Pod Save America - The Wilderness Chapter 5: Working-Class Latinos in Las Vegas

Are demographics destiny? We talk to working-class Latino voters in Las Vegas about what issues matter most to them and whether they’ll vote for Democrats this fall. Political scientist Ruy Teixeira, former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign manager Faiz Shakir, and Carlos Odio of EquisLabs join to discuss. New episodes of The Wilderness drop every Monday. Subscribe to The Wilderness wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple: apple.co/thewildernessSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6JfsJlD5sBhVpEQEALNw4UStitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-wildernessIf you want to learn more about how you can take action in the fight for our democracy, head over to Vote Save America and Culinary Union 226: https://votesaveamerica.com/midterm-madness/
https://www.culinaryunion226.org/

Duration: 50m
Broadcast on: 17 Oct 2022
Audio Format: other

Millenie Aras-Minde started canvasing when she was 18, before the 2018 Nevada primaries. She went with her mom, a pride member of Culinary 226, the biggest union in Las Vegas, one that deployed 500 canvassers to knock on more than half a million doors for Joe Biden. She likes to teach me, she's like, "No, Millen, you got to do it this way." She's very loud. I don't know if you've seen a Mexican mom trying to push her point. Millenie's family hasn't had it easy. No matter how hard they've worked, it's never been enough to keep up with the cost of housing. Starting with a crash that led to the Great Recession of 2008. Now it's official we are in a recession. A report out today says nearly 213,000 homeowners got foreclosure notices just in July. Nevada is ground zero for the housing crisis. I was born in California in Los Angeles, moved to Vegas in '03, because an appearance that was too expensive in California. With Vegas, we lived here until 2008. We moved to San Diego because we lost the house in 2008. It's very tough moving a lot of times. I think I went to like 10 different schools. It was pretty lonely, but it's okay. I got used to it. If you are able to stay in the same house, from the time we were like a kid, it's very fortunate. Housing is way too expensive almost everywhere right now, but Las Vegas is one of the worst markets in the country. Melanie is also a full-time nursing student, and when the pandemic hit, she couldn't afford her own place, so she and her boyfriend moved back home to live with her parents, just like millions of other young people did during COVID, which is one reason she's out knocking on doors in another midterm election. Hello, my name is Melanie and I'm with the Culinary Union. I just want to... The Culinary Workers have proposed a ballot initiative for the 2022 midterms that would institute rent control and the predominantly Latino working-class neighborhood of North Las Vegas. The union asked us, "What do you think is the most concerning right now?" Most of us said housing. For the whole entire paycheck to go to housing, so it was not attainable. You need a down payment. You need to be able to like live, you don't like to eat. Rent control would be life-changing for people like Melanie and her family, which is why she spent her summer collecting signatures in 100-degree heat, because housing's an issue that too many politicians aren't doing anything about or even talking about. I have such a story about this. Remember, Congresswoman Katie Porter from our last episode? When I met with my first political consultant and he said, "Well, you know, what do you see as the issues that you want to run on? Like, who's Katie Porter gonna be?" And I said housing. And the political consultant, who's no longer my consultant, by the way, said, "Well, that's not really like a thing." And I said, "No, no, no. Listen to me. This is the crisis that people are facing, and this is the crisis that we're coming into as a country." But generally, this is thought about as a private problem, right? Not a public one. There's sort of this category, public housing, and we know what that conjures up and what that typically means. And the rest of it is sort of a thought about as, like, not really the government's problem.

Transcription truncated.