Speaker 1: Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
Speaker 1: weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'mory host, Rams'
Speaker 1: Ja he is.
Speaker 2: Rams's Jah, I am q Ward And you are tuned
Speaker 2: in to Civic Scipher.
Speaker 1: Yes you are, and we're talking about the election. If
Speaker 1: you are a longtime listener of the show, you know
Speaker 1: that that was not what we expected, nor was it
Speaker 1: happy in any way. You know, there are some some
Speaker 1: bright moments that came out of the election, but there
Speaker 1: are so few of them, and they're so sparse that
Speaker 1: we're taking a moment to just kind of come to
Speaker 1: terms with what has happened and really decide as much
Speaker 1: as we can where we go from here. And so
Speaker 1: we're going to spend the next part of the show
Speaker 1: trying to sort that out with you. But before we
Speaker 1: get there, it's time to become a better ally Baba
Speaker 1: and Today's Baba sponsored by Friends of the Movement, you
Speaker 1: can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal
Speaker 1: dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as
Speaker 1: well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's
Speaker 1: Fotmglobal dot com, and today I want to remind you
Speaker 1: about Stop Aapihete dot org. This is an initiative that
Speaker 1: really looks out for the rights and the wellbeing of
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Speaker 1: seeking to protect our AAPI brothers and sisters against you know,
Speaker 1: hate and again challenges that are specific to their community.
Speaker 1: I'll share a bit. It is a US based coalition
Speaker 1: dedicated to ending racism and discrimination against Asian Americans and
Speaker 1: Pacific Islanders. They strive to advance the multi racial movement
Speaker 1: for equality and justice by building power for communities, working
Speaker 1: in solidarity with other communities of color, and advocating for
Speaker 1: comprehensive solutions that tackle the root causes of race based hate.
Speaker 1: Your support of AAPI Hate, Stop AAPI eight Sorry enables
Speaker 1: them to track and respond to racism, xenophobia, and other
Speaker 1: forms of discrimination facing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Speaker 1: To learn more about your donation, visit their website at
Speaker 1: Stop AAPI Hate dot org, slash donate and another note
Speaker 1: here there are several ways you can contribute. Your donation
Speaker 1: is one hundred tax deductible. The fiscal sponsor of stop
Speaker 1: AAPI hate is Chinese for Affirmative Action. That's CAAA, and
Speaker 1: that is a five oh one C three nonprofit organization.
Speaker 1: And their tax id number and all their W nine
Speaker 1: infos available at stopaapi height dot org. Okay, so how
Speaker 1: did we get here? Well? I thought that once upon
Speaker 1: a time that black men would be the deciding factor.
Speaker 1: At another point in time, I thought, you know, third
Speaker 1: party candidates would be a deciding factor. You know, I
Speaker 1: read from the economists that it's Latino males that were
Speaker 1: decisive in the most recent election and that Democrats could
Speaker 1: no longer rely on that group faithfully to support Democratic
Speaker 1: candidates and policies and initiatives. And you know, there's a
Speaker 1: conversation to be had about any number of things. But
Speaker 1: the truth is, I think the biggest, most visible element
Speaker 1: that we've had to come to terms with is the
Speaker 1: voter turnout. The reason this was top of mind is that,
Speaker 1: you know, I went to the watch party, the campaign
Speaker 1: watch party for Kamala Harris, and there was an individual
Speaker 1: next to me wearing a shirt that says You're fired,
Speaker 1: and then it was signed eighty one million voters. So
Speaker 1: of course I saw this shirt before all of the
Speaker 1: votes had been counted, and that number stood out to me.
Speaker 1: Eighty one million. Wow, that's a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: then I saw the number of voters that turned out
Speaker 1: for Kamala Harris, and if I'm not mistaken, it was
Speaker 1: you know, sixty six almost sixty seven million voters. So
Speaker 1: considerably less voters turned out for Kamala Harris, and the
Speaker 1: end to be fair, less voters turned out for Donald
Speaker 1: Trump too, but I think he lost some in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of like three million votes from the twenty twenty election
Speaker 1: to this one, and Kamala Harris lost something like, you know,
Speaker 1: thirteen million. Somehow, it ended up being a very low
Speaker 1: voter turnout for Democrats. And of course we see by
Speaker 1: looking at twenty twenty numbers that Democrats do exist and
Speaker 1: they do vote. Eighty one million of them voted to
Speaker 1: get Trump out of there, and a lot of those
Speaker 1: folks just didn't show up at the polls this time.
