Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Why I'm Voting, a production of I Heart Radio. Listen.
You already know this, but it's an election year. You
might already be tired of hearing about it. But here's
the thing. Democracy doesn't work without you. I'm Holly Frying,
and I'm sitting down with many of my fellow podcasters,
from Will Ferrell to Stephanie Rule as well as other
(00:26):
luminaries to find out about their relationships with the ballot
box and ultimately just to find out why they vote.
I hope you're exercising your right to vote, and if
you're not, I hope that their stories inspire you. Welcome
to today's episode of Why I'm Voting. Today, I am
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joined by Armando Perez, who you probably know better by
his name pit Bull, which is his stage name. Everyone
knows him because of his musical career, which spans a
wide range of genres, and he also uses his platform
and his success to give back funding educational initiatives in
his hometown of Miami, as well as other efforts. But
today he is here to talk about a subject near
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and dear to my heart, voting. Armando, welcome so much.
You know I appreciate you having me, thank you so much,
and look forward to the conversation. This is a person
excited to talk about voting. So first I want to
know where your relationship with voting started. When did you
first learn about voting? When did it occur to you
that this was something that you would get to do
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well voting? For me, the minute that I could get
my hands on a voter registration card, I did, actually
got it through school, one of the schools that I
went to. So therefore, the minute that I could vote,
I did. In the first election that I got a
chance to vote in, or at least be a part of,
was George Bush Junior and Al Gore, which we all
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saw what happened in that election, and I'm glad that
we're having a conversation on why voting is so powerful
and important because that that election actually Al Gore won
that election and then they came down and they missed
they counted again the votes here in Florida, which George
Bush Junior one and then Jet Bush was the governor
in Florida. So yeah, it was interesting. I love that
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you got registered three year school. How did that work?
It was just something that you could sign up and
it was one of those things, and I happen to do.
Not too many kids really pay attention to that, but
the fact that my family comes and fled from communism
in Cuba, and my grandmother was a revolutionary in Cuba
and my aunt was a political prisoner. My mother came
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over in Operation Peter pam pe Roan and my father
came over. And basically what they do is they a
letter that they give over in Cuba, it's called the lottery.
What you win is the most priceless thing in the world,
which is freedom. So you leave everything behind. They only
give you a couple of minutes to pick up and
go and you get a chance to come over to
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the United States. So then my father brought votes over
in the Merrio boat lift in the eighties and brought
over five and forty Cubans from Cuba to freedom. So
that's why I'm someone that's honors, appreciates and loves freedom.
And only what you get that is by voting. Did
your family talk a lot about voting as you're growing up,
obviously very politically minded group of people. So was this
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something they really made clear to you was an important
thing for you to do, very very important and my
my mother became a US citizen and that was one
of the first things that just how she would talk
about is now I'm gonna be able to vote, and
I'm gonna be able to vote, you know, so people
may not look at whether it counts or it doesn't count.
You know. I call politics politics, and I get it
that everybody has different agendas and God knows what companies
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have their hands on, what politicians and I mean, there's
a lot of moving parts when it comes to that world.
But if you don't go out there and vote and
you have the right and the chance, and you were
born in the United States of America or you fought
your way to be able to vote in the United
States of America, and I don't think you really have
a say, so, you know, and people that it's it's
easy to see my my mother raised me to be
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a critical thinker, not a criticizing thinker. So it's easy
to criticize, it's hard to be critical. And people out
there need to understand how critically important voting is because
if you don't vote, then you shouldn't talk. Bottom line. Now,
those that have been stripped of their right to vote,
which is different because I grew up in a lot
of different neighborhoods in Miami, being a good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods,
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and in in the worst neighborhoods. And a lot of folks
that have been incarcerated and charged as a felon. When
they get out of prison, they no longer have the
right to vote. They can pay taxes, but they can't vote,
even though they're fighting to overturn that, it's still a
lot of loopholes and right there, but a lot of
people that I know that have been incarcerated and they
took their life from a negative to a positive. That's
one of the first things they fight for when they
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get back into society is getting that voters registration card,
which I know very select few that have gotten a
chance to fight their way to the loopholes to get that.
