September 20, 2023 • 32 mins
This will help you shut down the blue check bros who hit you with a "Well actually" about what democracy means.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Cool media. Okay, so today's episode might be a little
short but very powerful, Like my grandma, I want to
preempt some arguments you're gonna have. I mean, and it's
(00:26):
a good thing that like a lot of us are
jumping out of X. You know, I'm gonna go ahead
and call it X cuz hey listen, like a good
progressive if somebody changes their pronoun and I'm an hon
or Day pronoun. So look, if Twitter is now X,
it is now X, I'm a respect its name sing.
(00:51):
That's tweeting now sing anyway, But whether you're talking to
a bot or a blue check bro or some sort
of elon sexual or just the like pseudo intellectual that's
gonna try to like school you with the well, actually,
maybe you got a cousin or uncle who just got
(01:13):
out of prison. He been reading books. He been reading
books without any guidance. You know, they just get out
of prison. They doing nothing but reading that they know everything.
You don't want to discourage them because they make it
a change of they life. You gotta learn how to
build with them. Anyway. So if you even if you're
talking to your ex con family member and you just
talking right about you talking about the death of democracy
(01:35):
and are voting because of course it's going to be
just chaos for our next election. So before somebody actually
wearing up, I'm like, we're a democratic repub Black. I'm
not sure and they know what they talk about, and
I want to make sure you know what you're talking about.
(01:56):
So let's go back to elementary school and let's plan
and a school wide pizza party, ice cream, social hood politics, y'all.
(02:18):
All right, for some of y'all, it's back to school season.
For some of y'all who got kids, you know where
your children are now out your house. You are not
responsible for figuring out things for them to do all day,
so you could possibly get stuff done and go have
lunch during the day, not that your kids is gone.
(02:39):
I think we all thought summer was the best time
of the year, but that's because we were in school
then and summer was our break. Now we understand that,
especially as parents, summer's probably the hardest time. It's the
most expensive. I gotta find camps. I can't get anything
done five minutes. Can I have a snack? Oh my god?
(03:00):
It is so much more work in the summer when
you get anyway, So this is the most wonderful time
of the year for parents. But I want to take
you back to when you were an elementary school. Now,
I don't know the specifics of your elementary school. This
is definitely any Hood USA scenario here. You know, at
(03:24):
the end of the year, like if you guys did good,
you'd get like a you know, pizza party or something,
you know, ice cream. If let's get all perfect attendance,
if no one gets in trouble, if nobody gets sent
to the prisons, everybody, if we finished our test, you
get your little pizza party, little ice cream party. I
remember my elementary school if I can't remember what the
(03:48):
carrot was that they dangled in front of us, But
if we did something by the end of the year,
maybe it was fundraising, I don't remember exactly what it was.
We would get like a school wide like last day
of school party, balloons, pizza, ice cream, all the stuff
that once you cross thirty you can't eat no more.
Whatever it was, dust was the type of thing. And
(04:10):
I know my demographic don't like like you could still
eat cheese and ice cream and not it killed your belly.
So let's go back to elementary school. End of the
year celebration. You guys made it. I don't know, perfect attendance,
whatever it is, whatever it was, this is your time.
You get your pizza and ice cream, social, your water balloons,
(04:32):
everything school wide. Right, But now you got to decide
what kind of pizza, which kind of ice cream, what
movie we're gonna watch. I mean, we want this thing
to go up, right, So you got I mean, look
y'all worked hard for this. You gotta get this right.
And which games we're gonna play? All right, I'm going
(04:57):
to explain to you what a republic it means with this,
because this is what we do at Hood politics. Yes,
bring the track in madness, all right, So here we go.
(05:33):
You got, I don't know what, let's paint the picture.
Here's what's our demographic, Like, Okay, if if we're on
my side of town, we're predominantly Latino, sprinkled with equal
parts Filipino and African American with a little pieces of salt,
(05:54):
like a couple couple of white people in there that like,
and so many white people actually are just Spaniards or
they're Latinos that are very light skin, whatever the case
may be. This our part of town, right, that's for that.
Maybe your school is not. Maybe your school is super
major versus just just as white as mayonnaise. I don't know, Pitt.
Your elementary school, you know what you got, You got
your there was I remember the early two thousands of
(06:16):
a cartoon called Recess, which was spot on elementary school.
Like y'all remember that cartoon. It was Disney Cartoons perfect.
You had your av kid, which y'all don't really know
nothing about nomore because uh, you don't need an audio
visual kid. It's you have laptops. But you had your
av kid. You had your hall monitor. You had your
upside down girl. You're the monkey bar girl. You had
(06:37):
you know, your bully. You had the girl that was
always on the swings. You know, Yet every possible trope,
the card collector, the one that just wants to play,
whether it's Yu gi oh or or or Pokemon or
just the collector, every possible elementary school trope, you can
think of, the principal, the lady that had the lunch late,
(07:00):
the janitor, the person that helped out at the recess.
You know what I'm saying, like all of all possible tropes.
Please go look up that cartoon that cartoon was wonderful. Anyway, TJ. Dettwiler,
he's the leader, the leader. They they they little crew. Anyway,
elementary school, now you got your kindergartens, you know what
(07:21):
I'm saying, which are usually like fenced off in a
whole other part like your preschool. In kindergartens, to make
sure that you know, they have their own they have
their own playground, and make sure y'all don't to hurt them.
Then you got you know, I don't know I went
to it since I'm from the inner city. We had
a ginormous elementary school. So we had staggered lunches and
recesses where the first through third graders were at one
(07:41):
time and then the fourth through sixth graders were at
the other time. Our lunches were similar. You had a
staggered lunch, you know what I'm saying. Because of that, right,
and we all remember lunch recess was the dopest, right.
But as we're getting towards the end of the school year,
like we are, right, you know, you had your little
ASB group stuff like that. Now you've made friends, you
got been in the same class. You know, in elementary school,
(08:03):
you don't change a lot of you don't change classes.
