The Choice is Yours

into freedom. But freedom is leading, but which I mean between seeing people beating and bleeding on our TV's in the lately on the weekly, I just want to relax a bit cracker paths and watch the videos and cats and ship wishing these idiots and athens where equipped with the classism. But I'm really the shitty activist because everyone want to complain about the state of the system, congratulate

themselves on Facebook and paying attention and hop me. I know you're right for if nobody mobile lozz is a noble fight. We stay in slaves for a century and we're something. Giving the ship would fix it. Whish giving the ship was the simplest Wiston Dixie. The only way I had to fix it was catching my chips in. So who hast to fix the system first? I have

to fix yo. I'm blowing up enough that ship run past kids chilling with a blood that slit fuck fascist, eat them up for lunch back quick with the college for a year. Then I said funk that ship. Put my hands in the street. You couldn't stand the defeat that my man valid said, I could slam. Wanna be We made a crew, started a clan that was deep. Only thing you don't want with dope Sandwich is beef. I'm pretty sure it's coming back. You just gotta wait

for it. I'm on another different realm of thinking. It was a person on the earth of it, a helmet and pan rom swelled to sink in. Just watch us breaking it down, taking your town like miss monsters. It gets bonkers. So we slapped with a whole hand. It spent to any beat, even rapping a slow jams you in my bro hand. How you gonna be in the damn Senate? And there's a pandemic with no plan mother, yo, yeah, waiting no reparation, reparation. You know my name is Dope

Knight and we are waiting on reparations. Hurry the fuck up. All right, We're back once again, another week of politics and hip hop. What's going on in your world, dope knife, Oh, I've in recent weeks. I've hit that bug where I've just been working on a lot of rapidy rap raps, so I'll have some stuff for people listen too soon. But other than that, it's been hard to avoid keeping

up with the election. As of when we're recording this, it's seven days away, but when you guys hear this, it should be five days before the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. There's already been unprecedented early voting, so millions and millions of people have already voted. And at this point it's so close that you know, what else is there to say? How are you feeling about

the whole thing? I'm good. I'm mostly looking ahead towards November four with regards to just like organizing for whatever aftermath of the election comes, knowing that best case scenario is still massive civil unrest either way, and so um just yeah, connecting with comrades and like Atlanta and like within like anarchists and anti fascist circles here in Athens.

Regarding Mike, what are we gonna do? What I mean, you know, just in all fairness, we don't know that there's going to be civil unrest, you know, but it is always good to prepare for it. I mean, best case scenario, one of them could win decisively and no one's mad, and the demoralized, demoralized people uh ransack J C. Pennies, demoralized people crawl through broken plate glass windows to steal jewelry off a mannequins, Like, yeah, are you just thinking

about this for the first time? I'm in No, of course not. But there's definitely like a Y two K sort of vibe to it where I don't want to be on the record saying that the end is coming and then it doesn't, you know. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when motherfucker's thought they were going to put people in FEMA camps. That never happened. Well, we'll cross their tru Yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. How are you feeling about the outcome of

the election or do you just are you completelytimistic? I mean, like I feel like either way, like the fight goes on. I would prefer Joe Biden as an enemy. I would prefer John ass Off as an enemy. I would prefer Raphael Warnock as an enemy. And so um. The fact that they are all doing well on the poles here in Georgia is a point of uplift for me. So as a question, not to get too off topic, but given given what the what the other side has to offer,

what do you would you like? Do you would you consider John ass Off to be an enemy or we're gonna have to fight him to fight him for? Yeah? Is there no difference between an enemy and opposition? I mean, I'm gonna have to fight either of these people for like basic rights to like healthcare and housing. I would much rather right John ausuf on it then David Purdue. And but I'm not saying there's no difference between that. I would I would prefer John Auto because there is

a difference between these two sides. I don't see them as equally one size diametrically opposed. All that I stand with stand for the other I feel like just doesn't get it. So, you know, not to hate, you know, I voted for both of those cats. I voted for all these cats. Last week. UM went down down to vote on the first day of early voting, and the line was wrapped around the block, And so I took

a time lapse video of the line, posting it online. Yeah, and I was actually chastised by fellow commissioner who said, with long lines become the story and depresses turn out like it was like a disservice I had done to the public to let people know that the lines along. Maybe pack a snack, maybe bring a friend, maybe loads some loads some episodes of Watchman onto your phone. Well, what's the suggestion that, like people just it's better for people to show up there and be surprised by a lot.

