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Welcome to Front Page · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Gas prices are climbing and a war in the Middle
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: East is fueling it.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Remember the straight up from Moose was not closed at
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: the beginning of this conflict. This conflict has been a
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: massive disaster.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Republican led states across the South are racing to redraw
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the maps before the midterms, and black political power is
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the target.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: Is racist, you know it.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: And the biggest retailers in America are finally admitting what
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: you've been saying about self checkouts for years. Bringing sales
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: associates back.
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: Is more profitable.
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  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, May twelfth, from the Black Effects Podcast Network.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Mimi Brown. This is front page and here are
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: today's biggest stories. Plus. Later in the show, Tennessee State Rep.
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  Speaker 5: Justin J.
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  Speaker 1: Pearson joins me. He's running for the Memphis seat at
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  Speaker 1: the center of all of this. Stay with me if
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: it suddenly feels like everything is getting more expensive again,
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  Speaker 1: gas flights, shipping, groceries. This war in the Middle East
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: is a big reason why there's still no deal to
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  Speaker 1: end the now ten week conflict between the US, Israel,
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  Speaker 1: and Iran. President Trump rejected Iran's latest proposal on Monday,
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  Speaker 1: called it quote totally unacceptable. Senator Corey Booker was on
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  Speaker 1: Meet the Press Sunday.
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  Speaker 2: Remember, the straight up for moves was not closed at
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  Speaker 2: the beginning of this conflict. This conflict has been a
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  Speaker 2: massive disaster and Donald Trump himself is an embarrassment on
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  Speaker 2: the world stage. I hear it from allies all around
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  Speaker 2: the world. He has got us into a trap and
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  Speaker 2: we're effectively in a stale meet with Iran. And the
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  Speaker 2: people that are paying the price was American military, hundreds injured,
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  Speaker 2: fourteen lives lost, and the American people collectively were spending
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  Speaker 2: billions of dollars more in the price spikes that we've
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  Speaker 2: seen as a result of this. This president has no
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  Speaker 2: way out. This is going to go on for months,
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  Speaker 2: and that pain is going to continue to be felt
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  Speaker 2: by people he promised to lower prices for keep us
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  Speaker 2: out of foreign entanglement.
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  Speaker 1: At the center of all of this the Strait of
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  Speaker 1: her Moose, a narrow stretch of water where about twenty
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  Speaker 1: percent of the world's oil moves every day. Since the
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  Speaker 1: war began, Iran has repeatedly disrupted traffic through that area.
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  Speaker 1: That uncertainty alone has pushed oil back above one hundred
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  Speaker 1: dollars a barrel, and here at home, people are starting
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  Speaker 1: to fill it.
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  Speaker 5: How much was it ninety three seventy four?
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  Speaker 1: Whom?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah not good?
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  Speaker 1: Gas prices are climbing. Airlines are warning about jet fuel costs.
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  Speaker 1: Shipping companies are paying more to move products overseas, and
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  Speaker 1: those costs eventually show up in stores, grocery aisles, and
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  Speaker 1: online prices. The US is hoping China can pressure Iran
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  Speaker 1: to fully open the Strait and calm global markets. But
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  Speaker 1: until something changes, Americans may still keep paying for this
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: war little by little every time they drive, shop, or travel.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Before most people ever cast a vote, the lines deciding
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: who those votes belong to may already be changing. Several
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  Speaker 1: Republican led states across the South are moving to redraw
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  Speaker 1: congressional maps. After a major Supreme Court ruling weakened protections
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  Speaker 1: under the Voting Rights Act, a new redistricting battle is
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  Speaker 1: breaking open just months before the mid term. The Supreme
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  Speaker 1: Court recently ruled that Louisiana's second majority black congressional district
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  Speaker 1: was unconstitutional. Now states across the South are using that
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  Speaker 1: decision to reopen fights over congressional maps. The biggest battles
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  Speaker 1: right now Louisiana Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina all are trying
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  Speaker 1: to redraw districts in ways that could help the GOP
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  Speaker 1: hold on to control of the House.
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  Speaker 3: The proposed schedule for the week has been properly moved
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  Speaker 3: and seconded. Paulos in favor will say aye, opposed nay,
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  Speaker 3: the eyes have it. The schedule is.