It's not like middle school where you got your seven
different teachers, you know, spoken out like, which becomes more
like high school. It's not like that. We're still in
elementary school. And when you do your little as B stuff,
we all know it's just a popularity contest. It's not like,
you know, really the thing. You know what I'm saying.
They're not like really qualified. They're just the cool kid,
right or the kid that was willing to do the
(08:24):
work now not so hot. Take I ain't gonna hold
you that boy. Vivek reminds me of a kid just
running for AsSb in elementary school and he's just trying
to listen to whatever the cool kids say, and he's
just trying to do that like the kid that's promising
I'm would put kool aid into water fountain. You know,
(08:44):
I'm outlawing homework. Yay. It's like bruh, shut up, man,
Like everybody love him because he's like he's gonna outlaw homework.
Like come on, vam, this is not real anyway. We
(09:22):
need to choose what kind of pizza we have and
what kind of ice cream we're gonna serve. Games we're
gonna play what movie we're gonna watch? Okay, who gets
to choose that? What if they just go, well, the
sixth graders are about to graduate, we're kind of celebrating
them and everybody there, so we'll just let them choose, right,
and then so they decide among themselves in whatever ways
(09:45):
that they decide, and then they let the school the
rest of the kids know. Now, unless you know, unless
you're related to a sixth grader, unless you know any
of them, you're not really gonna know like how they
came to that conclusion. You're just like, if you're a
third grader and you don't know any sixth graders, all
you're doing is just open that they pick stuff you like.
But y'all know access to them. They're six graders, you know,
like some of them. Dudes got facial hair, a couple
(10:07):
of the couple of girls have started, you know, they
got they got boobs. Now, like they're a few of them,
You're like, these are you're all you're practically adults. You know,
when you're a third grader. The sixth graders might as
well be able to drive, So you know, access to
them unless you have a sibling that's a sixth grader.
And then maybe you'll overhear them talking about a little
bit of the cheesemaya as to how they came up
(10:28):
with that. Maybe they're mad. Maybe you got a sixth
grader brother or sister or they that is just extra nerdy,
not involved. You got a D and D kid, you know.
So when you say, hey, hey, hey, what are you
guys gonna pick? You're the third grader, what are you
guys gonna pick for the school? And they go, I
don't know. He was like, damn where they go, I
don't care. It's lame. You're like, well, okay, well I
(10:48):
care because you're still a little third grader. You care.
So in that scenario, the sixth graders, you could see
that as an aristocracy, right. They are the noass the
elite who wine and dine and wheel their power and authority.
It's I don't know. For some reason, we are somehow,
(11:12):
as descendants of Britain, obsessed with like Turn of the
century style monarchy, European monarchies where you go to court
and you're watching all the wheelings and dealings, like the
Game of Thrones of it all. You know of people
trying to like wheel and deal and get power and
stuff like that. The people that get to go to court.
(11:33):
That's your aristocracy, plutocracy, if you will, you use your
elementary school is ran by a select few and powerful people.
That would be one way they'd run it, and you know,
hopefully what they come up with is super dope. Now,
let's just say the principle still allows the sixth graders
to choose everything, right, But the principle has a sixth
(11:58):
grade child, and ultimately the principle is going to decide
I'm gonna let y'all work this out, but the principal
going to decide who has the final say what they
child wants. So when ay child comes up and says, hey,
the sixth graders they all want Hawaiian pizza, we want
(12:19):
to watch the Barbie movie, and we're gonna play Capture
the Flag, the principal may or may not double check
that information. Right. That's installing a puppet dictator, okay, which
a lot of countries run off. Is it's a puppet dictator.
Like the principle really is really making the decision, and
(12:41):
you're just I just put you in there because I
don't want it to be perceived as though I made
the choice for you and using this metaphor, sometimes the
principle in this story is a whole other country, you know.
Sometimes the principle is Russia, or as we know, often
(13:02):
if you know anything about history, the principal is the
United States of America. You don't say it's your choice.
And the puppet leader is supposed to make it seem
like this was discussed and everybody had power. That's what
it made it seem like. Or that puppet dictator is
(13:25):
supposed to take all the heat and just be considered
the jerk that just made the choice. So everybody mad
at the dictator and really don't understand why the dictator
got so much power. But we know. But alas, our
elementary school is a part of an experiment that is different.
(13:49):
We are not a monarchy elementary school. We are not
an aristocracy elementary school. We are a democratic elementary school. Yeah,
you'd say, hey, prop how would we be a democratic
republic elementary school? Well, before I answer that, let me
(14:11):
answer what a democratic elementary school would be. So this
is what it would be. It would be like this
principal would say, hey, you guys earned it. End of
the year school party. These are the things we want
to choose. You guys go vote, and everybody gets to
say you guys, tell me what you like, and majority wins.
(14:32):
Whoever whichever gets the most votes wins. Right, So every
kid goes back to their home, to their room. They
start thinking like, Okay, what kind of pizza do I like? Okay,
I think we should do this. My vote would be pepperoni,
This one, maam would be cheese, you know, and then
everybody comes in. You tally all the votes, and whoever
has the most, whichever things have the most, that's what
(14:55):
we do. Now. In that scenario, there's a lot of
variables that could come about. Right. You can have the
kid that's lactose in tolerant, right. You can have the
kid that doesn't really care. You can have the kid
that didn't read the ballance, didn't do the questions, don't
know where we going, what we're talking about, not really
(15:16):
paying attention. And then you have the kid that just
likes to sow chaos. That's just you know, the kid
that just like farts. You know when you can't. When
y'all are ready to go to recess and the teacher
says not until everybody's quiet, and then the one kid
who just thinks it's so funny, just so funny, and
then your teacher goes, now, congratulations, Brad, you've ruined it
(15:37):
for the rest of them. I don't know why his
name's Brad, but he's Brad. You know what I'm saying.