Speaker 1: So if we want to look at Latino voters or
Speaker 1: black men, or jerry mandering or third party candidates or
Speaker 1: everything you know, all put together, it might not amount
Speaker 1: to that many votes. There is something to be said
Speaker 1: about what the Democrats have stood on, what the Democrats
Speaker 1: have done under this current administration that has failed to
Speaker 1: motivate people to come out to vote. The thing that
Speaker 1: we've debated on this show, the thing that we've wrestled
Speaker 1: with on this show again, longtime listeners will know, is Palestine.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people, probably more than I
Speaker 1: would have expected, that simply, we're not going to vote
Speaker 1: for an administration that is actively supporting a genocide. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing that makes sense to me in terms
Speaker 1: of while those people stayed home this time, and of
Speaker 1: course I wish that, you know, all the people that
Speaker 1: stayed home would have given Kamala Harris a chance. I
Speaker 1: wish that all the people that you know could not
Speaker 1: conceive of a woman being president would have given Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris a chance. We already gave Donald Trump a chance.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, Let's just see, just because
Speaker 1: it has worked, it doesn't mean it can't work better,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't mean that it's going to be worse.
Speaker 1: Just because we've all only had men in the past,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that a woman might not do as good
Speaker 1: or a better job. Just because Kamala Harris was actively
Speaker 1: in an administration that was helping fund the gendocide on
Speaker 1: the ground in Gaza doesn't mean that had she been
Speaker 1: able to ascend, that she could not have played a
Speaker 1: more decisive role in ending that genocide or helping Palestinians
Speaker 1: rebuild or you know, find a path to self determination.
Speaker 1: Hard to imagine Donald Trump prioritizing you know, Palestinian people
Speaker 1: or really anybody that kind of not in his immediate
Speaker 1: circle and is not putting money in his pocket. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't mean to point fingers because that's
Speaker 1: just kind of the wrong approach right now. But it
Speaker 1: is important to learn from this moment that you know,
Speaker 1: there is a line, you know, as try as you
Speaker 1: might to get everybody on the same page and get
Speaker 1: out and vote, you know, there's eighty one million of them.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I hope it's just the the Palestine thing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because if it's you know,
Speaker 1: people not willing to vote for a woman too, then
Speaker 1: you know that that's half of the population, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. If it's just the Palestine thing, then
Speaker 1: that's an easy lesson for an easier lesson for Democrats
Speaker 1: to learn that they cannot ignore the split in the vote.
Speaker 1: But if it's I'm really you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: come up with the words right now, I'm really disappointed.
Speaker 1: And and the people that failed to show up, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republicans did what they did. You know that we
Speaker 1: saw were disappointed in the people that did show up and.
Speaker 2: Voted for him.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to try to pretend to two
Speaker 2: things are the same.
Speaker 1: Well, so let me just make this last statement, and
Speaker 1: I want to hear what you're thinking. But again, the
Speaker 1: first go round, Donald Trump had seventy four million, seventy
Speaker 1: six million votes, and then he's pretty much all those
Speaker 1: same people showed back up less about three million. So
Speaker 1: he already had a built in base that we knew that.
Speaker 1: You know, those people, as you mentioned earlier, they weren't
Speaker 1: going to learn. He said that when he was campaigning
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, he could walk out in Times Square
Speaker 1: and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose a single vote. So
Speaker 1: we kind of knew that he had a solid base
Speaker 1: going into it. We just didn't. I just didn't realize
Speaker 1: that Democrats had turned off so many people with what, again,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping is just Palestine. They didn't turn they I
Speaker 1: didn't realize they would turn off so many people with that.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty certain that it's not just Palestine. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I figured as much Stein as a convenient thing to say.
Speaker 2: It puts you in this kind of ambiguously morally, as
Speaker 2: far as your moral intellectual stance, it's ambiguous, almost intentionally.