They're more likely to walk away from that want of people to know where they're getting into. I want folks to, you know, bring change with the parking leader meter, get time off works, and the responsibility from their calendar for an hour or two if need be. There's no sense in denying the facts. A ton of people are trying to vote early, perhaps because of the scaremongering around mail and ballots and tamporary with the post office has gotten to people. I really think the right has won the

discourse with regards to mail and voting. Well, the right definitely does propaganda way better than the left does, so you know, their messaging is just more on point, just in terms of how much they drone any particular thing that they want a message at a time, and I

want to make one thing very clear. I feel like I told it like a very sin line between like, you know, I believe people should engage typically in every way they can, while recognizing some shit is disrect For example, Thomala Harris tweeted out something like vote and you can change two things. And I saw, you know, a lot of leftist sounding off in the response that she had been appointed to the second highest position possible without ever having received a single ballot cast in her favor in

the presidential primary. And so yes, some should have just rigged. But because some should have just rigged, it's necessary for us to push at every point of weakness in the system possible, including uh, spitting in the face of voter suppression by voting by any means necessary. Most of deff, I mean, if your vote didn't mean anything, they wouldn't

be trying so hard to prevent you from voting. And make no mistake, they there there is a side that is actively trying to prevent people from voting black people, specifically, so you know, you should be a middle finger in their face because of that alone. Now is presidential election tumbles towards us with daily reports of bold face voter suppression by the way of ballot purging, mail tampering, and disinformation.

This episode, we discuss America's uneven history with its citizens right to vote, as well as dive into what role,

if any, hip hop has played in electoral politics. I want to just like frame this idea of voting around the idea of just like resisting ah voter suppression and just like really in this small way, but small but powerful way, like agitating against so many forces at play and that have been at play historically that I've tried to disenfranchise us from what through our really shitty civics education available to us in America is framed as like

the highest form of participation in the government, Like oh go, you know, you do your you do your mock collections in your fourth grade class, and everyone puts your little you know, I remember putting my little Native vote in the ballot box, you know, and we tabulate, you know, and like it's seen as like this is how you participate, and that like marching and all these other things like

are seen as like historical. Do you think it's Do you think it's because of the easiest form of participation, And that's the thing. That's what I'm trying. That's what I like to lay out today, that it's it's not even and because it's hard, it's it's worth doing. UM I'd say it's easier to go stand in the street and yell no justice, no peace for two hours and block traffic. I enjoyed, I personally enjoyed a great deal more than going to vote. But because it's hard is

why it's so valuable to do. And so let's take a trip back through time, starting back in eighteen seventy, when the fifteenth Amendment was ratified. UM, I can look a little bit about the history of voter suppression in America. So back in the seventh decade of the eight hundreds, states were prohibited from disenfranchising voter is on a koind of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. However, it did not provide automatic writing voting rights for African Americans. UM,

and Congress did not enforce a fifteen Amendment immediately. UM. Tennessee, as a matter of fact, was the last state to formally ratify the fifteen Amendment in guess what year, nineteen nine seven seven. I can only imagine how many obvious laws were passed like recently, I know, UM Alabama didn't make interracial marriage legal until two thousand and showed, oh no, our country is backwards. So by eighteen seventy twenty eight states that adopted a version of these laws prohibiting convicted

felons the right to vote. According to the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, some states still enact these laws. Literacy tests were implemented to stop those who were uneducated from participating in the voting process. The tests were administered by those in charge of the voting red frustration and often discriminated against African Americans. You gotta remember that African Americans who took part in these tests for the descendants of slaves, who were not allowed to read or write

in supple states to antiliteracy law. So like five years before the right like literally right before this, like it was illegal for them to read a write. Suddenly they have the right to vote. They're like, wow, you gotta be able to read a write. Bit So, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, only two states Vermont, you have everyone the uninhibited right to vote. UM Free States UM currently disenfranchised fells from voting permanently. Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia.

