And give us a way to express ourselves that the white community doesn t allow us. - exactly. - yeah. - there was a lot of poetry that was used in the performances, you know? because most of us were writers. there were a lot of people here that were former hippies, and we would go to the demonstrations, to the concerts. - but it wasn t all good. there were language barriers, high unemployment, unaffordable and overcrowded housing, and one night in 1991 the cops shot a latinx man, and no one was held accountable, so it was no surprise when it all exploded. there was an incident, a riot that happened here. can you tell me a little bit about that? - yeah, in 1991, cinco de mayo, a guy gets drunk and belligerent in a joint over here, you know, and they call the police. - the trouble started when police shot a man they say failed to follow their order to drop a knife. some witnesses say the man was in handcuffs when he was shot.
In the united states, but only half of all eligible voters of any color actually vote. that s why maria teresa kumar and rosario dawson founded voto latino with one mission in mind, to get more latinx voters to the ballot box, and it s working. since launching in 2004, voto latino has registered over a million new voters and spearheaded campaigns to fight unfair redistricting and voter suppression. - so you re here to shake it up a little bit? - i want to try to shake it up a little bit. shake it up a little bit. you re you ve been shaking it up forever. how many years has that been? - oh, my gosh. i like to say we re 18 years young. - yeah, yeah, that s amazing. i mean, longevity in this game is everything. - well, and this is what folks don t realize is that every 30 seconds a latino turns 18 years old. and so when people. - voter. - voter. - and that s for folks you know, and people say, well, why do you do what you do? well, if we deeply believe that latinos are part of americ
But when you think of d.c., you mostly think of dead white guys, am i right? like washington, jefferson, lincoln. well, guess what. latinos have been here every step of the way. [upbeat latin-tinged music] in fact, latinx heroes have fought in every war for the united states for centuries. this goes all the way back to the revolutionary war. american forces got major financial contributions from cuba, and they also got help from the spanish forces led by a young venezuelan commander named francisco de miranda. and then during the civil war, more than 20,000 hispanics served. almost half of them were mexican-american, and that was only 13 years after the mexican-american war. now where s the monument for that? huh? huh? huh? now, today, nearly 20% of the u.s. population is latin, and our numbers are growing. our voting power is growing too, and about one in ten votes are being cast by latinos, and yet we still make up less than 2% of our elected officials, but the good news is, we do ha