Speaker 2: If you use platonized Palestine as a shield, people won't
Speaker 2: question the fact that you didn't participate, they won't question
Speaker 2: your apathy. You won't be looked at as a bad person. Actually,
Speaker 2: quite the contrary. You stood on some deep held principle
Speaker 2: that you had, But you'd have to be intentionally misinformed,
Speaker 2: intentionally dishonest, intentionally apathetic, and intentionally privileged to adopt that
Speaker 2: as your single issue for not participating in this election.
Speaker 2: Because every piece of information available to you, and I
Speaker 2: mean the simplest way of searching information, shows that the
Speaker 2: guy that won this thing is worse, is far worse.
Speaker 2: It's not people keep doing this neck and neck thing.
Speaker 2: All politicians are the same, and both parties are bad,
Speaker 2: and they keep doing this very very intentionally false equivalent.
Speaker 2: The percentage of Latino men that voted for him increased
Speaker 2: in the face of him spewing anti Latino, anti immigrant
Speaker 2: rhetoric every time he spoke to a microphone. And the
Speaker 2: interesting thing that happens for men in the patriarchy, for
Speaker 2: immigrants in this country, for white women in the patriarchy,
Speaker 2: at once they see themselves accepted by it, they will protected.
Speaker 2: The Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican and Latino men in general
Speaker 2: who see themselves as a part of this American dream
Speaker 2: that came from wherever they came from, and they were
Speaker 2: accepted now for incentivized, if not obligated, to protect that
Speaker 2: same American dream, the same American dream that craps on
Speaker 2: their countrymen, but speaks of them as they are criminal bigenetics,
Speaker 2: lesser biogenetics, murderers and rapist biogenetics, thieves and lazy genetically.
Speaker 2: That means he's talking about you too. But oh no,
Speaker 2: you did it the right way. You got the proper paperwork,
Speaker 2: you went through the proper steps, and you're here the
Speaker 2: right way. Everyone else is wrong, and everyone else hents
Speaker 2: also beneath you. Not just beneath him. I'll ask you guys, forgiveness.
Speaker 2: I do not have a redeeming thing to say today.
Speaker 2: I don't have a positive thing to say today. I
Speaker 2: don't have a hopeful thing to say today because I
Speaker 2: don't believe or feel any of that. I don't feel hopeful.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like there's redemption. I don't feel like
Speaker 2: there's some lesson that's going to be learned and people
Speaker 2: are going to get it the next time, if there's
Speaker 2: a next time. I saw people saying they would vote
Speaker 2: for him because he promised not to ban abortions. That's
Speaker 2: a really uninformed reason to vote for Donald Trump, because
Speaker 2: he's made very, very plainly his thoughts on abortion. I've
Speaker 2: seen people vote for him because of the economy. This
Speaker 2: is what I mean. You were just intentionally misinformed. Do
Speaker 2: the smallest amount of research, and you be blown away
Speaker 2: by the improvements of our economy under the current administration.
Speaker 2: From record lows and unemployment, record lows and black unemployment,
Speaker 2: decreasing of inflation, decreasings of prices across the board. Donald
Speaker 2: Trump had us in record debt by the trillions with
Speaker 2: a T Do you vote for him because of his economy.
Speaker 2: All of this keeps us from saying the very very
Speaker 2: obvious truth out loud. Wasn't Palestine, it wasn't the economy,
Speaker 2: it wasn't reproductive freedoms. Clearly, a black woman was running
Speaker 2: for president. We like to make things more complicated because
Speaker 2: we'd like to think that we're much more advanced and
Speaker 2: progressed society. We're not. There was another black person running,
Speaker 2: and she was a woman. And there's a massive segment
Speaker 2: of this society that will tell you to your face
Speaker 2: they voted to protect whiteness if you would get them
Speaker 2: to have a conversation with you where they wouldn't be
Speaker 2: shamed by anyone, which also doesn't seem to be something
Speaker 2: that matters anymore. Donald Trump's gonna stop all those immigrants
Speaker 2: from coming in here. He's going to deport all the
Speaker 2: immigrants that are here. He's going to make America great again.