Poll taxes meant to prevent people of color from voting, continued into the twentieth century. Now, as of nineteen sixty four, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, they all clung to the poll taxes. And that was reported in the New York Times. And that's all the way back in nineteen sixty four. Poll taxes were abolished in nine four with the Fourth Amendment, and literacy tests

were outlawed under the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. However, Florida still makes formally in cautrate to people pay off their fines before being able to vote, which some have called a modern poll tax, which brings us to um the villain, the true villain. Like I don't know if there's like a comic book analog for like Donald Trump is the true villain? Who is Michael Bloomberg and like the Marvel cinematic universe of presidential election. Now, you might

have to give me some d C in that. Okay, gave me some of that. Well, Mike Bloomberg is kind of like Dark Knight returns Batman in a way. Yeah, yeah, because you know, it's like he definitely thinks he's the good guy. So that's that would be a big difference between him and like, uh, you know, diabolical evil genius

who knows that he's diabolical and evil. Well, you know, he promised to pour millions in new billions into this president election and pretty much hasn't shown up until quite recently to do such, raising more than sixteen million dollars to pay fines and restitution for convicted bellains in Florida's they're able to to vote ahead of election um, adding to the five million dollars that was raised by the nonpartisan voting rights advocacy group Florida Rights Restoration Correalition. Just

a little bit of a clip. He has been um paying for a lot of ads for Biden, I think in Florida as well, but also might be elsewhere. So you know, good job for him, clap club. It just sucks that, you know, contributions like that can only come from as far left as Mike Bloomberg. You know, I imagine there are some rich, rich people whose politics are a bit more in line with mine than Mike Bloomberg. But you know, definitely the right has that sort of

shipped on lock. I mean fucking Republicans they spend money on that on ship like that, you know what I'm saying. Like the Republican billionaires and conservative billionaires, they fund think tanks and they on YouTube channels and failed comedians, infringe professors and whatever other little sneaky ship they can do to spread their ideology and their messaging and their propaganda

and to actually get cold hard policy passed in their favor. So, you know, good for Bloomberg got to play the game. So Lebron James and his More Than a Vote group recently announced a partnership with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to help Florida voters with past felony convictions. James team fellow NBA players Trey Young, Skylar Diggin Smith, and other black celebrities and athletes from the Voter Rights Organization with

the goal to fight against voter suppression. And so all of this to me, I mean I feel like you here oftentimes like you know, vote because our our fore fathers and four mothers fought for the right. And it's like, yes, that's true, but I find it I'm more much more generative framing. It's a lot easier to do things out of younger than out of respect. Um. I think that has animated a lot of the like brunch liberal organizing against Trump, the resistance over the last four years, like

they were sleep. As long as it was organized, it was animated by respect for people doing good. As soon as it was animated by disdain for those doing evil, it was like boom, everyone's a member of you know, Surge and whatever. You know, Black lives matter, signs of the yard. And so I just want this to anger you. I want I want the knowledge of like the poll taxes and the literacy tests and the way that the poll taxes are still alive today to hold back people

who are living under the new gym. Crow to piss you the fuck off and get you so fired up to stick too, middle fingers up in the air to these assholes that want to ensure that we continue to have no say in our electoral process by fucking getting in that fucking line in the rain, And would you went rain boots on? Bring you know, stop at Chipotle, ber you or burrito, Like call up your homegirl you ain't talked to you know, how quick forty five minutes?

Chat it fucking just go and wait in line of vote to say fuck you, but them to say fuck you to them. But I think something that's important, at least for me, and I don't want to be a centrist about this, is we gotta call a spade to Spain. There is a political party that is dedicated towards voter suppression right now. And for all of our complaints, it's not the Democrats, you know what I'm saying. So it's

just let's just get that out there. Is that if the way that Republicans are going, if they had half a chance, they literally would be doing like literacy tests and ship like that. And I just want to do a quick side note. But like when I think about my work as an elected official here in Athens, I I even think about it as strengthening democracy because voter suppression also takes the form of of having to pay a dollar seventy five to ride the bus, a bus

that only comes once an hour. It doesn't take you right to your to your destination. Voter suppression is also not having paid leave from work. Voter suppression is also not having access to affordable childcare. It's not having electually not being in a holiday it's uh, not having access to affordable healthcare so that you have chronic conditions that you know, make it so that you you know, just with reguards to the built environment, you know, you gotta

wheel your wheelchair up to the voting booth. You might decide not to go because it feels like too daunting, And so all of these policies I'm trying to pass on the local level, it's like, yes, to improve people's lives, but also the idea that like when we lower the barriers to to access to civic spaces for folks by making fair free, making public transit fair free, by like raising a way doesn't get in, mandating paid time off and make the election day holiday, and giving people access

to healthcare and giving people access to sheld care where people will participate, and when more people participate, that's when

