then the things that have to do
Speaker 1: in my community, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna matter
Speaker 1: my representative, like I don't represent the vast majority of
Speaker 1: my district no more. But because the guy wanted that
Speaker 1: wanted to get elected, redrew the lines to make sure
Speaker 1: he could make sure she could. So Mary Garland is
Speaker 1: sue in Texas because Texas is in the process of redistricting. Now,
Speaker 1: what is the basis of the suing is The basis
Speaker 1: of the suing is Section two of the Voter Rights Act.
Speaker 1: I talked about the Voting Rights Act before, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: y'all do your google's on exactly what that is. But
Speaker 1: what happened was when that Voting Rights Act came into
Speaker 1: power in two thousand and thirteen, it got gutted. How
Speaker 1: did it get gutted? Basically, one of the things that
Speaker 1: we were trying to do with the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: was just this was this idea of redistricting oftentime was
Speaker 1: for the purpose to follow me, disenfranchise black and brown
Speaker 1: voices because there's so much of us and when you
Speaker 1: hear white supremacists like the extreme right, talking about like
Speaker 1: white genocide, talking about the fabric of our nation being changed,
Speaker 1: the you know, the way that our society is working. Now,
Speaker 1: they feel like they're being outnumbered. Nobody's caring about them
Speaker 1: no more. This is a way to counteract that, because
Speaker 1: you're right, if we're talking sheer numbers, there's more of us.
Speaker 1: So why aren't we getting laws passed? Why aren't we
Speaker 1: being represented? Well, you just redraw the maps. Rather than
Speaker 1: letting us consolidate and stay together, you just read all
Speaker 1: the districts. It's it's actually pretty brilliant. But that's what
Speaker 1: will always happened. Let me go back to reconstruction time,
Speaker 1: back to when uh, the slaves were fully freed, When
Speaker 1: the slaves were first freed and we got the right
Speaker 1: to start voting. That's why they invented the black codes.
Speaker 1: Is because we was like, oh wait, we get to
Speaker 1: choose our electric official choose oh nigger, we're choosing us.
Speaker 1: And we was winning because just like you use your logic,
Speaker 1: use your antennas. You got one slave owning family is
Speaker 1: maybe five six of them. If they got twenty slaves,
Speaker 1: you out numbered one the four right four You got
Speaker 1: it for the one okay, a little bit of Matt.
Speaker 1: You out numbered one to four, the one right, you
Speaker 1: out number four the one easy. So that means if
Speaker 1: you let me choose, what I'm gonna vote is more
Speaker 1: of us. We're gonna choose the stuff that got to
Speaker 1: do it. So, yeah, they invent the Black Coast. That
Speaker 1: was to disenfranchise us on purpose, because when you when
Speaker 1: you said it, when we get too elected, we're gonna
Speaker 1: choose what makes it. That's what you told me. I said,
Speaker 1: you told me how it works. You said, I get
Speaker 1: to said I get to choose my elected officials the government,
Speaker 1: bother people for the people. The people saying this is
Speaker 1: when we choose. They was like, oh, niket, is this
Speaker 1: working too good? So they had to change the laws.
Speaker 1: The Voting Rights Act was a way to say that
Speaker 1: you just keep doing this because you're you're redrawing these
Speaker 1: districts to make sure that our voices aren't heard. So
Speaker 1: if you're going to redraw the districts, you gotta talk
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court before you do it. That was
Speaker 1: what was in the Voting Rights Act to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're not just being racist. Well, when it got
Speaker 1: gutted and it was Like I said, this was specifically
Speaker 1: because this is what was happening in the South. It's
Speaker 1: just more, it's more, it's more people of color there,
Speaker 1: so those who are in power and losing pacts, not
Speaker 1: enough of them. In two thousand thirteen, that part where
Speaker 1: you had to check in with the Supreme Court got
Speaker 1: taken out. So Texas was like, oh, well, we don't
Speaker 1: have to when we have to check in, And what
Speaker 1: does the Supreme Court know about us? Anyway? You're not
Speaker 1: down here, You ain't out here. She wasn't outside. Y'all
Speaker 1: know what's up down here. We draw on our own.