But that just goes to show you, once you take
the most powerful commodity in life, which is time him
away from somebody, it allows you to really sit back
and appreciate things if you're trying to put your life
back in order. So imagine when they're putting their life
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back in order, one of the first things they come
out fighting for is the chance to vote because they
know the importance behind speaks volumes. You mentioned having voted
for the first time in the two thousand election between
Al Gore and George W. Bush. Aside from the outcome,
do you remember what it felt like that first time
you voted? Was it confusing? Were you nervous? Did you
walk out of the booth like just feeling like you
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would accomplish something? What was that day like for you
that it was very confusing and nervous? I wasn't. I'm
a person that if I don't know, I asked questions.
So obviously when you go to vote, there's a lot
of you're voting for a lot of different things that
no one really speaks to you about. You don't know.
This isn't just a you know, a scantron sheet where
you're just gonna Christmas tree this thing, you know, and
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and guess a B, C, D or all of your bove.
So that's where the confusing part came in. Another thing
that was confusing was when I went to go vote
at a certain spot, it wasn't the address that was
for my area. Let's just say so. Sometimes they tell
you and you can vote, but it will be disqualified,
or they'll tell you, yeah, you can vote and it
may make it and certain things that at that age
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when you're talking about I was nineteen years old, it
can be very confusing and also disenchanting or not motivate
you to get back out to the pole. So I
learned a little bit more by the time it came
to and I would say when Obama got an office,
I learned a little more. As we know that Bush
had two terms, and then by time I got to Obama,
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I was ready for voting. And then the last voting
I mailed my voting in since I was traveling in
the world at the time. Do you make sure to
vote in your local election. I try to vote in
anything I possibly can. How do you research for your
local elections because those are not as well publicized as
the big presidential elections, and it can be a little
bit trickier to make sure you have info on the
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candidates to find who is the right candidate for you,
I mean for me voting in researching. All I try
to do is what I can do to the best
of my ability. I speak, I get word of mouth
with what's going on, and you know, being being Cuban American.
I was already born politically incorrect, you know, due to
the embargo between Cuban and the United States of America,
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and due to everything that's happened between Cuba and the
United States of America. So being that I was born
Cuban American is irony behind that. I always tried to,
one way or another, find a way to educate myself
on voting and on the politics that are going on
in my area. Now another thing that I was taught
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growing up, So you have to navigate the waters of
They always tell you in any dinner table, or any
dinner setting, or in any setting, one of the two
things you shouldn't speak about is is politics and religion.
So when you go to have these conversations, you gotta
know who you're having them with. People that are open minded,
who are open to constructive criticism and also give graded,
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not just people that think one way and then think
just because they think that way. If you don't agree
with them, then you have no say so in the conversation.
That's being closed minded. And I think that's what's happening
right now as we speak. We're living in an era
of divide and conquer. And I have these conversations about
voting and politics and freedom. Why because you know, this
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is the United States of America. We don't want this
to become the Divided States of America. And as long
as I have a voice and a platform to be
able to help, whether it be through music, whether it
be through education, I always take it very seriously and
I give it a thousand percent because guys, there's nothing
like freedom. There's nothing like freedom. And me being first
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generation Cuban American, I know where my family went through.
I know what they took away from I know how
many people were murdered. I know how many people lost everything.
But if you're six seventh, eighth generation in the United
States of America, you may not understand that. You know
that might be a story just like Adam and Eves,
and you know you don't understand the imports behind that.
But I do. So when I have these conversations, I'm
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very passionate about them, And like I tell people, if
you don't vote and you shouldn't speak, you should just go. Look,
I didn't vote. I have I can't even throw my
hat in his ring. You don't know about voting, educate
yourself on it. And you know, like anything in life,
it's not about the right or wrong thing. It's about
learning from your mistakes. There's the saying that I love
by the way that says you don't make mistakes, mistakes
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make you. So if people just understood that meaning, it's okay.