He's just ruined it for the rest of them. Right,
So now we all got to stay in the extra
five minutes before recess because Brad thought it was funny
to make a fart noise. Don't raise your hand, but
I'm pretty sure it's a good amount of y'all that
are brad head asses listening to this thing. I can't
(15:57):
stand you there, kids that just so chaos. You have
kids that aren't even gonna eat anyway, They're just gonna
run straight to the monkey bars. You have kids who
have peanut allergies and probably can't come anyway. You got
a kid that's not gonna be there that day. You
have all these things happening. But everybody, I don't know
if you're informed. It's a nightmare. Some of y'all don't
(16:18):
know how to spell. I can't even read what you're saying.
None of this it's just so much. But you had
a chance to make your voices heard. And if you
didn't do it, if you didn't let your voice be heard,
if you didn't if you weren't informed, if you didn't
do what you were supposed to do, if you accidentally
clicked the wrong thing, and then look that's on you.
Everybody got a shot. Now you counting, Now, your little
(16:41):
asb president has a lot of room for error because
now this person got to count six hundred, seven hundred votes.
Make sure that Tali's are good. Probably gotta count it again.
Make sure and then throw out the ones that you
don't know are serious. Because if some dudes like you know,
peanut butter and anchovies, like, oh, that's a joke, Like
what if it's not a joke? Now they mad because
(17:02):
that wasn't a joke. I said what i'mant, that's what
I want it. You just disenfranchised me. And then and
then again, if the choices are what kind of pizza
and which ice cream? And somebody put fried chicken on
the ballot, it's like, nigga, did you read the question?
You or you just want fried that's not one of
the options. That can't like why is this is a
(17:24):
disaster everybody maybe, and I don't even know if everybody's
turned they thing and it's just so much. But if
you go to this school, you get a chance to
say it is your inalienable rights, and no one gets
to take it from you by virtue of your enrollment.
Ain't no test on it. If you smart enough, if
(17:44):
you know order, it don't matter. If you go here,
you get a vote. That, my friend, would be a
direct democracy. But we don't have that. We have things
called districts representatives. Congressman, So let me help you understand
what that means in Usin so, rather than every kid
turning in these stupid little pieces of papers, some of
(18:06):
them got snot on them, you know what I'm saying,
some of them filled out all wrong. Don't he can't
even read half of them because you don't know how
to speale pizza, you know, you know what I'm saying.
I don't know if this is a joke, right whatever. Like,
instead of that, what if every class says, you know what, dude,
I'm not gonna read this. What if you looked at
(18:28):
the who in your class and your you know, twenty
five thirty kids in your class that you know likes research,
that's gonna read, that's gonna be informed, because you look,
you are too busy, you're too busy keeping up with
(18:49):
you are too busy watching your blue shows. I don't
have time. And the kindergarteners, they don't even know what
you're talking about anyway, except for one him kindergarteners who
might be rather advanced. Maybe one of them kindergarteners has
a second grade brother, or a second grade sister, or
a second grade non binary, whatever the case may be,
(19:11):
that one little kindergartener is very informed. And what if
as a class you said, hey, this kid, can you
do us a favor? Do the work for us? Be informed?
Find out with Okay, so if we say, if we
say we want pepperoni, what shop they gonna go to?
Are they gonna go to that shop because I prefer
(19:31):
this pizza spot. If but if it's gonna be pineapple,
then can we find out if it's that way, if
it's gonna be sausage, if it's gonna be if it's
gonna be I'm saying, so can you go do the
homework to be like? Okay? So if I choose pizza,
was and then if we say, okay, what kind of
ice cream? Are there gonna be gluten free options? Are
there gonna be dairy free options? Are there? Are there
gonna be Srbert like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
(19:52):
do that work. I want somebody class Let's choose what
of us, someone we trust that's gonna get all the
information we need, tell us so that we are informed
and tell us the truth. And then we tell them
as a collective, all right, as a class, as you
(20:14):
know Miss Duncan's fourth grade class, we choose pepperonium mushroom.
Maybe everybody didn't want it in our class right, but collectively,
because we were informed, we have now sent a representative
to represent our classroom at the senate of other classroom. Now,
(20:39):
how y'all came to that choice inside your classroom. That's
completely up to your classroom. Okay, every classroom may come
today conclusions, may figure out how they tally they votes.
That's something most of the time inside of the classroom,
it is a direct democracy. We all choose, or maybe
you break it up into caucuses or small groups inside
of your classroom to decide what your classroom wants. That's
(21:01):
up to you. We sent them to the republic of
our elementary school. And if every class does that, guess what,
you have a republic. It's not that we all didn't
get to say. We all got to say, but our
say was roped around into one thing. Right. So if
(21:24):
in my classroom, Miss Duncan's third grade class, we had
forty of us wanted cheese, five percent of us wanted Hawaiian,
and forty five percent of us wanted pepperoni. Okay, now
nobody's reached a super majority, but what got the most
(21:48):
votes out of everybody was what did I just say?
I say pepperoni. Wait, let me pause this to scroll back.
See what I just said. Yes, I said pepperoni. So
forty five percent of Miss Duncan's room voted pepperoni. So
if this were the electoral college, and our classroom was
(22:14):
the state of California, and since we have a very
large class, our bunch of thirty class, thirty kids in
this class are sending a vote of pepperoni, but our
vote counts as three ticks towards the pepperoni. That's the
electoral college. Because of how many people are in our class.
(22:58):
Now you have a class let's say you're in miss
Rodriguez's second grade class. Your class just happens to be smaller. Okay,
you just have a smaller class. Y'all picked. Y'all picked
a little girl, Jessica Gonzalez. You know, she's just a
smart kid. She's well spoken. She told us everything that
(23:20):
she thought about it. She's willing to say her choice
is this, but she'll she'll do whatever y'all ask. She'll
tell them what your class says. And your class decides
on cheese. Right, Well, there's only fifteen people in your class.
But if ten of them said cheese, five of them
didn't know what pizza meant. The choice was cheese. Right.
(23:41):
So now those are two tick marks that you send
to the Republic, that you say. Second graders want cheese.
Third graders want pepperoni. Fourth graders do the same thing.
They picked a kid, They said what they needed to say,
figured it out. Fourth Graders wanted pineapple, wanted Hawaiian right.