should actually gets better. I don't think I can do a whole lot of ship, but I can do a whole lot more ship if all these barriers are lowered and there's a lot more people getting out and voting, a lot more people showing up at these town halls, a lot more people come in to city hall, a lot more people here canvasing and knocking on tours for initiatives that they believe in, and so like, uh, I think we need to think more broadly about what voter

suppression means and like what we can accomplish when we combat it everywhere. It manifests in that project, and that project isn't just oh, you know Stacey Abrams organization like making sure there's pull watchers or whatever that is. That's the work that goes on year round with regards to agitating for policy, Like, that's fighting voters oppression as well. And that's not just about casting about it's about making the lives of your neighbor is better. And that's something

that's going to happen on November two. That's what's gonna happen on number four in November four, and like it's gonna keep going. Life is voter suppression, you know what I mean? The whole thing is designed so that you feel discouraged from voting. Now, I'm gonna have to push back on that because I think the ultimate voter suppression is being dead. Being alive is it enables voting more so than really any other condition ontologically anything short of Yeah,

the thing short of of of being dead. But yeah, you know, it's just like with everything that people have to worry about in their day to day it does sometimes feel like, you know, the whole you know, rat

rat race, chasing the cheese. It feels like everybody is in such a hustle that things like being involved in the election process can sometimes seem as like a second or third thought, especially in these times when you have I'm amazed that the voting is the way that it is when you have a pandemic and economic anxiety going on,

real economic anxiety is there. There needs to be I think in America of a reconnection with like civics, you know, and just just so that the average person understands, at least in theory, how the government is supposed to work, you know. I feel like that being more of a of a broader knowledge to people, even people who don't agree with anything that people like us have to say. I think based knowledge at a younger age of how American government is supposed to operate and function kind of

disqualifies a lot of trump Ism type. I feel like the knowledge of how the government functions is only useful when paired with knowledge of how to intercept it. At various points collectively to get shipped done, which is what not what we're teaching kids in schools. Um, they're seeing, you know, people marching in the streets, but they don't

understand what it takes to put together a rally. They're like seeing on the news, like you know, people marching on the capitol, but not understanding how those policy demands were settled upon by these organizations. And that's civics and that's what we need to start teaching you so that yes, they vote because they have a very robust repertoire of forms of civic engagement that they do year round. But do you think we need to teach that in schools?

And I don't mean from a moral standpoint, I just mean from like do we really I mean, what type of what type of protests are you going to learn in school? Like officially? Like isn't that more something that you pick up like outside of the system, because that's how it has worked traditionally. But imagine if we taught like community organizing as a part of our civis education. I mean, what do you remember learning about civics in school? Oh?

I went to a series of international schools as a kid, so I definitely got a bit more of a robust education about how American government and politics operated when I was younger. Um, something that comes to mind that I

guess kind of plays into what you're talking about. I remember in eighth grade, I think it was I had a teacher who off the books gave us a or I should say off the record, gave us a for class textbook that year was this book called Don't Know Much about American History, and it was just kind of like a debunking of all the traditional historic stories that you're told and then it gives you the you know, real hardcore truth about what happened in that particular incident.

But that was like our whole textbook for history class. Yeah, I've never I've never had a civics class. Um, I've only ever taken like social studies were like this is how a bill becomes a lot, but not like you know, if the Senate does this and that, you'll show up at d C with a hundred thousand of your homegirls and you know, fucking fight. Well, this is We're going to kind of get into this when we do the

music discussion. But I feel like situations like that are where hip hop could easily fill in that gap where you know, motherfucker's just incorporating ship like that into their music so that people are at least picking up some knowledge and stuff, you know, some fucking schoolhouse rock type ship. Anyway, let's move on and talk a little bit about modern

forms of voter suppression. Definitely, so we're seeing again some of the Republicans frequently do right before an election, which is a launch of voter fraud investigations in order to suppress turn out. For example, this happened in two thousand seventeen ahead of Alabama's special state election, when Republican Secretary of State John Merrow claimed that nearly seven people had

illegally voted in the Republican primary. He wanted to prosecute the alleged offenders for felonies that would carry it prison sentimps up to ten years, but appropriate judges ultimately found that a hundred for people had voted in the Democratic primary then illegally voted in the Republican parties runoff. It's likely because of so called crossover voting, which was legal until the state legislature and made it a crime earlier that year. A change Merrold did very little to make