Speaker 1: So they started drawing their own districts. Obviously, these are
Speaker 1: the Republicans doing this because they they could feel the
Speaker 1: wind shifting. How do they feel the wind shifting? NIGGD
Speaker 1: because Austin, Dallas, in Houston, them is big cities and
Speaker 1: them is big and what happens in big cities nigade
Speaker 1: lean left at least right now, that's what happens if
Speaker 1: if all that, if the rest of Texas is ruled,
Speaker 1: ain't nobody out there. It's not enough people out there.
Speaker 1: So according to these Republicans, they're not getting their voices hurt.
Speaker 1: These people outside not getting their voices hurt, right, So
Speaker 1: we need to draw districts that make their voices in
Speaker 1: rural areas be just as powerful as the ones in
Speaker 1: the city because the city is getting too much. A
Speaker 1: lot of this, this, a lot of this was some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that was happening in California. Why California
Speaker 1: was talking about um breaking up, breaking it up as
Speaker 1: a state. Why in the hell should Kerrent County? You know,
Speaker 1: way Rika California. You ever heard of way Rika? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Why they're paying the same the same taxes at San
Speaker 1: Francisco as l A. It's like, why are we paying
Speaker 1: what y'all gotta pay? Then? Prices is for you, Like
Speaker 1: that's y'all's way of life. The rest of Cali ain't
Speaker 1: like this. That's a good point. You get up to
Speaker 1: Mount Shasta. Oh, that's that's Trump Country up there. It's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, it's crazy. It's not you think
Speaker 1: California this this bastion of leftist no nigga, that's the cities.
Speaker 1: You get out the cities, bro, you get down to
Speaker 1: u Kaiper. I'm naming cities that I know. You gotta
Speaker 1: be from here to know and I know this is
Speaker 1: a national international pod. You don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: But you get down to ukaiper all, nigga. You in Texas,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like they don't rural Texas
Speaker 1: because y'all saying because Austin becoming a lot like Portland's.
Speaker 1: You feel me, Dallas, you know what I'm saying, Dallas
Speaker 1: looking like Seattle these days. You feel me like the
Speaker 1: city's is changing. So they was like, oh no, bro,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta, we gotta fix this. They wash,
Speaker 1: they was they was doing. They're doing too much. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act was saying, listen, you should be
Speaker 1: able to include not just geographical but racial in linguistic interests,
Speaker 1: right because that at first wasn't a part of the
Speaker 1: districting process, racial and linguistics. So when you start adding
Speaker 1: racial and linguistic, it's again, we have a burgeoning, you know,
Speaker 1: Spanish speaking Latino community that has very specific needs and
Speaker 1: if you're not looking around, they find an outnumber. Everybody
Speaker 1: you know saying, but they don't have no say how well,
Speaker 1: this is how you make sure, if you empower, how
Speaker 1: you stay in power, if you're the guy that you're like, Yo,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose this district because it's a gang of
Speaker 1: you know what's that have been filling up in my district.
Speaker 1: I'm about to lose this job. Well, what's the answer.
Speaker 1: Do you try to convince these people who know for
Speaker 1: a fact you racist and you're not doing nothing for us.
Speaker 1: You're gonna try to convince them that you are, especially
Speaker 1: when they brought up their own champion. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, They got their own champion. You're gonna convince
Speaker 1: them to go with another white boy. You're gonna convince
Speaker 1: this group. You're gonna convince this whole city of multi
Speaker 1: colored faces that what they need is another white boy.
Speaker 1: That's what you're gonna do. Now, we're just gonna redraw
Speaker 1: the districts. You feel me, y'all, y'r bloods now now
Speaker 1: a blood practice, practice, a blood practice. You got it?