Fifth graders they were cool at whatever, but they had
(24:03):
to vote. And if they had to vote, even though
everybody was just like, now, we're good, but if we
have to choose, I guess Peperoni's cool. Cool. Okay, that's
two for Pepperoni, right, because remember it has to be pizza.
You could write in chicken wings, but it's not gonna matter.
You could have a third party, doesn't matter. We are now,
(24:28):
rather than counting five hundred votes, we have someone that
represents us, who informed us of our choices, went to
us and said what we asked them to say to
this council, this republic, this congress of elementary school kids
that have chosen I have the authority to say, I,
(24:50):
as the representative of mister Tokeishi's fourth grade class, I
have the power to say, we desire Pepperoni pizza and
we hope to play red Rover. That's our vote. And
I can say that because I have been entrusted with
the authority by the rest of the fourth graders, because
(25:12):
they chose me as their representative in this thing to
tell the school what we want to have. That, my friends,
is how a representative based democracy is supposed to work
in theory. Now, how does it work? Well, how it
works is the representative we just sent said what they
(25:33):
wanted to say. And it's because some of the other
kids paid them to say that, and they walked in
it was just like, yeah, you told me to say this. Okay, cool.
How did you even get chosen to be our representative
in the first place? I know I didn't choose you. Oh,
I selected myself because my big brother is also a representative.
So I get to be one. Wait, nigga, you get
(25:54):
to be why well? Because I kind of tore down
my signs to be the other representative in the class
room was cooler than yours. I just happened to have
more money. You ain't had no markers to be able
to make your posters. I had all the markers. So
that's why my poster is good. And I will vote
for whichever one of y'all pay me. So you got
pizza companies, You got Domino's Pizza down the street running
(26:18):
up on this little fourth grader, Jessica. No no, no, no, no.
Jessica was the second gred. Okay, So the fourth grader,
let's call it. Let's call it the fourth grader. What
we go call a fourth grader? Give me a name.
I can't hear you. Give me a name. I can't
hear you. Derek. We gonna call him Derek. So the
fourth grader, Derek, Derek, Derek got a text from Johnny's mama,
(26:41):
who actually runs a pieza shop down the street, who
offered him free sodas and candies for the next year
if you vote for his pizza shop and his particular
dough that he's trying to get the rest of the
city to start using. Or how about this, I'm the
representative because my big used to be a representative and
his brother and my mama went to this school and
(27:04):
she was a representative, So I get to be one.
I hel I know the secretary. You want me to
jump this metaphor even crazier, you want to jump in
even crazier. What if the fifth grade class looked at
the map of the school, peeked their head into some
(27:26):
of the fourth grade classes, some of the second grade
classes looked in there, and listen to the way that
they was choosing. And what if that fifth grade class said,
you know, some of the fourth graders are technically fifth graders,
so we think part of that fourth grade class should
be a part of the fifth grade vote. So I
(27:46):
think you need to draw these lines a little different
and say, actually, we really need to think about the
way that we're organizing these grades, because what if this
kid got held back. What if this We're like, no,
this kid's actually our age. So we think the way
that you're drawing these classrooms are not necessarily correct. We
think that like, actually a part of that fourth grade
class are actually fifth gradest. That's called Jered Mandy, y'all,
(28:08):
it's Jerryman. That's when you redraw the district lines to
make sure that your district is stronger than the other district. Right,
you're just siphoning off votes for pizza. That's kind of
what has become of our democracy, I mean our elementary school.
You got fifth grader stealing fourth graders to make them
(28:29):
fifth graders just for this, right. You got freaking Jessica
in second grade being paid off by Byron's dad's ice
cream parlor to make sure that he votes, make sure
that Jessica votes for his ice cream only. And then
(28:49):
we have this pizza party. We have this after school,
last day of school party, and no one got what
they wanted. Yuh, nobody won. Or let's just say what
happens is, somehow, against all odds, Hawaiian pizza one but
(29:14):
Pepperoni swore it was stolen from them, and that y'all
counted these wrongs and the seventh graders cheated, for which
we would say, there are no seventh graders at this school.
How to hell could the seventh grader see no, no, no, no, no,
no no. We saw you bring your brothers. Y'all added
votes that kid don't go to this school. No more. No,
(29:36):
this is not fair. It's like nigga, No, okay, don't
you think we would spot a seventh grader. Don't you
think that would be don't you think we could tell
who the seventh grader is? Nope, it's not what happened. No,
there was no seventh grad yes, there were all right, man,
well we're in shambles. Eventually, the first graders are going
to be like, you know what, this system don't work.
(29:57):
I'm not We're not even next year when they do
this when we're second graders. Let's just not. Let's just not.
How about we just don't go. How about we just
ask our mom to let us stay home because voting
and being a part of this system continues to fail us. Well,
(30:27):
that's our country, I mean, that's our elementary school. That's
the republic. Y'all didn't get to choose. You chose a
representative to represent your grade for which pizza we wanted
and what games we wanted to play. We all voted,
but our vote went as a block of votes to
(30:52):
the legislature for which the choice was made. I may
have confused you even more. Now take y'all. You know,
(31:28):
I don't know why I ain't thought of this before,
but you know you could use promo code hood for
fifteen percent off on terraform colbrew dot com. Like I
forgot I own that company and this is my pod. Y'all,
go ahead and punch it. Promo cold Hood. If you're
in the cold Brew, get you some cold Brew, Gonna
(31:51):
get you some coffee. Yeah, Like, I can't believe I
ain't think of this still right now, y'all, y'all, This
thing right here was recorded by Me Propaganda and East Lows,
boil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This thing was mixed, edited, mastered,
(32:16):
and scored by the one and the only Matt Awsowski.
Y'all check out this fool's music. I mean it's incredible.
Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman for Cool Zone Media. Man,
and thank you for everybody who continue to tap in
with us. Make sure you leaving reviews and five star
ratings and sharing it with the homies so we could
get this thing pushed up in the algorithm and listen.
(32:39):
I just want to remind you these people is not
smarter than you. If you understand city living, you understand politics,
We'll see you next week.