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  Speaker 1: Adopted, and Louisiana lawmakers are already working on new maps
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  Speaker 1: to the court. Struck Down, a district that helped elect
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  Speaker 1: Democratic Congressman Cleo Fields Builds himself says it's quote highly
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  Speaker 1: unlikely he wins re election if the new map goes through.
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  Speaker 6: Sometimes you get a setback to be set up.
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  Speaker 7: I mean, don't underestimate that power of the vote.
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  Speaker 6: That's what they are trying to take away.
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  Speaker 1: Then came the questions. One man stood up.
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  Speaker 6: I just don't understand how it happened and why there
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  Speaker 6: is nobody able to stop this train.
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  Speaker 5: You see all of the the.
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  Speaker 6: Role you see, Uh, it's racists, you know it.
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  Speaker 3: Everybody want to.
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  Speaker 1: Pretend like we know what it is that was a
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  Speaker 1: voter at Galilee Baptist Church. That question is the question,
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  Speaker 1: and so far no one's answered it. And Alabama Republicans
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  Speaker 1: are pushing to revive a map critics say could make
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  Speaker 1: it harder for black voters to elect another Democrats to
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  Speaker 1: Congress and Tennis Republicans just to prove the new map
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  Speaker 1: that splits up Memphis, the state's largest black majority city,
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  Speaker 1: and to multiple districts. Opponents say that weakens black voting
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  Speaker 1: power and threatens the state's only black House seat. South
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  Speaker 1: Carolina lawmakers are also signaling they may be next. And
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  Speaker 1: here's why this matters even if you don't follow politics closely.
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  Speaker 1: These congressional maps determine who controls the House, and that
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  Speaker 1: affects everything voting laws, student loans, abortion policy, taxes, healthcare funding,
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  Speaker 1: where federal dollars go. Because sometimes political power isn't just
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  Speaker 1: about who votes, it's about how the map is drawn
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  Speaker 1: before the voting even gets started.
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  Speaker 6: They're trying to turn the democracy upside down. That's what
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  Speaker 6: jerry mandering is about, so that rather than the people
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  Speaker 6: picking the politicians, the politicians get to pick their voters.
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  Speaker 6: That's what it is. That's what jerry mandering is. But
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  Speaker 6: I've got news for them. The democracy doesn't belong to
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  Speaker 6: the politicians. It belongs to the people and the people
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  Speaker 6: are coming to get their power.
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  Speaker 1: Bet Tennessee just dismantled its only majority black congressional district,
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  Speaker 1: Steve Coleman Seed in Memphis is gone, split into three pieces,
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  Speaker 1: scattered into rural districts that stretch hundreds of miles east.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody's calling it jerrymandering, and it is, But that word
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  Speaker 1: makes it sound like a process problem, a technicality, some
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  Speaker 1: legal slide of hand. But let me say what it
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  Speaker 1: actually is. Tennessee just told the black voters of Memphis,
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  Speaker 1: a community that has organized, that has voted, that has
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  Speaker 1: elected representation for decades, your vote no longer counts the
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  Speaker 1: way you thought it did. The lines have moved around you.
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  Speaker 1: Your neighbors are now grouped with people three counties away
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  Speaker 1: who don't share your interests, your schools, your roads, your priorities.
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  Speaker 1: Your political voice has been spread so thin it can't
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  Speaker 1: carry anymore. And here's the part that no one's saying
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  Speaker 1: out loud. This happened just eight days after the Supreme
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  Speaker 1: Court gut it the Voting Rights Act. Tennessee was the
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  Speaker 1: first state to move, but will not be the last.
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  Speaker 1: If you live in the South, if you live anywhere
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  Speaker 1: with the majority black district. Pay attention because somebody is
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  Speaker 1: sitting in a state legislature right now looking at Tennessee
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  Speaker 1: and taking notes, and the man justin J. Pearson fighting
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  Speaker 1: for that seat joins me next. So for the listener
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  Speaker 1: who is now just plugging in, break it down to
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  Speaker 1: us what happened in Tennessee and why should the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the world be paying attention right now?
