I have the right to vote.
I have the right to vote!
Residents of America’s most segregated city
are in the fight of their lives.
I didn't know if I was going to live or die.
But I knew one thing:
I wasn't going to give up, man.
Amid a pandemic,
they’re struggling against an effort
to cheat Black Milwaukee residents
out of the right to vote.
I have to, every day, choose between:
Will this virus kill me or will racism kill me?
A fact that comes with daily reminders
that the system is against you.
Nobody’s going to come save us.
We got to save ourselves!
Black people are being brutalized
and killed by police with little consequence.
That was somebody's brother.
That was somebody's son.
But this place —
where Black Americans experience
an ongoing struggle just to exist —
has its own kind of superpower.
This state could help determine
who becomes the next president.
If we come out and vote,
Trump can’t win Wisconsin.
If folks in my community come out and vote,
there's going to be a change.
And it's going to change the nation and the world.
From voter suppression
to a crippling pandemic
and systemic racism,
the odds are stacked against them.
But that won’t stop these residents
from doing everything they can
to have their voices heard.
Because it’s their right to vote,
and people should not be denying folks
their right to vote!
[phone ringing]
- Your call has been forwarded
to an automated voice messaging system.
Hey, superintendent, this is Minister Lewis.
I was just calling.
I wanted to talk to you a little bit
about helping us get this vote out.
Reverend Greg Lewis is leading a campaign
to get people to the polls
amid a concerted effort
to suppress votes in Wisconsin.
Some people think
that if they keep us from voting,
that they can keep power,
and they can always win.
And that's why I call it
scorched-earth politics.
They don't care about me.
They'll burn me up.
They'll sacrifice me,
as long as they can keep their power.
And as long as they can win.
State Republicans made it
more difficult to vote
after taking control of the legislature in 2011.
They passed a strict voter ID law,
remapped districts,
put limits on early voting
and attempted to purge voters from the rolls.
We're not just talking about voting for
a Trump or a Biden.
We're talking about voting for power.
We're talking about developing
a voting bloc in our community
so we can control our local politics.
That hasn't been done before.
People, you know, if Black and brown people
get together, man, we'd run this town.
He’s gone all the way to the Supreme Court
to advocate for his community.
And, in the coming days,
he’ll find out if his fight has been successful.
If you leave here,
go right down the street to downtown.
It's thriving -
buildings everywhere.
But you come over here,
and where's the thriving?
None.
People are being left out of everything,
especially the vote.
People are being discouraged from voting.
Wisconsin has one of the strictest
voter ID laws in the country.
It’s one of six states where you can’t vote
without showing a specific photo ID.
Getting a photo ID can be difficult and unaffordable.
Less than half of all Black and Latino adults
in Milwaukee County have a license.
Maria Hamilton experienced the difficulties
of navigating the voter ID law firsthand.
[I] went to Office Depot,
got all the copies and everything,
sent it back to them.
And then you send it back here.
Sending me a letter, come talking about,
well this isn’t proof that you live there.
This is my energy bill
with my name and address on it!
Maria had the right photo ID,
but because she had recently moved,
her address didn’t match it.
After several failed attempts to register,
she’s headed to the city’s election commission
to get it sorted.
I literally want to know that
I am clear to vote in the next election.
Maria is an advocate for change in her community.
She started mobilizing
after experiencing her own personal tragedy.
This is the headquarters of the change in my life,
where Dontre was murdered.
Her son, Dontre, was shot 14 times by a white cop
after sleeping on a park bench in 2014.
The officer who killed him was never charged.
He was fired from the police force.
It happened across the street from City Hall,
where Maria is going today
to get answers about her voter registration.
Hi.
I came to bring this letter back.
She’s tried twice before.
But today,
Maria’s application was finally accepted.
I don’t know what happened in the process.
But a person should not
have to deal with it three times.
Yep.
I have everything right here.
OK.
And you will be up in
our system very, very soon.
Thank you so much.
Today.
I appreciate you.
Thank you, ma’am.
You take care.
You too.
- Is it printing?
- Yes.
- OK.
It’s less than 50 days before the election,
and Shavonda Sisson’s twins,
Nicholas and Michael, just turned 18.
She’s marking the day,
among other things,
by registering them to vote.
I want them to understand
the privilege that there is
to be able to have access to a vote
and the responsibility.
Shavonda didn’t get that privilege
during the April primary.
She requested a mail-in ballot
that she never received.
Her husband received an empty envelope
with no ballot in it.
And her experience with
voter disenfranchisement
wasn’t unique.
- People have been waiting for hours
in Milwaukee to vote in the presidential primary.
- Two courts ruled
the election could not be postponed.
After a failed last-minute attempt
to delay the election,
residents were left with a choice between
exercising their right to vote
or risking their health.
For Shavonda,
it was an impossible choice.
Election day comes
and I have to ask myself,
as a Black woman who has a preexisting condition,
am I willing to risk my health,
knowing that I might not be taken as seriously
if I go to the doctor
because of medical racism.
And if I contract the virus,
will I die?
At the time,
Milwaukee County’s Black residents
accounted for over half of all confirmed
COVID-19 cases and 57% of deaths.