the public aware of because it did not finis narrative. UM, so the judges recommended no cases for prosecution and the issue just ended just quietly. It was a non event. Even so, he made a huge deal of the voters oppression, We're gonna get them for felonies, and it's like, uh, they didn't realize they're breaking a law because previously you were totally allowed to vote a Democratic primary and then

a Republican run off. UM. But it generated these scary headlines about voter fraud and felonies carrying ten years sentences and was effective in suppressing the turnout. It's all part of their narrative. In Georgia, in two thousand and eighteen, two days before the mid term, Secretary of State Brian Kemp he came out with an explosive announcement. So he said they were investigating the state Democratic Party for attempting

to hack the state's voter registration system. At the time, Kemp was both the state's top election official and the Republican nominee for governor in a dead heat race against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Kemp had a history could have had a bad bitch. Kemp had a history of bogus voter fraud allegations against his political opponents, and many recognized this brazen tactic. At the time. Election law expert Rick Hanson called it perhaps the most outrageous example of election administration

partisanship in the modern era. Just basically banana republic type stuff. Quote. But the allegation allowed Kemp to accuse his opponent and the opposition party of a serious crime, distracting from his own failures as Secretary of State. Kempt won a narrow victory by less than fifty five thousand votes. I remember that, should I remember that that I knew exactly what he was doing and knew exactly what he was trying to do.

Didn't realize at the time. There's a part of a long standing Republican playbook, and here it is happening again

with the Trump Justice Department successfully generating news about voter fraud. UM. You know, it's a central strategy once again to the Trump campaign Republican National Committee to fight court battles, to make it harder to vote by a mail, and to prepare to contest absentee ballots after the election, and recently, UM in Wisconsin, they ruled the Wisconsin Supreme Court rule that I have to stop counting absentee ballots at midnight on election day, which I'm not sure about Wisconsin law,

but most places, Georgie included, they can't even start counting absentee ballots until election day, which gives them like a twelve hour window in which to count what could be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of absiditty ballots.

And like you know, and the and the pressure that puts on the polling staff, the people that are in there counting these fucking ballots and ship like, it's just it's just like anyone that tries to say supreme courts of anything, our neutral entities, that just no, these niggas, it's sucking appointed by the Republicans, and they do their bidding, consume their narratives and get them the festers in their brains,

like you know, damn black mold. Yeah, we're gonna have to do something about these courts, just in terms of a strategy to get around them. There's something, but that's a topic for a whole another episode there. We've got what's going on in Texas. So Governor Abbott in October made a declaration that there be just one ballad drop

box in each county. He said it would help curb legal voting, mirroring President Donald Trump's claims made without evidence, that postal voting is a major source of electoral fraud, despite Federal Election Commission rejecting these claims. But you know, there there there was a back and forth. At one point a judge ruled that he couldn't do it, But as of now of us recording it, another judge is ruled in his favor. So there is going to be

only one ballad drop box. This this is ridiculous. This is And then in California you had Republicans setting up fake ballad drop boxes. Fucking fake drop boxes. Think about that ship. That's like a crime. Let this enrage you, Let this boil your blood and bring you near tears, and on the brink of tearing. Every fall a coal of hair from your scalp, and fucking blastsom goddamn R

T J or whatever you listen to. Reel out in your car as you roll up and pop out, lock your doors and put a little bit of change in the meter. Get out, pop up your umbrella, if it's raining standing on my fucking line, vote early in person, because clearly they want these ballot boxes. Man, if I can win these ballot boxes, they're trying to make it so that they're gonna stop counting the ballots at midnight on election night, all this ship is going to be crazy,

illegal battles on one step at a time. All we can do, we can do, we can control. All we can do is do and like, if you're going to participate, then just make sure you know how you're going to

vote in the next five to seven days. Make sure you if you're gonna wait for election day, make sure you have your plan in place, bring a friend, bring a family member, and uh yeah, you know that's uh, that's all we can really do is to just you know, if you're paying attention, then you know what the stakes are so out there and do your part and be safe while you're doing it. So let's get into the music discussion. So as we uh, you know, as the

election approaches. This being a hip hop show, we kind of wanted to delve in and talk a little bit about some examples of instances and time when rappers have perhaps expressed their opinions on this elect election system of ours or even tried to off directly. Yeah, both, you know, just through statements to the media as well as in their music. So recently Blue Face said, hell, nah, he's not voting, quoted in double excel as having said, I don't know, na I, I really I don't know. I

just ain't in that stage in my life. And he's as look at my face, you think they give a funk who I vote for, which I mean, I feel like he's not wrong in the sense that like when we when we think of black voters as a monolith, the're thinking about like black lower middle to middle class like folks that are not a part of Like no, they're not running in the underground economy, they're not aspiring rappers.

