This interview with rapper YelloPain from Cleveland Signal reveals how a little knowledge can help turn non-voters into voters and encourage them to vote all the way down the ballot:
… And she [cousin, Desiree Tims, who was running for Congress] said, ‘Well, what are some things that you would like to see changed?’ I started to list off the different things in my community. I’m from Dayton, Ohio, and at that time, it was these crazy potholes in the street. I got friends that’s doing extra so much time in jail for small crimes. I was listing the minimum wage, etc., you know, and how they started giving less money out on the food stamps. I’m not on food stamps, but I got family members that had those complaints. So it was just a lot of things that I was just like, you know, ‘They don’t care about us.’
And then she explained to me who ‘they’ were. She told me about the different levels of government, and broke it down for me. She’s like, ‘You know those potholes? There’s a transportation bill that can be expedited to get those roads fixed.’
And she started to list all of the different people, the state reps, the city council members, the judges. And that was eye opening.
So you mean to tell me that everything in our community, down to the trash pickup, to what the kids eat in school, is directly tied to somebody that’s in office? That blew my mind. And then I became extremely passionate about it, and then I started to study the process even more. ...
So then he wrote a song:
And a slight update in 2020: