 HBC Dodgers Radio welcome back I'm your host Jared Carter privileged today to be joined by Sister Keona Kizzi she is a senior political science major out of Tennessee the president of the political science society at the North Carolina A&T State University here to talk with us today about the recent developments out of the Supreme Court on the gerrymandering case which if you haven't been keeping up with it maintains in part in large part actually an issue that has literally divided the A&T campus down the middle into two separate voting districts and something that the students have been fighting for and about for a number of years so sis it is a pleasure and an honor to have you on today. Well thank you for having me. So Supreme Court comes down with this decision that the federal government will not get involved on issues of voter redistricting and North Carolina A&T has been at the heart of that for a couple years now and the students have really led the charge on this matter because in fact the campus is in two separate voting districts down the middle you have been at the heart of this as one of the organizers and activists you've worked with external groups beyond the campus to get this to and through the courts what was your reaction to the Supreme Court's decision? Oh man honestly devastated because the Supreme Court's honestly haremarked especially considering my own personal beliefs I want to become a lawyer one day I was haremarked as kind of a champion of the people but that to me that decision wasn't reflective of the needs of the community or the United States at large. I've had the pleasure of being you know mentored by several faculty shout out to Dr. Armstrong, Steele and Smith along with the rest of my eboard and previous students because this has been going on since 2016 and I've just now been able to kind of follow in their footsteps and keep the fight going. So this has been your whole collegiate career essentially right fighting this issue. Yes essentially. I mean to have so much invested in getting the word out getting media involved and engaged on your battle and then to have it come down as a decision like this do you do you feel like okay well we gave it our best shot and this is it or is there another direction in which you fight? No I definitely believe that there's always another direction especially considering where our ancestors came from and the things that we've overcome there's always another step to take and as far as the political society we've definitely convened since then and gotten together with a specific plan and format and ways that we want to go about in this upcoming year. As of right now we're focusing on voter education with the new North Carolina voter ID laws and just working on massive voter registration drives on campus and in the surrounding community to make sure that we're all on the same page. Take us back a little bit to how you first became aware of this issue and how you became involved because I think a lot of HBCU students who are going to listen to this come to an HBCU for an opportunity like this to make a difference in their community but because of their personality or because they're new to a city or campus they don't always feel comfortable doing that. You're not from Carolina you're a military kid been a lot of different places so how did you become comfortable on the A&T campus becoming out front and engaged on this topic which has national reach and implications. All right that's actually such a far-reaching story. I actually didn't start my journey at A&T. As a freshman I went to Spelman College in Atlanta and then I transferred between them money issues like many people do and I was kind of battling between whether I wanted to go back to Spelman or start A&T and I just got really really immersed in A&T's culture and their student body and luckily like I said earlier I was fortunate enough to find really good mentors that are great at doing what they do and because of them they really kind of just motivated me it started off with me just wanting to be in the political science society and then my professor and mentor let me know that it actually hasn't been registered on campus since 2014 so I kind of took that under my wing and started the process of doing that and then it just kind of rolled into me becoming president and then it was all just sort of this snowball effect and here I am now talking to you and just trying to let people know that these things have a massive effect it doesn't simply just affect A&T it affects the surrounding community and local elections and then it just rolls into presidential elections because it's a jerrymandered on a local level a jerrymandered on all levels that's right for everybody who may not be familiar with what gerrymandering and voter redistricting is can you kind of give us a primer on what it is and why it's so important right so basically every 10 years the united states creates a census based on population data things like age you raise political what's the word basically your political affiliation now in early 2016 republicans ted bud and mark walker basically hired a political scientist to sort of redistrict the counties that you see so instead of them being in kind of fair equal representations they look like what people often call squiggle marks because what they effectively did is instead of A&T being one entire campus which was represented by the lovely Alma Adams it was called district 12 now they've broken us into the 13th and the 16th which basically kind of breaks down our votes into two separate groups and we're surrounded by I won't say surrounded but we're mostly encompassed by other republicans and how does that when it when it breaks down to actual elections which you referred to earlier about how it impacts if some people would say okay well A&T has to is in two districts right but those students are going to vote a certain way either way no matter what district they're in what does that division mean for the outcomes of elections from local to state to federal right so effectively what gerrymandering does is it takes our A&T's campus which is historically and predominantly democrat it takes that and kind of dilutes the vote by surrounding it with other republican votes that have more weight to it and it's also continuing the fight against that and trying to find an independent way to redistrict counties so what do you say to people who say okay well you know what that's screwed up but there's a lot of republicans in north carolina they had another case that came before the supreme court involved democrats doing it in maryland so if the issue is whoever's in charge can draw the lines the way they want to how do you respond to folks who just say well if you don't like it then then go be in charge but somehow i i myself and i know a lot of other personal friends of mine and students on campus have been battling with because time and time again we tend to put the power into hands of other people who we might do best fit to protect you know our community and our interests but they've shown us time and time again that they don't so we're working on finding a way of taking that power specifically to redistrict outside of politician hands and into something more independent and if that doesn't work actually we're going to have an onslaught of young adults running for congress in local position talk about the the i guess the honor or the the privilege of being the next generation of a and t or aggy activists right because there are few campuses in effect i think a and t might be the only campus that i can think of where the heartbeat of the school's identity is civil rights if you say a and t the first thing you think is a and t four um yeah you know so and then and don't get me wrong all hbc's have that but i think that yours is a campus that intimately feels that way from start to finish from when you come in to when you graduate you are an aggy activist that is that's what aggies do so to speak that's what aggy pride is um so what is it like to be a part of that legacy and how do you think that that today's activism is different from what the a and t four did at the lunch counter oh that was a very low question i think it's it's overwhelming in the most positive sense because you're surrounded by people that know instinctively how you feel you're surrounded by alumni that have been through this before so you get access to that knowledge and that like vast base to kind of help lift you up into your own spirit and just the things and the policies that you help create for future anti students the challenges that we face today are still violent but they're violent in a different aspect the a and t four faced physical violence for the things that they did ours is more so political economic social ramifications so while you don't harm me physically you do harm that state of being as a person in the united states if that makes any sense yes um we do have the privilege of being able to kind of connect with more people like via podcast or social media but at the same time it it's often tricky because you run into issues of like your voice being drowned out by the thousands of other things that are constantly happening so you have to try to find a way to let people know that this is important but this does affect each and every one of us it's one of the basic things that kind of reap into other issues as far as representation and policy and things like that when you what is it that you want your elected officials to to know um about the seriousness of this issue and why they should take a different course to approaching a and t greensboro north carolina's voting autonomy and basic constitutional right to vote what is it that you want folks like alma adams mark walker other folks in the state to know about how serious this is and why it should be different me um i want to think i'm i'm because i know she's been working hard she specifically has been displaced because of this because she's had to run to be a representative of a completely different district that she hasn't you know she wouldn't have had to traditionally do as far as mr walker and mr budd i suggest that they find better ways to redistrict the surrounding counties because you're going to have a lot of people that are upset about the fact that when we have new voter id laws that are already complicated for people of color specifically to acquire and then you have this redistricting redistricting that effectively sort of dilutes their vote which means you're not absolutely representing us you mentioned at the top that your career goal is to be a lawyer um where do you see that taking you um in everything that you've done those thus far going into your you know your final year uh at anti what where do you see that the work that you've done in greensboro will launch you uh politically and professionally um i've always had an interest in civil rights and constitutional law so that's definitely going to be my concentration so hopefully y'all will see me in a few years as a federal court judge that's definitely the end goal that all me are owning my own law firm one day and just kind of putting out more progressive thinking black lawyers and people of color all around so that things like this can immediately be challenged