Speaker 1: You got it, dam you know I'm saying you got it, Pyru, y'all, y'all,
Speaker 1: bloods now, you redraw the district Now, you gotta worry
Speaker 1: about it. How we become bloods So I just drew
Speaker 1: another line around Compton. So now we now were bloods
Speaker 1: now you're a blood like it just happened right under
Speaker 1: your feet. So this is what Texas is doing, and
Speaker 1: married Garland is like, I don't know, man, this feel real.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're saying this to protect the rural community,
Speaker 1: but it feels a little I don't know, man, it
Speaker 1: feels a little. Uh it's a little like paragraph feel
Speaker 1: little like you're protecting protecting your whiteness kind of what
Speaker 1: it feels like because Nikki, y'all almost lost last y'all
Speaker 1: almost lost. It's just your your state flipping and uh,
Speaker 1: it seems like you're not representing the people, you representing
Speaker 1: yourself and just I don't know if y'all could do this. Um,
Speaker 1: let's give you a little background history of like how
Speaker 1: long people been jerrymandering and where we even got that word.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break. All right, we're back, y'all. Peep
Speaker 1: that headlights yet? Did he drop it? I don't know
Speaker 1: when this episode is coming out. He better have dropped
Speaker 1: the album by now, if not hit him again, dropped
Speaker 1: the album. I listened to it. We don't help to
Speaker 1: put it in in order. This fool got slapstock. It's
Speaker 1: just good vibes, Like if you had. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the holidays. You know you kind of tired a family.
Speaker 1: Keep it real that, uh you need something to chill
Speaker 1: out in, or even background music while everybody there. Man,
Speaker 1: throw on that headlights tape. Man, it's good vibes. You
Speaker 1: feel me anyway? So jerrymanderin All right, listen this mug
Speaker 1: go all the way back to I mean, the next
Speaker 1: day after we became a nation, right, like immediately you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Thomas Hunter. He's a political scientist
Speaker 1: over professor over there at the at the University of
Speaker 1: West Georgia. Right, I mean, like there's evidence in like Virginia,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, South Carolina that they drew districts to benefit
Speaker 1: some candidates over others. I'm talking like late eighteenth early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century there. I mean, it was called Jerry Mandarin then,
Speaker 1: but nig has been Jerry Mandarin the whole time, right,
Speaker 1: it would be called that a little later. I'm an
Speaker 1: quote him. He's all, yeah, I'm a quote thomasonr. He says,
Speaker 1: I think that what they did in Massachusetts in eighteen
Speaker 1: twelve really was on steroids compared to what had gone
Speaker 1: on before. Said Hunter. Um about okay, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to it now. Check this out. So eighteen twelve, the
Speaker 1: Boston Gazette, right, was this politically he ran this political
Speaker 1: cartoon with this like species. Is the drawing of this
Speaker 1: like monster right that they called it the Jerrymander. Right.
Speaker 1: It was this fork tongue creature that looked like a
Speaker 1: almost like a dragon, a little bit that was shaped
Speaker 1: like a contorted Massachusetts voting district that the States Jeffersonian
Speaker 1: Republicans had drawn to benefit their own party. So again,
Speaker 1: rather than drawing, you know, district map that made sense,
Speaker 1: they drew this weird shaped thing around the side of
Speaker 1: Boston and they called that one district. And it's because
Speaker 1: they were just drawing circles around people that would vote
Speaker 1: for a Jeffersonian Republican. So rather than having a district
Speaker 1: and trying to win that district over, you just drew
Speaker 1: a district, drew a circle around people that would vote
Speaker 1: for you. And now Homie who signed off for this
Speaker 1: became a future vice president. Eldredge Gary Right, who signed
Speaker 1: off on his party's redistricting in February, unwittingly submitting his
Speaker 1: place in the United States lexicon of underhanded political tricks.
Speaker 1: So the Federalists reprinted it. That's a newspaper, and so
Speaker 1: when they reprinted it, it it was kind of like this.
Speaker 1: It was because it was supposed to be a play
Speaker 1: on words with a salamander, right, so they called it
Speaker 1: a jerrymander, even though Jerry's name is pronounced Gary. What
Speaker 1: we say it like Jerry, It's just whatever. It's just
Speaker 1: this is what happens when something's two hundred years old.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he drew a district that did not make
Speaker 1: sense to make sure that he could stay in power. Right,
Speaker 1: But before that they used to call him a rotten
Speaker 1: boroughs um, which is, again, you make a district that
Speaker 1: would ensure that these people in this room would vote
Speaker 1: for you. So if you're living in this in this area,
Speaker 1: your neighborhood happens to get redrawn. My nig, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're on the wrong side of town according
Speaker 1: to you're voting practices. Now, in a defense of redrawing districts,
Speaker 1: a defensive redrawing districts can in some ways be like
Speaker 1: my first example of Lynnwood, the demographic changed, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like the city is it's different, right,
Speaker 1: the the the borders are different. Um using a gang.
Speaker 1: Using the gang analogy here, like when you say you
Speaker 1: from Compton, we have to be like you from east
Speaker 1: or west because one side is blood, one side is crip.
Speaker 1: You know, but maybe it wasn't always like that, because
Speaker 1: you know, there was a time that bloods didn't exist,
Speaker 1: you feel me, right? So uh, that means that the
Speaker 1: city needs to be who's representing y'all needs to be
Speaker 1: y'all need to this needs to We need to redraw
Speaker 1: these districts because these two areas have very different interests, right,
Speaker 1: So because of that, you need different representatives. So there
Speaker 1: is a time that maybe it is important to re
Speaker 1: draw lines. But then it's other times that it's like
Speaker 1: when it's coming from the top down rather than the
Speaker 1: bottom up. It's because y'all, these fools is consolidating power.
Speaker 1: So more of the story for all of us. What
Speaker 1: do we need to know? Your homework is today? As
Speaker 1: soon as you finished this pod, go figure out what
Speaker 1: district you in, who your representative is. Didn't do your
Speaker 1: googles on this? Dude on this lefe on this food
Speaker 1: on cuse blood? Do do do do your do your google?
Speaker 1: What's this fool about what they what they're trying to do?
Speaker 1: What's they vote in history? You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: pay attention like who who is this fool? You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Know your district, Know some of the
Speaker 1: ballot measures that are in your district. And then after that,
Speaker 1: like look around as to like, yo, maybe somebody else
Speaker 1: might be maybe he's trying to start paying attention to
Speaker 1: your local commercials about who's running for district, Like see who,
Speaker 1: see who? See who we're putting up? When you see
Speaker 1: what your district is, look at the way it's drawn
Speaker 1: and being like all right, uh, you know your hood
Speaker 1: better than me, be like okay, this seems it seems
Speaker 1: real weird, Like why why are we looped in with
Speaker 1: them and not with them? That don't make no sense.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why somebody wanted to keep their gobs.
Speaker 1: You feel me so um And then just you know,
Speaker 1: now that you have this information, like the next time
Speaker 1: you's Alice come around, you can make a more educated
Speaker 1: guess as to like who you're trying to send you
Speaker 1: feel me, who are you trying to send to the
Speaker 1: table to be representing y'all? Like who's your soldier. Does
Speaker 1: this soldier Is this soldier really interested in our goods? See,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things in politics that are I
Speaker 1: feel you are so far away from us that it
Speaker 1: seems like it don't do nothing. And those ones that
Speaker 1: are so far away from us usually get the most shine.
Speaker 1: These local ones, they don't get a lot of shine,
Speaker 1: But that's the ones that affect us the most. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Your vote in your local one
Speaker 1: is one of a couple of thousands. Your vote for
Speaker 1: them national ones um a couple of millions. So I
Speaker 1: mean where you think your voice gonna have problem more
Speaker 1: weight with a couple of thousands or a couple of million.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? Why not talk district on
Speaker 1: out what color places you've got? You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Maybe you ain't handle say what you do now the
Speaker 1: politics y'all, y'all, This smug was recorded and edited by
Speaker 1: me Propaganda right here in East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Y'all cauld follow me at prop hip Hop on all
Speaker 1: the socials. You could follow the Hood Politics pod itself
Speaker 1: at Club Politics Pod, where we'll be trying to make
Speaker 1: takes on stuff that aren't really big enough for a
Speaker 1: whole episode, but definitely needs a little bit of clarity.
Speaker 1: This mug was scored, edited, mixed, and mastered by the
Speaker 1: one and only Headlights. Y'all, go follow my dog Matt Outswellski.
Speaker 1: I still don't know how to say his name. I'm
Speaker 1: glad he changed at their Headlights. Follow him on his
Speaker 1: socials at Headlights. Underscore music telling you here, all these
Speaker 1: new other fly tracks, this wool be making, and the
Speaker 1: theme music was done by the one and Only Gold
Speaker 1: Tips Gold Tips DJ Sean Pte. Y'all remember every time
Speaker 1: you check in. If you understand the hood, you could
Speaker 1: understand politics. Shouts to I Heart Media for making this happen.