One study found
that the combination of poll closures,
COVID-19 and other factors
may have lowered Black voter turnout
by almost 16 percentage points.
Here’s why that’s significant:
CNN now projects
that Donald Trump will carry
the state of Wisconsin.
He won by just 23,000 votes.
If you look back at 2016,
turnout across the state
was down from the previous election.
But Black voter turnout
took a huge dive from 2012 —
when Wisconsin voted for President Obama.
Black people were absolutely blamed
for Trump winning Wisconsin in 2016.
We are still being blamed, right?
All we're seeing is people saying:
Black people, you need to get out here and vote.
It's so important.
And it's like, well,
we try to vote.
One study found that
anywhere from 11,000 to 23,000 residents —
disproportionately Black and low-income —
were disenfranchised by the voter ID law.
The state has a reputation for razor-thin wins.
So the smallest change in turnout
could make all the difference —
which is one reason Reverend Lewis
is so committed to getting people to the polls.
If we come out and vote,
Trump can’t win Wisconsin.
Black voters aren’t a monolith,
but a vast majority of them
have historically voted for a Democratic president.
If folks in my community
come out and vote,
there’s gonna be a change.
And it’s gonna change the nation and the world.
He’s not just committed.
Pastor Lewis is relentless.
During the April primary,
he was in bed recovering
from a near-death battle with COVID-19.
So how you been feeling, Greg, since the ...
- Good.
pandemic?
I’m good.
You know, just my respiratory
needs to heal, but
it may not ever heal.
Yeah, I know.
But you got to slow down.
-Ha ha. Yeah, after Nov. 3.
Man, you gotta fight till you die.
When I was dying, I was like,
man, I ain't dead.
Give me that phone.
We still got to organize, everybody.
Everybody, we still gotta do this.
You know,
get on your posts, you know,
Imma be all right.
I didn't know if I was going to live or die.
But I knew one thing:
I wasn't going to give up, man.
I knew ...
I knew I wasn't.
I was going to fight!
I was going to fight
until I was gone.
Coronavirus
has ravaged
Milwaukee’s Black community.
Beneath the data
is a complex story
about the ways in which Black residents
have been deeply disenfranchised.
Shavonda grew up on the city’s north side.
She’s now director of programming
at a social justice organization
that works to foster young leaders
from neighborhoods like this.
For decades, it was redlined
by racist housing policies
and is now almost entirely Black.
Today, it’s marked by poverty,
unemployment and a persistent myth:
What so often gets told about this area
is that there aren’t good people who live here.
That’s not true.
There are wonderful people who live here
that want access to the same things
that everybody else wants access to.
People want access to good schools.
People want access to safe housing.
People want access to everything
that everybody else wants.
Like freedom from police brutality.
Four days after George Floyd was killed,
protesters in Milwaukee took to the streets
to demand justice.
They’ve been protesting every night since.
What people in this community want
is systemic change.
Their survival depends on it.
The recent marches for Black lives started,
and there was lots of concern about
COVID numbers going up.
And there was people saying,
y'all need to go in the house because
y'all shouldn't be out there because of the pandemic.
And it's like,
don't you think people want to be home being safe?
We don't have a choice.
And so I have to every day choose between:
Will this virus kill me, or will racism kill me?
Dontre Hamilton!
- Dontre Hamilton!
Dontre Hamilton!
- Dontre Hamilton!
Dontre Hamilton!
During filming with Maria,
footage was released of Daniel Prude
being suffocated by police
in Rochester, New York.
Every time someone dies,
it’s like Dontre dies all over again.
He was suffering from a mental health episode,
something Dontre struggled with.
That was somebody's brother.
That was somebody's son.
That was somebody's father.
You could lose your life in this country
because of the color of your skin
and hate.
And the worst kind of hate in America
is hate that’s fear.
Those two things?
It’s a walking time bomb.
It’s clear that the struggle for political power
in Milwaukee, and the rest of the country,
can’t be separated from the struggle for Black lives.
Nicholas, let’s look at your documents.
Shavonda’s just finished
registering her sons to vote for the first time.
Do you know where the mailbox is?
But she’s still thinking about
how she was disenfranchised.
If I could go back and change anything
that happened in the spring primaries,
I would have risked it and gone to vote in person,
because what I never want to happen
is for me to be victimized by a system
or oppressed by a system
and remain silent about it.
So we just have to keep
telling the truth about
what keeps us from participating
in something that
we’re supposed to have the right to.
Good evening.
We’re here today because
Judge Conley ruled
that as long as ballots are postmarked
by Nov. 3
and received by Nov. 9,
they will be counted.
Reverend Lewis and his allies
just earned a major win for voting access:
Absentee ballots received after Election Day
will be counted.
We’re going to overcome
all the things that are in our way.
We’re going to overcome
this photo ID situation.
We’re going to overcome
all these requirements just to vote.
For Reverend Lewis,
the fight for freedom will go
far beyond the outcome of Nov. 3.
So as long as I’m living,
as long as I got breath,
you know, I’ll be crawling
and grabbing and scratching and biting,
letting people know:
Man, we need change.
And we have to do that together.
Your vote matters!
Thank you.