The final Human Voter Guide, Joel Edgerton on playing the role of reluctant activist Richard Loving, how do expats view the U.S. election?
Human Voter Guide: last-minute tips for Election Day
Who's behind the high Latino turnout in Nevada?
"Looks like Trump got his wall after all. A wall of beautiful voters,"
Looks like Trump got his wall after all. A wall of beautiful voters. https://t.co/cIx3IQdlwD
— Yvanna D. Cancela (@YvannaCancela) November 5, 2016
, Friday night, after it emerged that Latino residents waited for hours in line to cast early ballots in Nevada.
For a look at who's behind this surge in early voting amongst Latinos in the silver state and what it could mean come tomorrow is
who's covered Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century.
To hear the entire conversation click on the audio embedded at the top of this post.
Awkward no more: Election-fueled rifts could soon cease
Election Day is just hours away.
For people across the country and even here in Southern California, Tuesday can't come soon enough. No, not because they're hopping up and down to take part in the democratic process (though that might be a part).
For many, tomorrow marks the end of uncomfortable and sometimes stressful conversations with friends and family over issues that have polarized the country.
Take Two asked listeners to share their experiences. Sandra Harrison and Mary Perez told their tales to Take Two.
Mary's Story:
This election season has had a distinct impact, particularly on my mom and I.
We are both staunch Republicans who believe in fiscal responsibility and limited government, so there's never been an election where we have disagreed about who we would vote for or rather if we would vote at all.
My mother believes in the 'lesser of two evils' argument — that she must support Mr. Trump because he will nominate conservative Supreme Court Justices and will appeal Obamacare.
I believe that it is our right not to vote for either candidate. While I agree with my mother that it would be detrimental to our country to elect Secretary Clinton, I think Mr. Trump will tarnish the conservative message.
I will absolutely be relieved when the election is over. I'm still optimistic, no matter what happens, and I still believe the right to vote is one of the greatest constitutional rights that make our country so great.
Sandy's Story:
This election has had a tremendous impact on my relationships with people I love.
I question their news source; they think that my news source is questionable. I think their candidate is a lunatic; they think mine is a lying crook. There's really no middle ground.
On Facebook and Twitter, I have tried to keep people with different opinions in my feeds because I don't want to only surround myself with people who look and think like me, but it's hard, and it's hard to know how to engage with them without tearing into the relationship.
So instead, I've settled for surface, and I'm hoping that once Tuesday comes, we can return to conversations of depth.
The issue we disagree with the most is probably immigration. I and most of my family come from a Christian worldview, so it startles me, it horrifies me when I hear what they say, or when I see the memes, they post about immigrants and closing our borders.
My hope for the nation after the election is that we can find common ground, middle ground and that whichever candidate is in office, that the people who are on the margins will feel heard and that things will be done to bring them into the circle of this amazing country that we are.
(Answers have been edited for clarity.)
Need a free ride to the polls? These companies can help
On the eve of tomorrow’s big — and very close — presidential election, get out the vote has become the final rallying cry on both sides of the ticket. Polls are tight, and the winner could very well be determined simply by whose supporters show up to vote.
To help voters get to the polls, all kinds of companies will be providing free and discounted rides November 8, including the following in the L.A. area:
- LA Yellow Cab is offering free taxi rides all day to callers who say they need to get to their polling place. (424) 222-2222.
- Lyft is giving a 45 percent discount on election day rides in 20 markets, including Orange County (but not Los Angeles), from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
- General Motors' new car-sharing service Maven City is offering $5 off car share rentals to registered users with the promo code VOTE.
- Primetime Limousine is making its entire fleet of limos available to voters in Long Beach from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. (562) 455-4665.
- Uber will feature a polling place locator on its app Tuesday to transport voters; new riders are eligible for a $20 credit.
- The car-sharing service Zipcar will make its rentals free from 6-10 p.m.
Voting has begun in California. KPCC is here for you and will help you develop your Voter Game Plan. Use our election guide to find your personalized ballot.
After asylum: 'My new country, everything is different'
After dipping last year, the number of child migrants from Central America is once again surging. Nearly 60,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended on the southwest border over the past 12 months – a 50 percent increase from the previous year, according to figures released in October by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Many of the teens and children that first arrived in 2014 cited gang violence as reasons for their flight. This put them in an uncertain legal zone in their asylum claims, which typically respond to political or religious persecution. Despite measures by the Obama Administration to speed up their cases and urging from advocates and attorneys to clarify how gang violence should be seen under asylum law, thousands of juveniles are still working their way through the nation's busy immigration courts. And for those that do receive the long sought-after asylum status, it can bring both hope and challenges to a new life in the U.S.