Cool media. Okay, so today's episode might be a little
short but very powerful, Like my grandma, I want to
preempt some arguments you're gonna have. I mean, and it's
(00:26):
a good thing that like a lot of us are
jumping out of X. You know, I'm gonna go ahead
and call it X cuz hey listen, like a good
progressive if somebody changes their pronoun and I'm an hon
or Day pronoun. So look, if Twitter is now X,
it is now X, I'm a respect its name sing.
(00:51):
That's tweeting now sing anyway, But whether you're talking to
a bot or a blue check bro or some sort
of elon sexual or just the like pseudo intellectual that's
gonna try to like school you with the well, actually,
maybe you got a cousin or uncle who just got
(01:13):
out of prison. He been reading books. He been reading
books without any guidance. You know, they just get out
of prison. They doing nothing but reading that they know everything.
You don't want to discourage them because they make it
a change of they life. You gotta learn how to
build with them. Anyway. So if you even if you're
talking to your ex con family member and you just
talking right about you talking about the death of democracy
(01:35):
and are voting because of course it's going to be
just chaos for our next election. So before somebody actually
wearing up, I'm like, we're a democratic repub Black. I'm
not sure and they know what they talk about, and
I want to make sure you know what you're talking about.
(01:56):
So let's go back to elementary school and let's plan
and a school wide pizza party, ice cream, social hood politics, y'all.
(02:18):
All right, for some of y'all, it's back to school season.
For some of y'all who got kids, you know where
your children are now out your house. You are not
responsible for figuring out things for them to do all day,
so you could possibly get stuff done and go have
lunch during the day, not that your kids is gone.
(02:39):
I think we all thought summer was the best time
of the year, but that's because we were in school
then and summer was our break. Now we understand that,
especially as parents, summer's probably the hardest time. It's the
most expensive. I gotta find camps. I can't get anything
done five minutes. Can I have a snack? Oh my god?
(03:00):
It is so much more work in the summer when
you get anyway, So this is the most wonderful time
of the year for parents. But I want to take
you back to when you were an elementary school. Now,
I don't know the specifics of your elementary school. This
is definitely any Hood USA scenario here. You know, at
(03:24):
the end of the year, like if you guys did good,
you'd get like a you know, pizza party or something,
you know, ice cream. If let's get all perfect attendance,
if no one gets in trouble, if nobody gets sent
to the prisons, everybody, if we finished our test, you
get your little pizza party, little ice cream party. I
remember my elementary school if I can't remember what the
(03:48):
carrot was that they dangled in front of us, But
if we did something by the end of the year,
maybe it was fundraising, I don't remember exactly what it was.
We would get like a school wide like last day
of school party, balloons, pizza, ice cream, all the stuff
that once you cross thirty you can't eat no more.
Whatever it was, dust was the type of thing. And
(04:10):
I know my demographic don't like like you could still
eat cheese and ice cream and not it killed your belly.
So let's go back to elementary school. End of the
year celebration. You guys made it. I don't know, perfect attendance,
whatever it is, whatever it was, this is your time.
You get your pizza and ice cream, social, your water balloons,
(04:32):
everything school wide. Right, But now you got to decide
what kind of pizza, which kind of ice cream, what
movie we're gonna watch. I mean, we want this thing
to go up, right, So you got I mean, look
y'all worked hard for this. You gotta get this right.
And which games we're gonna play? All right, I'm going
(04:57):
to explain to you what a republic it means with this,
because this is what we do at Hood politics. Yes,
bring the track in madness, all right, So here we go.
(05:33):
You got, I don't know what, let's paint the picture.
Here's what's our demographic, Like, Okay, if if we're on
my side of town, we're predominantly Latino, sprinkled with equal
parts Filipino and African American with a little pieces of salt,
(05:54):
like a couple couple of white people in there that like,
and so many white people actually are just Spaniards or
they're Latinos that are very light skin, whatever the case
may be. This our part of town, right, that's for that.
Maybe your school is not. Maybe your school is super
major versus just just as white as mayonnaise. I don't know, Pitt.
Your elementary school, you know what you got, You got
your there was I remember the early two thousands of
(06:16):
a cartoon called Recess, which was spot on elementary school.
Like y'all remember that cartoon. It was Disney Cartoons perfect.
You had your av kid, which y'all don't really know
nothing about nomore because uh, you don't need an audio
visual kid. It's you have laptops. But you had your
av kid. You had your hall monitor. You had your
upside down girl. You're the monkey bar girl. You had
(06:37):
you know, your bully. You had the girl that was
always on the swings. You know, Yet every possible trope,
the card collector, the one that just wants to play,
whether it's Yu gi oh or or or Pokemon or
just the collector, every possible elementary school trope, you can
think of, the principal, the lady that had the lunch late,
(07:00):
the janitor, the person that helped out at the recess.
You know what I'm saying, like all of all possible tropes.
Please go look up that cartoon that cartoon was wonderful. Anyway, TJ. Dettwiler,
he's the leader, the leader. They they they little crew. Anyway,
elementary school, now you got your kindergartens, you know what
(07:21):
I'm saying, which are usually like fenced off in a
whole other part like your preschool. In kindergartens, to make
sure that you know, they have their own they have
their own playground, and make sure y'all don't to hurt them.
Then you got you know, I don't know I went
to it since I'm from the inner city. We had
a ginormous elementary school. So we had staggered lunches and
recesses where the first through third graders were at one
(07:41):
time and then the fourth through sixth graders were at
the other time. Our lunches were similar. You had a
staggered lunch, you know what I'm saying. Because of that, right,
and we all remember lunch recess was the dopest, right.
But as we're getting towards the end of the school year,
like we are, right, you know, you had your little
ASB group stuff like that. Now you've made friends, you
got been in the same class. You know, in elementary school,
(08:03):
you don't change a lot of you don't change classes.
It's not like middle school where you got your seven
different teachers, you know, spoken out like, which becomes more
like high school. It's not like that. We're still in
elementary school. And when you do your little as B stuff,
we all know it's just a popularity contest. It's not like,
you know, really the thing. You know what I'm saying.
