Let My People Vote: Ensuring Voting Rights to Returning Citizens

Into the Mix

Ben & Jerry's and Vox Creative

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 537 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, over 4.5 million people can't vote in the United States because of a mistake they made in the past. Desmond Meade is one of them. He's a "returning citizen" who understands the devastating impacts of having your civil rights stripped away, and the redemptive power of second chances. So, he set out to do something about it, and brought about the greatest expansion of voting rights in America in half a century. It’s that work that just earned his organization a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. You can learn more about Desmond’s work at the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition here. Into The Mix has been nominated in the Signal Awards for Best Public Service & Activism podcast! Vote for us below to help support the show. Voting closes on October 5. https://bit.ly/itmsignal

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ashley C. Ford and welcome to the second season of Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice, produced with Vox Creative.
0:18.1	Last season, we introduced you to friends of Ben and Jerry's like John Legend and Ava Duvernay.
0:26.3	These are artists who take their activism just as seriously as they take their art,
0:31.5	and who use their gifts to raise others up, starting with the communities who raised them.
0:37.8	This season, we're back with more stories of struggle and success.
0:42.7	Stories of people impacted by today's biggest fights for a more just world, a more joyful world.
0:50.2	Like, a man battling to restore voting rights for millions of Americans, migrant farm workers
0:57.1	fighting for dignified working conditions, a 70-year-old returning to his family after spending
1:03.7	decades in prison for a non-violent marijuana conviction. All of them, ordinary people whose
1:10.3	lived experiences at the heart of these
1:12.6	issues, go far beyond what you read in the headlines. We're starting in Orlando, Florida,
1:18.7	with voting rights activist Desmond Mead. Let's get into it. So tell us where we are.
1:25.8	So this is the supervisor of elections office in Orange County, Florida, the place where I registered to vote in 2019.
1:35.3	What was that daylight?
1:37.3	Oh, Jesus.
1:38.3	I love the day because of many things, right?
1:42.3	That was actually, believe it or not, the same day that the governor
1:45.0	got sworn in the office, and we had better coverage than that. January 8, 2019. Outside of this
1:55.3	low-slung bunker of a building by the train tracks, election officials literally rolled out the red carpet for folks
2:02.5	who came to register that day. Imagine it. Balloons, confetti, a full-on party for democracy.
2:11.0	It was a love-inspired day that day because you have to remember that the people who were
2:15.6	registered to vote could not vote prior to that, right?
	...

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