[Music] that was a scene in April of 2020 as Wisconsin nights Brave the cold and covid-19 to cast their ballots for the candidates of their choice Pastor Greg Lewis believes voting is the one equalizer in our country that African-Americans can control unfortunately too many of us don't exercise that power and understand how one vote can control policies and impact our communities and neighborhoods as president of souls to the polls Lewis and other Faith leaders are working to get more blacks informed on the importance of voting Pastor Lewis thanks for joining us no thank you for having me all right we appreciate it um why are there so many efforts out right now to disen disenfranchise Black voters well you know most people believe that voting is important but in our community we've been inculcated with the fact that it just doesn't matter our votes don't count and I just believe that if if if if so many people are putting so much money into making sure that we don't vote that ought to tell us something that vote is so important I mean you said it earlier and and I want to keep repeating it voting is the great equalizer I don't care how much money you have I don't care how much land you own I don't care who you are if you have nothing you still have the great equalizer that's voting and it's power what was behind the closing of the Midtown voting site you know we're trying to figure that one out you know I don't want to be a conspiracy theory buff but uh I will say this that it was the most potent voting Center early voting Center in the midwest okay the Midwest and for some reason they said somebody bought the place and they didn't want voting in that location and when they asked them to change their minds they made the price so high to rent the place that it just wasn't feasible for the city so they closed it so we're going to be voting three times this year is there uh could we experience some voter fatigue just being tired of voting so much well I tell you that's one thing that is certainly going to occur but you know we we can't let something hard keep us from doing something great when people aren't voting like right now every vote certainly counts this is a great opportunity for us to take advantage of the fact that people aren't coming out and we can flood those polling places and make sure that our choice is the one that's made right now the Lesser people vote the more your vote counts and that's just a fact what do you tell people when they say my vote can't make a difference you know I tell people that there would been there have been times when one vote vote made the difference when one person made the difference there have been times when people didn't understand how important that vote is but when it was all over they saw the results of it there are three times when our votes were very important you know I'm you know I'm not going on anybody's side here okay but when Governor Walker was running for office the vote here in Milwaukee put the now government iers over uh early votes put him over uh the last presidential race when the presidential race was won by 20,000 votes 18,500 came out of Midtown shopping center voting place don't tell me our votes don't count they are very significant because most of the state with our white brothers and sisters are split right down the middle I hate saying this but when we go out and vote we make the difference I don't know how much power you need to understand to know that that is just sheer power okay so say you go out and vote and you do what you need to do how do we hold our politicians accountable after we cast our vote see and and that's the important part Mr Cy you know what we do is we go out and vote and then we don't involve ourselves in the politic after that you know you still got to make phone calls you still got to go to me meetings you still got to attend events you still have to stay on top of what your leaders are doing you still have to do all those things and you still have to push them to make sure that your interests are looked after you know just because you vote that don't mean go home and go to sleep when you get done voting you need to start to hold these people accountable and that's what we haven't done we don't ask for anything man and you know and we and we give our votes without even a consideration now when we vote we are so far behind the eight ball because what we ought to be doing is having our own candidates we ought to be having our own folks everything and putting them up for election instead we have to beg every time there's election for people to just come out and vote that we we have to get on to uh being more advanced and uh Progressive with our voting rights the voting system is ours to use and we're just starting to understand it and now they want to change it to a dictatorship okay so we were at a recent black men's forum and you talked about the buddy system how we could go to to the polls together talk a little bit about that no so so we're going to have this um initiative and it's called the uh vote tripling where everybody who's going to vote we want you to get three people to go with you and we want you to ask those three people to get three people and we're going to be doing this starting in our church communities and we want that to expand into the communities at large perfect perfect perfect well thanks a lot I really appreciate it