These are the folks that are like pretty much cast as disposable with regards to car salty like, oh, like any day now is Nick is gonna end up in prison and disenfranchise and can't vote anyway, So why would we like seek them out and seek their votes? And so like I can't I can't really be mad at him for feeling like they don't they don't give a funk who you vote for. A blue Face, especially as

like a personal choice, and I don't mind that at all. Yeah, But interestingly, yeah, a Snoop Dogg said he'll be voting for the first time next this month. And see, Snoop Dogg isn't that stage in his life. He's like, what, Yeah, Snoop Dogg is forty years old, He's in that stage of life. He's that demographic. He says, I ain't never voted a day in my life, but this year, I think I'm gonna get out and vote because I can't stand into this punkin office one more year, referring to Trump.

For many years they had me brainwashing thing that you couldn't vote because you had a criminal record. I didn't know that my record has been expunged to now can vote, which is a very very real phenomena. And also, I gotta say in it's that's refreshing to hear a rapper that doesn't support Nazis. It's definitely a breath of fresh air,

since that's a it's a hard thing from Motherfux to do. Now. Apparently, I'll never forget the story that one of my colleagues on the Commission told me of Canvas being in a black neighborhood and encounter a man who told her that he couldn't vote for her because he was a felon, And she explained to him that, you know, once you have served your promotion time, when you're off parole or whatever, when he's starting, you've painting all your fines, you can

get your right to vote back. This man literally cried. He broke down and cried in front of her because he had been eligible to vote since Obama's uh first term in office, and he didn't realize and he cried knowing that he could have voted for the first black president. He did it didn't get a chance to ye. And so thinking about just what I mean, like fucking felons should be like, well you should everyone should be able

to vote in jail. Well, I mean, but I will accept as a compromise automatic voter registration that includes folks that immediately upon your release. That's the whole that should be. The whole purpose of like going going in and serving your time is that you come out and you have of a second chance. I don't understand where even the concept of like, yo, somebody is going to go and do their bid and then come out and be less of a citizen than everybody else. It just doesn't make

any sense now. All the way back in two thousand and four, H. P. Diddy used his voice and platform to try to directly affect the two thousand four election between George Bush and John Kerry. UM Citizen Change was a nonpartisan political service group founded in two thousand four by P. Diddy. It was backed by Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, fifty cent, and others who started with the

aim to get young people and minorities to vote. The endeavor had P. Diddy touring campuses around the country in a private jet dubbed Air Force Change, and they were pledging that voting was sexy and cool as the you know, Bush Kerry election approach. The slogan that they had plastered all over T shirts and TV and posters everywhere that whole summer was voter Die Now. Despite Diddy's best efforts and mt VS twenty million loud voter registration campaign UM

young people. While they did turnout in record numbers, they pretty much made up the same percentage as they did overall in two thousand, so it didn't really make that much of a difference in the election. And George Bush won. Now, you know, some people have attributed the tone deafness and the corny nous as to why Citizen Change didn't really

have that much of an impact on the election. Two of its main faces, Paris Hilton and fifty cent at the time, we're both publicly not even registered to vote at the time, and the irreverent nature of the slogan voter die was just you know, and got spoofed on South par Yeah, it's just like I mean, still I'm still trying to figure out exactly what what voter die

means at this point. You know, there's you could you could go and look up interviews of p did He explaining it, But um, I think you're still gonna be wondering what do you mean? What do you meant by it? Citizen Change would eventually come under fire from the conservative organization the National Legal Policy Center for violating election law

and promoting Kerry and opposing Bush. Funk all that a decade later, though, back in did he had done a complete reversal and was of the opinion that voting was a scam and it wasn't something that you should participate in. But recently and as recently, as July, he's come around and he's said that, you know, Trump is a existential threat and we got to get rid of them, so people should vote to get rid of I can't even

be mad at that either. I feel like when we talk about being strategic and being practical, it's also looking at the particular dynamics of a given election and uh, deciding whether or not it's I don't know where you want to put your efforts. Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's the same the same thing. I don't want to sound like a broken record everybody, but it's the same thing that I was saying last time. Every year that comes around, they tell you, hey, this is the most

important election of your lifetime or ship like that. Now, if you're if you know what there is to know, then you know that most of the times they say that it's bullshit. It's still kind of up to you to decide whether you feel that way about this election. But I definitely feel that way about this election. So with that, I definitely don't I do not judge anybody who is voting with like like a sense of survival.