"I was torn whether to continue or return"
Ana Hernández says the decision for her children to leave El Salvador was wrenching. She had left their home in the central part of the country when they were five, relocating to Los Angeles to seek steady work and send back money to them and their younger sister, who were being raised by their grandmother in her absence. As reports of violence and gang threats reached Southern California, she grew anxious about her children, who were entering their teen years. They could now become prime targets for recruitment from gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a group with roots in Los Angeles and strong presence in El Salvador.
Then two years ago, phone calls from one of her sons, Alejandro, grew more intense.
"He kept saying, 'Mom, please bring me, bring me out of here,' asking me constantly," she recalled in Spanish. "But he didn't tell me what was really going on because he didn't want to worry me."
Aware of the dangerous trip north from news reports and other families, she tried to dissuade her sons from leaving. She feared kidnapping or risky travel by bus or train across several borders. But during one call, Alejandro broke down.
"He told me, 'If you don’t get me out of here, they’re going to kill me. If I stay here, they’re going to kill me,'" said Hernández. It was clear, she said, he was referring to local gangs in the neighborhood. "I didn’t doubt the fear, but the journey north also frightened me. I heard about all the risks, I watched the news. But I didn’t know what to do, because I also knew that they just couldn’t stay there."
For Alejandro, then 14, who ended up leaving their home with his twin brother Luis, the journey north was also filled with conflict.
"I was very afraid, not knowing if I should go forward or turn back. I thought a lot about my family – mostly about my grandmother who was still stuck back home," he said. "I was torn whether to continue or return."
Eventually, the boys made it to southern Texas where they were apprehended by border officials. Their date of entry reads: June 24, 2014 in Hidalgo, Texas. That area is part of the border patrol's Rio Grande Sector, which charted 49,959 unaccompanied children that year – the highest by far of any sector along the Texas border. After a brief detention, Alejandro and Luis were reunited with their mother in Southern California and given a court date in Los Angeles.
Their legal journey toward asylum had begun.
El Salvador tops list of migrant countries
El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala top the list of countries that have sent child migrants across the U.S. border in recent years. According to the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, border agents apprehended 27,114 migrants from El Salvador traveling as families in the past year, making the country the highest source of family migrants.
That's due to increasing instability and violence in the country, said Yanci Montes, the attorney who represented Luis and Alejandro Hernández-Gonzalez in L.A.'s immigration courts. Montes works at El Rescate, in Los Angeles, a legal advocacy group that offers low-cost immigration legal services. It was established in 1981 during the civil war in El Salvador, but the last few years have marked an influx that the group hasn't seen since that period, said Montes.
"I thought maybe people here wouldn't like us migrants," said Alejandro Hernández-Gonzalez. "But I've found the opposite."
After two years of immigration court dates and asylum office interviews, the two boys were granted asylum in March 2016. Alejandro said he's focused now on playing soccer and making friends at his new high school.
"People are offering a hand, helping from all over," he said. "And now I have to change my life for the better – it can't be like it was before in El Salvador."
During a visit to the family's home in La Quinta, his brother Luis showed off his recent geometry homework. It's a class he's struggling with, he said, but determined to improve in. He also pointed out a baseball hat collection in his bedroom, which featured an L.A. Dodgers hat, and a line of skateboards leaning against the wall.
"Here is my new country, my new life," said Luis, in halting English. "Everything is different."
Correction: This story has been revised to correct the name of the organization that Yanci Montes, the attorney, works for. It is called El Rescate, founded in 1981. KPCC regrets the error.
On The Lot : Marvel ties a box office record with Doctor Strange, political races end, Oscar race begins
Marvel Studios hit a record this weekend with Doctor Strange, making it fourteen consecutive number one box office films. That ties the comic book publisher-turned-film-factory with Pixar. Interestingly, both units are under the Disney umbrella.
Vanity Fair's Hollywood correspondent Rebecca Keegan joined Take Two with more on Marvels record breaking ways, plus some inside scoop on the big campaign. Not the race for the White House, or for control of the Senate, but the jockeying for Oscar gold. Rebecca runs down a few of the actors, and a few of the films, that are likely to end up on this year's Academy Awards nomination list.
To hear the full interview, click the blue arrow above.
Joel Edgerton on the legacy of the Loving case and playing a reluctant activist
The new film "Loving" is based on the real-life story of a white man named Richard Loving who fell in love with Mildred Jeter, a woman of African American and Rappahannock Native American descent.
The two lived in rural Virginia, where Richard Loving bought a plot of land with big hopes and dreams.
Will you marry me? Loving movie clip
Mildred said yes and the two were married in Washington D.C.
But their union wasn't recognized in Virginia. The two were arrested in the middle of the night, just weeks after their nuptials, for violating the state's Racial Integrity Act. The Lovings went on to fight the law and their case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967.
Joel Edgerton plays Richard Loving in the new movie. He spoke with Take Two's Alex Cohen about Loving's reluctance to become a political activist and how he came to understand Richard's love for his wife.