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  Speaker 5: What happened in Tennessee is probably the quickest voting disenfranchisement
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  Speaker 5: of Black Americans that we've seen in the last hundred
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  Speaker 5: years or leased since the end of Reconstruction. Quite literally,
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  Speaker 5: this is the new period of retribution for white supremacy
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  Speaker 5: in America. You got to look at the Voting Rights
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  Speaker 5: Act was gutted section two during what was most recently
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  Speaker 5: called the Cali Decision. A day later, the governor called
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  Speaker 5: a special session in Tennessee to change the only black
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  Speaker 5: majority congression district into three white majority districts in an
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  Speaker 5: attempt to dilute black political voting power and prevent black
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  Speaker 5: folks from being able to choose a representative of their
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  Speaker 5: own agency and their own volition. We're saying, this is
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  Speaker 5: the new KKK that wear suits, ties, robes, and badges
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  Speaker 5: in effect right now in Tennessee, but also all across
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  Speaker 5: the South. I mean it was done in an attempt
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  Speaker 5: to give Republicans an advantage in the congressional races this
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  Speaker 5: fall because Donald Trump, who forced and pushed for this
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  Speaker 5: to happen, actually with Governor Bill Lee, is bent on
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  Speaker 5: taking away our political power but also trying to maintain
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  Speaker 5: political power in Congress going into the midterms because he's
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  Speaker 5: done such a horrible job governing.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 8: You see, gas prices five dollars, six dollars, seven dollars,
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  Speaker 8: The policies that they've been pushing have been detrimental to
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  Speaker 8: our economy, detrimental to our communities, whether they be white, Black,
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  Speaker 8: urban or rurle.
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  Speaker 5: We're all suffering because of this administration. And he knows
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  Speaker 5: that's going to have consequences at the ballot box, and
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  Speaker 5: so he's stealing seats and using this court Supreme Court
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  Speaker 5: decision to help him to do that. All across the South.
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  Speaker 1: Tennessee seems like the testing ground, right, It seems like
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  Speaker 1: an area where you know it's starting. Can you speak
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about how this is starting in Tennessee,
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  Speaker 1: but how this is this is going to.
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  Speaker 7: Spread, Tennessee is always the test case. The klu klutz
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  Speaker 7: Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tendessee. That should tell you
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  Speaker 7: what is at the heart of these folks and the
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  Speaker 7: work that they are still doing to honor their clancestors.
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  Speaker 5: And in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Florida, you're going to
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  Speaker 5: see this exact same effort repeating itself because the test
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  Speaker 5: case is being proven that you can you can take
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  Speaker 5: black people's voting rights away, and the courts seem like
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  Speaker 5: they are positioned to support that. But we've got some law, lawsuits,
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  Speaker 5: very unique lawsuits that we think may be able to
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  Speaker 5: withstand even this attempt to take away our democracy. But
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  Speaker 5: this is what's going to happen, is going to happen
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  Speaker 5: all across the South, and it's going to happen if
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  Speaker 5: we do not fight with everything that we've got to
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  Speaker 5: resist it. And I mean, this happened in just a
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  Speaker 5: matter of a few days, and so we organize this
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  Speaker 5: mass mobilization of thousands of people with just a few
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  Speaker 5: days and that in the short term, that is what
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  Speaker 5: we're going to have to do. But in the long term,
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  Speaker 5: we're going to have to realize that the South has
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  Speaker 5: to be a place that is infrastructurally important to our democracy,
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  Speaker 5: and so we have to build up our city councils,
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  Speaker 5: our county commissions, our mayor's offices, our state representers, our
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  Speaker 5: state senators to be able to change this. And that
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  Speaker 5: is not a project that is going to happen in
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  Speaker 5: the next two weeks, two months, or two years. We
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  Speaker 5: need to be looking fifty years down the line, because
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  Speaker 5: this fight is for a lifetime.
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  Speaker 1: How do we get here? How did we get here
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  Speaker 1: right now?