Speaker 2: Making America white again is what they mean. White people
Speaker 2: to have all the power throughout all of history, all
Speaker 2: of it. Forever. We will stomp on, step on, and
Speaker 2: stagnate the progress of everyone else forever, to protect that
Speaker 2: every story, or the overarching themes of every story throughout
Speaker 2: the entirety of humankind has always from the Bible to
Speaker 2: Game of Thrones, has always had in its reserve some
Speaker 2: sort of redemption or redeeming except for the African seeds
Speaker 2: that were planted on American soil. Black people in this
Speaker 2: country have no redeeming. There is no redemption story, There
Speaker 2: is no happy ending. And every time we get a
Speaker 2: little bit of excitement, a little bit of joy, how
Speaker 2: dare you be happy? How dare you be hopeful? How
Speaker 2: dare you think it's going to work out for you?
Speaker 2: Along comes a petulant, narcissist, white supremacist child of a
Speaker 2: man who spits in our faces, tells us it's raining,
Speaker 2: and then we buy Trump umbrellas for it. He has
Speaker 2: woken up the most disgusting among us, and those who
Speaker 2: I consider far less disgusting got in line with.
Speaker 1: Them, and everybody that was supposed to save us stayed
Speaker 1: home because it was a black woman.
Speaker 2: Are you really going to stop being friends with people
Speaker 2: over politics? I would never, But am I going to
Speaker 2: stop being friends with who because they support and worship
Speaker 2: Donald Trump? Absolutely one, without equivocation? Yes, because I don't
Speaker 2: need people to think I'm smart, so I don't have
Speaker 2: to pretend to be a contrarian and think of some
Speaker 2: other thing about how flat the world is, and tell
Speaker 2: you all the reasons why I think so. To what end?
Speaker 2: How does that benefit me or anyone? All the scientists
Speaker 2: and the history of the of the planet have all
Speaker 2: worked against us to what end? To make us think what?
Speaker 2: There's no facts no more, there's no experts anymore. And
Speaker 2: somehow Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Is teaching us about windmills, is.
Speaker 2: Teaching us about anything. He's the leader of the free
Speaker 2: world now again, hope and belief in what bro like? Yeah, right, Well,
Speaker 2: like I.
Speaker 1: Said, you know, we are on a long road, and
Speaker 1: the road just got longer. It got a lot longer.
Speaker 1: And I'm not gonna pretend like that's not true, but
Speaker 1: that's the road. You know. I've said it before. I
Speaker 1: was not born a slave, So that means at some
Speaker 1: point some folks had to get on the same page
Speaker 1: black people and white people and make some progress. And
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't born in you know, and subjected
Speaker 1: to the black codes or Jim Crow, you know. And
Speaker 1: there was an evolution of what it meant to be
Speaker 1: black in this country by the time I was born.
Speaker 2: Reproject twenty twenty five and tell me how all that
Speaker 2: hope you're expressing right now can still exist.
Speaker 1: What I mean is that it's a long road and
Speaker 1: there's momentum, sometimes forward, sometimes backward, and this feels like
Speaker 1: a huge, gigantic, enormous step backwards. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you know, the road is not still ahead of us.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to walk and not be weary, am
Speaker 1: I run, and not think it's the only setting I have.
Speaker 1: As always, I'm inviting everyone to join me. This is
Speaker 1: what we do. Man. You know, sometimes we we are
Speaker 1: a little sad and sometimes we're big sad. And my
Speaker 1: hope is that eventually somebody gets to be happy somewhere,
Speaker 1: so we'll manifest that. We'll manifest that together. All right.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, i'd like to thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to this very heavy installment, probably the heaviest yet
Speaker 1: of Civic Cipher. I've been your host, ramses Jah, I
Speaker 1: am q Ward and do us a favor. Follow us
Speaker 1: on all social media. We are at Civic Cipher on
Speaker 1: all platforms. We got our work cut out for us,
Speaker 1: and we need your support now more than ever. We're
Speaker 1: going to keep doing what we have to do. And
Speaker 1: uh again, your well wishes, your support, your whatever it
Speaker 1: is you have, follows, likes, donations, comments, That goes a
Speaker 1: long way. If you have any questions, anything to add,
Speaker 1: like I said, you can hit us on Civic cipher
Speaker 1: dot com and of course you can download this in
Speaker 1: any previous episode. Yeah, we got our we got our
Speaker 1: marching orders, so let's march together all right? Until next time, y'all.
Speaker 2: Peace,