You know. It's like looking into some of the songs that in which folks have addressed voting, voting in elections and stuff. All right, yeah, so two of these songs have a pretty um strong video component that's kind of important to the overall message. First up, we got the Eminem song mash off his two thousand four album Encore

Now in the set the same two thousand and four election. Uh, As the summer came to a close, you had Michael Moore's Fahrenheit nine eleven come out, and a bunch of celebrities started making a lot more overtly political statements and you know, being you know, making their anti war, anti Bush stance is a lot more obvious, and this would

be Eminem's contribution to that. So let's check this out on videos animated and has a little documentation of a cartoon character going to Iraq and protesting, mass protesting in the streets, things of that nature. It's definitely one of those songs where you know, he has a fun Bush line in there in the imagery and the video, but the song itself is not necessarily laser focused on bashing Bush. I have a song kind of goes hard. It's a

dope song, and you know what it's for me? It's definitely one of the songs where it was better when I was younger. It's not it's not prescriptive in terms of like how to engage. He's like articulating like let's let's band together, everybody in the middle and the sides, let's all grew up, let's march, let's be together, but not like marching to the polling booth to like and

that like kind of quartified voted away. Yeah, no, I feel you, And I don't want to speak for Eminem, but I feel like through this song, in the publicity that they made around it, in around it being an anti Bush song, I just more so think this is like a cultural play where it's just bringing into awareness. Hey, I'm the most popular rapper on the planet, and I'm

saying fuck Bush. You know what I'm saying. I think that was I think he felt that was an important message to get out there or an important stance that his fans know that he has. This is an industry protest song. Whereas same artist, Eminem, same general time period. Two on his album The Eminem Show, he had a song called white America that has a verse on there

that is pretty, you know, vividly anti Bush. It's it's like two years before this election took place, but I think it illustrates more of his views on like the administration and just his views on the war. I think it did a lot of that better than this song. I'm pretty sure those are like the only two lines, the fun Bush part and tie it to that real to the actual to the contection video is much more a statement against the Bush administration than I the song is.

And I feel like that's a really interesting tendency in hip hop that like it makes me think it like this as America or like EMM and Fans point Rain, where like the visual adds this dimension of context to the lyrics that like makes it more pointedly political. Um um. Next, we have so the legendary group Black Sheep. Drezz from Black Sheep. Around two thousand eight, he decided to go all in for Obama and he made a reworking of

their classic song the Choice is Yours. You know, you can go with this, you can go with that, you can go with this, and he made like, you know, a whole redo of the song while working with Austin based production house Um House Voodoo Cowboy Entertainment. That's the name, and they made this pro Obama track Choices Yours remix. What I feel sads with me. He's got my back to night. You know what I'm saying, people, you need to catch it. Okay, uh, please, this is two thousand eight.

Let's just keep things in proper perspective. Please. I understand that forty year old black rapper in two thousand its excited enough about Obama to make a rap song about it. I do not begrudge him of that. Like, it's not like Barack Obama was running for abice, Like I am going to be really centrist. I promise I won't change much, but you can hope. Yeah, I would have. Now. This song definitely has more lines in it that are relevant to the election, but um, the video still does come

into play heavily. There's imagery of Sarah Palin John McCain US stock exchange crashing to illustrate the recession going on at the time, and then naturally when they get to the hook, they're saying, you can get with this, so you can get with that, showing you the choice between Obama and McCain. The choice is yours. Yeah, you know what I'm unoffended by that I I I was old enough to know that or to remember like the excitement about Obama. Then I get it. I don't. I don't

you know? Yeah? And I mean, even in crafting the wraps for this week's episode, thinking about having to wrap about voting, I feel fucking lamb of shit. There's just not a way to make it cool other than well, you don't have to make a vote because fuck them. Let me give everybody a little insight into how things are made. Right. So, the the only real rule that we really give ourselves for when we're coming up with some of these verses for the rap part is it's

just generally rapping about the subject. But we can go whatever direction we go with it. We can go with that. Can you go with this? All right? Days by I'm sorry, Yeah, okay, so yellow paints my vote don't count. Let's listen to a little bit of this. It was three branches of the government. We forgot it when we got o. It's the judicial, the legislative, and executive governor and the president. Just keeping it real. God damn, there are a lot of um there's a lot of people who could probably

learn a lot from that song. Yo, I'm about to put that in my service classes when I get out its PhD though straight up? That define all right? You know, like these judges run uncontested. The state house races are uncontested. We don't know who our congress people are. We don't see them out in our communities, but they're the ones that are putting the fucking legislation on the executive branches desk to vote to a firm a vitao. And it's simple.

