When the Flint water crisis happened in Michigan, I was already feeling pretty disillusioned with the state of the world.

当密歇根州的弗林特水危机发生时，我已经对世界状况感到非常失望。

I was 27, I had an hour-long commute to work.

我那时候27岁， 上下班有长达一个小时的路程。

I worked in the recycling industry, which I liked, but I spent most of my day crawling around in garbage cans.

我曾在回收行业工作，我很喜欢，但我一天中的大部分时间都在垃圾桶里四处爬行。

And I would listen to the radio on my hour-long commute and hear about how there were all these bills that the people of Michigan wanted to see passed, yet our legislature wasn't doing anything about it.

我会在长达一个小时的通勤路上听广播，听到密歇根州人民希望通过的所有法案，但我们的立法机构却无动于衷。

And I found out that the reason they weren't was because of a thing called gerrymandering, which basically meant that when voting districts were being drawn, our politicians would pick and choose which voters they wanted voting for them to all but guarantee that they were going to win the election, or that their political party was going to win an election.

我发现他们之所以不通过，是因为有一种叫做选区划分的东西，这基本上意味着在划定选区时，我们的政客会挑选他们希望投票给他们的选民，以确保他们能赢得选举，或者他们的政党能赢得选举。

I kept thinking like: How is this the world we live in?

我一直在想：我们生活在怎样的世界里？

Kids don't have clean water, politicians aren't doing anything and aren't afraid of our vote.

孩子们没有干净的水，政客们什么也没做，也不害怕我们的投票。

Like, doesn't anybody care?

没人在乎吗？

And why doesn't somebody do something about this?

那为什么没有人对此做点什么？

And I didn't realize that soon, by accident, I would figure out that actually a lot of people do care.

但我没有意识到，偶然间我发现，实际上很多人是确实在乎的。

That next morning, before going to work, just kind of out of frustration, I made a post on Facebook, and it said: "Hey, I want to take on gerrymandering in Michigan.

第二天早上，在上班之前，出于无奈，我在Facebook上发了一篇帖子，上面写着：“嘿，我想解决密歇根州的选区划分问题。

If you want to help, let me know :)" And -- the emoji was very key.

如果你想帮忙，请告诉我 :) ”并且 —— 表情符号非常关键。

And I didn't think that this would actually do much of anything.

而且我没想到这实际上会起到什么作用。

I thought maybe I'd find a couple other friends who thought this was a big deal. Maybe we'd volunteer somewhere.

我想也许我会找到同样认为这很重要的另外几个朋友，也许我们会在某个地方做志愿者。

I certainly didn't think that it would lead to a political movement of over 10,000 people, that it would lead to amending our state constitution or actually restoring faith in democracy in our state in general.

我当然不会想像，这会导致超过1万人的政治运动 ，也不认为这也会导致修改我们的州宪法，或者确实恢复对整个州民主的信心。

But when I went to work and then at lunchtime, checked social media, I started to see that people were responding.

但是当我去上班然后在午餐时间查看社交媒体时，我开始看到人们在回应。

And they were saying things like, "I've cared about this issue for such a long time. I'm so glad you're doing something about it."

他们说的话比如：“我关心这个问题已经很长时间了。我很高兴你在为此付出行动。”

"Please let me know how I can help." "Katie, let's do this thing."

“请告诉我该如何提供帮助。”“凯蒂，让我们做这件事吧。”

And that's when it struck me like, oh no.

它震撼我的时候我的反应是，“哦不”。

These people think I know what I'm doing, and I did not.

这些人以为我知道自己在做什么，但我却不知道。

So I quickly Googled: “How do you end gerrymandering?”

于是我很快在谷歌上搜索了一下：“你如何结束选区划分？”

And it turns out that it's all related to a process called the redistricting process.

结果全都导向一个被称为重新划分的程序。

And if you wanted to end gerrymandering, you had to get the politicians to stop being the ones getting to pick and choose who their voters were.

而且，如果你想结束选区划分，就必须让政客们停止选择选民是谁。

And that made a lot of sense, because when politicians would draw these lines, instead of keeping communities together, we would get districts that look like this.

这很有道理，因为当政客们划清界限时，我们得到的不是让社区团结起来，而是选出看起来像这样的选区。