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  Speaker 5: I'm gonna be honest, like, because we're black. I believe
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  Speaker 5: that over the last fifty years, white supremacists, conservatives, white
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  Speaker 5: Christian nationalists have been organizing using our tactics against us,
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  Speaker 5: and that this moment has culminated after really fifty years
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  Speaker 5: of work. It didn't just happen in the last year,
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  Speaker 5: shall we count of your holder? Happened over a decade ago.
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  Speaker 5: They have been working at destroying the Voter Rights Act,
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  Speaker 5: working and making black folks second and third and fourth
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  Speaker 5: class citizens for a very long time, really since the
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  Speaker 5: end of the Civil War, but particularly in these last
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  Speaker 5: sixty years. And I won't say that black folks we've
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: fallen asleep at the wheel as I don't think that's
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  Speaker 5: a fair characterization, but I will say I think that
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  Speaker 5: we have not had the level of urgency that was
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  Speaker 5: needed for the moments that we are in.
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  Speaker 1: But what tools do we have left? I know the
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  Speaker 1: NAACP has filed, you know, suit to block the map
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  Speaker 1: from taking effect with Section two of the Voting Rights Act.
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  Speaker 1: Now gut it. What is the legal strategy? What grounds
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  Speaker 1: are left to fight on?
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  Speaker 5: We have to find the unique avenues in which to
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  Speaker 5: fight this, and we also have to make sure politically
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  Speaker 5: our representatives and our representatives who are in positions of
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  Speaker 5: power today use them. Our Congressional Black Caucus needs to
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  Speaker 5: be in these communities, organizing town hall meetings, registering people
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  Speaker 5: to vote, checking folks voter registration. Because they're trying to
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  Speaker 5: rig the maps based on the lack really of participation
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  Speaker 5: in elections, and in Tennessee, where we have the lowest
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  Speaker 5: participation in elections of anywhere else in the country, this
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  Speaker 5: is an opportunity for us to have people to show
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  Speaker 5: up in a way that they've never shown up before,
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  Speaker 5: to have people participate in the way they've never participated before,
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  Speaker 5: and make their maps devoid from the reality of what
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: we can construct, what we can bring if we have
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: the new energy, the new ideas, new candidates, which is
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: why I'm still running for Congress, and tell people go
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: to vote justinj dot com, get in the fight, run
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: for office, donate to people who are running for office.
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  Speaker 5: Support in this moment in time. But you cannot sit
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: on the sidelines because you're going to be one of
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: the people fifty years from now when your grandkids are
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: asking you what did you do? You're going to have
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: to lie and say, oh, yeah, I was in there.
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: You know I was against it. I was no. Don't
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: have to lie, tell the truth and participate with everything
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: that you've got.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Right now, you know that moment at self checkout where
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the machine starts yelling at you and suddenly everyone's frustrated. Well,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: some of the biggest retailers in America are starting to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: admit something customers have been saying for years. Self checkout
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: may not have been the great idea they thought it was. Walmart, Target,
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  Speaker 1: Costco all three are pulling back on self checkout kiosks
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and bringing back more traditional cashier lanes. After years of
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: pushing customers towards scanning and bagging their own items. Stores
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  Speaker 1: love the idea of self checkout at first because it
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: was supposed to make lines move faster and cut labor costs.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Instead three big problems theft, technical issues, and angry customers.
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  Speaker 1: Retailers say self checkout has become a major source of
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  Speaker 1: inventory loss, especially when expensive items get misscanned or skipped altogether,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and then there's customer experience instead of speed, Shoppers say
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the machines often create longer weights, glitches, frozen screens, and stress,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: especially during big grocery runs. A recent survey found many
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: shoppers feel like they're basically doing unpaid work for billion
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: dollar companies without a discount for it, and honestly a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: lot of people probably relate to that. This is part
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: of a much bigger conversation happening across the economy right
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: now about automation, jobs and convenience.
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  Speaker 4: Is more profitable for the retailer to pay employees to
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: manage checkout than it is to support the machines, where
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: they're probably getting less than accurate checkouts from consumers.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: For years, companies sold technology as a faster, cheaper, better route.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: How some of them are realizing that people still value
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: actual human interaction, especially when the technology starts making everyday
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: life more frustrating instead of easier. That's your front page.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I Me Me Brown. This podcast is brought to you
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: by the Black Effect Podcast Network