It's just like putting the message out there. It's civics. There's no difference between what he just did in like some schoolhouse rock ship when like my little my older brother, like my dad were like younger and ship. You know, it's like I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol. He'll come on, somebody, somebody out there has to remember that ship too. It's using the power of hip hop to inform people some ship,

but making it fresh, you know what I'm saying. So it's like we was both bump into it like we were hearing the new trapped banger in the nightclub. So it's like that that's how you get those messages out there, like that and the framing the framing the song is called My Vote Don't Count and talking about its own

personal disillusionment with the system. And yet through it he builds an argument for why we've been looking at it all the wrong way and actually we need to pay more attention than ever because it's not about and that's good and it goes back specifics and how and our

civic imagination. As a country, we view the executive friend to the federal government as this pinnacle of where decisions get made, whereas the truth is that the judges, your superior court, your municipal court, your magistrate court, your sheriff, your state housepresentatives, your congress people like those are the folks that are gonna be putting legislation on the president's desk.

Those are the folks that are going to determine whether or not you can get your kids back, um you know, when you get out of jail, or whether or not you're gonna have to wear an ankle monitor, and it's going to constrain whether or not you can leave your fucking house. All these quality of life issues come down to all these other elected positions that they don't they don't know how to make important to children in school and and and as the adults we don't care about them.

They well when we say vote and we focus on the importance of voting, you know, I think the best way to go about doing that without feeling like we're just resigning to you know, feeding people more fluff about oh, the president, vote for president. That's the most important thing is to just, yeah, is to encourage people to vote all the time, to actively be engaged for sheriff, Actively be engaged with your democracy and like make make put

the people that you want in charge in charge. But don't just don't just do it for the big one every four years. Engage with all of them and like make tangible change in your community that you're in right now. But um, you know, we're gonna get into some wrap

things in a second. But you know, by the time you guys hear this, we are either going to be preserving the status quo for another four years or we're gonna be getting to some real, some real foul gangs and ship And I hope that it's the status quo for another four years. And we'll fight that when we get there. But that's just me. But all of y'all out there, be safe, good luck and you know, fight the power. Let's get a beat. Yeah yeah, we're waiting

on reprobations. Yo. Hey, yo, so take my name to your local vallet box to give this information so they hope you have forgotten taken from the city streets up to the mountain tops. They consider you with threats, so your vote they have to stop. Give you obstacles in life. They've got lots of those. Can make you feel like this vote and ship is kind of impossible, but not so though. I ain't with the games in a shame if it's not for Joe, but I ain't fucking with you.

So you guys to go all just trying to block and vote. Pull watch tops, approach, find out where it's going down and the flocking droves. I sent the absolute You don't know what the god is, so do it all in person. Don't trust this mail boxes, yo, I called myself. They're gonna stop mail if we all go out, and we will all not fail. If they steal ship,

get the Molotov cocktails. Don't marry. You're fifty one to try to solve Ross well with a chain ship only relatively best pass fascism with a new president of let you're ready to fight whoever wins, and know so in my middle fingers. In the year streaming voting president election is upon us and set up in the making election the opposite ain't just about the president, It's also about the Senate and the sheep in the corner. Who the fund you voting for? Down a ballet candidates they matter

just much. But most people cast a ballots without looking them up. That ship is rookie stoff. They get voted and without even working hard, and they fat cat friends stay ready in the cookie jot. So looking here, everybody knows that's been a cookie here. But on November, Betacy, you're playing hookie, joining us in the streets, demanding the vote to county, because when we come together, we are bigger than our ballots. Bars bars, bars, bars bars. Get

out of voting out the streets in November for us. Hey, I'm dope knife Franca. We are waiting. Hurry up. Follow us on i Heeart reparations on Instagram. See you next week. Waiting on Reparations as a production of I Heeart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the i Heeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.