If you don't understand much about it, It's okay if
you feel nervous about it. It's okay if you feel
confused by it. But at least take the initiative of
educating yourself a little bit on it to understand the
power behind that and what freedom really means. It's not
just the word. I mean, freedom is everything. Do you
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have any rituols around voting or election day? What will
election day look like for you? Are you too busy
with work or do you watch it all day? Will
you stay away from it and then engage with the
results when they're all in? How are you going to
play that? No? Look why now politics are becoming like
the w ws. It's like the bigger the clown, the
bigger the circus. So for me, what I do is
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I sit back, I let it all play out, and
then I see who's fighting for what, who's making a
political play on a certain whether it be I don't
know right now, was everybody making a political play on
the virus? And for me, what I care about the
most is who really stands for what this country stands
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for and has been built on, which is bottom line freedom. Okay,
So when I sit back and I watch everything that
goes on, I try to make an educated decision to
the best of my ability. But it's tough in these
times when you have networks that no longer give you facts.
They just give you headlines because all they care about
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is their own political agenda, which is called ratings, and
the more ratings they get, they're gonna program me with
whatever they want to do. And it's sad cause I've
watched certain networks that I had so much respect for
and I used to love to watch the news on them,
and money you're speaking to somebody and watches the news
all around the world. So therefore I really get a
chance to see how polarized things become when there's an agenda,
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how programmed it could be. And I can tell you
all these people's ratings are through the roof right now,
just because they're putting this world on the bottom or
they're putting this name on the bottom, and for it
to be so left and so right. It's not fair
to the people. It really isn't. And when you have
all these platforms that are touching so many people and
have access to them literally at the touch of a button,
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it's dangerous. Now with all that going on, that's why
I gotta let it play out. You don't know how
quick this thing can change, which we've seen they shut
down the country for a virus that the numbers really
do not make sense at the end of the day
when we really break this all down, because there's no
longer a headline research as educate yourself, create yourself, and
be aware, the same way with telling you about voting.
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Then you have a civil unrest. Then it comes back
to the virus. Now you have civil unrest again, and
politically they're trying to play games with that, which is
not fair to the public. It really isn't fair to
the public, and not to me, is not democracy, to
be honest with you, So for anybody out there that
thanks voting is some kind of game, you need to
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wake up. You need to understand how important it is.
And if you love freedom, then you love voting bottom line.
I love it. Armando. Thank you so much for sharing
your very obvious passion with me today and all of
your stories. I think it's really important to hear from
first generation Americans about why they value this one freedom
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so very much. Oh no, it's truly my pleasure, is
truly an honor. Thank you for the opportunity for me
to be able to voice my opinion one way or another.
I hope that it helps and motivates and inspire those
out there to understand what a beautiful country we live in.
Because if you think for one minute that anything in
the United States of America's bad, then you need to
visit the favelas of Brazil, the shanty times of South Africa,
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the slums of Mumbai, the villages that were people don't
have anything, and then you would understand that the United
States is really like the Beverly Hills of the world.
No matter you can go to the worst ghettos of
the United States of America, there's people out there that
would appreciate one day in those places, you know, as
citizens and as Americans, appreciate the country that you're from,
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because yes, it is one of the most powerful countries
in the world. But it is because it's built on freedom, folks. Freedom.
They allow us to vote in other countries. You have
no opinion, and if you think the other way, they'll
kill you. If that's simple, That's how this works. I
know it because my family has lived it. So therefore
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I express again the importance of voting. You know did
he had a great campaign in the mid two thousands
and he wore a shirt around for one of the
campaigns and the shirt said vote or die. Okay, that's
how real it is. Hey, are you not registered to
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vote yet but you think it's something you want to do.
You may still have time. Voter registration deadlines vary by state,
so to find out the scoop for where you are,
check out a nonpartisan registration voting site like head count
dot org or fair vote dot org. Why I'm Voting
is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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or wherever it is you listen to your favorite shows.