Interview Highlights
How did that moment, that bursting into the bedroom in the middle of the night, how did that fuel Richard Loving going forward?
"I think that suddenly it changed a lot for Richard...I think that event is very significant to the knocking down of one's door, the assumption on behalf of the sheriffs that they could go inside the bedroom to tell two people that what they're doing in private was not legal. It's a significant thing and I think it changed a lot in that moment."
Why do you think Richard was a reluctant hero?
"We all love a revolutionary and we need them and we identify with them from a distance, but more than that, the majority of us look at revolutionaries and go either 'I wish I could be like that' or 'I'm glad that's not me. I'm glad I'm not standing at the front in the firing line or behind the microphone.' Richard wasn't the guy that kicked the door down. He wasn't the guy sort of at the front. He was the guy that sort of looked around one day and realized he was in the spotlight. That he and his wife had been plucked out of Virginia and placed in this sort of spotlight that they didn't want to be in. And for nine years they had to endure that. And for nine years they had to go and live under roofs that they didn't choose to live under...and the time that they were robbed of with their own family and being on their own land...is such a psychological violence.
As people go to see 'Loving' what do you want them to take away from it?
"Jeff [Nichols] has made a movie that, I think is very gentle, and it's very quiet but there's something very intelligent about what he's done. I think he's opening the door for an audience to walk in and experience life with Richard and Mildred, to see the domestic day-to-day existence that they had, the connection they had with each other and their interactions with family, under all the roofs that they either wanted to live under or didn't want to live under. And by doing that it's hard not to have an empathetic response to them, to get to know them, to fall in love with them, to walk in their shoes and I think that's the first point of changing people's opinion about judgment."
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Americans abroad: A view of the 2016 election from overseas
Estimates vary widely, but there are somewhere between 4 and 8 million U.S. citizens living overseas.
So what does the race for the White House look like from thousands of miles away?
Three Americans shared their thoughts from the UK, Australia and the United Arab Emirates:
Ted Cardos is originally from Kansas City, Missouri and now lives in London, England
Leslie White was born in Houston, Texas and now calls Melbourne, Australia home
Steven Anderson is from Santa Barbara, California and splits his time between Europe and the United Arab Emirates.
Interview highlights
How do people overseas view the 2016 presidential election?
Ted Cardos
"Talking with friends in the U.K. the view of the U.S. presidential election is one of deep foreboding. People are very much absolutely obsessed with the U.S. election, and the things that they've been interested in talking about have been very different from before Brexit as opposed to after Brexit."
Steven Anderson
"In the United Arab Emirates, people find the whole election process and the fact that it has taken so long, comical, to say the least. There are concerns here and there, but when they speak with me they have a big smile on their face and find it quite interesting."
Leslie White
"When people hear that I'm American ... everyone asks me 'what is going on with the election?' 'How has Donald Trump got this far? This is completely ridiculous.'"
On the candidates
Steve Anderson
"I have been involved with in the GOP since Richard Nixon in 1972. In the last 25 years I've been very despondent, and then I saw Donald [Trump] come in and say he's Mr. Anti-establishment. He represented all of the people that had views similar to my own that lost hope in Washington, whether Republican or Democrat. So I was one of the people that wanted Trump and was cheering for him from the beginning, because I didn't like anyone else."
Leslie White
"I voted already and I voted for Jill Stein. I left the US in 2010 and a big part of that is that I didn't feel represented by my government. I wanted basic human rights that I thought the United States government was never going to come around to giving like healthcare and education ... Jill Stein is much more in line with values that are important to me."
Plans for election day
Ted Cardos
"I've already voted ... on Election Day I hope and plan to stay up as late as I can to watch the results as they come in. I guess if I could stay up late to watch the Royals win the World Series, I can stay up for the election."
Ear Hustle - the podcast produced inside San Quentin State Prison
Earlier this year Radiotopia, a podcast network run by Public Radio Exchange (PRX), launched an open call for new podcast ideas.
More than 1,500 people from more than 50 countries submitted ideas ... like "The Difference Between," which dives into the world of “information doppelgängers” or "Do Over," a podcast about how your life could have turned out if you’d just done that one thing differently.
But the winner perhaps had the most unusual circumstances. "Ear Hustle," is a podcast produced by a team of three people, Earlonne Woods (left) , Antwan Williams (right) and Nigel Poor (center). Woods and Poor are the co-creators and co-hosts and Williams is the co-creator, co-host and sound designer.
https://blog.prx.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/ear-hustle.jpg
What makes it so unusual is that Woods and Williams are both inmates at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California ... and the podcast is about life behind bars. Here's a promo clip provided by the producers:
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-95/2-min-1
We talked about the podcast with Nigel Poor, and how she got involved.
To listen to more, click on the blue bar above.