They're not like really qualified. They're just the cool kid,
right or the kid that was willing to do the
(08:24):
work now not so hot. Take I ain't gonna hold
you that boy. Vivek reminds me of a kid just
running for AsSb in elementary school and he's just trying
to listen to whatever the cool kids say, and he's
just trying to do that like the kid that's promising
I'm would put kool aid into water fountain. You know,
(08:44):
I'm outlawing homework. Yay. It's like bruh, shut up, man,
Like everybody love him because he's like he's gonna outlaw homework.
Like come on, vam, this is not real anyway. We
(09:22):
need to choose what kind of pizza we have and
what kind of ice cream we're gonna serve. Games we're
gonna play what movie we're gonna watch? Okay, who gets
to choose that? What if they just go, well, the
sixth graders are about to graduate, we're kind of celebrating
them and everybody there, so we'll just let them choose, right,
and then so they decide among themselves in whatever ways
(09:45):
that they decide, and then they let the school the
rest of the kids know. Now, unless you know, unless
you're related to a sixth grader, unless you know any
of them, you're not really gonna know like how they
came to that conclusion. You're just like, if you're a
third grader and you don't know any sixth graders, all
you're doing is just open that they pick stuff you like.
But y'all know access to them. They're six graders, you know,
like some of them. Dudes got facial hair, a couple
(10:07):
of the couple of girls have started, you know, they
got they got boobs. Now, like they're a few of them,
You're like, these are you're all you're practically adults. You know,
when you're a third grader. The sixth graders might as
well be able to drive, So you know, access to
them unless you have a sibling that's a sixth grader.
And then maybe you'll overhear them talking about a little
bit of the cheesemaya as to how they came up
(10:28):
with that. Maybe they're mad. Maybe you got a sixth
grader brother or sister or they that is just extra nerdy,
not involved. You got a D and D kid, you know.
So when you say, hey, hey, hey, what are you
guys gonna pick? You're the third grader, what are you
guys gonna pick for the school? And they go, I
don't know. He was like, damn where they go, I
don't care. It's lame. You're like, well, okay, well I
(10:48):
care because you're still a little third grader. You care.
So in that scenario, the sixth graders, you could see
that as an aristocracy, right. They are the noass the
elite who wine and dine and wheel their power and authority.
It's I don't know. For some reason, we are somehow,
(11:12):
as descendants of Britain, obsessed with like Turn of the
century style monarchy, European monarchies where you go to court
and you're watching all the wheelings and dealings, like the
Game of Thrones of it all. You know of people
trying to like wheel and deal and get power and
stuff like that. The people that get to go to court.
(11:33):
That's your aristocracy, plutocracy, if you will, you use your
elementary school is ran by a select few and powerful people.
That would be one way they'd run it, and you know,
hopefully what they come up with is super dope. Now,
let's just say the principle still allows the sixth graders
to choose everything, right, But the principle has a sixth
(11:58):
grade child, and ultimately the principle is going to decide
I'm gonna let y'all work this out, but the principal
going to decide who has the final say what they
child wants. So when ay child comes up and says, hey,
the sixth graders they all want Hawaiian pizza, we want
(12:19):
to watch the Barbie movie, and we're gonna play Capture
the Flag, the principal may or may not double check
that information. Right. That's installing a puppet dictator, okay, which
a lot of countries run off. Is it's a puppet dictator.
Like the principle really is really making the decision, and
(12:41):
you're just I just put you in there because I
don't want it to be perceived as though I made
the choice for you and using this metaphor, sometimes the
principle in this story is a whole other country, you know.
Sometimes the principle is Russia, or as we know, often
(13:02):
if you know anything about history, the principal is the
United States of America. You don't say it's your choice.
And the puppet leader is supposed to make it seem
like this was discussed and everybody had power. That's what
it made it seem like. Or that puppet dictator is
(13:25):
supposed to take all the heat and just be considered
the jerk that just made the choice. So everybody mad
at the dictator and really don't understand why the dictator
got so much power. But we know. But alas, our
elementary school is a part of an experiment that is different.
(13:49):
We are not a monarchy elementary school. We are not
an aristocracy elementary school. We are a democratic elementary school. Yeah,
you'd say, hey, prop how would we be a democratic
republic elementary school? Well, before I answer that, let me
(14:11):
answer what a democratic elementary school would be. So this
is what it would be. It would be like this
principal would say, hey, you guys earned it. End of
the year school party. These are the things we want
to choose. You guys go vote, and everybody gets to
say you guys, tell me what you like, and majority wins.
(14:32):
Whoever whichever gets the most votes wins. Right, So every
kid goes back to their home, to their room. They
start thinking like, Okay, what kind of pizza do I like? Okay,
I think we should do this. My vote would be pepperoni,
This one, maam would be cheese, you know, and then
everybody comes in. You tally all the votes, and whoever
has the most, whichever things have the most, that's what
(14:55):
we do. Now. In that scenario, there's a lot of
variables that could come about. Right. You can have the
kid that's lactose in tolerant, right. You can have the
kid that doesn't really care. You can have the kid
that didn't read the ballance, didn't do the questions, don't
know where we going, what we're talking about, not really
(15:16):
paying attention. And then you have the kid that just
likes to sow chaos. That's just you know, the kid
that just like farts. You know when you can't. When
y'all are ready to go to recess and the teacher
says not until everybody's quiet, and then the one kid
who just thinks it's so funny, just so funny, and
then your teacher goes, now, congratulations, Brad, you've ruined it
(15:37):
for the rest of them. I don't know why his
name's Brad, but he's Brad. You know what I'm saying.
He's just ruined it for the rest of them. Right,
So now we all got to stay in the extra
five minutes before recess because Brad thought it was funny
to make a fart noise. Don't raise your hand, but
I'm pretty sure it's a good amount of y'all that
are brad head asses listening to this thing. I can't
(15:57):
stand you there, kids that just so chaos. You have
kids that aren't even gonna eat anyway, They're just gonna
run straight to the monkey bars. You have kids who
have peanut allergies and probably can't come anyway. You got
a kid that's not gonna be there that day. You
have all these things happening. But everybody, I don't know
if you're informed. It's a nightmare. Some of y'all don't
(16:18):
know how to spell. I can't even read what you're saying.
None of this it's just so much. But you had
a chance to make your voices heard. And if you
didn't do it, if you didn't let your voice be heard,
if you didn't if you weren't informed, if you didn't
do what you were supposed to do, if you accidentally
clicked the wrong thing, and then look that's on you.
Everybody got a shot. Now you counting, Now, your little
(16:41):
asb president has a lot of room for error because
now this person got to count six hundred, seven hundred votes.
Make sure that Tali's are good. Probably gotta count it again.
Make sure and then throw out the ones that you
don't know are serious. Because if some dudes like you know,
peanut butter and anchovies, like, oh, that's a joke, Like
what if it's not a joke? Now they mad because
(17:02):
that wasn't a joke. I said what i'mant, that's what
I want it. You just disenfranchised me. And then and
then again, if the choices are what kind of pizza
and which ice cream? And somebody put fried chicken on
the ballot, it's like, nigga, did you read the question?
You or you just want fried that's not one of
the options. That can't like why is this is a
(17:24):
disaster everybody maybe, and I don't even know if everybody's
turned they thing and it's just so much. But if
you go to this school, you get a chance to
say it is your inalienable rights, and no one gets
to take it from you by virtue of your enrollment.
Ain't no test on it. If you smart enough, if
(17:44):
you know order, it don't matter. If you go here,
you get a vote. That, my friend, would be a
direct democracy. But we don't have that. We have things
called districts representatives. Congressman, So let me help you understand
what that means in Usin so, rather than every kid
turning in these stupid little pieces of papers, some of
(18:06):
them got snot on them, you know what I'm saying,
some of them filled out all wrong. Don't he can't
even read half of them because you don't know how
to speale pizza, you know, you know what I'm saying.
I don't know if this is a joke, right whatever. Like,
instead of that, what if every class says, you know what, dude,
I'm not gonna read this. What if you looked at
(18:28):
the who in your class and your you know, twenty
five thirty kids in your class that you know likes research,
that's gonna read, that's gonna be informed, because you look,
you are too busy, you're too busy keeping up with
(18:49):
you are too busy watching your blue shows. I don't
have time. And the kindergarteners, they don't even know what
you're talking about anyway, except for one him kindergarteners who
might be rather advanced. Maybe one of them kindergarteners has
a second grade brother, or a second grade sister, or
a second grade non binary, whatever the case may be,
(19:11):
that one little kindergartener is very informed. And what if
as a class you said, hey, this kid, can you
do us a favor? Do the work for us? Be informed?
Find out with Okay, so if we say, if we
say we want pepperoni, what shop they gonna go to?
Are they gonna go to that shop because I prefer
(19:31):
this pizza spot. If but if it's gonna be pineapple,
then can we find out if it's that way, if
it's gonna be sausage, if it's gonna be if it's
gonna be I'm saying, so can you go do the
homework to be like? Okay? So if I choose pizza,
was and then if we say, okay, what kind of
ice cream? Are there gonna be gluten free options? Are
there gonna be dairy free options? Are there? Are there
gonna be Srbert like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
(19:52):
do that work. I want somebody class Let's choose what
of us, someone we trust that's gonna get all the
information we need, tell us so that we are informed
and tell us the truth. And then we tell them
as a collective, all right, as a class, as you
(20:14):
know Miss Duncan's fourth grade class, we choose pepperonium mushroom.
Maybe everybody didn't want it in our class right, but collectively,
because we were informed, we have now sent a representative
to represent our classroom at the senate of other classroom. Now,
(20:39):
how y'all came to that choice inside your classroom. That's
completely up to your classroom. Okay, every classroom may come
today conclusions, may figure out how they tally they votes.
That's something most of the time inside of the classroom,
it is a direct democracy. We all choose, or maybe
you break it up into caucuses or small groups inside
of your classroom to decide what your classroom wants. That's
(21:01):
up to you. We sent them to the republic of
our elementary school. And if every class does that, guess what,
you have a republic. It's not that we all didn't
get to say. We all got to say, but our
say was roped around into one thing. Right. So if
(21:24):
in my classroom, Miss Duncan's third grade class, we had
forty of us wanted cheese, five percent of us wanted Hawaiian,
and forty five percent of us wanted pepperoni. Okay, now
nobody's reached a super majority, but what got the most
(21:48):
votes out of everybody was what did I just say?
I say pepperoni. Wait, let me pause this to scroll back.
See what I just said. Yes, I said pepperoni. So
forty five percent of Miss Duncan's room voted pepperoni. So
if this were the electoral college, and our classroom was
(22:14):
the state of California, and since we have a very
large class, our bunch of thirty class, thirty kids in
this class are sending a vote of pepperoni, but our
vote counts as three ticks towards the pepperoni. That's the
electoral college. Because of how many people are in our class.
(22:58):
Now you have a class let's say you're in miss
Rodriguez's second grade class. Your class just happens to be smaller. Okay,
you just have a smaller class. Y'all picked. Y'all picked
a little girl, Jessica Gonzalez. You know, she's just a
smart kid. She's well spoken. She told us everything that
(23:20):
she thought about it. She's willing to say her choice
is this, but she'll she'll do whatever y'all ask. She'll
tell them what your class says. And your class decides
on cheese. Right, Well, there's only fifteen people in your class.
But if ten of them said cheese, five of them
didn't know what pizza meant. The choice was cheese. Right.
(23:41):
So now those are two tick marks that you send
to the Republic, that you say. Second graders want cheese.
Third graders want pepperoni. Fourth graders do the same thing.
They picked a kid, They said what they needed to say,
figured it out. Fourth Graders wanted pineapple, wanted Hawaiian right.
Fifth graders they were cool at whatever, but they had
(24:03):
to vote. And if they had to vote, even though
everybody was just like, now, we're good, but if we
have to choose, I guess Peperoni's cool. Cool. Okay, that's
two for Pepperoni, right, because remember it has to be pizza.
You could write in chicken wings, but it's not gonna matter.
You could have a third party, doesn't matter. We are now,
(24:28):
rather than counting five hundred votes, we have someone that
represents us, who informed us of our choices, went to
us and said what we asked them to say to
this council, this republic, this congress of elementary school kids
that have chosen I have the authority to say, I,
(24:50):
as the representative of mister Tokeishi's fourth grade class, I
have the power to say, we desire Pepperoni pizza and
we hope to play red Rover. That's our vote. And
I can say that because I have been entrusted with
the authority by the rest of the fourth graders, because
(25:12):
they chose me as their representative in this thing to
tell the school what we want to have. That, my friends,
is how a representative based democracy is supposed to work
in theory. Now, how does it work? Well, how it
works is the representative we just sent said what they
(25:33):
wanted to say. And it's because some of the other
kids paid them to say that, and they walked in
it was just like, yeah, you told me to say this. Okay, cool.
How did you even get chosen to be our representative
in the first place? I know I didn't choose you. Oh,
I selected myself because my big brother is also a representative.
So I get to be one. Wait, nigga, you get
(25:54):
to be why well? Because I kind of tore down
my signs to be the other representative in the class
room was cooler than yours. I just happened to have
more money. You ain't had no markers to be able
to make your posters. I had all the markers. So
that's why my poster is good. And I will vote
for whichever one of y'all pay me. So you got
pizza companies, You got Domino's Pizza down the street running
(26:18):
up on this little fourth grader, Jessica. No no, no, no, no.
Jessica was the second gred. Okay, So the fourth grader,
let's call it. Let's call it the fourth grader. What
we go call a fourth grader? Give me a name.
I can't hear you. Give me a name. I can't
hear you. Derek. We gonna call him Derek. So the
fourth grader, Derek, Derek, Derek got a text from Johnny's mama,
(26:41):
who actually runs a pieza shop down the street, who
offered him free sodas and candies for the next year
if you vote for his pizza shop and his particular
dough that he's trying to get the rest of the
city to start using. Or how about this, I'm the
representative because my big used to be a representative and
his brother and my mama went to this school and
(27:04):
she was a representative, So I get to be one.
I hel I know the secretary. You want me to
jump this metaphor even crazier, you want to jump in
even crazier. What if the fifth grade class looked at
the map of the school, peeked their head into some
(27:26):
of the fourth grade classes, some of the second grade
classes looked in there, and listen to the way that
they was choosing. And what if that fifth grade class said,
you know, some of the fourth graders are technically fifth graders,
so we think part of that fourth grade class should
be a part of the fifth grade vote. So I
(27:46):
think you need to draw these lines a little different
and say, actually, we really need to think about the
way that we're organizing these grades, because what if this
kid got held back. What if this We're like, no,
this kid's actually our age. So we think the way
that you're drawing these classrooms are not necessarily correct. We
think that like, actually a part of that fourth grade
class are actually fifth gradest. That's called Jered Mandy, y'all,
(28:08):
it's Jerryman. That's when you redraw the district lines to
make sure that your district is stronger than the other district. Right,
you're just siphoning off votes for pizza. That's kind of
what has become of our democracy, I mean our elementary school.
You got fifth grader stealing fourth graders to make them
(28:29):
fifth graders just for this, right. You got freaking Jessica
in second grade being paid off by Byron's dad's ice
cream parlor to make sure that he votes, make sure
that Jessica votes for his ice cream only. And then
(28:49):
we have this pizza party. We have this after school,
last day of school party, and no one got what
they wanted. Yuh, nobody won. Or let's just say what
happens is, somehow, against all odds, Hawaiian pizza one but
(29:14):
Pepperoni swore it was stolen from them, and that y'all
counted these wrongs and the seventh graders cheated, for which
we would say, there are no seventh graders at this school.
How to hell could the seventh grader see no, no, no, no, no,
no no. We saw you bring your brothers. Y'all added
votes that kid don't go to this school. No more. No,
(29:36):
this is not fair. It's like nigga, No, okay, don't
you think we would spot a seventh grader. Don't you
think that would be don't you think we could tell
who the seventh grader is? Nope, it's not what happened. No,
there was no seventh grad yes, there were all right, man,
well we're in shambles. Eventually, the first graders are going
to be like, you know what, this system don't work.
(29:57):
I'm not We're not even next year when they do
this when we're second graders. Let's just not. Let's just not.
How about we just don't go. How about we just
ask our mom to let us stay home because voting
and being a part of this system continues to fail us. Well,
(30:27):
that's our country, I mean, that's our elementary school. That's
the republic. Y'all didn't get to choose. You chose a
representative to represent your grade for which pizza we wanted
and what games we wanted to play. We all voted,
but our vote went as a block of votes to
(30:52):
the legislature for which the choice was made. I may
have confused you even more. Now take y'all. You know,
(31:28):
I don't know why I ain't thought of this before,
but you know you could use promo code hood for
fifteen percent off on terraform colbrew dot com. Like I
forgot I own that company and this is my pod. Y'all,
go ahead and punch it. Promo cold Hood. If you're
in the cold Brew, get you some cold Brew, Gonna
(31:51):
get you some coffee. Yeah, Like, I can't believe I
ain't think of this still right now, y'all, y'all, This
thing right here was recorded by Me Propaganda and East Lows,
boil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This thing was mixed, edited, mastered,
(32:16):
and scored by the one and the only Matt Awsowski.
Y'all check out this fool's music. I mean it's incredible.
Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman for Cool Zone Media. Man,
and thank you for everybody who continue to tap in
with us. Make sure you leaving reviews and five star
ratings and sharing it with the homies so we could
get this thing pushed up in the algorithm and listen.
(32:39):
I just want to remind you these people is not
smarter than you. If you understand city living, you understand politics,
We'll see you next week.
Host
Prop
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